First I don't PVP, but I belong to a large guild (both PVP and PVE) where members have been fairly stoic and weathering changes with little complaint. But on our internal forums, I am now seeing complaints about the lack of PVP rewards, people leaving losing teams, and the time it takes to get gear. My feeling is that if these folks are beginning to complain, something is not right.

There is some good advice in this thread. The ops group I run with is still trying for first HM SOA kill, can get to P3 most of the time now, and once got him to 3% -- just gotta keep trying.

I am holding off judgement until 1.2. I have a feeling the code bases for live and 1.2 diverged to a point where they did not feel like taking the time/resources of pushing ops-level bug fixes that are in 1.2 into live. If 1.2 releases, and most of the EV bugs are still in there, then I give up hope on Bioware ever fixing them.

Ooops....thanks for the information. I am a healer and have not been the one responsible for destroying these -- will pass on the information and try it tonight.

We were attempting SOA on hardmode last night, and wiped a few times (resetting the instance each time before the next attempt) and progressing further into fight as we got better at dealing with the two lightning balls but then the following mechanic stopped our progress. In phase 2, he started doing an AOE attack in addition to his regular attack (this was not our first night at trying hardmode SOA, and this was the first time we saw this). What triggers this? Somebody in the raid said this was a nightmare mode mechanic. We tried resetting the instance, switching leaders, etc, but he kept doing this. BTW, we always kill all of the pylon devices during transition between phases. Thanks.

What I see are rakata-geared raiders with infernal titles clearing 1.2 story-mode ops that drop rakata. So, they are over-geared for the content being cleared. They have yet to beat any of the hard-mode 1.2 ops bosses. I have also yet to see these same raiders go back and attempt nightmare mode EV/KP with the new nerfs, as they are too busy testing the new bosses. I have yet to see columni-geared raiders clearing the 1.2 story-mode ops. There is not enough data yet to say the new nerfs are just fine and dandy.

My opinion in difficulty level: I am not a tester on PTS; I run with a hard-mode EV/KP guild group and assist new guild members with normal-mode EV/KP. I appreciate the posters in this thread questioning the difficulty level of story-mode 1.2 ops in terms of being overtuned for PUGs (which I believe is the target according to BW statements). I believe that there should be raiding progression that is accessible by those types of groups. I think the current difficulty level of normal KP/EV is about right for PUGs except for pylons and infernal council, which is too easy. I appreciate the fights with mechanics like SOA or the Fabricator bot. I don't care about the difficulty for hard-mode/nightmare mode -- it can be whatever is needed to keep competitive raiders from complaining about difficulty. The rest is speculation: I think what has happened is that Bioware is very sensitive to all of the complaints from competitive raiders about how 'easy' hard-mode/nightmare mode EV/KP was, and they determined to ensure that when 1.2 ops went live on PTS, that there would be no guild group that could just 1-or-2 shot the bosses in story-mode, so made them very difficult and probably out of reach of PUGs (or even organized raiders in just columi which I have not seen attempt the fights yet). I personally don't think Bioware is going to reduce the difficulty level of these fights until they have nightmare mode rolled out for 1.2 because they don't want to hear competitive raiders complaining about things being too easy. When they release nightmare 1.2, then competitive raiders will have two tiers to keep them busy, and at that point I think Bioware will make the 1.2 story-mode more accessible. I think right now that Bioware is simply using the players on PTS as bug testers, and will not retune anything until it all goes live (which should be interesting when that happens as I am not sure how the general raiding population will react to the current difficulty level). If the current story-mode difficulty level requires rakata-gearing, then it is just a hoop to jump through to get to hard-mode since the story-mode drops rakata. I am interested in seeing columi geared raiders attempt these fights.

FYI, it has been reported in PTS threads that Corellia dailies do not give blackhole commendations, that only the Corellia weekly does (gives 6).

Great information! The dev communication in this game keeps getting better and better. You may not like what they are saying, but they are communicating (both ways!) -- much appreciated. Down with haters.

Well, Bioware has said they do hope to make nightmare mode really a lot harder for the upper tier raiders (after 1.2?), so they are making an attempt to please that segment of the player population and at least recognize some economic value to trying to keep them. Whether or not Bioware will be successful at that remains to be seen. It will be interesting to see how the new nightmare ops (once released) affects posts in this forum.

Are the final boss drops from Hard Mode flashpoints working as intended? Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a higher than expected probability of a piece dropping for a class NOT in the group when the group does not have all class types in it.

Haha, by the tone of your posts I am sure that the vast majority would be perfectly ok with not raiding with you --- just saying.

Well, its official from Bioware (Guild Summit) -- Destiny loot sucks and will be junked in update 1.2.

Don't expect anything to change. If they could have fixed it easily by now, they would have. It seems that that Soa fixes takes more resources than they are willing to spend. I am not sure if Soa will ever be fixed, to be honest. Right now, most players are getting around these bugs and that seems to be good enough for Bioware. Bioware is currently focusing the majority of its resources on 1.2. When that comes out, there will be more bugs introduced in the new content, and they will focus on that and also on the new content 1.3. They have made content so easy to progress through that they are in a race to produce new content to keep subscribers, and don't have time/resources to fix old content, especially content that players find workarounds for.

The Quesh world boss at 300,200 is also a good training dummy -- see how much damage you can do to it in 5 minutes (it starts at 800K).

