Well, that is completely ***. What was their thought process not allowing master loot to actual be master loot on normal too? Baffling. Unnecessary RNG is unnecessary.

lol yes. this is so dumb. I made a post earlier about it. Like our first run had one of our inquis guys get like 3 pieces over our tank and a even more undergeared sorc them himself. A couple of cunning items going to a certain player that were only sidegrades as opposed to 100% upgrades for another IA. The fact that its essentially random just makes gearing for the harder difficulties more time consuming. Just let us master loot like normal ffs..... Did they not think that guilds would run this as a 100% premade? They couldn't have expected that only pugs would run normal mode raids. You gotta gear up somehow right? CONFUSION - HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Weird.... I'd rank them as such: BT FE B for Ilum Foundry Boarding Party Directive 7 For whatever reason we have more trouble with 7 then Battle. Guess our healers are a bit better then our DPS, idk haha.

@MacAllen Spread out around him. Never stand in front of him if your MDPS. When he targets you just be far enough in to not get knockback into poison, and just take the swipe or dodge it as he prepares it (3-4 seconds). We just take the swipe. Its a bit more stressful to the healers but we run a couple snipers and too much movement completely destroys their DPS so we had to improvise.

This and the video lag would make me a happy happy camper, specifically in PvP. My rig is pretty old so some of it is on my end too, and I'm workin on that!

Please. This isn't Kotor. The story ends as soon as you hit Ilum. After that, you should be spacebarring like no tomorrow. These games are time synchs enough without having to wait for people to watch RP for 5 minutes a time. I'd actually appreciate a way to just remove the conversations in Ops/FP all together. But that'll never happen so spacebar it is! YEEEHAW

This is where dual-spec comes in to play I feel. Because then, the OP can play his gimp spec because he likes it when not in Ops. And play the actual worth a damn spec when he is in Ops. And for the millionth time, without damage meters it is very hard to assess beyond obvious fails (dying to cleaves, standing in fire, knockback into poision, etc etc) where the problem lies. Not only for DPS but for healing as well. Casual players don't like these tools because, like the OP stated, it makes them funnel into a certain play style. I guess this is a valid point. But, think of it this way. There is literally no possible way to balance specs so that they are all viable. One will always do slightly more damage, have slightly more utility, and slightly more survivability and overall use then another. Operations, in particular the harder modes (just like in WoW) are tuned so that these are taken into account. It's imperative that a player maximize his efficiency before combat. The rest is up to the player to make these talents and gear shine. A meter allows raids to fix the problem. Whether that be helping a player out, changing the strategy a bit, realizing who is in desperate need of some gear upgrades, or in some cases removed from the group. I think anyone used to raiding should understand their purpose. /ENDRANT

So we were finally able to run EV/Rancor (Normal Mode) the other night and I had master looter on... It was auto-deciding who got what, besides the crafting materials and schematics. Just wondering if there is a method that allows the operation leader, or operation group in general to decide who gets what loot? Over the course of the six bosses, about a third of the loot was wasted because it was given to the wrong people. We had a Sorc raid with us who stated previously he was going to be very casual, and it ended up looting him 4-piece tier 2 over our assassin tank and our sorc healer. He said that he'd only take gear if a full-time raider didn't need it or they passed. It gave a side-grade cunning belt to our Operative healer over our fresh Sniper with a 49 blue, etc etc. This isn't a very effective way of gearing our players out if we want to do hard mode and 16-man down the road when we get more 50s. So my question is, what should I as the "master looter/ops leader" be using for a looting option that gives me the ability to choose who gets what loot? We did try round robin as well, but it only allowed us to need/greed on crafting materials and schematics and still auto-looted the actual gear. So no real change from the master loot setting at all. Any help would be much appreciated. We're all long time gaming friends so ninjaing isn't an issue (at least intentionally) so if there is a way to just let a player loot the boss, select and loot his gear, and back off; that'd be great. I've seen videos of other guilds doing this in Hard-Mode and I'm just curious how so I don't have to waste time and even more loot trying to figure out the appropriate loot settings! Thank you.

