I really hope that they are not wasting ressources on bringing back expertise if there goal of brining it back is to attract "pvpers" for 6.0. I hope their focus is to bridge accessibility to end game gear (atm 258) through PvP activities. That is what pvpers actually want and I am certain that that is a lot easier to do than to change the whole system again. Like What is expertise and what does it have to do with pvp anyways? Expertise is just a STAT, just like alacrity, crit, accuracy etc. Expertise only benefited players in pvp situations and did nothing in pve encounters. When they removed expertise so that 1 set of gear can be viable for all content (both pve and pvp) what did that change in regards to pvp? The answer is nothing. Are you less of a pvper because you all of a sudden dont have some kind of stat that affects your type of content (pvp)? If you answer is yes to that, then the only thing you seem to be having is a simple identity crisis, because having expertise on your gear or not, has NOTHING to do with you being a pvper. Being a pvper is all about the enjoyment of PLAYER vs PLAYER combat. If I have crit and you dont have any, does that make me less of a pvper than you? No. So why do some of you feel they should bring back expertise? what would be a good reason to bring it back if there is simply a better way for them to bring pvpers easier access to the best endgame gear through pvp activities?

are you actually advising against expertise... without knowing why it even existed?

 

by the way, it still exists. expertise is your mastery stat. when expertise was "removed" it was renamed mastery, given a different effect, and applied to pve gear. this is very important information... because... there is no heavy change. they will just put it back. the coding already exists. it never went away

Edited February 11, 2019 by Seterade

are you actually advising against expertise... without knowing why it even existed?

 

by the way, it still exists. expertise is your mastery stat. when expertise was "removed" it was renamed mastery, given a different effect, and applied to pve gear. this is very important information... because... there is no heavy change. they will just put it back. the coding already exists. it never went away

 

 

Im sry m8, but from now on I will most likely disregard most of anything you say since so much info you try to provide other players it just wrong and therefore completely useless and pointless to any argument you have tried to make. Expertise did not become mastery. Expertise is 100% gone atm. Mastery is the stat that replaced cunning, strength, willpower and aim. you really need to get your facts straight for anyone to even give you any kind of credibility. I am no coder, so I cant speak to the difficulty of the task of bringing it back, I simply base my knowledge on the fact they said they will only make that kind of change with an expansion size update which to me means its most likely a bigger deal than not. When they introduced mastery, it was similar to power, the difference is that it provided some crit % aswell (not the surge/multiplier part). power gave something like 0.23 per point of bonus damage and mastery gave 0.20 bonus damage and a very small crit % increase. That's how the original things were after the removal of expertise.

lul. well at least you have some idea of what "stats" are. yes I was trolling.

 

its a pity that someone who thinks they have so much information is so blind to game mechanics. I dont need you to respect what I say... specialy when you have no idea what expertise was for, and think this game is designed for 8v8. regardless of the fact that game mode failed long ago and has been completely erased from the dev agenda in terms of balance. but you do you. you obviously know more than me.

 

Post edit: on further thought.. I decided mockery may not be the solution here. so instead of making fun of you I'll tell you what it for and why it needs to return and why exactly it is so important to pvp.

 

expertise was a stat that increased your damage by 60% and your damage reduction by like 35% or something.... basically it buffed your damage reduction and damage equaly. you didnt gain a stat buff by using it.

 

so why did it exist? because gear with expertise was cheaply earned quickly, allowing pvp to be a very fast gearing mode, because pvp is an action mode not a progression one.

 

why does this affect 5.0? because throught this entire expansion (with the exception of 5.10) gear has ruled pvp and gear was much harder to earn doing pvp than pve. couple of hm op carrys and you had full 242 ready for uppgrades. took you one week. do it with pvp? took a month or two.

 

 

last but not least.. you dont believe me? you think im stupid, assuming bs? take a look at swtors population nnumbers between 5.0 launch and now. take a look at the servers, server locations, sub numbers, and swtor income. something sure scared off a lot of players.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Seterade

Expertise is to seperate people using pve gear in pvp and getting the same as if they had ground out pvp gear.

 

That is the only way I can see with separating the gear.

 

So no, expertise should come back with pvp gear and pve gear separated by different ways of acquiring it.

 

We need to have two sets of gear. Combining it is what’s caused all of this *********** gearing mess to start with.

 

I’m sorry OP, but you are wrong. We need expertise back.

Edited February 11, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

lul. well at least you have some idea of what "stats" are. yes I was trolling.

