Thank you for the great guide. Let this be a place to provide gear progression for 2 man without the need to find larger parties. With the current server population, this might be a perfect solution to many, also for well geared players, this will provide entertainment.

I just want to a little something for developers to consider. These aspect might help keep some of the player base happier. RESPECT FOR RAIDERS Create top tier difficulties dungeons/instances that is tough to beat with rewards that will stand them apart from the rest. I come from FFXI, where the first wyrm was down months after it was introduced and the first relic weapon took a guild a year to farm to equiped on their first paladin. Where reward was rare and only found on the hardcore players devoting tremedous time and effort to perform tasks that few could imagine. Provide means to record the time for: 1) Dungeon clear time taken 2) Instance total kill percentage 3) Key boss kill speed 4) Amount of dungeon cleared 5) World boss kill timing, (Does not allow ppl beyond party to hurt bosses once claimed). HONOR PVP SKILLS Allow customisation of gear cosmetically to identify/titles/symbols above players with higher ranks. Prevent gear vs gear progression, if some newbie have a better skill in PVP he should win in a fight. It should not be determined by the gear they collect. PVPers should be able to flaunt their skills over other where everything remains equal. PROGRESSION FOR THE CASUAL/SOLO Give a series of progression for the casual to earn their gear with challenging contents developed for duo/solo with companions. These should not include top difficult to obtain raid gears mentioned above, that takes a lot of commitment from hardcore raiders to obtain. Remove the rage timer, allow for insane solo. If someone takes 3 hrs of effort to kill a boss that takes 16ppl to accomplish, so be it. Let them upload their fraps, keeps the soloer imaginative in seek for means to accomplish crazy tasks. At least provide everyone something to stay in the game.

I agree, it would be great to have some solo instances that rewards with substantial effort. No point shutting people off from enjoying the game. The more alternative to attract a larger crowd better. Currently there is guy shouting for the past 45mins looking for a FP, there are only 11 in the fleet. It will be sometime before someone just burn out from repeating looking things to do before they quit.

Was trying to form runs recently, with 8 in the fleet it become a very difficult task. A cross server group finder would be great.

Been trying to do stuff recently, the server pops getting low and it became difficult to get a party together. Anyone know any HM FP that can be soloed or duoed (from the republic)?

Before 1.2: Look like a car, feel like a car, drive like a scooter After 1.2: Look like a bicycle, feel like a sponge, but BW call it a car.

This nerf is completely uncalled for in PvE. Had not seen a group treating a sage as a poorer healer than a combat medic. The amount of heal we could put down based on the current ammo management is pretty tight, this would further make the situation worse. Our primary healing ability is hurt badly. If all this is to cater for better gears, I would rather it remove it from our T2, just return us our healing efficiencies. Working as a combat medic is tough enough in OPs, please do not nerf our ability to function in PvE just cause you could not deal with PvP issues.

Gear progression should not form the basis to rebalance class abilities. With PVP and PVE, it is more important to consistantly keep the skills. Just give lucklustering Tier II if they feel the healing is too overwhelming. No point only allowing Tier II equiped troopers to function only in PVP while the rest is basically useless.

Ewoks gear!

Off the thread. Is there a republic counterpart, Essele is a pain to duo. Is there a flashpoint for non-empire to possibly get their alloy duo?

It is great idea to enable single/duo players to have endgame progression. An additional option for people to enjoy the game they want it. Everyone spend 15 dollars per month, everyone should have some attention. To have it better than the current raid gear? I would say no. To have it comparable? Yes. The raiders current have the ability to progress to Rataka. Let the solo/duo progress till Columni or even something closer, with the upcoming new mods removal, this would be great. Let there be a single tier difference. Provide challenge for the solo/duo to farm their craft materials for their tier. Let the solo/duo teams perform 2+ heroics instances to obtain some new tokens, to obtain some better gears. HM FPs can be tweaked for 2man+2companions. If they permits, they should just create a 50lvl HMFP just like when we encounter BT/Ess FP at lower levels. Let them farm those with solo with their companions.

This would be a great idea. Fully support.

Everyone paiy to play this game. So I guess fair to ask for many means to get to the same end. Raid takes more organisation skills and should get a piece to show off their effort. These pieces should have an augment slot. Crafters should have means to craft similar gears, but I still feel they should create an additional stats similar to expertise to cater for PVE raider. A lot of comments is just simply that the raid gears perform so much better in world encounters that devaluate the crafters gears. Why not just keep an additional stats so they behave better (20-30% better) in Hardmodes and NMM. And make items with this new stats only drops from raids. For non-raiders, no point trying to get em and if they should whine, tell em to raid for it.

Crafters would still need to raid to get material, so effectively no different from now. Except raiders will have to buy an additional piece from em, plus spend credits removing mods from the gears. Just an additional hurdle, that say, if ur a raider, please save your millions for a blank 3+1 orange armor that will be low in supply coming 1.2. Any case, this tier of crafting is only available to raiders since material drops from RAID.

I totally agree with you. The ability for players to do stuff at their pace tend to attract a certain crowd till the realisation that their progression is stopped by group content. The design of the game should stay consistant, BW shift with more added raids should turn these ppl away. Hopefully we would see sufficient raiders to keep the servers alive.

To claim that the crafted gear should be viable seems a little farfetch. BW just make the process of gearing up with an additional hurdle, now once u have obtained ur gears from ops, u takes the mods outs and spend a tons of credits to get an orange gear. If BW is looking to close down the gap between non-raiders and raiders, this ultimately fail, with the new augment + detaching mods, it will be just as the same situation now. Few find the 49s purple useful, and will continue to find it so. It just means everyone will have to get augment orange to close down the gap. The additional effort is simply not worth it, just leave the hard content and gears for those that can do it and get it. If they are looking to close the gap, let the crafters makes 50+ mods, which will be in demand, but it also means less will do the ops that does not provide them better mods. A better approach will have to be taken or looked at. Simple added aug. to armor probably will not cut it. Anyway, the ingredients probably need raid, so this basically does not give those who wanted to craft only. For the raiders, we just have to make an alter ego to craft our aug. orange. So before 1.2 is out, it means all serious raider should consider going off to level a armtech, armormech and sytheweaver.

I agree, they should simply include an additional stats similar to expertise that effect raiders performance in hardmode/NNM instances.

Agree with the OP. Raids content should be made more difficult. It should provide a sense of achievement for the time and effort required to get them. Having three tiers of diffculty, BW should made a distinct change in difficulty. As for the reward system, I do have a different opinion. Gear should have some distinct advantage in different scenarios (PVE raiding contents and PVP). Expertise increase the effectiveness for PVP, could a similar stat be added to awarded for PVE raid contents gear, where these gears increase the effectiveness in higher difficulties such as HM and NMM instances. For the casual, they could still experience the content in Normal mode, with similar stats. Where as raiders, we would not seems to be some sort of elitist that show we could demolish world mobs more effective than them. The gear obtained in HM would effectively tier us to take on higher content (providing a constant gear chase to take on insane challenges where time and dedicate is required). In summary, I am asking for an additional stat to be added on PVE raid content gears to tackle higher difficulty without increasing the ability to differentiate the causals and hardcore raiders in world encounters.

With not much time on hands, the two man instances are great, just need more of them at diffferent level or at least makes the Companions a little more viable at time when you could not get a few more to join a run. If most of the instances could be managed with better Control tools or AI, the game will have a lot more content for those at endgame.

I have just started with tanking as a trooper (lvl16), this is a great guide, I was wondering where to place my points. Now I have a clearer direction. T'anks