GREAT write-up. I regret that I only have one “like” to give. With that said, I’m glad I transferred off SS a while back. Sounds like a solo guy like myself would have a really bad time. I’ve only played about 20 8v8 games so far (because I don’t play much and can only hop on briefly -also it’s December and I’m on vacation for most of it), but I’ve fought tooth and nail for a ~20% win rate. I can imagine it would be close to zero on a lower population server. I think the pvp mode in this game is still trying to find its identity. Is it competitive or casual? Right now we mix the two and deliver a platter of casuals to the competitive to devour. Personally, I will keep playing casually, by myself. I simply don’t have the time to invest in finding friends, and I don’t want to feel obligated to stay and play longer. If I have to wait around and form a group, I might lose my time to play at all. I’m very stubborn though and will continue to fight uphill and lose most of the time. I doubt most casuals will do the same. Only BW has the data to know if 8v8 grouped queue would be sustainable (population). I’m guessing the answer is no, based on their actions. I think as-is, this problem will be self-correcting as the competitive players will get bored and quit. The baddies will get tired of losing and quit. The casual diehards will keep playing solo. Eventually we will reach a state of equilibrium with only the occasional 8-man premade, but mostly casuals playing solo or in small groups.

Looks like I'm at a 25% win rate solo queue in 16 games so far as a PT (both Pyro and AP combined). I think people tend to cry "premades" a little too much, but it's still a legitimate problem. Doesn't matter how good you are, your W/L record in solo is going to be bad. Might be a little better if you play heals or skank tank, but as a lone dps you are going to have a bad time more often than not. I don't really have the time or energy to make a group, and I don't want to feel obligated to stay and play. I just hope we don't see things devolve into a scenario where people feel they either have to play with their friends or not at all, and the queue dies that way.

I’m not a fan of any lockdown whatsoever. If people want to leave, let them leave. It’s not like they are going to be motivated and useful anyway. I’d rather get a backfill with a player who actually WANTS to be there. Back in the day, pulling off a win after one or more players rage-quit was an amazing feeling. Being able to choose 8v8 or arenas is great. I think that helps a lot. But we don’t have full map choice in the 8v8’s. There are times when I simply am not in the mood for Huttball, and there are 3 different versions of that map. If you absolutely MUST have a lockout timer for quitting, then perhaps consider if it is technically feasible to be able to detect the difference between somebody hitting the “leave” button vs a character timing out and disconnecting. Escalating penalties for leaving is WAY excessive IMO. I’m gonna be a bit ticked off if I ever get multiple Quesh/Vandin in a row and/or have connection issues Muchas gracias

This is a solo queue huttball specific issue, but I think most people are going to interpret it as “NeRf OpErAtIvEs!1!1” I’m sure any reasonable and objective person would agree that op roll de-sync in Huttball can be pretty awful. But that’s more of an argument against de-sync than it is against operatives.

Check out vulkk.com for the class guides. They are mostly PVE focused, but it won’t be much different. Deception doesn’t really have a set rotation as it’s highly dependent on procs. The simple version is “click glowing buttons.” It’s a pretty solid spec in pvp and, IMO, very fun to play. Gearing is pretty simple. I believe the number is 7.15% on alacrity for the 1.4 second GCD, then dump the rest into crit. Personally I go for around 105% accuracy. Don’t forget about stims.

This gearing change is pretty much the best thing since 4.X, or whenever it was that we had cheap PVP gear. I’m a solo pvp’er primarily and I’m loving this. Definitely going to be putting together a gear set for all of the alts. Will be playing Deception, Vengeance, Annihilation, AP PT, Pyro, Merc heals, I/O and Arsenal, PT tank…practically ALL of the things. Devs: you have my thanks P.S. logging into these forums is a super annoying process. Waiting for the one-time password email, and as soon as you log in it takes you away from the forum post and to the SWTOR home page. It took about ten minutes to be able to post this. There have been plenty of times where I ended up not posting something because I didn’t have the patience…I’m certain this limits feedback. P.P.S. Carnage still isn’t great, IMO. It just feels so clunky, and the new shard of Mortis tactical doesn’t help much (although building up to a huge devastating blast is fun on a dummy, it’s easy to mess up in a pvp environment where targets are constantly running away - those 6 seconds disappear quick). I miss the old channeled Ravage / Master Strike animation. My idea of a non “clunky” feel is Vengeance. Everything just seems to flow from one ability to the next and you don’t have to spam the same ability 3-5 times in a row like with Carnage.

