The current 10s duration feels too short. I know there is a set bonus to increase it, but feel the base ability should last longer. Something like this would, I think, work well, and be useful in more situations.

To further what Snave said; it seems that the cooldown of roll is reduced to 6s with the set bonus (tooltip changes with/without gear), but the charge refresh time is 8s regardless of gear. As far as I can see the cooldown is irrelevant with the charge system, and guessing (hoping) the set bonus was supposed to reduce the charge refresh time?

Bah, and I was so excited with the initial direction you were going. This is a shame. I, and other Ops, will have very little trouble scoring solo in under 45s in the majority of PUG matches, so these changes do nothing to improve that. Even the increase to 10 goals doesn't really worry me; in the matches where I'm playing Op I find any resistance to me scoring falls off after the first 2-3 goals as the enemy team realises it's going to be 'one of those matches' and they just start DMing in mid. After that, the subsequent goals - whether up to 6 or 10 - are just a formality really. In PUG matches where I'm not on my Op the 45s timer is going to be a pain without someone else actually paying attention, and being ready for a pass. I'm worried these will lead to matches where I explode just short of the goal, while the 7 other members of my team are mid fighting 7 of the enemies - there's usually 1 player that tries to stop me. Said player will then get the ball, nearly make to our goal, harassed by me, before exploding. Repeat for 10m. In matches that are pre-made vs PUGs there's generally not an issue with passing anyway, at least for the pre-made; grab ball, roll/dash/sprint through acid, pass to stealther waiting on top gantry. Or on Quesh, pass to stealther waiting on top level. Repeat x 6 (or 10). Two minutes, easy match. The only thing these changes seem to address is pre-made vs pre-made where, generally, the safest tactic is to have tank grab the ball and just trudge to the line while being healed. But I think these are the least frequent type of matches. So, these changes only seem to help with a small subset of matches, and aren't as good as the initial direction you were heading. Third time lucky?

Hopefully you don't discount a hinder type fix completely, as I feel a reigning in the non-targeted mobility moves would really help, especially with other options as discussed. Look forward to your revised thoughts!

Huttball is my favourite match type by far, but there are definitely some classes that over-perform, especially in PUG matches where there's very little coordinated opposition. As such some changes to the format are welcome, and is something I've thought about and discussed before. My main wishes are below, and I'm thinking all 4 work together but testing would be required, but I like some of Snave's suggestions, too. Apply a stacking healing debuff to the carrier, as suggested elsewhere. Thought should be given to the duration it remains for after the ball is passed to prevent , for example, passing from tank to healer and back to tank to clear said debuff. Depending on the duration it stays for, it should possibly reset when the ball does. Apply a modified 'hinder' effect that only applies to non-targeted mobility actions; roll, dash, sprint, etc. This does give an advantage to some classes, but I feel the targeted nature of leap, intercede, pull, etc requires bad positioning of the enemy team - which should be punished - or good positioning/teamwork from your team - which should be rewarded. Use the temporary ability bar to grant the ball carrier a dash type ability. Yes I'm suggesting taking these away from classes, just to give them back! However this ability would be standardised across classes and balanced for Huttball specifically; root break, CC immunity, short duration (~2s), no damage mitigation, at least a 30s CD (I'm thinking 45-60s, but not sure without testing). This should allow people to make some headway, and skip some inactive hazards. Active hazards, however... Increase damage or other effects of the hazards. They've lost their bite over the years as classes have gained mobility and/or damage mitigation. Make them actually hazardous again. I think these work together to encourage more teamwork without bogging down progression too much. As for the listed changes, the only one that concerns me is stun blocking a pass. Can see this could lead to stalemates, and also makes it easy for stealth classes to shadow someone expected to receive a pass (on the line, up high, etc) and just stun them to easily intercept.

Yeah, this was one of the bugs I was referring too, without wanting to draw too much attention to it! A few players have claimed they only need to sap once per login / play session to get auto-crit on every opener, but I've not seen this personally.

Assassins are also being helped by bugs it seems (discharge stacks build too quickly, despite limits the tooltips claim, and some people have any attack from stealth being an auto-crit), so hopefully BW fix them before applying too heavy a nerf bat.

Ah, that'll explain it. Only had time to have a quick dummy session on PT so far - mainly to check animations! - and noticed that I maxed heat really quickly. Hopefully fixed soon.

The knockback is a bit much at present, it just has too much going for it. It has 30m range (more than any other knock back), you can use it twice every ~12s and it even gives you energy. Yes it doesn't knock back that far, but it's enough to knock off various ledges - sometimes to your death - and interrupt casts. At the very least I think the range needs dropping to 10m - Ops are a 'melee' class after all, to follow BWs recent logic/design goals. Possibly a CD adjustment - once per ~12s, or some ICD on the target - though not sure on that yet.

