This is the other line of reasoning I get tired of hearing. "I have a real life etc etc etc." Who says? You? Why? Because you choose to what? Go out and get drunk at "social meat markets"? Have kids? Watch tv shows? Who are you to say your life is any more real than anyone elses? For one, if the answer is you have kids, that was your choice buddy. I, like many other people in the world, either chose not to or chose not to have them yet. Or are too young in the first place. Or do not ever want them at all. And if it isnt that but some other answer, guess what! Still your choice. I work, go to school, socialize with friends, and still manage to set aside 2-3 hours a night, 2 nights a week to raid with...............wait for it...............wait for it.............my friends who also play the game. You know. The same friends I go out and do things with in your so-called real life.

I'd just like to take a moment and say, Welcome to MMOs 101! Ranged vs melee has been and will always be a problem in MMOs. Melee generally have the hardest time staying on a boss, have more mechanics to dodge, and, when brought, only add to the difficulty of fights as the more people you stack up next to a boss, the more people are at risk for a boss's "dont stand near me" damage. Now that said, good or great melee are generally some of the best players in the game and (aside from having an over abundance of melee in a potential raider pool) are viewed as an asset by raid leaders and do not have issues getting into raids. I would honestly say the bigger problem is that any MMO veteran knows (or should know) this melee unfriendliness issue and still we find hordes of people rolling melee characters and then complaining. Or the other problem is if you run a raiding guild, why are you allowing so many melee in the first place? Sidelining in favor of a ranged class is purely a lack of forsight on the raid leaders part as one should be restricting the allowable raid slots to slant in favor of ranged out the gate. Though in the case of 8 man operations in this game, I can tell you all the content can be easily defeated by having a balanced mix of ranged and melee dps (2 and 2). Should melee get a free handout for having it tougher? Nope. Personally, I (who plays a sentinel) prefer the added challenge placed upon me. Should BW alter fights to be more favorable to melee? Nope. Part of the reason for the status being this way (other than enforcing class balanced raids) is to allow them more diversity in fight design. The OP mentioned Fabricator being almost impossible with all melee. This is true. And it is by design. You would not be able to have fights like this if raid comp allowed for all melee. However, melee are also the work horse dps for the fight as they are always on the boss or clearing the stun droids for the tanks.

I can has quotes too. However, at least when I quote something from you, my response directly relates to what it is I am quoting rather than simply picking a section and posting a statement that has no link at all to what it was the original quote was conveying. But since you like to jump around I, again, will respond to what was quoted. It would be next to impossible to get kicked from a guild I created and ran, so no, I didnt kick myself out. I especially did not kick myself out of my own guild who downed all HM content up to the craptacular FL before quitting WoW entirely to move. Tho I did remove from raid or pass over many, many terrible players who, even with all their prescious addons, could not manage to get out of LK's puddle before it spread. You know. People like you, who think things like that are challenging.

See, the major problem with using raids like ICC and the handholding buff is that Blizzard also used a dubious technique called gating to slow progress down as they knew certain guilds would rip the place apart just like every other raid they began releasing in LK. That gating included creating a boss that was nigh unbeatable without any form of hand-holding buff. That doesnt mean the fight is mechanically hard or even difficult to a good player. It just means the numbers are stacked against you. Also, lets take another look at ICC as a whole before we begin to tout the new system as something that works. Exactly three fights in the whole of ICC 25-man HM presented a challenge: Deathwhisper (execution fight with tons of damage flying around), Putricide (another execution fight with high damage), and LK himself (made close to unbeatable by design to slow progression unless guilds utilized some form of percentage buff). Some fights, the vampire chick, actually became far easier on HM than they were on NM. Cata was even worse in terms of Blizzard just throwing huge amounts of damage at people in an effort to call a boss hard. Perfectly executed mechanics just kind of fell by the wayside. Even some of the worst guilds on my old server managed to score multiple HM kills just by throwing attempts out there. And this whole issue was again compouned by the fact that you could do this in 10 man, claim it was still hard, but in reality have a much easier time of it as long as your raid leader was smart enough to raid stack. Having problems on Cho'gall HM? Just bring all ranged with somewhat decent AOE to help burn slimes faster. Issues on Chimaeron? Take a few rogues and any other class that has short CD, high damage resist CDs to help eat slime phases. Bottom line, all the Wrath-babies that LOVE the current system are in a state of self-inflicted delusion because they missed the height of WoW raiding and want to believe that the efforts they put it now hold a candle to the coordination, strategy and execution of fights they missed out on. Quick Edit: FYI to the OP, Tanking in WoW and threat hasnt been an issue since ToT was introduced and even when they altered that and MD to be "fake threat", they increased the damage output of tanks to compensate so if anyone ever, EVER pulled threat on their tank, the tank was horribad. It's why Omen went from having daily updates, to going months without one. No one cared about threat anymore. Sorry you just cant handle gauging yourself and instead need some addon to tell you not to go crazy.

