Thanks Chris and the team for the thread and back and forth discussion. I'm looking at this topic from high end pve point of view. I think that whatever tuning changes you make (meaning adjusting the numbers without changes to rotations) are irrelevant for Story mode and legacy Veteran mode operations. That content has been tuned so that it can be cleared with any combination of specs - in other words, the requirement to clear that content is player ability only. Its necessary to bring this up, since tuning and class balance does not exist in vacuum. It should always be considered with the content in mind. Many many people in this thread are baffled by these proposed changes, because they seem to be a complete mismatch to the high end content that exists in the game (R4 VM, Gods MM and to lesser extent other legacy Master modes). Furthermore, the operations were just nerfed across the board. It is confusing that you are nerfing the content and then nerfing dps specs (seemingly semi-arbitrarily). If the content became too easy, just revert the content nerfs? Furthermore, several people (including myself) are wondering, how do you measure performance, especially for the dps specs? I would really like to know. I can think of few different ways: 1) spec representation 2) dummy parse leaderboards (not the top but average of top 50 or 100 parses for each spec) 3) operation boss leaderboards. I understood that the purpose here is to bring the specs closer each other in performance. This is why it is critical to understand what you mean by performance. Option 1) spec representation is affected by dps numbers sure, but also by utility that the spec provides. 2) Dummy parse leaderboards (not the top but average of top 50 or 100 parses) is a poor measurement system because it does not represent real pve or pvp situation correctly. If this is your measurement method for performance, please use something else. 3) Operation boss leaderboards are skewed because they magnify the strengths and weaknesses of each spec. A good example is how Vengeance Juggs dominate if there are adds on the encounter. Specs having niches where they are dominating is not a bad thing in my opinion but it just makes operation leaderboards (as in which specs are in the top 100 parses) a poor tool to measure overall performance. Swtorlogs.com is a parse log analysis tool that calculates statistics based on uploaded parses (as an example: https://www.swtorlogs.com/zone/statistics/14#). Higher the score, the better is the performance of the spec. Currently the performance is unfortunately not representative because there are very few people who upload parses and those players play their specs extremely well, but I hope that changes in the future if people upload more logs. I bring this up, because I assume (hope) that Bioware uses similar analysis tools to see how their specs are performing on each specific encounter/operation. But I'm tangenting off the topic. I would hope that the goal of Bioware is to bring the spec representation closer to each other (true balance is impossible but you can strive towards that), because that means that the real performance of those specs is closer to each other. But how to do this? I'll throw my 2 cents in. If the balancing problem's core really is the conflict between pve and pvp, its a good idea to apply separate tuning to those environments. I've come to understand that Arsenal merc would be too good in pvp if it was buffed so that it could be representable in high end pve. I assume its a lot of work, but if you adjust the damage of each ability based on the environment, this problem is avoided entirely. WoW had this problem a long time and they fixed it with PVP talents and separate tuning. If we want to go to detailed level: Regarding current nerfs: - Healer changes are ok, although Bodyguard buff is probably too much. Merc was already good enough. - Operative AOE damage reduction is good change - Concealment damage nerfs are not necessary and the Defensive Stance mod change irrelevant because Roll Knife is too good to give up. If you must nerf Concealment dps output, then critical damage bonus from Stim boost is enough. - Pyro changes are ok, I don't know enough about AP to comment. I would mention here that dps PT defensive kit is very op, demonstrated by being able to tank 3 consecutive cleaves from Overload/Inferno droids with ease (Yield for 1st, Energy Shield to cover 2nd and 3rd and Sonic Missile AOE damage reduction to cover 3rd. If you wanted to change the 6 dps 2 healers comp that has formed (for good reason!) around IP-CPT VM, one reason is that DwTs can do the little tanking that is needed in the fight. - Lightning changes seem a bit excessive as many here have said. Probably too much, especially considering that Lightning benefits from Guild Perks more than average dps specs and thus Lightning dps output is higher in R4 than in MM operations. If you must nerf, aim to 5% rather than 10% decrease in dps output. - Good to see that you are reverting the Darkness change. How to buff underperformers: As stated already, it would be good to understand what kind of performance were buffing here. I would implement incremental changes and observe how the community reacts. As an example, buff Arsenal dps output by 3% by increasing the numbers on some abilities. After 2 weeks, if the representation has increased, good! If it has not, make another 3% buff. Continue iterating until you have found a sweet spot that you want to achieve. The content updating pace of this game is so slow that you can iterate in peace (as long as you communicate your intention well!). And if the spec becomes too good for pvp, please refer to what I wrote above. In Concealment's case (because its the spec I know the well), I would implement only the AOE damage reduction change at this point, cince the representation is already so low. If suddenly every PVE encounter was dominated by Concealment operatives because if this (doubtful tho), then hit the spec with these nerfs. I guess I'm proposing staggered changes here again, since now you are proposing to increase the spec survival ability but decreasing its dps. When the spec has nonexistent utility, dps is the only selling point. Nerfing too much will result in the the situation not changing at all: the spec not being represented.

