AdrianDmitruk
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Posts posted by AdrianDmitruk
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Respect for your well written post (which I snipped here, because it is just two or three posts above). Your observations are spot-on and I particularly like that you see the positive side for crafting. When people complained about prices dropping I never understood why they don't realise that the prices are also dropping for stuff they need.
Isn't it great that you don't need to log through 16 chars anymore just to send companions on crew missions with unknown outcome? I think it is. Of course, you can still do it, should you not be interested in playing the slot machine. Right now, I do a mix of both.
Oh, yes. I can actually play the game now
(On a sidenote: What do you do with hundreds of millions credits? I don't think there is enough stuff ingame to spend that much on. )I donated an eight-figure amount to the guild to help fund the guild ship pub side (I'm in a small, tight-knit guild where I don't have to deal with drama so I'm cool with that). Other than that, I have found redecorating all four strongholds quite...capital intensive. Then there was the week where we, a guild of about eight active players, decided to not just invade a planet, but to TAKE it, and the per capita efforts required for that were simply herculean.
I make credits so I can have fun with them. Muahaha.
To the OP: Also very good opening post for this thread.I think the last days on this forum have shown that a vast majority is PRO slot machines. This is my own perception, but if you check the various threads, you will notice an increase in positive opinions and you will also notice that the naysayers are usually the same few names in every thread.
I'm hoping that even post-patch the jawa junk is at least kept reasonably competitive with crew skills--it would be a shame to have to go slogging through 16 characters to get my mats again. I get that before, once the numbers were crunched, the slots were objectively better, and there are valid reasons to adjust that, but I hope that they don't go so far in the other direction that you're more likely to win the mount than jawa junk lol. The slot machine is just so...liberating.
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Well I'm one of those Troll Crafters who made a couple hundred mil crafting augments and such while the prices were sky high. I still tentatively believe the slot machine did more good than harm:
1) Yes I went and bought one on GTN. I had a second one drop from a hypercrate I found on GTN; that one is going in the guild ship tomorrow when it unbinds.
2) A second bite at old cartel faction rep? Yes please! The CM did not interest me at all until strongholds were released, so I do appreciate the second bite of the apple.
3) Yes prices did come down and I can't sell augments for 200k anymore, but I can craft far more reliably. I don't have to log 8-15 toons to craft anymore (and few things about this game SUCKED more than logging in thinking "I've got 45-60 mins of Troll Crafting--i.e. alt logging--before I actually play the game"). The quality of life for crafters is MUCH better, and now I can craft my wares from two toons instead of sixteen.
4) Accordingly with number 3, some of my crew skills have changed, especially on toons that run dailies--I don't need underworld trading so much anymore for example, so that crew skill slot can be reallocated to a primary resource gathering skill that makes things like dailies more productive.
5) It generally gives me something to do while waiting for a warzone pop or similar queued activity, when the wait for the pop is likely to be short enough that going through loading screens to reach daily areas and/or having other activities interrupted just isn't worth it.
As for the market being "flooded," I'm honestly not sure how much of the jawa junk is from slots and how much is from stored and stockpiled conquest rewards. The slot machine was added at the same time the latest crafting mats were added to the jawa vendors--so two potential "floods" of mats were released at the same exact time and were commingled. It's impossible to tell as a player how much of the supply is coming from which source. So I'm waiting for a little bit for the conquest stockpiles to be used and spent down; then I will see where the market stands.
Also as a bonus I get to meet new people who are there to play the slots in my publicly listed Nar Shaddaa stronghold, that I would not have met otherwise, and that's a good thing.
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No nerfing has been confirmed.
They've only confirmed that current drop rates were intended and that using the slot machine is legit. They've stated they're looking into the drop rates but they haven't come to a decision yet. Hence no nerf has occurred yet but it's possible the drop rates might get changed in the near future.
If the drop rate is nerfed, however, it's likely to be mats (specifically jawa junk) getting the nerf, not reputation tokens.
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Either way you'll be good. Getting rep out of the Contraband Slot Machine is far, far cheaper than rep out of Contraband Hypercrates.
The hypercrates with the rep you want run what, anywhere between 12-25 million? And it'll probably take about three or four for max rep, if not more.
Once you have the slot machine, however, well let's just say that spending 100k on a couple stacks o chips got me enough rep to max out the (inflated) weekly cap; I'm just shy of champion after spending those chips and I'm just waiting for the reset next Tuesday. You'll also get scrap materials to trade to the Jawas for mats, and quite probably a couple of certs.