 

its a pity that someone who thinks they have so much information is so blind to game mechanics. I dont need you to respect what I say... specialy when you have no idea what expertise was for, and think this game is designed for 8v8. regardless of the fact that game mode failed long ago and has been completely erased from the dev agenda in terms of balance. but you do you. you obviously know more than me.

 

Post edit: on further thought.. I decided mockery may not be the solution here. so instead of making fun of you I'll tell you what it for and why it needs to return and why exactly it is so important to pvp.

 

expertise was a stat that increased your damage by 60% and your damage reduction by like 35% or something.... basically it buffed your damage reduction and damage equaly. you didnt gain a stat buff by using it.

 

so why did it exist? because gear with expertise was cheaply earned quickly, allowing pvp to be a very fast gearing mode, because pvp is an action mode not a progression one.

 

why does this affect 5.0? because throught this entire expansion (with the exception of 5.10) gear has ruled pvp and gear was much harder to earn doing pvp than pve. couple of hm op carrys and you had full 242 ready for uppgrades. took you one week. do it with pvp? took a month or two.

 

 

last but not least.. you dont believe me? you think im stupid, assuming bs? take a look at swtors population nnumbers between 5.0 launch and now. take a look at the servers, server locations, sub numbers, and swtor income. something sure scared off a lot of players.

 

you really seem to have a problem with numbers. you say it increased you damage done by 60% and damage reduction by about 35% (I dont remember the exact numbers, but it was similar to this) and your next sentence says that " it basically buffed your damage reduction and damage equally" so, 60 does NOT equal 35, if you cant see that I seriously have no clue how to help you with that. In regards to what expertise was as a function, to me it only did one thing, it gave a strong boost to those who had it in pvp vs someone who did not. two people who had the same expertise, you can say that neither of those two had any expertise. if I had 2k and my opponent had 2k BOTH out boost to damage done and damage reduction (whatever the % was) would be the same. if both players had 0 expertise, guess what the bonus to damage done and damage reduction would be the same aswell--->> which is what our current gearing system is like. there is no difference between players and therefore expertise is useless as a stat. In regards to your trolling and so called first instinct to mock others, that behavior is the true problem that has hurt the ranked community over the years. Ill talk a little about that later.

 

 

Gear has never ruled pvp in this game. You can give the best gear to the dumbest player and give the worst gear to a smart player and the smart player will win 100% of the time. gear only makes a partial difference when looking at players of similar skill along with RNG crits of course.

 

 

It was indeed easier to gear out for pvp back in the day for sure, but that had nothing to do with the fact that our gear had a stat called expertise, it did not cost you expertise to buy your pieces of gear. so again ill state it again: expertise was useless. The focus is all on how long it took a pvper to get the best gear for pvp. If the time it took to get the best gear for pvp that also had expertise (in the past) on it took you for example 10 hours, and it also took you 10 hours to get the best gear for both pve and pvp (today). Why in the world would you not prefer to take the gearing system of today in which you only need 1 set of gear to do all content in the game.

 

 

The reality is that it does not take the same 10 hours TODAY to get a full set of gear. That is the problem, not expertise. As I said in my original post at the end, their focus and ressources should be directed towards bridging that time gap that it takes to get a full set of gear by doing only pvp activities. That has nothing to do with expertise, so I ask again why in the world do you want them to waste their time brining back a stat that was useless.

 

 

You ask why do you think people have been leaving this game, I have 3 main reasons (1 pve, 3.5 pvp). For PVE focused players, its the lack of new content over a set period of time. 1 operation in one year? maybe 2-3 flashpoints? people got bored of it real fast. people cleared the content in 1-2 months and got nothing new for the next 10? im not surprised most of them left. In PvP, the first reason is the lack of SMALL balance changes, its been the same meta for way too long of a period and people all want there favorite class to somewhat have the perception that there class is the strongest at somepoint. The second, is also the lack of new Wz's types, reskin of civil war with a couple minor differences is not what I consider a new wz. The third is the matchmaking, its I believe to be a consensus that any kind of backfilling to anything needs to be a replacement of the same role (tank leaves, tank comes in its place) if one cannot be found because no other tank for example is in q, then perhaps offer an option for every1 to leave that wzs and have first priority back in the q (just an idea). The last little bit is specific to the ranked community. There needed to be some sort of ingame official that can review suspicious behavior IMMEDIATELY and take action right away. Its people who troll ranked (since you said you like to troll, please stop queueing for ranked, your kind of behavior is not welcome in a competitive setting), leave mid game on purpose, doesn't actually play once they are in the game, throw to make people they dont like lose, throw to make friends win, actual hacking of the game. All these BEHAVIORAL problems that have gone unpunished for basicly forever have caused most ranked players to no longer care and leave the game. These are what I believe are the main reasons people have and will continue to leave this awesome game if things do not change.