I found the are really immersive and enjoyable to wonder around. I soloed all missions that were available, including the H4. Lots of people here didnt seem to be able to. I could not either as concealment but as lethality I kept dots on the boss and then just cleaved the adds with Toxic Haze dot spread and aoe Lethal Strike (330 + purple augs). It was little slow. The fun gimmick there was to let the boss cast hit the adds so I didnt take damage from it and I did not have to interrupt it. I dont really have much complaints. Maybe the mob density would annoy if I was a non-stealther combat but as operative I just walked past anything I didnt feel like killing.

We actually tested it today and the flowers work. So I guess it was the hotfix.

To be honest I'm not sure but I assume that the flowers were broken even before the hotfix. Things targeting players based on proximity was broken that that's what flowers do: give a buff to players who stand close enough. If location is broken, flowers don't give anything.

Just to add to the list, Red flowers do not give buff to players anymore.

We have done it actually, lvl 70 characters running hm and Nim legacy operations with 270 master datacron gear with no augments. Not a lot but occasionally. But you ask a good question tho. I think the answer lies in the nature of RPGs. Character growth is one goal and downgrading yourself to increase the challenge yields inferior satisfaction compared to overcoming the highest challenge set by the game itself. That's why PTS hammer station feels better on master mode compared to live downgrading yourself and then running it.

Have you been to PTS yourself or are you just echoing what other people are posting? We have access to lvl 80 content and the person you are referring to (LadyAdmiral aka Swtorista) was doing a lvl 80 vet flashpoint. But you are right, things hurt more due to gear level difference. But that's a good thing. On live server everyone is overgearing all content, including master mode operations by a wide margin. For players like me, who enjoy their content challenging, meaningful and rewarding, master mode and especially veteran flashpoints are so undertuned that they are very boring. I never do then unless I need resources and then they are a chore, not fun content. But MM hammer station was fun on PTS! We will eventually overgear flashpoints when we have higher item ratings and they will become boring again... But why complain now, when you could just enjoy it?

Weird. I ran several daily areas as shield PT and lvl 50 companion (that Kuban dude from season 1) and even soloed Aurora Cannon, the heroic 4 on Section X. I had green 318 tank gear with no augments and my companion did at least same damage as me. Maybe certain companions are broken?

It depends on how the equations for transforming stat rating to stat % work. They have full control over that, so they could tweak the equations so that you reach the same / desired % of crit, alac, acc, shield and abs with 8 slots (ear, head, chest, gloves, main hand, offhand, legs and feet) only. Or increase the tertiary stat pools of non-implant items. Or do what dready_tv proposed Besides, we will live in completely uncapped world in 7.0. This means that power especially is really valuable, just like is on live servers in dxun where bis gear has lower crit values than capped to benefit from power (although mainly because crit diminishing returns are there when you have more than 3.2k crit). The point is they can accommodate the smooth swapping of legendaries, essentially making them into tacticals with stats, without players suffering at all. We're here just to point that out since it looks like they did not consider the inconvenience of needing to shuffle gear around since the "locked slots" have specific stats.

Yeah I agree. You could also increase mastery and power/defence pools on the legendaries and drop tertiary stats entirely so people would not have to accommodate that one legendary with accuracy on it with, for example, gloves without accuracy.

