Real men play female sage/sorc post 1.2, you mean. Right?

I quit playing my full- (or nearly full-) champion geared character. I spent a lot of time grinding that in solo PUG warzones at a relatively casual rate of play. Took me quite a long time in absolute terms (i.e., number of days/weeks from start to finish). I'm not going to buy recruit gear just because I got screwed on my champion gear. I'm just not going to play. I'm in until my time runs out at this point. After that, if I don't have a way to upgrade my guy's gear other than buying recruit gear like any ol' 5-minute fresh 50, then I'm done I think. I don't care that I can just go buy the recruit gear. If I could trade in my champ gear for recruit gear, then maybe I would. At this point, buying recruit gear is a credit sink on top of a previous grind. No thanks.

The gimbal-mounted engines would give the BH ship by far the best maneuverability in a dogfight in a vacuum out of all the ship designs. None of the rest of the ships are suitable for anything but straight flight and gentle turning in space. The BH ship can use its main engines to turn, while all of the other ships would need some sort of additional, and much less powerful, thrusters. The further your propulsion is from your center of mass, the better you can turn in space. I'll be the first to say the BH ship isn't the prettiest, but for its purpose? By far, the best. I wouldn't mind if the styling were upgradable at some point, but I'll take function over form any day, if it means the difference between looking pretty and getting paid.

Those are expertise stims and power-ups, not experience. But, yes, use those and get them. They let you do more damage and healing and take more damage.

This kind of implies that the ranking system will be integrated (or slapped on top) of the current system, but in a way that seems to attempt to prevent heavy premades from going against all-PUGs. But it doesn't actually say that specifically, as far as I can tell (i.e., it says "avoid" rather than "prevent", which may be a negligible semantic issue, or not). If the only two groups queued for PVP late night (for example) are a heavy premade and a wimpy PUG, will they not be matched? I wonder ...

That's certainly possible, tho that would de facto take the choice to play rated or unrated out of the question and make my own question moot, now wouldn't it? If they did as you suggest, would there be cutoff points where different tiers of rated players could not be joined together? Or would they throw highly rated teams against lowly rated teams? Separating rated and unrated seems easier to manage and code, to me. E.g., you can put together your highly-rated team and go faceroll unrated PUGs, but then you don't get any particular rewards for doing so. I don't know if they've said one way or the other, so ...

Will you queue for rated warzones exclusively, or will you run both rated and unrated? I wonder if, when rated wz's are implemented, if regular wz's will become more like training grounds absent the more talented pvpers? I would think the more talented pvpers would gravitate more toward rated, unless there are those who just want to faceroll noobs all the time even if you're way more skilled & better geared than them. I guess it could depend on whether there are diminishing returns to playing rated wz's all the time.

As someone who levels alts 90% thru pvp, I'd fully support a further bracket segmentation; however, if and only if the numbers support it. I'm not a big fan of the x-server queue, but if that's coming, then we might as well have more brackets. I could easily top damage charts at low levels. Your gear is so much easier to have roughly BIS at all times at the low levels. But you have such limited other utility and usefulness that high damage output is all you can really hope for. That's not enough in most matches. I'd also add level 30 pvp gear ... Or maybe pvp gear for every 5 levels starting at 15 (and make it a bit cheaper) ... However, if x-server queues are not implemented, then my server at least wouldn't support more brackets as far as I can tell.

Str (1129) +7.91%, Crit (352) +12.35%

PVE: utterly destroying standard/weak NPCs so you can get right to the elites/bosses. PVP: whomping on everyone around nodes/doors/the huttball/etc. Focus shines when you're facing groups of multiple enemies. You also get a pretty nice speed/defensive boost with fast-to-permanent Transcendence. In other words, AOE damage at melee range.

Focus is great in PVP. Best? Who knows, since best is so subjective. There are positives and negatives to all three, but Focus is definitely viable. I completely agree on Leg Slash. Use it early on (I never open with it). Try not to open with Force Leap if you can help it. Using your leaps to close gaps after you start getting kited is the way to deal with getting kited. Once you get to 31 Focus, you'll get Exhaustion, which between leaps, leg slash, and that, you'll never get kited for very long. Early on tho, it certainly can be tough. One of the best moves is to open on sages/sorcs and anticipate their speed burst. Having played one yourself, you should become good at that pretty quickly. Stasis them right as they pop their speed burst, and you'll roll them more often than not.

