- Armor debuffs don't stack anymore = slight dps loss. - Tank dmg was nerfed for both Juggs/PT's. Not sure about Sins. - It is EV/KP and people usually goof off and get lazy in there. One of the 3 possibly?

Going to agree with the above. Yes, it is annoying. Unplayable, not by a long shot. I am West Coast playing on an East Coast server and I manage perfectly fine. There are lag spikes, it does suck, but you can still clear the content with a few annoyances.

I got the two BM trinkets, and swapped out all my augs except 2 because I couldn't find any more absorb augs. Stats fully buffed with Exotech Stim: Health - 24985 Armor - 8760 Dmg Reduction - 53.78% Defense - 18.03% (375 rating) Shield - 56.08% (653 rating) Absorb - 61.71% (625 rating) - also not including the 8% gain with 4 stack heat screen. This is about as close to min/max I can get having: Squishiness 0.2375 SigmaSquish 0.2030 Spikeyness 1.4214 All other combos are such a tiny improvement, in all reality I think this is the best it will get.

A good goal to start out with is 15% defense, 50 shield, 50 absorb. That is easily gained from HM FP's, HM EV/KP, and Story EC. Once you get into the min max stage, you will be going for much higher in all 3.

Updated my post. I have a 10/4 split Def/Absorb augs.

My thoughts are for end game Ops only so I disagree and here is my reasoning: - It is trash. No one cares about trash in the long run. - 5 secs shorter cooldown on a 45 sec ability is a wasted talent point. Grapple is used for trolling my other tanks in the guild in EC, not really for easier crowd control because we blow through it all insanely fast. - Again, 1.5 sec shorter cd on an 18 sec cooldown ability is pointless. It is essentially 1 GCD less. - With the changes in threat, AoE threat, etc there is zero reason to have those shorter cooldown, especially grapple as you will want to be leaping as much as possible to gain the free flame sweep. - The slow component. Where does trash sprint away from you, or run at all? Most trash stays there until it is dead, so there should be zero reason to have a slow component now, coupled with the threat changes. Even if you are a fresh 50 and run HM FP's all day long every day for weeks, I still don't see the benefits of having those points spent there.

Simple fix idea since you guys couldn't fix it your way. Remove all the trash from between the bosses for guilds that have cleared 4/4 at least 3 times already. Then we can switch instances all day long with no worries. 8P I joke, I kid. In all seriousness, why would there be a switching of instances in the first place. Have a set cap in multiples of 8, and don't switch instances. So an instance could be 64 player cap perse before a new instance is opened up. Any combination of 8/16 man groups make up this cap but here is the rub. It is a dynamic set that if 56 people are already in the instance and a 16 man group wants in, they will create a new instance. If an 8 man wants in, they get into that one. Make the instances have a timeout factor of 5 mins as well. That "slot" is held for 5 mins. This allows for wipe recovery where people are repairing outside the instance, that way their spot isn't taken by some other guild going in. In theory, this shouldn't be too hard to implement.

Didn't you hear? This is the new Nightmare mode version of EC. Instant 30% packet loss and random lag spikes throughout each encounter. All kidding aside, yes the lag is bad and made fights like Vorgath and Kephess pretty difficult because it would seem to want to lag at critical times of Overload casting, or Gift/Breath. We had a no joke 3 second lag spike on Stormcaller, but it was right at the beginning so all was ok. You think 3 seconds isn't a long time, but just take a bit and count it out. It is a big deal. We still cleared it all in one night, and would have had NP down as well but Mox just beat us to Voss.

Reserving this for a future post when I have time to write it out.

No. I compared logs weeks ago and spent millions in credits changing mods around with accuracy and back out to see a difference. Here is what I noticed: - I was more squishy as a tank because I had those stupid 51 accuracy mods instead of shield in its place. - The amount I missed on the same end game bosses week to week in my comparison was less than 15 misses total over the course of the ENTIRE raid night in 16 man EC HM. 15 misses that included 4 bosses, and all the trash in surrounding it. Accuracy is pointless.

I disagree with the spec choice for Vanguard now, but this is a personal choice/nitpick, etc. With the changes they made to our overall damage output and subsequent threat increase, it is clear what our roles are. Removing the stat points from Shockstrike/Iron Fist and throwing them into Endurance makes sense now, even if the Endurance gain isn't super huge. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#8010cZG0GrdoroGRZMcb.1 It appears to be a better spec choice IMHO for end game PvE. Tactical Tools and Neural Overload are pointless talents so was very confused as to why you had points in them.