Its weird because the natural progression in gear doesn't seem to apply to this game. I still love it but.... For us: BT, Fallen Emperor, Battle of Ilum. No problems on hard except for a few mishaps here and there, and with gear now, hilariously easy. Foundry, Boarding Party. Challenging, generally because of the bugs. Eternity Vault Normal, walk in the park. Free loot. Directive 7 hard, lolwtffffffffffff. So you end up actually gearing in EV to do 4-man heroics. OPPOSITE DAY!!!

I've found that once you hit 100% on your physical, you should stop going for accuracy. Unless of course, boss mobs require an extra 10% like some people on other threads have suggested. As far as stat priority, definitely stack Crit. That should be your main secondary stat after Aim. Then a toss up between power and surge. With two piece, your tracer will almost always crit. But some alacrity doesn't hurt either. I have my tracer down to 1.3 cast. I'm still trying to see if that 1.3 is a damage increase over say more power, but hard to tell until I get some kind of meter . Cheers.

Well I've tried all suggestions. There is nothing that can be interrupted after the assassinate. We've tried stacking and aoeing for both the first, and second (if someone even lives through the first which is the problem); and that doesn't seem to do **** either. Basically, our operative healer needs more gear or we absolutely have to bring our sorc. Whatever, just gonna do EV for gear and not waste my time with this nonsense lmao. Thanks anyways.

We've done this fight like 8 times on Hard, and suddenly his incapacitate is 2-shotting anyone and everyone. We tried dispelling it, nope, we tried aoeing him while he's stealthed so that he maybe "can't" assassinate, nope. We tried using the flare droid things, nope. One time, randomly, the tick stopped prematurely. We have no idea what we did to actually stop it. We tried stacking, no change, we tried spreading, no change, we tried killing the turrets, no change, we tried not killing the turrets, no change. So I don't know if we're missing something, if its something specific from a specific class that we need, or....i have no idea. Thanks lol. Again, we've done it everyday since 50. Then today, 4 wipes before we finally killed him out of sheer luck.

Honestly, Ops kill me in 4GCDs and I'm in 350 expertise. How much could 2% additional damage reduction with that 100 expertise honestly help a brother against an equally geared Op? It just seems that stunstabdead Operatives don't really care what your expertise is at all. It just, look another guy with 15-18k health, I'm just gonna shot him now because I'm fairly certain Determination is on CD. Stop trying to justify the class by saying we're all bad players. Yes, you CAN kill Operatives. They don't get the jump, or you outrange them you have a good chance of melting their faces. But in a lot of cases, they can simply LoS you (extremely easy in buttball), restealth, crawl their way around and find you, and then *poof* dead. Again, I can't complain about the DAMAGE since I'm playing Merc who do just as much as an Operative in some cases if I go on a crit-spree; its really the overwhelming stuns and escape. But whatever, not like anyone gives a **** about our opinions. Its just going to be a circle jerk of players who aren't Ops qqing, like me, and then people who play with ops or play as op calling those qqers bads. So lallalalalalala

as an Empire player, instead of "wanna PvP" its "wanna play some buttball?" Lol. When voidstar or Alderaan pop, its like AHHYEA ACTUAL REPUBs. I've stooped so low to add all the best players to my friends list just to see what Pit(x) there in when we premade queue to see if the game is going to be landslide victory, fun, or a /sit situation because they're running two or three battlemaster operatives. GGGGG I love the pvp regardless though, just getting sick of buttball.

If they had just balanced empire/republic during EGA this might not have been a problem....my server is like 80/20 Empire. We tried working around that issue to do Ilum dailies, and people got banned lmao. But yes, I'd rather wait 20 minutes for a Voidstar pop then have to play Huttball for 3 hours before I get one. Seriously. Plus, Ops and Smuggs are more manageable on the other two warzones as opposed to buttball from my experience. But that's besides the point.

The problem really is that no class can effectively defend against an dps/pvp specced operative. If your stun/snare removal ability is on cd, and even if it isn't, a good operative can and WILL find you and kill you. I'm at 350 expertise and similarly geared Ops kill me in that 4-second time frame almost 100% of the time. Without a dedicated healer, you're doomed before the fight even starts. And a good operative will just gib your healer and come for you after, so....yea. Rogues in WoW were one thing, but they were paper. I could kite a rogue around for decades on my priest. Can't for the life of me do that on my Merc. Granted, if I'm allowed to freecast I can generally shred an operative in 4 GCDs, but that's a whole other nerfbat that needs to be dealt with lmao.

