1a) Bailing.. can't speak to, as we don't have enough WZ matches going on (on our server) for people to bail. 1b) Medal requirements were changed from 3 to 1. 2) TOR handles drops in connectivity very poorly (compared to virtually every other online game and program). A brief 5s drop in connectivity will cause the game to boot you. They need to add code on the networking end to have the client attempt to re-establish a connection with the server instead of waiting & dropping. Whether they will or not (and how much work it would be) is another discussion. 3) Cheating/hacks - haven't seen any on our server (just afk bots a month ago which BioWare presumably banned). If it is indeed an issue on some servers, it should definitely be addressed though. Keep in mind that new players often think they see speed hacking when in reality a Sentinel/Marauder just used their group speed-boost. 4) MVP doesn't award a lot - think BioWare knows that sometimes friends just hit friends with them, which is why the rewards are poor. I don't think it's realistic to expect BioWare to try and address what amounts to a player-issue - it's just a pat-on-the-back thing anyway. 5) I personally just find the icons annoying & in-the-way. It's easier to see a healer's castbar without that junk filling up the screen. The other team usually places a raid marker my healer anyway - the sage icon does nothing to help/hurt them in this. 6) Casual play - you'll have to elaborate more. You don't have fun playing casually, but why specifically do you find it worse as a casual player versus say what a hard-core player might experience? 7a) Queue - the re-invite aspect is a little annoying, though if you play with the same people and add them to your friends list, it's fairly easy to spam-invite everyone quickly. 7b) The Warzone *does* wait until even players have queued. The problem is that not everyone accepts the queue. I suppose they could potentially go League-of-Legends style and make sure everyone passes the pre-game check. However, if/when they implement cross-server warzones, I suspect that teams will fill up during the current pre-game period, so this will probably become a non-issue. 8) WZ rankings in regards to leavers - Elaborate on what you mean here. Are you suggesting they group "leavers" together in their own warzones? Suggesting it's shown in the scoreboard? Something else? Where do people who get boned with a disconnection fit in? (and if they're immune what's to stop leavers from pulling the plug on their connection to make it look like a disconnect & forgo the penalty)

Hmm, not on our server/faction. It's often a split between healers and "pity" votes (the guy who got less than 8 medals often gets 4-5 MVP votes). However, we usually win, and we recognize nearly every player in our games. We know who can sap/cap, bait/cap, who can be trusted to watch a door (who can't), you can carry a ball, who will pass, who will be in position, who will CC at the right time, who can 1v1 if solo defending, who can't and will (or won't) call for help, etc. Since we can't vote for all of the 4-5 players that each pulled off stuff that won us the game (and all deserve it), MVP votes are kinda... throwaways. If we could send multiple votes (with less weight to them), it would probably be more performance based.

