[Why do melee NPC have knockback ?]

Knockbacks are fine, but I hate how there is no consistency to mobs using them. Like the example with ranged droids who will grapple you to them and then use a knock back. There is also way too many normal rank mobs who have knockback and cc effects, and there is no limit in their AI that prevents them from spamming them on the player. For example in one of the heroics on hoth, there are large groups of sith warrior type mobs who *all* have a force choke move. They all use it in a staggered way, essentially stun locking you, and they all have force push as well.

 

Gold Mobs like turret emplacements and ranged type enemies? I'm fine with that. Ranged mobs who grapple and knockback? just frustrating. Silver and normals having knockbacks and stuns? That's just retarded. I'm all for having cc effects that the group have to deal with and counter with interrupts and movement, but large mixed packs have too many cc effects between them, when they should be a feature that gold rank mobs and higher have, increasing the threat they pose to the group. I'm in favor of having knockbacks come with a short cast time and for cc's to only come from gold ranked mobs and higher in mixed packs.

 

Face-pulling has become normal practice for me in flashpoints, ensuring I always have my gap closer for that inevitable knockback/snare.

[So, any expansions??]

Its hard to speculate what they plan to do at this point. There were preliminary plans laid out to expand the class stories before launch, at least some of the writers indicated they had written content for further chapters, and some companion VO was recorded post launch (this could just be companion environmental "barks" though).

 

On the horizon it looks like there will be a new space game added with a pvp component, and perhaps a new world story arc/planet. I would be more inclined to believe they will sell a lot of this stuff as DLC, priced like makeb. I don't think large boxed style expansions are going to happen.

 

I'm very pessimistic about the chance class stories will be expanded, bioware haven't given us any reason to expect them every time they have been quizzed on the topic.

[Threat Generation]

The scenario you mention is an actual threat drop mechanic. Many fights have these that require a taunt be used to regain agro, these specific instances are not you failing to generate enough agro.

 

But what ellenbec is saying is that taunt by itself does increase your threat so long as you have done damage to the target. Its actually the biggest threat move you have in your arsenal, so inserting it into your opener after a couple of GCD's is the best way to use it for generating threat. Taunts will also force the mob to attack you for a limited time, but this is separate from the threat generation effect it has.

[Threat Generation]

You can picture your opener as a "rotation" but from then on its going to be a priority based system as abilities come off cooldown and procs fire off. One thing to keep in mind is that grapple doesn't generate enough threat to make it worth using for that sole purpose, so keep that ability for setting up aoe opportunities for death from above and flame sweep.

 

Jet Charge > Rocket Punch. This is your melee closing combo, always. After that its a priority system:

 

1. Heat Blast

2. Rocket Punch

3. Railshot

4. Flame burst (refresh combust debuff)

5. Flamethrower (flame engine proc)

6. Flamethrower (no flame engine proc)

 

Fill in ability downtime and manage your heat with rapid shots. Try to avoid the temptation of using flame burst beyond refreshing the debuff, unless you're gunning for more threat on your opener. Rapid shots will keep your heat down, and make heat blast come off cooldown sooner.

 

I don't mention death from above or flame sweep as you will have to judge when to use them depending on the situation. If you're aoe tanking, you will want to consume your flame surge stacks asap to grab the initial attention of any stray mobs off the healer. You can also use your flame surge stacks to manage your heat, as they offer heat free flame sweeps.

 

Use of death from above will be opportunistic, so if you can get a good number of enemies inside its radius, use it.

Death from above is also excellent on a single target, so if you can manage to get a boss inside its targeting circle, use it (a hot key and fast mouse cursor positioning will be needed to fire it off quickly without wasting a global cooldown). And explosive fuel with death from above is you're most potent aoe opener.

[Pyrotech rebalancing]

OP touched on the main points, but here's my spin on it anyway:

 

The Hybrid Problem

This has a lot to do with thermal detonator being lackluster, but the issue is also compounded by the fact that low hanging fruit provides obvious advantages for pyros (prototype cylinders specifically and uniquely buffs CCG). Getting all the direct passive improvements from the lower trees requires sacrificing the top tiers of the pyro tree. This issue is not evident in AP, as that spec can acquire all the low hanging fruit that directly buffs their tree without sacrificing their top tier skills. The top tier of pyro needs be made so enticing and essential that players will be willing to sacrifice some of the low hanging fruit.

 

Incendiary Missile

This ability needs a lower heat cost as target switching is absolutely crippling to heat management. For such a mundane damage and dot effect, it is completely out of wack with its heat cost. It also has no synergy with the tree, not even to enable railshot (CGC).

