I didn't win the lottery when it was at ~500 million, why won't the deli take my tickets back and return my money?

Please, move on and make yourself happy. Also, may I have 5% of your credits when you leave? I will gladly tell everyone how great you are at gaming.

This isn't the feedback you're looking for.

Isn't there being no need to gear your toon covered under the "easier than ever" umbrella?

That's interesting. Did you try 8m by any chance to see if it's a problem with 16m bolstering?

Since that stat is irrelevant to SWTOR, how about we look at the actual SWTOR fact that matters. That fact is that the PvP servers are all dead and PvP oriented players have been forced to move to PvE servers in order to get queue times that are not insane. I won't argue that Operations are the highest played portion of this game because I know that's flat out wrong also. What I will argue is that less players PvP than run Operations; especially now that SM Operations are all bolstered. So, if you take a tiny portion of the player base and then take a fraction of that tiny portion you end up with a pretty small percentage of players in this game. The OP just wants there to be a PvE gate added to M1-4X recruitment as an alternate means. This request is not bizarre in the slightest, and it actually makes a lot of sense. The PvE gate doesn't have to be an Operation, it doesn't even have to be a Flashpoint. The PvE gate could be something as simple as getting the first kill achievement of Imperial NPC's on every planet. That would still keep the lore of M1-4X wanting to kill all the Imps, and that would satisfy not needing to run 20 warzones that are absolutely painful to sit through.

A Heroic 2+ that needs a 2nd player to go with you to complete successfully 100% of the time? NO WAY! THAT'S BLASPHEMY!

I'm with you. Surface's are for productivity, not gaming. You want productivity and gaming, just buy the SurfaceBook, Microsoft's brand spanking new laptop that has dedicated graphics instead of trying to rely on the CPU for graphics processing. It's also super light and thin compared to other laptops. This will handle all of your needs. TLDR; get SurfaceBook not the Surface Pro 4

My first character was a Sage Seer that was created 2nd wave of early access in December 2011. That toon is still my main to this day, however I've added about 12 other toon's to his Legacy.

I definitely don't see it happening any time soon. Believe me, I'm an advocate for Bioware creating a game engine internally, but I'm not overly optimistic they will do it. Don't count out an engine upgrade or rebuild entirely, though. It took many years for Blizzard to upgrade their engine for WoW and those graphics were... underwhelming. They finally upgraded their engine in 2013 and the original engine was a homebrew engine. A game engine is a large undertaking, however, I believe that Bioware has enough talent to set aside people and get it done. Moral of the story? WoW finally received an engine upgrade in 2013, 9 years after release, on their own homebrew engine. If SWTOR wants an engine upgrade, they have to build it from the ground up so don't expect it for at least 5 more years. The larger question is, where did you see the HeroEngine is dead? The company that made it looks like they're functioning just fine to me... You actually got me excited when I read that HeroEngine was dead. lol

Wait, how did you finish your class story at 49 while doing all planetary story and class story? You should have easily been level 50 half-way to 51, if not 51 or higher. Shoot, I haven't even left Coruscant yet on my brand new Guardian (created post 4.0), and he's level 27 already. Granted, I'm doing heroics as well.

Unethical? Unethical is having a boss that's your family member/significant other/close friend and provides preferential treatment. Unethical is receiving gifts from someone that has a vested interest in your company and is trying to sway your decision making. The developer taking an item out of a game has nothing to do with ethics. This is the funniest thread I've ever seen. What was your e-mail to them? "Bioware, RNG was not with me while this schematic was still in the game, you should give it to me now!" As with all games, items/content are subject to change at any given time. They don't have to warn you about anything. I guess you missed the large post that Eric Musco provided about how all schematics that you haven't already learned will be removed from the game to make way for new up-to-date schematics, and if you have old schematics they will be moved to Archived portion of your crew skill window?

I guarantee you that Blizzard has been paying attention to other mmo's that level sync. The main complaint from people that don't like level sync is that they don't like "feeling weaker". If you notice what Blizzard did with their scaling, they scale the mobs to the player level, instead of scaling player level to mobs. This allows players to "feel" strong when they see their big numbers that they're used to. It doesn't matter which way you do it, it's still the same thing except that Blizzard understands that many players like seeing massive numbers when they attack. I personally do not care one way or another. All that this tells me is that I will continue to enjoy SWTOR and WoW for the foreseeable future. I win!

http://dulfy.net/2015/10/20/swtor-gearing-and-operation-loot-table-in-4-0/

Thank you, DrBonesMcCoy. I want you to know that I have been testing your numbers and I have to agree with all of them thus far. These numbers will go up slightly as players collect rating 224 gear, but these are absolutely solid numbers to strive for and easily obtainable by casual players. (I don't mean casual as an insult, I mean casual as in competent players who only play casually.) I'm currently running 216/220 gear with full set pieces and have gone above your values slightly, and I can barely "feel" the diminishing returns yet.

