Well that's an extremely frustrating answer. "Play a spec you have no interest at all in playing because what you want to play was designed too poorly for this particular patch". This is why I stopped playing MMOs. It's not about having fun, never about having fun. It's about chasing the meta. Playing "optimal-only" regardless of your actual enjoyment of it. That's not a criticism of you, but the brainwashed mindset your post represents and one I shared for years. Paying money to have a developer move the goalposts on you. Well thanks for the feedback guys, but I'm jumping off the train at this stop. I promised myself I would never let a developer choose my class for me again and I'm certainly not going to make an exception for Bioware. If they want my money, they can stop with the bait-and-switch. Enticing me to play with fun, engaging classes and then forcing me to play something that isn't if I want to continue to be successful.

Hey guys, I'm playing some SWTOR hoping to find a new MMO to switch to. I'm currently playing Rage Juggernaut and have leveled to level 45 so far. I'm following the DPS rotation guide mirror for Focus Guardian on Dulfy since I always try to play at the top of the capabilities of my class and do my research. I just attempted the Flashpoint False Emperor and ran into a design oversight so infuriating I almost unsubbed instantly. The boss HK-47 had a passive aura that would knockback, stun and punish every time I used any form of charge. Including Obliterate which is a non-negotiable, high priority in my DPS rotation. In other words I was being penalized not for any gameplay shortcoming I actually possess... but because I had the audacity to fight this particular boss as a Rage spec. How common are these horrific design oversights? Is this something I can expect from multiple boss encounters? Main rotational abilities being excluded because of arbitrary boss mechanics? Or is this some unbalanced old FP they never fixed and I should put it behind me and just move forward?

Excellent, this was exactly what I was looking for. Thank you.

Hey guys, I'm a former hardcore raider in WoW (spreadsheets, simcraft, hours of theorycrafting per week, the works). My job just eased up and I'm looking to get into SWTOR and was interested in the class balance or potential lack thereof. One of the things you pick up on when parsing is the theoretical DPS vs. the actual DPS. In WoW it was the divide in the community between Raidbots (real, aggregated parses) and Simulationcraft (theoretical modeling). This game has a much, much smaller community though and I wanted to get some opinions on class balance in PvE content from people who are deep into this stuff. So just looking around the forums I see multiple threads complaining about poor class balance. Several specs and some advanced classes are deemed "sub-optimal" in all specs (Operative/Scoundrel for example). However according to the DPS ranking calculation found here, theoretical class balance excluding the top and bottom outliers are within 5%. That's outstanding class parity. Literally industry leading, if true. How much of this translates in game? I'm unfamiliar with aggregated parsing trackers for this game, but if the counter-argument to this class balance is to link such an aggregated parsing website (which I would agree is a more accurate measure of class balance), how much of that is due to selection bias? I.e. players who play at a higher skill ceiling seeking a competitive advantage and navigating to a theoretically better class making the class imbalance seem more severe than it really is. I look forward to your responses.

Thanks for the link. Really let's me see where the stat allocations are going. So if the mitigation stats are taking a backseat to endurance healers must be able to efficiently and quickly cap your health irrespective of boss damage output. That answers a friend of mine's question as well.

Hey all. To start with, I'd prefer responses from people with legitimate endgame PvE tanking experience. My question goes to the importance of endurance. I've read several tanking guides and endurance is looked upon as a primary stat and not weighed against the "secondary" stats in terms of value and import. However, with the new augment kits its going to become widespread that you'll have to choose between endurance or a secondary tanking stat. So here's my question: How important is endurance? My Vanguard is going to be hitting level cap in the next few days and I have choices between Rakata/Columi pieces with high endurance pools but horrible defensive stats or 47-49 purples with lower endurance pools but superb defensive stats. Then there's how to choose your augments. So since endurance doesn't actually increase your survivability, only the length of time you have before you die without a healer, how much health do you need to survive PvE content. This also goes to the value of "Soldier's Endurance" from the Assault tree (giving only 69 END for 3 talent points at 2300 endurance) which in my experience in other MMOs should have an extremely low value of stats and would be better spent on utility like Defensive Measures and Neural Overload. I'm interested in everyone's thoughts and comments.

