I don't think I get the angst from the solo crowd that's on the forums. In 7.0 will you be able to: 1) Run daily areas - yes 2) Run solo flash points - yes 3) Craft - yes 4) Create a new character and re-run one of the 8 class stories (or run one for the first time) -yes 5) Create a new character and run Kotfe or Kotet - yes What can't a solo player do in 7.0 that they can do right now? Is it conquest? I don't really understand that either. Does solo play REALLY revolve around the gear treadmill? I am putting this here since I really don't get it, and I'm sure there's someone who can tell me here. This sounds like a raider saying they can't do the story mode version of Terror From Beyond because they can't get 306 BiS gear...which is not true at all. Is this the thing we are dealing with here? Not having unfettered access to all tiers of gear does not kill or limit the solo experience. No, it does not hurt anyone if a solo player has access to BiS gear, but that's not the question in this thread or posed by many. The solo experience simply does not change it just gets a little bit more content added and 5 more levels same as any expansion.

Oof man. You hold some heavy prejudices towards nim raiders, or who you think are nim raiders. As a former nim raider, assigning these arguments to the nim community is actually really backwards. NiM raiders want to shorten the gear treadmill as much as possible so they can get back to progression (if there's any left). They don't want to go backwards to get back to neutral. I've honestly never met a NiM raider who cares about gear. The driving force has always been "I realy want Brontes Wings" or "I want to get the timed run titles". Gear simply isn't this "errmagerrd itzzz maaaiiineeeeeee. Mah preciouuuuuuusssss". It's always been "hey are you pulling the numbers you need" And most of the time that answer is yes, in say 216 gear when 224 is the top for example's sake. NiM raiders simply do not care that a "casual" player gets any gear at all, or from where. If anything, I would venture a very large chunk of money that a real NiM level raider would rather you get gear so that they can open a door for you when or if you get interested in higher level raiding.

What I find amazing is that the blame always goes to the same place: the raiding community. More specifically, the nightmare raiding crowd. No matter what gearing system, whatever ails that system is the nim community's fault. Kinda funny. If this gearing system revitalizes any semblance of a raiding community like it was pre 5.0 then I'll be super excited. I know that's a huge pipe dream, but it would be cool. For better or for worse, operation pugs expose players to new people. My story started in pugs, and it ended raiding NiM. While now I have no desire to seriously raid, It was a fun ride, and one that I would encourage others to get in on. I'd die and go to heaven if I saw more "LFM tos/rav/gods/df/dp/tfb/dxun/gods" calls out in general. I will say that I really hate the non moddable gear. Really really don't like that at all. Otherwise, the gear will be the gear, and the gear will matter less than you think it does. You'll get your gear, you may get bis gear, you may not. You'll have fun, and if you don't you will leave. You may miss the game and come back like I have, or you may not.

What you guys are arguing about revolves around the idea of how much responsibility should be placed in individual player agency. If you're queing solo in whatever pvp mode you choose to, you should know what "level" of skill is required to play it. And I don't say that to be a jerk. I say it because I think it's important for players to build their skill set and progress through different levels of content. Take ranked pvp for instance: if you don't really know your class well you shouldn't que up for ranked until you think you're at a level that will make you competitive. If you're not up to that level and you see the comment "stick to regs" or "practice in regs" while it may be blunt and offensive to hear, it's not a bad thing. Once you know how to practice you can actually test yourself in situations that give you problems and then you grow your skill. There's no shame in not being platinum in one match. In Regs: If you need voice to know what's going on in the match then that's a problem. Focus on reading your map, seeing the battles unfold in front of you (meaning stop focusing on your ability bars. Look up!). Focus on different positions. Focus on trying to kite. Put yourself in a 2v1. Seek out the classes that you can't beat immediately. If you win the match awesome! If you lose, so what there's another match right around the corner! And what's interesting in this is that sure premades do happen. When you're against a premade make it your goal to be that one player that they HAVE to all hit because you're dangerous. Be that opponent. Have pride in being that opponent. Not all of your matches will be against premades. And, to be honest the better you get your own skill, the more you will oddly win. You'll start seeing that you need to play less and less matches to complete your weekly. So the question I don't think is premades are a problem and we need a totally separate que. I think the question really should be centered on player agency. How much should the game expect from the player? Is it too low? Is it too high?

The game isn't dead. However, the player base does seem compartmentalized to a high degree. If you're rolling completely solo the game experience will feel light. If you find your way into the compartment related to the content you want to play you will have plenty to do (if some of it might mean running old content over and over and over again).

