When Resilience was first introduced as WoW's 'PvP stat' it was designed to reduce damage but more specifically burst damage, so Resilience decreased chance of being crit and damage of crits (sort of 'anti-Crit and anti-Surge'), rather than a flat across-the-board damage reduction. A character in full PvP gear might have had 10% reduction in chance-to-be-crit and a 20% reduction in crit damage taken. Against an opponent with, for example, 30% crit and 80% cdb, that would translate to roughly a 10% reduction in overall damage, but more importantly the damage intake is smoother / less bursty.

If Expertise did a similar thing it might help the game; less emphasis on RNG and increased TTK gives tactics and skill more chance to shine, and the (likely unintended) OPness of 'auto-crit power stacking' builds would be reduced.

Thoughts?

I've never really understood the purpose of PvP specific stats so I think they should simply get rid of the whole thing instead. Who cares if some hardcore PvE'er can PvP in his/her gear or if a PvP'er can raid in the gear he/she got from warzone rewards. Doesnt take more than a few days for a hardcore PvP'er to earn enough money to simply buy a full BiS PvE set so why shouldnt it be possible for PvE'ers to buy PvP gear or simply be on par in PvE gear?

The problem you run into is that hardcore raiders then run the gambit on the game. Many hardcore PvE players are abysmal PvP players and would dominate the PvP metagame because they have the best gear. Thus forcing people who PvP exclusively, into the time sink known as PvE raiding. Contrary to popular belief, time spent in game =/= skill. With your proposed model, that's what it would become. Let's also not forget about why WoW introduced resilience in the first place. That reason being that you had a couple of PvE heroes running around 1 and 2 shotting people with their Hand of Rags.

if you made PvP gear and PvE gear require the same time investment to acquire, there would be no problem.

Expertise is a poor attempt to separate PvE gear from PvP gear, but it is 100% not the problem with PvP. equally geared opponents cancel out each others Expertise.

I consider myself a PvPer in this game, and while I know I don't speak for all PvPers, certainly my personal opinion is that some sort of 'PvP stat' is a good idea for the fundamental reason that if you don't have a 'PvP stat' you will either have:

BiS for PvP only accessible, or more easilly accessible, via PvE OR

BiS for PvE is only accessible, or more easily accessible, via PvP

and I presume the PvE heroes will cry about the latter; many of them have no more desire to PvP than I have to do *yawn* ops. I even remember a forum flood of PvEers whining and complaining that some of the HK51 quest took place in a PvP area....

The problem you run into is that hardcore raiders then run the gambit on the game. Many hardcore PvE players are abysmal PvP players and would dominate the PvP metagame because they have the best gear. Thus forcing people who PvP exclusively, into the time sink known as PvE raiding. Contrary to popular belief, time spent in game =/= skill. With your proposed model, that's what it would become. Let's also not forget about why WoW introduced resilience in the first place. That reason being that you had a couple of PvE heroes running around 1 and 2 shotting people with their Hand of Rags.

Secondly, there wouldnt be this gear disparity you speak of if you could earn the same thing through PvP. It would give people the choice to gear up in the fashion they prefered, or possibly by mixing PvP and PvE. I don't really see how having to play both PvE and PvP for two different type of sets can be considered "content" when it's already possible to simply buy one of said sets on GTN.

Here we go again with the gear exaggerations. First of all, I've always been of the opinion that only bad players are blaming gear. There's obviously some math to expertise and I'm not questioning that but the issue is not as big as some people like to think, as long as you stick to normal warzones, which is what the vast majority is playing.

 

Secondly, there wouldnt be this gear disparity you speak of if you could earn the same thing through PvP. It would give people the choice to gear up in the fashion they prefered, or possibly by mixing PvP and PvE. I don't really see how having to play both PvE and PvP for two different type of sets can be considered "content" when it's already possible to simply buy one of said sets on GTN.

It's not an exaggeration buddy. I was a dw twin blades of azzinoth rogue in WoW. When you mixed those weapons with resilience armor and PvE trinkets, things got ugly real quick. The things you're proposing also cause class balancing issues. That gave me a huge advantage over most of the playerbase. Apparently you didn't play high level PvP in WoW... As for your "anyone can go buy said set" shtick. Maybe if everyone had double digit million credits at their disposal, sure! But the vast majority of this games population don't. You seem to think me pointing out the obvious, means I'm complaining. I'm not. I don't have these problems, but I'm also not naive enough to deny that it could cause issues.

I consider myself a PvPer in this game, and while I know I don't speak for all PvPers, certainly my personal opinion is that some sort of 'PvP stat' is a good idea for the fundamental reason that if you don't have a 'PvP stat' you will either have:

 

BiS for PvP only accessible, or more easilly accessible, via PvE OR

 

BiS for PvE is only accessible, or more easily accessible, via PvP

 

and I presume the PvE heroes will cry about the latter; many of them have no more desire to PvP than I have to do *yawn* ops. I even remember a forum flood of PvEers whining and complaining that some of the HK51 quest took place in a PvP area....

Agreed! This isn't so obvious to some players(ie the poster I quoted before this). The point of having varying content is so that you can specialize in your area of interest, whether that be PvP or PvE. If you want to be the best at either metagame, you need to get the gear for it. I rarely ever see PvP players complaining about not being top "insert dps/tank/healing" in ops. It's to be expected. However, like the previous poster, you often get PvE players complaining that their leet HAZMAT gear doesn't translate to easy PvP wins. In this case, they are mutually exclusive. Deal with it.

