The Expertise stat has to go...

OK I'M GOING TO EXPLAIN WHY EXPERTISE IS NEEDED!!! People are confusing expertise with gear progression.

For our example, I'll take away expertise. There is no expertise anymore in the game.
But we still have gear progression meaning tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 armor and weapons.

Now tell me, A VALOR 60+ PLAYER IN FULL BATTLEMASTER VS A FRESH 50. The gears do not have expertise. What do you think will happen? Do you think the the fresh 50 will somewhat miraculously have a chance? Of course not. With or without expertise, that fresh 50 is going to get rolled BECAUSE OF GEAR!!!! BECAUSE THERE IS GEAR PROGRESSION.

Expertise is there so that people who raid will not be able to suddenly go to warzones and wreck pvpers through gear. It's the only reason expertise is there.

If you want PVP based on 100% skill and nothing else, go play Gears of War. MMOs are not like that.

If PVP needs a reward system, then have it apply expertise to your character, not gear. It has no use outside of PVP, but while in PVP it "activates". The higher the valor you have, the more "expertise" your character earns.

I hate a system where you have to "swap gear" constantly. EverQuest 2 had a style where every ability you had did something different depending on if you were PVPing or PVEing. If you hit a mob with a super hit, you did 15,000 damage. If you used the same ability on a player, it did 3,000 damage. No gear changes needed. It auto applied to skills....not gear.

Easy Solution to PvP outside of bugs and imbalance:
1. give players a gear score
2. rank players based on valor rank and the gear score
3. group servers into "battlegroups" so when you Q for a warzone you Q with many other servers.
4. some *********** entry level pvp gear (player made gems/gear)

Pvp doesn't seem "broken" but it does seem a bit ****ed up, on my server (the harbinger) republic gets rolled Hard and it just seems like a huge difference in gear. I'm not sure if that is due to the Sith having been more active in pvp or exploiting it or both but its frustrating to a point that even though i never post on game forums (5years in wow 0 forum posts) here I am, ************ about pvp having just come from a crushing defeat on Alderaan. I love the idea of pvp in a MMO but whats the point if the avg. life expectancy of everyone on my team is like 1 min. Say what you will about world of warcraft, battlegrounds kicked *** I still remember my 1st grinds in Alteric valley fighting my way to SP then across the bridge into Dun Baldir. Know what I remember about star wars pvp? Getting rolled hard by the opposition and i cant do **** about it. So please see the steps above and get on it Devs. Not sure about the rest of you but if things dont change I'm heading back to wow for some solid pvp, with the right enchantment anything can look like a lightsaber.

Stop right there. In every other non-mmo game, the biggest reward is skill over time. You get BETTER at the game you are playing if you put more time into it. That's what PvP needs to be about. Skill and that's it. Not gear nor anything else that gives players that play more an unfair advantage.