 

Thermal Detonator

If a pyro could acquire all the low hanging fruit, it may be enough to encourage them to get Thermal Detonator in its current state. Its still a monumentally underwhelming capstone skill, and like incendiary missile, has absolutely no synergy with the tree. TD in its current form still wouldn't do anything to discourage hybrids from using the pyro tree for nothing but Prototype Particle Accelerator. I feel the better option would be to go back to the drawing board with this ability and tie it into the spec in a way that ensures the pyro playstyle would be compromised without it, or make it so amazing that no sane person would spec up to PPA and not get TD.

[If your thinking of rolling a PT for DPS, don't!]

For what it's worth, a vanguard currently holds the highest (full fight) parse on 16m hm styrak.

 

I have been studying that parse ever since I noticed it uploaded, Its very impressive. Its the exact same spec that a certain 'greatest AP player of all time' has been dragging through the dirt (the same person who says dummy parses are irrelevant, yet posts their own dummy parses as proof of AP's superiority.)

 

I wonder if C-tor would be willing to share their crit rating and their choice of set bonus.

[If your thinking of rolling a PT for DPS, don't!]

Higher parses, yes. Higher real world application, probably not. I'll never understand why so many players put stock in these numbers against a stationary target that has zero mechanics. How many operation bosses resemble a target dummy again? I lost count.

 

It is relevant as it shows the maximum average output. Vengeance kicks the dummy's arse but it doesn't approach that on any fights other then target dummy like encounters, so I understand where you're coming from. They are still a valid way of comparing specs because the variables can be controlled and parses can be compared in an objective way. What I don't agree with are people who parse 20mins+ and hand pick the most ideal 5mins and trim it up, because that doesn't give you a realistic representation of what is the typical performance of a spec. I would still say that styrak is the best fight to determine what a classes true potential is, as it has a good mix of movement, target switching and burn phases.

[If your thinking of rolling a PT for DPS, don't!]

I can't comment on PvP, but for anyone comparing PT's to maras and snipers that's not even a fair comparison, they do dps that is in a tier of its own, well above most AC's. Comparing the top end performance of PT to say juggernaut and assassins, it doesn't look as bad (this is real fight performance, not hand picked dummy parses).

 

For example vengeance can parse 2.9k on a dummy but doesn't get anywhere near that on styrak. I mean a full pt pyro can parse 2500 on that fight so its not even a question of spec. For pve damage, PT's are better then assassins, who are currently the lowest dps AC in the game. PT's are viable, but are straying away from the top tier performers by well over 500dps, which is far too much. If bioware are intent on sticking with NiM dreadguards in their current form, yes PT's and assassins wont be viable for that fight without skipping them and getting gear.

[So are SGRA still coming? Guild Ships?]

I think a couple of people missed the memo on SSGR. We got them in makeb and Jeff Hickman mentioned that many players "believed" they would come in the form of new companions. We have also been told how expensive companion content is to make and that beyond environmental barks they wont be adding more stuff to them.

 

I would doubt we are even going to get more class story stuff so you can forget your SSGR companions.

[does anyone else get instructed what to do because you dont follow the norm?]

Yea I just ignore people who ask me to tank wookie near the taxi or the second boss in athiss near the pond.

[Best 2.0 PvE DPS set bonus?]

Its one of those things that can't really be controlled, when a streak of procs happen it's just amazing, but I can't rely on it when I need that proc. I find the general fight to fight performance is much better with rage, its much more operation friendly in general. Dummy numbers don't really mean much when you have to move or switch targets with bleeds and ravages. I would be interested to see if vengeance could rival rage on hm styrak (minus the adds at the start).

 

And I'm curious about not using ravage for single target dps as rage spec, you can easily fit in a ravage after every 3rd smash while force crush is ticking down. There is no way that an extra two viscous slashes would push ravage off the table completely for a single target, even when taking the smash cd reduction into account. The only time I can think where you would ignore ravage is if you are fighting more then one target, in that case you would want to go from smash to smash asap.

[GCD skipping]

I have personally observed that this issue is worse in certain areas / encounters. For example, GCD skipping seems to be worse when fighting Styrak. It also seems to be linked to having a lot of simultaneous inputs at once, for example activating force charge + adrenal while mashing the smash key has a pretty good chance of causing a fake GCD with no smash.

 

I have a feeling that this issue is also linked / compounded by poor client performance causing some crazy sync issues with the server. The knockback bug is a good example of this, where you will get stuck in the air and be completely immobilized instead.

