the newest stupidity.. Rank= pve skill..

ranked pvp players tend to have experience when it comes to organization.

that can't be said for your average pve pug. The emphasis here should be on the word tend. Rank means nothing as the player could have just ebayed to buy the account from somebody else or payed for a fame farming service.

It should be pointed out, however, that a lot of PvP experience does make an individual player's skill better at PvE than they were before they had PvP experience. Why? Because you better understand concepts like energy management, the importantance of disruption, how to maximize damage, and what the skills on your bar are actually supposed to do.

The reverse is also true. Take a player who has only ever done PvP and asking them to join you in a high level PvE area such as PvE tombs (true story with a guildmate of mine) is a formula for disaster. The damage formulas in this game are highly dependant upon level differentials and facing level 28 enemies puts you at a steep disadvantage on damage inflicted vs. damage received. Armor ignoring damage is really great against level 24+ enemies.

I really like the format of the Factions missions as they force a different kind of playstyle if you want get the Expert and/or the Master objectives. Time is of the essence in these missions and things like energy management, damage per second, and focus firing really come into play if you want to get the higher objectives. The sad thing is that I joined an "average pve pug" with my completely unlocked level 20 Prophecies monk using strong healing, energy management, condition and hex removal for Vizunah Square and the mission took 32 minutes to complete. I later did the mission with my level 18 assasin with 7 henchman and completed the mission in 28 minutes and did not even have any deaths on my team. How can this be explained? The average PvE pug plays too defensively and worries about not dying first and killing second. In addition, they do not often focus fire. For my assasin, I had maxed dagger mastery (at least the max I could have at the time) with high critical strikes and some spare points in shadow arts for a little defense. Knowing the deep wound mechanic (twisting fangs ftw) and that it knocks off 20% of a foe's health made for some quick killing. The quicker you kill the enemies, the less damage they get to do to your team. Warriors just have to watch out when using frenzy and having one of the afflicted putrid explosion on you as this will definately freak your monks.

I expect that there are plenty of good PvE players out there who have never played PvP who are already adapting and will continue to adapt to this new playstyle for Factions missions. This playstyle really is more fun as it keeps the game fast paced and makes the missions seem like less of a grind.

Mark of Pain triggers the mobs to spread after being hit by it for more than 4 seconds. This reduces the ability of barrage to hit multiple targets. I don't think that 4 seconds of shadow dmg is worth the lessened impact of barrage. maybe he meant to say Order of Pain?