From my perspective, it's more about: a) Making sure you'll have enough Focus going into a PS rotation. b) Making sure you have the right procs going into a PS rotation. c) Making sure stuff goes on CD. So for the first part, for my rotation, I know it takes 5 Focus for the first PS window (PS>BS>BR>TST) and 4 Focus for the 2nd PS window (PS>DS>BR>BS). So as long as I'm at the right Focus, with my OA proc up, I'll just alternate between BR and Strike which keeps me Focus neutral. If i don't have 5 Focus yet, I'll spam Strike if Zealous won't be off CD for a bit. Basicaly: - If you need to build Focus, don't worry about spamming Strike, your PS windows are the majority of your DPS, so make sure you have enough Focus to ensure they're not wasted.

I, for the life of me can't seem to get a DPS increase when using Zen on CD, as opposed to saving Zen for use with MS in a PS window. At first I thought it was to do with the terrible sync timing I had, with Zen constantly lining up with the very end of the 2nd PS window, but even after delaying for a few GCDs so it would line up during a PS window, I'm still seeing the same DPS (compared to saving Zen for MS, if not a little worse). Maybe one of you people can see where I'm going wrong here? I did a 10min parse of each type, no Insp, Clicky Relic or Adrenal (since i'm terrible at using them on CD >.>). Parse #1. (Saving Zen for use with MS during PS Window): http://www.torparse.com/a/536639/time/1388589798/1388590398/0/Damage+Dealt Parse #2. (Using Zen on CD, sometimes delayed to re-sync with PS window): http://www.torparse.com/a/536639/time/1388590488/1388591088/0/Damage+Dealt Both parses have some slight mistakes during them, but they were generally few and far between. Either way, I don't feel that if both parses were done "perfectly" they'd differ significantly from each other anyways.

1) Is it possible to PUG endgame content? Sure, you can usually find some decent groups to match into and it just sounds like you had some bad luck. Maybe try looking at Fleet Spam as if it's like our Server, there are usually groups forming up for 16M content which, to put a little bluntly, can generally get away with being less mechanically coordinated and be carried through by a backbone of stronger players. 2) Read up on all the Operation encounters, watch the videos and make note of the mechanics. Also spend time reading about your Class, via the Class Forums and maybe the DPS Leaderboards thread... sometimes someone will come along with something slightly different and it'll be more to your playstyle / do more DPS. Parse away on a Dummy to see where you fall in terms of DPS and try see if there are areas you can improve. Ultimately it's just know the fights and know your class better and you'll eventually end up somewhere. 3) Guilds are definitely about finding one that suits your playstyle and tastes, ranging from the focused, structured guilds to the more casual, laid back types and anything in between. Don't be afraid to join one, run a little to see how they are and if it's not for you, politely gquit and keep searching. Without a guild, your chances of doing the end-endgame content (NiM TFB/SnV, HM DF/DP) is rather small, but you should be quite easily sorted for the SM 55s just by Group Finder / Fleet / Oricon general chat and there are occasionally PUG Groups for HM TFB/SnV that might be worth going in for experience. 4) You look fine for all the SMs... it's not really so much about Gear as what you can do with it. I wouldn't be fussed about taking a 63 geared player into any SM Op if I knew they understood their class and obeyed mechanics. Conversely, I've been with some 72-geared people who don't seem to have any idea of what "ignore the boss, he's invulnerable right now" meant. If you're looking for optimisations, you could probably drop some Crit into Power and then swap some of your Surge for Acc, but you seem to already be aware of this so your answer is yeah, you're alright for SMs and possibly HMs if the rest of the group is a little better geared.

AKA, if you're going to parse > 3.3k DPS, use the 1.5mil dummy

It was related to the discussion that's going on in the DPS Leaderboard thread in the general forums. Yes, TTK and DPS are basically inverse functions of each other, but in the game, time is an absolute value, so whereas the jump from a 100s TTK -> 90s TTK is only an 11% DPS increase, but when you scale up time to say 300s TTK and 270s TTK is still just a 11% DPS increase, but as a representation of killing a boss, ±30s can mean the difference between hitting/fighting an enrage timer. Now on the flipside, i don't really understand what you're trying to say? So Execute specs won't have an advantage, but going to a 1.5mil dummy will "help them" and will be "better represented"? Unless you're not talking about the debate between the 1mil or 1.5mil hp dummies and are just chiming in on a separate note between the invulnerable dummies, HP dummies and being able to have an execute phase. Regardless, imo the best "representation" of DPS is what they're discussing on the other thread with regards to generating a TTK and then from that reverse-calculating DPS. Mainly because that *is* DPS, rather than a way to translate DPS (as in, if you left it in TTK format). Specific details as what HP dummy, debuffs and minimum time limit can be quibbled away.