Expertise is to seperate people using pve gear in pvp and getting the same as if they had ground out pvp gear.

 

That is the only way I can see with separating the gear.

 

So no, expertise should come back with pvp gear and pve gear separated by different ways of acquiring it.

 

We need to have two sets of gear. Combining it is what’s caused all of this *********** gearing mess to start with.

 

I’m sorry OP, but you are wrong. We need expertise back.

 

I much rather have 1 gear set that does both kinds of activities then have to grind out 2 different sets of gear for both types. Fix the gap that it takes to get a full set of gear compared to what it was in the past and you will rather have 1 set of gear too, if you disagree with that then your simply arguing for the sake of arguing and bring nothing to any kind of discussion. Expertise has nothing to do with the time it takes to gear, therefore expertise is useless and they should not waste their time brining it back.

Expertise is to seperate people using pve gear in pvp and getting the same as if they had ground out pvp gear.

 

That is the only way I can see with separating the gear.

 

So no, expertise should come back with pvp gear and pve gear separated by different ways of acquiring it.

 

We need to have two sets of gear. Combining it is what’s caused all of this *********** gearing mess to start with.

 

I’m sorry OP, but you are wrong. We need expertise back.

 

If I have to GRIND two sets of gear after they bring back expertise than NO.... please forget about it. It should never return.

 

You are very naive to think that PVP gear will be so easy to get like it was pre 5.0. it will never be that easy and with one set of gear I can do both PVE and PVP.

you really seem to have a problem with numbers. you say it increased you damage done by 60% and damage reduction by about 35% (I dont remember the exact numbers, but it was similar to this) and your next sentence says that " it basically buffed your damage reduction and damage equally" so, 60 does NOT equal 35,

 

im kinda dumb.

 

also, this game has been given a lot of content.... everything from uprisings,, an operation, flashpoints, story, story based flash points, 3 new wzs, 2 new arenas, reg matchmaking.... we could go on but whats the point. your mind is made up.

 

(3 wzs? OPG was 5.0 wasnt it?after three years of a stale meta their just melting together...)

Edited February 11, 2019 by Seterade

If I have to GRIND two sets of gear after they bring back expertise than NO.... please forget about it. It should never return.

 

You are very naive to think that PVP gear will be so easy to get like it was pre 5.0. it will never be that easy and with one set of gear I can do both PVE and PVP.

 

Well it’s my opinion, you don’t need to agree. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong or you’re right. Just different perspective.

 

I’d prefer 2 sets to seperate the gear system. That way they can make the grind as hard as they wan and for raiders and gear grinders and it doesn’t impact on pvpers.

 

BioWare said themselves during 3.x that gearing for pvp back then was too slow. I’d definitely accept that sort of philosophy again and I’d hope they would consider that if they split the gear.

 

Regardless, unless they change this current system soon, I won’t be here to find out what they end up doing.

Edited February 11, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

I much rather have 1 gear set that does both kinds of activities then have to grind out 2 different sets of gear for both types. Fix the gap that it takes to get a full set of gear compared to what it was in the past and you will rather have 1 set of gear too, if you disagree with that then your simply arguing for the sake of arguing and bring nothing to any kind of discussion. Expertise has nothing to do with the time it takes to gear, therefore expertise is useless and they should not waste their time brining it back.

 

PVP gear was easy to get pre 5.0 and this is why most people here think that bringing it back is a must for a well being of PVP...

 

It might or might not be the case, but if they bringing back PVP gear must still be easy to get. Looking at the game now that is very very unlikely... And having to grind two sets of gear will seriously cripple the remaining player base.

 

I mean ok, I only PVP, but sometimes I like to do HM ops as well, and being stuck only with PVP because I now have to grind another damn set to be able to PVE would be a very very bad move.

 

So in that case let the past die please..

You want me to resubscribe for a month, just to tell you how bloody, horrifically wrong you are? Fine I will take the bait.

 

I hope their focus is to bridge accessibility to end game gear (atm 258) through PvP activities. That is what pvpers actually want and I am certain that that is a lot easier to do than to change the whole system again.

 

They would never be able to do this in a manner that would serve both sides. It would need to be a lot faster to have any meaning for PVPers, and it would kill all incentive for PvE progression players. That is not what PVPers want. It is not what we have been asking for.

 

Like What is expertise and what does it have to do with pvp anyways? Expertise is just a STAT, just like alacrity, crit, accuracy etc. Expertise only benefited players in pvp situations and did nothing in pve encounters.

