I am absolutely blown away by the negativity surrounding this content update. Really shouldn't be surprised, but here I am. For what it's worth BW if you read this... Locking pieces of the story out for a week or whatever is not a terrible thing. I like the buildup of this story arc. It already in an hour or so of content has more going for it than all of Makeb ever had... Please continue ahead and keep up the good work!

At launch played lightning sorc when obviously at that time, they weren't super great at much but AOE dps. Swapped reasonably early on to Mara DPS and held that as my main ever since. Never had an issue battling as 1st or 2st place DPS in any group once I was attuned to fights and had the time to get used to it. These new fights are absolutely busted against this particular class, and as many have noted against all melee except arguably PT or Sin DPS. For simple reasons. For PT, hydraulics + range DPS capability, plus AOE in the form of conal flame attacks that make it so all you have to do is position and click. With assassins its similar, but even easier... Death field. Period. Look at torque in HM for example. Sure a sin there will eat as much DTPS as I would on my mara (approx 1400-2k depending on how awful placements of fires are) and in that same scenario, the sin can do 4k DPS relative to my annih/carn DPS tops of around 3400-3600 with rare exception. Why? because death field is an aoe they can plop down and hit Torque, Shootslasers, and 2 turrets without even trying. If they ARE trying and the position is great, they can hit 3-4 turrets on top of Shoots and Torque. Boom you suddenly have dots ticking in addition to a solid 10K+ hit. A marauder meanwhile has dot spreading through smash which I would be BLESSED to hit 4 targets on, most conditions of that fight would allow you to hit 3 targets... A couple turrets and the boss or shootslasers, because the boss isn't static very often without fire and then tank movements. You simply can't compete in this type of environment. Even sweeping slash with an upgrade, even in carnage, lucky to hit 2 targets at a time. Why? Because turrets attract to melee range targets automatically, meaning I am simply a healing liability when I stay within range to hit 2 of them with sweeping. That's right, 2 is all I can hit. Because if I went to try and hit them with the boss and/or shootslasers, I am about to get annihilated by fire so I have 1 GCD or 2 at most before that happens, additionally the tanks then need to move Torque to new position around the time shoots drops and turrets come out anyway to make room for the repair droid. It's a lose-lose for a marauder ability set. This is just one example of where sweeping slash and/or dot spreading/DST are worthless abilities relative to the advantages of the shape and ease of use for sweeping blasters, DFA, suppressive fire, DEATH FIELD, and none of this is even considering how OP force storm obviously is today. As an annih mara for so long including through prior content in NiM progression, I can honestly say that in the new content only a small number of fights allow competitive numbers due to a combination of downtime as well as AOE opportunities. Those fights are: Malaphar, Sword Squadron, Master Blaster, Rev Commanders. That's about it, whether you lose out to add opportunities that spike rDPS numbers or terrible uptime relative for a melee... And frankly when competing against competent range DPS (In my group 2 snipers, a sorc/merc that interchange) I am lucky often times to beat them even in those fights, if they play their cards right, they can utterly keep pace with me without breaking THAT much of a sweat. Please BW, do something about the melee classes you left out to dry.

I think the issue is really the variation of skill among constant NiM/HM raiding groups vs casuals who only play for fun here and there... Nothing wrong with that, it just costs you in the way of practice time to rehearse strategies that other groups have already executed to death until they know every mechanic so intuitively it becomes easy. Or in some cases, have the natural intuition to develop rapidly and require very little wiping if at all to accomplish certain content. Torque isn't challenging even in 16 if the following is true: You have 3 great DPS, and a handful of mediocre dps (no bad dps) Your tanks and melee are aware of the timing of fire spawns. You don't need visuals or a stop clock. See a shoots lasers? START MOVING! no one destroys Fix-It droids. Granted this can be challenging with the randoms that hit group finder, but not sure what the real solution is except to nerf content somehow, and I don't think that is the right solution. The new content being challenging is a good thing overall. It asks us to grow as players, we should embrace that wherever we can. Also for those wondering, 16m was tested in SM on both ops during the closed beta. Feedback given. Some fights were literally unable to be completed due to difficulty being so ramped up, even with the prediction of mechanics. Overall though we also have to remember that at least for the time being, dev team is trying to support harder content and challenging players to rise to that level. We'll see how it pans out long term, as obviously this method is going to lock out some groups entirely.

/Sign anyway. Even if they don't listen. My concerns are in line with what everyone is saying, I think both utility AND DPS need reworks. The DPS at least from a PvE perspective on fights where our uptime is effectively screwed. I don't know how you make up for it, because on some fights we can do fine (not amazing compared to other classes, but ok) but in general it's lacking. It still feels like a need for a raw increase though. And please fix undying, ugh... At the least health consumed on cast. But how about 10% health lost? or none? I mean really why do we have to suffer so hard there, when the CD on SW is awful? Force camo is another great CD, but its my speed CD AND a DCD, now I gotta cleanse with it, you're breaking my balls here BW...

Seriously. And/or movable, currently it's popping up right on top of my PvP queue notification and its tiring every time I see the thing. Especially because then it'll fade, then STOP fading and I have to reset my UI just to get it to disappear.

Bump.

Ohh Harbinger... How you love to sing the song of death to us all. Seriously BW you're killing us... Address this as a long term issue, and not some bull isolated incident. This is not isolated, it happens far too frequently. I am starting to think they knock out other servers on purpose every once in a while just to make it appear that Harb isn't the only one running on some ancient, decrepit, diseased hardware/software combo that just seems to hate players being on it or near it. Fix it! My NiM raid is being crapped on for this, just as it was Saturday. >.< bleh.

Bump... This is ridiculous. The gap between biochem and the other crew skills is ridiculous. Many people are making millions a day just by doing gathering professions, let alone anyone for instance making armorings that are selling for 1m+ constantly... Rather ridiculous to me, biochem was already nerfed with the medpacs before, now this, in addition to not being able to make much money? Yeah people need to buy stims, but not as many as others seem to think. The market is flooded relative to the raiders who actually care enough to buy them. This is especially true considering only so many of the raiding group would even want them considering many raids in the game are absolutely passable without these stims and medpacs... I have a stack of the good medpacs that I cant sell to save my life. For less than they cost to make.