Indeed, one of the best instances I've seen, including other games. The only thing that bothers me is that the last boss (or rather group of bosses) is such a pushover ... not well tuned at all. Bonus Boss is a lot more to my taste though, good damage output, needs a lot of coordinationn and quick reaction not just for a single role, but tanks, healer and dps alike.

In all fairness, this is a MMO ... can't stress this enough. However, I would see no damage in making 2-3 one man instances for you and one companion. What should the loot be? Maybe Tionese Crystals and a daily, so you can get 1 Columi token per day. No set pieces, but a meaningful amount of crafting resources or crafting missions for your current skills. This would yet enhance the crafting system, make it more fun, and wouldn't take progression away from where it should be: In raids.

People are talking about the T3 relics, not the T2. All of them within a tier are exactly the same - 168 energy damage, 4.5 CD and 30% chance. What I don't get is, why people talk about Crit/Surge Relics ... they're abyssmal as you should be well within DR of Surge already. Power Relics are where the power lies ... to me it comes down to taste between Matrix and Proccy. It also depends a bit on what class you play and which spec. Do you have DoTs? Do you have skills that count as multiple hits? A lot of long cast abilities that are just counted as a single hit? I'd always keep the Clicky (aka Relic of Boundless Ages) ... reasonable duration and cooldown, perfect for burst damage, especially because every 3 uses it's lined up with the Adrenal and Bloodthirst further enhances the effect of the shot power up.

Hi! I'm maybe the largest supplier for Stims on my server - all my 3 characters are biochemists. The game often runs in the background while I work at the computer so my minions can run missions very frequently and I end up with ~80 Stims every 2-3 days. Plus those that I couldn't sell previously. Added to 1 armoring and 1 enhancement and any orange belts and bracers I resell that's too much for the auction limit. I'd like to not have to put up auctions with multiple alts and just be able to sell everything through my main ... wich does mean I need more than 50 auction slots. Is there any reasonable reason for the limit in the first place?

Hold on, I can get not 3 but 7 additional abilities? Thought the mirror classes would give mirror abilites. Other then that ... are thise actually the same abilities the parent classes use? Because I really wouldn't see why my Mercenary shouldn't get Orbital Strike from my Sniper on top of Death from Above. Cheers & off to level myself a pupi char.

If it means we spam less powerful Tracer Missiles and Heat Seeker gets it's CD reduced, I'm all for it. :> Or maybe Tracer Missile becomes a basic skill and we get a new talented one that will be part of the rotation. Or maybe Arsenal will be nerfed so hard no one will play it and respeccing to Pyro will be the part where rotations get more interesting?

Yes to a fully parsable combat log. No to ingame dps/heal meters. Every MMO is nothing but a game of numbers. At the surface you see the floating ones above your targets, beneath that there's even more of them ... and at the end the program is even nothing but numbers ... lots of zeros and ones to be precise. Don't be afraid of them. But ingame tools can lead to hazing, so for all those of us who are interested in the game behind the game, we could take the effort and parse the log outside of the game. Those people that don't want to do that or those that are lazy bastards bitc...omplaining about other players slacking probably won't take that extra step of effort, so every side wins.

No, it doesn't. It looks like their either patching the PTR or doing pre-patches. Usually very large updates don't roll in in one go as this would increase the chance of mistakes. Easing in some changes into the game files is not unheard of even for live servers.

Actually it should be equal. However it never will. Unless space is a problem 16 man will always have the upper hand thanks to more armor debuffs, more healers who each has their own resources and more strong cooldowns in total. It's just that Soa is very badly balanced between 8 and 16 man. I'd consider it almost free loot in one version and almost too hard for the first raid tier in the other. Btw, wasn't the basic raid size 8 man or do I remember that wrong? I have to admit, I didn't watch anything happening in beta but 'small raids' is one bit of information that stuck.

Tibbel, you really thought that through and your posts on sithwarrior are impressive, though I'm not fond of spreadsheets and the amount of misinformation they thus far produced. But I like hybrid specs. And they are not an issue. The fact that Engeneering and Lethality lack strong higher tier talents is the problem and can be easily fixed by removing or altering questionable talents. (e.g. passive cooldown reduction for 'Explosive Probe' for Engeneering) Even in Marksmanship 'Imperial Assassin' could be a 3 point talent and another talent could be introduced in the same tier - something like Ambush leaving a small bleed effect for example. Your visions for 'Sniper Volley' are very nice, although I wouldn't mind something more simple as a flat damage increase for three Snipe after using Ambush. What I don't agree with is that one class should gain dispell protection and all the others don't - also because I don't think it's needed as DoTs would be too powerful otherwise. The user interface changes are something that would effect all classes and especially in 16 man it is something that's bothering all players that play DoT heavy classes or specs. I seriously hope BW will give us DoT timers soon ... I already know two people who quit just because of the hazard current debuff tracking is in 16 man raids. With almost all of your suggestions being reasonable, I'm not sure the effort you put into such specific ideas is worth it compared to simply analysing the problem with a class and hinting it to the developers. Who no doubt will have their own ideas how classes should be nerfed or buffed. Classes are not nerfed or buffed because of people whining. It happens when there is need of balanceing classes or specs.

