before i say this i just wanna point out im a decent pvp player in other mmos. i do well in WoW, Albion, GW2, and ESO. i also parse 70-85% in raids for WoW and FFXIV

I know im new, but the PVP scene in swtor so far has been embarrassing. it feels like a pay to win mobile game MMO. (not that im saying its pay to win, just that there is very obviously some kind of massive stat advantage against me)

Ive so far tried a 75 operative, a 75 sniper, and a 72 jedi tank.

my sniper dies in seconds. my crit ambushes usually only do like 5% of someones health. even when they crit for 44k, they barely do anything. And its often just healed immediately anyway.

my op survives longer by virtue of not being the first person targetted thanks to stealth, but also does almost no damage.

My jedi guardian usually ends up with the highest damage numbers on the chart by virtue of it just being alive the longest. but again, i just underperform compared to everybody else.

Now my sniper I can understand as im not great with it. But im fairly decent with the jedi guardian, and playing with sith immortal or another guardian, they will pull 3 or 4 times my damage on the leaderboard. Im pretty sure im not _25% as good_ as someone else.

im around 270 equipment rating. with the warzone boost i didnt even notice a difference from 205 or so and 270. infact my hp actually went down when i upgraded gear in warzone.

Can someone please explain where im missing damage. I havnt tried all classes yet but i assume Ambush is supposed to be a hard hitting skill relative to other classes but ive seen someone with a "highest hit" for 88k on the leaderboard. My crit ambush as sniper has only ever achieved 44k. does 306 really make a difference compared to 270? i know there are set bonuses but would that even make my ambush achieve 60k? How are people doing so much damage and receiving so little in warzones compared to newer players at 270?

I really just have to say i know my lack of knowledge is an issue and thats why im asking all this, but so far swtor pvp has been the worst pvp experience ive had out of WoW, GW2, ESO, and Albion. It just isnt remotely fair and i really dont know if its the gear or what. I have topped damage a few of times in PVP but those are with people who appear to be in the same boat as i am.

I just cant stress enough of how badly this game feels. How much it feels like a bad chinese pay to win mmo. absolutely 1 sided battles are the norm, rather than occasional. I just expect more from a EA/Bioware game.

PS i have tried googling things along the lines of "swtor gear pvp" or "pvp gear matters" etc and got irrelevant or outdated results. ive also tried asking in the swtor discord a couple times and got ignored.

As much as people will say gear is a crutch, you need the right gear in order to be not terrible at pvp. You need the right set bonus, the right tactical, and the right stat pools. You also need the right utilities. That can easily increase your dps by 50%. I’m not sure what you’re talking about for guides. I googled “juggernaut 6.0 pvp guide swtor” and got results in 1 second. Here’s an immortal jugg guide for pvp: https://vulkk.com/2019/12/18/swtor-6-0-immortal-juggernaut-tank-pvp-guide/ and here’s one for leth operative : https://vulkk.com/2019/12/03/swtor-6-0-lethality-operative-guide/

You can be a competent pvper basically once you have the right setup. Of course there’s a learning curve (which can be steep depending on whether you want to get into ranked or unranked pvp) but if you have the right gear/tactical/utilities/setup you shouldn’t be doing 25% as much dps as other people. After that it’s all about practice, learning your rotation, and reacting to different situations.

Its a mixture of being new and a lack of gear.

A veteran player could do pretty well with 270 gear thanks to bolster and simply knowing what CD's do what and how to respond to what their opponent is doing. That said, max gear is more about boosts you get from the set bonuses than it is about the stats. Makes a pretty massive difference along with having the BiS stat allocation once you get to 306.

Its a mixture of being new and a lack of gear.

 

A veteran player could do pretty well with 270 gear thanks to bolster and simply knowing what CD's do what and how to respond to what their opponent is doing. That said, max gear is more about boosts you get from the set bonuses than it is about the stats. Makes a pretty massive difference along with having the BiS stat allocation once you get to 306.

I can confirm this. I've popped into a voidstar only to realize I forgot to equip gear on my character after mailing it around. As long as you have the right tactical and MH/OH for whatever rotation you're used to, you can easily do well enough to not be a boat anchor for a team of average players even with no other slots filled.