Agree here. Some of the problems it solves: it keeps PvE and PvP gear separate. No PvP'ing for your raid weapons, no PvE'ing for your PvP set. it can be used to make newcomers viable in PvP - toss free expertise on starter gear, and they're not simply fodder for the slaughter. it gives a method to counter/mitigate stat-inflation. Since PvP & PvE gear would have to be nearly identical otherwise (to keep 1 from being better than the other), new PvP gear would have to scale as PvE gear does. And PvE gear usually has to scale a lot to force *progression*. A few of the problems it creates: inconvenient for players. It's another set of gear you have to carry & equip. it's another stat to *try* and balance. Is it adding too much survivability? Too much DPS? Too much healing? That stuff has to be balanced & adjusted, unlike PvE content where they can often just modify encounters if they see a problem. PvP Healing - similar to above, but the exception is that there's no counter to it's scaling. A low expertise DPS group will drop a low expertise group at the same rate a high expertise DPS group will drop a high one because survivability from expertise goes up with damage. Healers on the other hand don't have a counter-balance. Their healing just gets better as they gain more expertise - people take the same damage in a mirror-match as they scale, but healers are healing for more. They become more valuable in a high-expertise matchup vs a low one. PvE gear viability in PvP becomes an issue. The only way to address that is to make Expertise so incredibly valuable that PvE gear is utterly worthless in PvP. At that point, expertise basically becomes the "only" stat worth looking at which is pretty boring, and also ensures that a PvE'er who shows up for PvP without expertise gear (for a fun match, or a break, or whatever) has 0 viability and gets horribly destroyed. Could go on, but that gives an idea. There are trade-offs certainly. It's not a perfect system, but nothing is. We just have to hope BioWare puts a whole pile of effort into trying to balance the system as we go. So far, they seem to be doing a surprisingly good job (which is a good sign), but balancing it is going to be a never-ending job. Gear should matter in that it gives you a *minor* edge. I'll farm up gear that has +2 stats on it, because it *might* be that little bit that makes the difference. LoL did this pretty well - those runes & talents you got were all pretty minor (though they admittedly did add up), and you tended to pick ones that played to your particular playstyle. TOR has done this pretty well too - the difference between say... Champion and Battlemaster gear isn't very extreme. Sure it's an upgrade, but a BM team isn't going to roll a Champ team by any means. Skill, composition, etc all mean a lot more. The BM team has an edge, but it's not massive.

Don't know if a LFG is being actively worked on, but they're aware many people want it and I wouldn't be surprised if there are plans to implement it at some point. If you click the Legacy button on your top menu-bar thing (in-game), you can see all the benefits (stuff you have access to now, stuff you don't yet, etc). If there's anything you like, much you can buy with credits. The only thing you can't buy as far as I know are the other class buffs. A 570 is a quick/speedy card - can probably run at near-max settings (if not max), depending on your resolution, CPU, etc.

I think I've only ever used EMP and WFP once or twice. So the basics, in case you're missing something: Make sure you're not constantly shooting when there's nothing to kill (shields dont regen when you hold down the mouse button). #1 (power to weapons), always on when shooting. #2 (power to shields), turn this on AS SOON AS YOU GET A BREAK from the action. Even if it's only for 2-3 seconds that you have nothing to kill, use that time to regen your shields (reminder, don't shoot with this on because your shields wont regen AND your weapons will do terrible damage anyway - press #1 again before shooting) Also, the best defense is a good offense. Focus on killing stuff as fast as humanly possible - if you try to avoid fire instead (and the enemy ships live longer because of it), you'll take more damage. In waves where many ships are coming at you but are still far away, don't be afraid to spam missles while shooting. Remember, you can shoot through rocks. If you crosshair turns red, start shooting. Finally, part of it is remembering the script, which comes over time. Eventually you'll know exactly when to let shields recharge, exactly where to start shooting before stuff appears, etc.

The ones I currently play. -Sentinel -Sage Healer I suppose maybe also a Shadow tank (mine's a lowbie). They're just fun classes to play. Sage plays similar to a WoW priest. Sentinel's kinda like a warrior/rogue hybrid - great anti-caster. Shadow tank, I just like the melee-tank-with-stealth aspect. Stealth is super fun. Could nerf them all to the ground, I'd still play em.

1) An Intel i3, i5, or i7, with a speed of 2Ghz or more (super easy to find). 2) An nVidia or AMD Radeon video card. The Radeon's are easier to find & generally cheaper, but I hate their mobility drivers. If you go nVidia, a 540m or better gives decent framerates at low settings (might be able to skimp further I suppose). For AMD, I would *guess* you might want to start at a 6600-series or better (again, might be able to skimp further). 3) Most have enough hard drive space and at least 4GB of RAM. More is obviously better, but once you've got the CPU/GPU figured out, you generally just have to make sure you like the laptop (keyboard, screen, DVD/Blueray drive, etc). Note that laptops are often brutal when it comes to gaming. If nothing else, after a few months it'll probably start overheating in TOR and you'll have to use compressed air to try and blow the dust out, & hope you don't have to disassemble the thing to get it all. It's slightly less of a problem with "gaming" laptops, but those tend to start at the $1000 mark. A non-gaming machine that can usually game ok (similar to what I'd mentioned) usually starts at the $600-700 mark. And if you skimp and are willing to settle for less, you can probably find something for $400-500 that'd work, though make sure wherever you buy it lets you return it just in case you found you skimped-too-much. I don't know if a $400-500 machine would make for a playable experience or not. Also worth noting that Intel's new "Ivy Bridge" laptops are supposed to come with better integrated graphics than previous ones - while Intel video is usually considered bottom-of-the-barrel, maybe the new stuff would be playable in TOR - don't know, but might be worth looking into since skipping an nVidia/AMD video card would save you a good chunk of money and possibly keep you in the sub-$500 range (AND be better for battery life since integrated video doesn't guzzle electricity the way dedicated chips/cards do).

