My girlfriend and I had recently decided to move in together. The other day she called me to ask what day I was planning on moving my stuff. "Soon." I replied. There was a short pause before she noted that having a day would really help, even if it was a rough estimate. I told her I didn't want to lock myself in to an obligation by picking a date, and that soon was the best I could do. She then retorted that she wouldn't be holding me to a specific date, she just wanted a general idea, as a courtesy. I replied, "sorry babe, soon. I'll let you know when I get a more specific time in mind, don't worry though, it will be soon." We both play TOR, and while she did not find it amusing in the slightest, I am hoping that you do, and that eventually she might as well...

Agreed. I haven't used tab for targeting in forever, mouse click. Its faster and barring enourmous hit boxes, more reliable. How many times have you had this scenario play out. 3 targets in front of you, you wish to attack one as it is a high priority target. However, for some reason, no matter how many times you hit tab, it only jumps between the two targets you couldn't care less about?

wait... you have seen imp toons (as in players) on balmorra... ***?

trick question!

Why would it? One came out during the reign of WoW, grew, thrived, and built a healthy enough community to warrant a sequel. You only need to kill it if you plan on taking on its customer base. Quite frankly, why would you want that? (as a player, of course)

Funny, after the BWE myself (and a few other guildies) developed a certain kind of despondency. For days we couldn't bring ourselves to log into TOR, and now many of us only log on raid nights, and that isn't because we enjoy them but because we feel we have an obligation to guildies who are still having fun. Which I should note, some are most certainly still having fun. Just wish I was one of them

Glad to see that when people can't fight about the topic at hand they find something else to fight about. Was almost worried that the drop in players might lower the amount of conflict on the boards, glad to see I was wrong. As to the OP. I think there is a very simple answer. You are going to continue to see a drop in subs until they release something new, implement a patch that fixes issues, or otherwise radically alter the way you interact with the game so as to give people incentive (which they currently lack) to play. Honestly, I don't see their being any "extra" dropoff from the event though. People who are bored with the game aren't going to log in just because they have an active subscription.

Because constant knockbacks isn't equally detrimental to a melee? See what I said at the start. Mechanics either work against melee and ranged, or just melee. To clarify, for the most part I was discussing end game boss fights, as that is what all my examples were. Still, I have a 50 merc, and a 30 sniper, so I feel pretty confident when I say that, even during leveling, this is pretty prevalent.

Everyone who has played both a melee and a ranged class knows what I am talking about. There are some fights in the game with mechanics that increase the difficulty for melee while there are none that do so for range (at least not any that don't apply to melee as well.) A simple example of this would be a boss that does damage in the immediete area around it with no real means of avoiding it, save not being next to it and not doing damage. Think of Toth from Denova or the second boss from EV. You can't simply avoid the attacks when they come, it is a proposition of either standing there, doing damage, and taking a hit. My biggest problem with this mechanic is 2 fold. First, it pointedly bias towards a specific group and secondly that it is unimaginative and simply not fun. There are plenty of mechanics you can use to force the DPS to potentially take damage, that effect both melee and ranged equally, as well making the fight more interactive. A great example of this would be the Mentor Assassin Droids or Krel Thak. The damage shield that returns damage is an inventive way to give out damage to the dps (healers need something to do) while giving the damage classes control over this, forcing them to be more engaged in the fight, and affecting ranged and melee classes equally. If you can't be bothered to break from the melee ranged AE boss mechanic, then why not at least give the melee some way of adressing this. -give mission items that act as melee range interupts for specific melee range effects -have bosses use cone attacks that would allow the players to position and dodge -give mission items to ranged characters that can be used to mitigate effects of boss AE done to melee The fact of the matter is, that at the moment, any instance can be cleared with less difficulty by simply bringing all ranged damage classes. This is because of poor fight mechanics placing a direct disincentive on a particular type of character. The worst part about it is, it is relatively easy to fix, it just requires that designers not be lazy or afraid to stray from the "generic" mmo model. I realize that this problem is endemic in almost every game, just hoped it would be different here.

