Actually it's OK if people have a different understanding. The backup plan is the chat window. Yes! Precisely! There are so many different wants and needs in this game that trying to enumerate and order all of them is a waste of time. I dislike if people hit need for something they are going to sell but I'm not going to make a big deal out of it. Otherwise their reason is as good as mine. If I lose a roll I can whisper them and ask for the item but again it's not a big deal either way. Just for the record I very very rarely hit need. SWTOR doesn't track this but my main WoW character (no longer play WoW) shows 264 need rolls and 5571 greed rolls (pass is not counted but this would be even more than greed). So in all the thousands and thousands of times I could have rolled need, it only happened 264 times. Not everyone that hits need is an evil person.

An enlightened response.

I said that to enable people to think about the mechanics of what the buttons do without preconceptions. I never said one should need indiscriminately. And yes, it does lead to less conflict because in most cases there is no one that "needs" it according to your definition. Therefore the need button can also separate the people who can use it for some other reason vs. people who will sell it to a vendor. P.S. I do not mean conflict as in a shouting match. I mean that multiple people claim an item and it needs to be resolved.

A very mature response.

There is nothing wrong. I do not make a "hierarchy of neediness" to judge people with. Certainly if someone can use the gear I will defer to them.

If you want something you should hit need. There is time to fix mistakes afterwards.

Forget about the names on the buttons. This is about a fair and efficient method of distributing loot in a PUG situation. If hitting need leads to less conflicts then it should be done, regardless of what reason you have for wanting the loot.

Should the goal of this discussion not be to develop a set of rules that makes looting easy and conflict free? It seems many people are here just to have an argument or vent their frustration at losing a roll.

By using the group finder tool you are agreeing to the system put in place by BioWare, which is need/greed/pass. I am fine with that system so I will not make any attempt to enforce rules on other people.

It seems to me like people are getting off topic. First off, you can level to 50 with free quest gear so people saying they need an item to level is false, or at the very least an exaggeration of how much a single item will help them. That is not to say that making immediate use of an item is not a strong argument to hit need. It is far more efficient to hit the need button and sort out conflicts afterwards. This is because in the majority of cases the item is not an upgrade for anyone. So yes, if I see something I could use for whatever reason I hit need. If someone feels that they could make better use of the item they are free to whisper me and make their case. The "need" button should probably be re-labelled "want". I think this better expresses the purpose of the button. I prefer simple rules. I pretty much stated my looting system in two sentences, and it handles every scenario that could possibly occur. I'm not going to read a two page essay on how to decide between need/greed/pass. Especially not when ambiguity is introduced - did that trooper roll for himself or his companion??? A lot of it does come down to simple greed. Many people just cannot handle not winning loot. How else to explain why so many people raged at the initial story mode loot system in ops? A perfectly fair and simple system that was taken out because of greed. Anyways, happy looting to all.

It's very frustrating getting people to understand this - and I've pretty much given up hope that I will get any response other than hand-waving dismissal. I believe that self-healing is equivalent to mitigation/absorption provided a factor is used to correct for over-healing. The good news is that over-healing generally goes down with increased damage taken - so it's more useful when you need it! For a high damage fight I would consider 90% to be the maximum expected efficiency of self-healing. I.e. 10% is lost to over-healing. On most fights the over-healing is closer to 30%-50%. Obviously this really is fight dependent. It's not really a convincing proof. It's using a fixed incoming DPS based on logs, so it includes all the down time, phase transitions, tank swaps, etc. Also it's based on 8-man fights or nightmare pilgrim so the incoming dps is very low. It doesn't account for over-healing. Basically every simplification enhances the apparent value of the healing relic. If something needs multiple advantages to just barely come out ahead I have to question the conclusions.

And yet yllesius is correct that many of the models being used are not reflective of reality. I don't know why people think that sticking every boss in a blender and hitting purée will give them all the info they need to tank. To evaluate relics you need to consider the effectiveness of each. A war hero defense relic does absolutely nothing if you are not taking melee/ranged damage - this can account for a large percentage of the fight. The heal relic is devalued when it over-heals. The value of "on use" relics are enhanced by periodic spike damage but can be very bad/awkward on some fights. Anyways, I'll keep your blog in my bookmarks and see if I can comment on anything. I see you are putting points in Expertise which is a really terrible talent. Moving those points to Upheaval will give you higher dps and a higher uptime of Force Synergy.

It's a no-so-obvious bug in Mr Robot so no need to be snarky. You actually have 34% defense - because of the bug it's not showing right. This is pretty far up the diminishing returns curve so you would benefit from dropping some defense and moving it into absorb. Search google for "swtor minimum squishiness" if you are interested in a way to distribute stats optimally (for one definition of optimal that is).

