15 character-weeks worth of conquest mats, for one 3 hour raid. And reminding ourselves knowing the following: Increased DPS may help but it doesn't negate the insta-wipe mechanics of Nightmare Nightmare isn't even worth it, dropping 220 tokens when you go in there in mixed 220/224s The only people who will find benefit are the hardcore raiders anyway, as a casual raider would still wipe to mechanics, and will definitely not spend 15 encryptions on a single attempt to learn a raid The ratio of reward to cost for this consumable is abysmally low I am making the petition, as I speak for everyone else, that if you're going to include such a consumable in the game, with the expense of such a consumable, that you make it a reusable. A reusable will definitely justify its cost, especially since nightmare is worthless to farm anyway....

I don't know what's scarier. The fact that Bioware is actually doing this (no guaranteed 224 tokens from nightmare) or the fact that they aren't responding to the overwhelming feedback telling Bioware that they are in the wrong.

Bioware, this is not worth $180 a year.

Finally... this is far more like it. That's the endgame I'm looking for.

Or maybe your tank can hold still when the cross is gonna happen....

By the way, I was one of the players in an aforementioned guild on this thread who couldn't use star parse, but this was because the client was 64 bit. They have a 32-bit client now, so anyone who couldn't use Star Parse before should try it again. It runs much better on my dinosaur, and I imagine the same would go for everyone else using it. Link to site in case they update that download. Just wanted to clear that up in case any testimonies of Star Parse not working on any computers keep you from trying it out. Personally, now that I can actually use it, I like Star Parse more than parsec. I know this is a reply to a post from weeks ago on this thread, but just wanted to clear it up. Anyone who had issues before with Star Parse should try it again.

I'm personally doing fine in PvP, and I use watchman and concentration. I don't even have augments. I'll admit that combat is impossible to use (at least for me) in pvp. Leap Zen, zealous strike, precisio-- stunned and worthless.

I'm a bit busy :/ https://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/1685/1987/original.jpg in the meantime, here's a parse that I did in 186 gear with the following rotation (put in spoilers to prevent misinformation) From what I can gather, I seem to have a few other rotations to try thanks to this thread

Reply in spoiler because of potential (although probably unintentional) derail Please focus the topic on 8 man groupfinder vs. 16 man groupfinder.

I'll admit that I am oversimplifying the problem I had, but that doesn't change how useful an 8 player queue is, because at the end of the day, an 8 player GF gave you a chance to prove yourself as a veteran raider in whatever the spec you wanted to do, and ignore guild politics in the process. The problem in general honestly was never supposed to be a focus of my post, and I'm a bit frustrated that people jumped on it and started saying all the "you should leave your guild" and etc., when the real purpose was to discuss the preference of an 8 player gf queue in a low population server such as Jung Ma, where 16 player pops may happen once a day, if ever. That's what I wanted to focus the discussion on, and that was the wholehearted intent of the discussion. People just read into my example a bit much (and reading my post, I guess I'm to blame for the misinterpretation) And even then at the end of the day I can just find one of the many guilds manually and hand search for people looking for an 8 man spot to be filled (which so far is working just fine, it's just tedious as all heck).

The irony is the guild is tiny. They have no reason to be picky. I've already left the guild, and probably will soon unsub unless something changes, because there's no reason for me to appeal to play endgame content and pay $15 a month if there's no way for me to get involved in anything other than Flashpoints unless I can find a guild that's actually good (which doesn't, to my knowledge, exist on Jung Ma, although I'm reserving judgement and still trying to look for one), or at the very least, a guild that knows what they're doing, and doesn't try to do prog elitism for a story mode op. Anything else I can do in SWTOR, except for PvP, can be done without a sub.

You literally only can do it now if your kolto inject and surgical right on the end both crit and heal you for 14k.... .... oh wait that's not much, is it...

Well what if groupfinder is how I would find those other guilds?

Volatile substance can totally hit for 14.7k if you have full expertise and you hurt someone with pve gear, both your relics proccing. I'm undergeared and it's hitting for 12k in pvp. As for lethality, I imagine it's a cull that had every several pieces of it crit (with the toxic blast procs critting as well), but that's what I imagine at least. edit Looking at the math, the basic damages of my cull are 3k + 1k for each toxic effect. Then Toxic Shot adds 0.5k for each cull damage. We end up with 3k + .5k + 1k + .5k + 1k + .5k = 7.5k with none of the six pieces critting. This can get boosted by several things: Crits, assuming 70% surge rating, boost damage by 70%. Assuming all 6 pieces crit, you can deal 12.75k Targets at 30% health can take 15% increased damage. Targets without pvp gear can take up to 60% extra damage from you. Conclusion: We can probably do even more than 15k with cull on a player. Your testing on another player not yielding the damage is probably not taking advantage of 30% health, and even if it was, the chance to crit all 6 shots is about CRIT CHANCE^6. So if you have 20% crit chance, you have a 0.032% chance to crit all six shots. On a final note, this is all assuming that the "highest hit" accounts for attacks like cull that have 6 pieces that do damage individually as all one attack. Which contrary to what people are saying in here, yes, that does happen.

Hoping the concealment guide comes out soon. This is inspiring me to get back into lethality operative practice, and trying to go for the big numbers with it. edit: I can grab 3.76k with 180 gear and a 192 offhand, and several upon several mistakes. I can't wait to see what I can pull when I don't blank out in the 1.5 mil parse and master this spec.