Ah crud. I was hoping to get a post in before livnthedream jumped on the OP with some elitest bullcrap telling the OP how to play the game, how to post, and essentially why the OP should never complain about this topic. But, I see that I was too late.

Very interesting theory...... seems to fit what I have seen. Lets assume that what BW really meant to do was: Inq = 23% Inq Gear BH = 23% BH Gear Agent = 23% Agent Gear War = 23% War Gear + 8% Random so that the more of a particular class you had in a group, the higher chance you had of something dropping for your class. But instead, the coding is goofed up and instead has the quoted percentages. I guess we will never know and threads like this will continue.

Heh, every time I see posters that say this, I LOL. Lets see -- I am in a large guild, leveled to 50 while grouping with guildies. So, now I want to run an OP. So I say, "Hey guildies, lets get some new 50s together and do an ops -- we don't know the fights, and we have green gear, but lets not do a normal mode ops, that is too EASY (at least, that is what the forum posters say). Lets start out in hard mode ops!!!". Or alternatively, now that I am 50, I will suddenly start grouping with PUGs for normal mode ops because normal mode ops is too easy and the guild thus does not run them (NOT). My guild has about six different 8-man ops groups, two of which are currently doing nightmare (my ops group is on HM ops). ALL of them started out in normal mode ops, and all new ops groups will do the same. Why would you use PUGs for them and not guild groups? How do you learn the fights if you are a new 50 unless you want to be carried by a HM ops team? Of course, normal mode ops is intended for guild raiding (and of course, for PUGs). To say otherwise is mind-boggling. And to stay on topic, I agree with the original poster, a change to the normal mode ops system is needed. Next time I am in a Normal mode ops group that is trying to gear somebody, I will use the trick of exiting area before the chest is opened or the boss is downed to avoid being assigned yet another piece of gear that I don't need.

Taral V is the easiest (if you skip the bonus boss) -- I am not sure why you are having problems with the droid, your gear sounds plenty good enough. You could also try False Emperor (skip the bonus boss) -- that is fairly easy as well. After that it gets a bit tough. In Maelstrom if you can get past the guy with the eye (he has a tight enrage time) the other bosses are not bad. The trick to Ironfist in Essels is to always interrupt his headshot -- generally requires at least two people rotating interrupts. Also, normal mode ops is by far faster in terms of getting geared instead of HM FPs if you can get the 8-folks that is required (do EV normal mode -- KP is a bit tougher).

You are observing what lots of people have observed (including the groups that I run HMs with) and it is my belief that something is screwed up. It is basically a running joke with the groups I regularly join. Yet, others say 'random is random' and claim all is fine. I am going to use my weekly dev lotto question on this next week as in "Is HM FP end-boss loot working as intended as many have observed that a majority of the end-boss drops seem to be for classes not in the group." My personal experience has been about 50% smuggler (no smugger in group), and the rest about equal split between JK/Trooper, with Cousular willpower gear being a very small chance (~5 %).

This would be fine -- the only thing I hate is wasted time which equals to wasted loot (gear dropping from final boss in HM FP for class not in group, or duplicate gear in normal mode ops). At least in the above scheme each token would go to somebody that needed it. My normal ops group is at HM ops now, but also taking new guild members and part-time ops groups members through NM ops -- last night I got my fourth chest piece, yay, and the new guy who needed stuff hardly got anything.

Are there any plans to change/tweak the loot options for normal mode ops, such as either add looting options other than destiny loot or allow players in the operation to pass gear to other players in the operation in a short time period.

Well, at least they fixed master loot. Of course, I guess we will have to take their word for it as I doubt if the current players on the PTS will be able to test this to a significant degree.

How can the people that do PUGs for normal mode ops not be the same people that do PUGs for hard mode ops? That is completely illogical. People get gear from normal mode ops, then move to hard mode ops. Since hard mode has no different mechanics, just requires better gear, then if PUGs can do normal mode, they can do hard mode. And if you have PUGs doing hardmode, then by Bioware/your arguments, they must need protection from ninjas. BTW, I agree that it is mostly guild groups that do hard mode ops. And I will also say, that I bet it is mostly guild groups that also do normal mode ops. It is rare to see anybody without a guild tag, and people complain all the time about not being able to find groups, so this does not magically change at 50 where it is now 'easy' to form a PUG for a normal mode op. If more guild groups than PUGs are doing normal mode ops, then this 'auto-assign' only option is protecting a minority of the players. Of course, without metrics, neither of us can prove our statements. Yes, for option A, the loot option via voting would have to be set before the first boss pull. So, to fix option B, let loot be tradeable only for 15 minutes and only for people who where in the instance at the time of the boss kill. There, fixed. I now like option B better (tradeable loot for short time period) since it can be added on top of the existing mechanic. Look, I understand why destiny loot was added. But that does not mean that it can't be tweaked to the address concerns of players who don't like it, while still protecting PUGs from ninjas. I am retiring from the thread. Good luck responding to all of the other players who don't like the current looting options.

This sounds like what used to happen before they 'fixed' it, correct? What used to happen was that if the tank would get stuck in a mind trap, and the 2nd tank did not taunt fast enough, then Soa would despawn, or if 2nd tank taunted and then also got mind-trapped, then Soa would despawn. Then they 'fixed' it, but that caused Soa to switch its aggo table very often. Now, they fixed the fix, and it is back to the previous bug state? Weird, almost sounds like they reverted the code.