I think the current system is fine. There are a lot of different ways to define need. For myself, I consider need to be making use of the item in some way other than vendoring. That doesn't mean I recklessly hit need on everything that drops (actually I rarely run flashpoints or group finder so it doesn't come up much) - if the item is important to someone of course I will pass. Now some people are proposing solutions to make the system better. I see two approaches people are taking: (a) restricting loot rolls, and (b) creating more roll options like "need for companion", etc. I see enough problems with both to reject them. Restricting loot rolls not only makes a lot of people annoyed it actually doesn't solve the problem in the first place! People will be annoyed because they may be looking for certain mods, or a certain look, or gear for companions, or crafting materials, or they like the name/icon of the item or any other reason under the sun. To me any of those reasons are valid to need on an item. I am not saying that they are more important than gearing up but the option should exist for having a reasonable shot at the item. As for solving problems this proposal simply doesn't stand up. Consider a dread guard geared marauder rolling need on a medium armor strength columi item. Oops the system just failed at it's goal. Ok so now we include an item level check. But of course we have all seen where the next tiers itemization makes it worse than the current tier. So now the poor marauder is stuck with a higher item level crappy gear and can't roll on a better one. It would also be impossible to "side-grade" for a different itemization. As for creating more loot roll options, well this quickly turns into a mess. Is main-toon off-spec higher priority than third-alt main-spec? What about second-alt off-spec vs. main-toon companion. Yuck! Keep me out of that mess. I actually liked the original story mode loot system. You got to see all the awesome loot that dropped and no arguments over who gets what because it's all pre-assigned. Unfortunately some people couldn't handle not winning loot and there were enough complaints to get that changed. Anyways I would suggest to all people who want to avoid drama - please talk it out with the other people in the group. Sure there may be the occasional idiot but the vast majority of people are happy to pass on loot if you let them know you want it.

It's true that the vast majority of time spent in the game is doing trivial tasks, but I don't think it's worth optimizing gear for that content. If you are in EC nightmare there is no point in optimizing for Soa, dailies, etc. At the same time there are people whose highest level of content covers the whole spectrum of the game. If the most you do is dailies every day then the healing relic and absorb relic may very well be the best for you. This is what I recommend. Keep each type of relic up-to-date in case it turns out to be useful. I am perfectly fine with this (although "vast majority" is an overstatement imo). I only have a problem when people say war hero relics are the best for every imaginable scenario.

Yes, I personally believe the absorb proc and matrix cube are both terrible. In general I feel there is too much emphasis on "averages" in this forum. There is no doubt that war hero relics will provide a higher average mitigation in just about any fight you can imagine. The point I want to make is that there are often periods in every fight where the incoming damage is very high above average. This is the point in time when defensive stats are at their highest potency. Deflection is 5% melee/ranged defense on average. Pretty awful - but if you use it at the right time you become nearly immortal. There can be no proof that one is better in general than the other because it depends on the fight. I will leave it to the individual to decide which is better. This is how it should be, because when new fights are released there is no one to ask which is better and every fight can be defeated with different strategies.

How much does your war hero relic help when tanking zorn, or stormcaller, or not tanking vorgath, or not taking damage on kephess, etc, etc, etc? Saying that all other relics are sub-par is absolutely silly. Get both, use the best one for whatever fight you are on. The factors that determine this choice are: (1) % of time taking melee/ranged hits, (2) % of incoming damage that is melee/ranged, (3) frequency of melee/ranged damage spikes, (4) farm vs. progression content.

20:41:28.527 Adsoyo's Force Lightning heals Adsoyo for 617, causing 617 threat. 20:41:44.993 Adsoyo's Force Lightning heals Adsoyo for 617. 20:43:05.614 Adsoyo's Force Lightning heals Adsoyo for 617, causing 366 threat. 20:41:20.179 Adsoyo's Dark Charge heals Adsoyo for 228, causing 228 threat. 20:41:44.993 Adsoyo's Dark Charge heals Adsoyo for 228. 20:45:16.127 Adsoyo's Dark Charge heals Adsoyo for 228, causing 95 threat. 20:44:09.660 Adsoyo's Hollow heals Adsoyo for 3085, causing 3085 threat. 20:41:19.662 Adsoyo's Basic Medpac heals Adsoyo for 282, causing 282 threat. I picked these lines out of a log. So dark charge and force lightning both cause 1 threat per healing, and 0 threat for over-healing. From a mechanical perspective the heals cause 50% threat multiplied by the 2x threat modifier for being in dark charge. Similarly, hollow is worth 10% of your health as threat as long as it doesn't over-heal. Medpacs also cause 1 threat per healing.