From what I've been told the 1.3 GCD can't be reached/or isn't efficient on some DPS classes. I'm not sure if Merc dps do well for the 1.3 or not. For healing: You do aim for the 1.3 global GCD and run 3205 or so in Alacrity. The rest goes to Crit. Power is greater than mastery still I believe. If you're not going for the 1.3 gcd and are ok with the 1.4 then flip it and invest 3205 iin crit and the rest iin alacrity. Not sure it's correct, but it's the philosophy I've been following so far.

Hey all, I've been attempting to que for ranked on SS, and have just sat there never getting a pop. I was queing around 7pm-9:15pm EST. Not a pop to be found. I sat in que for about 15 mins at a time before requeing for regs. What times do people usually que up? Is it because I was attempting to go in with my healer, and no healers were in que? That could be it? Could it be that it's just holiday time?

Out of curiosity, how would you fix team ranked to make it something people want to play? It just seems like stating "fix team ranked" is a bit...too generic a complaint? If players aren't forming their own groups to play how do you promote growth within group ranked? I don't really know how Bioware could do that from a structural stand point. Rewards seem ok with the stipulation that the daily and weekly quests seem of too high a requirement for completion. I don't know if just changing that would get group ranked flowing. Last time group ranked seemingly grew was when there were mat farming teams in there, and group ranked players HATED them.

I don't know if premades are an actual problem or not. It all seems to balance out over time. I solo que regs 90 percent of the time or more, and I think my w-l is right around 50-60 percent win 40-50 percent loss. Seems pretty on target overall. It's those matches where you get a premade that's stomping the other team but ignoring all objectives thus holding up the game so they can just number farm their way to achievements (I'm guessing?). Like a premade spawn camping yavin and not capping any turrets as an example. That's where the problem is. If it's objectives and your premade is clearly head and shoulders above the competition just win and end the match. I don't see this happen often though so I'd say these kinds of premades are the exception to the rule not the rule itself.

Great insights Tung! I've definitely been getting better at being more aware of what dcds are active on players, or what's next in their rotations. I'm still rocky with it, but getting better. I'm sure it'll take a lot of time to get that segment up to par with what's necessary in ranked. I'd say the three things that are holding me back from being ready to que ranked would be 1) awareness of where players are in their rotations/ what DCDs they are using currently (i.e what their buff/debuff bars are telling me. I've found there's so much on those bars that it's hard to quickly locate what they have going on since there's like 40 things on there at a time. So I'm just too slow to recognize what's going on in real time to be truly effective. Is this a thing I can deal with differently from a UI perspective, or more a keep focusing on it and keep watching and over time it'll start to stick more and more? 2) Positioning. I'm still very raw in this category. I've been practicing as a healer a little bit here to really focus on how to kite. I don't know if that's a solid practice plan or not. I know it's a totally different ball game going from a healer class like my merc to a sniper, but I was hoping it would help teach me about how to kite, what objects are actually "solid objects" in each map (good example I think is Rishi Arena where some things look like objects I can kite around only to be behind it, and someone directly in front of me on the other side of the object still able to hit me). Besides changing the elevation with holo locate, or speed boost on countermeasures, what are you looking for, how are you moving around maps, Tung? 3) How to maintain my range. In arenas when I'm on my sniper I will or have been seeing, that I will have 3 on me either at all times, or very much 90 percent of the time. It seems very rare that I'm even in a 2v1 situation. I've found myself in panic mode and getting out of my little strats to deal with less players on me. I can deal with the 2v1 about 40-60 percent of the time depending on opposing player skill and me re-establishing the range I'm looking to keep. I end up just burning everything way too fast, or maybe I am burning things at the appropriate speed but I'm certainly out of my comfort zone there. What is or are your process(es) for you to keep range as a thing, or how do you decide when to enter tank mode, or retreat mode? What's the tell tale signs for you there? edit: You also mention the Precise Targeter set. I was under the impression that you can't fit the extra LTs in so it was a waste. Have you noticed that you aren't fitting in what it gives you, or do you have a way around it to fit in the extra LTs?

The answer is there is no BiS tactical that fits both PvE and PvP. For example I use B-O Targeting Systems for PvP I do not use it in PvE. Why? You can figure that out I'd hope. If it's PvE then it's corrosive dart refresh if the fight doesn't call for Aoe. If it does then change the tactical.

that's a good plan of use I would agree. What I've been doing has been use it as my first chess move in a sense in an attempt to be aggressive with it. Especially if I'm facing multiple Melee or definitely if multiple stealth. They will all try to gang me at the beginning of the match etc. I know it's coming unless say there's a PT who may end up taking the brunt of the open from the other team. I drop holo quick. Move as far away as I can before that 5-6 seconds clock in my head goes off. I crouch, entrench, drop orbital on myself. And then the stealth show up. I'm prepped for it. They open as hard as they can and I holo and break their opener. Might have taken a defensive of theirs with me. Might have taken a power up on their ability with me. I'm still close enough to them that my damage potential hasn't dropped and I can still continue with marginal interruption.