Or you could sell it and take the instant credits, depends how much the contraband rep is worth to you, really.
Personally I had to buy mine--the acolyte's shadow hypercrates haven't even showed up on GTN on my server yet cuz everyone wants to open them, and the packs are going for 600k LOL. The price cutting however was so intense that I was able to get everything I wanted out of that hypercrate for 1.5m combined (naga sadow centerpiece statute 250k LOLOL), and once I found out about the slot machine that set me back 5 mil. Totally worth it though--now the only reason why I have to be on lookout for the hypercrate is to max out my rep from the new packs, and I have the option of going back to the previous packs which are dirt cheap on my server right now.
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Undying rage doesnt protect from CCs. If a Mara drops it, I can still stun/lift/mezz/<insert CC here> them for most/all of its duration and I know that after certain duration I can return to finish him because his health wont change (unless he gets healed).
With Force Barrier I cant do that. I have to either:
1) Sit near you and wait for it to deactivate which, for the duration, makes me completely useless and non-contributing.
2) Switch my focus to someone else, allowing you to deactivate it sooner, heal yourself (effectively nullifying my efforts) and to continue healing your teammates.
If they at least make it so, that you have to wait out its FULL duration and cannot cancel it any sooner, or maybe make it so that it depletes your Force to zero and prevents regen while the effect is active that would be imo enough.
You don't have to stun/mez us during Force Barrier, because we're doing that to ourselves.
Before Enduring Bastion, that weakness in the cooldown rendered it useless unless we had alternate forms of CC available to allow us to escape the hyenas (i.e. grenades) as we left the barrier. That is why they added Enduring Bastion.
Bubblestun should have remained within lightning discipline. Allowing madness (and yes, I'll admit, healers) to get it was just LOL after Bioware claimed to "destroy hybrids" with 3.0. Fixing that alone would help with a lot of cc balance issues with regard to marauders and such.
Yes we have balance issues (madness has been FOTM for a while now) but Force Barrier isn't one of them. You just think it is because you remember that time a sorc popped it with 12 HP left and someone healed said sorc to full. Marauders have been doing one variation or another of that since launch, and unlike us they can continue to dps and move while they're doing it.
I'm not complaining about UR. Marauders need it. But there were some very good reasons why Force Barrier was changed to its present state, that you probably would not understand unless you played a non-FOTM sorc spec before it was buffed with Enduring Bastion. (Remember how long corruption sorcs were told to h2f, play defensively, and make them pay for trying to kill you, while the skill level required for the class might be higher than some players were comfortable with? It wasn't just our perception problem.)
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Like I said in another thread, reduce all healing received while Force Barrier is active (and maybe for 5 seconds after it drops). The immunity to EVERYTHING from that ability is enough, hell it even wipes out all debuffs and a well timed use will completely negate any bursts from infinite number of DPS classes (not to mention it also allows some of their CDs to recover). They dont need the ability to drop HoT on themselves, use a god mode and come out of it at frickin 100% HP and force armor/static barrier ready to use.........
If you want to nerf it to undying rage with a purge, then remove the self stun from it and then we'll talk...
It's not like we get to do anything during that immunity. And if we have to use it as a counter to burst, we probably don't have time to spend 2 globals setting up our perfect little hots to h2f during its duration before we pop it.
Hell before Enduring Bastion FB was practically a force taunt in that the entire enemy team would circle around you waiting for the barrier to drop so they could get their free kill. I had to save my grenade to cover an escape after using it, which prevented me from using it as a separate cooldown. That was clearly never intended by Bioware.
If you don't believe me, they gave stealth classes access to utilities that automatically purge on combat stealth--it's pretty clear they don't intend that you should HAVE to save one of your cooldowns just to make another cooldown useful.
I should clarify that I speak as a healer, not a DPS. Madness has long had...separate balance issues. Force Barrier is not one of them. (Mostly rather than spamming blatant dot immunity to cleanses they should have made it like the old lethality dot protection where you can cleanse to mitigate damage but they still get their procs and such from a reapplied dot...you know the counterplay Bioware keeps talking about.)
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I asked during last week's stream about the comm gear by pointing out that during 2.x, you could buy 10 gloves (or whatever) with comms and rip out unlettered mods, but now literally all the mods are high endurance, rendering the comms worthless. They said they were probably going to re-itemize it to make comms have some value again, and I was actually hoping they would do it with this patch, but I see that they didn't. I still have a lot of the 180 mods on my PVE toons as it seems there's no way to even RE the unlettered 36 mod schematic unless you get really lucky and have an unlettered mod drop from an OW mob. LOL.
