Bug is still not fixed, the pain continues.

To think I've been running these courses over and over again looking for the one target/orb/hoop I must be missing because I haven't been getting perfection achievement on Tatooine or Onderon. And then I decided to check the forums, and it turns out those achievements haven't been working for what, roughly a year now?

I am experiencing the same problem too. Bioware, please fix this ASAP, this is a huge pain. Loadouts are such an amazing feature and have made moving gear across toons so much easier. Having to click and move everything by hand to share gear across all of my toons makes me not even want to play the game anymore.

I don't know if this has been suggested before or not, but I think it would be very useful to make the currencies used to upgrade gear (daily matrices, op/FP/PvP currencies) interchangeable. Imagine that you are a solo player. Most of the gear and upgrades you get are for the Noble Decurion conquest gear set. You decide to try out some flashpoints, or some PvP, or some operations (maybe even a few Nefra runs) to get better gear. But you just don't play that content frequently enough to upgrade the gear you get from that content. Wouldn't it be great if you could exchange your supply of daily matrices at a vendor for op/FP/PvP currencies to upgrade the gear you got from your foray into other content? You wouldn't be able to trade them at a 1-to-1 rate of course, because if you want the best deal you have to keep playing the content that drops the currency you need. But it would at least let you continue upgrading your gear while mostly playing the way you want to play. Being able to exchange one gearing currency for the other would also allow players who almost exclusively play the game to do operations or PvP or flashpoints to exchange the currency they have a lot of for daily matrices to continue upgrading their gear. I can't tell you the number of times I finish an op, go to the vendor to upgrade an implant or a piece of gear, and although I'm capped on op catalysts and tech fragments, I don't have enough daily matrices to upgrade the piece. So I have to go run CZ-198 for the 9,999,999,999th time, for every single upgrade. It is so frustrating to me that I can't upgrade the gear I get from operations by playing operations--instead, I am forced to grind the content that I don't like playing, and in my opinion is the least stimulating content in the game. I'm sure the same is true of a lot of players who don't play operations frequently but are not satisfied with the (rather weak) gear that is obtainable from everything besides master mode operation bosses. Simply put, being able to exchange currencies would allow players to (mostly) gear up by playing the content that they want to play, while still retaining an element of needing to do harder content for better gear. On a separate but related note, it would be great if players could exchange daily/op/FP/PvP gearing currencies for tech fragments much like we can exchange conquest commendations for tech fragments. I have been capped on op and FP currencies for weeks but have nothing to spend them on. All I have left to upgrade are a few implants, and those upgrades are limited entirely by tech fragments and daily resource matrices. I know many players are in a similar boat--they've reached the end of their gearing journey and have nothing to spend all the currencies/drops they get on. Being able to exchange them for tech fragments would serve as a good escape valve for excess currency.