We just had a match start with three people on our side. So, I'm moderately in favor of imposing a deserter penalty for people leaving warzones, tho I could really go either way. I don't really care. In most matches, it wouldn't matter. What I am opposed to: I am opposed to warzone matches starting so severely undermanned that you've got [insert arbitrarily small percentage here] chance of winning. Lately, I've had matches that start with everywhere from 3-7 on a side. I wouldn't put the matches starting at even strength at even being 50%, especially during off-peak hours. I actually have no problem with matches starting 4 on 4, and then the 5th for each side has to wait until both sides have 5, et cetera, until both sides are full strength. The people who press the enter warzone button first could be put in right away, and then people join in equal numbers on each side. If you have 8 all press the enter button before the match, then great. If not, then wait. Usually 7 v 8 is manageable. Once you start getting to 6 v 8 and lower, it seems like win chances drop dramatically. If you start with less than 6, should you be hit with a deserter penalty for deciding to leave such an unbalanced match? I don't think you should. I've never won a 6 v 8 match (that I can recall). And, yes, I know that there's a shutdown timer, and if people come in quickly then matches can sometimes be saved. Rarely, tho, in my experience. In fact, if several people drop your full-strength match willingly taking the penalty, then I think it would be fair to, say, after 30 or 60 seconds of reinforcements not joining, then let anyone else else drop the all-of-a-sudden unbalanced match. If you're the last couple of people in a match that started 5 on 8 and everyone else dropped, should you have to sit there for 120 seconds getting smacked around just so you don't get a deserter penalty? It's not a fairness thing; it's an annoyance thing more than anything. (If you're a stealther, then great -- just avoid everyone for 120 seconds. The rest of us usually get to die several more times.) Applying a deserter penalty in all cases would seem heavy handed, tho like I said, I moderately agree with one in general.

Lots of good advice here. I'll just add, after playing a Sentinel to 50, every other class I've tried except Gunslinger/Sniper is somewhat boring. The others are fine in their own way, and I still play them, but they're not nearly as enjoyable as Sentinel. I leveled to 49 as Watchman, and then switched to Combat for 49 (doing mostly pvp) and then Focus at 50 (again, mostly pvp). I've still done some pve at 50, and I'll say that Watchman is definitely my preference for pve, and the other two are great for pvp (tho Watchman is also great for pvp). Try Watchman. You'll like it. Just keep your burns on the strong enemies, and it'll be much easier for ya.

What do you guys rotate in when Force Exhaustion, Zealous Leap, and Force Stasis are on cooldown? I'm sometimes tempted to run out to jump back in with Force Leap, but that is a significant amount of time without any DPS, plus your target may just follow you (e.g., hard to do 1v1 if your target is fighting you). So, Strike and Slash, then? That is what seems obvious to me, but I might be missing something. A couple of non-empowered Sweeps? Maybe if you're in the middle of a group, right? But not if you're 1v1, since Strike and Slash average out to be higher DPS than Sweep, it seems. Anywho. Thanks for the tips.

I prefer left/mid to start, with mid/right or left/right later in the game being perfectly fine. I prefer not to start for right unless you go with overwhelming force (6 or 7), because if you go right then you have to take it, since your reinforcement time is so much longer there. The one variation that's been working for us lately if we start the match with 6 players, is to send everyone right, make sure we take it, and then send 1 or 2 left to try to cap that node before they realize we don't have 8. You can defend left and right with 6 people if you've got 3 or 4 who can flow back and forth very quickly and are efficient at calling out incoming attacks. Calling out incoming attacks is, ideally, done when you see them incoming. Not when you're almost dead and you're the only defender at the node. I don't care how good 1v1 or 1v2 you think you are. GD call the inc when you see it! However, I'll echo previous posters: You have to base your tactics on what your enemy does. If you're too rigid, then you're probably going to lose (certainly more often than not). The other point of strategy is: If you're down 2 nodes to 1 after the start, then regroup and attack a node together. So many people try to take nodes by trickling in.