Disagree, mon ami! It's perfect when you've got a clump of people who took aoe damage and are sitting at 60-90% (especially at the south node in the new warzone, but also useful in VS/Ald during large zergs).

I disagree (both that we're paper thin and in regards to the suggested heal change). On Survivability BH I don't see as a problem (similar to other ranged, I start pillar-kiting if the pressure is too high) The best Maras on our server can't drop me alone. When they're super-determined, just to be silly I've started kiting them away from the action, and they eventually turn around (since they can't trust anyone else to watch the node I assume). If 2 are on me (Mara + anything), sure, I drop hard, but I expect that. I either need a guard or a peel. Bad Maras (don't kick, don't mortal-strike me), I can take 2 indefinitely. On Heal Change First, if nothing else, it made Alacrity worthwhile (it was utterly worthless pre-1.2 and was the first thing to mod out). With a chunk of Alacrity (after buying new gear since I'd destroyed the old mods), the big heal isn't so bad. It's just the Maras/Sents that can kick virutally non-stop, and they're the only real threat to the big heal. Once they finish their CC-chain (kick, choke, kick, awe, kick), I can almost always make them choose between interrupting that and the AoE heal (unless they're also specced for the shorter 0-range leap too which makes things a little more tricky but I've played a Sent and watch their timing) I think BioWare expects us to make use of our short heal. I almost never used it before, and now I do periodically. If you spam it (throwing in rejuve and shield when up), it actually keeps most people up. And other classes *hate* interrupting that one because they know we'll follow through with a big heal. Short heal is expensive focus-wise, but we're also supposed to "manage" our focus with 1.2, though admittedly we still don't really have to most of the time. Making the big heal 1.3 seconds (close to what it was before with a renew) would just make us unstoppable again, even if it cost more focus. And then there'd be no reason to use the other short heal, because it's also inefficient - if they change that too (make it the efficient one), we'd just switch to spamming that one instead and just use the big heal for uh-oh moments. Really, I think it would make us too strong. ----- For reference, I'm Valor 70-something (73 I think), full BM gear with a Rakata implant/belt/bracers & a WH implant, sitting at something like 700-800 expertise IIRC (swapped out some of my other PvE pieces today so don't remember exactly). Obviously, above is just my opinion. I'm not having any real troubles with the change (I think I'm slightly less OP than I was before), but I can accept that others might be having issues.

So in VS, all we would need to do when attacking is sit near the defender spawn and rotate Awe, AoE Stun Grenades, etc while we assault the door. The best part is, combined with your suggestion of having a CC-break basically reset the resolve bar, there's absolutely nothing the defending team could do about it, because they'd just eat another full-duration CC if they CC-break. CC that breaks on damage *is* dangerous. We use them all the time to cap nodes already. I have no idea how you can justify making it even easier for us to do that.

Looking at it from a paper->rock->scissors aspect, I think it comes down to: -you're supposed to shred sorcs/sages -you're supposed to do ok against other medium-armor dps -you're supposed to do worse against heavy armor (BH, Guardian/Jug) -you're supposed to do terribly against tanks I don't think it actually works out that way, and I doubt it's terribly fair, but I don't play a sniper/gs. Edit: didn't really address the Commando/Merc part, but it seems to me they have less paper-rock-scissors to them and are supposed to do ok (moderate damage) against everything including tanks, with the heavy armor giving them a stronger edge against physical-damage-dealers. Again, don't think it really works out that way.

