Edited and bumped with new recruiting needs.

That progression thread was a joke. Their google doc has the world first timed run literally a month after my in game time stamp.

We didn't skip dread guards for gear.

After years away from the game for the great content dearth, <Death and Taxes> is back on the scene in SWTOR. Prior to our break from the game, we fully cleared all content available, including Nightmare Power Timed Runs, multi-class and multi-role Deposer and Conqueror for most of our raiders, and we took multiple top finishes in the world progression races. Our current goal is to catch up on and clear all current Master Mode (and Veteran Mode) content released since our raiders took a break after the release of Colossal Monolith. We are currently actively recruiting players to fill out our raid team. Current Needs: Our group is in need of two strong DPS to re-fill our team after life happened. We would prefer candidates be flexible in their roles, able to switch classes as needed. Barring that we'd prefer ranged DPS. Raid Schedule: Our current raid schedule offers some flexibility, and have not yet committed to a full schedule pending availability of our completed team. While we do not currently intend to devote as many hours to raiding as was necessary in the 3.0/Pre-3.0 era, we do intend to run a few nights a week until we have fully cleared the current content. Raid Attitudes: We raid with two goals in mind, clear the content, and have fun. The general attitude of our raids is semi-competitive, and we try our best to save our "goofing off" for after the content is cleared. We should note that we expect adult (not crude/explicit) attitudes during raid, and raid team "fit" is an important factor to us. With our track record of being competitive in every progression tier from Launch until 4.0, we believe that once DNT is back up and running we will be fully capable of clearing the most recent operations at the highest level very quickly. Alts Policy: If you are on a <Death and Taxes> main raid team, we do expect for that team to be your main in-game raid priority, and for any characters running on a main team to be in the guild. We understand that many players have scheduled raids with other groups, and are in guilds with friends/family/etc. and will do our best to accommodate such situations on a case by case basis. Trial Information: We will be conducting trial runs, on a schedule to be determined, of any player that we feel may fit well with our group. Which operation will be run will be determined based on the role applied for. You do not necessarily have to have full clears of all content to be taken seriously, but an aptitude for learning a fight quickly is an important factor to us. If you are interested, please contact any of the following players in <Death and Taxes> via whisper or ingame mail: Rhomea or Ninebras, or ask any player online in <Death and Taxes> to be connected to one of those players on the Imperial side of Star Forge. You may also submit an application to our guild via google form here and one of us will reach out to you. Finally you may also submit a message to a guild member on Discord. You can find us via this link.

The game gives plenty of options without subverting the role selection inherent in picking a tanking spec. Skanks should be obliterated, perhaps by shunting defensive power into gear and away from disciplines.

So? I can count on one hand the number of times a hybrid spec was optimal in high level content and that's being very generous. It's actually one finger, and it was the aoe damage reduction-focused Shield Tech/AP hybrid for NiM Brontes. I don't care what you were goofing around with in low level content where the game doesn't care what you do and you can valor box if you want. As soon as group compositions are enforced things should be tuned to force people into the roles required. If they refuse the game should kill them. Any instance where the players get away with breaking roles is a design failure.

How do I explain it? Why should I have to explain it? You may have had a shield on but if you went all the way to creeping terror you weren't tanking.

In a properly tuned game the only thing you deserve is to be killed by properly tuned content for playing your role wrong. Edit: to be clear I don't blame you for playing this way since you can get away with it. The point is the game should be designed in a way that you cannot get away with it.

This thread is buried because evidently nobody plays this class. Here's another reason defensive and utility CDs shouldn't be turned into offensive ones: Real offensive cooldowns get their cooldowns reduced through alacrity. Defensives and utilities do not, and putting a DPS increase on them further pigeonholes the player into a specific Utility build for maximum DPS.

Nightmare is the mode in which group balance between tanks, heals, and dps should be most strictly enforced. If there's a way to successfully do a current content nightmare boss with fewer tanks or healers it should be adjusted until that way is no longer possible.

I have sympathy for this issue but that's a problem for the UI engineers. CD numbers definitely need to show for abilities with charges but that's no reason not to implement a set bonus. Also, threatening scream is already on that system in the live game so this wouldn't change anything.

With Established Foothold I have a ~57% uptime on 2 energy per second and 15% increased damage, and it can be reset by Imperial Preparation. With this set bonus I'd get a variable amount of EPS and increased damage (thanks for the vague descriptor) on a ~16% uptime. At first glance this is overspecialized and dependent on too many contingencies to be attractive and there's two things I don't like about the design. 1) Once again defensive/utility cooldowns are being morphed into damage cooldowns. Other classes with good offensive cooldowns like Powertech or Marauder are not forced to use their defensive/utilities to reach their optimal dps. Why are Sorcerers and Snipers being made to do this? Why can't you just turn Recklessness, Laze Target or Target Acquired into something worth pressing? They were garbage when I left over five years ago and they're still garbage today but rather than fix them you decide to morph our other situational cooldowns into janky offensives. 2) You're going to cause a lot of social friction by making a sniper's damage output dependent on their group's positioning. The greater the damage bonus per ally is the worse the friction will be - and what's bad is it'll have to be high for such a low uptime cooldown to compete with options already available. I get that these set bonuses are geared toward NiM Dxun specifically but, well, that's a terrible idea anyway. Vertical progression or go home. In my experience this wouldn't make me press Ballistic Shield more than I already do - raids generally know when to use big cooldowns like this already.

Always nice to hear from a fan!

Sounds like they need to be even harder, then.

You didn't have to do that when they were actually hard, much less now. Get good, you have several more abilities than we had when world firsts were in contention.

You're fixing the wrong issue. The real problem is the Superheated Fuel tactical outperforms all others in all situations for 2/3 specs and contributes massively to Firefall's damage because of the guaranteed crit and absurd surge it grants.

Y'all ripped off my show name.

Vods for State of the Galaxy Episode 12:

He's right about why higher end players don't queue for flashpoints. I queued for them quite a bit at 50 because the rewards were worth it. At 55 they weren't worth it so I stopped, and that hasn't changed at 60. Off-pieces and comm rewards are literally vendor trash so what incentivizes a good player who knows what they're doing to go into this content? The answer is nothing unless for some reason they care about conquest points, which most weeks are more expediently farmed doing almost anything else. I really don't understand why tier tokens can't drop off of bonus bosses or end bosses. It's not like people won't still do story mode ops, which would still be more efficient even if FPs did drop tokens.

Bumped and updated with our current needs.

My request is that you keep answering my fluff questions and come back to POT5.

No. The new purple quality grenades are consumable.

Deserves a bump, I don't think it should be this way. Unbind the purple grenades please.

Eh? Pyro just spams flame sweep/thrower. Deception spams lacerate afaik. As vengeance you just hit shatter and slam jam it so you can spam sweeping slash harder - the damage is mostly vengeful slam and sweeping slash, the dot is there just to buff sweeping slash. I'll grant the PT runs out of gas and can't do it as long as the other two but that's not really dot dependence. The advantage of the sorc and sniper is that their aoe is merely bigger and has less setup time. It doesn't really do more damage though, and it's not so much faster (re: setup) that melee can't overcome the difference. Tenebras on his assassin and me on my jugg can get like 17-18k aoe pulls (depending on the group size) whereas sorcs and snipers were around 13-14 with their aoes on the same groups. Yeah, those classes are definitely better at clearing the wall on Torque but it's not because their aoe does more damage. Still, it does support the premise of the thread to a certain extent.