I do carry around different relics, however the latest round of content has me mostly using the dread guard on use relics. The on use power relic used to be nice on fights where there was nothing to defend/shield but the changes to tank threat and the higher endurance on dread guard tank relics make this one kind of pointless. I also carry around war hero relics but I find in EC the on use relics are a lot better. There is a lot of time in every fight where you are either not taking damage or are only taking force/tech attacks. This devalues the static stats of the war hero relics. EC has very predictable phases which makes it easy to take advantage of on use relics. I personally don't like the absorb proc relic. It's nice, but shielding an attack is already like winning the lottery. Absorbing a little bit more of a relatively small hit doesn't do anything for me. I will continue to replace each type of relic as they are upgraded to be ready for future content that might make them superior. I don't keep multiple sets of tank gear. That would be very expensive to maintain and it would siphon gear or crafting materials from other people that need it. With the Tionese/Columi/Rakata tokens it was easier to create multiple sets because chances were good that no one could use it, but now everyone can use the tokens. Any extra gear usually goes to off-specs, alts, recruits. Plus a lot of gear gets reverse engineered even when people need it to better benefit the guild. The relics are a nice way to customize gear without spending a lot of credits. As an assassin there is not really a lot of choice in spec. You might move a point or two around but it won't make much difference either way.

Personally I would love an operation where storytelling is the focus. Outside the operation there is a questing zone introducing the major players, the conflicts and themes, while leaving some mysteries. Maybe even a couple flashpoints that continue the story. Inside the operation the encounters are all tied to the story and a quest line guides you through. The quests doesn't simply have to be "kill X boss" but maybe collecting intelligence from a computer and using it to defeat a future encounter or even modify the encounter based on how successful you were at slicing the computer. E.g. There is a tech deleting/scuttling the computer during the encounter. If you are very successful you learn how to disable an impenetrable security system that leads to an extra boss (or gives you extra loot on the next boss) (or you learn some neat lore). Or something - I'm not really an expert on these things. I like the ideas in this thread like "assaulting a space station/military base". This would be sort of like having Taris, Kaon, Lost Island, and a rak ghoul operation released at the same time - only with a bit more cohesive structure between them.

There was a thread many months ago very similar to this one - it has a lot of good discussion, although some of it is out of date: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=469773

After defusing a mine the mines in the previous row all turn red after a few seconds. If you deactivate the mine field too quickly after defusing the final mine this trigger still happens. Wait a few seconds before deactivating the mine field and it should work properly. This should probably be fixed at some point but luckily the solution is trivial. Edit: Just wanted to point out that this happened before the patch as well so it's not new.

This is what I do. I don't refer to mods as "high endurance/low endurance" - I call them "high willpower/low willpower". What do I need more willpower for anyways? I'll take the ones with the highest endurance + mitigation, which is the same as "low willpower". Endurance augments are the last place to look for more HP. Changing a "high willpower" mod for a "low willpower" mod gives you more points of endurance than you lost in mitigation. This is very much *not* true on 16-man. The difference in damage on large hitting attacks is usually 2x and sometimes almost 3x compared to 8-man. Time is often much more important on 16-man than efficiency. Even one or two seconds can be crucial.

A lot of people will say that mitigation is the only way to go but it really depends what kind of content you are doing. This is the opening of a fight on Stormcaller 16-man NM: 21:09:20.851 2s Zap Attack 4907 elemental 21:09:22.472 4s Zap Attack 4907 elemental 21:09:23.558 5s Electric Discharge 12208 elemental 21:09:25.565 7s Zap Attack 4706 elemental 21:09:27.077 9s Zap Attack 4706 elemental 21:09:28.666 10s Zap Attack 4706 elemental It's ~85% more damage than on 8-man and this is after the nerf! You really need a lot of hp to give the healers a chance. An unshielded mortar volley on this fight does ~11.5k damage - if deflection is not available you will take a beating. Here is part of a log from Kephess the Undying 16-man HM: 23:31:00.228 11s Wrist Laser 8655 energy 23:31:02.071 13s Power Punch 5570 kinetic 23:31:03.274 14s Power Punch 5571 kinetic 23:31:05.057 16s Wrist Laser 8655 energy Doesn't look that bad does it? Only 28k or so damage - pretty easy on the healers. But I shielded both of the Power Punches, unshielded they do ~13.7k damage. An hp buffer makes tanking this fight much more reliable. My advise would be to look at the fight you are doing to see if it benefits from more mitigation or more endurance.

Agreed, it's really a choice between very underwhelming talents. I just didn't want to give the impression that Rapid Recovery was a super-awesome talent to have.