From what I've been told in beta Jet Charge was further down in the Shield Tech tree so DPS specs could get it more easily. The problem was that it allowed people to spec so they had both Jet Charge and Hydraulic Overrides and it was pretty OP in PvP situations. Thus they moved Jet Charge further up the ST tree. So giving Jet Charge to all PTs just brings back that problem.

I did some testing on this today. I dueled a guildie who was naked so he had 0% damage reduction against the energy damage IGC does. I did not have the Supercharged Ion Gas or Prototype Cylinders talents (+25% and 8% IGC damage respectively). I did have Ion Overload, but that talent does not seem to affect the initial damage done by IGC (as far as I could tell from testing). That talent adds a DoT to IGC, it does not convert IGC into a DoT. Keep in mind IGC is not like most abilities in that it does not have a damage range but rather a set damage number for when it procs. With my current gear the tooltip for IGC says it should've done 534 damage on proc. In my test it only did 176. I also did another test where my target had his gear on. In this test he had 19.77% energy damage reduction. On this test my IGC did 146 each time. That's not a perfect 19.77% drop in damage but I noticed after the fact that in between the duels he (a Sorc) had buffed us so I had slightly more Aim on the second test. That fudged the symmetry of the numbers a tad, but the point is still there. IGC should've done 534 damage but only did 176. That's a pretty substantial difference, only about one-third of the damage it was supposed to be doing. IGC is either seriously broken or it was intentionally heavily nerfed at some point by BW and the tooltip was never updated. The latter is definitely a possibility but I think the former is more likely.

That was my thinking. Hopefully this thread can stay on the first few pages or get stickied until the bug is fixed so people will stop being surprised each week. But then you wouldn't be able to make posts complaining about their complaining complaint posts! Postception? Joking aside, in all fairness to you a look at your posting history shows that quite a few threads had this info hit them for quite some time. Problem is most people are only going to come to the forums when think they're having a problem or (like I do) take a cursory glance at the first few pages to check for confirmed bugs in the thread titles.

Well, that masterloot could cause loot to bug out is about the last thing I would expect or even consider. It's utterly ridiculous. I check the forums for this kind of information (especially before clears) but like I said I didn't see any threads titled about this specifically. A bug this bad should have a thread about it be stickied and be confirmed/announced by a BW poster so people become more aware of it.

So after our clear tonight I noted that once again we got zero Alien Data Cubes drops from either instance and that once again we got no Rakata MHs. I suspected the Data Cubes might be bugged so I went to its page on torhead and checked the comments. People there are saying that if your group's loot is set to masterloot the data cubes will not drop. Afterwards I made the sarcastic post linked above bemoaning our supposed bad luck with Rakata MHs only to have someone tell me that again masterloot is the issue. I've looked around a few other threads and have seen people mention it but I wanted to make a thread about it specifically. From what I've read this isn't just bad luck as these bosses are always supposed to drop two of their respective tokens as well as Exotech/other pieces. On that point I should note that in normal modes (alt runs) we don't have issues with tokens not dropping from various bosses. It would make sense that it shouldn't be different in HM/NiM so I'm doubtful that the bosses simply do not drop their tokens some of the time. Can anyone else confirm (or disprove) that masterloot is bugged and causing loot to not drop correctly? If so please be somewhat specific. In our case it has caused us to get no Alien Data Cubes as said above, have Kragga drop no Rakata MHs as well as various other bosses not drop their Rakata tokens. I only just found out about this tonight so I can't post any before/after information. If this is a bug with masterloot I hope to bring it to BW's attention. I can only assume they are unaware of it as after the recent 1.1.2 patch made kills in Ilum reward no quest credit a fix patch was turned out within two days. You'd think a bug that affects any ops guild using masterloot in a more severe manner (we can't just go back and do the ops again tomorrow) would've been fixed just as quickly if not more so.

So masterloot is bugged and causes loot to not drop correctly? That is so incredibly ridiculous. First we can't use masterloot at all in normal modes then in hard/nightmare it actually breaks the loot. Unbelievable. Here I thought this game was supposed to be out of beta.

