I feel that in the mid ranks the problem is not mechanical as much as it is players perceptions.

You have listed stats further down this thread where protections at mid ranks are nill, gear is less good, so on and so forth.

The reason a lot of people have trouble in the mid ranks is because they never bothered to learn how to play them. Learning how to be succesful with a build takes experimentation and experience and if as a player you have been powering through the mid ranks the last 10 years chances are while you have a lot of CF experience you have very little playing cf at the mid ranks experience.

Now I think a little part of that has to do with non melee classes having a tougher time in the PvE arena in getting gears and much less incentive to learn these things since when it comes to ranking (what they spend the vast majority of their time doing at these ranks) you are better off just waiting for a melee guy who did do these things to come around and pick up the slack.

Another downside to mid rank play is you can only partially participate in cabal wars which seems to be the driving force of interaction in the game.

You can't participate in taking an item unless you are a support class because the inners will deep fry you in moments. There are actually a lot of instances where you can't participate in retrievals effectively either. Being wanted vs tribunals with heros around, imperial centurions, fortress hero healers, bioempathy, so on and so forth effectively barring mid rank retrievals and when cabals don't have their items for more then 15 minutes you tend to see much fewer around at hero until enemies log off for an easy retrieve.


My suggestion is to start rewarding vissibly some less traditional mid rank power houses, like temp titles would be huge. I know last names are there but they have really lost their value to the majority of the playerbase as a reward.