Actually, yes, because if you wait 10 minutes in queue, and join a WZ that ends right away, it sucks to come out with nothing. Sure you only invested 10s in the Warzone, but you also invested 10 minutes waiting, and now may have to wait yet another 10-15 mins if you don't get in the next one. This wouldn't be an issue if X-realm warzones existed (and you *always* got into games quickly), but as it stands, on servers that don't have an abundance of warzones going on at the time you play, getting shafted really sucks.

This. And this. Really, stock up on the medpacks and/or grab ranked WZ comms. You'll be glad you did.

Answer is here: You can buy the above mentioned expertise gear with credits. If you hit 50 with no moniez, do the PvE dailies and you'll have more than enough. If you don't have it, you'll get whallopped, and not just in Huttball. And it can be *really* hard for the rest of the team to carry you when you drop like a fly, particularly if you weren't the only one who showed up undergeared. Also, huttball partial-premades are always very tough regardless. It's the WZ that benefits most from that level of co-ordination. The good news is, if you're up against a partial pre-made in huttball, the game usually won't last long anyway.

Which I love seeing when I'm playing a stealth class. The sorc/sage is taking a risk. If it's a healer, a DPS should probably be taking his place guarding anyway so that he can heal your push. It's also not as big an issue as some make it out to be. They *might* get 2 medals out of it - the 5k heal (you can easily get 2.5k in regular combat), and if they're bored enough and really didn't see any action, they might grab the 75k heal if they keep at it long enough.

The issue you mentioned is always an issue in any expertise/resilience system, which is a part of why many were against this type of system in the beginning. Damage & Mitigation can be counter-balanced pretty easily. On the other hand, healing screws everything up, because there's no easy way to counter the way it scales (there are technically ways, but many are fairly complex and tough to implement). As far as healing goes, as you get more expertise/resilience, it just gets better. Now they can't just get rid of the healing effect. They have to give +healing to expertise, because otherwise we'd all just use our PvE gear (even in 1.2 there are a few pieces of PvE gear you can swap in without losing survivability or healing output). They try to counter the problem by using the static -healing debuff in WZ, and by giving heals a lower % from expertise than DPS or damage-reduction when it comes to scaling. It's not perfect, or anywhere near. But like I said, healing screws up the system. Thus we see band-aids like Trauma and lower % healing from expertise. It's a matter of trying to make healing work in a system that by design never worked properly for healing. That "other" MMO had (probably still has) the exact same isssue with resilience. And they've been doing PvP for a while now.

This. Don't get me wrong, I like the new warzone. But I want even more. Also, X-server warzones. I can't see there being enough players to have both rated and non-rated games going at the same time without it on many servers, except possibly at prime-time. Kinda hope X-server comes in the same time rated actually does. Oh, and with X-server, maybe we can get some huge warzones with 20+ people per side. Variety is good.

