Been playing vengeance for weeks and never really understood the bubble stun cries until I decided to legacy transfer to play a carnage Mara . All I can say is having unstoppable was worth the 1.2 mil I spent transferring gear back and forth

Another thing to consider is the optimal stat. Some bm pieces have mods or enhancements with desirable stats such as power whereas the war hero upgrade might give you a tiny bit more main stat and endurance with no power and some stat you don't need to stack. Of course you can do min max in the end but I find it quite helpful to be able to cherry pick certain mods and enhancements while still in the process of grinding full war hero

No offense to OP but I think your experiences is caused by more than just gear gap. If you don't have experiences with veng and immortal specs then you've pretty much only rage smashed, which leads me to believe that you really don't know your own class that well since you're not even sure how your own class trees functions. I really doubt you're making the most of all your abilities properly such as throwing out taunts regularly and using intercede generously (which btw, I'd recommend you to bind a key for quick friendly targeting to make using intercede instantaneous instead of spending 1~2 gcds trying to mouse target someone) I'd start off by visiting the class forums to gain more insight on your build and rotations and watch some pvp videos to get an idea of how to use your abilities to your advantage. The next step would be to learn what other classes are capable of and I would suggest you check out sites like TORhead and just look through all the other class skills to get a general scope and pay more attention to what enemy players are doing so you can counter them or react more efficiently. I.e don't use force attacks on assasins when they pop force shroud or don't face tank the last hit of ravage etc etc. once you've gotten a better understanding of pvp class mechanics the next step would be to prepare yourself better even attaining WH gear. you should 1. farm dailies to get enough credits so you can augment all your gear (on my server, around 35k for Mk-6 aug kit, and around 50~60 for a 22 might augment + 30k to augment) once you're in a completely augmented BM set you're really very competitive. My jug only has WH mh/oh, 1 relic, ear peice, and 1 implant. The rest is BM mixed with a few pve armorings. when fully augmented, buffed and stimmed i'm sitting at 1900 str, 560 bonus damage and almost 19k hp with 1100 expertise and I solo full warheroes all the time 2. Farm credits to buy might stims or level up a biochems. This is a huge bonus to your damage. 3. Gather datacrons, if you're willing to put in some extra time i recommend picking up willpower as well 4. when buying new pieces of gear, even upgrading from bm to wh I recommend you taking a close look at the new stats you are gaining, and cherry pick only the mods that will benefit you the most instead of just slapping it on. For this reason i have shelled out all my bm gear so i will only trade in empty shells. you want to maximize your power while keeping crit, surge, and accuracy at a near diminishing return point. And most of the time a straight upgrade to WH from BM will actually hurt that. All in all, please understand that there is more than just the warhero gear gap to pvp. You just need to put more time into maximizing your potentail and I'm sure everything will become much easier

The trick is really how to tone down smash for pvp while keeping the spec competitive for pve.

So I'm grinding a new sniper to 50. I should wait for the patch to drop before gearing him up to avoid wasting comms on bm gear?

From my experiences so far I really don't have any problems with my heat management. To me it's more beneficial to get the reduced cd on jet boost. Thanks for the input though

This exactly. I went through d3, the secret world and gw2 and decided I still enjoy TOR more

Maras are a lot of fun to play though seeing how they have a tool for every situation depending on the spec

Hi, just a reminder, it's November now, not January 2012

Thank you very much, exactly the kind of info I needed

Hi guys, I'm in the process of rolling an arsenal merc and I'm planning out the stuff I need to grind In a strictly pvp situation, what would be a better set bonus for arsenal? full pvp eliminator for the 5 second jet boost CD and 15% railshot crit chance? or would it benefit me more to mix 2 piece pvp eliminator with 2 piece pve for 5 second jet boost cd and 15% crit to tracers? and before anybody says it, I realize the irony of arsenal and pvp, and I'm actually stripping out my WH powertech to do it

Because it's not the spec he wants to play? I don't think it's too much to ask for the devs to bring the specs that are falling behind in line with the viable ones. In fact, isn't that the whole point of balancing? Granted it will never be picture perfect but it's also no reason for us to just be content with being pigeon holed into certain specs just to be competetive.

Again, progression. It's also to please the more hardcore min/maxers. It definately make me happy knowing my character will hit a little harder and survive a bit longer everytime I save up enough for new pieces. Of course looking more ****** is also a good incentive. I sometimes grind pve armors just for the shells as well. I definately know the pain of getting facerolled by BIS warheroes on my recruits, but I guess that really to me is just more incentive to improve my gears so I can stand on equal footing with them.

Personally, the gear grind is a part of what keeps me pvping. I can't play guild wars 2 for that exact reason because there are no progression. If I don't have newer shinier gear to look forward to there is very little motivation for me to grind war zones.

Oh right, because bioware knows their pvp balance so well and whatever they say must be 100% correct