1 expertise is worth more than 1 secondary stat, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out. If you disagree with my math, provide some math of your own.

Here's the problem: PvE: http://www.torhead.com/item/8tEYUpe/advanced-adept-enhancement-26 PvP: http://www.torhead.com/item/8pxfywz/war-heros-adept-enhancement-26 4 surge rating for 30 expertise. PvE gear is almost worthless in PvP (aside from tank sets which benefit only vs. certain classes). PvP gear is only a slight downgrade to PvE gear. The dilemma is that you can get a group geared faster by PvP'ing than by PvE'ing. PvE Operations are affected by lockouts and RNG drops (though the Campaign token change was a step in the right direction). PvP gear you get what you put in the time for. PvP is guaranteed results and can result in multiple pieces for all 16 members of your raid group each week whereas PvE content you might get one piece per member in your 16-man group if you're lucky. The difference is, individual members of your raid group are locked out where PvP'ers can continue grinding at all times - so those with more time, will get more gear. I'm not saying PvE'ers can't do the same thing (PvP whenever they are locked out of raids), but I'm saying that should not be the design. A PvE'er should not be able to benefit from PvP except in extreme cases. (I.E. - Replacing Tionese/Columi with War Hero should probably be an upgrade.. But War Hero should never be even close to an upgrade to Rakata/Campaign.) The stat weights are bogus and it's also making it harder to be effective in entry level PvP because they give them so many secondary stats. They should lose 30 secondary stats for 30 expertise. The mods and enhancements are absolutely bogus since PvE'ers pretty much have to get PvP gear if they want to PvP, but PvP gear is viable in PvE.

If you don't know the boss mechanics, I can see how this place is ridiculously hard. Also if you're in full Tionese, I can see this place being extremely challenging. Hell, the bonus boss had a pretty strict enrage timer considering he only dropped a Tionese level relic. The first real boss is ridiculously hectic as well - though, if you can beat him you can probably beat every boss in the instance (if you have the DPS for the bonus boss). I dunno, maybe change the enrage timer on the bonus boss and tune the first boss slightly.. The second and last bosses are fine as they are.

Damn. I guess we're fortunate to be on a low population server. Done NP 3 times, no issues with the stone be unclickable. I know this doesn't help you guys who are having issues, just wondering if it's server-specific or if we've just been fortunate that we may be the only guild doing NP on our server. Or if it's something someone does that bugs it. For instance, the one mission in Ilum that always got bugged - I wonder if it's a similar issue to that.

They do.

Yeah I've found myself exceptionally survivable in full PvE gear w/ PvP weapon. I was expecting to be absolutely drilled running around with just 150 expertise, but it seems only Internal/Elemental classes are really drilling me.

Just because someone has an opinion different than yours, does not mean that they are crying. And Undying Rage lasts 5 seconds. And 5 seconds is 1/4th of the door spawn time on Voidstar and Novare Coast, and also that's 5 extra seconds you give your teammates to fly back on Civil War - And it's more than enough time to get the Huttball across the goal line if you're close enough in a situation where every other class would have died. I don't care about Marauders 1v1 capabilities. Their defensive abilities make them overpowered in team play - same with tank assassins.

Play a Rage Juggernaut for one day. You'll see exactly where I'm coming from. We have to use Soresu Form to have any sort of survivability. And what that means is we have to give up 20% armor penetration, 3% damage, and generate 1 less rage for every rage generating assault ability in order to stay alive. Our Enraged Defense heals us for less than what we get hit for and saps all our rage away. Our Endure Pain is nice when used right before a warzone medpac, but we lose the health we gain 10 seconds after we use it which leaves us at 1% health usually. What do you have to give up to gain your survivability? 50% health? Whoopedy doo. Time it with a warzone medpac or use it when 50% of your current health is next to nothing and it's not that big of a deal. And that's just one of your many defensive cooldowns. I am biased because I play probably the least survivable melee DPS spec in the game, but that's all I have to compare it to.

Just because I say they have too many CD's, doesn't mean I want to get rid of ALL of their CD's. I understand your point and understand why you don't want to lose your overpowered cooldowns. I mean, why do I have to stop attacking a Marauder for 6 seconds in order to beat him? Cloak of Pain is a joke. It needs to be redesigned. This is not an ability a pure DPS class should have. I could see it on a tank, but not a Marauder. Will losing Cloak of Pain or having it redesigned to only last 10 seconds without refreshing be a huge loss?

I think any class that fights 6+ people should die almost instantly. And most do, not sure why you think Marauders should be fed with the silver spoon.