[Best 2.0 PvE DPS set bonus?]

With Vengeance, there isn't even a competition. On a bad day, Ravage is 18% of your damage. I don't believe I've ever seen Scream hit even 16%, and that's including a parse where I used Scream on an average timer of one every 9.8 seconds. While I have yet to conclusively prove this to be the case, I am fairly certain that the Scream damage bonus does not impact the bleed effect, since it has it's own ability name.

 

Maybe I just have terrible proc chance, but I can often go a solid 2mins without a single ravage proc, I suppose that's what made me start thinking about the 4p. I'm currently using the 2/2 but just end up speccing rage for most fights unless its a target dummy like thrasher.

[Best 2.0 PvE DPS set bonus?]

Not to mention Loufucai (Highest parsing Jugg, both specs), uses Ravage almost on CD in his Rage parses.

 

It's a very good parse, the adds at the start offer a huge advantage to smash. The damage graph spikes up to 35k at one point! Now all me and Ison want to do is smash.

 

I suspect the 4p could be better or at least, very close for vengeance considering the frequent use of auto crit screams compared to ravages. The 2 piece weapon master would depend on how lucky you are, with a good proc streak favoring the boost to ravage damage.

[Status of Class Stories?]

Bioware haven't given us any reason to expect more class exclusive story content. What we got with Makeb is what story updates are going to look like from now on. As was mentioned before, the initial plan was to keep the dev team on board to maintain the game, and that included all the writers who were responsible for the class stories. Most of these guys have either been fired or have left Bioware (some of these guys are still there), with the game converting to a completely different business model in that time.

 

I think its fair to say its not commercially viable content for a game with a market of this scope, considering how little longevity content like that has compared to a new operation or flashpoint. If they implement some systems to let us replay our class story (with scaled combat challenges and rewards) It would make future class story content have greater longevity, and mean that class story content would be repeatable content (a good thing).

[pulling agro question in raids]

The whole argument that "DPS can out threat a tank" is hogwash. Any and all who say such things obviously do not have a basic grasp on how threat works, and/or how to apply such information to the game.

 

I don't think anyone would disagree with you in regards to that if we are talking about a tank who is using a taunt boost. Using raw threat alone (before any taunt starts inflating the threat numbers) are where a lot of these arguments spring from. I think it has been shown that even with an optimized opener, a guarded sentinel can out threat a shadow who doesn't use taunt (using KBN's comparison).

 

Then we move on to whether or not dps should be taking steps to avoid that (giving the tank a gcd lead, not using relics/adrenals/class buffs on the pull, strategic threat drops). The easier option is for the tank to swallow their pride and use a taunt boost.

[Vanguard Snap Threat]

Skip the harpoon as that is wasting a global cooldown, it generates less threat then a flameburst. An easy mistake to make considering the assassin pull is very good for threat generation, and harpoon has a deceptive tool-tip.

 

Try to storm to the tentacle and get in your position asap to try to beat the dps to the punch, pop your battle focus and immediately fire off your stockstrike and high impact bolt. If you were quick enough you should get a stockstrike proc to use again. After that use your pulse cannon, even if it hasn't proc'd (you have the opportunity to get two pulse cannons off if it hasn't). Mortar Volley is worth a mention, especially if you have battle focus up, it hits pretty hard on a single target. A taunt boost would be wise before moving into your channeled abilities to make sure you can get them off without loosing threat, so you don't have to break the channel to re-taunt.

 

By the looks of it your doing pretty much this anyway, so it could be down to the fact that your dps are too close to you in threat, as they are not giving you a chance to lead in with your storm and / or popping adrenals, relics and class cooldowns right off the bat, or not using their threat drops. A pre cast flyby from a gunslinger is going to be a good culprit.

[player ship hangar(s)]

Well, each class having its own separate ship hanger phase is beyond stupid. Phases are dynamic and are capable of recognizing the player's class when they wander into the phase portal. Having "Sith Warrior" written on the minimap is such a cop out, and makes no sense. The makeb orbital station should be a model for how the game handles player ship phases throughout the entire game.

[Jugg Threat busted?]

You shouldn't open with taunt, all that will do is force the boss to attack you for 6 seconds. You need to leap in and bust out some threat before you taunt so you have some base threat to boost from. Setting up your crushing blow should be your first priority, for example leap in and smash>crushing blow+retaliation. Depending on how your dps behave, using a saber throw is the most rage efficient way to begin most fights, otherwise you will need to use enrage on your opener.