At launch you could actually get set bonuses with comms gear, which allowed even people who couldn't commit to a raid schedule (like me atm) to get set bonuses through group PVE. Now with the only way to get set bonus bugged to hell and chances of finding a pug run during my scarce time off very low, I'm considering farming multiple sets of the 174 PVP gear for set bonuses for the toons I leveled during 12x XP.
That's just broken. I do PVP, but I want my PVP comms to go towards PVP advancement, not farming multiple copies of set bonuses for PVE toons.
It'd be nice if Bioware would allow set bonuses from comms gear again, at least as a temporary measure until they can fix the ops and restore the vibrancy of pugs/groupfinder that existed in the months prior to 3.0. I understand that elitists don't want casuals running around with BIS gear every slot, but all I desire is really the 192 set bonus and slow availability of unlettered mods via appropriate group content comms grinding. The present bugs in ops are presenting enough issues for dedicated raid groups, let alone the formation of pugs (LOL 16m halving your chances at a token drop), recently closed exploits notwithstanding (obviously, I didn't partake).
Allowing set bonuses from comms, temporarily or otherwise, could also be an opportunity for Bioware to narrow the gap between those who farmed exploited gear, and those who did not partake.
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It might be worth the steep per-character price if it allowed you to mount in combat but I doubt that would ever happen. The QQ from so-called "PVPers" who use various methods to get PVErs on PVE servers involuntarily flagged would be far too immense as the victims might actually be able to escape the gank.
Otherwise this should just be part of Speeder Piloting IV on the trainer (perhaps with a boost up to 120% in line with previous speeder progression, hopefully 120% wouldn't tax the engine so much that it is not technically possible).
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Perhaps from the other source of 186 gear? Nightmare commendation vendors and those being REable. Who knows. Regardless, so that you may fully understand: 186 gear does not drop from any of the level 60 operations. And so that you understand that BIS 186 mods is not a result of the exploit: The exploit is present ONLY in the level 60 operations. And only one of them, but I won't say more on that.
Your concern with 186 schematics and BIS 186 mods/enhancements is not warranted as it is not related to the exploit at all.
Ah, it appears my confusion stems from the basic comms vendor now selling (crappy versions of) the old NiM stuff. Now there are 186 schematics floating around that use both new mats, for level 58s, and the old ones, REd from 55 NiM stuff. The new ones, utilizing the new mats, are crappy so the old ones can retain some sort of relevance. Never thought of that as I never did NiM content.
I guess that is a reason, albeit one I find not compelling, for there to be literally no properly itemized mod to rip from a piece of gear you purchased 10 copies of as was the case before 3.0.
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People don't need to be quite so harsh on comm gear if they think about it more ( or is this less? ) logically. That is for example ( and I can't remember the exact gear I bought so this is pure example ) I didn't like any of the enhancements in comm gear except Waist. So I bought each piece of comm gear I needed the armouring from ( and might as well take mod as well in most cases ) that wasn't for my set piece slots and then I just bought a bunch of Waist items to strip the Enhancements out of that I needed to min/max my char as best as possible.
It may depend on class but in the end I got my sin to the accuracy I needed and pretty close to the surge/crit I needed also ( based on Dulfy guides ) for supposed min/max.
It's not perfect and it was more expensive but I had a ton of comms to spend so I'm just saying it can be done with comm gear.
The character I'm talking about is a vengeance juggernaut.
I found NO unlettered mods available on the vendor. Every single DPS strength mod available from the SW basic comms vender was high endurance, very low power (or crit, but I'm mostly interested in power). Before 3.0, it was possible to buy 10 copies of whatever piece had the BiS mod, and mod rip accordingly. But no more, at least not for my class.
As a result, it was much better to simply leave the (optimized) 180 mods I had in there equipped. The basic comms were only good for implants, ear, and armorings (as I only had two leftover set pieces to send over by the time this toon hit 55 right before 2.0).
Enhancements have been like that ever since I got back into PVE, but the comms before 3.0 were at least useful for getting decent mods provided sufficient grind. It appears now the comms have degraded to total uselessness, and yes now I view it with utter disdain. Hell I'd consider grinding ranked PVP gear with proper itemization over suffering the high endurance crap from the PVE comms vendor if I had to start on a fresh 60 from absolutely nothing, and I know for a fact that if we were talking about my sorc healer instead, that would be indisputably better because of corruption's heavier-than-most-classes reliance on set bonuses.