 

This is such a weird sentence. Why are you even talking about a PvP-stat and then comparing it to PvE gameplay. It makes no sense.

 

When they removed expertise so that 1 set of gear can be viable for all content (both pve and pvp) what did that change in regards to pvp? The answer is nothing.

 

It changed everything. PVP should be about skills and nothing else, period. Forcing a gear grind upon none-progression players is detriment to skill-based PVP. Back in the 3.3 - 4.X era we could be competetive within a few weeks, and often instantly when comms became legacy bound. With the command grind and now, puke, crystal grind, we are starting to see huge discrepancies in gear and it will only become worse. I never got full gear for all classes in 248, and with 258 I will not even bother. Yes there are many other factors to consider, but this was so completely unnecessary and it really shows how out-of-touch the remaining developer is.

 

 

Are you less of a pvper because you all of a sudden dont have some kind of stat that affects your type of content (pvp)? If you answer is yes to that, then the only thing you seem to be having is a simple identity crisis, because having expertise on your gear or not, has NOTHING to do with you being a pvper.

 

Yes I am less when competing in terrible gear vs. someone in much better gear. Yes it absolutely impacts my experience when PVPing.

 

 

Being a pvper is all about the enjoyment of PLAYER vs PLAYER combat. If I have crit and you dont have any, does that make me less of a pvper than you? No. So why do some of you feel they should bring back expertise?

 

We DO NOT CARE about expertise. We care about being on equal footing! The old PvP gear just happens to be the easiest way to ensure that. The BEST way would be to force equal stats based on classes and completely by-pass any and all gear. Removing gear grind from PVP would be fantastic, and if someone still needs incentives they could just have titles, special cosmetic gear and similar trinkets.

 

Sheesh!

 

But they clearly insists on gear for PVP, so that is why we want it back the way it was around 4.0 when they made the comms legacy bound. It was epic. You had next to no excuse for not being BiS - especially for ranked. It meant people could dabble and try other professions without being gear-gimped the first 6 months. It meant low -/midbies were alive and vibrant.

 

I will NEVER understand why this is such a controversial topic. The inconvenience of having 2 sets of gear? Really?

 

Anyone NOT wanting 4.0 PVP gear back is either:

 

a) A troll plain an simple.

 

b) Mostly a PVE progression player that would rather NOT spend a week getting PVP gear, and prefers to shaft over all actual PVPers for their own convenience.

 

Lets all remember back when EAware had a clue:

We think that getting a full set of PvP gear is too much of a grind. This is so much the case that only about 2% of PvP players have a full Dark Reaver set. Having at least Exhumed gear is a barrier to entry to being successful in PvP for the majority of players, so we looked to reduce the time and cost of getting there. We have reduced the entry PvP gear costs by roughly a third, and a full set (not min/maxed) will now cost about 4075 Warzone Commendations. For the Dark Reaver/Ranked set we didn’t reduce the price as much, but Ranked Warzone Comms will no longer be used to buy them; pieces will now be purchased with Warzone Comms and the previous tier gear piece. (Ranked Warzone Comms have been removed from the game, but we’ll touch on that more in the Ranked Reward changes found below.) A full Ranked Gear set will now cost about 16,525 Warzone Comms, much less than the current price of around 29,000 Ranked Comms.

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3

Edited February 11, 2019 by Lundorff

You want me to resubscribe for a month, just to tell you how bloody, horrifically wrong you are? Fine I will take the bait.

 

 

 

They would never be able to do this in a manner that would serve both sides. It would need to be a lot faster to have any meaning for PVPers, and it would kill all incentive for PvE progression players. That is not what PVPers want. It is not what we have been asking for.

 

 

 

This is such a weird sentence. Why are you even talking about a PvP-stat and then comparing it to PvE gameplay. It makes no sense.

 

 

 

It changed everything. PVP should be about skills and nothing else, period. Forcing a gear grind upon none-progression players is detriment to skill-based PVP. Back in the 3.3 - 4.X era we could be competetive within a few weeks, and often instantly when comms became legacy bound. With the command grind and now, puke, crystal grind, we are starting to see huge discrepancies in gear and it will only become worse. I never got full gear for all classes in 248, and with 258 I will not even bother. Yes there are many other factors to consider, but this was so completely unnecessary and it really shows how out-of-touch the remaining developer is.

 

 

 

 

Yes I am less when competing in terrible gear vs. someone in much better gear. Yes it absolutely impacts my experience when PVPing.

 

 

 

 

We DO NOT CARE about expertise. We care about being on equal footing! The old PvP gear just happens to be the easiest way to ensure that. The BEST way would be to force equal stats based on classes and completely by-pass any and all gear. Removing gear grind from PVP would be fantastic, and if someone still needs incentives they could just have titles, special cosmetic gear and similar trinkets.