 

As for AoE tanking, in flashpoints some pulls can be scary, just ensure your dps are killing weakest enemies first before moving on to the big ones, that will save you a lot of pain trying to tap all the normals with damage so they don't shoot your healer. Positioning is key as smash and crushing blow have a small aoe range. Saber Reflect is also something you should learn to abuse for ranged packs.

[pulling agro question in raids]

@namesaretough

 

I think a lot of all this thread is a conflict of play styles, and what each party believes to be proper ops behavior for dps and tanks.

 

I think the advice shot at the op should have been from the mindset of letting dps be dps, and instructing the op's tanks how to taunt boost effectively. Instead, a lot of people treat taunt boost as a dirty word and immediately call into question the competence of the tank, with their own assumptions on how dps perform and behave in mind, which isn't fair.

 

Bioware have given tanks the tools they need to tank, they should all be exploited to maximum effect to let dps do the same for their respective role in operations. Generating "just enough" agro is equally unexciting to tanks as doing "just enough" damage is for dps.

[pulling agro question in raids]

Having all these sweet opening threat rotations is good and all, but when most are talking about a threat pull, the time scale they are talking is much smaller. If you compare what a dps can do while a guardian is using saber throw and leaping, his follow up smash isn't that spectacular, and it takes another 3 globals for threat to ramp up over what a dps would be easily doing at that point. Listing an opening rotation with 6 globals is irrelevant. A lot will come down to how dps behave and which tank is tanking. As kitru put it, "play-style disconnect". That's a good combination of words.

 

And if taunts aren't even in the equation (because taunt fluffing makes you bad apparently) any mara or sniper playing optimally is going to be too close to taking a boss off a jugg, even after their highest threat rotation. This is where I would disagree with KBN's blanket statement, because it *is* possible for dps to take threat, even if said guardian is playing "correctly". And to those that think that taunt fluffing isn't ever needed, that is just a joke. Mara and sniper burst is not a joke, and not everyone plays a shadow tank. If there isn't a taunt boost/fluff, I don't think a vanguard or guardian has a big enough safety net, with raw tps its just too close to be reliable (misses do happen).

[2.0 Practical Shield Rating]

For the current tier of gear anyway, the crafted implants are better then the underworld/verpine as far as mitigation goes, and the drop in health and mainstat is worth the trade. A best in slot guardian will have a minimum of 868 shield rating using the crafted ear and implants. If the stats go live on the KD gear though, it looks like they could be better, for guardians at least.

 

To bring up something I was talking about in KBN's thread, shield rating for guardians is a bit wonky once they start adding in relics to the stat budget, as KBN's spreads will start indicating that they should use shield, where as dipstik says with no assumptions on shield they would drop quite a bit of it for defense, which lead me to think that it's a bit odd using shield augments on a guardian.

[2.0 Powertech Tanking Guide]

I think you should also take into account that flamebust should really just be used to refresh the combust debuff, rapid shots as filler will make heatblast come off cooldown sooner. Rocket punch and railshot are always going to be used on cooldown, and flamethrower should be as well (even without the flame engine proc).

 

Also, I find it surprising that hot iron is bringing more damage to the table then iron fist.

[2.0 Powertech Tanking Guide]

Before 2.0, I think most pt's would agree with the reasons for not taking super charged ion gas, with hm / nightmare making the talent a liability. After 2.0, the guaranteed IGC proc builds a heatscreen stack and reduces the cooldown of heatblast, this is what really sells it as a must have.

 

If your speccing right, you wont be in a position where you are deciding between dps vs threat anyway, unless you put that one point into hot iron instead of proto cylinders. I agree that the point in proto cylidners can be moved around with little consequence, but supercharged ion charged gas is very compelling with the changes to heatscreen / heatblast, the threat is a bonus. Its a very strong skill all round now.

[2.0 Powertech Tanking Guide]

3% Increase in health is also a direct buff to your shoulder cannon heals, making it pretty much the only skill that you could spend those spare points in that increase your survivability. It is really going to come down to preference. Not only did pre-2.0 juggs prove you can tank with pathetic threat, but they don't have an endurance increase in their tree, showing just how trivial it is. There are more efficient ways to gain more health then dropping +% damage skills.

 

Also as far as raw threat goes, taking prototype cylinders and supercharged ion gas are the best bang for your buck for 2 skill points. Even with the pathetic damage, the threat modifier for them makes it worthwhile to take the flat % increases to their damage. Don't forget that railshot will trigger your ion gas cylinder even on a single target with supercharged ion gas, which will give you a guaranteed heat screen proc.