So people capable of clearing HM EC can gear up faster that way than by grinding BH comms. Well....yeah? I am not talking about them, I am talking about the vast majority of players, who are NOT capable of clearing EC HM. They would be absolutely correct in taking a long hard look at gear and saying: Why should I invest countless hours in rading and wiping, especially in a bad group that might never clear the place, when I can get pretty much the same gear relatively quickly by doing dailies? Last tier, BH comms and BH gear was just too damn accessible to my mind, hence I don't mind this tier of gear being more restricted.

It varies between classes. I was farming EC HM gear, and still had to buy about 8 BH healer boots (as an arsenal merc) for the mods I needed because the campaign gear was so badly itemized. For everyone except pretty succesful raid groups, you'd be in full 61 mod gear (barring weapons) quicker by sucking up BH commendations than by braving EC HM. Many raid groups STILL havent cleared EC HM, yet pretty much all non-raiding players in the 5 man pugs are sporting full 61 mods. What does that tell you? There are many well thought out things in this game. Gear progression and gear itemization are not among them, in my opinion.

Right, I have no problem with that. Firstly my goal is to clear TFB HM while having fun, not ensure that every single raid member has every possible gear piece. Secondly I assume that other ways to gear up might present themselves (NiM modes), and even if they don't, I am fine with that too. Last tier of gear you could farm dailies for BH gear. Shift the BH mods into Rakata gear from faceroll content, and in a short time have gear that was BETTER than Campaign gear, if you knew how to mod. The rational way to gear up was to farm BH commendations in dailies, not do PvE. THAT was sick, in my opinion.

So you are saying that your highly motivated and well-run raid group will loose motivation and stop raiding because they are getting 1 drop per boss and not two? Either there is more to it, or you're blowing this out of proportion to lend support to your wish for more loot per boss. Don't get me wrong, you're entitled to that opinion. I just don't buy that a proper raid group walks away and refuses to do TFB because of the number of drops. You still get the "special snowflake" effect. You still get gear, and at the same rate as everyone else. A statement like "I think the bosses in TFB should drop more gear " can be taken seriously, and people can argue for and against. A statement like "Noone will want to raid TFB because the bosses only drop 1 piece of gear" is hyperbole.

I just never understood why the content must be tuned so that everybody is able to do everything. It sounds like your guild members just don't have what it takes to raid on a certain level. It happens. I think that people are generally fine with there being content that they just can't hack, at least until it has been nerfed in preparation of a patch or expansion. If you played other MMO's, you're used to it. If you want to make SM harder to extent the longevity for bad/mediocre raiders, fine. You'll get lots of complaints a la SM EC however. Please don't tone down the hard content, it is what is keeping the game alive for some of us.

Personally I haven't noticed any difference from before. Why do you split the DPS? Why not just have a tank interrupt a droid each, and send the 4 DPS on their "own" droid? Surely 4 DPS can handle interrupts between them, and the debuff synergy means that stacking DPS on 1 target is more effective.

Where you go wrong is in assuming that you're supposed to progress from HM Denova to SM TfB. You're supposed to progress from HM Denova to HM TfB. SM is for people who mainly want to see the place and experience the story, hence the name Story Mode. I can understand your way of thinking, since the last tier was like that. You really DID progress from KP/EV NMM to SM Denova, which got a lot of people confused. I think the new system where story mode is actually story mode is better, now we just need an actual Nightmare Mode.

Assuming you're running an 8 man ops: Have 3 DPS focus on SC, 1 on FB. Get through all 4 dome phases, note that they will come sooner than you're used to. At that point SC will be at 20%, switch all DPS to FB. Nuke down FB, then mop up SC. You'll still need 2 DPS on either side to kill the adds during dome phases, you can just have a ranged DPS stand on FB, but DPS SC. We usually stand on the "INSIDE" of the tanks, not the outside. You can run straight through the turrets in case the adds spawn on the "outside" of the tanks.