Yup, same problem here. Although this set of weeklys I finally got some luck. But previously, I got 4 mainhand weapons and 3 head pieces. Those were the only PvP pieces I had up until today, where I replaced my chest (which I bought with the commedations, so basically a pretty non-existant upgrade) and a relic slot (also had through accomodations and adds nothing to my expertise, and very little to damage output). I'd also like to add that getting loot for classes not in your party in 4-man HMs is pretty frustrating too. But this is FAR FAR worse. I have two companions with champion pistols. For reals....

It's really just frustrating because even Operative players, at least the non-douchey ones, think their class is beyond overpowered right now. Like I play Mercenary, so I can't really talk about Operative damage without being a hypocrite myself, but virtually no class has any sufficient or good way of defending themselves from an Operative. The low cooldowns on multiple stuns/snares, the ability to heal themselves on the fly and attack at ranged, restealth at will, and kill any class without fail in 3-4 gcds....is a problem. A pure PvP spec'd Operative also, is virtually un-CCable. They are constantly resisting knockbacks, stuns, snares of any kind. And with most stealth classes, you'd expect them to be paper; but they're not. It takes me longer to kill an Operative then it does a Powertech or Juggernaut. Nerfing them to much would destroy the class, for both PvE and PvP, but diminishing returns and some tuning of their skills is definitely needed.

If i had to choose some things to add, besides the obvious bug fixes/balances and content patches, I'd probably have to say: 1) dual spec - this is so damn convenient for everyone, especially players like myself who play a hybrid that has different specs for pve healing, pve dps, pvp healing, and pvp dps. Granted, they'd only allow two specs to swap between, but it's still something I feel everyone wants and needs. 2) easier / faster way to get to your ship - The amount of time I spend going back to the spaceport on planets, running to the elevator, then running to my ship, then getting in my ship...is a bit unnecessary. I'm not asking for a free go to ship whenever the hell you want kind of thing, but I think it'd be cool if we could say, use our Quick Travel to just go directly to our ship. Or have an item we can purchase that is much like a "hearth stone" that you can use on an hour cooldown that brings you to your ship. Something along those lines. 3) A completely redone Auction House - The current auction house is atrocious. Sorry, but it is. I should be able to simply type in what I want, without filling out useless criteria, and have it find anything related. The way its setup now is not only unnecessarily time consuming, but is unorganized and even frustrating to find things. I can work around it, but I don't see why they didn't just keep it simple. 4) Organic / Droid Mounts - I just think this would be hilarious and cool. Riding a droid or one of those giant slugs from Balmorra. Awesome. Also, maybe a bit more then just 10% speed upgrades from speeder training to speeder training. Especially if I'm spending upwards of 200,000 credits. 5) For Empire players, something visual that coincides with Light Side players. I wanted to play a Light Side Bounty Hunter because I thought it would be something rare as most people would want to murder everything in sight. But I get no incentive at all besides titles and some lame items via vendor if I'm light. Dark Side players become evil looking hags. I don't change. Just something! 6) Fix Taris, the UI and Video lag, and add more unique ship battles. Other than that, I'm loving the game!

I'm going to assume the real story kicks in with Operations. Kind of sucks for people who don't intend to raid at all, because they don't have the time to commit, but honestly that's probably where the bulk of the storytelling outside the companions/class storylines and bonus area quests will be. But even after Athiss, you don't really feel as immersed like in Black Talon, as you said. Mandolarian Raiders actually had fights with mechanics, albeit simple (with a fun council fight), but other than that pretty standard dungeon stuff so far with a twist. cheers.

I kind of wish I never knew that they pushed the early access forward two days, having preordered on Sept 1st (which probably means I won't get in until Thursday anyway). Like, SECRET emails to you July pre-orderers saying "HEY, GUESS THE DUCK WHAT! YOU GETS TO PLAY!!!" Ignorance would've been bliss. Instead of sitting here on my day off, up at 7AM like a *****, waiting for some elusive email that more then likely won't appear. The process makes sense for sure. First come, first serve. Doesn't mean I like it though haha. Whatevs, see you Terentatekies later.