Like I said, we killed the first boss on VETERAN MODE (VM). Also story mode (SM) has those stacks. KP has no master mode (MM). BioChris confirmed that veterans edge will be removed in Theorycrafters discord server, so this truly is just a bug or oversight. I hope they make it far harder. Currently on live servers MM flashpoints are a complete joke and the only way to make then challenging or hard is to solo them. In a sense it's little like veteran mode since you don't need a tank, having dwt and a healer is more than enough (there are few bonus bosses which are exceptions). I ran MM hammer station several times on PTS in this build and it is not hard either, more like actually fun compared to MM FPs on live. It just requires players to have mastered their classes (as the name of the difficulty implies). This means tank has to be on point with taunts and threat generation or DPS will pull aggro on them and die. Tanks have to also be able to use dcds properly to mitigate damage before it happens, not as "oh ****" buttons you press when your hp gets low. DPS need to know how to pump decent numbers or bosses will enrage, threat drop on trash and use dcds when they pull aggro off the tank or they die. Healers need to have fast enough reactions to burst a tank or a DPS when their HP drops for reason or another. Anything less and it's no longer 'master' mode.

I see a lot of misinformed people in this thread - mainly because the original post was so vague and people actually did not go to test on PTS for details. How I assume the system to work, after 1 day of testing: - you can buy green 320 items with gear frags. They can be upgraded to 338 with gear frags and materials from planetary heroics but they stay green. I assume this is a bug since... - MM FPs drop blue minimum 320 (but according to the post should be on the same level as your item rating) gear which can be upgraded to 326 gear frags, planetary heroics materials and flashpoint materials - operations drop green tionese / blue columi / purple (?) Rakata gear, also minimum 320. That is upgraded using all materials mentioned above + operation materials (sm drops 1, hm drops 5 per boss per person). I do not know how high each respective ops loot can be upgraded to but i assume tionese 332, columi 336 and rakata 340. It is noteworthy that some blue items have higher stat pool as same green item when both have the same item rating. So to people who are worried that running lower level content becomes obsolete, worry not! They will make is run everything: conquest for gear frags, flashpoints for aquatic materials and ops for their base items and materials. But it is true that if you want the highest gear possible, you need to do operations (as things are on PTS) but then again, if you are not interested in operations, why would you want high item rating to begin with? There's nothing in the game that requires it besides operations. PvP aside entirely in this post, they have their own gearing system.

More like a bug report here. Karaggas palace still has veterans egde stacks which cap at 30 on 320 item rating. We were able to kill Bone trasher on 8 man HM (VM) last night because of the stacks. In tank spec i had 550k hp and one sorc dude even had augments which brought his HP to 630k. It was fun but please remove the vet stacks, please.

I play PT tank so I'm happy with the legendaries I have (EP shield is soo good). My feedback is more general. Would it be possible for implants not to drop from content? I have ran MM Hammer station several times, one operation boss on story mode and one operation boss on hard mode, and bosses typically drop one single item. (I'm not complaining about the scarsity of items, that's alright, gives longer gear progression time line and all that). If this one item is an implant (happened twice today), its vendor trash since our set bonuses are on implants. Even if the implant would be lower item rating than the drop, no body would still put it on since the set bonus should (!) be better than item rating upgrade on one item. In short, please disable item drops which are already covered by the legendaries, thanks. P.S. Maybe legendaries are not available right at launch and take some griding to get, so implant drops during this time is alright. But looking forward to patch 7.1 or operations after acquiring the legendaries, implants are just null drops.

I think its good to start by stating that since there has not been an official post about flashpoints and operations, I assume they might not have tuned those at all, just set them to 80. That being said: I did master Hammer Station with 319 gear with no augments. Bosses died quite slowly and tank took a lot of damage but overall it was fine. The loot was blue 320 items which was an upgrade over what we were wearing so that worked out too. I've heard that operation scaling is little whack and sm bosses enrage with nim players handling them. That is probably not as it should be, I would assume that doing HM in 320 gear would lead to that result. I have not tried Vet FPs but since Master FPs felt pretty solid scaling, I assume Vet FPs are fine too. although, lack of healer and inaccesibility to combat resses might cause some inconvenience. If the intention is that Vet FP can be completed regardless of the group comp (no tanks or healers), that might be difficult with 320 gear.