Best wishes to all of you, your families, friends, all the people you care for. I hope they all stay safe!! And that you find kind people to help you deal with whatever comes your way these days and also in the following weeks and months.

That's one, but not a good one ;-) ...meaning I tried it and didn't work for the way I like to position my hand on a mouse. Thanks for pointing it out nevertheless :-)

Yeah, some things are just too painful. Gotta let go! ;-) No good gaming mouses available for lefties, afaik, alas...

As I wrote in the Fury/Concentration thread: The main problem with clipping in Carnage is that it imbalances the three specs of the class making its sustained spec pointless in competitive raiding. I'm all for having a high skill cap, though. Ideally, a spec should provide consistent numbers for 95% of players and offer the best 5% additional challenges. The funny thing is, BW had that with RNG elements of specs. Those demanded planning ahead for experienced players. BW basically eliminated that from all specs of the game. Instead in Carnage we now have the clipping thing. So now the last 5% are not dependent on RNG and thus theoretically the same for everyone, but instead it's now dependent on being able to play the game without latency problems: There's just no way of playing clipping Carnage on 58+ APM in 16 man content from an Australian server or even 8man in Germany if you're living in the countryside :-) All that being said, I simply hate Carnage's clipping option because I can't get it to work in Ops for me the way I can make Annihilation dot tricks work and I clearly need to l2p! ;-)

The majority of players who contributed to this thread were doing so from a PVE standpoint. One of the reasons why the spec is underperforming in PVE is exactly because it's so effective in PVP due to its CC immunity that buffing it's output (which needs to be done for PVE where CC immunity is not at all an asset but lack of pure DPS is very much a problem) would make it too strong in PVP. BW has historically always been extra careful about buffing Fury's DPS, since it's always been one of the strongest specs in PVP. Which is why I wrote above that as long as BW refuses to introduce PVP specific ability effects/values and/or PVP specific talents/utilities (as is common practice in many other MMOs), classes in this game will never be balanced neither in PVE nor PVP.

I quite like that idea :-)

Sadly so. This way there's still no place for Fury in PvE - unless they nerf Carnage harder than they can afford to...

This is so wrong.

I give you credit you did some thinking, but I think you'd be better off - and also the matter discussed -, if you dropped a bit of the attitude you got going :-) I will try and yet explain it from another angle, going back to the fight mechanics I listed. (We could probably shorten the discussion if you had played those fights both on sustained and burst specs of the same class in the same difficult mode. Because then, your could experience your misunderstanding first hand: Try play Operator IX NiM on Telekinetics Sage (yay!) vs. Balance (meh) or Tyrans on Gunnery (meh) and afterwards Assault (yay!). However, I will try to explain it from the model you are trying to defend. Key point: The damage spikes you got in your burst curve are a huge (!!!) asset on any kind of combat situation that is not a dummy! For almost every fight - except stupidly easy ones like Nefra - there will be downtime for dps players. And after every phase of downtime all burst classes that newly engage their target will profit from the initial spike in their curve. The same goes for target swapping, since all sustained classes are heavily reliant on dots, meaning frqeuent target swaps with short living adds hurts their effectiveness. So if burst classes overall DPS is as high as sustained classes PLUS the huge benefit in downtime heavy or add heavy combat, you would need to play burst classes on everything but Nefra - if your objective is effective dpsing. I tend to agree, though, that looking at class design now in comparison to vanilla, Devs have gone a little too far down the route of separating sustained and burst specs, basically eliminating "inbetween" specs, though their listing proclaims Fury or Dot Slinger to be. Saying, I'd make the spikes and valleys less drastic on burst classes, but I'd also decrease ramp up time and dot durations for sustained specs in general. However, a significant difference in long term output between specs that profit from peaks in their dps curve to those that don't must remain.

Yeah that's in the same line what I wrote above: Devs have several times not been able to foresee what good Carnage players were going to do with the mechanics they designed. See the double Gore (now Ferocity) window thing (Devs: "We were surprised, that was never intended") or clipping ever since the travel time/damage registration difference had been discovered. What's more, even when that was already known for Vicious Throw, they introduced yet another ability with a long delay from activation to damage registration (TST). Has the Ferocity buff ever been altered to account for ability activation rather than damage registration? Or has the long asked for stack system for Ferocity been implemented? Or any other simple solution that would make it actually possible to balance the spec on the basis of what it was intended for to be played? Well... However, I see no logic in saying: Devs failed to foresee how more DPS was going to be squeezed out of the spec and I therefore demand they continue to pretend they're not aware of the imbalance this has been creating. It'd be much more logical to turn Ferocity into a stack based ability and then rebalance Marauder sustained spec against burst spec the way it's supposed to be done by BW's own proclaimed standards. BTW: I will also only write this once in this thread. Although I'm at my desktop, but I've been writing this too often in other threads in the last three years ^^

Yep, it has been since 3.0. I still can't get my head round how anyone could have thought Anni needed a 3rd dot. Anni's 2.X. class design was a masterpiece. Everything after that ultimately lead me to quitting to play this game regularly.

