The Expertise stat has to go...

I wish I was beating a dead horse, but “Expertise” is still in the game. I think the developers did an awesome job with the most of the aspect of PVP. I enjoyed being able to get almost 4 matches an hour before expertise made it needed for the separation of level 50s and non-level 50s. Now I’m lucky to get two matches an hour. It is not fun to be one of 5 to 8 players trying to pound on one Battlemaster geared player and not even move his health and not a healer in sight. Is this skill, no it is a reward for playing the game non-stop.
I’m not above working for what I need to be competitive in the game. I loved the fact I could be rewarded for PVP with EXP, Credit and Tokens. Tokens that gave me a chance to get better gear. Win or lose depending on the time of day I play I think I average 50 tokens a match. So it takes 16 matches to get a single back pack that gives me a chance for a piece of armor, or 3 of a different token. I’ve pull 4 bags guess what I’ve gotten, yep, your right 12 tokens. 64 matches and I can’t even buy one piece. I feel for my guildie, he has pull 20 bags, guess what he has gotten, yep 60 tokens. 320 matches and he can buy just one piece, a lesser piece like boots.
With those odds of getting needed gear for PVP only and not enjoying getting my butt handed to me by someone who’s only skill is the expertise stat I’ve stopped playing my level 50 toon and so have my kids. That is one story line complete and as soon as I finish the other 7 I think I’ll end my three subscriptions. Then wait for an expansion. Which by the way will more than likely raise the max level then everyone will have to get new raid gear.
I’m just wondering why my money is less valuable than those that who play all the time. Thank you for taking the casual player out of the game.

Nice idea, but I think it needs to be shifted to PvE gear. Have FPs drop gear along with purchasable gear or mods with a PvE stat which allows for a transition to raiding.

The reason for this switch follows: A PvP stat not only affects the person with the gear, but also the person he's hitting with that gear. Any positive gained for the person with the gear is a negative for the person on the receiving end. However, with the same type of stat on PvE gear, it's only a positive, since the NPC doesn't care that it's getting hit harder or hitting less on the player.

The key to the plan is the first step of gear, which is easily attainable, has the full PvE stat value, just lower main attributes. Just as the above poster stated.

Not only does this hurt the casual player... it also hurts the casual PVP player whom is a hardcore PVE player which in turns hurts the PVP playerbase since it is diminishing due to this.

PVP is about the skill of a player vs another... maybe they just need a PVP warzone where gear is not a factor where people can duke it out evenly... well at least as even as class balancing will take it.

Okay, I doubt anyone will be reading this far back but I thought I'd give it a shot anyway.

Seperating PvP gear and PvE gear is important. The first reason for this is quite simply that not everyone wants to raiding AND PvPing, but if you could do one and then be excellent in the other, then people who only do one option would miss out.

Lets say PvP gear was good for PvE for example; Now, at the moment, it really isn't hard to get champion gear. I've heard a lot of whining about it, but just as an example, I have a jedi knight who is level 22 and sitting on 3 champion bags... how long have I been PvPing with them you ask? 2 days. And not hardcore PvPing at that, literally doing maybe... 15 matches a day, 20 at an outside. Really not that much. If I'd been doing nothing but PvP I think I'd probably be sitting on more bags tbh, and I even posted a topic on this forum about troubles I'm having with that class... with my healer I get a load more commendations easily.

Anyway, so, champion gear isn't hard to get. Now, lets extend that out to when I'm level 50. I'm going to reclaim those bags (and more that I plan to get ofcourse!) and hopefully get a full set of gear without ever once doing a raid, but I'm suddenly geared up to the point where I can raid. This means that all those people who only PvE'd and were waiting to start raiding to get good gear are going to be less desirable candidates than me. That just isn't fair on them. They loose out on what they've specialized in because I happen to have gear from what I specialized in, which is a completely different aspect to the game.

There is also another aspect to this, that people do not seem to understand. Working towards gear is not just supposed to be a time sink to make you take a long time to get stuff, it's supposed to teach you how to play those roles to the best of your ability. Some people can pick this up very quickly, I will grant you that, and for some classes it isn't all that different. But for the essential classes in a group (healers and tanks) PvP and PvE have a major component of the game that differentiates them; Threat.

You might think "It doesn't matter, if you're a tank you generate threat anyway", for my Jedi Knight example. This, quite simply, is not the case. For example; I can run around a PvP map in my DPS form, have my skills all in my DPS tree but still get the same protection statistics at the end of the match; You can use your taunt and shield abilities without ever being in the Tanking form/stance/thingy. So, if I did that, every single bit of my experience would be in doing damage. Now..you might think that damage=threat. And it does, I'll give you that. But what you might not realise is that you can tank a WHOLE lot better if you're specced for tanking - There are atleast 2 skills you can ONLY get from your tanking tree, it modifies atleast 1 of your skills to actually be usefull where in a dps spec it really isn't that usefull, not only this but it modifies another skill to generate more focus, it makes another skill cost nothing if you leap...the list goes on. The play style is completely different, the skill set up is completely different, and the damage you can take vs the damage you can do is wildly different.