I should also mention that 192s/198s from comms seem to have the same stat allocation, just scaled accordingly. So if it's crap at the basic comm level, it'll be crap at ult level too.
I can't help but wonder if the comms gear is literally such a steaming pile that it encouraged the proliferation of the exploit. If shady people feel they have no good options, they'll find one--by hook or by crook.
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In my experience the second type of ops-leader you mention is a minority. Even on freshly minted 55's and 60's I've had no trouble finding a pug that would allow me to start doing operations on that character. Don't need to be ideally geared to run operations, just gotta overcome the fear of doing them and take a risk.
My personal experience was about 60/40. The gear checkers were a minority, but a statistically significant one large enough that it might take a long time to find a group (as DPS) should they be out in force.
I prefer to learn ops as DPS and might well join my first 3.0 pugs tomorrow (it'll be my first day off since the toon I wish to use hit 60). I'll heal ops with my healer main once I've run it a few times as a DPS so I know what to expect. I won't tank PUG ops whatsoever (though I will tank FPs) because...let's just say I'm better at healing than tanking.
I also have a lot of friends who PVP, so that's where most of my ties to the community are, and even when I want to run PVE it's amazing how much pull that guildies in vent in warzones have...
You can RE from Comms gear, which is where the 186 schematics are coming from. Same for the 192 schematics. The exploit has undoubtedly accelerated the rate at which the 192 schematics are learned, but aside from moving up the time table on major milestones in that process not much else has been affected. The effects of the exploit are being overstated by those who don't understand it.Wait, I can learn a schematic for a low-endurance, high-stat mod from ripping out the high-endurance mods from the comm gear and REing it? That doesn't make sense.
There are literally no unlettered 36 strength mods available from the basic vendor that I found. Not coincidentally, no unlettered 36 mods on my server.
So how the hell do I go about learning schematics for 186 unlettered mods? My cybertechs need to get busy. Presumably I don't have to run ops. I don't necessarily have to have instant 198s, but I know a steaming pile of **** (basic comms gear) when I see one. If I replace a gear slot, I expect the gear to actually be an upgrade.
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Do you run operations? Do you organize operations? Like, I can't even. As someone who regularly organizes pug runs, I can't care less about someone's gear as long as they meet min-reqs. The only time I care is when, after several wipes it becomes VERY clear who can't do the job. And then it's almost always not a gear issue, but a learn-to-play issue. I invite based on first-come, first-serve. Rarely make gear inquiries.
I joined many PUG ops on my server between about 2.6 and 2.10 as I wanted to get my toes wet in PVE. Some ops leaders shared your attitude; others did gear inspections and weighted gear...more heavily than strictly necessary. People who are non-exploiters are now at a competitive disadvantage finding a spot in a PUG led by someone in the second group.
Why are you talking about 186 stuff? Operations drop 192 or 198 gear, not 186. The exploit concerns the operations only, not flashpoints. 186 is equivalent to the former Arkanian, and is something you want to get out of about as fast as you can possibly manage. Which is not difficult at all. Before the exploit was common knowledge I was in full 192 with set bonuses. If you run the ops gearing is easy. The exploit largely benefits players who suck at raiding.I did mention that I spent all of December focusing on my PVP toon...
I am far more active in PVP than PVE, to the point where I felt that lack of experience with particular fights' mechanics shut me out of the latter. "LF DPS, must be geared and know fights..." well the latter is pretty much going to shut me out. I finally got back into raiding a little bit when Bioware buffed early endgame rewards to make it sufficiently forgiving for the community to be willing to teach people who were new to the content its relevant mechanics. Of course I also do have the responsibility to L2P and accept that, but there must be someone to learn from. However considering that I two-shot the Dread Council fight, in a full PUG, having never done that content before--in such a manner that describing it would lead to "video or it didn't happen"--which sadly I could not have foreseen the epic need to record
-- I think we can conclude I have the capacity to L2P specific fights that I previously hadn't done.It was only after New Year's that I got around to working on my second toon, my main PVE toon, whom I intended to gear up for the PUG raiding that I'd been doing a few months before. I went to spend basic comms and found I couldn't even buy 10 gloves to rip out the mods for anymore. I'd been so busy PVPing on my main that I hadn't even set foot in a 60 HM yet. I did, however, notice when doing the 3.0 storyline while leveling said PVE toon that there were multiple ops, so I figured maybe the easier one dropped 186 gear that hopefully was better than the terribad comm gear.
