they're not nerfing it, they're shuffling skills around and you end up with the old rotation and DPS.

now just remove ~2k dps that you'll lose from the Draining mod once it is properly implemented and you're sitting at 31.5k as a melee w/o any burst. Basically, you'll be doing as much DPS in an ideal scenario with zero downtimes as a Madness Sorc or IO Merc. You'll also be heavily rng dependent in raids, making your rotation rather random and every FR you miss with Berserk on time will mess up your rotation. You can ever so slightly offset this with using Brazen but ofc that loses you about 40% or so of the healing on yourself you'll be doing as TFR would be the sacrifice there. The devs need to seriously get a grip. They ruined Lightning, now they're ruining Anni and they nerf both the wrong way for the wrong reasons addressing the wrong issues. It's absurd.

Anni should simply not be doing 12k HPS. It is stupid for any DPS spec to do that while doing dmg. Everyone in the entire worlds sees that healing is the problem with Anni except for the devs who think they'll just nerf the dmg instead of the healing. But the DPS was perfectly fine and the playstyle was perfectly fine as well. The Healing was OP and it remains OP after the patch. berserk should simply not heal the group and thirst for Rage should be reworked to remove the healing and provide some other utility. Anni should not be your solution to a healing problem. No other class provides healing for the group this consistently and to itself on top of that. we should have about the same self-healing as a Hatred Assassin and that's it. everything else is just stupidly balanced.

It also does not yet have the Force rend dmg nerf patched in. It still does 4x dmg while it should only be doing 2x, so best parse so far was some 30.5k with a lot of crit luck to get FR with Draining Center off in time (adjusted for the coming nerf) which is like 3-4k behind Fury.

I would've let Anni remain the way it is right now and simply reduce the healing. You could have changed Thirst for Rage for example and remove the healing and also reduce the healing done by Draining Center Force Rend. right now on PTS, the spec is nowhere near as fun to play as it was. None of the choices are fun to interact with. Draining Center does not provide fun burst, Juyo Rend gives you Fury to sustain Blood Fury but that's just a few minor floating numbers here and there. taking Draining Center + Bleeding Center is a must to even make it work but then you're rng based and your own input to your own dps becomes less significant. The spec thus becomes rather detached from actual player skill.

yeah, that means you did the exact opposite of smoothing out the rotation. The reason you put 10 fury generation on this choice was that you could reliably use Force Rend with Berserk. With this change, you can't do this anymore. Especially since you also changed Bleeding Center and took away even more Fury generation. So, not only does this deal 50% of the dmg it used to, you can no longer use it as often as you used to which now means, FR will be pushed further in the rotation, which means you can't reliably use it at 2 stacks of deadly saber unless you forgo the buff - which is the point of the mod. This is very disappointing. This was by far my favourite mod and playstyle and now the fun interactive part of class is replaced with hordes of minor dps buffs that don't show up through any effort that I put in but just sort of happen along the way. You already once removed rewarding micromanaging when you changed Blood Fury. You now take away another thing where playing well actually made a difference. It now just matters less whether you play well or not. For all those rage issues that you literally never have? But you take away the Fury generation? Which is a bigger problem now than ever before with Draining Center mod. why? Nobody plays Force Fracture ffs. stop trying to make it a thing or give the Rupture tactical an effect for it on top of what it already does. I dislike having passive buffs instead of generating my DPS through active / smart use of abilities. That used to be the case with Draining Center. Now both the benefit and penalty are much lower and I'm not even sure it's worth it at all. So, you just simplified the spec to a point of mind numbing boredom with little to absolutely no more fun interactions and micromanaging to gain a dps increase. Just disappointing.

