https://imgur.com/a/EBznryX (solo queued, 332.) idk what to tell you chief. we told you to keep ranked around so it could hold all the players who've been spamming arenas for 10 years. y'all moaned about toxicity in a mode that u literally do not have to go into (if the house is too dark, don't go into the house 4head.) now every arena match is a 1v0 (except the occasional particularly creative player that finds a way to count in the negatives.) now being the one player out of 8 that knows how to play gives you unlimited agency, and there's no way to catch up because none of your teammates know what's going on either. pretty boring for everyone. premades aren't even an issue since nobody in them is any good... might as well be assembled by random matchmaking. at least it's free ig.

Want a video? I think we should make a compilation deleting characters and post it to the 7.2 PvP Feedback thread.

Preface before we get to the actual questions: Removing ranked is an UNGODLY ABYSMAL idea. First, competitive PvP against other players is literally the only enjoyable thing in this game for many players. Literally all but 3 raids are 10 years old, new flashpoints do not come out and when they do they are literally suffering to play and universally avoided, and heroics aren't fun for anyone. We understand that your studio doesn't get a lot of money for a 10-year-old game, so you can't churn out a lot of content. That's fine. But removing the entire ability for players to create their own content by competing against one another kinda renders your game worthless once you've completed all the content in it (which many players have, since yanno, it's been out for close to eleven years now.) The PvP Revamp was meant to address and correct the systematic issues that plague Ranked and Regs PvP and seriously discourage participation in both. I know you can do better than "the problem is that they exist." If you need more time that's fine, just don't publish the update, or simply delay it. No one will blame you, and it may actually be the first time you studio has gone back on a terrible decision instead of doubling down, which is an enormous sign of growth. Before you say your "good riddance ranked PvPers" piece, please note that this problem will dramatically affect casual gameplay as well. You will drive off a large portion of the ranked population instantly, yes, maybe even up to 90%. I'm sure subscriptions are already being cancelled. But those that remain will be playing your new merged PvP modes, and they will TERRORIZE causal PvPers. Consider the circumstances: the ranked community is fairly tight-knit, composed of essentially a few different groups of friends. These people will run together in groups, since there is no incentive to queue solo, and they will be incensed at the deletion of ranked, which they blame on unskilled casual players. Now you place them into a PvP warzone against these players. Suffice it to say the resultant toxicity will be horrifying. I know you've anticipated this issue by removing flags from the game, but it's pennies on the dollar--between emotes, toy flags from the cartel market, and literally just the chat itself, there are unlimited avenues for toxic expression. Even failing that, however, there is no requirement for toxicity or communication at all in order to produce a miserable casual experience if, for example, ranked premade just spawn traps the entire team and denies them their ability to play the game. The skill disparity between new ranked players and experienced ones was already too great a barrier to entry, and the disparity between experienced ranked players and new regs players is a hundred times that. As the poster above me noted, there is an extremely easy fix to this problem, where you just add ELO matchmaking and rewards to both 4s and 8s, and everyone is satisfied--objective players, deathmatchers, casuals, ranked players. You can even conceal the number while it is below a certain tier (say, bronze or silver) to allow casual players to play without worrying about it, and be pleasantly surprised if they do well enough to become rated. Now, answering these assuming the update will go live without any form of rating system or rewards:

It is a hard lie. No one likes to broadcast that they neglect their duties. Videos sent in to the reports email don't have their view counter increased. Rumor has it Chris checked the account before he left to do pvpers a solid, found tens of thousands of unread reports, and just gave up.

If they were going to kill ranked they could have at least had the decency to make regs not insufferable. It's like these devs take the worst possible course of action at every turn. Giving them feedback is like telling your wishes to an evil genie. ("There should be a 4v4 regs queue so unskilled players can learn and practice without ranked pressure!"--"Ok! We'll do that and then delete ranked so they have nothing to practice for."; "Lightning needs a tad more self heal to survive a reasonable amount in arenas!"--"Ok! But we nerf its damage by 10%."; "Bring back the old class icons and get rid of these ugly ones that some intern drew with crayons!"--"Nope! But you can have the crayon class icons with the old ~colors~.") Tbh even the old colors were wrong. With the job that's being done of the 7.0 expansion, having been employed on this dev team should be grounds to bar you from working in game design or software engineering for the rest of your life. Honestly I wouldn't trust this level of decision-making to serve fast food, but they're not likely to check your background for that.

