(From Taugrim.com)SWTOR Has Repeated RIFT’s Mistakes in Endgame PVP

If you're Commando DPS, I hate to tell you but *everyone* in the 50 bracket will make you a splat on the ground. It's just a hard sell in PvP.

The stat difference between BM and WH is really small, and the expertise difference comes out to maybe 2-3% damage if you replace the BM crystal(s). It's comparable to the Champ/BM gap from before.

Two things *do* make a gap, though: (1) Better DPS statting. BM has crap surge, WH has a much better allocation. (2) Augments. +18/+12 times 6/7 is nice.

(1) means you won't do so well in a mirror duel, but on the battlefield it isn't going to decide the engagement. (And oh yeah, your Commando BM gun had a Surge enhancement that you should have ripped and put into a different piece.) Most of the WH-geared folks on my server have an alt or two in vanilla BM, and the effectiveness gap between their chars is a *lot* less than you're suggesting. BM gear gives you the tools to put your skills into play. Of course, there are also BM-geared folks who are totally useless, but putting them in WH wouldn't help either.

(2) you can correct just by augmenting based on BM gear. Yeah, you lose the set bonus, but so what? With 1.3 you won't even have to lose that.

Well yes, and I think this sums up his entire post.

He's suddenly on the weak side of the curve, and suddenly notices how sad and unfair gear progression is is. Meanwhile he completely fails to notice that it'll be like this for less than a week now, as opposed the ages it often took to get into full Champ before.

I don't think the current WH grind bears much discussion, since it's *not* how the system was designed and even implemented (before they killed ranked).

For people with busy work/study lives and families, the grind is indeed still too great. Like it or not, this group of players represents a large portion of potential subscribers for Bioware. But what's of greater concern to a lot of players is the disparity between classes. If this point by Taug has been intelligently rebutted in this thread, then I'm yet to see it. Shortening the acquisition time for WH gear and addressing the obvious inconsistencies between classes should be something all serious PvPers would want to see.

Sorry, you draw conclusions from yourself to others. I like RPG very much, but I hate grinding and I hate gear difference when people should just compete about skill. I want to create a toon and just jump into the fight with or without my friends. PvP below 50 is perfect. PvP afterwards needs lot of polishing, Taugrim is right about this.

I love all the ad-hominem attacks against Taugrim. This are started by people that can't argue their point so they attack the person and not the argument. He could, be the worst pvper in the world, he could be the best, at the end of the day only his argument matters and he hit a lot of points correctly.

These are swtor's PVP problems atm:
Problem: The gear disparity is too high
Solution: Rated Warzones was suppose to solve this problem as people would face against people of equivalent gear + skill level.

Problem: Class Balance
Solution: This one is more complicated, but my initial gut feeling is that tanking classes are doing too much damage compared to their dps counterparts. I have a guardian alt and my intuition confirms my suspicion. Most classes are free kills with the exception of the tankassassins which is a very close fight. Tanking stances will need to have some damage reduction to prevent tanking specs in pvp from dominations (vanguards, shadows, guardians). Other than that it's pretty balanced.

Problem not mentioned: The lack of population
Solution: Cross server pvp and Server Merges

Problem: The Grind
Solution: I don't think this is a problem. Character progression is suppose to take some time. The real problem is it's hard to progress when you are getting face planted by people in much better gear and skill level. Rated warzones and x-server queues will indirectly bring in gear matching. Good geared people with bad skill should theoretically fight bad geared people with good skill and other such combinations. This should bring everyone's win ratio to an acceptable 50% after you're at the correct rating level for your gear and skill.

If a poll was to be taken as to the class most needing love from developers, it would be the Guardian/Jugg. I would suggest levelling your Guard to 50 and then spending serious time in end game warzones before attributing them with "too much damage". I also have a lvl 50 Tankasin and 46 Pyro (amongst others), and they by far outclass any spec the Guardian/Jugg has to offer. There is no "free kill" with the Guardian/Jugg.

Like I said, it's fine to do the damage, just don't do it in a tanking stance. That is the main problem. Soresu from is ridiculously good.

Also I intend to get to 50 (a few levels away) and do the horrible catch-up grind don't worry. I don't think my opinion of the guardian will change.

Agreed, but my comparison isn't full BM to WH, it's Recruit with 2-4 pieces of BM compared to full WH. The effectiveness gap between mostly Recruit to WH is obvious.

People are suggesting that if Taugrim had invested his comms into 2 pieces of BM, he would have been much better off. They don't like his opinion, so they tear it down by insinuating he is stupid for having purchased the weapon first. I really don't see how 2 pieces of BM gear would have given him the juice to go toe to toe with WHs, thereby validating the argument that he was in fact foolish to purchase the weapon.

Your opinion of commandos is noted, and seconded.

"Ridiculously good" at what, exactly? The Guardian isn't "ridiculously good" at anything. Maras/Sents are ridiculously good at DPS, Healing Ops/Scoundrels are ridiculously good at pumping out heals, but there isn't anything the Guardian does that could possibly be construed as "ridiculously good". If you run in Soresu form, you have good survivability at the expense of any meaningful DPS. You aren't going to beat a Tankasin or Powertech if they're equally geared and with a player of similar skill to you. I regularly decimate Soresu spec Guardians/Juggs with both my Mara and Sent. You are also going to do nothing in the way of threatening healers.

And while the damage outputs of Vig and Focus are decent, they have none of the survivability, versatility and mobility of their tank counterparts in the Assassin and Powertech.

You picked the wrong class to highlight as being even remotely close to OP status.

Tell me you're kidding, please.

There is nothing ridiculously good about Soresu form. The only tank stance that needs to be changed/slightly nerfed is for Sins/Shadows.

Having that 50% damage and self heal proc is stupid. It's not needed and it contributes to make them OP in 1 vs 1's.

Of course I did, the class you're playing cannot possible be OP. But when other people play it ... oh boy

I also highlight the excruciating bad fault in your argument. The Guardian is without a doubt the best ball carrier in the game because of these attributes you said were their faults. I'm sorry you can't see this. A good guardian is an instant win in huttball.

As for 'Soresu Form', it is ridiculously good at keeping your toon alive. 90% of the damage in this game is in fact mitigated so getting your armour levels to ridiculous proportions not to mention having a passive 6% reduction to all damage on top of that does just that. You gain very little from switching away from it, which is why I and most guardians run it.

This is the problem with the tanking classes atm. Their tanking stances are too good for pvp, because of their ridiculously high mitigation abilities. Vanguards with Ion cell and Shadows with combat technique suffer from the same problem. At least combat technique does reduce some damage.