That's mb, I forgot that Thundering Blast was an autocrit. However since the title and thread simply refer to "Force Potency" and "Surge" damage and made no mention of auto-crit, I didn't put 2 and 2 together. It might be the way TB is coded since all other Auto-Crits are buff dependent (i.e. on your character's side) whereas TB is dependent on your opponent (i.e. it's not a crit until it hits an opponent).

There's nothing to bump... Critical RATING increases your multiplier damage. Force Potency only increases Critical Chance and doesn't affect your rating. The only time it may affect your multiplier is if your Critical Chance is >40% and if the game takes Potency as now being an "auto-crit", however the notes are worded ambiguously and I haven't gotten round to testing it yet.

Actually, the more amusing thing is that PvPers are the ones who were whining from the start about the lack of individualised rewards that were specific to PvP and Bioware granted their wishes when Ranked PvP rewards dropped and they had the first Rancor in the game. The issue at hand here is that the "apex" of PvP rewards are given in the form of unique looking Legacy Gear, previously this wasn't the case... the original Victorious Set was simply a BoP set given to those who qualified. Legacy Gear for PvP and PvE is pretty much considered the de-facto gear to have, especially with the advent of the Costume system. However whilst the Victorious Armor and Weapons have their counterparts in the Dread Master gear set, the Furious and upcoming Predacious set do not since Bioware decided not to release NiM modes of either new Operations (and probably won't). At the end of the day, the fact that PvPers can get rewards which have such large utility as well as "prestige" (unless Bioware change how future rewards are handled, nobody will be able to obtain Victorious, Furious and Predacious gear sets in the future), whilst the only "exclusive" PvE content are the "Conqueror" and "Deposer" titles from the DF/DP Nightmare Buff... any competent raider and their dog can now stroll through NiM TFB/SnV/DF/DP for their Helix Hyperpod/Titan-6 Containment Unit/Wings of the Architect/Dread Enhanced Rancor, all of which are still obtainable and much more easily than they were previously, diminishing any value that they have as rewards.

Just have Cannon Barrage come back during the transition .

I don't think they've stated the latter, but iirc they did state that the increased difficulty was intended to try and prolong the lifespan of relevant content when the issue was brought up on the PTS.

Except you don't *need* to kill Revan... you just want to. But apparently not enough to put the time in though.

Unfortunately it's one of the first responses thrown out because... i don't know... style points or something. I'd love for you to explain how it exactly qualifies as an elitist jerk mentatlity... I'm not here judging players as being "bads" nor discouraging them from trying content because they "don't belong". I don't really give a damn who plays the content, but that's the difficulty it's set at and if you want to down it then it'll highlight where and how you need to improve, be it class' rotation, awareness or simply just attitude. Cool story... so just because *you* and others don't want to put the time in, somehow that justifies Bioware catering to your whim? I'm here in exactly the same position, putting in the hours to try and get Revan down and rather than ************, whining and saying that it's too difficult, I relish the challenge because I know that our group is capable of rising up to it. If this one boss isn't worth your time in order to learn the fight, then don't do that boss... if you're willing to pass on EV, KP, EC, TFB, SnV, DF or DP every week, then 1 boss out of 10 isn't really going to make much of a difference. Just go down Revanite Commanders, /ExitArea and go kill "[Weekly] The Enemy Within" (so you at least feel like you've completed the Operation) and leave the people that are willing to put in the time to go about their thing.

Fact is that times change and if you could clear all HM content before, with a chunk of good work, then surprise surprise, you can clear HM content now, with a chunk of good work. Maybe it's more work than you're used to, but if you or your team lose faith in your/their ability to down said content, then that's *your* fault, not the content's. And what happens with the players that find Story Mode too hard and struggle through? For those that don't have the DPS to down Underlurker or Torque? Should we further nerf those encounters to appeal to more people? People always want something to be able to best a challenge and thus "prove" that they're good players, but more and more people are unwilling to put in more effort than they expect in order to achieve results. There are *always* going to be Teams that are stuck in between Tiers and at the end of the day, those Teams need decide what sort of Team they want to be, one that simply gives up because they're not good enough or one that keeps persevering to finally get the kill. Or they'll just join new guilds that *can* clear the content and thus the status of "SM/HM/NiM" Tier guilds will just re-stabilise. In reality what you're really saying there is "I don't think a player of your skill level can perform up to the standard i *think* we need in order to kill this boss within a reasonable timeframe". Which when you break it down is either one of two considerations: a) That you know that even if his class were played perfectly, that you would still wipe. Which as mentioned in the thread, is not actually about "viability" of a class so much as "optimal"; of which there are no non-viable classes, simply sub-optimal ones. b) That you believe he *does* have the ability to defeat said encounter, but the time he'd take to optimise his play would hamper your group's "progression" and so you're willing to trade out for a different class where he wouldn't have to play as close to optimal. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how much of a dick you're willing to be for the sake of "progression". Except here we're talking about a Team/Mindset that wishes to clear the content as quickly as possible regardless of any other factors. At which point you're always going to get "cheese" comps, be it the double Hybrid Sin comp. vs. NiM Brontes to stacking Snipers for 16m progression. People are always going to try and "maximise" their chances, but that's not the fault of the content difficulty, more the attitude towards clearing it. It's only a problem if we regard it as one. Everyone's so fixated on the whole Revan BH-cheese that they're either unwilling to put enough time into progressing with a standard comp. or like you said, would just prefer to funnel gear and experience from the cheese comp into their standard group, minimising the time needed to kill it with that group. That's not so much "balancing" as it is simply maximising efficiency of raiding time. Also, we're basically talking about 1 encounter out of 10... people are progressing through at various rates of the other 9/10, but because 1 encounter is being cleared by cheese comps, it's a sign that the entire tier of content needs to be nerfed?

