If your talking about big numbers in Warzones I'm surprised more mention of Expertise hasn't been mentioned. If you have a 1000 Expertise you have around a 20% damage boost, and 17% damage reduction. So even if they have the same expertise as you you'll be getting a 3% boost to damage. If your target is not PvP Aware (I seem the every so often) and has very little Expertise your going to hit them super hard. Someone with around 500 Expertise is only going to have a 10% damage reduction. You'd think everyone would be stacking expertise, but occasionally they are not.

You can get good gear both through PvE and PvP. If your playing mostly solo then your easiest route will be the PvP gear. Play Warzones, Trade in Warzone commendations for better gear. It may take awhile, but it can be done. The PvP gear will always be better for PvP because of the Expertise. Get Recruit, then Battlemaster, then War Hero. Getting the best PvE gear is a little bit more involved and you'll have to group, and probably join a guild. Step 1 - Run dailes on Ilum, Belsavis, and Corellia. Get Daily commendations, turn them in for good mods, relics, implants, and ear pieces (solo, but will take along time). Step 2 - Run Hard Mode Flashpoints (4 people) or Story Mode Operations (Karagga's Palace and Eternity Vault) and get Columi Gear (8 people) Step 3 - Run Hard Mode Karagga's or Eternity Vault; or run Story mode Explosive Conflict (8 people) However when gearing up for PvE you can use your PvP gear as a stop gap. You can probably skip step 1 if your already in Battlemaster gear, and skip step 2 if your already in War Hero gear. Running HM Flashpoints and Operations is tough with a random group of people, so I recommend a guild that will help you out with this. So try to find a good group of folks to run with, and until you do PvP.

You can also unlock it for 500k credits if you don't want to play a human to level 50.

You could play SWTOR entirely as a single player game (ignoring all of the Heroics) and be just fine. You won't be missing out on much. They are just bigger quests, some are pretty cool, but none are essential. However if you never get a gruop together I feel you'll be missing out if you don't do the Flashpoints. These are longer story like missions (30-90 minutes in length) that you do need a group for. Most launch from the fleet and they range from levels 15ish to 50. They are very cool and I highly recommend them. You unlock the Legacy the first time you complete chapter 1 with a character. You'll then start gaining legacy XP in addition to regular XP. All your characters on a server share and contribute to your legacy XP. They also all share in the unlock and benefits. As you get higher legacy levels you can (usually with some additonal credits) unlock various convience things... many of which are helpful for a second or third character should you start one. Also when you complete chapter 1 you'll get an Interance Legacy Item. Do not use this on the person who got it... Instead mail it to the next character you create and around level 14 he'll get an item that is very powerful for that level.

Good Suggestion. I love my A-300, but it's currently not in my main hand because I can't get an augment into it.

I would really like to be able to copy my keymappings from one character to another. I can do this with my interface, but not with my keybindings.

Idea: I would like the ability to export the guild bank log for review offline.

This happened about 50% of the time in an Op the other night that I was in.

I feel like I did excellent damage before, now it will be even better. Maybe this makes up for the fact that the set bonuses are really insignificant for gunslingers.

I was normally the type of player who would always queue up for PvP and never leave a match early. Since this patch I only queue up for PvP if at least 3 other in my guild are doing so. And I will leave if a game starts where we are short handed or grossly outmatched. If we are just losing badly I still stay, but if we are getting slaughtered I'll leave. If I'm going to get no rewards for my time, I'll go do something else... like PvE.

The original poster is correct... I'll never SOLO queue again til they put back in the early shutdown. Heck 5 v 8 would be doable. I keep getting 3 v 8, and then people join and leave soon as they see it's 3 vs 8. If everyone would just stay we'd get to 6 people in a minute... Oh wait then we'd still lose and get no rewards. So yeah I'll not be SOLO queuing.

I read only the patch notes and not all the QAs so I was a bit shocked as well when I moved an armor mod out of some boots into an orange boots and lost the set bonus.

The original poster pretty much has it correct. I will no longer PUG PvP, will only PVP with pre-mades now. As I need my very well geared guild mates to have any chance at getting some PvP gear of my own.

Just some thoughts on the original topic (I didn't read all the pages). I didn't start PvPing until late, and just before the patch I hit Valor 50. I just started getting gear with expertise. I figured more PvP fun would be in the works as I worked my way to Battlemaster. For the last month on my server I'm reguralry in 6 v 8s, always outnumbered. In probably 80% of games my team is outnumberd. Now in this patch yesterday it's more like 3 vs 8 (why does that even start?) And won't end early. I try to be a good sport and fight it to the end only to find that I earn 0 Valor for getting insta killed repeatedly. I will stop PvPing unless invited into a pre-made group. At least then I'll be sure there is 4 people on my team. I think I'll go work on alts or something.

I rarely ever post on the forums, but was just about to come make a post about this. PvP is now broken. I played a few matches yesterday that were 8 vs 3. I stayed till the end and gave it my best shot only to find I got no valor, exp, credits, or wz commendations. Sure the three of us had no chance to cap anything, but we gave it our best shot. The second time it happened, 8 vs 4. People were continually joining and then leaving. Why was the early shutdown removed? Who in gods name thought that was a good idea? When you get a full 8 v 8 even match PvP is cool, but most of the rest of the time we are getting these unbalanced slaughterfests that are fun for no one.