This. We got to Sacrolash and the other one. Couldnt quite get M'uru tho we tried I dont know how many times (was still not especially easy mechanically speaking after the nerf but we did get him/it/her?).

Yes to all of your questions. I played that great game turned steaming turd since it was in beta. The only thing that made WoW raiding hard in hard mode was sifting through the lobotomized idiots that felt they had a right to raid just because they paid their subscription fee to find decent players. Each and every fight could be somewhat marginalized by simply stacking a raid with the classes that made the mechanics easier. And using subjective reasoning mixed with unsubstantiated and groundless facts earns you no points. I could just as easily state that more guilds broke up over Sunwell than any single raid in the game to date. However, I think in the case of your example, it would be far more appropriate to state that more guilds broke up simply because they were bored to death and tired of Blizzard's ever decreasing quality in terms of both raid size, scope, and imaginative boss mechanics. Besides, and in another nod to your line of reasoning, you speak like a person who got on board during Wrath and joined the collective Wrath-babies who ultimately got their way from Blizzard and continue to this day to tout the current game as the best it has ever been, when in fact the massive and rampant decline in subscriber base added to the ever growing number of those who call Blizzard to task on the poor design decisions they make prove you wrong. Oh and furthermore, your argument about zero skill required to press one button to drop threat.......yeah it was hard in WoW to pop feign death, vanish, soul shatter, or any of the other threat reducers with...............wait for it..............one button.

What about lightning balls not exploding at all upon reaching the target? They just keep ticking damage. Or my favorite: Soa dropping agro when he throws a trap and sprinting his happy alien butt out from underneath a pylon. Shoot, while we're at it, lets talk about bugs in EV period. Clicking an Ancient Pylon console and watching as nothing turned, then suddenly it says we unlocked a wheel and it moved to the next one even tho the colors werent matched, then when it did that all the way to the last one it instantly spawned 4 big adds and wiped the floor with us? Guess Mr. Answer for Everything will have answers to those too. My point is, the OP is right. Soa and, more specifically, EV as a whole is the most bug ridden raid I've seen period and with every patch it gets worse while maybe, MAYBE one item gets fixed (and yes I have played WoW since vanilla so I know the issues there and STILL claim this raid to be in the running for most bugged). In comparison Karaga's Palace works just fine. On any mode. Sure you get the occaisional bug here and there, but 90% of the time my guild clears it just fine through flawless execution alone. And while I know many guilds out there are grinding their in-game bank accounts down slogging through this mess, we shouldnt have to.

Ah the wonderful add-on discussion. How I missed thee! Ok so not really. I thought this would have died out considering how many are clearing both hard and nightmare modes without addons but I guess not. My opinion? Leave the addons for the WoW crowd. Are some of them helpful? Sure (only as far as the customizable UI ones are concerned) but TBH the only reason I required boss mod and threat addons for my top server guild was due to the ever lessening intelligence of the player base. Everyone became so dependant on waiting for a mod to tell them when to move, what to dodge, when to run, etc. Created a very lazy playerbase and eventually the only reason the mods were useful was so that I could yell at people who died to mechanics mods were in place to make idiot-proof. Unless I am mistaken, every class save tank classes have some nifty form of insta-threat drop on a short CD so start working that into your rotation. And if you still have issues at that point either A) your tank sucks balls, or B) your just too hardheaded to realize you may have to ease off and control your ouput. But hey, what do I know. I'm the guy that left WoW partially because of this mindset the OP has: me me me me me me.

