So let me preface this post by saying that I never play sorc in PvP and occasionally play madness (now Hatred) assassin. My main toon for PvP is a merc healer, which I think remains fairly well balanced in PvP, although like any class it could probably use a few tweaks. Because I have never played the sorc, all of my opinions are based on healing myself through damage from sorcs and assassins. After playing a considerable amount of post 3.0 WZs, I both agree and disagree that sorcs are OP in PvP. I know, this is where you say - how is that possible? As many people have said, a sorc on their own is not very OP, and assassins defninitely not. As a merc healer, I can defend an objective alone against a single assassin easily (the increase to merc/commando burst heals is a good counter for the assassin's burst damage). Sorcs are more challenging, due to the off heals and improved damage mitigation from bubble, but I can still defend against them (the utility that makes your cleanse reduce periodic damage by 30% is a big help). The problem IMO with sorcs is the spreading of DoTs through their AoE, specifically in objective game modes. I admit I haven't done many ranked WZs since 3.0 - but in unranked, objective format game modes, the spreading of DoTs is a big issue. The AoE they can use to spread the DoTs is HUGE which means a team full of sorcs can load up their dots and then spread them to all the players trying to defend or attack a node. If they can spread their DoTs to 4 or more people, the amount of periodic damage can easily overwhelm me as a healer. If I pick one target, maybe two and focus heal them I can keep them alive, but it is just impossible to keep up with the DoT effects on your entire team from a team of sorcs. The only way to counter this is to spread out yourselves, which makes playing near the objective (IMO an essential element of winning these modes) extremely difficult. The way I see it, if the game is truly balanced then teams should naturally end up being more diverse, due to each class bringing its own advantages and disadvantages to the match. The fact that a team 75% full of sorcs is a viable option is proof enough to me that changes need to be made. People will say that this will break PvE, but there are many things Bioware could do to fix PvP without breaking PvE. For example, put a limit on the amount of sorc dots that can be up on one player (not NPC), limit the amount of players they can spread to, or maybe just make them cleansable (cleanses have an increased CD anways). Sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to try to be as unbiased as possible. To sum it up, I don't think sorcs should be nerf'd completely, just tweaked to prevent large groups of sorcs from dumping a ton of DoTs on large groups in very little time.

This...really upsets me. For a shadow, yes, but that is only because their DPS is not a currently viable spec ATM. Same thing with focus guardians, although focus is still viable for FPs with a lot of AoE required. But you obviously haven't played a vigilance spec. guardian before. Somewhat difficult but very fun spec to play, and has single target damage on par with most sentinels. Just last night in a GF TFB run (everyone bolstered), I frequently found myself pulling aggro over the tank, two sentinels, and a gunslinger. I was using my threat drop almost every fight. Plus you can actually take a hit or two Didn't mean to go so off topic, but I just couldn't not say anything.

No, because that was a bug with a mechanic that is already implemented. In this case there is just no mechanic at all. IMO, an exploit is when users take advantage of a bug in the game. There is no bug in this case, at least from what I can tell.

EDIT: ^^^ - exactly It's really unfair to call this an exploit at all. I'm sure that when Bioware developed the operation they understood that this strategy was a possibility. If they really wanted to make you split up, they would have included a mechanic that forced the group to split up (like in hardmode). Calling something an exploit is basically calling something cheating, and I would not go so far as to say everyone going left is cheating. Everyone going left is the optimal strategy, so you can't really call people cheating for doing it. I find it hard to believe that Bioware did not consider the option of everyone going left in SM, but I could be wrong, they have definitely missed things before.

Did not realize there was a combat flag in GSF. Very good idea.

Wow I can not believe that people are doing this? I would love for this to be fixed, but it seems some of your proposed methods have drawbacks. If self-destructs don't count for anybody, then what happens when you run someone into a corner and they crash? It would be unfair to punish players who are attacking someone just to see them self destruct and leave you without a kill. The respawn and the booting idea are both good, but I remember when I first started playing starfighter I was pretty bad. I probably self destructed a lot in my first few games. It also seems unfair to punish new players for lacking flying skill, and it could discourage people from becoming involved in the GSF community. I think one solution would be to reward the player who last shot them with the kill, similar to how suicides work in FPS games. If you shot the player within X seconds of his self-destruct, you get the kill. This would prevent people from self-destructing to "steal" a kill from the opponent. As for the games in which multiple people self-destruct on purpose, I'm not sure much can be done. It seems it's the players who need to be fixed, not the game. Maybe an option to vote to ban them from future games? At least something to report them would be nice. Hope you don't run into this problem again.

Ahh well there's the issue, I typically run gunship with Ion Railgun which virtually negates the effect of shields in a gunfight. I do see your point though.

You're correct, I did misread your original comment, but I still disagree with what you said. I agree with you in saying that this is most definitely NOT a buff, but I disagree with your opinion that it is a straight up nerf of BLCs. If you are just some random scrub squeezing off a few blasts in a quick attempt to hit your target, then yeah, it nerfs you pretty bad. If however, you are a player who can keep your BLCs on target during a firefight, I think the change is minimal if not helpful. More shots on target means more chances to hit, and with the amount of people stacking evasion (due to the fact that so many people use armor penetration upgrades) this helps to mitigate the damage drop of losing a shot to evasion. Of course if they reduce the amount of armor penetration available then yeah, it pretty much nerfs everybody, less skilled players more so.

I think you misinterpreted what the OP was saying. What he wants is for the DPS to be held the same, but for rate of fire to increase. In other words, more shots per second, less damage per shot. What you are describing is keeping the damage per shot the same and increasing fire rate, which would indeed be a huge buff to BLC. I think that the original proposition is a great idea. It would reward players for holding their blasters on target over time, as opposed to just firing off quick bursts as you meet head to head. Unless you're using the burst laser, which I think should just be kept as is.

And you are absolutely right. For some reason, the level 52 items sold by the vendor were mixed in among all the items < lvl 50. Don't know how I missed that, thank you very much for your help though.

Hey everyone, I just ran in to a problem. My current toon appears to be stuck at synthweaving level 425. My crafting trainer doesn't have any new schematics for me, and all the ones I know are such low difficulty that I don't even seem to level when crafting them: I've probably crafted almost 100 augments with no level increase. I've looked all over the GTN for schematics to learn, but everything seems to be either Synthweaving (400) or Synthweaving (450). Am I missing something? Is there a place to buy more advanced schematics? If not, I guess I will have to just pray that something ~425 pops up on the GTN, if they even exist. Exhausting all other options, I figured I would throw this up here, as there are obviously plenty of people who have made it to lvl 450 in their crafting skills. Thanks in advance for any help.

^^^Well said. If you lose warzones all the time it is probably your own fault. Just keep playing until you learn to contribute, at which point you will probably start to win matches. 1 player can make or break a game

I think the best method for calling out which side you are on is Snow/Grass. This way all you have to do is take one look and you can figure out where you need to be.

are you kidding me BW??? 4 servers? Hanharr has been dead since I started playing. No pvp for days, 10 people on the fleet at peak times, its rediculous. If they had just let characters transfer freely people eventually the populations would balance out on a few, well populated servers. I understand where they are coming from with the assigned destination points, but only four servers at first? that just doesnt seem fair. I love this game and it bothers me how upset I am right now, please dont **** this up Bioware