Also, how the hell am I supposed to know FPs don't have their own exploits when Bioware sits on them for this long and doesn't do anything, and isn't transparent? You say that 192s and up are in doubt, but looking at the utter dearth of properly itemized gear dropping from FPs, let alone basic comms, I figured the good schematics were literally only REable from the ops. On my server there's a flood of optimized enhancements but literally zero unlettered mod 36s on GTN, as of last night.
So it appears my knowledge of where PVE gear comes from is off by one tier. I'm sure you've seen far, far worse issues of L2P, especially considering where I've been
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Who are you competing against in HM Ops? I'm confused.
Catch back up to what? Gear levels? Again, I'm confused.
Another raid group or end game raider's gear has no effect on your group or gear. No matter how they got the gear. The only area of this game where the gear of one player can actually affect the game experience of another player is in PVP. That is actually competition. You know how I know? Because at the end of each WZ or Arena it say Win or Lose. I've been playing since launch and I've never seen Win or Lose appear at the end of any FP or OP I've done.
Not to mention, better gear doesn't change how bad or less skilled players handle FP and/or OP mechanics.
So, I ask again, who are you competing against?
You see "LF 1 dps for OP" in fleet chat. You are a DPS so you reply.
You don't exploit. You have 45k HP in 186s, and 180s where the terribad stats on 186s render the 180s an upgrade from the 186s that are supposed to be "better."
But the group also got another whisper from the exploiter with about 52k HP, 192s, who farmed the exploit enough to RE the min-max enhancements. Of course the exploiter's not going to come out and say he exploited, but he will almost always get the spot over you because, even though you should be able to clear the encounter without being carried (I don't think the "Recommended Gear Level" assumes optimization, and even if it did, it would be nigh impossible with the current abomination of comm gear), the exploiter will have the gear to clear the content faster and easier than you can.
The only situation in which you might be able to compete with the exploiters in that situation is if you already have a superb reputation for skill that can overcome the gear deficit. It isn't necessarily enough to just have the skill, you have to be widely known on the server enough that a group would take you over someone with better gear.
For those of us who had hoped to use the gear reset inherent in an expansion to break into endgame PVE content, we might well have the skill, but that skill is unknown to those who are throwing the invites, so it makes the exploiters that much more likely to get invited over people who followed normal gear progression.
Full disclosure: I bought a single 192 might hilt off GTN and several optimized 186 enhancements off GTN about five or six days ago, well before Bioware published its exploit warning, and only surmised the vague nature of this exploit by reading the first 35 pages of this thread just now. I've yet to set foot in an op since 3.0 as tomorrow will be my first opportunity, due to RL, to even attempt that. (In December, I was busy leveling and PVP gearing my PVP main so I'm not counting that.) I have no reason to believe I violated the ToS or would normally be punished as such, as I figured the hilts and enhancements I purchased on GTN were RE'd from either the offhand comms saber (hilt) or HP FP/SM ops drops (the 186 enhancements). I assumed that nearly a month after the expansion was released, that those schematics would be out there legit by now when I made my purchases. I may, however, suffer "collateral damage" punishment if Bioware 1) goes the most extreme route of banhammering everyone who used or benefited from the exploit, and 2) is able to track where individual hilts/enhancements traded on the GTN came from (and I'm unlucky enough to have bought from an exploiter, even if I should not have been expected to know; at the time I bought the hilt I think there were only two sellers on my server).
I only bought the hilt/enhancements for one toon so it's not like I went out there and geared 15 alts through GTN flooding. Though it would be nice to know if there are legit sources for properly optimized 186 enhancements (mods, for that matter, too) that end up on GTN. I'll take this thread as further notice not to go shopping for 192s until after Bioware has addressed this (one way or the other).
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The comms gear isn't just badly optimized this time around. It's literally impossible to get unlettered mods from PVE comms gear, so you can't even buy 10 gloves to get 10 of the BiS mods now.
I'm afraid that if you want to run optimized 186s (since you probably won't be doing content that unlocks higher gear), you will have to go shopping on GTN, or learn the schematics and craft yourself (for the good mods/enhancements, not sure where you'll get the schematics). On my server, the desirable, low-endurance enhancements were already starting to pop up (for about 200k a pop), so I outfitted my PVE, dailies-running toon with them. I'm still leaving most of my optimized 180s mods in my gear for now, however, as I've yet to see unlettered mods appear on the GTN on my server.