OP: Sniper is one of the hardest classes to play in PVP. A bad/inexperienced sniper is REALLY obvious to veteran players. Your top damaging abilities are all obviously telegraphed with long cast times, so they are easy to LOS or avoid with cooldowns. Top tier snipers are among the most mobile players in PVP, while bad snipers are sitting still the entire game getting farmed. Snipers have a very high skill cap so if you stick with it and focus on moving around to avoid damage, and learning when to bait DCDs and then use your abilities like Ambush, there's tremendous upside.

For operatives, you can do really impressive self healing by focusing on applying kolto probes to yourself on every spare GCD. The first tick of KP is instant so you're giving yourself ~4500 hp every time you hit that button. Damage for operative is heavily dependent on your tactical choice. There are a few tacticals that give you insane burst for either lethality and concealment specs, but they require somewhat complex timed rotations. If you wanted something a little easier to learn you could try acid lash for concealment or synox shots for lethality. You won't have as much burst, but as long as you stick to one target you'll do great sustained DPS.

Not being 306 is a big hit to your damage. You will want to achieve that first. When you do hit 306, your stat goals will be something like this.

Atleast 10k power

Around 1213 alacrity(can be less, you just need 3 alacrity enhancements)

Around 600 accuracy rating to achieve 1.05 accuracy

Around 3000-3400 crit(do not go above 3400, because you start hitting diminishing returns after that point

Once you hit all those requirements just pump the leftover stats into mastery by using versatile augments. One thing to note that's often forgotten is that power is the largest boost to your damage. You will want to get that as high as possible by min-maxing mods. If you want more help with your stats, I would recommend joining a pvp guild, and asking questions there. The majority of guides aren't fully updated for optimal pvp stats.

and on average at least for reg pvp at 75 I see 1 up to 4 players geared in gear well below 306. Even then they mostly hop around and dont play objectives just slamming against that sniper and die and die and die. Works oh so well for the enemy team, especially in Ancient Hypergate where that basically ensures the enemy team wins. So gear does matter but so does playing badly..and I suspect intentionally.

So a few solutions

level 75 pvp should have a min gear requirement for both regs and ranked

the upcoming ban to prevent the sludge who ruin ranked as well as regs is most welcome

class rebalancing is definitely needed, so many teams just made up of the fotm classes everytime just rolling

teams and using their buddies to ensure enemy team never stands a chance.

Im sure there are a few other things to be done but I will say the leaving ban has just made things worse not better, more and more players just plan for loss and play to lose I dont know how the hell that made things better, its driving players away.

There is a bit of a misnomer that 306 gear irating matters in regs. Let me point out that we have bolster for players who don’t quite have the highest gear rating

What really matters is using the right set bonus, tacticals and having the right min max of stats that you stat pool allows.

Obviously the larger your stat pool (irating + higher augments), the better your stats can be min maxed. But you can have the largest stat pool there is and it will make no difference if you have the wrong set bonus gear and tactical equiped or the wrong mix of stats.

Ie, I see plenty of people with i306 gear and augments, but the have the wrong mix of stats. Aka, Sorcs with accuracy in pvp is just wrong. Sorcs with assassin set bonus gear is just wrong.

I would rather have someone with irating 270 that has the right stats, the right set bonus and tactical because bolster will give them a better chance to perform than these others with no idea how to gear.

Gear rating maters less than people make out. It really only matters once you have all the correct gear and are min maxing with high augments. Otherwise it’s mostly irrelevant.

There is a bit of a misnomer that 306 gear irating matters in regs. Let me point out that we have bolster for players who don’t quite have the highest gear rating

 

What really matters is using the right set bonus, tacticals and having the right min max of stats that you stat pool allows.

 

Obviously the larger your stat pool (irating + higher augments), the better your stats can be min maxed. But you can have the largest stat pool there is and it will make no difference if you have the wrong set bonus gear and tactical equiped or the wrong mix of stats.

