That is not true at all, and the whole point of my post. I personally do not have a problem with the difficulty level of anything in this game, but you are lying to yourself if you think that there aren't casual guilds out there whose entire end game is story mode content. When those guilds can successfully clear tier 1 of content and then get thrown into the brickwall that either HM EV/KP or story mode EC brings them they don't magically get better and keep playing, they quit the game. Edit: There is a reason that Blizzard recently added looking for raid difficulty to WoW when normal mode raid content was already very easy.

You should read my post again, because I haven't said that any gear is required for the instance and you in your post even identified the problem. Story mode raids are supposed to be their own progression path for lesser skilled players/guilds. If HM EV/KP = story mode EC then something is not right with the tuning. How is a group that isn't skilled enough to defeat hardmodes going to do a raid that is the same difficulty?

Rakata drops from HARD MODE raids. If the intended prgression path for a NORMAL MODE raider is to do story mode EV/KP -> hard mode EV/KP to gear up for -> story mode EC then that is not working correctly. If the path is supposed to be story mode EV/KP -> story mode EC then story mode EC is tuned to be too hard. Any raid group that can complete story mode EV/KP, but cannot complete hard mode EV/KP, will not be able to ever progress in story mode EC. They will be lacking the skill to do it and the fact that they are lacking gear as well is a double whammy.

If that is supposed to be the progression path, then EC tuning is off. A group that can complete story mode EV/KP but not hard mode EV/KP will not have any success in story mode EC.

Tracer missile in it's nerfed state is still the ability that does the highest percentage of your damage in pve. They nerfed by 10% the skill that you spam and buffed by 10% one you use every 15 sec. Basic math will tell you that sustained dps went down in pve.

I have 19.5k hp as a merc dps, if a tank only has 18k hp I don't think they are geared for any of the new content.

I'm pretty sure there is a large difference between 8 man story mode and 16 man story mode. 16 man is tuned pretty tightly for the enrage timer, even for full rakata raids. I have a feeling all the people saying that they easily beat the bosses after a few attempts were doing it on 8 man.

The arsenal tree is reliant on Terminal Velocity to vent heat, without it, you will overheat. The pyrotech tree is reliant on Superheated Rail to vent heat, without it, you will overheat. The op's hybrid build would not be able to utilize either of these talents, making it a very bad build that will overheat very fast. Regardless of what marginal advantage you might have by using CGS instead of HVGC, you would not be doing more damage than either a pure aresenal or pure pyrotech build using the correct cylinder, because when you are overheated you are worthless.

This discussion about kiting isn't relevant to the OP, if you want to be mobile dps as a merc the only choice is being full pyrotech. Said build in the OP would be awful for 1 reason. The talent Terminal Velocity causes your missiles to vent heat on a crit only when high velocity gas cylinder is active. Without that talent being in effect you will overheat very, very fast doing your normal dps rotation. Any math being done to determine if 35% armor pen compares to the dot is pointless. When you can't cast anything but your free attack, what cylinder you are using doesn't matter.

I wasn't aware that you needed rank for those items, still I would imagine that unless you are an in game billionaire getting those items anytime soon will be fairly hard, giving you time to earn some rank. It probably is a bug though if there is gear that actually still requires rank.

Did you compare the other stats and set bonuses? Expertise isn't everything...

Why does it matter? Valor does nothing for you but get you a worn out title anyway, so does it matter if you only get it when you win?

That isn't really surprising, they buffed damage in pvp and buffed the damage of heatseeker missile, mercs hardest hitting attack. Don't worry his tracer missile didn't hit you as hard.

Normal mode ops are designed for people that just hit 50 to do to gear up. You do not need to do pvp for worse gear than you get by filling your orange items with daily purchased mods. Battlemaster gear is worse than columi for pve and columi rains from the sky in hardmode flashpoints (no lockout on these in 1.2 along with smarter looting) and normal mode ops (1.2 removes predestined loot, making it even easier than it already is to get useful loot in ops). Instead of trying to institute an unnecesary gear grind for your guild, why not just do some normal mode ops?

Do you normally read forums by starting on the 71st page and posting crap in a thread that has been dead for over a month and a half?

Yea, They need to stop the 1 min cd aoe spell from doing aoe damage, it should be a channeled 3 sec cast that does the same damage, but single target instead. It should keep the 1 min cd. Would that be ok with you?

Magenta is the highest craftable crystal and you have to be 50 to be able to get the mats for it, so having to be 50 or close to it to use it makes sense. All the other "premium" colors are not available until level 50 as well, either through the vendor or already slotted in items you get from raiding/pvp. They are like this so that they remain "premium" items, not something you see all throughout the game.

This is very, very bad advice. The triage adrenal lowers YOUR damage output by 50% making it completely obsolete because the power adrenal has no negative side effects. It does nothing to lower incoming damage, you have to use the armor adrenal for that.

When you extract an armoring mod on your bound raid gear, it makes the mod bound to you as well. You will NOT be able to buy raid gear w/set bonuses on the GTN unless said raid gear is able to be crafted by REing the drops for the recipe.

I'm only valor lvl 64 and I have my full battlemaster set. It seems like I get a comm every 2-3 bags, but I haven't been keeping track. I can confirm there has been no nerf.

Most people aren't complaining about assassin damage. It is all the utility and survivability they have along with their decent damage that makes them the number 1 class you will want on your rated warzone team. If an assassin has all his cd's up in huttball and has the ball, good luck stopping him from scoring. Or he can be stealthed in your endzone waiting for a pass. Stealth is amazing on both voidstar and civil war, swinging games when utilized correctly. When rated warzones come out and full 8 man, coordinated teams are able to exploit the advantages of the class completely you are going to see a lot more threads about nerfing assassins. Don't act all surprised when it happens.

Don't worry once 1.2 hits and rated warzones come out, you'll see more of them.

They put in a massive amount of time and they deserve to be rewarded for it. I will be full the tier beyond what black hole comms offer before ANYONE gets even half way geared from running dailies, and most other competant raiders will too. Why does people being able to slowly, almost catch up in gear affect you guys so much? Is it because you are in actuality, horrible raiders with a bad attitude that wants to be better than someone, and since you can't be better than a real raider you need to have superior gear on the fleet to epeen preen?

You should do normal mode if you want to watch the story imo, HM FP is for getting gear.

Gavin you should really be in favor of being able to get black hole commendations from dailies, your guild won't be getting very many from the raids themselves if you can't even beat Soa HM. Blaming it on "bugs" like "someone getting thrown while they have a lightning ball being an unavoidable wipe" means you and your guild are not nearly as skilled as you think you are. You have the attitude of a world first epeen hoar, but the skills of the server's 10th best guild at best. This thread is full of hypocritical posts by you, which are kinda funny to read, but also makes me sad to think how many people like you exist in mmo's these days. You say in one breath that HM raids in this game are easy, but you haven't even completed them. You complain about dailies rewarding comms for top of the line gear like it matters at all when you can only get 6 a week and it isn't even for the best gear in game. And the funniest part is your guild and other guilds like yours will be running the **** out of these dailies trying to get an edge so you can complete the new raid in story mode cause you don't have the skill neccesary to do it on release and need the gear crutch.