Flameburst is used to apply debuffs and buff yourself mainly, but it should never hit weaker than your Rapid Shots or Juggernaut's Assault. Sundering Assault maybe, but that has a cooldown. For one, the damage and scaling on it is better, for two its a tech attack so it bypasses the hit table completely, for three its elemental damage so it bypasses the physical damage table as well. Your priority rotation should be Rocket Punch -> Rail Shot -> Explosive Dart -> Flame Burst. You then use Immolate to keep your heat low and use Flamethrower when you are certain it won't take your below your heat threshold preferably with Thermal Sensor Override. Managing heat can be a problem but my usual pattern is Ability -> Rapid Shots repeat and if I'm at a heat level where one more tick would cap my heat I delay the Rapid Shots 1 GCD and use the next ability in the priority. You can get some real spike DPS using Immolate, Thermal Sensor Override and the Heat Venting from shielding. But you should never do less damage than an Immortal Juggernaut. They had the lowest DPS in the game by 100 DPS in 1.2, and their damage was nerfed by a flat 6% plus Backhand and Crushing Blow were nerfed badly as well. Powertechs saw some minor nerfs to their damage but nothing that should have brought them down below Juggernaut.

So to be clear, the general way you get these enhancements or mods is by buying whole pieces of equipment outside of your necessary gear just to strip out the enhancements/mods? Or if you're a cybertech/artificer you still have to do this but there's a small chance reverse engineering will teach you the pattern?

There are 2 brackets: 1-49 and 50. In the 1-49 bracket all players are bolstered to level 50 which means their stats and gear is scaled according to their level. The big advantage to being higher level is having more talents/skills, but your stats are the same.

A friend of mine and myself are coming back for the 1.3 patch with the new dungeon finder. There are a lot of guides out there on what stats to prioritize and what those breakpoints are for PvE/PvP but the one thing I cannot find anywhere is an explanation of HOW you get these pieces. For example, the Rakata tanking gear for Powertech has a lot of accuracy which is useless. The guides say to switch to Shield/Absorb/Defense mods and enhancements, but there are very few on the auction house and the ones on Rakata level are prohibitively expensive. How does a Raid level tank maintain the appropriate Mods/Enhancements? Do they really have to spend raid tokens on pieces of gear outside their tier to strip out the mods and enhancements? Is there some raid level vendor I'm missing? TORHead isn't giving me any information, nor are any of the tanking guide I've read. Can someone please explain how raiders keep their gear with the appropriate stats?

I skimmed your post and quickly noticed the numerous straw mans and red herrings in your post. Like I said, this isn't a discussion for you, its about winning an argument. Move along people nothing to see here.

I've addressed both of these questions already. If you don't wish to read my posts that's not my problem, but I'll resummarize here: Your first question is answered simply by they give them to whoever the dungeon finder needs most currently, exactly like the WoW system. That will never, ever be DPS which is why people assume DPS aren't in the equation. Offering incentives to tanks and healers in WoW vastly reduced queue times for DPS and I already provided an example of a realistic situation in which the benefit to the DPS for incentivizing tanks/healers outweighed the actual benefit to the tanks/healers. Read my post. To your second question I already answered: tanks and healers have more responsibility in a group. They're just as complicated rotationally, but have more complexity because they require better reaction times than DPS does. More responsibility and complexity means these classes are less attractive than classes with no/little responsibility and less complexity. Read my post. I do, however, find it very telling you decided to push the hardest and last released dungeon in the final tier of content 2 years into WotLK to disprove my assertion that I tanked heroics on my Ret Paladin. Didn't feel confident enough calling BS on Gundrak or Halls of Lightning? Of course you didn't, you know those dungeons were an absolute joke and could easily be tanked by a well geared DPS with a 2 hander. That's why you misleadingly and dishonestly pushed the one dungeon that was there for a small fraction of the total expansion because this conversation isn't actually about helping the game for you. Its about winning an argument.

Yes its fair to the DPS. Let's assume tanks and healers get equal queue times and can make 10 comms an hour. A DPS with a longer queue time only manages 3 comms an hour (reasonable considering 30-40 minute wait times). Incentivizing tanks and healers increases their comms an hour to 11, maybe 12 while the DPS go up to about 6 or 7 due to substantially shorter queues. The benefit is clearly in favor of the DPS just because they get in to see more content both per capita and net. If you're worried about everyone switching from DPS to tank/healer your fears are utterly unfounded as this has never happened in any MMO that implemented incentives for rolling tank/healer. You say you grinded in WoW for 4 years. The dungeon finder wasn't even up in Burning Crusade (about 4 years ago) nor did DPS have the means to AoE down groups efficiently until the revisions before the release of WotLK . It wasn't until Dec. 2009 that the dungeon finder was added a YEAR into WotLK. So you could not have had the issues you claim to have had before Dec. 2009. So my question to you as a tank is: seriously? You had trouble tanking WotLK heroics? I tanked them as a DPS ret paladin using a 2 hander, usually without a healer. I mean early Cataclysm I can see some trouble with dumb people, but that got worked out within 3 months especially with the initial blanket nerfs to AoE that weren't fixed until 6 months into Cata. I seriously question if these issues you claim to have had are real or if you just never got enough gear to handle the content.