So our guild has been downing HM/NM Kragga for several weeks now and I gotta tell ya, we just cannot get enough of these Exotech chest pieces. We have dreams about them. We're insatiable, really. Every time we kill Kragga and we get no Rakata MHs and only get Exotech chests we're all so happy. It's really the reason a lot of us are still playing. The thrill of vendoring another sweet, sweet Exotech chest piece. It's like a drug. I'm so glad there's no sort of logic to the loot tables so instead of always getting one Rakata MH and one Exotech chest or, BW forbid; two Rakata MHs we get to fill a swimming pool with Exotech chest pieces.

My guild has been working on HM Soa and has encountered many encounter breaking bugs. I would say that only about 1 in 5 attempts actually works as intended. For anyone who cares; we're an 8 man guild of mostly ex-hardcore WoW raiders who want to raid casually without the carrying baddies part that usually goes along with that. We have 5/5 NiM KP and 4/5 NiM/HM EV. We raid one or two nights a week. Granted, if we raided 5 nights a week for 4 hours we probably could've had a clean attempt that was also bug free but none us can or want to commit that much time. Back to the bugs, here's what we've been seeing; After a wipe (often from a bug) upon reengaging Soa and getting him to his second phase several pieces of the platform will be missing, making the transition down to phase 3 impossible. If you transition out of phase 2 while someone is being spun around in the air by Force Cyclone upon being thrown down to the bottom they seem to enter a different phase where we cannot see/battle rez them and they cannot see us or the boss (even though we can see them on the minimap). On several occasions someone receiving a battle rez was teleported out of the instance (no, they didn't hit medical droid by mistake). On several occasions when someone received a battle rez it caused Soa to reset and the person who was rezzed was warped back to the top/beginning of the encounter. Occasionally on transition into phase 2 Soa will not properly lose the stacks of his buff. Random aggro in phase 3 making positioning him for the shield removal difficult if not impossible. Not specific to Soa; Battle Rez not working even though it's off CD and hasn't been used that fight. Soa's shield will occasionally not break upon being hit with a pillar in phase 3. Soa will sometimes not bring down pillars in phase 3 for extended lengths of time. He normally seems to do them pretty consistently but occasionally he seems to skip 1 or 2. - Possible bugs / Things that should be fixed - Lightning balls can target people being spun in the air, causing them to be slammed on the ball without anyway to avoid it, usually causing them to die. Lightning balls do not despawn on transition out of phase 2. You guys changed it so someone in a mind trap on transition from phase 2 is released but if you're being spun in the air by Force Cyclone you're screwed (even more so because of the previously mentioned phasing bug).

Signed. The nerf to the Rakata stims and adrenals was too severe and very shortsighted. What's even the point in being Biochem now? Your crew skill BoP items are worse than crafted ones anyone can use. Again, why be Biochem at all now? They still require 400 Biochem after being nerfed, too.

If you don't you either didn't read or understand my OP or just based your response on the title of the thread. Looking at your first post I'd guess the latter.

We don't because there is nothing in the patch notes about it. We can only forecast with the information given to us. Aside from that, you're missing the point. Adding augment slots to tier gear wouldn't solve the problem, either. At that point people are still effectively limited to either tier gear or crafted orange gear rather than having the freedom to choose whichever set they like the most. If BW wants people to have the freedom to use custom gear by putting PvE or PvP tier gear mods in them there can't be an incentive to use certain sets over others because some have augment slots and others do not. That's the bottom line.

Couldn't have said it better myself. An infinite use stim that has worse stats than one you can buy still has worse stats. So then what's the point of Biochem? Nothing. A guild will need 1 or 2 to get Exotech patterns to make stims for the guild and that's it. You aren't balancing Biochem, you're making it undesirable. You're making it into Cybertech or Armstech. Make the Rakata stuff as good as the Exotech stuff.

As far as I can tell when he shoots and flames go everywhere that's Incendiary Missile. I believe the high ~4k (white dmg) crits are Rail Shots and the ~3.5k (yellow dmg) crits are the Thermal Detonators. The ~2k (yellow dmg) crits where you see him shoot lightning are Flame Bursts. And yes, we do a lot of damage. I don't know why PTs have such a poor reputation as anything but tanks in this game.

Here's a video I just watched from the Vanguard forums, seems like he does pretty good damage. He's a mirror of the Pyro spec, though it appears he's using IGC for the added survivability. He's bursting the **** out of people with Thermal Detonator and Rail Shots while fishing for Rail Shot procs with Flame Bursts and Rocket Punches.