For PvE IO, PTS presents the veneer of the current live version of IO merc but I am still very disappointed in some of the changes that have been made. I really, really feel the lack of thermal sensor override. That's a critical part of controlling my heat build-up, same as vent heat. But now I have to sacrifice Energy Rebounder (reduced CD on Energy Shield when attacked, chance to generate small absorb shield when attacked) in order to get the utility for better vent heat and thermal sensor override is nowhere to be found. This sucks. My rotation mostly works the same, but now I have less heat to play with. As for the decisions I have to make now, I like the level 15 and level 30 choices. These kinds of decisions are interesting because they don't add bloat to the game or take away crucial skills. Level 15: Eruptive Flames sounds like it'd be very useful once I get into actual content; Incendiary Ignition sounds like it'd probably be BiS for most ops; Volatile Cinders sounds useless though given that Volatile Warhead doesn't actually result in a noticeable DPS increase over using Power Shot instead. Level 20: I don't know why anyone would choose Explosive Dart or Stealth Scan in PvE over Power Barrier. Frankly I think you'd be better off just removing Explosive Dart from the game and reworking this decision. Level 30: This is an interesting choice. 2 single-target DPS changes vs. an AoE damage buff. My guess is people will crunch the numbers and figure out which of the 2 single-target DPS increases is better, and then the choice depends on whether you need the AoE damage or the single-target damage. Level 35: This is a crappy tier. I like the buffs to the threat drop, but I strongly dislike the idea of making the threat drop optional. If you want to simplify classes and keep a mostly level playing field across classes, core abilities that all classes share (single-target hard stuns, interrupts, stun breakers, threat dumps) should be guaranteed abilities not optional abilities. I very rarely use Super Charged Celerity because it's so underwhelming--I'd much rather have an extra supercharged gas for more energy and DPS. You'd be better off either removing Merc/Mando raid buff from the game entirely, or just making it a guaranteed ability and removing any attached heat/supercharge cost. Then it might actually be worthwhile. 2 charges for Power Surge being optional now is... eh. As IO I don't care, but as Bodyguard I am disappointed to have to choose between raid buff, threat dump, or burstier heals. As for the rest, having to choose between Hydraulics or Reflect Shield hits REALLY hard. Having to choose between 60% Kolto Overload or the ability to Unload/Boltstorm/Progressive Scan hits REALLY hard. You have taken so many must-have utilities that we used to always be able to pick and forced us to give up half of them. You've stripped away way too much of Merc's DCDs. I may find myself in a situation where the only two DCDs I have are vanilla energy shield and vanilla kolto overload. That's it. Not even chaff flare if I need the raid buff or extra power surge instead. I mean what the actual ****? Overall I'm seriously disappointed in the level 35+ decisions we have to make now, plus the lack of thermal sensor override. Powertech is okay, but Merc got a really raw deal from what I can tell. If this is doesn't change then I may just end up retiring my Mercs because this neutered version of the class looks like it will significantly underperform in all manner of actual content. This seems to be a general trend across all the classes currently in the PTS--the only decent choices seem to be the ones that modify how existing abilities work, like Kolto Shell, Incendiary Missile, Healing Scan, Dark Ward, Power Yield, Enrage, etc. The ****** parts come in the level 35+ decisions where you have decided to LIMIT our choices and prevent us from taking DCDs or utilities that we used to always be able to pick. I don't know why the devs keep clamoring on about how they're trying to improve player choice, you are limiting player choice in these latter tiers and it really, really sucks. Furthermore, we're going to have to constantly reset our utilities/skill tree decisions every other encounter to compensate for this. This will NOT improve the player experience. Nobody wants to be changing their utilities all of the damned time because they have to make sure they bring the small subset of utilities/DCDs that will actually be helpful to them in each encounter. It will be a pain in the ***, especially considering that stuff will be moving around on our hotbars as we drop certain abilities in favor of others, unless we have a template saved for every possible combination of utilities. That does not sound enjoyable or user-friendly to me AT ALL. If you really want to reduce ability bloat, take out all of the abilities you added in 6.0. No one uses Severing Slash or Volt Rush. Slightly buff the damage of Juggs/Maras and take out Furious Power. Scale all endgame content to level 80 and then simply never increase the level or gear caps again. This gets rid of the need for clicky alacrity relics, so there's one less thing people need to worry about. Gear would actually finally matter too if everything was scaled up to the level cap instead of capped at 70/75. Nobody likes having to grind up levels and new gear and set bonsuses just so they can get back to doing the things they were already able to do pre-update. Increasing the level and gear caps and breaking the existing set bonuses is the least imaginative way to keep people playing your game. Instead of wasting development time on adding levels and updating stat formulas to accommodate new gear, spend that time on developing content instead your players will thank you for it. Finally, turn class buffs into permanent passive buffs. This, combined with removing the need for a level cap system by bringing everything up to the current level cap and then not *********** with it anymore, will take 5 buffs out of players' buff icon trays, increase players' ability to customize their gear, and reduce the number of things they have to click at the right moment.

