The problem with what he's doing is that it gives off the wrong impression. He will select footage of himself performing well in random WZ's, which is fine, but he will not show us the majority of his games where he is getting permanently focused by competent, geared players. Random WZ's are just that, RANDOM. Sometimes you face a bunch of *******, and you win, regardless of gear. But a lot of the time, you face fully geared premades who mop the floor with you specifically BECAUSE there is 2-3 people in recruit gear on your team. These are the types of WZ's that prompt people to come here and whine about gear. They aren't whining about the games where the other team was a bunch of mouth breathers who can't even mark a healer, and spend the majority of the game playing deathmatch in the middle of nowhere.

Yes, but that doesn't need to be proven because it's already an accepted fact. The gear gap between BM and WH is very small. Which is why it baffles me that so many people cry when they first hit 50. Within 3 days of hitting 50 on my new alt, I was in full BM and performing just fine in WZ's.

Not exactly. If skill truly is more important than gearl, then the ideal way to prove it would be to have a team of 2500 rated players in recruit gear, playing against a fully geared rated team who they usually destroy in rateds. For example, there is a mediocre guild on my server called Rival. They are good enough to beat pugs, but they get completely stomped by the top guilds on our server. Now, what if the #1 guild on our server was dressed in full recruit gear and played against Rival.... do you think they'd still win? My bet is no way in hell. The gear gap is massive, and Rival would make short work of them, even though they are significantly less skilled.

Unless you're going to post a video of a full team of recruits playing against a full team of war heros in rateds, then this is irrelevant. If you play hundreds of games in recruit gear, sooner or later you're going to face a team that is geared but has no idea what they are doing. They will not recognize the fact that you are squishy as hell, and they'll just let you sit there healing, therefore giving the impression that there is no gear gap, when in reality, if those horrible WH players decided to focus fire you, you'd be dead before you can even blink an eye.

Nah it's not you. Melee is superior to ranged in this game because of the ridiculous amount of gap closers and interrupts. Snipers are decent, but the problem with sorc/merc is that when they are being attacked by even one person, it takes them completely out of the game. You can attack a marauder or an assassin, and he is just going to ignore you and continue destroying everything in his path. So 3-4 ranged on your team means at least 2 people who are basically just fighting to stay alive instead of actually dps'ing.

Marauder is underpowered until level 40. Snipers are overpowered in the sub-50 bracket. That explains your experience against gunslingers. At level 50, the matchup between Mara/Gunslinger becomes a 50/50. Although admittedly it is our toughest 1v1 matchup. There is no such thing as kiting in this game. Maras have so many gap closers, that the best you can hope for us to kite them for a few seconds, which will not be enough, because once they get on you, they are going to hit you for 10-15k in only a few seconds. In theory, you should be able to keep a mara at 6-8 meters, but in reality it does not work, because this game engine is too laggy, and melee can hit you even though they are 10 meters away on your screen.

I'd be inclined to agree with you if it DID break on damage, but it does not, which makes it the single most effective CC in the entire game by a million miles. Nobody else has anything close to a 30 meter, 8 second stun.

I don't even know what to say to this.... By your logic, hybrid operatives are unstoppable in rateds. 1v1 viability is 100% irrelevant in rateds, so what you said is basically the exact opposite of reality. Talk about misguided.

Actually I agree with Pistols. However, I was speaking in terms of 2500+ play. The level of competition in SWTOR is so low at the moment, that you can get away with any combination of dps, and achieve pretty good succcess, as he said. But if you want to beat STS (the best team on Pistol's server) consistently, you'd better consider dropping those dead weight classes, because every bit of advantage you can squeeze out is going to matter.