Nice video. I don't know why people think Vangaurds/Powertechs are a poor choice for PvP/DPS. Maybe it's because they think all of us are tanks? Edit: Also Loveshock, one of your other video's uses a track from Bastion (I'm more partial to Spike on a Rail myself). This means you are a good person. Congratulations.

That really sucks. I was only vaguely aware some kind of kill trading was going on in Ilum, I didn't know the extent of it or that it made it that easy to grind to rank 60. I could've put 2 and 2 together I guess since the Ilum buff grants such a huge bonus to Valor gain, but I haven't been to the Ilum PvP zone since they changed the daily/weekly. The time it takes to kill 30 people on the opposing faction is ridiculous and gathering boxes is no better. I won't be as impressed with rank 60+ people anymore either I suppose, unless they can honestly say they got it all from WZs. Ilum is a failure by any measurement, on my server anyway. The problem is there is nothing at stake. There is no sense of urgency. There is no incentive to dominate the other faction (for extended periods of time). I think they should've adopted a Wintergrasp like model where you could control it for a time by winning a battle and only then could you say, do the (PvE) dailies there. Something, anything to motivate players to engage in PvP honestly for something of value in the zone. As it is, there is no motivation to actually compete with the other faction.

Yea, stack as much absorb as you can. In general; Absorb > Defense > Shield Rating You get so much Shield Chance innately from skills and IGC along with what you're getting on your gear that you shouldn't use an augment slot for Shield Rating. If you weren't already aware; 28 Shield Rating and 28 Absorb will not give you the same % increase per stat. Until you get it really, really high and start hitting the DR Absorb scales much higher per point than Shield Rating.

Something like this; http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#301hzZMsZfhrbzGhrs.1

Nothing like the smell of roasting Hutt ball carrier over an open flame...

What little number crunching I've seen shows Pyro slightly ahead of AP in terms output. Aside from that there are some problems with the tree, I think so anyway. If you look at the AP tree there seem to be quite a few PvP oriented skills; flat movement speed increase, shorter CD on interrupt, take less damage when stunned, reduced CD on grapple and of course Hydraulic Overrides. Sounds great until you note that AP's largest damage source is Flamethrower; a stationary channeled frontal cone attack. Flamethrower just begs to be interrupted or avoided, I can't imagine relying on it consistently in PvP. For that matter, with the amount of movement, stuns and knockbacks you encounter as melee in FPs and operations I can just imagine the buffed Flamethrowers that would be cut short or interrupted. It's sad that the reason I want to try AP is for the high damage Flamethrowers but the main reason I don't want to is because of the reliance on Flamethrower. Just my two cents.

Right, but how does that imply the benefit Sythweavers/Armortechs have by being able to get Rakata belts/bracers with augment slots is going away? You said; and from what I can tell that isn't true. Armortech and Sythweaving isn't losing anything.

Underline added for emphasis. I'm not sure what you're referring to there. I just checked over the patch notes again and there is no mention of anything related to Sythweaving/Armortech or augment slots.

Like the guy above you said, there are no craftable Rakata implants. You can get patterns for Columi ones which you can crit for augment slots (and possibly reverse engineer to get the prefix versions?) which require materials dropped in HM or NiM ops to craft but no Rakata ones.

Yea it's worse than that actually. Nerfed to Energized level, that is, worse than Exotech. That's pretty dumb. Why should my 'requires 400 of X profession to use' item be worse than a BoE anyone can use? I don't think you understand the MMO min-maxing mentality yet, Bioware. If it's worse, people won't use it. Worse is useless. Worse means, instead of everyone being Biochem (which I agree is a bad thing) and a few people being Armotech or Sythweaving it will be a few people with Biochem (to pick up patterns in ops) and most everyone with Armortech or Sythweaving. Make the Biochem epic craftables as good as the best stuff anyone else can get (Exotech) but reusable as it's advantage. That's what a player should be able to get by going through the trouble of leveling up professions to gear themselves out. Making the stuff a player gets from leveling their profession to max and crafting the epic stuff worse than the BoE stuff everyone else gets just makes no sense.

From what I understand the set bonus is going to be on the Armoring not on the gear itself. So you could conceivably have the tier set bonus on custom gear.