How does an operation net me any bonus to crafting, any more than PvP does? You seem to have a flawed understanding of the situation that honest progression raiders face, every day. How does me killing NiM Brontes give me anything more crafting bonus than scoring with the huttball? Crafting is mainly for normal PvE players, but we honest progression raiders are not that. We do operations, and lose a lot of money doing it. We are doing operations, not running around farming materials. We are in instances, the same way a pvp'er is. If you can not see this, then I am sorry but your manifested ignorance is clouding your vision. EDIT: As an addition, I would like to, or no, I demand that the devs acknowledge our situation! So that we may know that we are not alone and forgotten in our despair. To know that, even if we are a low priority, with our concerns laying in the bottom of a drawer under last years tax declaration papers, one day we will get our justice.

Thank you, dear sir. I beg your pardon? These are all very reasonable demands! If they happen to give us honest, hard working raiders a bad name, is it not our surroundings that are at fault? One can do little against manifested ignorance, but to try not to give it unnecessary attention. If these so called "players" can not cope with the reality we are faced with every day we log into our game, why should we care? And on the same subject, should said manifested ignorance be flaunted, should we honest progression raiders not do our part in forcing it off the common conciousness? We are progression raiders, and we strive for an open and honest community. In this case, that at the very least should mean a negative credit flow for losses in pvp!

Yes, we really do, and it's time for me to speak up! For how long are we to suffer under the yoke of ever mounting repair costs? For how long are we to let the cost of adrenals, stims and medpacks blow large holes into our budgets or pay the extortionistic fee's of grenade crafters just to beat enrage timers? All we get are ultimate coms, which are of no use whatsoever except for gearing companions, which we can't use in an ops anyway! No, it's time for us progressive raiders to make a stand. No longer will we tolerate 300k in repairs per night! PvP'ers dont have to pay repairs when they die, so why should we? Pvp'ers can buy their stims and adrenals for their commendations, so why can't we? PvP'ers get money every time they play, no matter if they win or lose, so why can't we? No, my brothers. Enough is enough. It's time for justice! If we lose a lot of credits doing what we love in this game, then so should everyone else! I say we remove credits from pvp and introduce repair costs. Only then will it be fair and everyone will be forced to run dalies! Additionally, bolster should be introduced around every and all daily areas since those without pvp-gear always get ganked whilst doing them. So, what say you, my brethren? Are you with me?

I figured I'd give my points on this, too, since everyone else seem to be. A time and effort exclusive mount. An effort exclusive mount. One of them is a variation, the other is unique. If I were to personally set which mount would be a (unique) variation I would pick the time sensitive one. Yes, you will need some effort to obtain the wings even after an expansion, but you needed effort to get the season 1 rewards, too. As in, you actually needed to play the game! Additionally, for better or for worse, this game draws an audience not because of its PvP, even though a lot of people enjoy doing it. This game, at its core, was not designed to be a PvP game. So lets turn to why having dungeon exclusive vanity items is a good thing: Because it's the ONLY thing making sure people return and see old content once newer content is released. If you don't have one thing present in a dungeon that people would like to own no matter their level, then as soon as that dungeon is no longer having the best equipment, it would be abandoned and newer players would never experience the story and the work put down in it. In short, they'd be missing a large portion of the game. I own neither the EC nor the SnV NiM mount, but I want to, and as gear progresses I will still want them. This will mean that for me, in 2 years time if I have some time to kill with my guild, I/we will consider going there. Making this into a PvE vs PvP discussion is borderline retarded and smells of 13-year old crybaby. Stop trying to manufacture a divide that isn't there.

Don't even have to run full expertise on Oricon, ran with pve MH and OH and still managed one 17.1k and one 17.3 k. I did (probably) have (reusable) adrenal on for those, though.

You mention you were extremely lucky, so if you don't mind me asking; what would you say your average parses look like? I find judging spec parses by statistical anomalies to be rather strange. Also, what would be a comparatively normal _low_ score whilst still doing nothing wrong. As in, what's a rough number when the RNG gods dislike you?

