Learn to read. I was saying that a Comm/Merc healer with a tank was next to impossible to kill. Funny you didn't actually say anything about the content of what I've posted in the thread. It's actually kind of funny that people that considered themselves "skilled" don't think that they could overcome a 10% differential in damage dealt/received which is what occurs when someone in the recruit set that costs about two rounds of dailies worth of credits faces some one in full war hero gear. Perhaps the difference between the players is actually class familiarity and skill in addition to the gear. Also I'm not sure why everyone is crying stat inflation already since the new tier of gear has roughly a 2-3% stat increase over previous gears with the obvious exception of expertise.

This thread is a typical post-patch "the sky is falling thread" since everyone here has had exactly 1 day to play the changes, and a lot of the stuff people are reacting to like the expertise changes are just misconceptions. About the only things I agree with in this thread are the WZ comm payout is a little low compared to the usefulness of the gear you get from it, and that some of the healing changes may have been a little harsh. But if the sky is indeed falling BioWare will most likely see it and catch it as they have with quite a few other things in this game so far. Overall this game has actually made significant progress for only being out for 5 months. About this time in Rift's initial lifespan devs were killing world event bosses as they spawned so the servers wouldn't crash due to everyone attacking it at once.

But with the way expertise is working now is not making the fights shorter. Between 2 evenly geared players they will take exactly the same amount of time as they did pre-patch as long as the increases to endurance on the PvP gear matches the stat inflation on the other gear. A lot of people that are perceiving the fights taking a shorter amount of time are most likely having trouble with a spec that was changed in the patch or they are trying to PvP in PvE gear which is not something that BioWare wants to encourage. If you mainly PvE it should be easy to pick up enough PvP gear through the recruit vendor to be competitive. What it stops is people that mainly PvE coming into PvP and rolling people that primarily PvP because the gear is the same or better. It offers two different progression paths with a low barrier to entry to each but a time investment goal to the player in each path. This is the fundamental way that MMO games work. They give you a progression path usually gear wise that you work through with a combination of skill and time investment where skill usually reduces the time investment required.

It is if you actually look at how it works.

Now the reason they reduced healing or rather did not increase it by much is because healing in pvp is unchecked by anything that a character can do except for stat inflation. Thus the PvP healing curve needed to be reduced to reflect what BioWare felt the increase in damage output sans expertise buff would be. This allows the game to have a PvP gearing dependency that creates a large zero-sum arms race. The nerfs that they gave to Merc/Comm and Sorc/Sage seem to be intended to bring them more in line with where Ops/Scound were pre-patch. From my experience in PvP fighting a BH/Comm that was in full BM gear require 2-3 people to kill depending on the skill of the dps and the timing of interrupts. Good sorcs/sages could easily achieve this as well. Ops/Scound on the other hand could be killed with 1-2 good dps interrupting/stunning intelligently. This is without the assistance of a tank or other dps. With a tank Merc/Comm were able to tank 4-5 dps without dying. (Maybe only 3-4 well geared/skilled players). That is over half of a WZ team. But by nerfing the resource management of Merc/Sorc it brings them more in line for PvP, and by not inflating pvp healing increases to offset anything other than stat inflation they make sure they don't get to a point where healers are nearly immortal again.

This post is going to be short and focus on the input/output differential for players of unequal gear levels fighting 1v1. Again I'll be using Dulfy's graph that I linked in my last post for approximate values. This will just be a list of the % dmg received in the case of [Player 1] ->(attacks) [Player 2] and using the buff values as follows: Dmg Reduc WH: 24% 19.5% BM: 22% 18% Rec: 18% 15.5% WH -> BM: 101.68% BM -> WH: 98.21% Diff: +- 3.47% WH -> Rec: 104.78% Rec -> WH: 94.99% Diff: +- 9.79% BM -> Rec: 103.09% Rec -> BM: 96.76% Diff: +- 6.33% Then in the case of fighting a fully pve geared player the differentials are as follows: WH -> PVE: 43.5% BM -> PVE: 40% Rec -> PVE: 33.5% So in the case that you are wearing a full set of pvp gear that is obtainable in 1.2 you will never be at more than a 10% disadvantage expertise buff-wise, but it makes PvE gear completely non-viable for PvP which was BioWare's stated goal. This is not much of an entrance barrier to a new 50 if they plan ahead and buy gear pieces as they level to use when they hit 50.

I've been seeing a lot of dubious math considering the changes to expertise in patch 1.2 so I would like to post my take on what the goal of the changes actually are for 1.2. I'm making one assumption on how the damage calculation works: expertise is multaplicative. Thus the formula for deriving how much damage you take is based on the following formula: (AttackDmg)*(1+AttackExp)*(1-DefExp)*(1-DmgReduction) = DmgRecieved And for the sake of argument I will be ignoring armor/resistance because they are unaffected by expertise. So that leaves the formula as: (AttackDmg)*(1+AttackExp)*(1-DefExp) = AdjustedDmgRecieved So pre-1.2 the battlemaster gear gave ~11% to all three categories. So pluging this into the formula as % values we find that expertise was behaving this way for the values of expertise that were available. (100)*(1.11)*(1-0.11) = 98.79% If they had just relaxed the dmr curve for expertise and allowed the pvp bonuses to grow evenly ending up with new battlemaster gear giving 22% to all three. It would lead to damage being reduced across the board in fights between similarly geared players. (100)*(1.22)*(1-0.22) = 95.16% Now I assume everyone is now thinking, "so what does it matter if everyone's damage is reduced?" the problem comes from the fact that healers would also be putting out 22% more healing. Healing is unchecked by pvp bonuses. With the new values of the pvp buff what is indeed happening is that the damage is being brought closer inline to what people thought was happening with expertise pre-1.2. Dulfy has an excellent chart in this article detailing the gearing changes. http://dulfy.net/2012/03/22/pvp-gearing-in-1-2/ With the new values of expertise on BM gear (22% dmg, 18% reduction) the cancelling is indeed happening like it was before 1.2. (100)*(1+0.22)*(1-0.18) = 100.04% For WH gear the same is true. (100)*(1+0.24)*(1-0.195) = 99.82% So as these two curves continue the stats do indeed cancel each other when two characters with equal amounts of expertise are fighting each other 1v1. Since this is getting kind of long I'll break this into a few posts. Summary: The new damage curves actually lead to 2 characters at equal levels of expertise doing exactly 100% of their pre-buffed damage to each other as the expertise buff cancel with the new dmr curves. Next I'll take a look at what happens when characters of different gear levels meet each other 1v1.

I'm planning on going Carnage so I was just sharing my build, but Annihilation looks like a pretty cool spec. The self healing on dots is optional in the PvE build though I believe, because I think you can skip it, and while it's nice to have it isn't 100% required for a raiding op build. It would definitely be a good pick up as an optional for an Annihilation build though. If you meant for a Carnage build, it's not a good idea because you have to waste 2 points to get to it and since you don't get any buffs to Rupture you probably shouldn't be using this means you won't have any bleeds active to gain the healing ability.

If you're looking for one that is purely PvE focused this one is a little better as you will be using Vicious Slash as a damage cooldown with Berserk in Ataru form. Carnage PvE build Edit: That is unless Massacre ends up hitting harder still than the buffed Vicious Slash then Massacre will be used in conjunction with Berserk and those are free points you can put wherever you would like them to go.

Just so we're all on the same page here. Everyone knows the BBB has no power to do anything and is at best a high school clique and at worst a protection racket? Honestly complaining to the BBB will net you about as much gain as complaining here. Well here you at least get the bonus of everyone else making fun of you.