I know what I said before, that Guardian/Juggernaut defense spec was not viable in PvP. It’s tough to admit, but I was wrong. My PvP friends and I all came to love the defense tree for the same reason: we all get the benefit of a healer who isn’t dead. It’s the ultimate tank support class, the glue that holds healer and dps relationships together. Here’s my build and reasoning.

Bioware is encouraging all players to PvP at least a little and it’s best to have some practice under your belt before you hit 50. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what to do with all those warzone commendations that alts rack up so I thought I’d give everyone the lowdown on pre-50 PvP. How to gear, what to do between queues, a secret bonus objective, and why to ignore objectives.

Hidden in an apparently innocuous post lies deep insight into the mind of Lead PvP designer Gabe Amatangelo and the future of Huttball.

There are many complaints going around about Huttball favoring some classes above others. These people make good points that movement abilities are not evenly distributed and hazards have proved notoriously difficult to balance in previous mmo games. It should be no surprise that Bioware took the time to address a related question, even if Gabe intentionally avoids the real issue by carefully selecting this question to answer.

Guardians are quite possibly the most balanced class in the game. At least that’s what the other classes would have us believe. They aren’t complaining about Guardians at all. Where are all the rants about over-powered slows and mobility? Guardians must be weak since, as we all know, balance is measured by the volume of complaints. Right?

It’s true that Guardians don’t deal quite as much damage as Sentinels/Marauders, and they can’t tank as well as Shadows/Assassins, but Guardians make up for their slightly weaker stats with difficult to quantify control effects. Right now Guardians go unnoticed and that’s just the way I like it. We are the behind the scenes MVPs. I question the puplic’s opinion and disprove an ancient proverb.

There’s so much information floating around in mmo-world that one Sith’s common sense is another Jedi’s nonsense. There are many important things you can do before ever entering combat. Although the decisions you make in combat will play the biggest role in determining your success, everyone should know these basics so as to level the initial playing field.

As I continue to research this game I bring you my discoveries of interesting need-to-know interactions, closing out the article with one such revelation. If you have any similar suggestions or basic questions you need answered, please put them in the comments.

You have a brand new lightsaber and you really want to drive home the news to the opposite faction players. Seeing them in an occasional warzone isn’t enough, you want those PvEers to know too. Reputation is important right?

Or maybe your on the other side of the coin. There is a brand new lightsaber repeatedly striking at your head. Don’t these guys have something better to do than stop me from doing my dailies? Actually no we don’t. Queue times are long and Ilum is abandon. It’s up to us to make our own world PvP. Why to gank, where to gank, and how to not get ganked.

Find out how after the break!

After canceling the release of Ranked Warzones a single day before players were expecting them, Bioware has yet to give us an update on their status. They haven’t even said the typical “we’re working on it but can’t set a deadline” and no one on the dev team has commented. Unfortunately, if they had good news I bet we would hear it, but right now all we get is silence.

Of course the fans aren’t being silent. There are rumors that thousand of players resubscribed to the game just for ranked warzones. From their perspective, Bioware waited to announce the delay of ranked warzones as a marketing and business plan to gain subscriptions.

New players and veterans, PvPers and PvEers alike, have room to improve their game by taking a step back and rethinking their controls. I continue to meet experienced players with the oddest of key binding habits. A poorly thought out control set-up is a huge hinderance to success. After the break we go over concepts that can help gamers of all levels improve their bindings.

This guide will cover what to take into consideration when deciding where to bind your abilities, as well as talk about a few optional modifications to your control set-up. Finally I try to convince you to revolt against the norm and make the biggest keybinding decision of your life. As a disclaimer, I commonly sacrifice convenience to maximize in-combat performance. Never waste a mouse button on your mount when you can put a combat ability there.

After putting out a couple PvP Guardian Guides I hope they have been giving everyone some trouble lately. To bring balance back to the galaxy, and because you have a right to understand your enemy, I give you a guide to Guardian abilities. While the interweb is full of mediocre guides, there is no single place to go for concrete factual info about enemy abilities. Now everyone has easy access to the facts of how Jedi Knight + Guardian talents and abilities interact. Who knew that sages could dispel Force Exhaustion? And if they know, why don’t they do it? I’ve also included some screenshots of the abilities everyone should know so you can memorize their animations.

This list is by no means complete; it needs more cross-class interactions. I will be updating this guide as I learn about new interactions and I want to ask all you for your help. Got some info that could go in this guide? Wanna see something tested? Put it in the comments. Many abilities have unexpected interactions when used in sequence and, with your help, we can make this guide the go-to place. Specifically, we need more cross-class interactions and we can start similar guide’s for other classes.

Some people love them and some people hate. But what does Bioware think? They revamped the medal system a lot recently, and while my previous article covered the facts, here we will examine the reasoning behind the design, how it might affect rated warzones, and possible improvements.

The medal system attempts to reward players based on their individual performance, presumably while trying to win the warzone. The rewards are great enough that players often farm these medal at the cost of proper strategic play and at a detriment to their team. So the question is: do medals improve the warzone experience? Other games have successfully added individual player scoring while keeping players focused solely on winning. League of Legends Dominion map comes to mind. It may be considerably harder to design such a system in SWTOR but this is the goal. Unless of course Bioware intends players to choose between two different objectives while in warzones.