Same here.

I'm looking forward to testing this one. Are you aware, though, how drastically this will change priorities/rotation for the spec? On a side note, I had the impression that the way legendary items did things like that to WOW specs was greeted with a lot of excitement at first, but people grew tired fast of having to adapt their priorities and rotation in a much higher frequency as a result of aquiring certain items than they had to when changes to the spec itself were the only reason to do so.

I think that's an excellent suggestion. I've been asking for tactical items that bring back Sent/Marauder Watchman/Annihilation to its 2.10 state here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=962798 because I loved that playstyle so much and miss it. I used to attack every single mob in the game just for the love of how elegant Watchman played with its rhythmical 4 GCD rotation (that was basically moved to Vanguard Tactics) and the brilliant micromanagement it had for resetting Cauterize's cooldown with different abilities. Since 3.0. I do what most people in this game do: Avoid/skip all mobs that can be avoided to get to mission goals as fast as possible. Back in 2.10. Watchman/Anni wasn't one of the classes with max dps potential, which was fair game, since it didn't have the long ticking dots of other classes. With it's shorter dots it was a class capable of reasonable dps spikes, once it's (then pretty long) buildup had been established. If we could bring back that playstyle just for fun with e.g. a lot lower dps potential, that would be great. Maybe balancing issues could be avoided that way. I'm dreaming of: a tab in the disicpline's window named "archive" or "classical" that lets you pick, say 1.0-4.0 versions of a discipline (could be the most common choice of abilities for thoses stages when there wasn's a set discipline path) utilities could remain the current ones to chose from. If DPS ist reduced you will still not be able to create OP discipline/utility combinations marking the character as "classic X.X" to others somehow That'd be so much fun!

No. /5char

Nicely put and all true!

This. I find the complaints about "mindlessly killing random mobs exploit doesn't work anymore" disturbing. If you love the game you can just play the game. If you want faster/bigger rewards, it should require you to do more difficult content not a mindless hack & slay fest.

That's pretty much what I and a lot of better players than me wrote at 2.10 stage. Turning a shot dot medium damage, medium burst, zero AoE class into the same two dot class that the game already had was a pretty substantial change to something that not only wasn't broken but totally unique and very elegant - and still was easy to learn and hard to master, probably a bit more than now. Imo after 3.x. there may still be a core rotation and a priority list, but core abilities are so similar in terms of damage per GCD now that it doesn't make that much of a difference which ability sequence you go for, especially if we're not talking tunneling your target for at least a minute or so... I was happy to see that a lot of posters here showed their interest for the core mechanic of vanilla Watchman to return, even though so many players who loved what that was have long left the game. The funny thing about it was that the reason devs gave for the change was that introducing a new ability into 2.x. rotation was not possible because of Master Strike which at that point was a 2 GCD ability and did not leave room in a 4 GCD core rotation that already needed to incorporate Dual Saber Throw. (But in 3.0. every specc was supposed to get one new rotational ability.) The characeristics of 2.10. Watchman would now be fine with Blade Barrage as a single GCD ability having replaced it. If you turn Force Melt into a Cauterize resetting ability (dont really care if dot or instant damage really), you get a wonderful and engaging playstyle that's still not to hard to learn even for beginners. The Alacity bug, i.e. the effect ot the stat having breaking points instead of working by percent as intended, was hinted to be eliminated in the next expansion:

900+? Lucky you ;-) ty for giving that info

I haven't seen any or that drop from crates either, yet - speaking 250ish crates or so. Has anyone actually seen 252 gear or Crytals in a crate at all?

That would definitely make me return to the game. If a combination of tactical items could bring the specc close to its 2.6 state, I'd be in heaven. Meaning additionally: - Cauterize actually on 12 sec CD, with reset Proc by Merciless Slash, Slash and Dispatch - plus newly Twin Saber Throw, with propability like Merciless Slash - Force Melt's damage is reduced and dealt instantly. Force Melt has a chance to reset Cauterize.

So funny how OP makes a valid point about difficulty disparity that needs to be adressed and all he gets is "I had no problems", "Should have seen this in the old days" and tons of "Yeah the old days", but noone picking up the good suggestion he made. No wonder, there's less and less people motivated to actually help improve the game that way.

Progression tracking is always about competition, the whole concept is built around it - and this thread shows it in just about every comment made. Hence the terms leaderboard, first kill etc. etc. Players who dedicate themselves to this kind of activity hardly need anone's encouragement to do so. Putting that forward as motivation is just pretext and pretty obvious at that. Imo the last thing raiding at high difficulty levels in this game needs is pushing competition. Again, see comments in this thread. Progression tracking is only valid if done by the game itself or a game API that allows reading out the exact same data for everyone. That's the only way of ensuring fair game and that the rules for progression are not arbitrarily set by a third party with their own motivation who just happened to volunteer first - and if this was done by a third party it would have to be appointed by players - and then of course referees don't participate, rule setters even less so. I wouldn't trust anonye than game's devs to handle the whole PTS topic correctly e.g. If they are not willing to do tracking or provide methods for valid tracking it might indicate a certain attitude towards progression in general. Either way: Have fun playing GotM everyone :-)