Hey Chris, So it seems like you guys are looking for suggestions regarding how to hit your DPS targets while preserving quality-of-life, or even improving it. I think I can provide ideas to that effect regarding Lightning/Telekinetics. The theorycrafters have done the math, and the nerfs as proposed would reduce Lightning's dummy DPS by 10%, leaving it at 10% below average DPS, so I will assume that is the goal, but you can take partial measures/scale these numbers differently in order to hit a different target (say, 5% below average, which has traditionally been the ranged burst DPS target). Firstly, a note on convection: The instant lightning bolts coming from this talent are pretty much exclusively a QoL thing, and a critical staple of its PvP performance, so if QoL is the intention then keep these in, nevermind whether that was the original intention of the change or not. The second part of this talent (as it reads in the new tree) is Reverberating Force, which is being treated separately, so I will assume that part is staying in, and we'll talk about that in a second. Therefore, the Convection passive in the tree should now read after the change: Lightning Tree (Convection): Telekinetics Tree (Clamoring Force): Next, let's talk about how to properly nerf the DPS. I personally do not feel Lightning's DPS is in a place where it needs a nerf, but I do strongly support the elimination of Halted Offensive/Power of the Force hardcasting by increasing its cast time. This is a tradeoff of DPS output for Quality of Life, and I would much rather have Lightning/Telekinetics be a fun, mobile, fast-paced burst spec than a turret with a lot of raw damage output (that's what sniper is for). However, since Lightning is a burst spec, its damage should be scaled accordingly--high peaks and low valleys--and generally the way to achieve this is by making damage nerfs to the DoT abilities and fillers rather than the burst abilities. Since the target is -10% DPS, here's a way we might achieve that in keeping with the burst philosophy: - Keep Reverberating Force at 15%. Surge bonuses only affect burst damage, so nerfing them only nerfs burst, when nerfing dot and filler damage is our goal. - Keep Halted Offensive/Power of the Force at 100% of its damage, BUT increase its cast time by 0.5 or even 1.0 seconds. This, alongside Thundering Blast/Turbulence is your big burst damage ability, so we don't want to decrease its damage for the sake of sustain. HOWEVER, currently it is being utilized twice per Thundering Blast/Turbulence instead of once, which is unintended, rotation-breaking, and limits mobility severely, so the increased cast time should prevent this behavior. [This alone decreases DPS output by approximately 5%]. --- Stop here if the goal is -5% DPS. If it is -10%, keep going. --- - Stormwatch currently contributes about 9.5% of the spec's total damage when using the normal (non-hardcast) rotation. Reduce the damage done by Stormwatch by 33%. [This decreases DPS output by 3.2% and enables a greater diversity of tacticals to but utilized in PvE.] - Thundering Blast under Forked Darkness contributes about 1.3% of the spec's total damage, and is not consistent enough to rely upon for burst in PvP. Therefore, rather than reducing its damage by 5%, it can be entirely removed without issue. [This decreases DPS output by 1.3% without any QoL difference.] - Crushing Darkness under Forked Darkness contributes about 1.2% of the spec's total damage, and is likewise not consistent enough to be useful in PvP. Therefore, reduce its damage by 50%. [This decreases DPS output by 0.6%, getting us to our -10% target.] Thank you for taking the time to read our feedback and I hope you will consider implementing some of my suggestions.

I get being annoyed at sorcs but lightning isn't the one to be pissed at, that would be madness. This is just taking the worse performing spec and running it into the ground. A nerf to death brand is in order but of course that's not what we get. Also, so everyone is clear, these nerfs make no sense from a PvP or PvE perspective. It's not players from other forms of content causing undeserved nerfs, these are just poorly thought through changes. And as I said before if the heal thing really is replacing the instant lightning bolts on convection... that is literally spec-breaking and uninstall-worthy in terms of its effect in PvP, and would do nothing to DPS numbers in PvE. I will put up with a whole lot in this game, but making it impossible to reasonably build DR stacks in PvP, on top of making it near impossible to recover your health, would be a level of cruelty to my main spec that I cannot tolerate. It would literally make you a sniper without the benefit of cover and entrench. The DPS numbers can be whatever they need to, but having to hardcast every damage ability other than the one with the longest cooldown, in a meta where it's difficult to even get one cast off through spammable leaps, pulls, knocks, los, and interrupts, would make an already pretty underperforming spec straight miserable to try and play, in addition to placing it squarely in F tier. I pray that this is just accidental ambiguous formatting, and the lightning bolts are left alone.

