I'll have to agree with the sentiment here. Tanks are the toughest to find generally (which is good for me, I enjoy tanking the most). While my guild has really great DPS players, the need for great DPS becomes painfully obvious when you start HM's. No matter how great your tanks and healers are you get smoked on enrage if you don't down the boss fast enough . If you want the shortest GF que times, tanks .

My participation trophy says otherwise. My mommy told me I'm special. These two things tell me I don't have opinions, I have facts!

I am really enjoying Ebon Hawk, but I was also looking for some RP. It's population is nice, sits at standard most times that I've checked. Harbinger is big, huge pop. I have heard of ques to play at the busiest of times after expansions launch. The biggest servers do seem to have the most issues though, so be aware of that. Harbinger seems to have the most issues out of the NA servers, likely due to the load it's put under. As others have said, I've heard good things about Shadowlands too. I left Jung Ma, for what it's worth. Loved the server and community that was left, and I miss the OWPvP, but that rarely happened due to such low pop and ques for group play could be long .

While what you said about gear vendors being removed is accurate, there is still a lot of orange gear in the game. Once you get your alliance you will get an orange gear piece from each box you open. You end up with a glut of it, a lot of it is older end game skins that were removed from the game previously. It's also legacy so you can pop it in your legacy hold or trade it between all your characters, so that is nice at least . I'm not the biggest fan that a majority of new gear skins go into the CM, but it may be one of those concessions we have to make for the game to be financially solvent. I do like the new way of armor packs that give a full set rather than the old system of RNG a few pieces out of the crates. Being able to sell the gear after a couple days at least lets the player base disseminate the gear we get from packs and allow players to get the skins without spending CC's if they want. All in all, not the best system, but if it keeps the game going I'm willing to live with it.

Recently joined a guild on my latest character, they were looking for a tank to start raiding again, so I've been getting into that. When we're not raiding, or I can't get on until later and miss the run I focus on anything to get us conquest points. I've never really done conquest before and my guild leaders just started trying last week and are pretty into it. We placed in the top 10 our first week and we're doing good again this week, so that's a lot of fun. I try to focus on grabbing anyone in the guild available and run FP's this week to grind out those conquest points . On the RP side of things our guild story is going to start soon. I've not done much RP so I'm looking forward to gettibg more involved in that and crafting a story for my character. Failing that stuff I try to get in the group finder, being a tank I know I can be useful in there for folks.

I've just recently started doing Ops with the guild I joined and noticed this. A large majority of the random pieces that drop for me (I didn't notice they were labeled for me, but realized they were for me when I looted them) are DPS pieces. I didn't think much of it, as I'm more concerned with learning the boss mechanics and the like, but did think it odd. I've just started putting together a set of DPS gear for my character should I ever need to DPS.

... Ultimately, this decision came down to our own goals for Companions, along with data on how they were performing. What we saw in those instances is that Companions, simply put, were just way too good. Their healing and damage output could be greater than that of a very skilled player with a fully maximized character. In order for you to understand why we are making these changes, we thought it best to explain our goals for Companions in Fallen Empire...

I like the nerf, but then again I like more challenging content. I'll try to answer your questions as best I can (I'm doing this on my phone, it's a little tougher ). I did not dismiss my companion as I do like having them there, I also am kind of a sucker for "playing dress up" with my character and companion, I enjoy trying to make them look good and seeing them look good. Stupid, I know, but it's fun for me, it was a big plus to the gearing change in 4.0 for me, though I did also enjoy customizing their stats, that was a bit of a bummer. Passive mode? Ehhh, yeah, I do enjoy the the companion working with me. Especially in this game, they're a part of the story too for me. You are right on that one, at the very least in part. I never thought to toggle off abilities, if they put them back to how they were I will likely do that. Then again I never really crusaded on the forums for the nerf, I just solo'd the hardest stuff I could to stil try and present a challenge to myself. This is a decent idea, not my ideal solution, but still it could help. I will not lie to you. I wasn't upset over the OP companions, I thought it wasn't right, they were out healing players, that's just silly . I would never want to make the game impossible for "bads and casuals", to insinuate such of me is wrong sir. I appreciate all the help my guild gives me to get better in FP's, Op's and HM Op's and I do what I can to reciprocate that to other players. I'm the guy that answers questions on fleet chat, helps players who are struggling with quests and gives money to new players to give them a head start if I help them and think they could use a quick 50k credits. The problem with the way comps were was that I started to say to myself "Man, I can do this FP easier with just my companion than if I get a group that isn't great". My companion at rank 20 did better dps than many upscaled players for killing trash in the FP and healed me to the point that I didn't need to ever worry about health on a boss. My companion was discouraging me from running with anyone but well geared guild members to do Operations, that's just not a good thing man. Now, I will say, I like where my companion is now, however, due to the dislike of their current state I think BioWare does need to do something with them. This game does need it's casual player base, it's the life blood of this game and I think the game does a great job drawing those players in and catering to them. We can't have companions be better than players though, so a middle ground must be found. As for me wanting to keep players down because of my ego and feeling superior over them, that offends me and how I try to play the game, I would respectfully ask that in the future you refrain from insulting such a broad swath of people like that.