Before 3.0 you had to either raid or have crafted the optimized enhancements, but at least the unlettered mods were obtainable through comms grinding. No more, comms are useless again (and we have nothing to spend them on other than this horrible abomination, either)
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Depends to a very large extent on playstyle. Are you there to tunnel a healer, or make a contribution to your team? (For purposes of answering this question, assume you are in a premade, as pugs would not know a group buff if it bit them in the arse.)
Because Force Speed is self-only. Predation is group-wide. And if you step out of DPS tunnel mode into more of a support role, assuming your team is intelligent enough to use such support (which is why I stipulate that you're in a premade above), predation becomes absolute CRACK to the rest of your team.
Your healer suddenly becomes almost uncatchable, barring a pull or HtL. Regular slows are kinda-sorta noticed but lose much of their effectiveness unless there are three or more of them. Your tank has that much more mobility to guard switch and protect whoever's being focused. Your other DPS (esp. melee DPS) has that much more uptime on target. Yes, you sacrifice a whole lot of your personal DPS to play a marauder as a support class rather than straight DPS, but if you play it right predation is nearly spammable. And you think I didn't notice this when my tank invited a marauder to our group tonight, and said marauder played support rather than numbers chasing?
That alone made my life as a healer HELLA easier. It (along with bubblestun and timely knockbacks) allowed me to be an alternate ballcarrier at mid in huttball when our main carrier had just scored, and sorcs are not well known for their innate ballcarrying abilities. It made defending objectives much easier as I could spend less time worrying about kiting and healing myself, and more time healing others and AOEing for objective denial over the course of a match, simply because predation a couple times a minute makes what kiting I must do that much more effective and compresses its necessity into a shorter timeframe.
I should also point out that I don't really know that marauder, other than by server reputation. I was not on voice with him or anything, my tank just invited him to group tonight. He just sees a point to playing marauder rather than sin, stuck with his main even after Bioware nerfed it...and there it is. I couldn't ask him when his AOE mez (another one of the mara's advantages over sin) was up for peelng purposes because he wasn't in voice. (Note, I stayed on my sorc healer main and stayed healer even during the dark days of h2f, so I empathize.) He plays it as a support class, not DPS, he was smart about it, I took his buffs for all they were worth and absolutely ran with them, and it made the team as a whole stronger.
Needless to say, the three of us had quite a good night in PVP, even against teams that are normally pretty good at separating me from my tank.
Now I'm aware that Bioware mucked up predation's use in arenas for 3.0 and I am disappoint. 8v8 though? I'd take a good support marauder in my group over a 1337 sin any day.
We definitely do think in terms of the trinity here, but originally during early MMO history, there was more than just the trinity: you had tanks, heals, DPS, and SUPPORT. Support classes waned as MMOs became more and more casual friendly, and I don't think Bioware wants the headaches of balancing a true support class, but the marauder is probably the closest this game has to one (assuming you wish to play that way).
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Exactly what rank is he getting from this?
I think he means OW player kills for the achievements/titles. He said he comes from BC, which is PVE-RP, so I'd cut him some slack about that. Ranked PVP is almost completely unheard of on BC and pretty much has to be organized either through guild meetings or recruiting for same-faction kickball ranked on fleet.
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I find it funny how Eric popped in here to tell us how great Bioware's anti-spam algorithms are, the community debunked Eric's utopian delusions within about five seconds, and he hasn't even been back with a post saying he'll have a chat with the dev team about some very commonsense UI improvements proposed thereafter that would allow us to better deal with the problem ourselves (since it's obvious EA won't).
I want some of what he's drinking for New Year's.
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I just wish you could see which roles (not specific players) are in the queue.
Example:
Currently Queued for <Insert FP here>
1 Tank
0 Healers
6 DPS
<Join Queue Button>
That way, if you didn't want to wait, you would have the information needed to get an instapop, assuming you had the requisite alts. If you don't want to perform another role, at least such a system could show you where your place in the queue is (are you going to pop when the first bottleneck fills, or will you have to wait until the GF matches its 5th instance?).
Might have the bonus of encouraging some of the more flexible DPS to learn new roles as well.
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This works really well as a healer, not so much as a dps.
Also, the melee are complete idiots if they stand there and let your bubble stun them (unless your teammates are dpsing them, in which case that bubble mezz won't help you), good dps wait for the bubble pop (including the pt who has zero reason to be in melee range...) and cc again as you start to sprint away; 30% damage reduction while stunned is nice, but it won't save you from semi-decent opponents who know how to counter your setup.
I get the average player is just that, average, but there is a very strong misconception that everyone in solo queue is a complete idiot and won't know how to counter these utilities.
