Fresh out of a PvP Team Meeting from Georg Zoeller

Are you happy with SWTOR PvP or like many of us, do you still feel like there are some things missing or lacking?

Here’s what Georg Zoeller had to say about a team meeting over PvP at the BioWare headquarters:

Hey guys,

A few additional notes on this topic, fresh from a meeting with Gabe and the PvP team.

(a) Expertise difference between combatants is the single most important factor in time to kill in PvP.

Having zero or little expertise on your gear (e.g. pure PvE gear) is the primary reason for people to experience a sped-up time to death in Game Update 1.2. While it was quite viable pre-1.2 to bring your Rakata or Columi gear without any added expertise into PvP, the increased focus on expertise in the PvP track of gear has made it much harder to compete with that equipment compared to even the entry level Recruit set.

Consequently, the single most effective step you can take to decrease time to death (i.e. increase time to kill of your opponent) is to gear for increased expertise. Coming from PvE, obtaining at least some pieces of Recruit gear is definitely recommended.

We’re aware that this fact is not adequately communicated in the game and that the cost of recruit gear is perceived as too prohibitive by some of you. We’re in the process of working on a solution for these issues at the moment.

TL;DR: Expertise is a lot more valuable than any other stat in PvP. Recruit gear easily beats Columi for PvP.

(b) In response to your feedback, we’ve re-tested all classes to ensure they are falling within our desired DPS targets and found one issue with Demo Round / Heatseeker Missile which was getting increased DPS, not just from other people’s stacks but also from an unwanted interaction with other skills. That issue was corrected in the 1.2.0c patch this week.

(c) There has been some level of inflation in the overall DPS budget of the game as result of Legacy benefits and other changes. Over time, these add up and as it stands, we have established that the global burst potential across the game is slightly higher than we are targeting. We will likely take some minor to moderate action about this in the near future by adjustments to the magnitude and duration of offensive relics (longer duration, reduced magnitude, identical power amortized over time).

(d) When faced with groups of enemies, stacking debuffs can result a real TTK issue.We are in process of revamping the debuff system in the game to reduce the impact of multi player debuff stacking on TTK.

So some of that is good news, right? It’s good to know they are aware of certain problems and that they are attempting to work them out. What do you think about expertise being so important in PvP? Do you feel like the dev team is really working to improve PvP or like this system of the game takes a backburner to other things they hold more dear to them- like the Legacy System?

Lisa Clark

Lisa has been an avid gamer since she was old enough to hold her first controller and a game writer for more than a decade. A child of the Nintendo generation, she believes they just don’t make games like they used to but sometimes, they make them even better! While consoles will always be her first love, Lisa spends most of her gaming time on the PC these days- on MMOs and first-person shooters in particular.