It isn't as if they aren't fixing things, it is often what they are fixing, their prioritization if you will. I tried to jump up a box (had done this before) on hoth to cut out part of the chain to of platfroming to get to a datacron. Apparently they had removed the edges from just that set of boxes, they had been there before, not anymore. Then I thought to myself, "they fixed this... really... HK has been bugged for how long now and they spent time and resources on this!?!?!?" Needless to say, this is just one of many examples, and I am sure most people would agree, it seems the developers don't have their priorities straight. At the very least, not in line with what the community sees as important.

Food for thought

Am I the only one who uses Rebuke and Riposte on a watchman to tank? Granted, I am only level 30, still it has been thoroughly effective.

Mostly for the weps though I dig the robe, and since they all have augment slots I don't expect to switch it out ever, and that is just fine with me. http://i.imgur.com/IpkDE.jpg

Yes and no. I honestly don't believe that one or two skill additions/changes would really adress the problem. As I was trying to say in the original post, this is a general and multifaceted problem that encompasses almost every aspect of the class. Another example. The efficiency of pushes vs pulls/charges. Now, lets look at the mechanics of this. For each of these moves, there is a small activation time, during which a character can move a very small distance. For someone who is being pulled or charged, this small distance is entirely negligible 99% of the time, even with latency as it is. However, for a push, this is often devastating. Someone moving a foot or two in point blank range completely alters their trajectory, and when combined with the poor latency, it makes effectively using pushes near impossible. Combine this with the fact that the majority of a mercs survival comes from pushes, and you see that simply tweaking a skill isn't going to really help when they underlying mechanics behind the way the skill operate, work against the merc. Our survivability skill is one of the worst, just look at inquisitors shroud, or marauders force cammo for comparison. This is understandable though, because while generally ineffectual for an arsenal or pyro merc, for a bodygaurd it works quite nicely, even without the talent points to alter it. Reducing damage on a target that is getting heals over a long duration is nice, but without the heals, its pointless. Other classes survival skills aren't entirely reliant on having other players around to be fully effective. These are just two examples. It isn't just the skills, but the entire way the game works and how the merc fits in that. With the current design the way it is, it would take a complete overhaul to fix the merc in pvp, so that all of the specs were functional. The way it currently stands, to bring arsenal back on to par with even middling tier pvp classes would again imbalance bodygaurd and potentially pyro.

I have had a 50 merc (mostly arsenal, but went bodygaurd for a full month to fill a role for guild) since early January, and have come to a conclusion regarding our viability in WZ. We dish out tons of damage, non stop, and with easy energy management, especially now with barrage operating the way it does. We can crush people, but this comes with a caveat. We can be super effective, but only if we are left alone. Mild to moderate harrasment results in a catastrophic dropoff in DPS, and any serious targetting is an instant dirtnap. The problem is a combination of the way our skills work, and the resources we have to deal with someone getting in our face. Despite what people might think, we are still reliant on tracer missile, it is the heart and soul of an arsenal merc, and it is still just as easy to interupt as it was pre 1.2 . We use unload more, but this isn't the gift most make it out to be. Unload charges you the heat cost at start of cast, has a very long channel time, and is super noticeable. A stream of lasers points back to you so that anyone who feels so inclined can interupt you. If tracer missile is interupted, you lose little, as there is no heat cost until after cast, but with unload, you find yourself building the heat quickly. More importantly though, is the nature of resolve. Rocket punch, builds resolve. Jet boost, builds resolve. Using both in close conjunction will fill someone resolve bar. Melee classes can chain immobilize (no resolve stack) interrupt (no resolve stack) knockdown (reduced resolve stack) and pull in some occaisions. We are fragile as can be at close range, and the tools that we have to deal with keeping ourselves at range simply don't work when you compare them to the counters our opponents bring. We are extraordinarily situational. If you have a tank guarding you, and pulling/snaring/immobilizing others away from you then you are a force to be reckoned with. I can't help but feel, though, that the perception that we deal ungodly damage is an illusion created in WZ where something is happening that should almost never happen. In low competency pvp, we shine, gods amongst newbs, but against people with even a rudimentary understanding of how to play we simply do not stack up.