Personally...I think expertise should be removed from the gear. Now before you all jump on me and berate me, hear me out first. Expertise should be earned, not given. Therefore, expertise should be awarded through PvP dailies, medals, kills, wins, losses, valor rank, and everything else along with comms. However, these should be awarded for dailies only. This way, no matter what gear one has, it comes down to how much a player's played in PvP and their level of expertise shows their experience.

Those of us with gear with PvP would receive that amount of expertise our gear has already. Coms can still be used to obtain the gear. The grind shifts from getting gear to obtaining expertise from doing the dailies. They should cap the expertise at 1500 as the max level one can obtain. This way those who already at a level they cannot get anymore (from their gear) can progress towards the maximum level. Expertise, however; does not translate to a player's skill. That falls on the player to learn their toon’s abilities and how to work and survive in a warzone.

Removing expertise from the gear in this manner would eliminate the argument about the gap between PvP gear putting it squarely on the player's shoulders. It’s their responsibility to earn their expertise, not have it given to them. The only exception to this would be the recruit gear. If a player does not have any or their expertise is lower than what Recruit gear level is, that's what they have until such time they earn the expertise to exceed the Recruit gear expertise level.

I believe this would solve a lot of issues. I know those who have worked their butts off grinding for their WH and EWH might not like it; however, if your level of expertise is locked in at what your current gear is, that means you do not have to spend a lot of time working to hit the maximum. It still means you are above what some new player to PvP is working to get. It’s an idea, one that I believe could be utilized and level the playing field more than worrying about grinding for gear. As I said, the grind now is earning expertise through actual PvPing. The gear we have in PvP we earn that still with our comms. It’s our reward for the comms we earn from the warzones. You might hate this, but if you think about it, this could eliminate the biggest gripe everyone has, the gear. With that gone, they have only themselves to blame for not grinding in PvP to earn the necessary expertise to be competitive.

if you made PvP gear and PvE gear require the same time investment to acquire, there would be no problem.

 

Expertise is a poor attempt to separate PvE gear from PvP gear, but it is 100% not the problem with PvP. equally geared opponents cancel out each others Expertise.

The problem is there is no way to perfectly balance time investment to acquire. And that is the main reason expertise exists.

Here we go again with the gear exaggerations. First of all, I've always been of the opinion that only bad players are blaming gear. There's obviously some math to expertise and I'm not questioning that but the issue is not as big as some people like to think, as long as you stick to normal warzones, which is what the vast majority is playing.

Um gear does make a difference. Not sure why you're saying only bad players blame gear.

Secondly, there wouldnt be this gear disparity you speak of if you could earn the same thing through PvP. It would give people the choice to gear up in the fashion they prefered, or possibly by mixing PvP and PvE. I don't really see how having to play both PvE and PvP for two different type of sets can be considered "content" when it's already possible to simply buy one of said sets on GTN.

The current system allows you to do what you want to obtain the gear you want. You want pvp gear? You do pvp. You want pve gear? You do pve.

In Vanilla WoW before resilience, it was you want to pvp? you do pve.

Um gear does make a difference. Not sure why you're saying only bad players blame gear.

I think he's just saying that it does but gear alone won't be a game-changer. Proper positioning + skill usage still trumps stats any day.

If players have nearly similar skill/knowledge, of course the guy with better gear has the advantage, but someone in a partial WH gear alt can still have a good chance of defeating an unskilled guy in full WH

Why not use valor as some kind of expertise mulitplier?

Simple and linear example: your valor rank multiplies with a factor 20: 60 Valor would turn into 1200 exp

Maybe get a progressing scale after that to keep the hardcore folk happy.

There is a reason resilience was changed from crit reduction. It heavily favored classes/specs that didn't need to crit as much or had less synergy for crit. For instance, if a class had an ability that procced of of crits, then you not only lower their dmg but also the chance of it proccing. That screws the balance up over a flat dmg decrease.

I agree with this.

WoW crits are also a lot higher compared to non crits. Whereas in swtor crits are still huge, but not that huge compared to non crit damage, because surge drs. Not to say damage is low here lol. Most classes normally see crits in this game that do 1/4 a person's health pool. Currently in WoW since the frost bomb nerf, I think only Boomkins and Destro locks can see that kinda damage on cooldowns when compared to health pools with one attack and massive set up.

Its not really fair to compare the damage to WoW though, because in WoW you don't have the taunt and guard mechanics (at least not on such a short cooldown) which is meant to mitigate a lot of the incoming damage to players in swtor. Unfortunately when a target isn't constantly taunted or guarded against, that target does insane damage outside of defensive cooldowns

Its almost the equivalent to a warrior in WoW with all his cooldowns popped and you don't disarm him and let him run wild. Well in this game, players pretty much have warrior cooldowns popped all the time, but your disarm is a really short cooldown. In other words damage is bareable when taunt and guard are being used and its insane when they aren't. That's really the problem. That and the health pools are much too small compared to incoming damage. Larger base health pools makes damage reduction from pvp stats like expertise a lot more important, because it increases your effective health and in turn lets expertise increases survivability while keeping healing in check. Its not a good game when healers can top someone off in 6 seconds and its even worse when someone can die in 5.