No, I didn't notice anything last week either. That's why I specified 3.3.1, which was pushed out yesterday (18th August).

(... or possibly Commando or Scoundrel healing?) I tanked HM Walkers again last night as I've been doing most weeks for the past 6 months, and I was getting wiped out repeatedly (on unit 1). Normally I only ever used Resilience (Force Shroud) as a cooldown against the Mega Blast, and I rarely get clipped by Rapid Fire unless I have a lag spike, but last night, the total incoming damage was forcing me to use everything (Battle Readines, Deflection, Exotech Absorb Adrenal, Medpac -- even resetting it with Force Cloak + taunt) and it still wasn't enough on quite a few of the tries. (I would have swapped with my co-tank except for the fact that his lag is generally too high for him to deal effectively with the rapid fire, so he rarely if ever does Unit 1). We did eventually get it down then decided to finish off with the "easy stuff" (HM Sparky and Bulo) but again on Bulo I died, might have been due to people getting tired. So... has anyone else noticed a significant difference?

A bit late, but also still missing Rancor achievement: http://imgur.com/D0eE3Qi

Seems to be some sort of bug in the schematic list, if I just filter on the Artifact schematics they show up just fine as having been learned....

This would in no way whatsoever improve the availability of the Grade 11 Exotic materials, which is what the OP is asking for. As for the (supposed) counter-argument to my suggestion re purchase of the Matter Transubstantiators, that situation only came about when there was a significant glut of MMGs available, toward the end of the 2.0 cycle -- and it's a natural counter-balance to the fact that you needed several of the EEEs per MMG used. If there are not enoug MMGs to "soak up" the EEEs, then the number of EEEs you need to sell to afford a MMG is extremely large. Currently, people are offering around 1.5-2m per MT and are just not getting any sellers, because they are basing the price on what they were going for at the peak of the Ravagers exploit -- I suspect that a more realistic value of a MT (i.e. a price that someone with one would be willing to sell it) would be around 4-5m credits. (Unfortunately, the inability to list either item on GTN makes the market very opaque and not readily amenable to analysis).

Actually, since the Ship Droid has +5% crit sensors for Synthweaving and Cybertech, they're two that are fine for anyone. However, for optimal crafting of Armstech, Corso Riggs has +5% crit (which synergizes well with Gus Tanno's Investigation crit bonus), and similarly, for Armormech, Tanno Vik has +5% crit (which again synergizes with M1-4X's +5% scavenging crit). Conversely, Artifice has no crit bonus at all, so Treek or HK-51 with their +1% crit bonus is as good as you get.

These schematics only make 192 grade items. You can buy inferior versions of (most of) them using Elite commendations, and since those have very limited use (since the introduction of the 192-rated companion gear sets from the Yavin weekly), it would seem to me to be sensible to add a way of buying Matter Transubstatiators using some combination of Elites and Exonium, just as there was for the Mass Manipulation Generators in 2.x. It would thus both make Elite commendations worth having for everyone, and improve the availability of crafed 192 gear without flooding the market.

For Biochem I've gotten the Hawkeye version of the implants by RE'ing the blue Expert version, but all I can seem to get out of RE'ing the Expert Earpieces is the Purple Expert one, not the Hawkeye one. Bug, or am I barking up the wrong tree?

With 3.1, and the consequent reduction of threat from Cascading Debris, the "improved" Force Breach now becomes a required part of our rotation, but it can neither build stacks of Harnessed Shadows, nor proc Acceleration. How exactly is this supposed to do anything other than punish us further for being reliant on a 3 second channel to get 4% DR, with a 12 second time limit? If you actually have 4 stacks and break off Cascading early, you're going to run low on force very soon, which is a ludicrous situation for tank.

Correct, it only works for the Imperials.

Prior to the nuking of these forums, KBN started a thread on trying to determine the actual optimal health that needs to be considered alongside optimizing for mitigation -- the hand-waved "50kish" number that some people now take as gospel before preaching about "maximum mitigation is the only way to go". Any chance we can get that thread resurrected also? The Zorz guys got a lot of flack on Dulfy.net for their target of having about 57k using B mods (I believe "bag-o-hitpoints tank" was one of the more repeatable things they were called) to cover the process of actually learning the fights and allowing for mistakes. Working on the HM ops myself, I find that it's rare that it's the steady DtPS that's killing me, more the big hits that amount to 30-40k in a couple of seconds because the healers are distracted -- maximum mitigation optimization wouldn't save me from that, but 2-3k more health might.

His problem is that he reset the Prelude mission stage after completing the solo flashpoint. As such he can't get the solo version again, but has to complete the flashpoint (in any mode) in order to progress. As I pointed out above, this is now available in the Tactical queue at levels 55-60, so he doesn't have to do the solo version.

Just untick everything except that flashpoint in the Tactical section of Group Finder and queue.

Just reducing some of the melee-unfriendly mechanics would do without having to increase DPS and thus require rebalancing. For example, with Torque, it makes more sense that the area immediately next to the boss is the one place that's immune to fire -- after all, why would that wookie want to burn himself?

