I just tanked both Czerka FPs in HM. I couldn't keep the buff up more than 50% of the time because of movement and stuns/kbs. 12s might work on an ops boss, but any fight involving movement and kbs/stuns and it won't be something you can get even close to 100% uptime on. Also, I definitely noticed that I took a lot more damage on trash mobs than usual. I was a fan of this change from a theory perspective but experience is beginning to gainsay that opinion.

It does depend on the incoming damage and yes, lower DtPs will be a nerf, but it also depends on how that damage arrives. If it is very bursty damage (spikes) the change will be a buff even on lower stuff. But the difference is still pretty small. I solo all of the dailies in the game (except Long Shots) and rarely use any of my cds. I may now have to use BR or a medpac one in a while, but I would certainly trade that for better improvement in operation performance. I just don't see this increasing my difficulty in soloing Heroics or FPs much at all. If is turns out on the PTS to be huge issue and I have to spend as more or more time doing dailies on my shadow than my Guardian, instead of half, I will change my opinion. I just don't think that will be the case.

This whole argument about solo play is rather confusing to me. The heal from TkT replaces health that is lost fighting mobs. The changes will mean that I won't lose that health. In 2.4 say I would lose 5k health and heal for 2.5k, leaving me 2.5k down. With the changes I will lose 2.5k and heal for 0 across the same fight. Thus I am 2.5k down in the current system and in the change. At the end of that fight, nothing is different. That is the point the devs are making in this. It shouldn't change the overall mitigation, just how the mitigation is handled. The heals are dependent on fighting so you have to lose health to gain it back. By changing it we don't lose nearly as much health. Why do you think this will cause a massive shift in solo play?

I apparently did not pick up your original tone correctly as it came across very condescending toward the use of technical evaluation (not just at KBN but at everyone who primarily looks at the numbers). But as you were reminding KBN, and thus all of us, to not forget lore and feel, I am on board with that. I don't think that we are forgetting about feel at all. It is something that is important and I think we are going do all we can to preserve the essence while getting the changes that will keep us competitive at all levels in PVE and PVP.

DG, I am not sure why you think KBN isn't concerned about lore of the feel of the class. Grumpf was the one who said he didn't concern himself with lore crap. I don't ever recall KBN saying anything negative about reinforcing commonly held ideas about lore. What I see is that KBN is concerned about making the game enjoyable from a technical aspect while preserving a distinction among the tanks. And while lore is very important for many people, I would venture to say that technical playability is a more important aspect of a game than adherence to traditional lore. You are challenging KBN by saying he is advocating destroying the feel of one spec of this class. We don't know how the change is really going to affect the feel yet. That is going to play out on the PTS and the first weeks of 2.5. From a technical aspect this is a good technical change. There is significant disagreement about how this will alter the feel of the class as we look at the surface changes. I am one that doesn't think it will change too significantly, you think it will. This is the discussion and we are all, KBN and Xinika included, in it. None of us want the feel to change, else we would have rerolled, but we recognize that technical changes were necessary and those might impact the feel of the class as Xinika pointed out months ago.

Removed as quoted post was edited.

This is how I read it as well, not a refresh, but restacking akin to bulwark. If it is simply a refresh, then the skill floor is dropped significantly, but a reapplication keeps a high skill level and seems more in line with what the healing did than a simple HoT refresh. As that would be similar to Bulwark it is not completely unique, but would, as Bulwark is, be unique to Shadows, which I like and is probably why I read it that way instead of a refresh. This will be something we need to look at on the PTS and ensure that we both keep a significant skill differential and are still rewarded for that higher level of play.

My favorite ops moment was when I was the last man standing on Titan at about 75k health to go. Everyone was encouraging me and cheering that my health was actually INCREASING as I fought the boss. I got him down to 9k before I died. But I felt very good with the level of skill that I demonstrated and the hope that I engendered in my team that we would triumph as I gained back lost health was enlivening. Having thought through these changes for Kinetic Combat, it is clear that a moment like that will not happen again. However, I don't see self-healing as our unique niche. It was prominent, but what makes shadows good is the skill to survive. The changes for 2.5 don't appear to alter that concept very much. In fact, I think that it will likely increase the skill cap slightly. While this will narrow the gap considerably between poor and great shadows, I think that the skilled players will still outpace the poor shadows very noticeably. Our survivability will still be very much skill based and using the correct cd's, maintaining DR stacks, and now 100% uptime on shadow's shelter are going to be significant factors that will sift the field. It is a significant change, but we have been asking for a change for months now. The devs have listened, which was a complete shock to me, and are trying to maintain the skill threshold while eliminating the massive spikes. And doing this in a way that addresses both PVE and PVP concerns. I am excited to try this out and see how much of a difference it will make. I certainly won't be able to demoralize my enemies by having my health increase while they are channeling force lightning, but the fact that I won't have huge drops in health is going to make me a bear to kill.

These were well considered and thoughtful answers. More so than any of the other answers to this point, they gave us a picture into what the devs are thinking through as they make decisions. I am completely surprised, shocked, and very elated. Not at all what I expected, but what I hoped they would be. These are the kind of answers that enable the community to see the classes the way the devs see them. This is how you build confidence in what the devs are doing. We may not agree with the answers but they are far more explanatory and give us a bigger picture of how you all see the past, present, and future. Keep up this level of communication; don't let this be the shining finale. These answers can turn the corner for a lot of people. Capitalize on that and push more communication from the devs about how they are developing our (yours and the community's) game. Not in PR flash, which is fun, but in substantive ways like this. This is the foundation of trust you need to establish in the community to make the game last.