Wanted to clarify on this further for you. With the AE threat to Rail shot, etc, it is only based off the initial hit. If you miss Rail shot on your initial target, Ion isn't spread. However if you hit, there are no accuracy checks for Ion on each individual mob thereafter. It applies a blanket so to speak. As said above, Accuracy is useless. From a spec standpoint, I even took out the 2 points in Iron Fist for endurance. Since they nerfed our DPS anyway as it is not needed for threat, I wanted to see how much of a difference it really was. In the end, not much difference in dmg comparing same fights from 1.2/1.3.

BIS for tanks now: War Hero/Battlemaster Tanking relics. Both are HUGE static increases of Defense/Shield. Then throw your augments to be full absorb. It appears that a hard cap of absorb sits at around 70%, or the DR is so steep at that level that points are basically meaningless. Shield is closer to a hard cap fo 68% while Defense is just slightly above 30%. I did the math last night while instructing my secondary tank (Juggernaught) on how each affects the other with regards to avoidance/mitigation and how easy it is to heal. We will be collecting logs to compare with our existing logs so people can see actual numbers behind it. However, 1st impressions last night in 16 EC HM with the new changes was VERY IMPRESSIVE. I normally use Energy Shield on Toth's Berserk, didn't have to at all last night. Firebrands hits were a joke, and the only time I got low was one unlucky crit from his frontal. Vorgath, same thing, hardly any incoming damage except for his dot that our healers cleanse immediately. The real test was Kephess. He used to hit like a truck. Not anymore. Last night my stats were (no BM trinkets yet) with buffs/stim: Armor - 8760 Damage Reduction - 53.78% Defense - 19.03% (I put in a 10/4 split of defense/absorb augs) Shield - 53% Absorb - 57% With the relics and me switching out some of the defense augs for absorb augs, it will be a pretty picture indeed as I won't lose much defense at all, but gain the extra shield rating to put me at 60%, and the absorb will hit 70% on the mark. It won't get any better than that.

I had a lengthy conversation last night with my secondary guild tank, a Juggernaught, over this. We did the math, calculated out the best stat weights point for point, etc. What we ended up finding is that minimal changes in augments for instance (switching 4-5 defense to absorb) made a TINY amount of difference. The real difference came with adding the PvP tanking relics, combined with swapping out all the defense augs to absorb, etc. As it sits today, shooting for anything above 25% defense (with talents/stims) is a good goal and start stacking shield/absorb ratings to go with it. The soft cap people like to talk about is 50/50, but in reality the real hard dr curve is much higher. When you start to get a ton of BIS items, we can help you min/max a little more.

You should now be using the PvP tanking relics with the static 103 defense and 103 shield, unless of course you are War Hero.

It isn't being released with 1.3, and when they are ready to "test", it will be on the PTS for guilds to test and debug. Not sure where you "heard" your info, but this is straight from a Dev at the EA thing recently.

...and the torch has been passed. 8(

I wonder if the "fix" will be the reversal of trash skipping. Not sure why they changed that in the first place..."oh no, they skipped 3 trash pulls total, got to LOCK THAT DOWN AND WASTE MORE TIME!"

Kephess can be done with 2 tanks, we have done it. It is a pain and just easier with 3.

Campaign Boots only drop off Nightmare Pilgrim currently. They haven't changed the loot table. You might be confused with boots dropping that were Blackhole?

No one should be complaining about open world pvp. Same faction griefing is the problem for most. 1 person, same faction can wipe the entire raid multiple times.

Happened to us tonight once, but since then we always kept a person in to "hold" the instance. Once we did that, no more issues.

Same faction can easily grief this, which is the problem. I don't think anyone cares if on a PvP server and it is contested by the opposite faction. That is acceptable. But when the same faction can easily grief it, that is where the line needs to be drawn IMHO. Don't get me wrong, I miss the days of EQ where everything was open world boss and trains were a necessity. However, games have evolved since then and there is no need to have this boss allowed to be griefed by same faction.

All I can say is play better. I did an 8m HM pug 2 weeks ago, all melee as DPS. 2 Marauders, 1 Sin, 1 Powertech. 3 shot Zorn by switching boss positions each odd % phase change, and telling the Marauders not to leap when Toth did and instead just wait. We had to stop dps for the stupid rocks anyway, so they can hold their crotch.

? Please explain what you mean. Are you saying you found a bug, or are you saying your person up top clicks too many things so you hit enrage over and over?