Now.. Imagine you are a tank class. You've spent all your time PvE'ing, learning to tank against NPC enemies, learning flashpoints to do in hard mode when you hit 50, reading up on operations... you hit 50, you start advertising that you are looking for certain groups, but to your horror you are repeatedly rejected because people with better gear, but who have never PvE tanked in their whole TOR time, are getting your spots. And not only that, they don't do good at it, which makes the people they group with think "Damn, tanks need to be REALLY highly geared to do well", when, infact, you could have done a much better job.

Just think about that scenario. Then reverse it for trying to PvP when people with PvE gear who have no idea what they're doing take your PvP slots. Either way, it's not a nice scenario.

Different armour sets exist for a reason. There is a reason you have to earn them. It's almost like a rite of passage; "Hey, he has that gear, he actually must know what he's doing to have got it, or atleast have quite a few hours experience".

Stop the expertise whining, please. Because if it were the other way round there would be a shizzle-ton more whining about people not knowing what they're doing, people would start interrogating you about your ability when you joined a group, PUGs would be very rare, and the casual player would lose out even more.

You may think "He's talking out of his bottom". And you're entitled to think that. But I'll tell you this - I'm not the most experienced MMO player out there, but what I have played is some of the genre defining games; UO, EQ, AO & WoW. Each of those games was ground breaking in it's own way (if you doubt that claim then just google them, look at when they were made and what they introduced), I've seen all these things introduced and I've seen what happened before they were about. Seperating PvP gear from PvE gear is a GOOD thing, for many reasons more than the one I outlined above. I would be happy to discuss this further, but really people, stop making accusations about what the stat does to gameplay if you don't have the background knowledge to back it up.

Guess what...

Good Pvpers kick ***

Bad Pvpers get there asses kicked

That is a simple fact that will remain the same with or without expertise.

A good pvper will do whatever is necessary to get gear for pvp. (You can get a full set of centurion gear just off the daily and weekly quests in maybe 5 weeks. Assuming you get 0 champ item tokens and dont purchase any champion bags).

So any good pvper is not running around with 0 exp they will get pvp gear and smoke people.

Bottom line is if you think that if they remove expertise all of a sudden your gonna be rocken in pvp WRONG.

You are still gonna get rolled cause you are a bad pvper.

QFT, this is the fact, it was indeed the opposist as mentioned years ago, how soon we forget. Anyone can get the good gear at 50, but if you want to pvp with the big boys, do what many of us have or are doing. Start pvp'n at 14 and don't stop. I have toon dedicated to the pvp spec tree and that's all I play them for. Did you know there is actually a pvp spec tree for everyclass? If your making these armor content comments, I gather that as a no.

Add a blue level 50 pvp set and this thread goes away.

It's dumb a fresh 50 goes into PvP with 0 of a stat that means everything in PvP.

Hell no,

If you start pvp'n your first time at 50, you deserve your fait...

A: you have no clue what to do on any map
B: chances are your solo
C: you have no skill other then pve to go by, so your concept of pvp and what to do when ==0
D: giving you any better gear options (blues) wouldn't even help, the reason people are getting owned is because of the above. Expertise helps, no argument, but skill vs expertise and add teamplay? no comparison. You still need a team that knows what it is doing to win a round , no matter what gear you own.

This comes from first hand experiance, I have no doubt many here have that same experiance. You could in fact ,eliminate all gear from pvp, the downfall would be we like to earn things for our time doing things we love. It's that little extra (knowing what is to come) that keeps us pvp'n just like end gamers like to raid. We do it for the fun, the glory and defniitly the gear.

What others here have to realize is, you have to work for it, just like the rest of us. I am sorry if you don't have the same amount of time to play or you feel left behind. But everyone you complain about having this uber gear didn't just get it for free. They did or are doing the same exact grind you are. You are no more special then the guy standing right next to you.

But the thing is...there shouldn't be whining!

You get 50 commendations easily, even if you're owned out of the warzone. With that you would only need to do 16 matches to get a champion bag.

I've had horrible stats at the end of a warzone, but because I participated my best, tried to support my team-mates and such, I've ended up with like 80 commendations. Doing that consistently is only 10 matches to get a bag.

I'll grant you that getting the higher level stuff is harder, but getting your first set of gear really isn't that hard!

Quoting this because it is extremely relevant to the topic, and simply cannot state the issue better. I'm not professing that I have some amazing idea to separate PvP and Raid gear progression, but a "PvP Stat" is a terrible concept to rely on.