 

Ie, I see plenty of people with i306 gear and augments, but the have the wrong mix of stats. Aka, Sorcs with accuracy in pvp is just wrong. Sorcs with assassin set bonus gear is just wrong.

 

I would rather have someone with irating 270 that has the right stats, the right set bonus and tactical because bolster will give them a better chance to perform than these others with no idea how to gear.

 

Gear rating maters less than people make out. It really only matters once you have all the correct gear and are min maxing with high augments. Otherwise it’s mostly irrelevant.

This is all true; however, the flip side to this is that the best way to gear to ilevel 306 is to put on whatever the highest ilevel item you have for that slot, regardless of stat, and only be concerned about optimization when you get to ilevel 306.

Myself, I levelled gear via PvE (yay red reaper stealth spamming with a friend), at one point running a tank piece on my healing scoundrel (because it was borrowed from an op i'd run on my guardian, and happened to be the highest ilevel item for that slot i had at the time).

OP has a choice, to be sure. Personally, my opinion is that getting to ilevel 306 is easy enough in PvE, and thus, trying to get a set bonus at 270, and keep that same set optimized through to 306, is simply far more inconvenient than stealth spamming reaper (or any class spammer stationing) to ilevel 306, then optimizing. To each his own though, and everything you mentioned is true given what we know about how the bolster works.

This is all true; however, the flip side to this is that the best way to gear to ilevel 306 is to put on whatever the highest ilevel item you have for that slot, regardless of stat, and only be concerned about optimization when you get to ilevel 306.

 

Myself, I levelled gear via PvE (yay red reaper stealth spamming with a friend), at one point running a tank piece on my healing scoundrel (because it was borrowed from an op i'd run on my guardian, and happened to be the highest ilevel item for that slot i had at the time).

 

OP has a choice, to be sure. Personally, my opinion is that getting to ilevel 306 is easy enough in PvE, and thus, trying to get a set bonus at 270, and keep that same set optimized through to 306, is simply far more inconvenient than stealth spamming reaper (or any class spammer stationing) to ilevel 306, then optimizing. To each his own though, and everything you mentioned is true given what we know about how the bolster works.

Yes, but you only need to worry about having the highest irating equiped to get the gear when opening boxes or receiving gear drops. Otherwise it’s not an issue.

So in pvp where you only get gear boxes and not gear drops, you can save those boxes up till you are ready to open them, and when you do, just make sure you have the highest iRated gear on that you own at the time, the stats don’t matter or what the actual gear is.

What I find really ironic about this whole gear system is many players wanted to do away with pvp gear that had expertise on it because they didn’t want to have two sets of gear or have to run two different types of content to gear up.

And what has happened instead is we now need to run pve to gear up for pvp and you still need to have two sets or partial sets if you are serious about being competitive in pvp. It actually takes many months longer to gear up for pvp or BiS for pve (hard content) than it used too.

The lesson to all of this is be careful what you wish for or ask from Bioware because their response is often not what you actually wanted.

before i say this i just wanna point out im a decent pvp player in other mmos. i do well in WoW, Albion, GW2, and ESO. i also parse 70-85% in raids for WoW and FFXIV

 

I know im new, but the PVP scene in swtor so far has been embarrassing. it feels like a pay to win mobile game MMO. (not that im saying its pay to win, just that there is very obviously some kind of massive stat advantage against me)

 

Ive so far tried a 75 operative, a 75 sniper, and a 72 jedi tank.

 

my sniper dies in seconds. my crit ambushes usually only do like 5% of someones health. even when they crit for 44k, they barely do anything. And its often just healed immediately anyway.

 

my op survives longer by virtue of not being the first person targetted thanks to stealth, but also does almost no damage.

 

My jedi guardian usually ends up with the highest damage numbers on the chart by virtue of it just being alive the longest. but again, i just underperform compared to everybody else.

 

Now my sniper I can understand as im not great with it. But im fairly decent with the jedi guardian, and playing with sith immortal or another guardian, they will pull 3 or 4 times my damage on the leaderboard. Im pretty sure im not _25% as good_ as someone else.