I find it somewhat amusing to try and track progression on one single boss with rules that are way stricter than they used to be when there actually were enough people who dedicated themselves to complete NiM ops to actually speak of competition. That being said, PTS advantages have always been a hot topic regarding progression. To me, competition is only fair, if everyone has the same theoretical amount of time available for the task competed for. That's why I think anyone who played progression encounters on closed PTS should be excluded from live progression completely. Not happening, though, for obvious practical reasons. However, arguing that the PTS advantage is obtainable for all players is simply not true. I was lucky enough to get invited to one of the PTS phases a few years ago and after a few weeks I asked why I was pretty much the only German player there. Devs' answer was that it's simply easier for them to evaluate feedback posted on PTS forums that was written by native speakers, especially if rather complicated issues were being discussed. Added to this, the few German progression guilds that actually HAD been invited to PTS testings before had not contributed anything worthwile. They primarily used PTS to get a head start on progression rather than actually helping to refine the content made available to them. Even though it kinda cuts both ways, fact is: No non native speaking progression teams on any closed PTS for quite a while, as far as I'm aware of. Fairest/simplest way to deal with it imho would be to include the information how many players of a progression team have at least once tried the encounter on PTS in the tracking document and ask participating teams to be honest about it.

Friendly gods would aim for equal chances, though ;-) It obviously can't. But it can give everyone equal opportunities. No. Yes. However, here's what defines if devs of games with group content and thus social mechanics have done their job "better": See to it that dedication gives advantage, but balance the amount in a way that people whose circumstances limit the dedication they can give the game don't feel completely outcast. Otherwise you'll very soon be sitting in a very small pool of elitist no-lifers ;-)

Hi Leute, vielen Dank für die vielen Bewerbungen, da waren so viele nette Schreiben von Euch dabei, das war echt eine Freude zu lesen! Wir haben nun fairerweise die Leute, die sich zuerst beworben hatten und bei denen es beiderseitig passte in unseren Raidkader aufgenommen. Für alle, bei denen es nicht geklappt hat: Danke für Eure Bewerbungen! Wir halten Euch in diesem Thread gerne auf dem Laufenden, sofern sich in unserem Team etwas tut - was erfahrungsgemäß immer mal sein kann. Derweil Euch allen viel Spaß im Game und sonst! Mit lieben Grüßen, Ele

Hallo liebe SWTOR-Spieler auf Tulak Hord, Wir stellen ein Team zusammen, um in angenehmer konzentrierter Atmosphäre die Bosse aus Götter in der Maschine im HC und NiM-Endbosse zu spielen. Dafür suchen wir: Range-DDs Im Team sind Veteranen der Gilde „Taking the Jawas to Alderaan“, dazu die nettesten und besten Spieler, die wir in unserer Zeit in SWTOR kennengelernt haben - und genau solche Spieler wollen wir auch weiter kennen lernen :-) So weit, so floskelhaft, aber was heißt das konkret? So läuft es bei uns: Konzentriertes Spiel im Bosstry, relaxede Atmosphäre dazwischen Team geht vor Ego, Taktik vor Parser Konstruktive Kritik in respektvollem Ton, aber kein Perfektionismus Sauberes Mechanikspiel Wir behandeln alle Spieler (in unserem Team und außerhalb) freundlich und vernünftig Raidleitung: Juko Raid-Termine: Dienstag: 20:00 Uhr bis 22:30 Uhr Donnerstag: 20:00 Uhr bis 22:30 Uhr Sonntag: 20:00 Uhr bis 22:30 Uhr Interessiert? Dann schau doch auf http://www.to-alderaan.de vorbei, dort kannst Du ggf. auch Deine Bewerbung schreiben. Ingame via PN kannst Du Dich bei Fjollah melden. Liebe Grüße, El'ethon

No. And that was exactly my point :-)

These discussions are, sry for saying it so directly, downright stupid. There will always be different levels of skill, gear and general capability in the game. 4 people clearing sth doesn't say more than 8 people having trouble with sth. It's just proof of how divergent players in MMOs are and therefore how difficult balancing them is. Generally if you get complaints from both sides of the table, chances are, you're doing something right. What posters in the forums tend to forget/overlook is the fact that posting there proves an amount of dedication to the game that is not representative of the majority playing and thus financing it.

Thanks! And returning all the best wishes for everyone connected to SWTOR, devs, players, facility people, oh well, basically to all the world: Have nice and peaceful holidays and may the next year shower you with happiness, health and peace.

(bolded/underlined by me) Sounds like the bonus would also apply to characters already at Command Rank 300. But in the bullet points later on it says: (bolded/underlined by me) Which sounds like the CXP bonus is only for characters below Rank 300. So what's the actual deal?

I have to admit I like the fact that Concentration/Fury will definitely be the goto spec for raiding for the first time since launch (it already is for a lot of bosses). I assume this will get corrected once devs realize how their Fury buff lead to a new rotation that made that buff way stronger than the added Dot itself, but until then let's go raiding Conc/Fury :-)

Echt jetzt, ihr auch? Oh Mann :-(

I hadn't checked yesterday but last time I had, best Sentinel Conentration parses were ahead of Carnage/Combat parses. Yes, atm there's one Carnage parse (http://parsely.io/parser/view/312141/0) that's 10 DPS higher than best Concentration parse (http://parsely.io/parser/view/312031/0). But I think this is mainly because not many players have really tried to push Smash/Concentration to the limit. Once everyone adopts the new rotation and minmaxes their gear for it, I expect it to be slightly ahead on parsely as well.

Smash actually outperforms Carnage in sustained dps now.

Nice stance on this :-) Suggestion: Just make the weekly quest award a substantial number of CXP, maybe as high as 10.000.