As much as I love the Crafting Rally Part 2 perk, I can see why they also want to change it. For the effort involved, they would have to gut the points to keep it repeatable. No one should be able to put out 200k+ conquest points simply by logging in 7 times a week for 30 seconds to que the next DP. You can hit your personal goal on 4-5 characters without even playing the game. I know because I do that. I hate to lose it, but I can see why it makes sense.

Won't go into the specific details as to not encourage others to do it, but right now there is a major exploit with Scum and Villainy on Master Mode that players are using to very easily clear/farm it.

Firstly, KP doesn't have a NiM mode. Secondly, the change hardly affects people just going in to clear, as its mostly the optional mob groups (ones you don't pull unless doing KP farm) that got the large increase to HP, clearing the regular trash on the way to the boss is more or less the same. You are right that this didn't stop KP farm tho, it only slowed it down, but the impact it has on people just clearing the Op is marginal.

Owned

I for one hope they keep adding more and more set bonuses. Not neccissarily power creeping old ones of course, but providing more options is never a bad thing.

That's a gross over-exaggeration. NiM with these changes is still more challenging than it was with Vet's Edge, but feels far more balanced for what old NiM content should be. The top 1% will have NiM Dxun soon to grind their teeth on, and NiM Gods is still going to be an exclusive arena as well. At the same time, this change will not make it an open buffet for casuals, but it will allow those in the top 5% instead of the top 1% the ability to progress old NiM content. There is currently a very large playerbase of raiders where HMs are just way too easy, but NiM in its current form is too hard. NiM with Vet's Edge was undertuned and no one denies this, but this middle-ground difficulty will open up viable progression to this larger group of players, which is much healthier state for the game.

I just 2-manned it picking up a random fleet PUG, NBD. Just kidding, nicely done.

Bump - we are looking to recruit one strong healer and RDPS for our 16-man Ops team. We run Wed & Thurs: 8:00pm - 10:30pm EST and are currently progressing NiM S&V working towards Hateful Entity. We also run Dxun and plan to start Gods in the future. Reach out in-game to: Deloth Vyrr if interested or feel free to hop into our Discord server and send me a DM (linked in my signature).

This game has been drip feed for years now unfortunately, and it makes me very sad. Whether it was a monthly KOTFE chapter with zero new MMO content, or releasing a new Operation one boss at a time over the course of years, it just doesn't seem like the Devs have nearly enough resources. Now we have Onslaught which came out in October but only included the first part of the story. Its now Feb and all we've gotten is a tiny update containing 10 minutes of dialogue. On the MMO side we got a single Op, Dxun, and a horrible downscale system for older Operations that is plagued with so many issues it was clearly thrown together as a bare bones minimum viable product and then abandoned. Not to mention the gearing system which completely eliminates any reward system that PVP and PVE might have had. Even Shadow of Revan, which was a rocky xpac to say the least and considered extremely poor when it came to endgame content launched with two full Operations at release. When an expansion makes SoR look good by comparison there is a big problem.

I rejoined the Empire on nearly all Imperial characters, so it tooks me a while to notice this. I agree this is a terrible decision by the devs. If a player stayed independent then Odessen is still the "Alliance" first and foremost, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to remove the Alliance banners.

I keep seeing people suggesting this, ignoring the insane cost that comes with it. Assuming a group raids two nights a week, that's 30 encryptions per week, per person. Yes let's tack on a weekly 20 million credit cost to raiding for these folks.

There is no such thing as Master Mode Ravagers. I think you mean Veteran? Master = NiM

Bioware undertuning old NiM Ops in 6.0 is a whole issue on its own, but it's not just comparing it to old NiMs, but against the 8man version of the same fight where its most noticeable. The difference in difficulty between 8 and 16 has always fluctuated from boss to boss, some bosses are easier or harder on one mode or the other, but they generally all fit within the same difficulty range for their mode. Having cleared HM Dxun on 8man and now 5/6 on 16man, the difficulty differences fight-to-fight is what you would generally expect... for the first 5 bosses. However 16man Apex is on a completely different level than everything else. He is arguably one of the hardest fights in the entire game, and that's for a Veteran mode fight, not NiM. I would expect this difficulty on NiM, but it almost feels like Bioware entered in some of the numbers wrong when coding this version of the fight.

Apex Vanguard on 16 Veteran is seriously over-tuned. I am the raid leader of a 16-man Ops team and this fight, a Veteran fight, is more challenging than most NiM content in the game. If the plan was to make Apex a NiM difficulty fight to hold raiders over until actual NiM Dxun that would be one thing, but its not, everyone in the group has multiple 8-man clears under our belts, this is an issue exclusive to the 16 man version. Please take a look at this fight and bring it more inline with 8-man difficulty.