They really need something - and it needs to heavily stack per alt at max rank - or to at least re-think PvP gearing. It's looking like a minimum of 300 hours to reach top level, then however many more to actually get the right gear. And this is per alt, per role. For the 5 alts/roles I play regularly this is ~1500 hours (or ~1.4 years if I can average 3h/day) of grinding to get to where I am now, essentially. By that I mean the ability to log onto the role/play-style of my choosing, and PvP at a level where my skill (or lack of) rather than gear affects the outcome. That's...insane. PvE is slightly better as at least you have a progression of sorts with SM, HM, and NM. PvP doesn't have that; within a few months any alt I want to try to PvP with is going to be seriously outclassed and I'm going to spend a large portion of the match in the respawn. Or I guess I could grind 300 hours of PvE first, just to get geared, so I can do the part of the game I actually enjoy. Neither of these scenarios sound fun to me, and neither does playing one class for ever more (I know there are those of you that enjoy that, and that's great). I can see what they're trying to do; get people to sub for longer so they earn more money. Unfortunately it seems they've massively increased the length of the grind, without actually increasing the size or frequency of the carrots. For me the grind is now so long I can't even see the carrot at the end any more. I hope I'm missing something, or that changes come soon, because this is looking like the end of the game for me, and I've been here a long time. I've already cancelled my subscription - mainly because I hope that will show up more on their beloved 'metrics' more than another forum post - though it does have a couple months left to run (I previously enjoyed the game enough they I paid for the 6-month plan each time).

Blade Barrage actually looks pretty good, while Ravage is 'meh'. Or at least it looks 'meh' in that choppy mess, hopefully it looks better in-game. Any chance we can get the official clips put up somewhere? Though I'm thankful someone posted them, what we seem to have is a YouTube video of a Twitch stream showing a Powerpoint slide with embedded video... I guess we only have a few days left anyway.

On 'paper' Mercs are now incredibly OP, though some of that is from changes 'seen' but not listed here. This might be deleted but; absorb / reflect / heal as baseline ability, plus the Arsenal absorb, plus an Enraged Defence, and a 30m 4s root, and a utility for Kolto to heal to 70% at 2x speed. While keeping all the toys they've gained over the years, while being a heavy hitter. I know they needed a 'little' something to help out on anti-focus, but 3 (or 2, plus 1 buffed) new defensives seems excessive. Please say you have someone testing PvP? With changes like this, and the gearing changes, I'm expecting a patch note soon that reads "PvP has been removed from the game".

I believe the correct responses to this is "lul wat?". Yes, I believe buffing Sorcerer mobility and survivability was what every player was clamouring for. Well done. Also, to those complaining about the removal of Phase Walk; It's OK, we have Thrash as an exclusive ability now. Yay. Guard changes? I can't even.

The removal of Phase Walk from Assassin is crazy, especially as you're keeping it for Sorcerers. :S The 'big' change for me is that guard no longer requires a stance. This is madness for PvP. A lot of matches already end up as near stalemates, and now there's going to be guard everywhere! Please, please say this isn't going live? The better solution would've been to lock guard to the actual tanking disciplines, rather than merely to a stance. Instead you've gone the other way - I know this saying has been overused, but; "Do you even play your game?"

So you've turned PvP into a pay to win grind fest? Don't want to sub? Crap gear for you. Don't have time to spend 40h per week grinding crates? Crap gear for you too. I can't even begin to understand why you thought this was a good idea. I mean I think I can see what you were aiming for; make the best gear only available to subs, and make it takes ages to grind means - in theory - many many months of subs. Unfortunately I feel this is going to back-fire horribly. Certainly for me it means I have cancelled my sub (yes, yes, you can have my stuff) - unfortunately I forgot to change the 6 month subscription (yes, that's how much I enjoyed the game before) so I have 150 days left...but I hope the cancellation still shows up on your 'metrics'. The best change in recent history, IMO of course, was the gear cost reduction. For a while now 95%, or more, of PvP people have been fully geared vastly decreasing the balance issues between teams, and making victories more based around skill, rather than on which team had better stats. And the fastest PvP way to get gear is in ranked matches? What should be the ultimate expression of skill vs skill in SWTOR is now a gear-check? ET seems like such a massive step back. I don't PvE at a high enough level to really comment. Certainly the level I play at I've never found gear to be remotely an issue, so isn't something I'd grind for. For PvP I play so many alts, sometimes respeccing between roles depending on my mood, this is just going to be a nightmare grind for me that I'm simply not interested in. Please reconsider. Yours, a long long time and previously 6-month subber.