Hey Chris, First of all, glad to see BioWare's getting back up and running after the recent departures--class changes and communication of any kind are much appreciated after such a long period of silence. I want to preface my feedback with some context-- I am primarily a Ranked PVPer. I have several golds on various toons and have even been in the top 3 of my class a couple times (though not with the 160 wins unfortunately). My only real qualification to give this feedback is that I play both solo and group ranked with (and against) the best players in the game, and I hear the same complaints from them repeatedly, across all classes and specs. I do hear complaints from PVE and regular warzone players all the time, and I will do my best to relay their pressing concerns as well, but most of my firsthand playtime is spent in ranked, so please bear that in mind. I overall am pretty satisfied with these changes, especially the changes to healers. I think kolto burst was grossly overtuned (to the degree that operative healers had an extra 10k HPS potential over the other healing specs), and I'm glad to see it reduced. It forced operatives into a very unnatural playstyle where they had to play on top of their team like a melee class, but with the very limited defensive kit of a healer, making positioning very awakward. I hope, if their HPS numbers end up underperforming due to these nerfs, they can be brought up by increases to the healing of kolto waves, recuperative nanotech, kolto probes, and surgical probe, all of which can be used from range, allowing healers to avoid stacking on their team, which, in PvP, is suicide. I like the buffs to merc and sorc healer, and I'd like to see a meta where all 3 healers can be utilized by teams interchangeably. I think sorc was lacking a bit in its single-target healing potential, and merc was lacking in its ability to heal pressure, both of which should be resolved in this way. One complaint I have heard, especially from PvEers, is a desire for better 8-target healing from sorc, as both roaming mend and resurgence spread are limited to 4 (5 for mend) targets, so perhaps some improvements to the healing value of revivification could be in order as well. Over all, well done with healers. I must say, though, the changes to the DPS specs have me a bit confused. For the most part, it seems like the goal is to remove many of the dice-roll mechanics, fix things that were working differently than intended, and compensate accordingly, which I think is a good course of action. However, the changes to lightning/telekinetics have me slightly concerned. First, a point of clarification: Is this meant to replace the existing convection, or be added in addition to it? If the latter, then I see no issue. This addresses a major PvP, and especially ranked PvP, concern of lightning sorcs--that they have very poor tools to recover health while in combat, while their defensive kit is reliant on them doing so--and does so in quite elegant fashion. If this passive is intended to replace the existing convection passive, however, the buff is not even remotely worth its cost. Convection is central to the lightning playstyle. The ability to activate lightning bolts on the move is the only thing that allows us to access our Fulgrous Fortification DR in PvP, as standing still to cast 3 lightning bolts requires idling for an obscene amount of time, during which our healthbar will vanish, and the DR will be useless to us. Such a change would also completely break the Eyrin's Haste tactical, as it relies on having 3 stacks of convection in order to determine whether thundering blast can be activated instantly. Additionally, removing the instant lightning bolts would make this spec nearly unusable in PvE, destroying any mobility it once had, and also pretty much destroy the most fun part of the spec (running around shooting lightning bolts at people). I am pretty certain this was intended as an addition to the passive, as I doubt you would so casually implement a change that would break so many things in the back end, as well as have so many unintended side effects, but someone expressed this concern to me recently so I wanted to relay it. Next, to the damage changes: As a PvPer, none of these changes greatly affect me. This spec has been through worse than a 3% surge nerf. I like that you're making more of the damage come from deterministic sources (RNG DPS is no fun), I like that you're removing the hardcasted halted offensive from the PvE rotation, and I like that you're making chain lightning a viable option to take over halted offensive. My concern is simply the cumulative effect of applying FIVE (5) DPS nerfs to the same spec at the same time. Lightning currently does exactly average DPS on a dummy, and struggles to actually pump this number out in fights due to the presence of the hardcasted halted offensive in the rotation. (Source: https://parsely.io/parser/stats). My fear is that applying the changes as described will send it directly to the bottom of the charts. Since whirlwind has been made an unreachable option, and the majority of its healing and damage avoidance utilities have been removed, lightning brings little to the table other than damage and roots in PvP. Without damage, I fear it may lose its already very niche usefulness. As a result, I would urge you to do one of two things: - Either, apply only these three changes, see how they affect damage output, and adjust accordingly in a future patch: - Or, apply all the changes as described, and then, very deliberately, inspect the damage output of the spec and adjust its bonus damage of the spec to ensure it does not fall behind its DPS target. I would actually prefer the second option because I would really like to see chain lightning viability, but it does seem like more work for the team. I leave it up to you to determine whether that's something you have bandwidth to take on.