Swtor has a very diverse skill spread and is actually catering both to hardcore and casual players. Complaining that the game is too easy when you're only doing casual content is simply laughable. The skill level required to be successful in nightmare content is actually quite high for a mass marketed mmo that is also comparatively easy to access - all you need are 8 awake and dedicated players. Taking into account the skill of the general player, the amount of players that are even capable of doing NiM content is sadly very small. As a former guild leader that tried to do some progression with kind of talented but still casual people I can say that sadly not very many people are even cut out for HM raiding unless they vastly overgear the content. As a dps, you have know your class and rotations and be able to keep them up without little(HM) / any (NiM) loss of APM (attacks per minute) even when you have to keep your eyes out for whatever else you should also be doing (since starting in HM, no class can no longer just stand still and do whatever it is they're doing). You need to know exactly what you should be shooting at in all stages of the fight and what you shouldn't and always be able to change and adapt when things dont go as planned. As a tank, you firstly have to be able to hold aggro from dps who actually can dps (hint: in your average SnV/TfB weekly 16 man pug, you generally get roughly 1 dps per run that actually can do dps close to what his spec/class is able to do, which gets one of the two guards and generally holds back to not get repair costs). Then you have to keep aggro from more things, move sht around whilst keeping aggro from ranged dps that wont stop that 3k dps and swap mobs around whilst at the same time keeping an eye out for the whole fight since any one mob that hits anyone but a tank will generally mean that person is toast, which means you all die. But I would say finding truly competent healers are the biggest hurdle. Anyone and their grandmother can heal any SM ops, but when everyone starts diying at the same time and you also have to pay attention to the boss mechanics whilst targets you just as often or more than it does the dps and thinking ahead in a way other roles dont since you always need to have energy/cd's for those parts of the fights where your normal maximum output without blowing cd's wont make the group survive even if you play to perfection. The latest guild I was in before I once again started doing progression raiding never managed to kill Brontes in HM since the game mechanic of those balls was troubling and that we simply didn't have enough healers that could heal through the 6 finger phase without being completely out of everything near the end of it. And these people weren't bad gamers, those of them that pvp'd did quite well in ranked, they just weren't _great_ gamers. And I have written a bloody essay to what is hopefully a troll post, and I haven't even touched on the most difficult subject in all mmo's, which is teamwork. When doing endgame content you need to perform to the maximum of your ability for long stretches of time since you will wipe and cry of the amount of repair costs and adrenals you have to go through when learning new content. It doesn't matter if you're the perfect healer that does 4k effective healing every fight if you do it by constantly forcing your co-healer(s) into overheals, or sacrificing your own energy when you dont want to to make sure your co-healer doesn't have to run out. You say this game is easy. Start doing (and completing!) the actually challenging stuff in this game and then get back to me. Oh, and if you say you dislike raiding because you don't want a set schedule or because you're allergic to your own voice, go compete in season 2 of ranked. Since it's so easy I expect you in the leaderboards. This is a MMO. The first letter stands for 'Massive'. If you want challenging single player content I suggest you find yourself another game.

The rail shot change is probably a nerf of up to around 100 dps in a high end parse. My reasoning for this is the top parses where commandos have consistently been lagging behind when in theory both classes should do the same damage (and after this patch most likely will). Playing a commando myself I have no issue with this nerf, but if I was a merc I might feel differently about it.

Keep your parser running when you're doing those SM ops and you'll get a decent ballpark figure on how you're doing. Keep in mind that when doing ops organised there will be timed inspirations, adds will be together etc, whilst at the same time being a bit more challenging. If you start doing HM's, your dps will probably at first be a little bit lower than your SM values, to then increase slightly once you learn the fights. When analysing your parses, what you can do is to also make sure your APM doesn't drop too much. First check your APM on the dummy and make sure it's not much lower than the highest parses (a low APM often means you're not hitting the skills as fast as you should and has a huge impact on dps) of your class and spec. (And make sure your skill rotation is what is should be.) So now that you know you're doing what you should be doing, try to do it as much as possible whenever there's something up that you should be hitting. Check the value, the closer it is to your dummy APM the better it is. Did you have a higher APM this time compared to the last time you did this boss? Why? Why not? If you do all that (and keep improving slightly), then there should be no reason you shouldn't be ready for HM's. Assuming your gear is up to par, of course.

