I'm all ears. What is this solution that can make people spread out of +/-~10hrs of time zone differences get to see the stream at a time that is convenient for all of them?

When the number of people in queue is small, yes. As was mentioned earlier, ELO works well for large participant pools and a high games played totals. Once that pool shrinks, match making prioritizes making games over "fair". I know it sucks getting stomped, but when the alternative is no pops at all, I don't know how it could work better without changing the entire matchmaking algorithm, which is a completely different discussion.

The TL; DR version of how it works. 1. People queue ranked. 2. Teams of 4 are assembled with similar average ranking. 3. Teams of 4 are compared to other teams of 4 in queue. 4. #3 repeats for X mins, trying to find 2 teams with similar ranking. 5. If no "close" match (usually due to a lack of active queue population), then the 2 teams eventually get put into the same match so at least a match can happen. The system will give you whoever is online before it gives you nothing.

That's not really a better one at all. There is so little unavoidable damage (tanks aside) on SS that there's no reason someone (either a tank or DPS) should die in the time it takes to B-Rez. "Topping off the tanks then I'm rezzing. Don't die. Pop CDs if you have to." Magically everyone lives, unless you're doing something wrong. Please don't come back with some further refinement of your example where you say something like "Well, what if it's right when someone who was low gets a grenade, and they don't have any DCDs up and then the game lags and someone ends up in a red circle and purple gets dropped on the raid during gravity etc." Would it make life easier if everyone had B-Rezz? Sure. Would it make life easier if no one let their health get to zero? Even more so.

Missing 41EXP makes it sound like you're still missing a crystal. Are you sure both your main hand and off hand had +41EXP crystals in them?

Most likely guess is you equipped the OH/MH as is and didn't notice they don't come with crystals. So you're probably missing +41/+82 from not having an EXP crystal in one or the other.

Stop trying to figure out ways to cheese the mechanics and learn how to do them properly. Force Barrier isn't going to save the sage from the 3-4 (at least, probably more) deletion protocols you're going to get. It doesn't matter if it works or doesn't. There's no reason to try and figure out if it does. The person with the shield and the person marked for deletion need to wind up a predesignated spot quickly and activate the shield. Everyone else needs to be far away from them. Learn the organization. It will help on just about every other boss fight in game.

Absolutely. re-reading my post, it did seem more snarky than I intended. Full respect to everyone in Holocron that cleared the fight and the 4,5,6 however many that this was a first clear for deserve their moment in the sun. And I think your honesty in this post explaining the situation and clearing up the overlap in roster is more than enough to address any sort of "Is this a second team?" questioning I had. I know there aren't any carries in HM Revan. New people got first kills. Congrats to them.

Sure looks a lot like the first team

If the big number is a killing blow, it only registers the amount of HP lost. So if you hit someone for 14k but they have 1k HP left, it looks like a 1k hit.

Stop being a child about it and try to learn something. Regarding Bulo Volleys. As people said, he will only jump to 5 set locations. I understand that ranged will get circles and have to drop them. But the point being made is that "Progression-level" DPS should know where they can stand to prevent that from happening. If the DPS start in positions that are nowhere close to spots Bulo will jump to, when they get a circle they will again be nowhere near a bad spot to drop. Avoiding bad circle placement is something you do before you get the circle. Once you get it, if you're in a smart position, you step/run off in one direction that is "clear". There's no reason for DPS to run around like mad when they have a circle and wind up putting it somewhere dumb. This Melee-Ranged discussion comes up all the time. Yes, currently there are more melee "unfriendly" fights. There isn't much of a "ranged tax". But so what. If you want to easy-mode your way through the current content, pick a ranged class. If you enjoy playing a melee, there are people saying that they are at least 9/10 viable. If they don't feel that way to you, it means you're not playing it as well as others do. Try and learn, or again, play a ranged. Unless things are perfectly balanced (which is a fools' errand) between melee/ranged DPS, someone is always going to have it "easier", by definition. So what. Play what you're good at and what you like. If you don't think it works, get better. Stop blaming the mechanics. Some are melee unfriendly, but you've identified what those mechanics are, now identify how to deal with them.

Because it hasn't happened yet....?

Agree. My original observation was based on completely forgetting PTs use blaster pistols as well (was thinking they used rifles like a VG.

Duh. You're absolutely right. Was thinking blaster rifle for some reason. Too early (or that's my excuse).

Hahah. Nevermind.

I think that's basically what it's come down to. When they first announced a >50 win % for sents/maras, I spent entirely too much time thinking about the significance of such a statistic. At face value, it suggests that Maras are above the mean in terms of viability as it relates to win %. But there are so many contributing factors that are included in that stat (and any black-and-white) PvP statistic in this game, I don't know how to accurately read into it, and I can't think of a concrete measurable number that could stand alone (without verbal support/argument) that actually shows the current plight of maras/sents. What is the spread +/- 50%? Are there classes with <45% win rates and conversely >55%? Do matches with the same class on each side get included in the win % calculation, or are they omitted. If they're omitted, are they omitted from the calculations for the other classes involved in that ranked match? Also Things like: Server Population and Type (PvE, PvP, RP) Solo vs. Group (and also role considerations for Tank/DPS and DPS/Heal classes) Skill of Sent/Maras on the leaderboards who are still playing. Total Sent/Mara population Composition of the rest of the team (mainly for solo). It just seems like the more you go delving into the sort of contributing factors that may go into a win %, the more secondary stats you can find to support/refute any claim.