It's not poor advice. More so generalized in a sense, but there's still a lot of value to what you say. In a way it's one of those things that IS gigantically important, but often overlooked or pushed to a second tier "next level" type of thing. Which also in a sense it is to a degree just by the nature of it. I JUST figured out what "practice in regs" means for me like two days ago and I've been playing this game for years and years. To me practicing in regs is developing strats for dealing with classes or situations and then looking for those situations and seeing how I handle it with those new strats equipped. I'm very inconsistent in that kinda panicked way that I'm sure is extremely common in green players, but I will say that the plans of attack and defense I've developed for myself in these past two days has been very very good. I've been very hard to kill., and I've been able to deal with classes I typically have a rough go of it with (ii.e I solo'd my first jug yesterday and that wasn't a jug who haphazardly used their defensives or were just bad overall. It was a long drawn out affair. I recognized his dcds. Reacted exactly as I wanted to. And I won. And more importantly to me was that I won and I knew exactly in one moment of that fight that I had won and there was no way for them beat me at that point. I used to just go into regs and play like a banshee trying to just top the charts and not die. I don't know why it took me so long to have that "how to practice properly" light go on but it has and it leads to such a difference in how to do things and yeah great stuff. So playing other classes is I would say just as important.It's good stuff.

This is actually something I've been debating hard core in my head lately. Well, more like trying to question everything I think I know about my utilities and seeing if I'm still right (or still wrong for that matter) or if I'll surprise myself with a new trick that gives me another tool in the tool kit. I typically run with ballistic dampers because it's a no brainer in my mind. Then I'll use vital regulator for the self heal since it doesn't hurt and over time it can potentially tip the scale one way or the other. Seek Cover/ Reestablish Range/ Hold Your Ground/ Defensive Safeguards/ Pillbox Sniper/ Tactical Retreat. But, I really have been going back and forth on snap shot lately in that tier. Is that extra immediate snipe say more valuable than having 3 seconds off leg shot or a slow and an accuracy debuff from shatter shot? I feel like there's arguments to be made about those three. If I can get you with leg shot faster, or slow you for longer, that means I don't have to re position at a quicker pace which means I can turret so if I can turret longer my damage potential goes up. If I can keep you away from me longer that also gives me the ability to shave a second or more off a cool down timer on a dcd? Do the potential damage increase or potential increase to survive ability enough to meet the instant snipe? Because of the complete roll of the dice (which is why pvp is so fun) of player skill or strategy it's so hard for me to just flat line test so I don't have any real total fact to base things on just the feeling that maybe it does over ride that snap shot utility.

I started ranked in season 11. Loved the challenge. I had been strictly a pve player before. Was pretty successful in that realm and held on to that success and didn't really dive into any other part of the pool. Now that I have, my god the challenge was perfect. I fought like hell and sucked hard enough for silver. And I'm damn proud of that silver rank. I'd love to hear from other snipers out there who are better (and there definitely is better than me that's for sure). But, overall, I want to try again in season 12. I'm not joining que yet., and want to practice in regs first. One thing I'm absolutely not used to is hololocate. I just...I dunno.. It doesn't fit the class in my mind and I just hardly ever think about it. But, in terms of positioning, where do you look to place this thing? Do you find it better to be used more offensively in a sense where you hololocate to say 35 meters away so you can keep blasting away, or do you find better use for it as defensively used where you can hide and maybe wait a few to re-engage? I suck vs operatives. Suck. Suck. Suck. I've crushed a few with knockbback on series of shots, leg shot, regular pulse det, diversion et c. But, you put one of em on me and there's say one other attacker on me (which I find there's usually 2-3 anyway attacking me constantly which I'm fine with I just need to get some education on how to efficiently deal with these situations or just accept certain death and do as much damage as possible. I'm not really afraid of sorc's or assassins. Jugs are annoying as hell with how many cool downs they have. Mara's I struggle with a little bit most of the time. Merc's sometimes struggle sometimes not. To make a long story short, I'm asking for a starting point to grow past last year's silver (and maybe become an actual formidable pvp player outside of regs). How did you all start? When you still were struggling what did you focus on? How did you discover what worked best for you against what wrecked you etc? I'm looking for what people's thought processes were. How did they attack certain situations? Why did they attack those situations that way? Thanks all. See you all out there, and thanks for the tips.