I'll just quote this but it goes generally for all you've written. Your theory is perfectly sound. I'm not going to argue that. The issue is the practical aspect of it. There just really isn't all that much where it actually applies. For example, you argue for Ling being great on Styrak adds - but a Sin can just instantly leap to an add almost off gcd and gain e.g. 3 discharge stacks as burst or you can also range dot as hatred for example while closing in. On top of that, you have better defences when you're supposed to stand near an add, you can taunt + deflect styrak + dragon if need be with force shroud to avoid TB, you have an easy 10%+ DPS over Lightning and the same knockback. No reason to bring Ling over a sin ever. And as for Viru - the adds on Styrak have so little health you're fine just doing SoS / LS if you're not the only one playing them. But you also gain entrench for 2nd dragon phase + sniper shield, a near constant 30% dmg reduction, better debuff on boss and more DPS overall. And you can kick with 2 snipers just fine (I've been told, or even just one sniper depending on your dps). Why take Ling? It is doable, sure, but it's not better than the other options. it is strictly worse. And if the Ling is at the part of the rotation where you've just fired TB and HO proc and have nothing else, then you also hit like a wet noodle. The spikes are theoretical - you don't always have those spikes on demand and they also suffer from some delay as you have to set up, depend on reck and have to apply a dot unless the add dies within 2 gcds anyway. But let's even take a mechanic add like Dxun 2nd boss, the pursuer droid, and check whether ling is actually better for that mechanic (not even the entire fight where it obviously gets obliterated with either crappy aoe or ST damage). I'd argue it's not - I'd argue a sniper in all specs performs better on the add since you can pick and choose your burst window without losing any major damage on other enemies since they're grouped (heck, with the burst tactical, it's not even close). I'd argue Madness outperforms with Shock finisher as well. Melee burst obviously outperforms, even Anni with the heavy hit from FR these days probably outperforms while also offering a bunch of other stuff for the rest of the encounter. So, even on a mechanic where range + burst would be what you'd like to have, the ranged burst spec underperforms massively (though I have no data to back that up seeing how there isn't a ling parse for the challenge). The thing is: If ling does less DPS than other options, it has to have something going for it to offset this. And it simply doesn't have it. Not practically anyway - not in an actually useful way that goes beyond the theory of being slightly better at some ominously timed burst window of 4 seconds that just isn't there. Even when you need to burst down the final bomb in R 4 IP-CPT (which is the shortest burst window I can think of rn), a Viru sniper would be better as you can pre dot, same for an engi where you can also set up beforehand - maybe only Madness would perform worse given you probably want the DR instead of shock finisher? The spec has nothing to offer, not even baseline DPS and ease of play. And I simply don't see it justified in any way (except maybe PVP but apparently we both have no clue about that).

I don't think you understood what I wrote - it's not about every class being the best for every boss all the time. It's about some specs being better here and there, so there's a point to them. An issue arises if some specs are simply never better or even equal to other specs which is where Ling is currently situated. It has nothing to offer that somebody else doesn't already do much better on any given encounter. And I know that sorc AE DPS is pointless but the parse that was provided to show the viability of Ling has all their DPS from Chain Lightning spam on Conduits and then does next to no DPS on the boss ST during the burn. The point I was trying to make is that it shows how you might still be able to kill the boss with Ling, yes, but also - every other spec would have been better. It's easy for people who play well, yes. Of course you can simply say that people who only ever managed to play Lightning well and nothing else can go fork themselves and play HC. But not everyone can just learn new specs and perform well with them. Ofc they can go fork themselves as well. It's just not that easily done for people past 40 and when HC is too easy, you might want to play nim. It doesn't hurt anyone if they can reasonably perform on some easy to play class in that content. It used to be the case before the update. This is not an issue for good raid groups. They don't have these issues. This is an issue for more casual players with some ambitions to play nim where some players could get by playing reasonably well enough as an easy to play spec like Ling which after the nerf is now quite the handicap for such groups. And I just don't see the point of it. I don't see the combination of range + burst being so useful on encounters that it warrants the lack of DPS (and sucky AOE damage to boot). I personally don't care all that much, it doesn't affect me. I never really liked Lightning or Madness for that matter and the only time I busted it out was for the countless time we dragged someone through S&V Styrak survive back in the day, but why would anyone play Ling over a Sin these days on Styrak? Because it doesn't matter as it's easy is basically the only argument you could make.