The effect on actual dps won't mean a thing, you say that execute specs have an advantage because they'll have more HP under 30% to chew through, but you seem to forget that you can flip it around and say that non-execute specs will have the advantage because they'll have more HP over 30% to chew through. In terms of DPS, the different HP dummies should have no effect apart from helping even out RNG from crit rolls as it's over a longer time. Not enough to eliminate RNG, but it'll help smooth it out. i.e. On both dummies, classes will be doing non-execute DPS for 71% of the fight and execute DPS for 29% of the fight... it all maths out to the same DPS value in the end. Unless you're trying to emulate what Ranick was saying in the other thread, which wasn't related to DPS, but TTK and the use of Time as an absolute measure, which is a different argument altogether.

From my limited understanding of lurking in this thread: Eman and Znih: The execute phase in terms of a TTK will always stay at a constant % since it only triggers at 30%. This is comparable to how the leaderboard currently functions, since everyone will have a % based increase on their TTK/DPS. This will simply be a more accurate way of tracking absolute DPS values for classes. Ranick: Whilst the execute phase of Dummy will result in TTK values shifting by a constant %, the TTK value shouldn't be viewed as we currently view DPS as actual encouters use absolute values for TTK and Time within an encounter is an absolute value itself. For example, taking Ranick's previous numbers: Lightning Sorc, 3k DPS: 5mil - 1666.7sec Anni Mara w/ execute, 3.1k DPS: 5mil -1612.9sec If we take the dummy is similar to an ops boss and it's enrage timer was 1600s, burning through 12s of Enrage is somewhat possible, whilst on the other hand, burning through over a minute of Enrage is practically impossible. So whilst it's still just a % based difference in TTK, the actual amount of time is significant in an ops setting because time itself is absolute within an ops setting.. --- At the end of the day, it seems like you simply disagree on what to standardise (although the end result seems to be rather similar). Other people are looking to standarise the HP of the dummy and replace it when it simply isn't sufficient to produce a reliable DPS score. Ranick wants to standardise the TTK of the dummy and replace the dummy when it can be re-standardised to the original TTK value. --- Was that a correct summary of the arguments?

Surely by extension from your argument you can argue that claiming one (or a few) Ops mechanic messes with our rotation is absurd? I mean the downtime for what you've mentioned is a few seconds. So yes, your stacks may fall off, but in the context of the fight as a whole it's not going to be a significant number unless you're doing something wrong.

Oh, forgot to mention you also need to have Valor 60 just to be able to equip the gear >.<

It's one of the old Inquisitor/Consular PvP Sets. You can't learn the schematic anymore, but there are usually people out there who picked it up at the time. You should look for the Battlemaster's Force-Mystic/Force-Master/Stalker/Survivor set. There's a colour difference between the former and latter two, but i'm not sure which colour option is your picture.

What server/timezone are you in? Have you tried the Guild Recruitment section in your Server's Forums to try and find a suitable guild you could raid with?

It depends what HMs you're looking at. The newer DF/DP Operations will generally require the higher gear req. of 72s, but the older TFB/SnV Operations which actually drop 72s will be more than do-able by people geared in 69s. At the end of the day, the most important thing isn't your gear level, but understanding of the fights, obeying of mechanics and knowledge of how to play your class/spec properly. I'd say look for guilds that aren't necessarily about progression, that have regular casual ops events (i.e. organised 16M SMs) and basically use them to learn the SM fights inside out, once you know those you should have sufficient gear to run the HM versions. Unfortunately trying to pug a HM Op without having been in there is usually quite difficult as most groups aren't willing to take a gamble on a person who won't be able to pick up the mechanics on-the-go after having been explained/seen. Which is usually why it's recommended to try and find a guild group that's willing to be patient and give you time to familiarise yourself with how the encounters are.

^^^^^

Oh i know, But since you're so reliant on your smash, in the event it gets resisted, you'll lose a substantial amount of DPS. Not sure if having a tick of Force Crush resisted will grant you a stack of Shockwave either. Either way, it's always Acc -> 100% before you worry about other stats.

As he said with regards to accuracy. I think you put too much in Surge (since it trades with Acc), i believe that for your gear, you should only need around 85% Crit Multiplier? (70% Base/Items + 15% from Tree). Depending on how good you are at following mechanics and outputting DPS, you could easily do SM Ops to probably HM TFB or SnV (Styrak not included).