This thread has no real actual topic. The actual topic of this thread to is engage is pure exaggeration. Posting by saying "the last two days at prime time there hasn't been the number of players online" on the surface is a meh complaint. Then when you see when they posted (1:33am) you get why its exaggerated and over sensationalized AS are the rest of this person's claims and threads through the years. Australian servers, pvp, conquest. It's all over exaggerated. If you can't see it then bless your heart.

it is completely within the realm of possibility that a solo player would prefer a higher degree of challenge in their solo activities. Their opinion may have been that companions were too strong, and effectively playing the game for them, which is what they disliked. It is also entirely possible (since we don't know the actual metrics at play) that there are more solo players who prefer more of a challenge than not. Secondarily, to the notion of "why didn't you dismiss your companion, take off your gear, etc.": the game was not meant to be played naked or without a companion. Therefore, to ask a solo player who does ask for more of a challenge to do these things is asking them to not play the game as designed which is an unfair ask. Their desire to play within the design of the game by wearing gear and using their companion should not be washed away so readily. Also stop blaming group based players for this. None of us care what happens for the solo based portions of the game. They can be as easy or as hard as Bioware dictates and our opinion more than likely doesn't change. Why? Because we aren't active members of that section of the community and thus do not comment on that. What we are more focused on is the level sync in operations, or tech fragment caps, or gear acquisition from the content we play i.e group based content. Solo content is, nor will be or has been, a focus for group centered players. Blaming group based players like raiders or pvp players is absolutely an incorrect assignment of blame and an absolutely incorrect modis operandi

The geo queen in hm is significantly less time and effort especially if you're new to ranked. Ranked is a totally different ball game than anything experienced in regs (for the most part). For me, since I'm new to ranked as well, I've found that I like to que Sundays and Mondays during the day. That way I don't totally sink a que if I'm not playing well against the top end competition you're bound to face at peak times or early in the week when the more veteran ranked players are getting their weeklies done. Que times if you follow my method will vary. They will sometimes pop back to back to back to back. Or they could be 15-20 minutes between pops. My logic is, I'm not good enough yet so I accept the slower pop times. It also can relate to class played. I play a sniper which is incredibly powerful in ranked, but also very very hard to play well. It's a one mistake you're super dead type of class. If you play say a Merc where you aren't a prime focus of the enemy you probably can extend your desired que time to more into the peak if you know what you're doing

While I did enjoy the stream. One comment here I disagreed with. I do believe it would have been beneficial to have someone new to ranked involved. While all of you are high level players, often times higher level players don't think about things that are issues mainly due to just not being able to put yourself backwards in time to a point where you were less skilled. If that person were involved I think you would have heard a few more interesting concepts worthy of discussion. Namely: Ability to que just Arenas in regs to attempt to lessen the learning curve from regs to ranked. Matchmaking issues (which you all did touch on to a degree). But, you'd get the perspective of someone who's trying to learn and grow. The first 20 game ranking process. Although, I do really love the idea of "prequalifying" in a sense that a veteran pvp player doesn't start at 0 for the next season. As much as I like/ may want to play against better players so that I get better. I don't want to be against 3 superior players while I'm still getting my feet under me. Other than that I hate rating decay. My rating sucks but I've worked my tail off for it. Krea's counter point is also true so there's probably a middle ground there that either was discussed in the stream which I may have missed (it was very long so I'm sure I missed a few things). Totally ok with lockout timer. Class stacking totally agree that it needs to be fixed. Stop matches that are unbalanced absolutely agree.

To me, the matchmaking is a problem. If I am a bronze level player, I shouldn't be going against high tiered players until I've "earned" that right through my own performance and ranking increase. If I'm in a match with someone in gold tier, or multiple gold tier people, that just brings the quality of the match down and hurts my team. Granted, could I play well enough? Sure. Could I improve with matches against better players? Absolutely. So the argument can be made that yes me going against better players is a benefit to me no matter if I win or I lose that match. It doesn't seem completely fair though to the higher level people. All in all, if that means that multiple bronze level matches are going on then that's what I'd advocate for. If it means that the higher tier players have to wait a bit I think that actually becomes better for the health of the community. Everyone gets better games overall. Maybe..and this is just a terrible idea at the sound of it but could be said anyway just for discussion purposes, is to say there's time restrictions to it. Maybe, in a completely arbitrary sense here, 7-8pm it's recommended for bronze to que, 8-9 silver, 9-10 gold and above. It semi segregates the player base. But, at the end of the day do gold players want to really be in matches with bronze? I know it's a crap idea, but I'm looking for ways to get more even matches.