Most of the problems you describe are usually fixed when people learn the encounter properly. All I can say is that once our group got a firm hold on the encounter, we never got blue balls under bombardment domes, or domes dying too quickly. The blue ball spawning on top of players standing on tanks happens when Double Destruction and Defensive Measures happen within seconds of each other. Most people avoid this by having 3 DPS focus on Stormcaller, until after the last dome where all DPS goes on Firebrand. We were quite frustrated by the blue ball deaths as well, but we have never seen it happen since we adopted the tactic described above.

There will always be a small minority of players that clear all the PvE content rapidly and "want more". Having said that, the operations content in SW:TOR has always been pretty limited, and the pace at which they have added new content has been extremely slow. KP and EV didn't really feel like proper operations, but something thrown together when faced with an imminent release date. EC is a very good operation by any standards, but by now the people interested in group PvE have been farming the place for months. Speaking as a MMO group content veteran, I still think SW:TOR has potential, if they can create regular content on par with EC. However, they need to get something out VERY soon. Things are always slow during summer, so the lack of new content hasn't hit that hard. Even so, I am loosing operation members at a slow but steady rate. In september people will be back from vacation, and they are faced with either EC which they have done ad nauseam, or one of the two other major MMO releases that are on the horizon.

By "raid content" I take it you mean EV and KP?

1: You're wrong. Heat Seeker missiles are working fine. 2: Why did you create TWO different threads about the same subject?

Let me guess. You play a DPS class? All MMO's that use the holy trinity model have a surplus of DPS players. Why? Because life as a bad DPS player is easier than life as a bad tank or healer. You just get more DPS players than you need to form groups, and various games have tried to handle the problem in different ways. It has nothing to do with the quality of the LFG tool. You gain nothing from cross server LFG, because you just combine pools that have the same uneven ratio of DPS to non-DPS players. Solution: Form your own groups, or start playing a tank or healer.

And yet I've made quite a large DPS gain lowering my accuracy from 108% to 104%, upping my crit and surge instead.

Or maybe EV and KP are not "real" instances, just something that had to be done fast and shipped when the executives yelled "GET THIS THING OUT OF THE DOOR SO WE CAN START MAKING MONEY". EC is very much a "real" instance, in my mind it is the first one and a good sign for things to come.

While I think the EV/KP system was basically ok, you'll be pleased to know that the Denova operation does indeed drop tokens that all classes can use.

What you are saying is that the difficulty setting doesn't hit your groups sweet spot. Totally valid. If developers wants their game to be like that, maybe it isn't the right game for you. It hits my sweet spot, so I am happy. Ultimately it is up to the developers to decide who they want their target audience to be. That doesn't mean that the game is "broken", it just isn't your cup of tea.

Low droprate armor/mod/enhancement drops would make it more interesting for me at least.

Apart from Soa (pre nerf) KP and EV were not challenging enough to interest raiders. If operations had continued in that way, I think most of us would have been looking at other games. Personally I love how EC is tuned, but I can see how inexperienced or badly geared players might struggle in Story mode. I think renaming normal mode to story was an odd choice, since the difficulty was upped considerably at the same time. For many people the name change seemed to indicate that you should expect a very casual experience, and that is not the case, especially compared to EV/KP. I think Denova is very well designed (and a bit buggy), and personally I/we love the difficulty tuning. I honestly think that most of the groups that struggle with story mode do so because they don't fully understand the mechanics. Once you do, the fights become very doable for most players.

I am talking about items on an individual basis. If I equip the Ops helmet, chest, or leg piece I loose (in very rough terms) about 10% Aim and Hp. Those are the bits I can easily obtain as orange augmented slots. The logical way to go if I get one of these drops is not to wear it, like I would want to, but to butcher it for the mods. Otherwise I have to pay the "appearance tax" statswise. Same goes for pretty much any other item slot where you can find an orange augmentable alternative. If you think that is a good idea, I really don't know what else to say.

This is an age-old argument. NOTHING is required for end-game content. I am sure that somewhere in the world a 8 man group of onearmed people is proving that two arms are NOT required for end-game, just an optional extra for min-maxers. My point is that actually equipping the gear that drops in end-game PvE will mean that I loose about 10% of my main stat, and a very welcome HP bonus. Alternatively I can just bung the whole lot in my old clowsuit, that I will never change out of. They have reduced the look of the raid gear to something purely visual, while at the same time making is ball-breakingly annoying to get. I would think that a 10% boost to your main stat is huge by anyones standard, rest assured most people will get it. In a nutshell, my beef is that I can choose to either act like an idiot and NOT get the Augment bonus, or wear the same old gear indefinately. To me both alternatives are less than ideal, but I gather you propose the first. Me, I don't think I should have to make that choice.