As you said, PvE demands not burst damage but sustainable dps. So while full marksmanship has a higher damage per energy for series of shots and followthrough thanks to imperial assassin, hybrid specs will reign supreme thanks to DoTs being the most resource effecient abilites and the ability to get not one, but two ways to regain energy. Whether you want to deal damage with followthrough or with cull is a question of taste and gear (lethality grows more efficient over time). Either way, energy effeciency, regeneration and abilities that enable you to deal damage while moving are more useful than burst abilities in PvE. So basicly you put together a spec that has: * Two of - Sniper's Nest, Imperial Methodology for superior energy regeneration. * Either Followthrough or Cull for effecient high dps abilities.

I prefer it over Arsenal atm. Automated Defenses enable me to cast free Fusion Missiles every 30 seconds and the execute period is really nice. As is the sustained damage from two elemental DoTs and Power Shot / Rail Shot. Unload is a bit lacking and you can't debuff the targets armor for your group, but you're more mobile and flexible at switching targets.

For PvE: Any ranged class or Marauders. For PvP: Any Warrior or Powertech.

On the upside, sleeping with him would be like agang bang with just one person. With all the hive being with him and all. ps: Rubbing forearms? How kinky! ;>

True. Snipers take a lot of more effort to play than BH or Sorcs. And OP, while lacking sustainable DPS capabilities, are great healers for nightmare. We currently have 2 OP healers, 1 OP dd and are looking for Snipers and just can't find any ... right now I'm even tempted to switch from Merc main to my Sniper, but I'm still not sold on that idea. Agent's are just underplayed because they're not Sith, they are their servants and they're not Mandalorians in thick armor with more guns and rockets than you can count. They're just normal people who are good at shooting things.

Despite the fact that your post is close to trolling I feel like answering it. Inquisitor maximum range before level 10: 10 meters. And Bounty Hunters are all ranged characters prior choosing their advanced class. Your DoT, Grenade and Rifle Shot are all usable at full range and you have plenty of 10m abilities as well. Power Techs have no gap closer as damage dealers and they don't whine about it, because they have roughly the same tools to use from range you do and it seems to work. That's a first. Our two Operative healers are very happy with how their class plays and they never heard of energy problems or lacking throughput. I heard it was lacking as Operative compared to Sniper's Lethatlity spec, wich probably is because of the high energy demand and the impossibility to spec into an energy regen talent in one of the other trees. And TA is not your primary resource - energy is. With Lethality being the shared spec it should be obvious, why it isn't designed around a mechanic only one Agent AC has. Think before writing. It's a basic truth of skill trees that characters will be less powerful and incomplete before max level. This is a fact for all classes and all games. Energy conservation? Your regeneration and DPE have to be balanced to get a balanced spec. Conservation is not something you should be looking for and while OPs deal a bit less damage than other classes, it's probably less then 5% diversion. And do not post on topics you have no clue about. The number of energy regeneration abilities in the Assassins deception tree is 1 and it's called surging charge. OP set bonuses are actually not bad. For a non marksmanship Sniper they're even better than the actual Sniper's set. Just you. Had no problem at all from 1-50. Yes, all those damage dealing Power Techs and their charges and grappling raid bosses ... oh, weit. You sure you didn't just dream about having a 50 PT? For PvP ofc things are looking different, but then again OPs got stealth and probably the highest burst damage and most stuns in the game. Quit whining. And while you're at quitting, either quit being ignorant and try to learn how to improve your playing or just quit the game. It's appearant you're not happy with it, but it also seems the fault is with you for not trying to improve before judging.

Threat dumps (other than the marauder's, getting pulled by a sorcerer or jumped at by a juggernaut) are nothing but a pretty animation. It is the tanks fault, not using taunt to maintain threat. On bosses with threat resets classes with DoTs are bound to pull threat whenever threat gets dumped however - but again it's your tanks job to be aware of that.

Considering the much higher price I wouldn't be surprised if it's either still purchasable post 1.2 or removed without going to be craftable.

As it stands the players still choose the style of gampley last time I checked. I feel great about a theory platform for this game and it seems that other people do so as well. That being said, people like to test incorectly, jump to conclusions too quickly and sometimes just write whatever comes to their mind (or so it seem). I hope Sithwarrior improves on some of the Sniper and Mercenary topics and maybe 2500% threat dump on Intercede should be rechecked. Last week I pulled aggro on Gahrj, second platform, after I was jumped at by the tank. So either my game is just different or your test is wrong. ps: 0.25% seems to be a typo. :>

Actually there's even a title for clearing nightmare in 2 hours. With that said, OP - you and/or your group probably don't count yourselfs amongst the creme de la creme of players, but even then 72k repair bill and 2 hours is unusual for any flashpoint, hard mode or not. The fault seems to lie with you, wich once you acknowledge you can start working on improving - like reading how to play your classes better and looking up some strategies first.

Interrupt him with a stun or knockback after he reappears and starts charging up. Move out of the area effect stuns and bombs.

The animation itself is decent looking. Spaming it isn't. I always wait for the moment my character fetches a chair and sits down to avoid back pain... Playing Pyro right now. Now my Bounty Hunter is bending backwards instead of forwards ... what's up with that?

A couple of months back I learned that one of my oldest gaming buddies was a clicker and I never realised it. So it probably is possible to keep up doing well, but you'd be better off learning to use hotkeys as you still will be more flexible and faster when rapid movement is important.

No one can cast while moving. So in the end they all are equally mobile or rather static. And each of the 3 classes has a dot based tree that deals more damage than the others when running a lot.

Fingers (and toes) crossed for a prettier 1.2 set! Won't be that hard to achieve anyway. That metal butt cape covering characters behind looks like insect wings!