1. I swear these forums should have a 6 month posting limit, it's been same bums malding about the same sh*t for the past 5 years. "PvP is dead because ranked 8v8s failed" "Nobody likes arenas because I don't" "PvP community/PvP guilds are dead" "Regs are easier than arenas" "Ranked is a joke and/or run by the mafia" "Make rewards win-only/punish leavers with a lockout timer". (And the corresponding answers being, ranked 8v8s failed because not enough people wanted to do them; nobody likes arenas now because they only pop in unranked when there aren't enough players to fill, meaning it's all 3v4s or 2v4s or 1v3s and nobody enjoys that, also everyone who did like arenas but wasn't ranked ready got forced out because they were literally taken out of the unranked rotation; the game is 10 years old and this is only one facet of it that's subservient to literal erotic roleplay on fleet, of course it's dead, we just do the best we can with the population that we have. I promise your PvP guilds wouldn't have gotten anybody to hop on a dead star wars game that looks like it was made in 2005 that wasn't already going to play; no, reg arenas just have the worst matchmaking humanly possible and 90% of them don't have 8 players so obviously one side is going to find them easy. also if you can press any buttons at all of course you can farm a bunch of node clickers when they're forced to do the one thing they actively butcher the enjoyment of warzone PvP in order to avoid; if ranked is run by a mafia what was your excuse in season 12-13 when pretty much all the long-standing players got banned and you were still sh*t in it; and finally, we actually saw these changes implemented, and the drastic drop in PvP population is a perfect depiction of why spamming on the forums is not evidence of having good ideas.) 2. Prum...is your only gripe with 7.0 balance really the removal of offguard? Not bothered by the all-stealth queues where any class without a vanish literally cannot play? No issue with madness sorcs running around spamming 12000000 roots and slows that reapply themselves and healing for over 100k every 13 seconds? Don't see what could be wrong with AP PTs having spammable 100-0 burst and an off-GCD hardstun with a 15 second cooldown? That stuff not ringing any bells? I feel like removing offguard is the only thing they did right. That mechanic was neither fun for the person doing it nor the person on the other end of it, it was just an ELO crutch. 3. I agree that how strong tank tunneling is is an issue but like.. do we really need new tank stats for that? Do we really think that's in the PvP budget? You could literally just remove the 20% healing debuff from being in a warzone (which is different from, and stacks with, the trauma one players can apply) and all of a sudden healers can keep their tanks alive. Voila. It's not like DPS cast healing themselves for 4.8% per cast instead of 4% would be game breaking. 4. Slow and root spam is definitely an issue. It's a catch-22 where every class has too many special speed boosts, but you also literally can never move unless you are actively using your special speed boost. So I think both of those should go. I don't think it's right to say the root spam disproportionately advantages ranged though. Sorcs get destroyed by spammable leap roots and any kind of slows (though they certainly have plenty to spam back), mercs literally have no roots AND no root break anymore because speccing into the ones they had is suicide, and snipers have such bad defensives they can't even play... roots are the only way they stand a chance to live longer than the 2 gcds they spend rolling. 5. I don't care what the combat timer is, just standardize it. Right now it's like half the time the mara you're chasing breaks combat before he even comes out of camo, and the other half you're sitting stuck in combat for literally 3 minutes with nobody hitting you. Just make it a uniform time please. 6. Making losses not count for anything has serious adverse effects on ranked PvP. Namely, it doesn't reward playing better, only playing more often. And if there is no incentive to improve, it goes the way of regs where it is full of extremely unskilled players to the point where it's very difficult to enjoy or find competitive matches. BUT, given how much nonsense goes on due to low pop, I think there are some things you can do to the ELO system to cause it not to be quite so frustrating for everyone involved, such as: not adding or subtracting ELO in games where the participants aren't who was originally intended based on the ELO matching (such as backfills, role mismatches, 3v4s, etc.), placing limits on the number of a class or spec that can end up in the same match (if there's 2 games going split them into each game, kind of thing), and changing placements such that players without a rating are considered "new" (around 900) instead of "average" (1200, where they currently are) (this would mean 0-0 placements are 900, but 5-5 are 1200, etc. I did the math out in a discord once, I promise it can be done.) Particularly this last one would help prevent new players from being overrated initially and consequently placed in matches far above their skill level where they have a poor experience that sours them on the mode in general. But, what do I know, I'm not a doctor.