By the time I sprint away I'll be whitebarred (unless the PT is smart and uses carbonize--but that stun is a full GCD shorter and even if he's smart and strafes away while pulling me, it makes that stun that much easier to eat). Many aren't that smart, but tbh the utilities I take are meant to counter the kind of mindless pull-n-gank crap that made full corruption sorc arena healing so disgusting pre 3.0. For that, my setup is extremely effective. It can be counterplayed but it at least gives me a chance to fight back instead of getting mindlessly stunned and globaled.
There were a couple of powertechs on my server who know of what you speak and could make my life a living hell--but they left the game when Bioware dumped 8v8 ranked.
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I faced 4 sages with 1 pt, 1 jug, 2 sorcs in a solo ranked today and won. Of course when facing any 4 of the same class you will have trouble facing the comp. the trick to defeating sorcs is focus fire and cc.. When the sorc stuns himself switch to the next target and eat at their health. Always make sure to carry a grenade for when the force barrier ends so you can negate the added shield+ uninterruptible buff. After that it is possible to make the specs scatter and be picked off 1v1.
A good pt can take a sorc down to 50% health in a couple globals by himself with a good pull. By timing this with other burst specs you can destroy a sorc so quick he won't realize he should have used his barrier earlier.
IMO specs don't outclass Pts,Jugs, and assassins, and I see plenty of all of these classes in the ranked scene. At least enough to counter the sorcs. Marauders can be competitive if they are skilled
I think the main point of this thread for any dev reading should be this:
Nerf Op/scoundrel!
Actually, speaking as sorc healer here, I take bubblestun and the 30% DR while stunned utilities. Those two utilities in combination (I try to ALWAYS keep myself bubbled) are excellent as an anti-PT defense.
Pulling me and stunning me at the start of an arena is just going to result in my little bubble popped, maybe about 20% of my health gone, with you bubblestunned (and any melee who joined you in a "sorc marked, I pull, you gank" instagib attempt likewise bubblestunned), and me waiting out said stun while you clutch your eyeballs, blinded by the bubble pop. At the end, I sprint away with a whitebar, unless you used carbonize--but if you did I will come out of my stun earlier than you will come out of my bubblestun and I'll be able to sprint further back towards my team, all the while using my newfound instaheals and laughing all the way (roaming mend is awesome). The net result is that a team who counts on a PT to force me to pop my cooldowns early will be left empty-handed as I will still have them available for later.
If you want to pull-n-gank me, it's far better for you to wait and try to catch me off-guard when my little bubble has popped elsewhere but I still have the deionized debuff. But that's probably what you meant by a "good pull."
I just want the PTs out there to know that sorcs can set up their utilities to counter your pulls+stuns (I find bubblestun+fadeout+shapeless spirit to be quite the unholy trinity myself). DR while stunned also helps for taking some of the edge off dat burst--if I'm stunned the burst will be shaved off a bit; if I'm not stunned I'm h2f. The times a PT pops my bubble 2 seconds before deionized ends, I'm trying to get around LOS, the PT yanks me back just as Deionized expires, I rebubble midair, the PT gets the back to back bubblestun, and I sprint away are just exquisite.
Some skill may be required to make me pay for healing to full.(Granted if my teammates are so worthless that I'm effectively 1v4ing the arena, I can only prolong the match so long by keeping myself up as long as possible, but I'm still going to make you pay for trying to kill me as much as I possibly can, that's just the way I roll.)
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We definitely have quite a few systems in place to try to stop this type of thing and we are always continuing to improve them. As you can imagine, those spammers are doing the same.
What is really important is that you always report them when you see them. It helps us immensely in tracking and removing that spam!
-eric
What is really important is that report functionality also include, WITH THE SAME CLICK:
1. Report sent to Bioware (what presently exists)
2. Automatic ignore
3. All previous messages from the reported spammer deleted from your chat window
All of that needs to be bundled into a single action. Presently ignoring is a separate action, and 3 is downright impossible. (3 ia also necessary as spammers can scroll off legitimate chat that you might be looking for, such as LFG advertisements in fleet).
Presently because report spam and ignore are split into two different actions, the temptation is to go straight for the ignore without necessarily bothering to report. The spam is the first interruption to our gameplay, ignoring it the second, and reporting it the third. We just want to be done with it and if we're doing anything other than waiting around on fleet....well you know.