'Not bad' and 'totally fine' is possibly the best thing you can say about the spec right now. Playing Lightning instead of virtually any other spec is just making it harder on the group while adding virtually no benefit outside of maybe the super amazing Sorc raid buff. Spamming Chain Lightning during Conduits and then being 6k dps behind 3rd placed DPS on Domi in Burn is your idea of 'viable'? If you replace the Sorc with virtually any other DPS - is the group better or worse? And on what boss would be answer actually be 'worse' right now? Should the goal from a design standpoint not be to carve out some niche where every spec is at times more viable and at others not as viable (because being always equally viable on all encounters is too much to ask for really). Specs like Lightning were always nice for people who weren't the greatest players to bring to a raid. They never played any mechanics, they just did some solid DPS and it was fine having them along if you liked the person and wanted to play with them. Now, the spec is such hot garbage that you're severely hurting yourself bringing these people along. That sucks. Because they're not gonna be able to figure out how to effectively play a more 'complicated' class with resource management or important proccs you have to hit on cooldown manually. Well, unless that guy is then still being carried by a really good team. But that can't be the goal. And that's not even considering how rewarding the hard cast mechanic was where if you placed yourself well and managed to cast HO on CD, you got a DPS benefit. You could play without, do less damage and have a much easier time but you were rewarded for putting in more effort. That was just fun to play. The current iteration is neither effective nor fun to play (in PVE, Idk about PVP).

1) compared to what? A Virulence Sniper with 2 dots and a cull? Madness Sorc with Shock skilled? Where do you need that 'burst' that apparently Lightning provides so much of and/or better than other specs? What's a specific mechanic where the combination of burst - which isn't even all that great to begin with on this spec compared to others - and ranged DPS is so viable even? What is one encounter where you'd take a L Sorc over other specs? And you conflate burst specs with the ability to do burst DPS in certain windows because you're not beating a Pyro PT in DPS in specific phases and lightning Sorc sure as hell isn't outdoing anyone or anything in specific phases either after the nerfs. And you're not outdoing a Virulence sniper with burst tactical either when something needs to die in 3 gcds, do you? Sure, let's even simply concede the argument Lightning Sorc is far better at switching targets and bursting them down than other specs and thus loses a lot of DPS single and multi target. Where is that skillset so viable that I just have to have it? What encounter is in this game where this is so vastly worth more than sustained DPS that you'd be a fool to sacrifice a little less burst for much more sustained DPS? And keep in mind that we're not talking about what Ling does right now but what it will do after these nerfs w/o hardcast halted offense and further dmg nerfs. Where to do you bring it and it's more viable than some alternative? 2) Sure, sometimes that's neat but not really on many bosses, especially now that group healing revolves around standing near the operative spamming kolto inject. I don't manage to think of more than 4 bosses where range is specifically viable and makes the fight go easier - Huntmaster, Trandoshan Squad, Tyrans and Master&Blaster I guess? For really anything else a ranged DPS hits a significant diminishing return in value when you already have one. So, a >10% falloff from a melee DPS is okay because you have range and you don't have a dot? Except that you do as a LS but that's not all that important, is it? But that's general for ranged burst specs - which outside of Lightning aren't played right now. More specifically, a LS losing all that DPS has what value over other ranged options?