Guy had a bad group with a mouthy little infant. Welcome to the internet. If some a pissy little nobody you've never met before and likely won't see again gets your dander up you aren't ready to tank seriously when you have 19 other people you know and work with depending on your performance. Juggernaut/Guardian DPS classes who continually post 2000 DPS parses still have to deal with people giving them crap for having the audacity to show up in Vengeance/Vigilance specs to DPS in a dungeon group. People who play MMO's are uninformed, ignorant, arrogant and mouthy. Its a part of playing a video game on the internet. Its why progression guilds have applications and interviews, they don't just invite anybody. When I get someone like this I use my votekick option, its unlikely the other 2 members of your group appreciate the pissant's incessant negativity and refusal to perform anymore than you do. Aside from the fact that as a tank you hold all the power. What's easier to replace? A healer with a bad attitude or a tank of any type? Leverage your position, you call the shots unless they want to sit in queue for another 10 minutes.

The incentives system in WoW worked on bringing DPS queue times down from 45 minutes to 22. The lack of tanks and healers isn't that tanks and healers aren't engaging, because they are. A tank or healer's rotation is usually just as complicated as a DPS rotation with the added bonus of having to react to a changing environment. Moving out of the fire while maintaining your rotation as a DPS might seem difficult, but try repositioning a boss without killing your other raid mates while still needing to stay out of the fire, or prepping a heal to go off and weighing incoming damage against their odds of survival if you have to move while casting. Healers and tanks are just as engaging as DPS but their added complexity and importance give them more responsibility. Having more responsibility is intimidating for players, especially new players. I've tanked in FFXI, WoW, Rift, WAR, and other MMO's I'm just not thinking about right now. I've MT'd just about any raid on hardmodes across all these games and when I'm hitting level cap on a new tanking class I'm not familiar with, I'm still abrasive walking into my first 10 tanking dungeons because I've lost the control that comes with experience and familiarity. This doesn't happen with DPS because I know that if I mess up I'll likely deal bad damage or worst case scenario get myself killed. If I mess up on a tank, I just killed everyone. In a PvE raid setting healers can rely on other healers to support them so they have more wiggle room, but being the MT is the most stressful job in the raid because no one can pick up your slack. If you mess up it costs everyone. Healing is also easier in a PvE dungeon because you aren't expected to lead. The tank is the de facto leader in just about any PvE dungeon which is also intimidating. That's why DPS are super common, healers are uncommon and tanks are rare. Its a measure of the responsibility hoisted on these archetypes their class mechanics notwithstanding. If you demand a game where no class has more responsibility than any other class I don't think I want to play that game because its likely so arbitrarily easy or punishingly difficult that it couldn't succeed anyway.

Last patch Operatives/Scoundrels had their burst nerfed, Mercs/Commandos had their Tracer/Grav round nerfed, Sorcerers/Sages had their Presence of Mind/Wrath mechanic nerfed basically removing their on-demand DPS. But you're right! Why do they ALWAYS nerf tanks!? The whiners will quit, the players will play. This change is minor. Very minor. I'm just sitting here drinking the tears, this is almost as stupid as all the Mercs screaming they took away 35% ArP because they can't be bothered to read the patch notes properly.

I think a better hybrid build would look like this. You don't need 3/3 Burst Volley. Because of the internal cooldown in terms of DPS per point, each point is worth significantly less DPS than the previous point and the third point is almost worthless. 2/3 is really all you should put into it. 2/2 Slick Shooter comes at the cost of 1% crit to all abilities. You'll want to put 1/2 Slick Shooter to get up the tree, but 1% extra crit for Trick Shot, Speed Shot and Charged Burst isn't worth -1% crit for all of the other abilities you rely on for damage. So those 2 points (1 from Slick Shoot and 1 from Burst Volley) are better invested in No Holds Barred.

I don't think we'll be able to reverse engineer it into anything like a rotation. For one, we're a cooldown oriented class so if the fight ends up with 20 backstabs vs. 23 backstabs we won't know where that person is ranking backstab in their rotation as a variance of just a couple of abilities is fairly normal in a parse. Based on some data I ran for myself using some basic roundabout numbers I've come up not with a rotation (because cooldowns regularly clash) but a priority system as follows: 1. Hidden Strike + Acid blade (As you can only do this once per fight and does not trigger other CDs) 2. Corrosive Dart 3. Stim Boost (highest DPS contribution besides Corrosive Dart) 4. Backstab + Acid Blade if your armor debuff is about to wear off. 5. Lacerate if you have 2 TA's. 6. Shiv. This is because while it has a low DPCT, it has a very high DPS compared with other abilities. The cooldown needs to keep rolling. 7. Backstab + Acid Blade if your armor debuff is fine. This ability has a high DPCT, but a very low DPS. 8. Lacerate if you have less than 2 TA's. This is because Lacerate is dependent on TA's and as long as you are not overcapping TA's there is no DPS loss as you've only "stored" these Lacerates for later, not lost them. 9. Rifle Shot if you are below 60 energy. 10. Overload shot (filler)