 

im around 270 equipment rating. with the warzone boost i didnt even notice a difference from 205 or so and 270. infact my hp actually went down when i upgraded gear in warzone.

 

Can someone please explain where im missing damage. I havnt tried all classes yet but i assume Ambush is supposed to be a hard hitting skill relative to other classes but ive seen someone with a "highest hit" for 88k on the leaderboard. My crit ambush as sniper has only ever achieved 44k. does 306 really make a difference compared to 270? i know there are set bonuses but would that even make my ambush achieve 60k? How are people doing so much damage and receiving so little in warzones compared to newer players at 270?

 

I really just have to say i know my lack of knowledge is an issue and thats why im asking all this, but so far swtor pvp has been the worst pvp experience ive had out of WoW, GW2, ESO, and Albion. It just isnt remotely fair and i really dont know if its the gear or what. I have topped damage a few of times in PVP but those are with people who appear to be in the same boat as i am.

 

I just cant stress enough of how badly this game feels. How much it feels like a bad chinese pay to win mmo. absolutely 1 sided battles are the norm, rather than occasional. I just expect more from a EA/Bioware game.

 

PS i have tried googling things along the lines of "swtor gear pvp" or "pvp gear matters" etc and got irrelevant or outdated results. ive also tried asking in the swtor discord a couple times and got ignored.

get the gear to 306 and get bd-0 tactical with set bonus armor. my highest hit in sniper 105000

You do not have set bonus, tactical item, augments.

Besides, being ilvl270 new guy means you die a lot, and spending time on resp means you can not have big numbers in final match table.

44 k ambush it is 1/6 of usual player character HP and it is comparable with other classes hard hitting abilities.

Do some dungeons and get latest items, set bonus, tactical, buy augments.

Boom - you now live longer and do more damage overall.

Besides, take in count that it may happen that whole your team or half of it will be bored PvE guys, new guys, guys who has no clue etc., opposite team may have healers and your team - not. It means you all will constantly teleport to resp, nothing you can do about it.

get the gear to 306 and get bd-0 tactical with set bonus armor. my highest hit in sniper 105000

How do you do this? I'm in full 306, running that tactiical and full augs/armor pen amps. Show me the way....

Thanks,

How do you do this? I'm in full 306, running that tactiical and full augs/armor pen amps. Show me the way....

 

Thanks,

You hit someone undergeared and with no DCD's up.

get the gear to 306 and get bd-0 tactical with set bonus armor. my highest hit in sniper 105000

How useful is that tactical though for the whole match? It doesn’t make much sense to use is except for meme purposes.

How do you do this? I'm in full 306, running that tactiical and full augs/armor pen amps. Show me the way....

 

Thanks,

I think my max hit is 109k and it was on a poorly geared sorc who had no DCDs up and I had just picked up the red WZ powerup. I think theoretically if you had a group of two snipers and a mara, you could hit for 130k if one sniper used sniper siege and the mara popped bloodthirst. Would be fun to try ...

How useful is that tactical though for the whole match? It doesn’t make much sense to use is except for meme purposes.

It's useful for all the ways that hitting someone for 120-130k in two GCDs, on demand every 20s, is useful. And it's not like you're doing 0 damage between those burst windows either.

I just started using agitating energies more but as you said, sometimes the memes call and you must answer with a roll and ambush.

You hit someone undergeared and with no DCD's up.

My biggest hit is like 85K. It sounds like to get higher you need the red WZ buff and a mara bloodlust.

It's useful for all the ways that hitting someone for 120-130k in two GCDs, on demand every 20s, is useful. And it's not like you're doing 0 damage between those burst windows either.

 

I just started using agitating energies more but as you said, sometimes the memes call and you must answer with a roll and ambush.

Interesting. Ok, colour me intrigued enough that I’m going to try it out.

Works oh so well for the enemy team, especially in Ancient Hypergate where that basically ensures the enemy team wins.

This is an easy exploit : Focus on the inexperienced players first and then win. Do not engage against good players at all !

This game is gear dependent.

That's really the answer. If you are 270 iLvl you're probably getting crushed because everyone else is at least purpls (286+) or into the 300s.

This game is gear dependent.