You are just plain wrong. Neither spec is overperforming atm. Your idea of ranged burst <<<<<< melee dot makes no sense. Why would I bring a ranged burst to any fight? Where do I need burst explicitly at range which a melee dot cannot provide? What is the benefit of a ranged burst spec in PVE content? There really is none. Because most of the multi-target DPS is provided by dot specs. If you play Lightning right now, you deal good ST damage - not great! Just good. You sacrifice Chain Lightning for it meaning you have no more really viable AE without loosing ST damage. Thus the spec is SUPPOSED to be up there as a pure ST specs. If you play APT PT right now, you are just plain worse than a Pyro PT and with the patch even more so. There is an entire nim level community here trying to show you how far removed your idiotic theory is from actual gameplay and decisions players make when those decisions matter (which is exclusively nim level ops and competitive PVP). Your set targets for what specs are supposed to do are just wrong. They make no sense. It's just not how your game is being played and here you are just blatantly ignoring what people AND stats are clearly telling you. Because it's also not all about DPS but also about utility and what utility does an e.g. Lightning Sorc have over a Madness Sorc (the later who should do more ST damage than the L Sorc)? There is none. They lack aoe and they lack the same amount of self heal while providing nothing else really. So why is Lightning supposed to be even worse on single target? And in regards to hardcasting abilities like halted Offense: That is actually fun. Because managing to do that while having to position yourself and move and what not is the fun challenge DPS players are looking for. With your asinine changes changes to those specs, you are basically removing Lightning and APT from consideration for any good nim level setup. And there were next to no classes in that pool to begin with. I mean, what is your thought process? How do you think players think about setups? Do you think they'll look at Lightning Sorcs and see they deal at least 3k DPS less than an alternatively viable spec while having zero AE capability and no utility and then come to the conclusion they should still bring it to the raid because it is supposed to be 3k behind the Virulence Sniper they can use instead? Why? Why would anyone use a Lightning Sorc. Assuming you'd for some reason need something only a Sorc can provide, why would you EVER make the decision to choose Lightning over Madness after your moronic nerf? You're just shooting yourself in the foot making that decision. So why are you forcing people away from decisions and forcing them into a tiny pool of viable specs you get to play?

I've seen most groups struggle on the first boss and then getting IDs (we gave ours out quite often) from others to farm the second boss for blue tokens to get 340 mainhands to have an easier time killing the first boss. That is not a gearing issue though, that's a balancing issue. IP-CPT is much harder than Watchdog and Kanoth and it's not even close. The improvement thus would be better balancing. Watchdog should've been the first boss. It has a much more appropriate difficulty for the entry boss. Sure, every piece of 340 equipment helped. But you really had to have 5 tokens to upgrade it unless you wanted to augment every iteration of the same item. The hazardous gear was helpful for sure but took quite a while and many watchdog Ids to complete. Without specifically saving the ID and farming Watchdog on the weekends, it would have taken quite a while I guess with not enough tokens for a clear run to get one item from new to 340. Lol, no and no and thus: Better looking armor sets. Who wants to run around looking like a scuba diver on land? they also basically look the same as the gear you can get with stats anyway, so what even is the point? I love the look of the mount. Went in multiple times trying to get the mount because I'd like to have it on multiple characters. In the future, we need a better drop chance though OR at least make it an account wide mount I can get from my collections if the drop chance is that low. That would be a fantastic change. I've seen it drop only one single time in some 20 kills or so. Fortunately I got it and I'm happy with that but it's a pure fluff item and should not be that tedious to get. You could also put it on the vendor for many many tokens from the R4 operations giving people some motivation to keep running it. Overall, it would've been better if it was tied to an achievement and could have been gotten that way for all characters and not the one you were in there with.

Or, you know.. they're just not that good with other specs and can't just pick it up in 5 minutes without having any fun in order to be helpful. Why is that a better solution than the devs properly balancing the classes? Most players (by far) aren't at that level and even within the nim raiding group, many players play maybe 3 specs really well and that's it. Wouldn't it be better if more specs were viable and people could then play with individual strengths of those classes instead of having to constantly stack the one or two meta classes for every fight? I personally can play almost every DPS spec well and can thus bring it to the boss where it's needed but even I don't like to be unable to play some classes I just enjoy playing without being flat out worse for the group than I'd be on a different class. And it's especially even less fun now that 3 more specs will become obsolete (at least compared to other classes you could bring instead) while not a single spec will be made more viable. It's tough to argue for Hatred over Anni now except for important burn phases but with a dmg nerf on Hatred? What's the point? Why bring AP PT over Pyro or Veng? Why Viru over Engi after the last nerf (except maybe the debuff)? There are more and more limits on sensible choices and it makes the game less fun for everybody.