EVE Online combines all three functions into one "REPORT ISK SPAMMER" click. Coincidentally, isk spam (which would be credit spam here) is practically nonexistent there. I played EVE when REPORT ISK SPAMMER was implemented into the game in its present form, and overnight the spam dropped by an order of magnitude. Within a week the spam had dropped by two full orders of magnitude--yes I mean literally by 99%. By the time SWTOR launched, I would see spam in EVE Online only about once in five months, and EVE was what I played right up until SWTOR launch.
The solution is simple. Yet when I brought it up at the Seattle Community Cantina event, the devs were...surprisingly blind to it.
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There's a difference between the ability to gear quickly and the ability to gear at all. And I highly doubt I'll bother with PVE since Bioware fubared this up so badly, at least until we go through another tier or two of PVP gear that will allow for entering PVE content with properly itemized gear.
Once upon a time, we could earn the PVE set bonus from 4 man content, but that was long ago taken away. (I'm in a small guild, so this matters to me). As I didn't have the ability to get 8 friends in the proper role online at the same time then (we all have different schedules), I pretty much went to PVP only.
I only returned to PVE around the time Bioware made pugging ops/GF/etc "worth it" for people who were severely behind the gear/mechanics knowledge curve to learn. I think that was somewhere around 2.6ish. I managed to get one of my toons decked out in min-max 180s (save only Arkanian level set bonus armorings, and Underworld left side), and a second toon close, before 3.0 dropped.
Now that Bioware standardized the PVP and PVE set bonuses, I LOLed. Back to PVP, because PVE comm gear is so worthless! (I literally spent my overcapped basic comms on my companions, and only bought the offhand for myself). I probably will wait for PVP gear to hit 180 before PVEing any group content again, as properly itemized 180>crap 186. For 174s that might still hold true, but I'm not a theorycrafter and I haven't done the math.
Oh yeah, and this brings us to the whole issue of PVErs in warzones to get better gear than they could get from the PVE content they are capable of running for one reason or another (first we had molecular stab REing, which was nerfed, then in the 2.0 patch cycle we had the PVP relics which were damn close to BiS, probably 3rd best and damn sight better than anyone who didn't HM/NiM raid DP could get). Fortunately I've been more a PVPer than PVEr since 1.2, but I have to deal with all the PVE scrubs in my warzone who just want a set bonus and something without high endurance on it now...
Congratulations Bioware, you've driven this casual PVEr away from all that content you worked so hard to write (save the solo modes that will at least allow me to see the expansion in the meantime). But hey, in the meantime, by making PVE so crappy, I guess you at least saved PVP.
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Depends partly on your preferred form of PVP. If you still prefer 8v8, the queues are reasonably busy though they start to taper usually around midnight-ish Pacific. If you're an East Coaster, that should be reasonably late for you.
Ranked, however, won't be nearly as active as you're accustomed to. Usually either kickball is organized somewhat in advance or rumors of ranked pops spread like wildfire on the fleet--it might take a bit of effort to get the latter started.
General attitudes here are probably more chill. We have our players who like to stroke their egos to be sure, but they are probably a significantly smaller percentage of the population than you're used to (then again, I've never been on Pot5). The unfortunate corollary is that the mean and median player is probably a bit...derpier than you're used to. (Especially for, but not limited to, objectives)
Also, I should mention that open world PVP mechanics are different here. Here, people aren't flagged unless either they choose to be, they group with someone who is flagged and buff or heal the flagged player, or they were tricked into flagging (such as a stealther running through a PVEr's AOE attack).
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Woow, THANK YOU!
Indeed I use that feature extremely rarely, ..there is always something you learn, every day...
thx again!
You're welcome. It can be confusing (especially at first!) as some categories seem to be duplicate, which is why I took the time to give all the details. There's more than one line for "Toys," for example....
Edit: I forgot to check up on Sprint last night, but you will have to put it back somewhere on your quickbar from the Abilities window. Open your abilities (the page that lists all of them by category). Sprint should be somewhere under General if I'm not mistaken--but I'm not logged into the game right now. You can drag and drop it into your quickbar, assuming your quickbar isn't locked.
)
-- I think we can conclude I have the capacity to L2P specific fights that I previously hadn't done.
Freaking goldspammers!!!
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by AdrianDmitruk
So last night a wild unicorn appeared!
I actually received a message in my chat window that read:
You are no longer ignoring [Gold Spammer 1].
You are no longer ignoring [Gold Spammer 2].
Which meant that Bioware actually did manage to ban a couple spammers, and I was actually online to see the wrath.
Now if only they'd give us one click report+ignore+purge spammer's existing messages from our chat window like EVE Online has...