This comment doesn’t make any sense. Pvp has bolster. Bolster caps at (formerly 326) 328 now, so anything over that gets nerfed downwards in level. You can acquire said 328 gear doing nothing but warzones. My brain might be tricking me and remembering prior to 7.0, but I think Boarding Party vet mode might still be doable solo. The hardest part is the first boss, but only because your companion tends to be dumb and stand in the wrong spot. Use a stealth class and rocket boost: skip all the trash. I know I can do SM in like 10 minutes. Will have to go try vet mode again…but personally I’m a pvper and don’t care to get anything but the pvp gear so I haven’t bothered. Mostly that’s just a good way to farm tech fragments. By the way, I don’t understand the big deal with queueing for a vet or master flashpoint. You can still call yourself a solo player. I very much consider myself a solo player because I don’t have a guild or any friends in game and 100% play by myself. I still queue for warzones, but it’s always solo queue. Should I decide I want to grind a gear set for PVE, I will probably farm master flashpoints. But otherwise I will stick with my 328 for pvp and call it good.

I found that color crystals are not applying stats and blue augs are slightly bugged. Purples are mostly fine, except they give you +8 more endurance than they should. On blue augs, you end up getting a little less endurance, power, and tertiary stat. So that’s why your HP dropped slightly inside the warzone. Within Rishi stronghold, my Crit rating is 2419. Adding a single blue 276 crit aug should add +95 Crit points, +126 Power, and +126 Endurance. Instead, it only adds +86 Crit, +114 Power, and +119 Endurance. So in other words, the blue augs are stealth nerfed by -9 Crit, -12 Power, and -7 Endurance. Go purple or go home. I'm way too broke to have any gold augs to test.

That’s how it’s supposed to work, but the only way to know if it’s actually working as intended is to try both 328 and 330 and inspect your stats inside a warzone, or inside your Rishi stronghold. I’m planning on investigating, but it’s dependent on my play time and how long it will take to grind those items.

EDIT: I see this post was edited and the note was removed, so I decided to edit my post as well. Hopefully was just a copy/paste error and the issue has now been fixed. I will check it out later when I get off work. Cheers 2nd EDIT: Color crystals still do not work in pvp level sync / bolster. Within Rishi stronghold, adding a +41 Crit crystal to my mainhand or offhand does nothing. Crit points remain the same. No stats added, makes no difference if it is equipped or empty. Purple augments work great now, but Blues (276) are still a little messed up in pvp level sync / bolster. Within Rishi stronghold, my Crit rating is 2419. Adding a single blue 276 crit aug should add +95 Crit points, +126 Power, and +126 Endurance. Instead, it only adds +86 Crit, +114 Power, and +119 Endurance. So in other words, the blue augs are stealth nerfed by -9 Crit, -12 Power, and -7 Endurance. Go purple or go home. I'm way too broke to have any gold augs to test. P.S. Technically the purple 286 augs grant an extra +8 Endurance (should be +144, ACTUAL +152). But the power is OK and the tertiary (crit) is OK. P.P.S. I'm kind of annoyed that I spent the evening being a bug tester, so I hope this is useful to somebody.

That’s the plan, yes. But we all know the track record on bolster bugs so I would not be surprised to see that 340 gear ends up being superior, until they implement a patch. I would be very pleasantly surprised to find it working as intended from day 1.

I'm assuming the pvp population is just so low that they figure it's hardly worth mentioning. They didn't even tell us that they disabled augments for the longest time. I remember having to go to my Rishi stronghold and play around to figure out what was happening. I do recall the high end pve gear being superior at first, but I thought that was fixed in a later patch. That's what the patch notes said, anyway. I could probably go dig them up. EDIT: it was 7.0.2 patch notes

We will have Thyrsian 328. I would imagine gearing is going to be the same process as it was for 326 (weekly crate = guaranteed upgrade of your lowest item rating). Also we will have mods, although I have no idea if there will be a mod vendor or not. Might just be whatever mods come in the weekly crate piece, or whatever come in a piece that you buy from the vendor. https://vulkk.com/2022/07/29/bioware-previews-new-swtor-7-1-content-and-introduces-the-new-team-leaders-with-a-livestream/

I appreciated the face time from the devs and am encouraged by some of the UI considerations. The gearing details weren’t super clear, but it sounds like there may be a dev post on that in works so I’m intrigued to see that. Will be nice to finally be able to use augments again, and hopefully mods will be accessible and not limited to RNG.

You get it at level 60. I’m doing a re-run of the warrior story with assassin as my 2nd spec. Just hit 60 yesterday and got it. I was wondering the same thing, but wasn’t expecting it until 65 or 70. Edit: well now I feel like an idiot for not reading the date on the post. Hopefully this helps somebody else out…