Why would it apply to dummy parsing? A boss fight that's challenging rarely consists of ~ 3 minutes hitting a target that does nothing while standing still. Hatred for example does really well on a dummy and when you can easily spread but can lose severely with downtime or when you find yourself needing short intervals of burst DPS. Not every DPS spec is meant to be equally great at everything at all times. That being said, with the introduction of combat styles and the reshuffling of talents and skills, the devs had a great chance to make more classes viable and flexible and sadly, they did not take advantage. Where sometimes you can choose between more aoe dps or single target dps, you rarely have a burst vs consistent dps choice in the trees. And instead of focusing around making classes better at some things some times, they chose to overly pressure every spec into a very specific niche. The devs also drastically overvalue the advantages that ranged DPS provides. Nobody plays MM or Arsenal because they're just borderline pointless. They also drastically overestimate the value of burst in PVE content. Especially when you have dot classes for example who can spec into burst like triggering remaining Dots with shock or a pyro PT who has the strongest 15 sec burst of all. But at this point I don't even know what the devs want. Are we supposed to all play the same 4-5 specs for serious PVE content and the same 3-4 specs for PVP content and the rest is just for RP purposes? Are all specs supposed to be viable in all content (not necessarily equal on all bosses but better at times, worse than others?). The initial posts state they want to bring top to bottom DPS closer. But this just makes three more specs be at the bottom. The initial posts states they want all styles to be viable, yet ling and AP PT will not be viable for pve content after this update goes live because they'll be at the bottom and classes that provide mostly the same benefits as those specs are at the top (comparatively). And it's not the first time they've done this. The nerf to Virulence last patch (was it?) was completely pointless. Now they nerf Concealment without it seeing any play in real PVE content. Instead of making you choose between what would make it good in PVE (ae reduce that is not tied to a buff lasting 4 seconds) and another def ability that isn't a joke (looking at you shield probe) and whatever makes it so strong in pvp, they half-*** give you what you needed and take away the only thing that made you viable (the DPS). I wish the devs would just at least try to explain the issues they have with the specs in what content so the feedback could be better. We have some 40 pages throwing wild guesses into the unknown trying to figure out why they're doing things that are obviously nonsensical and there's just zero information what their problem with those specs are.

Yes, I understand the burst DPS aspect but if it's too much for PVP balancing issues, then tuning that down and increasing sustained DPS is the only way to go. Right now the spec is fine but if the changes go live, APT PT is dead in any sort of serious PVE content. The DPS loss is too heavy to justify still bringing it into any raid instead of a Pyro. It wasn't great before but the armor break + rebounder was worth it at times. Now, what justifies bringing an APT PT over a Pyro? Or what else has the class going after the nerfs with the hefty dps loss? And I don't care about the dummy parses. Dummies don't fight back, no movement involved, no target switch, no burst windows, nothing.

While AP is indeed rather easy to play, its DPS is far from too good. It's basically worse than Pyro in most circumstances and does not outdo other specs by some huge margin, if its even anywhere near the top. The burst might be too much, but that could easily be remedied by sacrificing some damage around it or just removing it entirely and compensating the spec with more sustained DPS. It was a stupid mistake to remove the DPS tactical from AP and make EL tactical baseline. Burst versus sustained DPS should mostly be a choice. Now it's in this stupid spot where most of its DPS comes from burst windows.