My initial response is very pleased. This maintains a significant skill threshold and smooths damage. I will look again and write something more significant tonight after work.

The only thing that would be intentional is if they did release the answers at this point. That would be all sorts of messed up, but planning things out well seems to take a level of skill considerably higher than the devs are comfortable with. Just glad I won't have to patch to full tonight.

The distractions begin and the comedy ensues: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=6798315#post6798315 I love Bioware, and truly enjoy this game. I want it to succeed. The incessant foibles and follies are so amusing, though, that I am not sure I want them to stop.

You still have hope that we are getting a second round of questions. It's like walking out of my bathroom with the scent of rainbows and unicorns.

I wouldn't be shocked if they released them at the same time as the patch so that they have fewer people reviewing them and critiquing them with the hope that the questions just get forgotten.

Unless, of course, they are timing the release of the questions to coincide with the patch so that people are distracted by the content and patch issues and don't have time to adequately respond to the questions. Pretty cynical on my part to think they may be that deceptive, but if they don't have good answers and are just going to blow smoke at us, they'll want something shiny to distract us with so that we are too busy to bust up the smokescreen.

Except that Eric said they were hard at work on 2.5 and the changes that are supposedly coming in that patch. If he had said they are working on polishing 2.4, I would be less disappointed.

That was my point. Where is this in the priority queue? Obviously it is not a priority. If something is a priority it gets accomplished. I oversee a team, and work alongside other teams. We are all very busy, but when something is a priority, we are there and get it done. Here is another example. The whole U.S. military shut down for a day to train on Sexual Harassment because it was a priority for the leaders. The WHOLE military in the US stopped work for a day to accomplish a priority task. I am sure it sucked but it was done.

Courtney, This is completely disrespectful to us. I accept your apology because I choose to believe that you actually are sorry. However, this is yet another time in which your company says one thing and does not align its manpower to effectively achieve that goal. So you may be sorry, but your company's actions continue to demonstrate that as a unit you all do not care enough about your professional work ethic to ensure you meet the goals that you all set for yourself. As far as taking time, we were told that the devs had been looking into shadow tank spikiness for months. For my job, I was given two tasks yesterday (9/25) to write 500 word essays nominating people that I barely know for awards that I don't think they merited, but I wrote 1000 words about how my company thinks they are deserving and why in addition to my standard 9-hour workload. It took me 90 minutes to answer the question of why they should get these awards. The fact that your entire combat team cannot take the same time to answer six questions about something they are supposed to be experts in is deplorable. It seems that they are either incompetent or uncaring. Professionals accomplish what they are capable of regardless of whether they care or not. We will now be waiting 18 days between posting questions and receiving answers. 80 hours per team member at 40 hours a week. I am trying to be very respectful, but unless these "thorough" answers are essay-length, you are misleading us and treating us with disdain.

Just to head off any nitpicking, it is 6 questions. Updated my post. Still should not take more than a couple of hours for a professional team to hash out.

Eric, this is really disappointing. You had initially said these would come back in a week, then moved it to 11 days so you could interact with the community on Monday. Then it was twelve days because the devs weren't ready, now we are sitting at 14 days between questions and answers with the reason being that the devs are working on another project. Is this really that unimportant to the combat team that they cannot take two hours to hash out answers to six questions? Is the forum community that low on the priority list? If the devs work on 2.5 is so important that they cannot take the time to answer us, why should we ever expect answers? If they haven't answered because they don't know how to answer them it is just as concerning. Don't they have a unified vision for the classes from which to provide answers? Are they arguing about what the class vision should be? Delaying answers to better interact with the community is one thing, delaying answers because you guys can't set priorities and work to deadlines is very unprofessional.

Are you friggin kidding? Another defensive CD for Guardian tanks? They already have the best suite of cds, a super smooth damage profile and high DR. Why not just ask for permanent invincibility? Even higher DPS, also? Juggs are incredibly simple to play and put out some amazing dps. How about you just ask for an insta-kill button? These are seriously unwarranted and completely insane.

I think that using overload as an opener is going to generate less threat overall than a wither opener would and the concern in the first couple seconds is how fast you can generate that threat (high TPS). by opening with your rotation the TPS curve is going to be a bit smoother and push the dip to the right a little bit, but I don't think it is going to alleviate the issue of a healer's hard hitting threat (or a dps) landing right when we aren't generating threat at a point where we don't have enough threat built up to maintain aggro. That part is the dance I was talking about. Everyone needs to work together, because some fights need to open with overload and force pull to get everything in the right place. If the dps or healer don't know that and explode out of the box the positioning is going to be crappy and everyone will blame the tank, because he was working on positioning (the right thing) instead of threat (the necessary thing).

I didn't use taunts in my parses above as I wanted to illustrate how threat naturally develops. The right place to use a taunt in those is right after the major spike in threat so that the tank is completely locked in on threat. It can be used earlier, but it's benefit is severely limited if it is used before there is any threat to magnify. I have noticed that Shadow/Sin tanks have an amazing proclivity to blame ourselves far more than the other tanks do for Ops problems. It is very interesting and wonder if it is related to the skill level or play style that attracts a certain type of person. but, yes, I always blame myself first and only after I am sure I didn't mess things up do I look at other players.

Perhaps add this "would it be possible to add the armor debuff to operations dummies permanently and change their health so that at 5% they automatically heal to full? This mechanic is already available in game with the Dread Guard and would enable dummy parses to better mimic actual fights."

Cake Balls are ordered and will be delivered on Friday, same day as our questions. Red Velvet and Mexican Chocolate. Thanks to everyone that helped out with the cost. I take full responsibility if Bioware wants to ban someone.