I just wanted to add I guess another data point for those who are looking to get into ranked. The experience I've had thus far has been actually very positive. I've only seen really one person rage. I've received zero death threats. Nothing crazy. Players have been attempting to help me in matches. I play as a sniper which I've found can sometimes have huge levels of survivability, but that survivability hangs on a pin head. My best example was from today: match was a pretty tough comp to go against for me. I tried to kite first round, basically just run and try to survive until my team could hopefully take one player down and let me transition back into a more offensive approach. Didn't work. The other team absolutely wrecked me. I did no damage, and I died early. I still took about 250k damage which probably isn't that much, but it sure felt like it. I tried stunning, I tried rotating all of my defensives. I even threw a seismic grenade at the three melee chasing me to try to buy time. None of that worked. So this player let me know hey stay back, wait for us to engage them, pop out get some damage in, when the re-target you **** and kite. We ended up winning that match, and I even survived the third round. My damage output was minimal, but the lesson I learned there was surviving and successfully kiting and stunning is the key to it all. They chased me, over extended themselves, and we were able to pull ahead. Really fun match. Really hard it felt like though. Very similar thing happened in a tatooine canyon I was in before that. I'm currently 13-10 and a rating of 1257 with a high of 1286. So not good, but I've felt good playing. Still inconsistent but getting better. And, I have the players who try to help me in que to thank for the success that I have had so far. The one thing I wish for would be the ability to control what I want to que for in regs. The jump from regs to ranked is insanely massive. If I could que just arenas in regs I think I'd be a bit more prepared for the real ranked scene.

what annoys me about gearing: the fact that to this day I can't have one legacy gear set for my sniper and my gunslinger. Having to get multiple off hands is frustrating. I wish the masterwork and monumental crystals were legacy bound. I dislike that mods and enhancements are tied to strict pieces of gear.

Dear Dps, Feel free to pull! You're only making my job of gathering threat that much easier. I'll take all your threat, and then add it to my collection.

geezus h christmas. A post of yours I agree with. Wow.

I highly doubt you're getting grouped with "nim players". Simply put, we generally stay within our small community. There may be a few pug runs here and there for hard mode operations like how i jumped into a 16 man hm tfb and a 8 man hm df yesterday.. But, you don't typically find us in a new boss fight pugging. Mainly because we have our own groups to get the mats so we can craft and get everyone their main hands. I have 15 characters, and I've completed the queen already this week on 13. Im not trying to tank it so there's why it's not a full 15. Not once did I jump into a pug group for it. The "nim raiders" you speak of are most likely not who you think they are. And we have absolutely taken a few here and there into the fight with us. Not a single one of us will require parse for Queen. You're either at 60 percent when you need to be or not etc. You are right on one thing though. If you go into a group with "nim raiders" and it's a specific purpose of run like a timed run you should know what you're doing. If you don't a timed run is not where you need to be. And, if people are grouping for it you should be telling them straight away hey i'm new at this. I'm not some "god tier" player. I'm like mediocre in nim on a good day. A sandbag probably...most other days. I still to this day, tell people i group with if i'm unclear on something that i'm unclear. Never once had a problem. The hate the nim community receives is misplaced quite honestly. Queen is no where close to nim level. Maybe Nefra? But, like...Nefra is a joke. I stand by my opinion that it's as hard as Xeno. It comes down to just understanding what's required of you in a fight. The reason you think Xeno is super easy is because you know the fight. Knowing the fight comes with time and experience. You don't, or you shouldn't, be calling for a nerf on a new fight because you don't feel comfortable in it yet. If it were like a year from now and people still can't do it sure let's discuss a nerf. Not now though, definitely not now. Regarding gear: I should say I'm biased since I can get these crystals easily for a main hand. However, if you can hit checks in say dread fortress hardmode, and deal with orbs in brontes, or coordinate movement in draxus, cooridnate op 9 etc this fight is not a challenge. If it is a challenge for your group...good! That's awesome! Progression is fun! Just don't throw a glass against the wall. That's bad juju edit: one last thought...pugging a fight...any fight...is asking for inconsistent play. If you have a group of friends work together. That's a big reason why people ask for achievements in anything. They want to do something, but really don't want to "carry" multiple people. It's an unfair ask of players in my opinion to basically expect them to carry whoever in a raid "just because they want to do it".