Let me start by saying that I hate DPS, and I love healing. I have been running as DPS and Heals in solo play to see which is better for me. I'm running with Lana Beniko influence level 35. So far, DPS is faster to play as during solo play with your companion set to either Heal or Tank, since as a Tank they self-heal a lot. When I do my boredom [Heroic 2+] Star Fortress solo-run, I run as DPS with Lana as Heals. When I run [Heroic 2+] Star Fortress with a guildie, I run as Heals and Lana as DPS. In planetary Heroics, I run as DPS with Lana as Tank or Heals. It depends on if I need to position mobs a certain way to get them all AOE'd down quickly. Overall, solo play is probably a no for healing spec, unless you REALLY want to. You will be completing stuff much slower and not really doing much work since your companion will be a work horse. If you want to send your companion to fight while you take in the sights and throw out the occasional Force Armor or Healing Trance, run as a Healer. If you want to participate in the carnage, run as a DPS.

Where can you test healing in "unbiased" conditions in this game? There's no healing dummies. The closest thing to a healing dummy is the heal challenge in DP which lasts for, what, 20-30 seconds? As far as the DPS goes, all I was looking for was the Turbulence crit. To find that, I did two solo runs of heroic star fortress and two runs with another dps in heroic star fortress, a sentinel. I took the numbers from every Turbulence crit and got the solo damage number, as well as a "group" damage number. To be honest, they were very different and the average was around 12.5k with full crit/alacrity augments and only around 9.5k with versatile augments. Again, I don't DPS at all, but I saw a lot of people complaining about the Turbulence not critting as hard as other classes abilities and that's why I posted that. I was using "real-life" examples of what people will be seeing in content, I wasn't throwing the numbers out there to say that they were perfect in any way.

That's because it was replaced by Telekinetic Burst at level 58.

I main a Sage Seer in 216/220 (few set pieces) and I have around 78k hp unbolstered. Bolster usually puts me over 81k. I think by the time more players start getting full 220's, we'll see tanks in the mid-80's unbolstered and dps/heals ~80-82k unbolstered. I want to see where 224 gear will put me... lol

The trash are doing a lot of burst damage currently which is hurting the casuals that are not used to, or they are otherwise unable to heal through bursty damage. This problem is evident in older flashpoint's rather than the flashpoints designed specifically for Tactical group finder. The trash in older flashpoint's just need a once over fine-tuning and they should be fine.

Are you 100% positive that you chose Heroic and not Solo?

So, because it's mandatory you will not do it, but if they ever made it optional you would try it? That's ridiculous and childish, but it's your money so play how you wish. Keep the good fight going, you little rebel! Personal experience with level sync: level sync combined with the new heroic terminal and Alliance system are the only things bringing me back to lower level planets. I have played this game since early access 2011 and the only time I've ever gone back to earlier planets to do anything was when I leveled an alt. I think this was a great implement. Also, I wanted to comment on something else that I see people saying.. Companions are OP. Yes, in a way they are. However, when I pull groups of mobs I find that I down groups faster than my companions do. I now role Telekinetics and set my companions to heal whenever I do any heroics. In my current gear (rating 216/220 3-set pieces fully augmented), my companions are not doing anything better than I can, however, they are definitely powerful enough to be truly useful now. The companions I use the most are Koth and Lana, both are past mid-20's influence level and I still feel like I am doing more damage and/or more healing than they do - depending on which spec I feel like running. Presence with them out is ~2500-2600. I do feel that once they hit influence level 50 I won't be able to keep up with them, even after I get a few NiM pieces. So, at influence 50, they will be OP. Maybe I'm just so used to using Treek in fully augmented endgame gear before the expansion launched that now I'm immune to what everyone is calling OP companions? Ah well.. lol

Using your numbers, I tried Telekinetics and Seer specs and I got some pretty good parses from both specs over my previously using all Versatile augments. I was only rolling with 107% accuracy too. My current numbers are as follows: Seer - Avg. RAW HPS - 11-12K+ All Versatile augments RAW HPS - 9-10k Healing Trance - Consistent 6k+ crit ticks. Salvation - 1400+ crits Wandering Mend - 15k+ crits Force Mend (Self-Heal) - 25k+ crit.. TK - Avg. Turbulence Crit - 12.5k All Versatile augments Tubulence crit - 9.5-10k I don't know the proper balance yet because like you said, we need some proper math to be done. I did my DPS testing in four runs through Heroic 2+ Star Fortress. Two runs were solo, two runs with a second player, a Sentinel. I saw the biggest increase in effectiveness of the ~1400 crit/~1100 alacrity setup in a group setting - which is what everyone wants... lol Healing tests are harder to test because we don't have a proper consistent healing target. My tests were done in a GF ops environment, switching augments between boss fights. What I will say as a 100% certainty is that my Salvation, Healing Trance, Wandering Mend, and Benevolence crits were much higher in the 1400/1100 setup, and almost predictable.

So, we want ~1400 crit and ~1100 alacrity now? No main stat augs.... got it

I wouldn't go with anything except the Versatile ones. I'm in 216/220 gear right now (no set armorings), and I have around 8.5% alacrity, 32-33% crit, and 62-63% crit multiplier with all main stat (Versatile) augments. I'm pretty sure I can replace a couple crit enhancements with alacrity, but I'm waiting for some theorycrafter's to come along and do the math for me... lol As far as augments go, I 100% say main stat - Versatile Augment 40