You do realize that Rift is nothing more than WoW 2.0 right? And that many of the devs had experience working at Blizzard prior to going to Trion? Or that almost every single one of their game concepts was ripped, borrowed, or stolen from some other MMO and that nothing in the game was orginal? I played it. Was fun for a month.

Honestly, I am tired of seeing responses like this. Stop telling me what my or anyone elses guild needs to do. We chose to start on normal as a guild. See the fights, get some gear, move on to hard modes. I dont care if other guilds started on hards or if normals are meant to be puggable. The bottom line is this feature sucks, is stupid, not well thought out, and should never have been implemented in the first place. BW, you know how you deal with ninja looters? You let the community black list them. Dont implement server transfers and make it so a person's legacy name is always on in some fashion. That way, any ninja on any of their characters on a server get flagged by the community and people avoid them like the plague. Your current system is broken and counter-productive to actually helping people get gear from running raids.

Not true at all. The first attempt failed, yes, but they actually brought the high level server up several times (I played on it quite frequently). Also, though I am not quoting it, I will comment on the guy who stated it took longer to level in Vanilla WoW. The only reason it took longer was at launch in WoW you had to actually read the quest text to get a vague idea of the direction you needed to go. Nowadays, people won't stand for that and need to be handheld everywhere(though personally I loved that back in the day. Made you really get invested in the world imo). Also, I find it hilarious that a hair over a month after the game's official launch people are whining about endgame. This is what WoW and WoW's crappy rush to endgame shortened leveling experience has done to people. Are there bugs? Heck yeah. My guild was stuck on Pylons NMM for 2 hours and finally called it quits cuz it kept locking the other night. Is BW obligated to fix this? Sure. Are they obligated to fix it right this second? Nope. Their priority, as much as I wish otherwise, is to smooth out the leveling process as there are still many more people in that process than not. That's the way it goes with any mmo. I'm sorry if you and your guildmates spacebarred your way to level 50 and jumped into raiding vying for your prescious (and worthless) world and server firsts. Not only is this a new mmo, the devs at BW are new to designing and maintaining mmos period. There will be growing pains. If anyone is looking for perfection, you are in the wrong genre. Now, if the issues at hand are not addressed in another month or so, yeah, I'll give some ground to the complainers. But as of right now, most of this stuff is just ranting by people worried about some arbitrary accomplishment that means nothing, no one cares about, and should be left in that other mmo that keeps getting mentioned. Give the game time to come into its own.

Some of you are clearly missing the point. At current, EVERY hard mode boss, be it flashpoint or raid, is hard enrage based. There are no variations. These fights are just boring. They arent hard, as all they require to win is either A) more gear, or B) figuring out a trick to allow more dps time on a boss. I have personally never been a fan of hard modes ever since WoW began using them to extend an ever decreasing amount of bosses per raid (save Ulduar: activating HM by performing the fight a different way is win), but at least they throw in new mechanics that have to be performed. Execution fights (those in which a raid must execute a strategy flawlessly or fail) are always the most fun, most well-thought out, and challenging. Now, I have faith that BW will grow into their own as they become more experienced in designing an MMO, but at current, their hard mode boss model is extremely lacking.

Yeah, really hate to burst you "rng is rng' or "random is random" people's bubbles, but this isnt random. We have been farming all the HM FPs for the last 3 weeks daily and every AIM using player in our guild is carrying around at least 3 pieces of the same things, cunning second highest, with willpower and str gear taking a massive (read as almost non-existent) back seat. The loot tables by FAR favor Aim over any other. On almost every run, with the very seldom exception, every boss drops nothing but Aim. And this isnt just in FPs. This crap carries over into Operations, the only problem there is that on normal you cant even assign the drops so we're getting Aim gear going to the same person over and over again. The loot distribution system, both in terms of master looting in Ops and types of drops, is THE WORST in the history of an mmo. Fix this crap. Please.

