Whoops. Posted in wrong thread.

No, it's a silly mini-game with objectives that highly favor some classes above others. I want deathmatch, as any self-respecting pvper would.

Can anyone who values high level pvp play at all take huttball seriously? Does Bioware not realize that the silly mini-game rated huttball will be dominated by a combination of Sorcs/*INSERT TANKY HUTTBALL RUNNER HERE w/ Guard* (Jugg/Assasin usually). Why is there not more outcry for a real pvp mode in this game? So much wasted potential. Give me deathmatch or give me Guild Wars 2.

If that's the case then everything maintains the status quo. Assuming everything is BoE and no class other than armormech and biochem has any unique perks for PvE then one could simply buy the BiS gear and get the mods from raids. Not sure how this helps make any end game profession superior to biochem, but if you're right it won't gimp raiders too much.

Getting tired of these posts, please read the OP. The point of this thread is not that crafting will not require raiding, it is that one has to craft in order to get best in slot gear. This is a tedious process of switching professions over and over to get BiS piceces, artifically extended raid content.

I understand the system completely, you missed the point entirely. I know that the materials to make crafting best in slot still require raiding; the problem is that all this adds is a tedious extra factor that artifically extends raid content. One would have to max out a profession, farm X number of drops, luck out on RNG for a critted piece of gear, then rinse and repeat for every piece of gear. Instead of getting direct best in slot loot from the hardest content, we have to grind out professions and mats over and over, artifically extending the lifespan of content.

You realize that if an Orange piece of gear has an augment slot it is BETTER than the tier piece you are extracting mods/armoring set bonus from right? It will be the same + the amount of stats for the augment since raid drops do not have augment slots. Therefore crafted items will be BETTER than raid drops, regardless of how long it takes to grind out a critted piece with raid drops. It artficially extends content for people that want best in slot pieces.

Obviously there is some uncertainity there, but what concerns me is the general idea that crafted gear is superior to endgame gear obtained in other ways (i.e. raiding).

It does if crafted items are best in slot. That doesn't make me elitist, I assume that everyone that plays an MMO wants challenging raid content or good and balanced pvp that rewards those actions, not grinding professions. Otherwise, what's the point? How does that make me elitist?

That's part of the point of this thread... They are just making us grind for mats in the same OPs over and over switching professions every time instead of actually working on new content that is challenging. I want gear from downing a hard boss, not from an RNG on a crafting item.

Exactly, so instead of getting drops directly from downing bosses you have to spend extra time griding professions until you get everything. It's boring and artifically extends content. Better solution would be to add more content at a time that is HARDER.

If what has been said is true, it looks like crafted items for every profession will be better (when critted) than their respective tier drop counterpart from Nightmare operations. Thus, the following slots will be better than raid counterparts via crafting: Main Hand Off-hand (possibly) Implant x 2 Ear Piece Bracers Waist That only leaves the 5 tier piece armor being better than raid gear, and one can also presume crafting armoring and enhancements will be needed to modify those pieces further. I'm not sure why everyone is looking forward to this change and considers it good; it only artificially increases the length of raid content by making people grind mats and switch over professions to get best in slot items. Crafting should supplement raiding like it does in WoW, not overtake it for viability.

lolsmash cannot be avoided playing huttball as an operative. We have no knockbacks, no gap cosers, no anything remotely useful for doing anything in huttball except attacking healers/ballhandler. Unfortunately even with max gear our damage is so low we cannot kill a healer in time to do anything useful, and resolve mitigates th effectiveness of our cc. If operatives had a damage nerf, LoLSlam should be nerfed on the same grounds. It's not balanced, anyone saying it is and that it requires "skill" to avoid is kidding themselves.

Oh I'm sorry, should we not be clumping to kill the guarded tank ballcarier with HoTs on him? We should just let him score amirite?

So I just got out of a wz where 4 LoLSlam Mara's / Jugg's specc'd rage would slam together at 5k aoe crit our entire team to death over and over. How exactly is a *********** 5k aoe crit slam balanced against someone who has 600 resil? What a joke.

Dear Bioware, Please allow us to trade our Columi commendation for Biometric Crystal Alloys so that we do not have to run the same boring Hard Mode instances and Normal mode ops we are way overgeard for in order to collect them. Thank you for your time.

Tanks don't belong in PvP anyway as far as I'm concerned. Current objective based pvp sorc/sage + tank guard spam is a horrible excuse for pvp, why are you complaining about shields?

Hard to say as well since certain stats are more useful than others to a certain point...

EDIT: Stacking power will always increase bonus damage more than stacking cunning, even with the 9% bonus talent because of the way they scale. The original question still remains, at what point is more crit not viable via cunning? i.e. what is the magic number to stop using cunning augments/ high cunning mods and replace them with power counterparts?

9% bonus cunning... you have a point... time to bust out some calculators.

Yeah I had heard this before, but I'm not sure if it has changed recently as a result of the surge changes.

So we know now that power scales slightly better than cunning for damage, and also know the new surge caps around 250 before DR hits hard (~75%) What I'd like to know is if anyone knows the ideal crit % (unbuffed) to have before stacking power above cunning? This only comes into play with mods of course, Artful Mod 25 vs similar 25 rank mods without as much power but more cunning and/or crit. Thanks in advance.

^So any word from Bioware on this?

Yup. Heatseekers are critting for wildly huge numbers as a result.

^This. Our merc was drooling over his 7k+ crit heatseekers when we paired him up with another merc on our latest KP run. Mercs are definitely benefitting from each other specifically, it is not a universal gain from the armor pen.