the extra 10% on hatred assassin proc rate for the tactical will not save the class. Won't have recklessness up on time, no eradicate reset > no buff > no damage > hefty dps loss and the class will simply vanish from PVE content. The force management was never really fun because it's not even a choice between burst vs sustainability - it's just a choice between dealing damage or hitting something with a wet noodle. It's a failed design as is. recklessness as a proc based cooldown ability should simply not be a mandatory part of the rotation if you want a smooth rotation. It's not just about numbers, it's about having something to play that feels fun. You just replaced using one basic attack with another basic attack and increasing the luck necessary just to keep your eradicate up. And what have we gained because of that? Nothing. If the DPS was too harsh, then a nerf to the damage triggered by the tactical would've been an easy solution. But I don't even see what the point of this spec is supposed to do in pve content.

if the changes go through as is, Hatred will lose too much DPS to make sense to bring to anything that would be considered hard content. Losing uptime on eradicate since you can't reset reck on time + the dmg nerf to the tactical will just put the spec out of any usage. I wish they would just increase the dot and cooldown of eradicate to match the proc rate of Raze so you can have 100% uptime and maybe tie the proc to leeching strike /assassinate instead of any melee attack. It's just not a smooth experience to hope for enough crits to keep your rotation up. Or add 2 charges to reck and make it only give 1 critical charge instead of 2 as currently is the case when you activate it. so you can use it for the reset more often but still don't get more guaranteed crits. I just don't want to be even further limited in regards to specs I can actually play in challenging operations and not being dead weight for the group while I have simply superior classes I could play instead.

You can't just remove hard casting halted offense and not replace it with an appropriate damage buff to make up for it. Why don't you buff the damage it gains when procced but lower hard cast damage or WHY in the world don't you buff Stormwatch to make up for this nerf instead of idiotically nerfing it? Or you could allow halted offense casts to buff subsequent lightning bolts or other skills. Or you could allow halted offense to be procced only by thundering blast and then also another skill with a CD, so basically we'd have what we have now but with instant casts that each deal less burst damage but provide a steady DPS. That would do away with the hefty opening burst and not ruin any chance at proper DPS. With your changes, the spec just becomes a non-option in raids and everybody will just have to play madness because you just removed some 3k dps or so from the spec just with the HO change. Why don't you ever think these things through? Why the **** do you buff healing on the burst sorc? So people play it for more self-healing? They have more healing on Madness already AND aoe damage capabilities. What even is the point? Virtually anything is better than this. It's not rocket science. Do some basic maths before you post your ingenious and wonderful ideas here. The APT PT nerf is just unwarranted, What even is the problem with the style? The double energy burst too heavy? What is the reason to nerf the dot damage then? Why in the world are you still insisting on providing us with these idiotic and wasteful "increase x by 3%" talents? That's not a talent, that's something you correct in the skill tooltip itself. And when you nerf one talent so hefty like Lingering Heat, then people will just take the other choices. You did consider that, right? That you could have as well make the talent read 'does nothing, pick something else', yes? If the burst is the issue, then buff the bleed damage, let the DPS choice revolve more around dots, perhaps triggered from other abilities and nerf the direct damage skills at the same time. But I don't even see a problem with the spec beyond not having a proper tactical and now with the introduction of the new tactical, still not having a proper tactical. Why are you even nerfing it? Nobody understands this. It dominates nothing nowhere. Marksman has completely pointless talents still that don't transform into a positive rotation of any kind or any sort of much needed DPS buff. It's supposed to be a sharshooter, yet zero of the talents revolve around Takedown. Why not have Snipe and ambush build stacks, and after 5 you can use a buffed version of takedown. You could build some sort of zeroing in / exploit stack and then consume it. It's not super problematic in PVP because you'd have to use e.g. 1 ambush ( 2 stacks) + 3 snipes (1 stack each) but it could fix the lack of DPS from the class while fitting the feel of a MM sniper. You also have to change the level 23 choice where ambush CD is reduced while the cast time is not reduced. What is the point then? Just doesn't sit right in a rotation. could replace it with my idea for the ST option and have targeted ambush both reset cds of laze target/ambush and reduce the cast time of ambush to 1.5 or zero after killing a target. Just buff the goddamn spec already. It's not that complicated. Sometimes the patch notes you provide read so goddamn badly that one might even believe you're actively trying to sabotage this game to get fired and free yourselves from the burden of having to work here.