I agree, but with regards to previous HM's being easier, clinging onto a previous tier's progression rate as an attempt to judge your "current" ability is really just setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. I mean noone really cares if you got that World First Soa kill at launch if you're not able to clear SM Rav now... at the end of the day, people should be judging guilds not by how well they used to do pre-3.0, but how well they're doing post-3.0 and if you're not doing as well as you'd like? Then make an effort to work on that, instead of trying to ask for the content to be easier (because at the end of the day, there's always storymode if you want easier). And as for tuning content down because there's the potential for NiM to make it even harder... I think that people vastly overrate the difficulty of content when they're wiping on it. The amount of times I've witnessed first-hand multiple wipes on a boss week after week and then the week after it finally dies? Bam! One Shot! Did the boss' difficulty suddenly drop in between? Usually not... but the confidence gained, even if it is subconsciously, that people *are* doing the right thing can make all the difference.

I think the notion of labelling Guilds/Teams as "SM-tier / HM-tier / NiM-tier" is a problem within itself... if you can't clear the HM level of current content, then maybe you're no longer of that tier? That's not a jab at the Guilds or the Teams in question, but originally it was the content itself that determined whether or not Guilds were "NiM-capable" or w.e. but suddenly when the "majority" of guilds can't clear said content (which has always been the case tbh), it's now the content that needs to be adjusted to fit into this plan. I get that everybody hates wiping on content, but simply labelling it as "too difficult" is taking the easy way out. The attitude that content needs to be nerfed instead of people learning their class to its full potential, taking more responsibility in boss fights or even optimising strategy for their group is what's lacking. At the end of the day, what kills raid groups isn't content that's too hard, but the lack of trust between raid members to count on them executing mechanics properly... everyone thinks that they should be able to do the content but the others are holding them back, so rather than simply deal with those issues they'd prefer to blame the difficulty because at least that way they don't have to act like a ****** person to someone else.

I *do* get what your saying and i'm not saying that's it's not an issue. However if at the end of the day if you're failing a DPS check/enrage due to "lack of execute fluff", 99% of the time you can probably put it down to other imbalances (AoE/Single Target, Sustained/Burst, Melee/Ranged) or simply underperforming in general.

If the game's not going to process and make a mob immune quickly enough then you're going to have far more issues with getting the transitions to work. How is it worse to have slightly reduced DPS on a boss compared to potentially bugging out a fight within 2-3 gear tiers? Like I said, it's not that the Execute phase is completely missing, just that it's not as long. Certain fights are always going to favour one set of classes over another... AoE over single target, burst over sustained... and there is no fight out there where it's "meaningless" to take an Execute class because they're "not useful". At the end of the day here we're talking potentially Cora (and only Ruugar who leaves at 9%) and M&B... that's 2/10 bosses on the current content tier and in terms of past operations it's the TFB and... Annihilation Droid? Is this really *that* big a deal?

The point is that it's not like the Execute phase doesn't exist... it's there, it's just not as long / not as much of a proportion of the fight that the OP would like. And yes, in theory making the Boss go immune at 1HP/1% works well on paper, but there are numerous times where you can DPS through such mechanics. Like I said, it's better to accept that DPS will be lowered through such means than having people ***** about having to *not* kill a Boss just so the fight can progress.

Sounds like the perfect way to start a conversation, ignore any logical input that counteracts your own views and only listen to people that agree with you? If i'm (hopefully) not employed by Bioware then you're (hopefully) not a Politician? The only "solution" you have to your issues is to take 80% of their HP (since they run away ~20%) and then effectively make that their "100%" HP. Which means they end up running away at maybe 1-5% HP instead of 20%... the problem there is start running into issues when you can accidentally kill the boss which can either prevent phase changes, push phases too early or just bug out the fight entirely: - Killing any of the Dread Masters in DP Council during penultimate phase during their Channel won't transition into last phase until you push another another. - You can kill the Wealthy Buyer before intended on the Olok fight in SnV - painful. At which point you then have 2 solutions: - Stop DPS on the boss because you don't want to break the fight... whereby people will complain because you know... "how can bioware justify making a Boss you can bug out because you kill it". - Give the boss more HP as "buffer" so it's harder for them to kill the boss... whereby people will complain because "how can bioware justify people having lowered DPS because the boss runs away at 20% HP". --- Also, trying to put the onus on an increased Time-to-kill and not DPS is really just swings and roundabouts because TTK has a direct relation to DPS. At the end of the day... if you don't want a fight to take as long, just DPS harder.