I mean lightning still sucks massively against sins, the matchup is like 85% to the sin, but you're right it's not 100% like the other two. And sure "viable", as in, playing lightning at 100% potential will net you the results of a fury mara playing at 50% potential, but you can still win some games. It's good for memes or for practicing kiting under harder circumstances for when u go back to madness, but no one will play this spec for ELO. Anyone on a meta spec who feels like it can abuse your complete absence of a recovery mechanism (or stealth) to force you to just not play the game for a minute and a half, and then die, giving them a h2f. Same problem sniper has. 6.X was broken, but it could stand to have *one* of the 5 or 6 tools they took away back (those being short phase+leap immunity, bubble heal, stun DR, bubble stun/surging speed--one can be taken but not both as before, short stun+reduce target dmg, accuracy debuff, speed boost on heal, and a free spot in case I forgot anything).

PvE rule #1 Moan any time a PvPer speaks. Seriously, who asked you?

You are not some gigabrain because you have a high tolerance for boredom and a sense of false superiority resulting from it. You're just a killjoy. People dislike these maps because they actively discourage pvping in pvp. It doesn't require any intelligence to play a jugg mit tank and intercede a stealther in the endzone, just the ability to rationalize ruining 14 other people's enjoyment. But go ahead, keep pretending being a "pro obj player" is some noteworthy achievement.

He said solo regs players not solo ranked players. As in T******T**** and friends, who whined on the forums for 10 years about people leaving from huttball spams, wrong-utility-locked voidstars, and people pvping in pvp, which nearly everyone did at the time. They finally got their way too, majorly killing regs participation in the process and leaving us with these very tyrannical structures in a game mode that is meant to be the casual form of pvp. (Also, if anyone disagrees that regs is casual, pick any 8 regs regulars and I'll show you 4 solo ranked players who can win 4v8 against them.)

This is exactly it. If you're good at killing the enemy players and not dying, you will perform well in PvP and your win rate will reflect it, even if someone else on your team is the one physically clicking the nodes. Bad players have been throwing matches by spam clicking nodes while people are still alive defending them and then coming to the forums to whine about "damage farmers" killing attackers off other nodes and running up kill points, since the inception of this game. They were just never taken seriously until very recently, and since that change has been reverted they probably never will be again.

Seems to be some arguments between raging ranked noobs, so let me tell yall two things that really helped me start climbing: - don't treat any game as autolost, I've won hundreds of 3v4s over the seasons, numerous 2v3s, a handful of 1v2s, and even some 2v4s. It's not a guarantee to win any game nor to lose it, play your best and see what you can pull off. - when people are doing ******** in q (wintrading, syncing, throwing, afking, acting like wannabe moophies, crossguarding in heal games, whatever it is), literally just don't q into it. Go do something else and they'll be done in an hour or two. It's better to just lose the 13 elo or whatever from getting thrown on than lose hundreds tilt qing into **** you can't win regardless of your performance, hoping to somehow outinfluence outside factors. It's also preseason tho so u could just chill out.