No way around auto-assigning. However, at current, since you cannot disable auto-assign, leaving loot set to round robin (which still auto-assigns all but schematics and biometric things) alleviates the chest bug. Autoassign only goes away in hardmode and up.

Except for the fact that the person I quoted made a blanket statement regarding being level 50 before posting anything as if that made some massive difference and the opinion of the OP would be swayed by hitting a certain level. Do not discount my opinion just because you dont agree with it. It is perfectly valid. Especially considering I play Republic side, which is the least played faction no matter what server you are on. Furthermore, I am referencing my experience as one who was above the leveling curve (50 by the end of the second week) on my server making it even more difficult to find groups than someone in the leveling process now. It still is not an issue if you use even a fraction of effort. And the amount of time trying to get a group together is no different, and in many cases much much faster, than being a dps in WoW and waiting for their PoS system to match you into a group when tanks queue instantly.

I'm 50. Never had an issue with groups. Completed every FP while leveling, do heroics when I please with zeron issues. Gonna go ahead and sign my agreement to this. Eff a dungeon finder.

Anybody ever accounter the bug on Mentor where if you wipe on Hardmode, the next and following attempts have every phase of the fight going on at once?

Oh and thats not entirely true. Had a dps lightsaber drop on Soa get assigned to a tank Guardian instead of a Sentinel. To my knowledge the only things that are assignable are schematics and crafting mats.

If working as intended means complete inability to give loot to those that need it over those that already have the piece then they seriously need to reevaluate who is in charge of loot distribution design. I'm not generally one to flame the devs cuz ultimately I love this game, but if some project lead thinks this is a good idea, they need to be fired.

Maybe I missed a dev post or thread that covered this but regardless I think this issue warrants as many posts as humanly possible until it is fixed. Master Looter on normal mode operations NEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEDS to work like a master looter function should work. IE - a raid leader can manually assign loot to anyone they wish. Earlier this week my guild cleared EV normal. On Soa in particular 2 consular chest tokens dropped and BOTH were assigned to one person. Now, as soon as that person picked up one an invalid condition was created where he could not get the other so it auto-assigned the chest to someone else: a person who already had their Columi chest. In addition to this problem, there is a sage healer in my guild who has gotten nothing because the stupid auto-assign keeps assigning gear to people who either have the piece already or dont need it do to being a shadow tank. This is absolutely atrocious and whoever thought this would be a good idea is seriously wrong. I understand the desire to avoid potential ninja looting but having a system that works differently in exactly ONE instance from every other is ridiculously silly. And this does not even take into account the complete lack of /random 100 system to help a raid decide who gets what. Please BW address this issue soon as, imo and the opinion of I am sure many, many others, this is actually game breaking in the sense that a raid cannot properly gear its members for harder content when the system precludes people from getting anything even when something they need drops.

Not to mention the excessive amount of Trooper gear that drops over all other class types?

I hate to sound like a troll but you are doing something very, very wrong. I am level 37 and have 0 issues with anything. Group fights, strongs, elites. Sure on some elites I have to use CDs but thats the point of them. Either your gear isnt anywhere near as good as you think it is, or you are just ignoring the inner workings of the mechanics. Combat is also the single easiest leveling spec as it is designed to build centering through received damage and watching Combat Trance procs to use blade storm on mobs is key.

Crit is meh tbh. Power is additive directly to damage output and only 1 talent in the Watchmen tree is based off crit. The dot crits healing. If you generally arent pressed for needing heals power will add direct damage to all of your attacks and dot ticks. As for accuracy not being needed that is completely not true. Every burn effect in a Watchmen arsenal is based off hitting something from a melee attack. If your melee attack does not land you dont get the dot. And stacks from overload saber only stack from physical hits.

Combat would be for leveling and Watchmen later on. You really need a lot of talent points to make watchmen truly viable unless you are leveling statically with someone.

How many threads must you make about the same thing before everyone on the forums realizes you're a horrible player that doesnt understand the interworkings of the sentinel class? I can only imagine that is your true goal because you have been refuted numerous times in other threads and continue to persist in your horribleness.