<- 2300 Due to the structure of the current warzones, the name of the game in rateds is survivability. Logically, you'd think that a team of healers and tanks would be king, but SWTOR is a strange game in the sense that a lot of the dps classes are very "tanky", and therefore you can get the best of both worlds if you stack the right classes. The only desirable classes currently are: Sentinel (at least 1 must be combat spec for 80% speed buff) Assault Vanguard Shadow in tank stance with dps gear. Mostly 23/1/17 although a 31/0/10 build is acceptable as well. Scoundrel healer Guardian, tank / dps hybrid ----------------------------- As far as actual makeup goes, we prefer 2 shadows, 2 scoundrels, 2 sents, 1 vanguard, and 1 other dps. The last dps spot CAN go to a gunslinger, but we definitely prefer sent, guardian, or vanguard. This makeup covers all bases essentially. Your healers will be incredibly difficult to kill due to 3 or 4 of your team having access to taunt, AOE taunt, two guards, 3 pulls, and a buttload of CC. We've had games of huttball where our carrier literally has 8 fully geared players trying to burn him down, and he is taking almost zero damage. You simply cannot DPS through guard, taunt, slow time, and constant CC's and peels. That's 85% damage reduction. On the offensive side of things, your 2 shadows, although they are there primarily for guard/taunt purposes, can also provide very respectable front loaded damage in the form of auto crit projects and FiB's. When you combine this with the ridiculous front loaded burst of your sents and vanguards, it's extremely difficult for your opponent to react fast enough to target switches. If they are not on the ball with their guard switches and taunts, there is no way for their focus target to survive. This is assuming that they even have the correct makeup, which 99% of the time they do not. Assuming you can get the lead in civil war / novare, it's almost impossible for the enemy to take a node from you. Your 2 shadows and 2 scoundrels are so difficult to kill, that the opponent almost has no choice but to try and target switch to one of your dps. However, this does not work either because your sents will simply pop GBTF and force camo, which is a get out of jail free card in rateds. Even if they do manage to wipe your group, and that's a big *if*, they will never be able to do it quickly enough before you respawn and interrupt their cap. This concept also carries over to voidstar. By leaving a shadow/scoundrel or shadow/sent combo on each side, the enemy will never be able to wipe you fast enough considering your sents will always have 80% speed ready to go, in case they need to respond to a side switch. Not only that, if the enemy manages to wipe you on one side, you have FOUR classes who can simply vanish, and then pop out and interrupt while the rest of your team waits for the spawn door to open. In huttball, you will have at least 3 pulls, 4 knockbacks, at least 3 leaps, and constant 80% speed. The only thing you're missing is sage friendly pull, but that's a small price to pay for not having such a squishy liability on your team. What classes won't we bring? Basically anything that isn't on the above list. If we are desperate, we will take a gunslinger or healing sage, but definitely not more than one. Commandos, dps sages, dps scoundrels, and infiltration shadows are absolutely out of the question. These classes bring nothing to the table that the above classes don't already bring and then some.

I just hit 50 earlier today on my shadow. First I bought the WH earpiece and implant because they don't require a pre-requisite. Then I bought two BM power relics, and after like 2 WZ's I bought a BM implant. Then I transferred the WH boots from my sentinel to my shadow using the legacy gear. After finishing my weekly, I bought 2 pairs of BM gloves, took the mods out, and put them into my orange belt/bracers along with a 61 armoring that I purchased from the GTN for 2 million credits each. (These orange pieces are better than the WH belt / bracers, so I won't need to buy those now.) So, here on my first day as a level 50, I now have 5 pieces of war hero, 4 pieces of BM, and 5 pieces of recruit. Everything is augmented except for the recruit pieces. This puts me at 17k health, 1400 willpower, 34% crit, 74% surge Not too bad for a fresh 50. I had a game today where I finished with 375k dmg and 140k protection on Novare coast. IMO it is foolish to get the weapon first. It's so insanely expensive, and you will be stuck with 1 piece of good gear and a bunch of garbage for quite a while, which is going to make you feel quite gimped. The jump from recruit to BM is so drastic, that it makes more sense to rid yourself of as many pieces of recruit as fast as you possibly can.

Nevermind, I was overcomplicating it.

How do you solve the puzzle for t he Writings of Tiethiagg in the cantina? Been at it for a while, can't for the life of me figure it out.

What the hell is "support" dps? PvP is all about burst damage, survivability, and utility. Nobody cares about support dps, whatever that is. Sorcs have terrible burst damage, the worst survivability in the game, and the utility that they bring to the table is not valuable enough to replace a more important class. The ONLY thing sorcs have that someone else doesn't, is friendly pull, which is useful mostly in huttball, and in rateds you can't bring someone onto your team for a 25% chance that you'll get a certain wz.

The ONLY way this is happening, is if the other team is absolutely terrible. If you're in the same warzone with me, I will be on you immediately and you won't stay alive for more than 8 seconds unless you have some serious guard / taunt / peels. Any dps class can put up big numbers against terrible opponents. The problem with sorcs is that they are free kills to people like me (sentinel). The second I see a sorc, I will drop whatever I'm doing and go kill him, because I know he'll drop in less than 8 seconds, and that's one less player for my team to deal with. What really makes me laugh is that their survivability was never even nerfed. Sorcs were ALWAYS bad, and I was posting it on these forums back in February, yet somehow they were considered the best class in the game. Then bioware takes away instant force lightning and suddenly they are at the bottom of the totem pole? LOL Bottom line is, if you're gonna design a class that has no means of escaping or mitigating incoming damage, then you must give them something incredible to compensate for such a massive weakness. Sorcs should have the highest single target damage in the entire game imo. Thundering blast should be hitting for 5-6k so that people actually have a good reason for bringing along a dps that gets killed in under 8 seconds as soon as even ONE sentinel decides to attack them.