I understand your thought process but consider that raiding is ALL about min/maxing. This means that the concept of hybrid does not exist in a raid context (at least as raids are currently designed). If you are assigned a DPS role, your job is to kill the target faster than a) an enrage mechanic or b) a mechanic that wears down a healers resource pool. If there is someone that can do that job significantly better, you have no place in a progression raid. Consider that WoW went through this debate with Paladins for years and ultimately their devs there reached the conclusion that the concept of hybrid does not work in a min/max raid. There used to be fights that required a bit of extra healing or another off tank - I assume this was meant to allow hybrids to shine. Instead, raid groups that had difficulty merely brought an extra "pure class" for that single fight and subbed people in and out accordingly. In terms of "Utility" - the ONLY utility skill that is effective in EVERY fight is held by sents/maras. Every other utility skills use is sporadic and gimmicky at best. It took "other games" years, to figure out the "hybrid question". I hope this game and this community gets it right much earlier. Bottom line: As long as enrage timers are meaningful on progression raids - you cant bring a dps that does "other things" at the cost of not hitting certain dps marks.

I don't know if the current log output supports this, but is there any way to count shields as part of amount healed? (Or even just to see how much damage the shields are preventing)

Just a thought - and I have no evidence to support this other than the clear concept that they want slower and more sparse healing as opposed to spam healing (see medpack and healer changes). Is it possible the changes are not to our characters but rather to the attack speed and damage output of mobs?

This is in the class changes for 1.2 - I am curious how other people read this? If I think I am reading this right I am very worried. If anyone can post a screen of the new talent trees (and any changes to offset this) I would be much obliged.

Is the goal to have 1.2 live by early April or is the goal to have 1.2 on the PTS by early April (the presentation at the guild summit left uncertainty between these two options).

You didn't listen to the entire cast did you? IF Bobba Fetts father was force sensitive then all of the sudden it makes a lot of sense. (Father Fett was not force sensitive thus Bobba could not use the force). With the LEGACY system, if you put a force sensitive as a relative, then it makes PERFECT sense to have all ppl in that family tree be force sensitive.

There are more or less two ways to feel powerful in this game. You described one, I described the other. Is it good game design to cut 50% of perceived progression out of the game?

Agreed. Which again promotes a horrible design. It is great that they are setting it up so you don't have to wear the end tier raid gear if you don't want to. However, penalizing players who do is counter intuitive to a genre that survives on looking (and thus feeling) more powerful with each iterative update.

The CHOICE to change the look is welcomed. This is NOT a choice. Anyone staying in the sage look starting in 1.2 will be looked down upon. Anyone wearing the next tier of gear will be looked down upon. I am all for giving armor crafters some special benefit but this (at least on the information given) does not seem that great. One person in a guild will bite the bullet and go synthweaving and one person in the guild will bite the bullet and go armor mech. They will provide the gear to the rest of their guild and then the look of the next raid gear will disappear from that guild. I am all for creating design choices that promote choice, this is not choice.

I will ignore the jab. I have read the Q + A very carefully. The incentives you talk about are in future patch, likely not 1.2. My comment pertains to 1.2 and sans "incentives" the gear issue is in an incomplete state that poses a serious problem. I don't know how much money it costs to develop end game tier looks but this system is essentially throwing that money down the tube. People will WANT to get rid of the look as soon as possible as anyone SEEN with that look will be considered an inferior player.

I really don't understand Bioware's thinking at all. Basically you are saying that the min/max'er will HAVE To ABANDON their top tier pve look. CHOICE is one thing, what you are setting up is a person wearing the top tier pve look will be viewed as stupid while the person looking EXACTLY like a lvl 30 is smart. You are FORCING a path instead of creating CHOICE.

I feel like this post should get some kind of troll award.... Of course will will only answer questions they CAN answer.... if they don't have info to give you, the CAN'T give it to you...

The situation I am thinking of would be you have used rejuv + deliverance and then healing trance. Hit noble sac. Rejuv and healing trance are now on cool down for a few more seconds. Your target needs more healing - do you use a cheap heal costing 2.7(adjusting for alacrity) or a 1.5(adjusting for alacrity). I am starting to think this is when benevolence will be useful, as a 2.(lets say 2) heal is just too long in certain ops encounters. Of course sometimes you might have time to use that 2.2 second cast heal but I am betting (especially in hard/nightmare) you just dont have the time. After benev is used, rejuv and heal trance should be back up.

I wonder if this change will mean that benevolence has an actual use again. I agree that the new priority system will probably be Rejuv --> Deliverance --> healing trance (assuming the particular sage has enough crit chance). However, in situations where that rotation is not enough to top people off, and rejuv is still on cooldown, will people be more inclined to go for another 2.x deliverance or a 1.5 (costly) benevolence? Curious what other sages are thinking.

Any eta on combat log and /roll feature?

Wow anyone who believes this guy is a JD/MBA or an investment banker, I have some property on the moon I would like to sell you.... He rages against the fact that he was censored on the forums... there is likely a very good reason for that... He is representing himself as an EXPERT (very loaded term), as a lawyer he should understand that such a representation is EXTREMELY dangerous especially when pontificating on the outcome of a major product of a PUBLIC company. I won't explain or advise about the law in this area because I am smart enough to know that to do so in the manner he is doing is absurdly reckless and has consequences. If he has ever studied law, specifically tort and/or securities law... I seriously question his competence.

You sir, just won the hyperbole award. 1) The reason YOU are able to even contemplate the above paragraph is because where your guild is at; 2) Someone in greens NORMALLY is going to have a tough time doing Normal - it is absolutely doable but not easy - the fact that they are getting people into raids as early as possible is a great thing. Artificial gear checks for raiding, are exactly that, artificial; 3) You discount HM and NM. Why? These are part of progression. Anyone who completes all Normal mode content and says they are finished raid content will be laughed at. 4) A significant majority, no one has numbers so I can only give personal observation, is not close to completing NM or even HM. The fact that a certain small percentage of guilds have done all of NM is a good thing, They pushed themselves through progression and get to call themselves elite guilds. The converse of this is that is is also a good thing that the same NMs will be beaten in a few weeks/months by a second tier of guilds. This type of content design is optimal. (Also you sound quite ridiculous complaining about easy content when it is clear, and you yourself have admitted, that you are being carried through said content).

You clearly know nothing about investor calls.

Agreed. Overall, very impressive patch. Ilum needs to be fixed and the ramifications of the exploit dealt with. However, aside from that A+ in my book.

I can agree that a choice may be warranted. However, EVERYONE I have spoken to in game today, absolutely LOVES the new cooldown timers.

Moreover, a Goldman analyst would have more sense than to represent himself as such without the authorization of his company. By attaching the Goldman name to this post, it is possible, however unlikely, that this rant would be picked up as the "official" Goldman position on the profitability of the game. I would think that the higher ups at his company - assuming he actually works there - would be highly displeased at his using their name and he/she better hope Bioware is not amenable to shareing IP Address information. I won't even speculate what regulatory issues this post could get into just on the usage of clearly wild and unresearched numbers. I am either calling BS on this post or wonder how much longer this guy will actually be a "Goldman Analyst".

Crit is very helpful (as mentioned above). Alacrity is also a must. I would say these are our two secondary stats with some deference to +power or +force power.

bump This will become a serious problem as time goes on.

The unchecked box is for your actual game registration. The code you will get when the game ships. The code you entered previously was for early game access.

Name them and have them copy/paste their pre-order date from their accounts. Conspiracy theories are fun!