I managed to screw up in just that way on my Commando. However, you can now just do the [TACTICAL] version via group finder -- since the last patch it's now available for level 56-60 people so it's probably just as quick and easy to do it that way as in solo mode. (Only difference being that you don't get to choose the exact conversation path).

Same on Red Eclipse.

I was Merris's co-tank last night and yes, it's HM -- and yes, she did indeed get pulled in a couple of times with Rapid Fire on her that killed half the team at the Gravity Missile spot. The bit about running around the middle bit is because there is a second bug (at least, I assume it's a bug) whereby if the tank Leaps/Charges to Unit 2, they then get about 5 stacks of the Rapid Fire hitting them at once. (Needless to say, that's a splat). I don't quite understand what KBN says about tank timing, is the suggestion for the Unit 2 tank to taunt Unit 1 BEFORE the targetting on unit 2 switches? At present I only taunt off once Unit 1 has switched target to my co-tank.

Depending on your server's economy, a more reliable way to convert CC to creds might be to sell unlocks and weekly passes to Preferred players - although if the price is in excess of 300k or so then you are probably looking at bartering things like MMGs or Iso-5s instead.

While the former is entirely sensible, it can make perfect sense to sell direct, especially on high value items, because the seller loses 6% of the sale price in GTN fees. So, they can fairly easily undercut GTN prices by upto 6% and still end up making more money. As for bartering, IMO that's a perfectly legitimate approach for Preferred players, especially if it's for stuff like unlocks that I can buy directly from the Cartel Market with all these "free" Cartel Coins I have.

It depends on your level, but basically Trooper/Bounty Hunter gear with crit/surge/alacrity/power and not defense/absorb/shield/accuracy is what you want. Try to get a balanced set of rating numbers for crit, surge and alacrity, don't try to put everything into one of those stats. If level 50 or lower, you can buy the armorings, mods, enhancements from the Planetary Comms vendors or GTN, and plug them straight into Treek's own gear. EDIT: Actually, I'm not even sure if Companions really use Alacrity at all. Anyone done any tests?

Apart from the one DPS that fell asleep while having the final fight explained, my late-night GF Ops have been pretty good...

However, as a Light Side male Consular, I don't have any problem with Nadia, other than the fact that she joins you so late means that the affection gains are greatly compressed -- and that's an unfortunate function of the pacing. I'm fairly sure that none of the other class/gender combinations get a Romance companion as late so late, just about 5 levels from the original endgame. (The relationship between the Knight and Kira, in contrast, has a much more natural pace, having met her on Tython in the Prelude, and the final stages not unlocked till the conclusion of the Knight's story).

Still happening after today's patch. The only workaround is to exit the ship and re-enter... or log out and log back in.

So I finally got round to doing some basic checking on this. I compared Crew Skill times between 2 characters I have with maxed Investigation skill, one of whom has a ship droid with 10k affection and the +10 efficiency sensor, and another that has the ship droid with 0 affection and no sensor. (Equipping/Unequipping the sensor immediately shows changes in the completion times). I compared the time to complete "Seeping Suspicions", a Bountiful Grade 9 Research Compounds mission that is "yellow" at 450, with the 3 scenarios: Character 1, ship droid @10k, +10 efficiency sensor: 1h5m36s = 65.600 minutes Character 1, ship droid @10k, no sensor: 1h14m20s = 74.333 minutes Character 2, ship droid @0, no sensor: 1h27m28s = 87.467 minutes Assuming that the +10 efficiency equated 10%, this showed that a "Yellow" mission has a 10% discount built-in even for the character with zero affection and no sensor. ActualTime(Yellow) = BaseTime * (100% -10% - Efficiency% - AffectionBonus%) so BaseTime = ActualTime / (100%-10%) for a 0 affection, 0 efficiency companion. I then checked AffectionBonus% = (ActualTime/Basetime)*100 - 10 This showed that a companion with 9690 affection and no Efficiency bonus has 4.00% bonus -- i.e. the Efficiency bonus is a stepwise function, not a continuous one. So, if your affection drops from 10k to 9999, it will almost certainly mean that the efficiency bonus will drop by 1%, not by 0.01% -- and this probably applies to the Crit Crafting bonus also, but that is not readily tested (as explained previously by myself). PS: Actually, I believe it should be: 0000-1999 = 0% 2000-3999 = 1% 4000-5999 = 2% 6000-7999 = 3% 8000-9999 = 4% 10000 = 5%(and that's what the rest of your post says also).

The Energize suggestion was an alternative to my preferred option, that of extending Dark Protection to 15s, and one that worked in the same way as the mechanics given to various other classes lately. You're probably right, so up the proc chance instead, and increase the damage on the proc? I'll take your word for it, I just hate using this spec with the current UI where on a typical boss fight, even an 8-man one, there's upwards of 20 debuffs on the boss at once, and if it's a 16-man, you have almost no chance of seeing which is yours. (By comparison, Lethality Snipers/Dirty Fighting Gunslingers, despite having a DoT spec, can just refresh their DoTs as an easily predictable part of the rotation without needing to watch the enemy debuffs -- that's what I would like to see for Madness/Balance). There still needs to be some way of getting some burst damage into Madness/Balance also.