Introduction: Groupfinder: the savior of Eldergame Endgame content right now is absolutely ridiculously exclusive to the guilds with prog teams who are gearing their prog raiders as fast as possible to compete with each other. Which is fine, because that's the design. But there's a problem with some aspects of endgame raiding that need to be addressed, especially in SWTOR. We have countless guilds who are opinionated on class specs, and even full viability on specific classes. Either your class is viable as a DPS/Tank/Healer in the eye of your guild leader, or you aren't gonna raid. Simple as that. No amount of evidence you can grab from the top raiders on the internet is gonna help you convince them otherwise. Their opinion is law, and if you are someone who's out of a raiding job because your guild won't take you in, you've got option B. Groupfinder. Groupfinder did two things: It allowed you as an experienced player to prove yourself, and your spec's viability. As a pug spot in a guild's raid night, or in a full pug group, this is a clean slate. You're given at least a pull or two to prove yourself, and even get some gear while you're at it. It allowed new raiders to learn how to raid, and maybe even find a guild. It also allowed guilds to find players looking for raiding guilds. Go figure. Why try to convince guild leaders they're wrong when you can join a group that will give you a chance instead? And this worked. At least, in 2.0 it worked, before 16m queues were implemented. Right now, groupfinder is broken for raiding with the current 16m implementation, as well as the choice between only two of the hardest ops this game has to offer (yes, even on story mode). This post addresses the main issue in depth, and pleads to review how you implement the eldergame, so the elitist bigshots who control who raids and who doesn't, and have a bigoted opinion on class viability (and are also very wrong), don't prevent half the playerbase from even having a chance to prove themselves. Perhaps the main problem is its 16m implementation. 8m vs. 16m Group Finder Low population servers have already seen how difficult it is to queue for groupfinder for 16 man (if it even pops at all). With the difficulty of the ops, and the lag in the new ops when doing them 16m, is it any surprise as to why? And if you're guild doesn't let you raid because you're "unviable", even after you practiced parsing for hours on that target dummy and can reach 3.5k consistently (keep in mind, you probably don't have gear so that's pretty impressive), you're out of options if groupfinder isn't working. I'm highly convinced it's because it's 16m, instead of 8 man. The Case for 8 man In 2.0, back when 8m was the way groupfinder worked, a guild could easily pug that one or two replacements, and, if they were new players, help them learn to raid and learn the fights. It even helped guilds recruit new players (or new players find guilds). The bolster helped bring new players into the raiding experience, without making gearing a pointless endeavor. The comms given helped new raiders (and experienced raiders) to get the gear they needed, in case they didn't already have it. Heck, have a personal experience. When I started raiding back in the summer, I was very fresh. I had an operative healer, and a gunslinger DPS. The only way I even raided was with groupfinder alone, and that was how I learned that I needed to read up on all the fights (because I sucked.... obviously) One night studying dulfy later, and parsing to get the numbers expected, I go into groupfinder and proved myself and found a guild that accepted me. This was only possible with 8 man, where you can be noticed by that group of 7 guildies. The rest was history. I was a regular raider, and a regular sub (because I was gonna cancel my sub if I ran out of things to do) What exactly is wrong with 16 man groupfinder? For starter's, there's no choice. It's 16m or bust. A chaotic group of 16 individuals, probably (in a low population server) who aren't even in the same guild together, and probably many noobs who not only don't know the fights, but also don't know their roles or class well thanks to the 12xp we had earlier. Worse still, if you're in a low population server (or a server that's labeled PvP/RP, where for some reason everyone thinks that means screw PvE), you won't get a groupfinder pop with 16 players. And what if you do? Are your tanks new? They won't stand a chance in 16 man: They have to learn mechanics, their rotation, and hold threat against the 1 in 10 people that may pull more threat than them. And not just that, do you expect 16 pugs to have the fight explained to them and expect all 16 of them to follow directions? Definitely not probable. I don't know if that's how it is in the PvE servers, but it's horrible in the low population PvP/RP server. Feel free to speak up in the thread if you experience the same so the devs can see that this is an issue that needs to be addressed. Both guilds I was a part of refused to do groupfinder to find a couple pugs in 16m. Perhaps this is the gambler's fallacy, but this is what I see. Back when 8m was how groupfinder worked, my guild did this regularly: there would be 5-7 of us and we'd pug the remainder and either see how impressive they were, or carry/teach them. It worked very well. In the summer, we did this 4 times a week for all four raids (TFB, SnV, DF, DP), for two straight months. It was an amazing system, everyone got to raid regularly, pugs were always finding pops, and everyone was happy. 16Ms are just too big to do this. How exactly is 8 man better? When we had 8 man groupfinder, the groupfinder raids were more manageable. You could have half the raid composed of experienced guildies who not only carried the raid, but helped the other four pugs learn the raid. Not just that, 8 man pugs were actually quite doable provided a couple of the pugs were experienced prog raiders who could carry the group (expected for Storymode, right? I'd hope so... that's what "Story mode" implies). It also, like I said before, allows new raiders to find good guilds, and to learn how to raid. Finally, if you're, say... a scoundrel DPS who enjoys ruffian, but you're not finding a spot with the guildies who think you're not playing a viable spec, you'll find your chance in groupfinder to prove yourself as a DPS or healer in the eyes of the pugs who you're in GF with, or the guild that picked you up for a replacement. TL;DR Raids suck now, it's almost like story mode became the new prog with "class viability" and guild leader elitism. The solution is groupfinder, where players are given a chance to prove themselves, but it's broken with its 16m queues that never pop, and are impossible to complete. The solution there is to make them 8 man, back to the way they were in the summer. That way groupfinder will actually be used. Even if you don't re-implement 8m groupfinder, you should review how elder content is handled. Those of us who work our butts off on the target dummy are tired of not having a chance to raid because our guild leader hates our class and spec and the groupfinder alternative is too broken to be the plan B that we need. tl;dr;tl;dr That plan B known as groupfinder needs to be fixed so raiding becomes possible again for those of us who aren't in a prog group.