There's no reason for Marauders/Sentinels to have the arsenal of defensive/offensive/utility cooldowns that they have. Most games I play one team or the other has at least 5 Marauders/Sentinels/Tankasins/Tank Shadows. There's a reason for this, and it's not because the classes play more interestingly than other classes. It's because the classes are grossly overpowered. Honestly, Marauders are probably third on the list - and they're on the list for their CD's, not their offensive output. Tankasins/Shadow Tanks - Uninterruptible channeled self-heal from a tank class needs to go. I don't mind them having the heal, but it either needs a longer CD or needs to be interruptible.. Also, for Huttball purposes, I would suggest something be put in place to tone down the usefulness of their force sprint. Pyro Powertechs - Burst damage is just insane right now.. Not sure how to fix it, but something needs to be done to spread their damage out a bit. Marauders - CD's... a laundry list of cooldowns they can use - some of which buff their entire party - others that buff the entire ops group.. Ridiculous defensive self cooldowns as well.. I'd maybe put Snipers on this list, but I really don't think they're that OP. I think they're just the only counter for most of the currently OP classes.

Pretty sure all the warzones are like this. I won a Novare Coast yesterday when our team only had 3 kills the entire match. It's just harder to not play objectively on Huttball and expect to win.

If they allow you to simultaneous queue for Huttball League, Rated Warzones, and Arenas - I think the 3 can coexist. Making you choose what to queue for might kill queue times for both the thing you're queueing for and the thing you're not queueing for. I'm 100% for a Huttball League. I think Huttball is one of the greatest things in SWTOR. I'd love to see Huttball championships played at gaming conventions. I love the knockbacks and pulls in this game. And Huttball utilizes these skills the best. I'd probably quit the game if they took out knockbacks and grips. Don't get me wrong - I hate the grip mechanic into the fire, but I also know that if you want to beat a grip team you have to pass the ball. If a Sorc pulls you past a fire, anticipate that grip and throw the ball as soon as you land on the other side. I can't tell you how many times I've been gripped right after throwing the ball because I anticipated the grip. It's such a great feeling having burned their CD on grip without letting them stun/kill the ballcarrier in the fire pit. Anyways, I think Huttball League is an awesome idea. You'd probably have to use a ladder system though as it'd be hard to schedule championships other than ones hosted live at a gaming convention.

What this game "needs" vs. what people would like to see: Needs: ======= - Cross-realm queues. - Rated Warzones. - Position lag fixes. People stuttering at the top of the catwalks on Huttball then appearing at the goal line is no bueno. - Class balance. Specifically pertaining to Annihilation Marauders, Tankasins, Pyro Powertechs, and their mirrors. Either bring them down to everyone else or bring everyone else up to them. I would say vote kick and penalties for leaving warzones, but vote kick is already in place just rarely used and penalties for leaving will exist in rated warzones. Would be nice: ============= - Huttball League - Arenas (though I don't personally want to ever see arenas, a lot of people seem to want this) - World PvP with unique rewards

ROFL. Is that a Civil War where nobody capped mid? Ommgggg...

Equal amounts of expertise definitely cancel each other out. 1100 expertise on 1100 expertise is the same as 0 expertise on 0 expertise or 10000 expertise on 10000 expertise. I assumed that was already accounted for in the math though.

Did you take into consideration the expertise of what you're hitting and what you lose by having less expertise than your target? I mean, this works great if people do the exact same thing you do and always have the exact same expertise as you - but not taking expertise gives you a chance to be at a lesser expertise than your opponent meaning you're getting less of a benefit from your power than you think you are. Also, since expertise is % based, wouldn't it be better for certain classes who consistently hit for 5k+ damage? I really don't think there is much room for theorycrafting damage output in PvP. It's more of an art - kind of like healing.. It's not about how much damage you pump into your opponent.. It's how well you render your opponents useless while pumping damage into your target at the right time.. Yes, you can maximize the amount of potential damage you put into your opponent, but very rarely will you ever need your maximum damage potential to kill an opponent if you play the game correctly. And this is why I think expertise should always be king. It greatly affects your highest burst abilities and gives you more damage reduction than any other stat you can replace expertise with. I dunno, power over expertise just seems wrong. Personally I rank the crystals Expertise>Endurance>Power.