What in the world is the thought process behind nerfing the single target damage of the concealment operative when he offers literally nothing else? Zero AOE capability, tiny range, weak when switching targets due to dependency on the debuff triggered by backstab and virtually nothing else. The APT PT nerf seems too harsh. It's not like spec dominated like crazy, did it? Wasn't Pyro virtually better on every boss, especially when there were more targets? And what is the new tactical? You get one extra thermal when you use energy burst and then it buffs a single missile shot after rail shot? One? Then you massively nerf AE healing of the operative because we already have all those great AE healing skills around that aren't virtually worthless beyond kolto burst? Nobody likes to play this way, you just made it a must. You even nerfed what tiny little insignificant amount of AE healing the Sorc had for like 5 minutes before you took it away again. Where are the buffs to AE healing for the other specs then? That would've make sense. the most pointless spec in the game right now seems to be Marksman and this change does very little to help it. It has useless choices on almost every level which could easily be fixed to make the spec more viable. As for Hatred Assassins - you really want to add energy management to the class while at the same time making it rather luck based whether or not you can get enough dot crits in to reset recklessness on time? That's good design? More fun to play now? I kinda doubt it.

In regard to VM: The team really needs to fix the polarization bombs not disappearing when they have been detonated already. It's just stupid to have to remember which ones have been triggered and which not. Other than that, the encounter is fine though quite unforgiving with the stack mechanic on the boss. We've also experienced some issues with missiles hitting players despite them clearly and visibly being outside. Maybe that's just some lag spike here and there though. What's a bit irritating is the missile impact zone being slightly bigger than the visual suggests. there's just no reason for it. Either the visual is too small or the actual impact too big. Choose one and adjust accordingly. Doesn't really matter which We've also run into threat issues where the boss would leap to a ranged DPS despite the tank still being above them in threat. It just doesn't seem to work all that well. Not experiencing these issues with other bosses on the live server. It's like the threat threshold for his pounce of pursuit skill is out of whack a bit. One mechanic issue many seem to have is the 5th polarization beam after degauss has been cast that is a mechanic death no matter what you do. Right now, the only thing we have found to avoid it is to simply have the sin tank vanish to interrupt the cast.

So, instead of tying AE damage reduce to a raidbuff with 5 minutes CD, you decided to tie it to a 30 sec / 1 min cd respectively with only a 30% reduction in damage taken while leaving comparable melee DPS classes with a 60% reduce on a 45 sec CD that has no other uses than damage reduce while Marauders might want to use Predation for specific situations as is needed by the group, not only the Marauder. What is the goal of the design? Are DPS supposed to have a reliable way to reduce AE damage taken or not? If yes - then equalize it across the board, otherwise you cannot design any encounter properly as you'd have to assume all DPS being equal or drastically reduce the effectiveness of certain DPS specs (which seeing how little you give a damn about the poor Merc bastards might be your goal). If they're not supposed to have it or are supposed to sacrifice something for it, then what is the point of the current design decisions? Why can't you think these things through instead of just guess-working your way to some result without ever having asked and tried to answer what it even is you're trying to do? Did you really need a bunch of us Marauders to tell you that a 5 minute CD for a crappy 30% reduce was too long? Do you now really need a bunch of us Marauders to tell you that 60% reduce on 45 sec at will is strictly better than 30% reduce on 1 minute / 30 sec that are not at will? Really?