What you're basically complaining about is that your DPS numbers are "too low" because you don't have enough of an Execute phase in order to inflate them as your spec has bonuses to under-30%. However at the end of the day, it's just fluffing numbers because if they gave you an extended Execute phase to DPS to 0%, your DPS from 100%->30% would still be the same and all that will have changed will be the number on your parse will be a little higher at the expense of having a longer fight.

I don't understand how you're complaining that Boss Fights / Execute phases aren't longer just so you can pad your DPS numbers more?

TBH even though you're the OP, your post was about as constructive as the Zorz/Aisthesis posts you're calling out. It amounts to nothing more than "Hey guys, stop complaining about those people who are complaining... oh... and try to be more helpful... btw, we managed to down it, it's not really that hard". Either way, we managed to do 16m last night, Olok took ~3 attempts so we could see what people were complaining about and stop people derping. In terms of being "constructive", it all basically amounted to: - Wave 6 - mDPS killed the summoned add and ignored the bodyguards (because Flame Sweep thing OP). - Obfuscate/Pacify, Saber Reflect , Diversion and Tank Def. CD rotation on Artillery and Assault Droids... the latter usually died about halfway through the 2nd Obfuscate (when cast back-to-back).

It's not just the "left" hand side consoles... I just finished a run where we had ~2 or 3 times where the droid would try and fix a healer even though only the right hand console was destroyed. ^^^ As you said... we had it today where we thought a console hadn't been repaired when in fact it had... they just zap the healers.

All this talk of wiping just reminds me of this video: Admittedly the situation was a little different, mechanics were understood, just that the enrage was incredibly tight that it wasn't worth continuing if someone died.

I personally respec to Rage/Focus for Draxus (and Grob and Corruptor). As the previous poster pointed out, it's mainly dependent on how your group is doing... my current guild runs an Annihilation Marauder because we aren't missing the AoE dps. Likewise, another guild I raided with used to have their Sents run Combat. It's really up to which spec they're most comfortable in, you'll probably get the "best" results going from: Focus -> Combat -> Annihilation

So I've recently noticed during Ops there have been times that I've failed to apply a stack of Deadly Saber to the boss when using a valid attacks (be it Annihilate, Dual Saber Throw, Vicious Throw w.e.) I was wondering if it's a known issue? Whilst I don't know the exact cause of the issue, it seems like it (mainly?) occurs when there's another Annihilation Marauder in the group and your stacks seem to interact with one another... I'll experiment more when our Guild's other Marauder logs in later tonight. Either way, it's damn frustrating... I've had times where I still have 1 stack of Deadly Saber and the buff times out.

You were the one that said people didn't understand what you were trying to say and subsequently tried to "explain" it to us. You also tried to make it sound like it wasn't very common because you referred to people doing it on specific conquest weeks in the past. Newsflash - It's happened every week there's been a Group Finder Operation reward... so... every week. Also, all I get from your post is that you're a bit bitter about losing to this guild you alluded to, since if a load of guilds are using this method, there's no need to hint to one specific guild.

You implied that people didn't really understand what you were trying to say, when I think that everyone who replied knew exactly what you were talking about in the first place. Battle of Ilum was a moot point in the face of Esseles spam. Not to mention once again, BoI was repeatable, these are not (to the same extent) a) I don't know what Ops you're trying to run, but: TFB - 45min to clear. SnV - 1 hour if that. DF - 30min DP - 30min b) This was actually linked to point a). I.E. Even if you could solo the Op, you can't just ignore all the mobs. c) The discussion about Alts is pointless. It's like complaining that other guilds have Alts so they can potentially craft more. Or the Daily HM55, HM50, Tactical Daily / Weeklies because they can get them on other characters. Having Alts should convey an advantage. The problem with the FPs was that having Alts made no difference at all because you could farm infinitely on a single character.

What you think is "special"... isn't special. Many guilds have known this since Launch (of Conquest - you thought it was just Week 2? lmao) and like i said, it's simply min-max'ing your time most efficiently *and* it comes with it's own draw backs (not everyone wants/likes to miss out on a Weekly). What you're trying to do is make an analogy to the "Exploit" farming of BT, which is nowhere even close to the issue at hand. a) You can't solo grind the Op over and over again. b) You can't just Rocket Boost / Mount past every single mob in the instance and one shot whatever it is you *do* need to kill. c) You're limited by the number of Alts you have.

With the FPs, it doesn't matter if you have 1 character or 20, you can farm an "infinite" (solely limited by time) amount of Points to the... point where it was inefficient to do anything else. As for whether or not only doing the Last Boss is okay with me? Absolutely, every guild has access to it, it has its own limitations (not every one gets the weekly - from a Conquest PoV, not an issue, but from a Player perspective - yes) and because it's capped by the number of characters/alts you have, it's not an infinite grind like the FPs were. It's no different that what I've seen people recommending about pre-completing the Section X/Oricon Weeklies and not handing them in until today to get the points and the "time" out of the way.