With the cooldown of Smash, I don't know if this is really worth it. You're losing the ability to reduce the cooldown of Enrage when you're AoE tanking (Sweeping Fury), reduce the amount of rage you gain through taking hits in half (Sweeping Fury), losing 5 seconds on Endure Pain (Dark Blood), 6% melee damage (Single Saber Mastery), an extra stack of Sunder Armor (Improved Sundering Assault), 6% strength (Dreadnaught), and possibly some accuracy (Accuracy) as well as the talents you already mentioned. I like the idea in theory, but the Smash CD being what it is post-nerf combined with the reduction in rage generation from taking damage in Soresu Form without Sweeping Fury will leave you in a situation where you just hope one smash crit holds aggro for 12 seconds until you can do it again. And you won't be able to use Sweeping Slash as much since your rage generation is nerfed. And if you ever have to tank a boss in that spec, your threat is going to be terrible without your two High Threat abilities you can use at the beginning of a pull and the extra rage to use your assault abilities as you only generate 1 rage per 6 seconds instead of 1 rage per 3 seconds with a full Immortal build. It's a good build in theory, I just don't think it's practical given the enrage timers on current (hard mode) content and how important threat is. Yeah, taunts can be used aggressively to give you some nice threat, but if your DPS are really pushing it, you're going to need the extra rage and Crushing Blow. Also if you Vicious Slash a decent amount in your threat rotation, you'll be reducing the cooldown of Enrage with a full Immortal build which will also allow you to use more attacks and do more threat/damage. I'm not 100% against this build, though.. I'd give it a C, maybe a C+. If snap AoE aggro is an issue, this can help correct that issue.

On the back side of the turrets... If you leap in from directly behind, you have a chance to be insta-gibbed. If you leap from a different angle (about 45 degrees), you will never have this problem. The issue is with leaping to the turret while directly behind it. It is a bug and the workaround is to simply take a different angle when leaping back. I had it happen once, and I never took that same angle again and haven't had any issue with it since.

I had the same issue. I corrected it by taking a different angle.

All world respawns seem to be messed up. Not sure if they fixed it with the patch today.

The whole problem isn't expertise, the problem is being able to PvP to be effective in PvE as PvP typically is easier to get gear. So you'd be telling raiders they need to PvP and get the gear and then go in and do the raids. Some people don't want to be forced into PvP, and hardcore PvE'ers will stop playing the game because the people getting geared from PvP are downing all the bosses before them. Even if you just load PvP gear with a ton of extra endurance, the tanks would be forced to PvP to get uber geared in like a week. PvE content is affected by lockouts - PvP is not, and that is the issue. If you want to cap Warzone Commendations per week, then sure - eliminate expertise... But PvP'ers won't like that. Essentially the whiners have all the power, and since that's the case, you have to make PvP gear ineffective in PvE and PvE gear ineffective in PvP - and the best way to do that is to lower the PvE stats on PvP gear and add a PvP only stat. Though I suppose they could do it the opposite and put a PvE only stat on PvE gear - Hell, that could remedy everything.

I think we change it from boss to boss. - 2 tanks, 5 heals, 9 DPS for first two bosses. - 2 tanks, 4 heals, 10 DPS for third boss (one tank does the puzzle). - 3 tanks, 4 heals, 9 DPS for last boss (since we have no DPS with a taunt button). All of these are for HM. And for Nightmare Pilgrim: - 2 tanks, 4 heals, 10 DPS.

It is needed. PvP'ers would quit the game if the best gear came from PvE... And the game would lose subscriptions... and eventually the PvE'ers would stop getting new content... I'd prefer to have PvP where the person who dedicates the most time to PvE is the most powerful player in the match, but that just simply doesn't work for people who do not want to play against scripted encounters and prefer the challenge of going up against another player and not having a set path they have to go down in order to win the fight.. In PvP, decisions have to be made on the fly much more often than in PvE. The only way to balance PvP is to allow PvP'ers to gain the best PvP gear by PvP'ing. By the same respect, PvE'ers need to have better PvE gear than PvP'ers. Granted, there are times that those that excel in both can gain a slight edge in one or the other by going for the easier to get piece - be it PvP or PvE, but the best in slot for each needs to come from whatever aspect of the game the piece of gear is best in slot for. MAYBE have one piece that comes from the other aspect to reward those active in both, but surely not any more than one piece. The only alternative to expertise is just having a set that scales with the bolster buff and still trumps PvE gear in world PvP... But that means the only alternative to expertise is a different implementation of the same exact thing.

Nice write up. We 2-tanked it and in all of our attempts with two tanks we never had both tanks get marked. Maybe someone aggro pulled if you got 3 tanks all with the debuff? Either that or we just got incredibly lucky. To 2 tank it we just had one tank take 2 stacks of the debuff and the pilgrim tank taunted and tanked both temporarily while marked with defensive CD's up. Then the other tank taunted back once his stacks dropped.