I read what you wrote, and I thought about it, and I thought "Hmm, he can't be making such a reach of an argument in that the premise is PvE gearing is easier because each boss drops something where-in no similar mechanic in PvP exists." And that there must be some strange issue why you keep mentioning "Full pieces of gear". I'm not interested in gating gear, or restricting gear, or making people "earn" gear. The cosmetic rewards and achievements are enough for me. I found the argument you cherry-picked regarding gearing up in PVP/E to be rather disingenuous. You chose the absolute best case (quickest) gearing up scenario for PvE , and kept the status quo for PvP. You're right, if I had an alt I wanted to get the new set bonus on, I could achieve that in about 2 hrs with a guild carry. And then I'd either have to do it again on alts (several times) and transfer mods/enhancements to min/max or wait several weeks and repeat every lock out. And all things told, that works brilliantly for SM if you're in a guild that raids HM. But once you move from SM to HM gearing, you could be waiting up to 8 weeks for another set bonus upgrade piece. The best comparison to guild SM carry night is the last ranked pre-season we had. Before season 4 started (and I concede there's no pre-season before season 5) it was basically queue up and get some free ranked comms. Try out some comps, have fun, get 174 gear for the season. If I was going to cherry pick an argument, I'd say that people who focused in on farming ranked comms during pre-season (if you were able to) did not have much of a slog gearing up PvP-wise. Not everyone has a guild to gear up quickly through, just like not everyone was able to Pre-Season like a champ. The PvP gearing system is inefficient, it's dumb, it's a bad gate for new players, and it can certainly be a slog. But so can the PvE grind. It's a random data point, but it took me way way way longer (7 weeks) to get my 198 set bonus head piece than it took to get my 174 ranked set bonus head piece. There's gray areas, edge cases and exceptions to everything, TUXs, but there are times you play your experiences fast and loose, black and white and as the only FACT on an issue.

When I buy something with WZ or RWZ comms, I get the full piece of gear. Weird that you don't. Must be some sort of bug on your end.

Dem new patch notes doe.

That's what I figured. I realize that if you bought the regular WZ shell, you'd likely need to buy the RWZ shell on the same char (which is more work, for sure). Trading comms is a more direction approach than buying the gear and shipping it off. And buying the pieces again for the shells on the alt may not be the worst thing ever ( to help with min/maxing a bit) and it gets you as a fresh 60 to 2018expertise (almost). It's an inconvenience and a disenfranchising type of change, but I just think the argument that "I'll be a punching back in regs for so long" is a bit overstated. If you're used to that gearing up, and have friends to queue with, it's not bad at all getting a set of 168 gear. As I said previously, being able to purchase the gear while leveling would be the best course of action, in my opinion. I don't think being able to walk into 60 PvP in full 174 and zero valor (absolute "worst" case hyperbolic situation with comm exchange) is good for the game.

Question about this. A lot of people are mentioning gearing up Alts through your main. Can't you still do that? Can't you just buy the shells (armoring/mods/enhancements) on your main and ship them off to your alts via legacy gear? I've never tried to buy a set I couldn't use on the char I was buying it on, but unless it's different than the PvE side of things, can't you gear up alts amost the same (minus some credit costs)? Wasting comms on low-level characters is still an issue after this change, I'd love to see the ability to buy the gear prior to 60, but not be able to use it. Not defending the change, just genuinely curious if this will really affect main--> alts at all. The only real issue I see is low level alts wasting comms.

You know they fixed that in the latest PTS update. It's back to 10%. Actually, you probably know that and feel like complaining. Time to find something new to whine about.

Did the same thing. Until I wanted to buy an enhancement on my sage. Makes no sense why you would think there would 2 reg enhancement vendors, but I never went over into that section until I had a Jedi.

Haha, been there. So you know how there's 2 banks of vendors. 2 groups of 2. The guy in betweeen (consular/knight) and (trooper/smuggler) sells enhancements. If you click one and he's the regular enhancement vendor (I believe reg WZ enhancements are on the trooper/smuggler side, the vendor in the other bank sells ranked enhancements. 2k per though.

I agree. And I think SM Lurker (especially with 5 DPS) is closer than a lot of people will admit that it is. The biggest issue I've run into with the few pug groups I joined for this fight hinged largely on the quality of the players. And I'm sure the things I saw in my experiences are not the same as everyone else and I'm not going to say it's necessarily the fault of the player (because they're aren't many helpful in-game tools to improve rotations/threat gen/healing) But I think there should be a reasonable expectation that you are competent at your class (and again, there's not a lot in game to make people realize they may not know as much as they thought they did). I've seen multiple people in the few pug groups I've done who: a. Are in no stance/cell/form etc. b. Are in the wrong stance. c. Have gear that gives them all sort of random stats. (def/power/etc) d. Run into energy management issues way too soon. e. Use attacks that are useless (i.e Explosive Round as a VG) f. Not being able to hold threat, or actually make an effort to regain control. And it's hard for me to just let this sort of behavior be able to walk through the current Ops in a backpack. I'm sure their behavior is not intentional, but there is a measurable contingent of selfish players who are only interested in doing whatever they want, will not take advice, and bring down the ability of the rest of the group. I think if there was a way to improve the baseline abilities/understandings of players entering operations, the issues on Underlurker would not be as widespread as they are. Way easier said than done though.