having tried VM now with two different groups, the main issue was pretty much always the console clicking because it's just badly designed. You can't see anything of what's happening in the fight and you can't do anything but stand there and click unless you're a healer perhaps or range dps with something in your vicinity. It's mechanically bad. You can either spam buttons or you have to have voice chat to call colours. There are easy solutions. You could give players a remote type thing with a special ability bar to play the mechanic. You could make something like that pop up when players are near the consoles. You could move the consoles to the ceiling / have them drop down in view and make them interactable from some distance. Basically anything is better than staring at a wall and clicking. The other major issue is adds spawning and not being interactable immediately. The delay is just infuriating. The fire being more visible is really a good change. The laser should still be both visually more apparent on the ground and then just not as big when actually blasting through the room. It's such an ugly effect. Why not have it be an electric type ground effect with some lightning running on the ground instead of this diarrhea Christmas light spectacle. All other things about the boss fight are great and it's really fun, just the console clicking is so lacking because it takes 4 people out of the fight who get to stare at the wall instead. Pointless.

Killed her and virtually have no idea what the boss does. First two tries we played around a bit to figure stuff out (like difference between kick void and placed void which could seriously have more different colours) and got to the phase where we had to kill adds near the generators. Next try we focused on dps again and just skipped that phase. No idea why, then some arrows appeared or something and a bunch of adds. We then just burned the boss down and that was it. So, it's not clear to me what makes the friendly robot slicing generators survive and what kills it (boss facing perhaps? That didn't seem to do anything though). Not clear why the generator phase where they get shielded triggers and why we skipped it(I guess just dmg but we also played with 5 DPS as the tank dmg was insignificant). Don't really know what the arrows from the adds do and those stationary adds channeling something but running into each other seemed to do something.

my nim group tried SM yesterday and killed it well enough but the fight still has quite a few issues. We play three nights a week, I'm DPS. The fire vents are simply not well visualized. I don't understand why a barely noticeable dark orange hue is considered to be a good visual clue. It's not easy to spot on the dark gray floor taking away attention at the rest of the fight. Basically, everyone is just looking at the floor, which is just plain stupid. I can also imagine a lot of people struggling to get out on time. This is more a concern for more casual players but since this is SM, the time between visual clue and flames might be better off being longer. It can be tight in VM, that's fine but the R-4 SM bosses are generally more tuned like 'harder' VM content imo. The lasers are well visualized as to where they'll hit but the actual hit is completely overblown in terms of length and visual impact. It could be much shorter visually while losing nothing of its mechanic and also be ground based instead of flying through the middle of the screen giving you eye cancer for no reason. The vast amount of voids surrounding players is fine except when you play 2+ melee and you have to quickly move out of flame vents and then also both want to DPS and avoid voids simultaneously. It just does not work as well, especially if you have DPS like Fury/Rage who change position with some skills like Obliterate. It's just minor dmg in SM so it doesn't matter that much but in VM, this makes me want to just switch to ranged dps instead. The button click phase is just badly designed where playing it the right way is strictly inferior to just spam clicking stuff. Why do people spam click? because you can't see the field when turned to push the button and when as you really have to be quick about pushing buttons, you can't do anything else. That means you stand there like an idiot watching a wall waiting for your colour to be called out. Where is the fun in that? A much better solution would have been to make 4 players be able to pick up skills for the temp ability bar (each player gets 1 colour) and then still have them react quickly but still be able to play the game instead of standing there like an idiot looking at a wall. The mechanic would be the same but the players could still do other things and not suffer greatly if colours aren't being called out as they could actually see it themselves. This is imo the best change you could make as the wall panels are just such an unintuitive and zero fun mechanic. There is also a weird thing with the turrets and the robots that spawn. For some reason, you can't immediately target them which is annoying as hell. And there is no reason for it. Ofc you should give the turrets some wind-up time before they just focus oneshot your squishy agent heal but they should be target-and attackable. This was one of the things that really ruined damage uptime. All in all, the fight could be fun but the wall panel click stuff and the bad visuals really hurt otherwise good design.