You are missing the point entirely. This is not slowing down anything, it just means that there is a strong incentive to never wear the raid gear look, and in fact to never change gear but just switch mods around. Show me someone in the raid gear look, and I'll show you someone who shelled out a millions creds just for looks. Making Augments one-shot enchants would be BETTER for crafters, not worse. Now, once I have the number of augments I need, I'll never buy another one. If it was an enchant, I'd have to slap one on every piece of new gear.

I like this game. One of the things I like is the way you keep looking good while levelling. So far I like the end-game PvE and PvP sets too. I don't like the crafting changes that came in 1.2, and I especially don't understand how augment slots are going to work in this game, and here is why: After 1.2 I can remove my mods and put them in crafted orange gear. I liked my Rakata set visually, but since I take PvE moderately seriously, statswise it was a big boost to just keep the 2 set bonus and strip the other rakata pieces and put the mods into "low level" orange gear with augment slots. Same deal with weapons, I stripped them and put the mods into lvl 19 blasters with augment slots. I liked my old blasters, I dont like the orange ones. But the stats are way better. Now, that MIGHT be ok, apart from the fact that there really isn't a lot of orange crafted pieces to choose from. I do think there are a lot of good-looking orange armor as you level up, but so far I have seen no evidence of these patterns being in the game after 1.2. There are 2 or 3 sets to choose from, that is it that. I haven't seen "new" patterns on the AH, I haven't seen "new" orange items on the AH, and I have gotten nothing from missions. I also like the look of the new campaign set. But let's think through what will happen once I start getting the pieces: The logical course of action will be to strip out the mods, and put them into the orange "clown suit" I am wearing now, and just forget the campain set shell entirely. I'll get the full stat bonus of the campaign set, plus the augment stats from the clown suit. What if I want to actually get the look of the new set? I'd have to strip the mods from the first of every piece I get, for my clown suit. Then I'll have to make sure an armormech gets the next drops, and pray he gets the shell pattern when he does the RE. Then I have to pray that he crits an augment slot when he crafts the piece. Then he can hand the piece back to me, and I can (at great expense) move the original mods plus the augment into the orange campaign shell. People who can craft armor themselves are a bit better off, and there is of course always the GTN where you might be able to buy shells. However, I just can't believe that this is how gearing up is supossed to work. I want to do Ops, I want to get shiny new items, and I want to be able to use them, and look at them. That is at the core of MMO PvE. When all is said and done, that is a big part of why we play. The way the game works currently has forced me to ditch gear I liked to look at, for gear I find ugly. It will also mean that there is zero incentive (quite the contrary in fact) to ever use anything except your clownsuit, and just shift mods into that. At this point I think the best option may be to remove augment slots entirely, and make augments "enchants", that you slap on any piece of gear you want. TL, DR: The 1.2 crafting change has given me LESS choice, not more. It will probably mean that I will never bother changing my look again, but just shift new mods into my old ugly orange gear, which I find depressing. Please change the way augments work, my suggestion is to remove augment slots entirely and make the augments themselves "enchants" that work independently of gear.

Let me get this straight. You think KP and EV were too hard to begin with?

@ Valindra: I just don't buy the premise that bodyguards are generally more resource restricted than operative or sorcerer healers. They work differently, they have less burst outside of Supercharged Gas, but can go on literally forever. Yes, if your entire raid insists on standing in the fire, thus forcing the healers to go flat out all the time, the BH will overheat before the sorcerer/operative runs out of resource. Do you want to balance the game around that scenario? In that case you would have to make all the healers work more or less the same. Yawn. The thing I enjoy most about BH healing is the different take on resource management. Sorcerers are pretty much like any other mana using healer in any other game. Bodyguard healers are absolutely viable in operations in my experience. You just can't ignore resource management, like you used to. Nor can operatives and sorcerers.