 

Sheesh!

 

But they clearly insists on gear for PVP, so that is why we want it back the way it was around 4.0 when they made the comms legacy bound. It was epic. You had next to no excuse for not being BiS - especially for ranked. It meant people could dabble and try other professions without being gear-gimped the first 6 months. It meant low -/midbies were alive and vibrant.

 

I will NEVER understand why this is such a controversial topic. The inconvenience of having 2 sets of gear? Really?

 

Anyone NOT wanting 4.0 PVP gear back is either:

 

a) A troll plain an simple.

 

b) Mostly a PVE progression player that would rather NOT spend a week getting PVP gear, and prefers to shaft over all actual PVPers for their own convenience.

 

Lets all remember back when EAware had a clue:

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3

 

I wish I could up vote this post.

 

Especially the last quote about BioWare. I’ve actually been looking for that post this week to show just how ridiculously backwards their current gearing is and how they havent learnt from past mistakes or successes.

 

You might be interested in this thread I’ve created

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=960494

Edited February 11, 2019 by TrixxieTriss

IIRC 2 types of gear set was used in the early days to keep players subbed longer as they acquired the sets if they wanted to do PvP and PVE content. - so if you look at it cynically it was just a cash grab in a sub-only model.

 

I am not convinced either way. I don't want huge amounts of dev time re-inventing something they discarded some time ago.

 

I would prefer that they made another WZ or customisable match-maker or somehow re-examined the classes and re-jigged the old WZs.

 

It would seem that most people agree that gear grind is too long and arduous and that doing PVE for PVP gear or vice versa is not everyone's cup of tea.

 

It would also be better to use bolster to BiS and to make sure it worked properly. - I appreciate that some people like the progression, but on the other hand long grinds aren't progression, they're just work.

 

I've always advocated giving a small buff based off valor for PVP, it would help newcomers level mid-level valor players and reward high or 100 ranks valor players.

TLDR: more content > tinkering with gear again.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Storm-Cutter

Having just come back after a 2 or more years (Legion was fun, BFA not so much), I can safely say I won't be purchasing more time after this 2-month thing expires.

 

I didn't actually like the expertise system. Expertise WAS an archaic method of balancing gear. But the replacement system is more asinine: if I want to gear up now, I can either grind through PVE content (Ossus atm), grind through operations to trade-up my gear, or go the LONG route and get all the resources I need for the same gear and -- wait for it -- pvp. Am I missing something crucial here? Is just PVPing really the LONG route for getting gear to PVP in? lol

 

I guess it was foolish to assume they'd just give everyone even stats across the board (according to role/class) and let you buy enhancement/mods with different balances for command comms.

 

ah well. I can catch up on the story. (2 years of dev work in 5 days of gaming! lul)

Forcing a gear grind upon none-progression players is detriment to skill-based PVP. Back in the 3.3 - 4.X era we could be competetive within a few weeks, and often instantly when comms became legacy bound. With the command grind and now, puke, crystal grind, we are starting to see huge discrepancies in gear and it will only become worse. I never got full gear for all classes in 248, and with 258 I will not even bother. Yes there are many other factors to consider, but this was so completely unnecessary and it really shows how out-of-touch the remaining developer is.

 

^this is why I will not be purchasing more time. I could care less about the existence of expertise. I'll be damned if I'm going to be dragged through pve for a month or more, and I fully understand hardmode ops raiders being offended if I can get their gear in a couple weeks through WZs.

The easiest thing for BW to do is make bolster in WZs push people all to the same maxed stat line. 258, 260, whatever. No new gear grind needed, no bringing expertise back, just make bolster do the work.

 

This wouldn't upset the gear grind that PVE and OPs players love so much with 5.10.

 

5.10 grind-lovers can enjoy their grind, and PVPers would be able to enter WZs with no excuse or complaint that their gears are inferior due to them not wanting to do the 5.10 gear grind while other player types do.

 

Seriously. Why go through the trouble of sorting statistics with expertise, and trying to fit that back into the WZ with bolster etc., all just to give PVPers a new grind, albeit much less than the 5.10 PVE Ops grind-lovers?

 

Makes no sense to me but what do I know. This way would be the cheapest too. Seeing they seem to lack resources, this would make it cheap and the chance of bugs far less likely than if they go making a new set of expertise gears for PVPers to grind for.