Actually there's the Purple/Pink dye, if you want to look truly garish...

You get a choice at the end of the arc to either let him live or kill him after he comes stumbling into your camp, ranting about how he's broken without the other dread masters.

I really feel like they stealth nerfed the enrage timer on HM Styrak (and possibly TC HM) after 2.3 Before 2.2.3 we had hit enrage 3 weeks in a row and 2 weeks after 2.2.3 (we didn't raid one week) we downed him with no enrage whatsoever. I can see an argument being made that we were simply unfamiliar with the mechanics for the first 3 weeks, but all my "timing metrics" show that our DPS hasn't really changed at all. We still get the second set of spines (and the dragon dies shortly afterwards) and Inspiration comes back up when Styrak himself has around 30-40% HP left. Not to mention that i know we were underperforming DPS wise since we had 2 GSs and 2 Sents. And on a similar note, I ran with a different group on the Thursday just gone with 3 Commando's, 1 GS, I was personally underperforming massively (just under 2k dps) and we didn't even touch the enrage at all. Other than that, don't lose heart, sometimes it's just a case of maximising uptime on the boss, rather than "doing more DPS".

I have to say on the one hand I agree that the number of abilities needs to be toned down... there are a lot of abilities that are either incredibly situational, only useful in pvp, outclassed by newer abilities or simply just bad to use (which i guess is similar to the previous point). However, League of Legends simply is not a valid comparison in terms of ability variety as the variety comes within the nuances of gameplay decisions, team composition and the unpredictability of human allies/opponents. Similar to the way pvp'ers in this game will constantly queue for the same set of maps over and over again. Not to mention, League of Legends isn't just as simple as "every champion has 4 abilities" considering that properly playing the game requires inside/out knowledge of all 100+ champions and each of their abilities and potential use cases, potentially makes the game even harder to grasp than SWTOR, especially since PvE effectively requires you to only know your own class and the encounter mechanics. And last but not least, after having recently taken a break in GW2, an MMO which only gives you 11 abilities to use at any one time (5 Weapon, 1 Heal, 3 Utility, 1 Elite, 1 Class), I can tell you that coming back to the variety of abilities that SWTOR has was remarkably refreshing as there was simply no diversity or complexity in the gameplay which basically boiled down to spam "auto attack" use other abilities on CD as necessary. Which in turn reminds me of why I ended up abandoning my Commando pre 2.0 as it was simply a 4-button turret (Grav Round -> Demo Round -> High Impact Bolt -> Full Auto /repeat) that offered no depth of gameplay. But ultimately, i disagree with having to cut rotations in half... learning how to play (and now subsequently knowing how to play) a Combat Sentinel has been incredibly fun as it's a lovely mix of Focus Management, Ability CD Management and Proc Management. And for those that don't need or feel like that depth of gameplay... well there's still always the Commando

You seem to think that all guilds that raid do so on a set schedule that must be adhered to and requires frequent attendance.... that 3+ nights a week comment is rather amusing. I'm fairly sure most guilds, like ours quite often run random Ops for the hell of it, simply asking out in chat if anyone wants to come along. Not to mention the possibly of simply holding a sub position on a Team... pick a team which has a schedule that you like and ask if you can be a sub... if they need you to fill, you get your fix, if they don't, you can go back to whatever. And lastly, I personally run a PUG Ops night for our guild where it's pretty much first come first serve, although I do hold spots for certain people, usually those who don't get to raid regularly. So people know exactly when an Op will run (like a Team does), except there's no attendance requirement, you simply turn up if you want to run and if you don't, carry on with your own business. I'm sure our guild isn't the only one that does this, so it's just a matter of finding one that suits you.

This. What we (or at least I), was trying to determine was which category TST fell into: - Only use situationally, when you don't have better options (i.e. for AoE, when you're out of range etc.) or - Use on CD when you know you won't have to use situationally. For example, Force Sweep falls into the former category, unless you're playing Focus, there's no reason to hit it *unless* you need the AoE component. TST instead is now more like Master Strike... the latter isn't exactly use on CD, it's use when you know you'll be able to get the full 3s Channel off without being interrupted/having it wasted.

I believe Angus is right and that since US<->EU server transfers haven't been made available, this server isn't really an option.

No, but in 2.3. you can stack the Power Proc (Serendipitous Assault) with a Damage Proc (e.g. Kinetic Tempest) and so won't have to clicky anything.

This only adds up to 99.51% Which looking at other classes, seems to be enough to hit 100% of the time (on Special Attacks) on a 5min parse?

It fixes itself when you save and reload the character .