Please, for the love of SWTOR, listen to the player base and ditch these changes. They won't go well. These changes do not increase player choice or customization, nor does it encourage the use of a broader range of abilities. Currently, I can use blade blitz to cheese things like doom, or to give myself invulnerability for a second, or to quickly reposition, or just for extra DR. If I plan on using it a lot, I can spend a utility point to reduce cooldown and use it to purge movement impairing effects. Or, I can just choose to do none of those things and take blitz off of my bar. With this new system, I will have to sacrifice Reflect and Enure if I want blitz, and I MUST take the utility that comes with blitz because it's rolled into the ability. In fact, rather than being able to choose between 8 different options at 3 different tiers of utilities, now we have a series of forced choices with fewer options at each choice. All of these changes give the player LESS choice and LESS customization. This. Is. Idiotic. These changes lower the skill ceiling in the game tremendously, which is going to adversely affect the player experience. Currently, I can use saber throw on a distant add that no one has any significant threat on to keep that add focused on me for a few seconds while I fight something else, then jump to that add or taunt it to keep it focused on me once the saber throw threat starts to fail. Now I won't be able to do that, I'll have even less options for controlling the battlefield if I play guardian tank. If I play PvP I had better have my leap cooled down because otherwise I won't be able to blitz to a capping player, use freezing force speed boost to get to them faster, or saber throw them to interrupt a cap. Again, I have less choices at my disposal. Currently, the game rewards me with reflect damage/avoided damage when I use reflect at the right time, invulnerability to hard-hitting attacks when I blitz at the right time, and staying alive when I use Enure at the right time. I had to learn how to do these things properly and it has been very rewarding, and doing these things properly is a lot of fun. These changes strip all of that away and the devs claim this increases my choice? In what universe does reducing the options I have at my disposal and restricting my ability to customize them result in greater choice, greater customization, and an all-around better experience? If you think your class has way too many useless abilities then you are not playing your class to its fullest. If it bothers you, switch to a class with fewer abilities, or just take the ones you don't use off of your bar. This. Is. Idiotic. The game, especially Dxun, is still buggy as hell, and now there's going to be a completely unnecessary forced gear reset with the introduction of new tiers of gear and probably new set bonuses... I hate to say it but it sounds like 7.0 will be a disaster. What is even the point of increasing the level cap to 80 just to end up weaker and with fewer abilities than what we had at 75? I cannot fathom these decisions. We need (1) more/better content, (2) bug fixes/quality of life improvements, (3) maybe some new set bonuses or customization options like new races, cosmetics, combat styles, etc. Instead we're getting (1) a (probably) rushed & buggy op, (2) major balance changes for PvP and PvE that were unnecessary to begin with and likely have very limited testing (no way they balance ops in time for release), and (3) mindless busy work in the form of grinding up new gear. #3 is absolutely the most unimaginative way to keep people playing a game. I love SWTOR and I love the devs but their priorities and logic are wildly out of touch with reality. I can't wait to be constantly changing loadouts before every fight because I can only have 1 DCD at a time, that's really going to improve the player experience... Rather than a convenient system that encourages/facilitates players trying out new specs/respeccing, loadouts is going to be a terrible and constant necessity just due to how stripped down things have become. This. Is. Idiotic. Why in the world did the devs think that rushing PTS to the point where core skills like stun break and interrupt weren't available initially? What did they think players were going to say? Obviously they'd focus on that heavily. Did they think players would be able to provide any meaningful feedback on how their guardian lite idea felt with so many unrelated gaps in their bars? If they're this rushed with PTS, God only knows how rushed 7.0 is. Combining abilities isn't going to cut it. Opting into an aoe + slow on blade storm is NOT comparable to freezing force. The aoe on blade storm (PTS) is hot garbage, it has no range and no width to it. You're lucky to hit anything with it besides the primary target. Furthermore, linking a slow to a key rotational ability like blade blitz means that, unless I can maintain near 100% uptime on the debuff, it's not the same as freezing force because I can no longer slow exactly when I need to without having to hold off use of such an important ability for the right moment. ALSO, if I want to, I can spec into the utility to use freezing force as a speed boost in fights that require lots of movement; if I don't need the speed boost then I don't take that utility. Guess I won't be able to do that now either. This reduces players' options & control over their classes. WHY??? Who was asking for these changes? Seriously. This feels like change for the sake of making changes and busy work for the sake of having something to do. These changes run completely counter to the devs' stated intentions. Again, for the love of SWTOR, listen to the player base and ditch these changes. They won't go well. You've already got a really good thing going, there's no reason to waste precious resources on mucking it all up when you could be working on content, bug fixes, and quality of life improvements instead. My guardian on PTS feels like a fat, slow, still-leveling toon. God help me if an add is 8 meters away--I can't blade blitz or freezing force to him, I can't saber throw while I close the gap, and he's too close to leap to. I just have to slowly trod along until I close the gap like a useless idiot. That's pretty much the exact opposite of what Jedi should feel like. I'm going to play all the SWTOR I can now because there won't be anything worth sticking around for if this is what 7.0 is going to be. Finally, while we're all telling you what a disaster this has been, please change the PTS so we can just buy the 306 mods/enhancements/armorings etc. we want rather than having to grind at the vendor for them. Honestly, how hard could that be? And the mount speed.... what the hell?

I see, so if I have a 1.5 sec cast ability that now takes 1.34 seconds to cast (according to tooltip) and the castbar itself says 1.3s, it will cast in that amount of time, but there will still be a .06 second delay before I can activate my next ability (because I'm still at 1.4s GCD)?

Doesn't alacrity have the same effect on all three though? E.g., 10% alacrity = 10% speed boost to GCD, casting times, channel times, and cooldowns for most skills? It's just that the default GCD = 1.5, so 10% alacrity = 1.36 repeating, which the game rounds up to 1.4 GCD (i.e., the surplus alacrity is wasted)?

Alacrity noob here. I see people talking about using StarParse to record their APM and calculate their GCD that way. Is the in-game cast time not accurate for determining GCD? For instance, a 1.5 sec cast ability that reads as 1.40 sec in the tooltip means I am at the 1.4 GCD threshold, right? Also, is the time on the in-game castbar accurate? Because I've noticed that <x.4 rounds down... does this mean a 1.5 sec cast ability that is now 1.34 sec cast but only shows 1.3 on the castbar when casting = 1.3 GCD or am I slower than that?

I find this thread and its predictions of 10k and 5k EIS's amusing since they've doubled in price to 50K each now.