Hello. As the topic states, I'm wondering at which gear level you can start putting points into alacrity as a pyro. My gut tells me not in a year or two since it would have to weight up the loss of a 6.1 sec repeating HiB, but I've got nothing but my gut going about it. As it is now my guild has started progressing into DF NiM (Brontes not dead yet though) and with the new tier (186) I'm starting to question just how big an upgrade it will be for me since a pre 2.7 surge of 470 is already well into diminishing return territory. When looking at odawggs magnificent guide, I saw that he had included a link to a BiS 186 arsenal set, but not included any for pyro. If there's already been stuff written about this I'd gladly read up on any eventual links, but google have yet to return anything of value for me. :< TL;DR: When going from full 180 (78) to full 186 (and future gear sets), what to aim for? What is the outlook of future pyro itemization?

Running with 4 dps, cleared it. 2 sents, 1 gunslinger and 1 commando. Regarding wave 5, ranged take the sides (but also taking first interrupt on back corruptors from range before they start that). Saving all CD's/adrenals for that phase. If ranged clear their sides (also a little bit depending on what 2nd tank does then), they keep one up at low hp to kill the second the next phase starts. Personally, playing assault commando, I can get all 3 down in time unless I'm unlucky with crits, where I will basically hit it exactly at the next phase transition (at which point I dot up boss and drag my dismantler to a preassigned position for 2nd tank to take both). If I on the other hand get lucky with crits I'll be done ahead of time, during which I will leave a last add up for those few seconds and hit boss until next phase starts (which, wont be that long either way). During out kill, melee had to keep hitting boss for a few more seconds into the next phase for him to go away. So stretching that phase out to its maximum time is very important.

Regarding DF/DP: I'd say you're wrong there, at least on NiM, you want a balanced group (at least if you're running with a static group). And generally, for healing intensive fights: If mechanics dont dictate otherwise, ranged dps will almost be in melee range anyway in order to benefit from group heals. Or in other words, everyone will be standing in the salvation bubble.

Not only in NiM, was running a DF 16 SM for commendations on my shadow, when I noticed the hands on 6 finger phase didnt give me any stacks. Regarding NiM Draxxus, I'm ranged dps there, so I cannot really say anything about that part (only that our shadow tank hasn't said anything about it when we killed him (yesterday), but that phase is so hectic so it probably could have gone un-noticed).

A fairly late reply, but firstly, as you already stated - check your APM. It might very well be the problem. The only other thing I can think of (which will be shown in your APM) is when you use TO and reserve PC: If you use them after EN, HiB or DR you can get both clicks in during the global cd, which will at least increase your burst dps a bit.

Yup, it was. Works fine now. A perfect compliment to the lazy crafter.

Trying to hit "calculate cost" but nothing happens. Do you use any secondary site of some sort that adblock or noscript would dislike? (Accepted main site.)

I would say your attacks per minute (APM) is a bit too low. If you take a look at the highest parsing commandos (or mercs), they're way above the ~30 you're doing. Check your queue delay, if you have issues hitting the skills in time. With enough queue time you should be able to fully mitigate the latency effects with one exception: You can't queue skills after Full auto, and you really don't want to be clipping it. But except for when you're in the middle of a full auto cast, you should be spamming whichever next skill you're going to be using after that. With the currently active patch, you also should not be waiting and seeing if you proc full auto, but rather keep casting the next GR (or HS if you're running low on ammo) since if you're not super good with the reactions, you'll lose dps waiting for the proc compared to just waiting another global CD before using it. However, in the next patch you'll know exactly when the proc will come (at least if you practice on a dummy for 5 min) and then you can gain a little extra dps there, too. Generally, if you're a clicker, you're going to have trouble keeping up and making sure there's no delay between skills. If you're not a clicker, make sure you've got your active skills keybound (easier if you've got a bunch of extra buttons on your mouse, but since commandos doesn't have that many skills that's in no way a must) on buttons you can quickly reach. That excludes numbers above 5, for example. 1-5, shift+1-5, shift+q,e and that button to the left of 1 are the ones I use the most.