 

PVPers don't need a grind. If BW wants to add incentives for PVPers, then make vendors that sell toys, appearance items, things that have no impact on PVP or the stats. Make WZs reward the player with WZ comms that can be used to buy special PVP only items if they want to do something to get people in the WZs.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Lhancelot

I would rather not have expertise back. But I don't know that there is a better solution to PvP gearing vs PvE gearing.

 

SUGGESTION:

BW has added augments, dye slots, and tuning slots to gear over the years. What if the devs added a new expertise/pvp mod slot to each of 14 pieces of gear? The only thing that can go into this slot is an expertise mod. The only way to acquire the expertise mods is with the pvp currency. These expertise mods would have no effect in pve. There could also be special class perks that come with the mod, similar to set bonus.

 

Anyway.... don't want to carry 4 sets of gear on my scrapper/ruffian/sawbones scoundrel.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Rion_Starkiller

Bolster is 252 with a current gear cap of 258, if you can't compete at that level then you're just bad and looking for excuses for your losses.

 

I dusted off my Guardian last night that I haven't played in years to team with a friend pub side. Said Guardian is still in Rishi blues. My entire left side minus bracers was sans augments. I was top 3 DPS (counting both sides) in every match and we went 10-6. I even played as Focus.

 

hurr durr inb4 Trixxie classic excuse of you were teamed with bads against bads...no it was Sunday all the best premades were out in force.

 

252 Bolster is all you need otherwise there are plenty of safe space single-player games.

There was nothing wrong with the old Warzone Commendations. Oh damn, even writing that makes me feel nostalgic.

 

Expertise needs to return; the current gearing system is unacceptable. It clearly forces true PvPers to either not care about it (which is what most are doing), or grind the stupid dailies and the boring PvE stuff.

 

Gearing for PvP should be fast, simple, and through the very means for which you are gearing. You queue for PvP, you get your Warzone Commendations, you then get a piece of best in slot (which is only best in slot for PvP). Period.

 

Restore Unranked and Ranked gear tiers, return expertise.

 

UC is most likely going to be the new currency... for codeing reasons. theres no reason to remove it from game, and it will give pvers a way to gear for pvp. which isnt an issue since UC accumlation in pve is vastly less than pvp.

 

Bolster is 252 with a current gear cap of 258, if you can't compete at that level then you're just bad and looking for excuses for your losses.

 

I dusted off my Guardian last night that I haven't played in years to team with a friend pub side. Said Guardian is still in Rishi blues. My entire left side minus bracers was sans augments. I was top 3 DPS (counting both sides) in every match and we went 10-6. I even played as Focus.

moot point. we are so far past diminishing returns due to lack of expansion reset that we are only gaining like 4% dps.

 

the reason its important is because shocker! pve people have an easier time max gearing for pvp than pvp players. no matter what arguement you throw up, no matter how many time you say "but but, no gear difference, skill>gear" people are more equiptd by playing a different content.

 

skill does equal more than gear however, when skill meets skill gear will win. this is why gear should not exist in pvp. because its a skill mode.

 

you may be saying "yeh pfffft! how often are you actually going to meet someone as good as you?" the reality is this... there is a top 1% in swtor pvp who know every single dcd, counter and rotation. then there is like 40% who are above average they know their class and have a little exp fighting other classes. then theres like another 20% who just know their class and dont have much exp, finally theres a last 40% who legit just got into pvpp are taking dps utilitys and dont understand why they get destroyed by enet.

 

that like 4 total skill groups. it is not "unlikely" that your going to fight someone on your level regularly.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Seterade

You want me to resubscribe for a month, just to tell you how bloody, horrifically wrong you are? Fine I will take the bait.

 

 

 

They would never be able to do this in a manner that would serve both sides. It would need to be a lot faster to have any meaning for PVPers, and it would kill all incentive for PvE progression players. That is not what PVPers want. It is not what we have been asking for.

 

 

 

This is such a weird sentence. Why are you even talking about a PvP-stat and then comparing it to PvE gameplay. It makes no sense.

 

 

 

It changed everything. PVP should be about skills and nothing else, period. Forcing a gear grind upon none-progression players is detriment to skill-based PVP. Back in the 3.3 - 4.X era we could be competetive within a few weeks, and often instantly when comms became legacy bound. With the command grind and now, puke, crystal grind, we are starting to see huge discrepancies in gear and it will only become worse. I never got full gear for all classes in 248, and with 258 I will not even bother. Yes there are many other factors to consider, but this was so completely unnecessary and it really shows how out-of-touch the remaining developer is.

 

 

 

 

Yes I am less when competing in terrible gear vs. someone in much better gear. Yes it absolutely impacts my experience when PVPing.