I'd love for something like this to happen, but it won't. For one, the Operative forum doesn't get enough coverage. Less than 1500 views per thread in a game of 1.7 million players. For two there are too many trolls to post good data, any thread is doomed to get bogged down with personal anecdotes, complaining and general misinformation. Why are the DPS parses so disparate? Because there's no ElitistJerks and players have no mathematical basis from which to derive their rotations. Operative rotation isn't cut and dry, its one of the more complicated calculations. For example, in PvE Corrosive Dart (especially now that Corrosive Microbes has been fixed) has the highest DPCT by far and yet I rarely see it posted as the top priority of an Operative's rotation. Until we get a uniform rotation with a high confidence level that people are actually using this rotation, we'll be getting disparate data. Sometime in the next month the community will pick a WoW-meter website and we'll start seeing large scale parses under boss conditions. Right now its kind of a joke since its all dummy parses with no context or non-descript raid parses.

Paragon is not like other hardcore raiding guilds. They are a world-class professional raiding community. By your definition only .01% of raiding guilds (not all guilds, just RAIDING guild) qualify as hardcore raiding guilds. Developers NEVER balance classes in PvE based around what this immeasurably small minority of players does because it is utterly non-representational of how regular hardcore raiding guilds function. Most TOP guilds are sponsored. That's because they represent the top 20 guilds out of 12 million players. They are hardcore professionally, not to be confused with regular hardcore guilds. Also: "Certain classes are always better in special situations than others but after the recent nerfs all classes are good enough. Class stacking is obviously always helpful but that doesn't mean it's required and it has most effect during progress raids anyway when you have to get the absolutely best performance out of the raid." Did you not read the article you cited or were you just trusting no one would read it? Like I said, Paragon might class stack to get a world first kill, but its not their predominant method of clearing content. I can ignore everything else you've said because you're a poser who doesn't have a clue how competitive raiding works.

There's no elaborate studies done on player retention that are made public. The trend in a game like WoW, however has been towards easier content with the starkest difference between difficulty appear between their hardest and easiest content: Sunwell -> Naxx. From that they built up difficulty until they found a balance and made the most successful expansion in WoW's history. Cataclysm, by comparison started with harder content even in the normal modes. The result was a loss of 1.8 million subs over a year, 15% of their subscriber base. Paragon isn't a normal hardcore raiding guild, they're a sponsored world competitive guild. If you think you're a member of a guild on par with Paragon, you're misinformed as guilds like that have public images to maintain and would kick you for posting on the forums like you do. Not only that, Paragon doesn't endorse class stacking, they use it as a mechanism of getting a kill a few days earlier than their competitors, not their predominant form of clearing content. I can read fine. A raiding guild that kicks you from raids. They are free to be the guild's bootlick. Your opinion on how hardcore guilds actually function is laughable. Actually this is how guilds fall apart. The "hardcore" guild I quoted, doesn't even have SWTOR pics posted on their front page. Its Deathwing. That's all right, SWTORs only been out since December. They were probably busy recruiting to replace all the players they alienated while cancelling raids for non-attendance. Again, your opinion on how hardcore guilds actually function is laughable.

This is simple, we used to see it in server 22nd 2 out of 12 bosses hardmode "hardcore" raiding guilds in WoW. They bench players at the skill ceiling, those players find guilds that aren't made up of the mentally handicapped and those guilds progress. The "hardcore we'll bench our best players for being the wrong class" guilds, then talk about how hardcore they are while being utterly humiliated by guilds that are smart enough to bring the player, then come to the forums to talk about how every hardcore guild, the real ones that actually get crap done, must do the same thing they do that's costing them their top skilled players.

I raided server first hardcore in WoW on three servers. We never class stacked except in Sunwell and classic. In WotLK and Cata it was utterly unnecessary unless you were going for world firsts for only end-of-content bosses (No lights Yogg 25-man). You didn't raid hardcore. How do I know? Because when content was on farm you raided 2 days a week (sometimes 1) and had more time on your hands than god. Ignored the rest of your post after reading this because you are a liar.

I like players who do things like this. When it catches on developers nerf content into the ground to stop guilds from doing things like this as nerfing content is easier than class balance. Guilds that kick entire classes is far more harmful to subscription retention than class balance issues, so issues like this get addressed faster than class balance. Keep it up, you're making content easier for future patches.

Lol 60 second parses. Your post refuted itself.