We've done the first 3 bosses 5-man (normal mode). 1 Tank, 3 dps (1xMelee, 2xRange), 1 healer. Set-up was: Guardian tank Sentinel (watchman) Gunslinger Commando (dps) Sage heals (me) 1st boss is pretty easy. -if 2 people get swiped, it really hurts healing-wise -if everyone can avoid the swipe, while riskier (short window that you can run through him without turning him), healing is easier -we killed the cats (2 adds) instead of ccing them -we often hit enrage timer right near the end - as long as you finish him before ground pound it's ok. 2nd boss was tough. -tank has to solo tank jarg and sorno (trying to have commando range tank jarg did not work for us) -we started with everybody on sorno so tank could build threat for the full phase. 1 range puts a little threat on jarg so that when phase 2 happens he doesn't chase healer (me). -obviously when phase 2 starts and tank is carbonized, get him out quickly. -after that, the ranged go on jarg. -very painful to heal once soft enrage starts. have to burn 1 of them down asap at that point. -sometimes healer (me) gets boned with a combo (stunned in fire + headshot) which can mean a wipe. 3rd boss was fairly easy. -tank *must* rotate cooldowns on frenzies. anyone who takes damage around that time needs to use a health pot. -as long as people are quick at getting out of fire and killing adds, there's nothing special. 4th boss we just could not do. -Needed 2 tanks (couldn't solo-heal 1 with 10 debuff stacks). -Had our commando switch to his Shadow tank. That meant we had 2 tanks, 1 rdps, 1 mdps, 1 healer. -Only 1 rdps on the droids up top was not enough, even with us using our knockbacks on 2 of the droids on the ledge. -Had to rescue-pull the sentinel up to solve puzzle. -Being able to clear the droids up top quickly is the biggest issue. -Even though we solved as quickly as possible (healer & both dps solving - solved in under 10 seconds), it just isn't possible for 2dps to put out the amount of damage needed before the enrage. MAYBE 6 people could do it, but then it would be even more healing intensive. Ideally I suppose I'd go with shadow tanks in DPS gear, and all ranged dps (no melee dps) to shave off the time dropping top-level droids and getting in another puzzle solve. Grenade knock-backs would be more of a problem, mind you - everyone up top would have to *really* be on-the-ball. -if I were attempting with 6, I'd either try 1 tank, 2 heal, 3 dps, or 2 tanks, 1 heal, 3 dps (with 1 dps being able to cast a few off-heals). -again, biggest issue for us is getting the droids killed quickly enough. Solving with 3 people takes 10s. Clearing droids to do it.... takes much longer with only 1 rdps. -this boss is a pain even with 8. 5th boss we didn't get to, but I'm assuming it wouldn't have been much of a problem. Is kinda easy with 8, and I don't see anything that would make it problematic with 5 or 6.

PvPvE (a bolster system of some sort). Raw - population imbalances turn things into a slaughterfest. PopCap - If you have say... 100 imperials and 20 republic who try to get in, that means 80% of the imperials don't get to participate. In addition, the smaller-number-faction has more consistancy in terms of teammates so they tend to organize easily and have a higher chance at winning. GuildBased - Could be interesting I suppose, though this pretty much leaves the solo-player (and tiny guilds) out. Some form of bolster has the potential to even the playing field. I prefer the 2-stage kind - one that bolsters based on the faction imbalance, and another that progressively strengthens the "losing" side over time.

So basically what you're telling me is that Nadia is going to start 1.2 with a lot of expertise. ...I knew I should have left her in pure Champ/Cent gear!

I have 2 BM chars. I didn't grind valor though - I just had fun doing WZ and happened to get valor doing it. I won't be unsubbing. But then again, I still enjoy PvP. Actually I like it so much that I hope they give everybody else BM/WH gear for almost nothing. That way I'll have more of the awesome games that could go either way, and fewer of the 6-0 and 600-0 wins that aren't as challenging/exciting.

Pretty much the above. It's a good idea to pan the camera a little bit while getting in position for a pass so that you can see the circle on the ground if they throw a bit early. As far as interceptions go, sometimes it's simply caused by lag, though often a quick JK/SW can intercept by leaping to you while the ball is en-route to you.

In addition to this, bind the "Throw the Huttball" ability to a key. You don't want to be clicking it, because eating chain-stuns makes it nearly impossible to get off that way. Generally you need to be mashing the key while clicking the area you're trying to throw to in order to get the toss off in the short window between stuns.

Try jumping when the purple circle shows up (instead of trying to just run out of it). It tends to work much, much better. Though ideally they'd tweak that encounter a bit so that anyone has ample time to get out (and to make jumping unnecessary).

Sorry, I mis-spoke (I've done it on my shadow plenty too). You're correct - I should have said Inquisitors/Consulars.