 

 

 

 

We DO NOT CARE about expertise. We care about being on equal footing! The old PvP gear just happens to be the easiest way to ensure that. The BEST way would be to force equal stats based on classes and completely by-pass any and all gear. Removing gear grind from PVP would be fantastic, and if someone still needs incentives they could just have titles, special cosmetic gear and similar trinkets.

 

Sheesh!

 

But they clearly insists on gear for PVP, so that is why we want it back the way it was around 4.0 when they made the comms legacy bound. It was epic. You had next to no excuse for not being BiS - especially for ranked. It meant people could dabble and try other professions without being gear-gimped the first 6 months. It meant low -/midbies were alive and vibrant.

 

I will NEVER understand why this is such a controversial topic. The inconvenience of having 2 sets of gear? Really?

 

Anyone NOT wanting 4.0 PVP gear back is either:

 

a) A troll plain an simple.

 

b) Mostly a PVE progression player that would rather NOT spend a week getting PVP gear, and prefers to shaft over all actual PVPers for their own convenience.

 

Lets all remember back when EAware had a clue:

 

 

http://www.swtor.com/blog/pvp-economy-and-ranked-rewards-restructure-game-update-3.3

I have no clue who you are m8, so I have no clue how in the world you would think that I wanted you to resub just to comment here, that's your choice and I had nothing to do with it.

 

 

Feel free to disagree, seeing others point of view is interesting to me as it often provides things that we did not think about.

 

The whole point of me starting this thread is to create awareness that expertise is useless and does not need to be brought back. That the devs focus should be on closing the gap of the time it takes to acquire a full set of bis gear because that is what we want. From my point of view, all your arguments lead towards bringing back HOW you geared for pvp back. I feel like you are somehow incuding expertise in the HOW when all expertise is is part of the gear that you get from the HOW. It is not the HOW. If this still is not clear for you let me know, maybe someone else might provide you with an alternative explanation.

 

 

Most of my points that you commented, is simply my explanation for all this. You don't believe that they can do was I think they should focus on without hurting both pve and pvp. I simply say that your wrong and that the choice is all in the players hand. My example for this is this: Bring back the sort of wz commendations from doing any wz. allow that commendation to guy 252 and 258 gear (like it was in the past). For a PvPer , this gives us the fast way of gearing again without having to do any pve. You say that will hurt PVE progression, the only way I see that being true is if the PVE player decides to take a shortcut just to get gear faster by doing pvp. But that is the PLAYERS CHOICE, they dont need to do pvp to gear up at all if their goal is to do progression.

 

 

My comment on comparing expertise to crit, accuracy etc was simply to explain that all expertise was is a stat just like any of the others but that it was only relevant in pvp situations. That is the only difference. The point of that section was just to show that expertise is just a stat. I compared it to the others simply because they are also stats. It is a useless stat because of both players had the same expertise, it did in reality absolutely nothing between those two players. Look at today, you can say that all the players right now have "hidden" expertise stat that you cannot see, lets say its 1400 expertise. The bonus that we are all getting right now is the same 0. So how is expertise useful involving players who have the same amount of it, the answer: its not useful at all. I really dont know how to make this any more clear so if you still dont get it, again maybe someone else might be able to inform you in a different way than me.

 

 

Removing expertise changed nothing for pvp, because it did nothing for pvp in the first place. Here when you say that it did change everything, I feel like you are focusing on the wrong thing. Your complaint on what changed was about HOW you gear (wz commendations). This is a MMO, having a bit of a gear grind to me, is part of what an MMO is. The removal of HOW you gear is where your focus should be at. That has nothing to do with having or not having expertise on the gear itself.

 

 

The next point, was simply about how people identify themselves as a PVPer. Because you decided to answer yes, you felt like you are less of a pvper by not having expertise on your gear. This is one of two things. 1 you actually are having an identity crisis which I honest have no clue how to help you with, or your focus is once again focusing on the wrong thing. You seem to be focusing on your effectiveness based on gear differences that you and your opponent have. Based on that, your experience makes you feel somewhat lesser than your opponent? Why? How can u say that because someone has better gear than you (in most cases that's just because that person put more time into the game to acquire that gear) that that person is more of a pvper than you? Your Experience DOING pvp and your identity of BEING a pvper are two separate things. I dont understand how you seem to be combining the two? (atleast that is what I feel like your trying to do)

 

 