I would respectfully argue that any quest with Heroic in the title is supposed to provide a challenge. I agree that the standard daily quests should not be terribly difficult, but the weekly ones should provide some challenge for a single player with just their companion. There is plenty of content in the game that is faceroll easy, a large majority of bhai the story, the 9 chapters of KotFE. A little challenge is not a bad thing for people. As the OP said, he often wasn't using many of his abilities and after using them he succeeded. It's all still doable, it's just now the player is the one who has to carry the load, rather than the game carrying it for them via the companions. Now, I'll openly qualify what I've said with I agree with the companion nerf. My character was invincible with a healer comp and I didn't like that. I realized this after soloing elite named mobs on Corellia that were 2 levels higher than me and soloing the Battle of Ilumn on tactical at level 50 or so. I would agree the tune down could have been done more incrementally, but again, having players encounter some challenge in a Heroic quest is how I feel it should be based on it being called heroic. It should be able to be solo'd, but only through skill or overgearing, which is how it seems to be now. I understand if folks disagree, as we're all entitled to an opinion, but based on Eric Musco's post it seems the Dev's may have intended it to be that way. For what it's worth at least.

I think it is important to note that it's the Alliance story that parts of become inaccessible due to not completing the PvP objective. Not getting M1-4X will not prevent you from doing any of the new chapters. From what Eric posted it also looks like you'll still be able to recruit other allies, just not any more from that alliance leader until it's done, so whoever M1-4X is classified as (I'm guessing he's military, I don't remember off hand)will not give you any further alerts until you acquire M1. So while some of the story does get blocked, not all of it does. The good news is, as Eric mentioned they are discussing this and changes to it for story purposes. I don't mind doing the PvP, I like the variety in the quests, but I understand it's not for everyone and locking PvE content behind PvP Warzones doesn't appear to have been the best idea. Maybe a fewer number of WZ'z or completing certain Op's as another option to finish it would be a good idea.

I have to admit I was quite shocked at that price point myself. Is this the first armor set on the CM priced that high? I thought that Thexan's armor for 1400 was a little expensive, but I liked it and payed it. When I saw the price on this new one (I thought it was 2200 or 2400) I immediately dismissed it before even really looking at it. This could be BioWare simply testing the market. Just like any market the cost is subject to player demand. They may be tweaking the prices to try and maximize profit, which we can't blame them for, they need to make money, but I think this may be too high of a price and will result in a loss due to the high price point. It resulted in me not even considering the set before really even looking at it due to cost. Hopefully sales on it at this price point will be poor and BioWare will see that more sales at a lower cost results in a better profit.

That's where I got that title from. I like that one. There's also an achievement for finishing it solo with all Hey four buffs and the other things you can click in there.

I recently turned bloom back on, and I love it. The way lights pop and the vibrant look of the game with it on is amazing. Though admittedly I do have a laptop, so my screen isn't the best and can use any help it can get.

I'll be honest. I have a tendency to white knight for game companies when people complain. The OP's post however is calm and logical. I have recently bought a surplus of CC's and just can't bring myself to buy a Hypercrate with the changes that have been made to them . Thank you for your post OP, your (LONG) list of suggestions shows you care for the game and your support of it in the past is appreciated. The good news is I think BioWare is listening to our feedback on the changes and hopefully will implement it so it convinces me to spend money on them again in support of the game.

The beauty of this is that now, due to the hated level sync, you can go to fleet, grab some dailies, and hit up old planets doing said dailies and gain experience on par with your current level. Or do the exploration quests, or any planet arcs you may have skipped. Stupid level sync giving you options!