Didn't see a gunnery/arsenal commando on there. Corruptor Zero (8 man HM) Waymér - Commando - Gunnery - SuperNova - 2671 dps http://www.torparse.com/a/522947/17/0/Damage+Dealt

Just dont let gunship have the goddamn bypass copilot ability, and everything will be fine.

During normal (domination) game play, killing a fleeing scout can be tricky, esp if they have evasion/barrel roll up - you simply won't catch up with them. This can seem unfair, I mean, you can't kill them! However, thinking like this forgets a very crucial detail: Games are not won by who kills who. If a scout has been forced to speed away from a capture point, you have won that point. Say a scout is defending, then he needs to stay put, which is not that fun if you're 1v1 with a comparatively skilled strike fighter. Also, don't forget range - a scout has a maximum range on their available weapons of 5000 meters, meaning a strike fighter can start shooting before the scout can do anything. I usually play a scout, and the only thing I have issues with is when I meet a skilled strike fighter, simply because if he's parked somewhere, I can't do much outside of harrasing him and trying to lure him away. If he stays put, I'll just have to wait for backup. If I meet a gunship defending, it's he who's going to be on the run. When talking about strike fighters, you can either be a gunship and just shoot them down from afar, or you as a scout can use the terrain to your advantage. One such example is the B point on the Makeb-looking map, where you as a scout can just boost around hiding behind all the stuff (which breaks missile lock on even if you just fly by one) and use your agility to wear the fighter down.

But if it is a saving throw, then what is the use of some weapons having > 100 accuracy? The only reason for above 100 accuracy in anything would be to negate any defensive effects, such as defence of mobs in PvE, or now evasion in GS. Or?

Although I for obvious reasons can't be certain exactly how evasion works, I'm quite certain that it works, as by, lots of my dead on shots can miss a target at times (for some seconds), until they all start hitting. Pesky scouts with distortion. The way I think and hope that it works, is that after the program has seen that the shot fired will collide with the target ship, then they do an accuracy vs evasion check for the chance to hit, then if it hits, it goes further to the damage calculation, what to hit and whatnot. My idea behind this assumption is that there's no need to run the "calculate_damage()" function (which hogs up resources) for every shot if it didn't hit. But if it's a straight check, ergo 95 % accuracy vs 30 % evasion would mean a 65 % for a well aimed shot to actually do damage, is anyones guess. Also, as a reply to the thread author: Isn't your example the same thing? Assuming the enemy has 100 % accuracy at whatever range they were firing from, you in the end would on average take 20 % less shots, or did I miss something?

YES. This patch is the best thing to happen to swtor since well.. ever? Don't change it, even if people whine and cry. The skill level for a full 3D, reactive based game will obviously be higher than say, normal mmo PvE (or unranked PvP). And about the target retricule and it's erratic behaviour: It's a simple function: If the ship continues at that direction at that speed, shooting where the target points will hit it. If the target is using speed boosters, that's going to be quite the distance.

EDIT: I can't read and mixed up the fights. Ignore this post.

The last stage(s) with the guardians does indeed seem a bit unforgiving on 8 man SM. We did clear it with a pug, but the skill (and gear) level was higher than what you'd generally expect from a pug. I like it that the dps actually needs to know what and when to shoot stuff and would be sad if that changed, but those guardians, especially when the boss is up too, dishes out some serious hurt.