Equal footing, you need to be way more specific about what equal footing is to you. I personally see equal footing as people having the same abilities, the same hp, crit chance, etc. The only difference is the player and the actions and the order of those actions that that player decides to do, that is what equal footing means to me. But this is a game with 8 different classes, healers, tanks, dps. It has Different combinations of choices for utilities for all of them. we have single target damage, aoe damage, damage over time, etc... My point here is that this game and its "BALANCE" will NEVER be about equal footing in the way I define equal footing. The game is supposed to be diverse, some specs and abilities are meant to be countered by others and I believe the balance is based in theory around how any combination of 8 players goes vs any other combination that 8 other players choose. Its this complexity that makes this game fun and interesting to me. The only problem is and has been, is the fact that what people come up with as the meta or "best" composition, stays the perceived best for way too long. It is too complex to have "perfect balance" that requires no adjustments, that's why I wish they would make small adjustments on a much more frequent basis compared to what it is right now. So, no I do not want equal footing, partly because I think it is impossible to achieve, and even if it was, then it would be boring as hell.

 

 

So to response to your two possibles for the kind of person that would NOT want 4.0 pvp gear back, I say this:

 

a) I am no troll, I am very serious and I truly despise that kind of behavior because I believe that the biggest problem we have in ranked in terms of player retention, is caused by people who troll the ranked queue.

 

b) I havent done pve progression since snv and tfb were the new operations, I am mostly a PVP player compared to PVE which I bascily never do. I sit in pvp queue, craft and sit beside a GTN terminal making credits about 99.9999 % of my time logged into the game.

 

So surprise, I am not one of your two options. My final comment to is to put your focus where it belongs, on HOW we gear, and not on THE gear itself.

sigh....

 

bud if they make it easier to gear in BiS doing pvp (like with wz comms) then PvErs will pvp enough to get BiS gear, breaze through all pve content then unsub/stop playing because they no longer have progression gearing to keep them playing.

 

this is the whole point. pve progression (hard, time invested) gearing is why pvers sub. you take that from them by making BiS super easy with a little pvp they will leave the game the same way the pvpers did when their gear tier became progression based. the only way to seperate this is to have 2 gear sets for two contents.

Edited February 11, 2019 by Seterade

sigh....

 

bud if they make it easier to gear in BiS doing pvp (like with wz comms) then PvErs will pvp enough to get BiS gear, breaze through all pve content then unsub/stop playing because they no longer have progression gearing to keep them playing.

 

this is the whole point. pve progression (hard, time invested) gearing is why pvers sub. you take that from them by making BiS super easy with a little pvp they will leave the game the same way the pvpers did when their gear tier became progression based. the only way to seperate this is to have 2 gear sets for two contents.

 

Again, giving pvpers the option to gear via wz coms to get bis, has nothing to do with pve. PvE players can go about doing their progression by doing their operations and gear that way, which is the way pve players want to gear. If a PvE player decides to do some pvp to advance his/her progression the way not intended for them, that is the players decision and choice to make. Same thing goes for pvpers, if they want to do some hm ops to gear out, they have that choice too. Why would you want to put restraints on how people choose to gear between pve and pvp? Isnt that the reason you guys are complaining in the first place.

Bolster is 252 with a current gear cap of 258, if you can't compete at that level then you're just bad and looking for excuses for your losses.

 

I dusted off my Guardian last night that I haven't played in years to team with a friend pub side. Said Guardian is still in Rishi blues. My entire left side minus bracers was sans augments. I was top 3 DPS (counting both sides) in every match and we went 10-6. I even played as Focus.

 

hurr durr inb4 Trixxie classic excuse of you were teamed with bads against bads...no it was Sunday all the best premades were out in force.

 

252 Bolster is all you need otherwise there are plenty of safe space single-player games.

 

Point is it doesn't hurt anyone by making bolster give everyone in the WZ the same exact amount of stats boosted. Just make the bolster push everyone up by the same amount.

 

Why open themselves up to having people not want to play due to stat disparity that is caused by a highly unpopular gearing system? Regardless if the stat difference is slight, it's still a difference.

 

Is it so much to ask for the PVP playing field to be 100% equal statwise in the WZs and not "almost the same but still less?"

 

The only difference that should be in the WZs regarding stats is when a toon is geared a specific way to alter it's gameplay like speeding up GCDs with alacrity, or wearing high endurance for HPs etc.

 

They can achieve complete parity in the WZs by simply making bolster boost all stats to a max level in the WZs without ever having to create new PVP gears to grind for with expertise, or changing their present BiS gearing system that so many people refuse being a part of.

 

You people want to argue about irrelevant things, so have at it. But if BW really wants to solve the issue of PVPers wanting parity with their stats in the WZs they can achieve this using bolster.

Wait, I'm confused. Somehow expertise gives stealthers only an unstoppable buff in ranked, and that's why exflitrate needs to be removed? I think that's what I read.