HM TFB (Final boss) has a very tight enrage on 16man, for most groups that dont pull top tier dps you can't have any dps dieing at all. Deaths are likely the biggest thing keeping you from clearing. Another thing, try only having 1 DPS get all the Irregularities, they should be able to do it, they just need to be quick, also you can skip the 4th irregularity spawn in each set of tentacles as it will despawn on its own after the tentacle dies and all the anomalies spawn.

No but most of us have all that stuff already. Rerunning old content has a super short shelf life

IMO Bioware could have made the current system work by simply putting ilvl caps on certain content, for example they could have done something roughly like this: Veteran FPs provide gear up to ilvl 290 Master FPs/SM Ops provide gear up to ilvl 300 Legacy HM Ops provide gear up to 304 Legacy NiM/HM Dxun provide 306 The difference in gear between people who only run FPs or SM Ops and those who do top-tier content would still be small, only 6 ilvls at most, so it would still maintain the promise that everyone can get good gear playing their way. Honestly the difference between 300 and 306 gear is functionally pretty small, but it would at least provide endgame players some level of gear incentive.

You mean like shift-click and drag?

I too raid primarily for the achievement of a clear, however, once you've downed a boss there are no rewards for repeat clears. We are 5/6 HM Dxun working on Apex Vanguard, and since the first 5 bosses offer us no reward for clearing anymore, this has made those fights feel more like a chore we just want to get through as quick as we can so we can get to Apex progression. There is a reason that many guilds progressing on Apex grab lockouts from players who cleared bosses 1-5 earlier in the week, because skipping those bosses is more beneficial than re-clearing them. In the past, raid bosses had the value of top-end gear upgrades for players, so clearing farm bosses came with long term incentive and reward, now bosses are a one-and-done affair. Once Apex is down I see no real reason to step back in to HM Dxun. So yes, progression raiders should raid for the challenge and the achievement and not just the gear, but the truth is that it is gear that keeps raiders going into content after that initial challenge has been overcome.

Bump - we are recruiting one Merc or Sorc DPS for our 16-man Ops team. We are 5/6 HM Dxun working on Apex Vanguard. We run Wed & Thurs: 8:00pm - 10:30pm EST. PST ingame (Deloth Vyrr) if interested.

While it is understandable that cartel items are bound to character, it would be a huge QOL improvement if, once an item was unlocked in collections for the entire account, those items became bound to legacy. There is no reason not to allow cartel items to be sent between characters once the account unlock has been paid for.

Saying anything above 250M is absurd shows you fail to understand what it is you are actually paying for. You are paying for a raid team to clear NiM S&V and then paying 15 other players carry you through the Bonus boss. Even tho you only come in for a few minutes, this entire ordeal actually takes the group several hours to complete. If a group charged only 250 mill, each player contributing to your carry would receive ~15 mill. That's not even close to worth the time of going through all this effort. Also, many sales runs groups have at least some of their raiders running the Crystal of Nightmare Power to guarantee a smooth transaction for the buyer, these cost roughly 15M worth of mats each to craft - so anyone using one of these would essentially be breaking even on the transaction. What's the point? The standard rate of 500 mill isn't some arbitrary amount or the result of people being greedy. You have to understand your fee is being split roughly 15 ways. It really is the amount required to make the sale worth it for all those involved - and quite honestly it only really becomes worth it if they can line up a couple buyers for the same lockout. With all that said, if you have the gear and experience, why not start or join up with a raiding group that is capable of doing this content and actually just do it legitimately? It's a much greater accomplishment and if anyone asks you about the mask you can honestly say you earned it.

I have wanted either an Oricon, or Korriban stronghold for ages.

Avoid that perk, ignore it and never look at it again. Its is a total trap. Crafting Rally Part 2 on the other hand, that thing is <3

If the people you play with are "throwing you aside" for playing a Jugg tank, it's time to find new people to play with. All tank classes are more than viable, this is coming from a Jugg tank myself who has cleared every NiM encounter in the game pre-Gods, including the NiM title runs. I've even run with Jugg/Jugg tank comps and they work perfectly fine (tho I generally prefer class diversity, it's not a make or break thing). Only reasons I can think of for people turning you away for being a Jugg are: 1) They already have a Jugg tank and don't want to double up on classes 2) They are ignorant - in which case you just need to move along and find new people 3) Your class isn't the real problem. They are using it as a strawman to excuse them for not bringing you as a player.