Because fights are designed differently. Operator IX NiM Datacores require burst damage and the coordination demand of killing two of them within 5 seconds makes dot classes (which tend to be sustained) unsuitable for said coordination. Same with burst requirements for Styrak NiM Adds, droids on Revan HM or generally, fights with difficult add based mechanics. Single target fights with difficult enrage requirements and maybe soft enrage mechanics will ask you to chose sustained DPS classes (meaning classes with superior overall output): Writhing Horror NiM, Kephess (TFB) NiM, Dash'roode & Titan 6 NiM, Tyrans NiM, Grob'thok NiM, Bulo HM, Coratanni HM etc. If the latter bosses are equally well played on a burst class with same long time DPS level, it really makes no sense whatsoever to play sustained classes in the first place.

https://i0.wp.com/mindpluckd.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Denial.gif Well, noone can stop you from making up your own reality :-)

Absolutely not: The cases in which a spec with a slow ramp up time would make sense in this weird mixup, is a fight with middle duration that does not require burst periods. In any other scenario imaginable you would always chose the burst spec, if "very long period of time damage" was equal. The concept of burst vs. sustained is simply this: https://boosteria.org/wp-content/uploads/dps-and-burst.jpg

The fact that Carnage as a burst spec has nonsensically been competitive with Anni in sustained DPS and at times even outperformed it has been a conceptual flaw for most of SWTOR's history. For a period of time this was a result of the double gore windows that, as devs admitted later, had not been what they meant the spec to be doing in the first place. The specs are supposed to be, and vanilla pretty much had them there, is: Anni for best sustained DPS by a significant margin, long setup, very little burst on demand Carnage for strong burst DPS on demand with short setup Fury for supreme burst DPS with no steup, but not so easy to time without losing a lot of overall DPS For those who are not aware: Strongest sustained AoE is actually Anni, if you know how to make your dots jump between mobs, for if you do, you never have to reapply them. Strongest burst AoE should go to Fury, though. Atm it's with Carnage. The route the Fury change is going, is basically a clever one, since it affects Fury's sustained DPS, that had been a bit too low even by what I said above, but doesn't affect PVP as much. The problem is, it should haven been more sustained, but if you just increase the number, Blade Barrage will become more important than it's meant to be rotationally. Buffing Force Crush a bit as well might do the trick. Either way, class balancing will remain unnecessarily difficult, if SWTOR refuses to introduce PVP only traits to its class design.

There's even more now with new movies coming out every year. My former guildmates who left the game for other MMOs are still saying they'd rather play SWTOR, if the game provided more content more frequently and wasn't as far behind in terms of general gameplay, QOL stuff and player population. The last one obviously being a consequence of the former stuff. Star Wars is the strongest franchise in pop culture. That's the game's biggest chance, yet maybe also its worst enemy: The longer I played the game, the more I got the impression execs relied solely on that and didn't invest enough resources into a property that's generelly associated with high class entertainment on the highest professional level. Looking at almost any other MMO, especially the most successful one, SWTOR doesn't hold up the way a Star Wars movie does against any other SciFi/Action movie. That's why I'd suggest you should pick up the pieces very fast now, invest all the resources you can and even acquire more, and use the Star Wars hype to bring the game to the professional level Star Wars is generally associated with. "Picking up the pieces" would mean cross server queuing, as I explained above: It's by far the most effective way to boost group content experience for everyone and overcome the problems of declining server populations. If the reason for not doing this is officially "database layout" as stated in the bad feelings podcast quoted several times in this thread, I'm 8 times facepalm: one for every Star Wars movie.

Thanks for the info. The explanation Keith gives there (at about 30:00, if anyone else wants to check) doesn't sound too solid to me, though: Anyone would have guessed that it's not trivial technically, but any "database layout", which was the only specific explanation Keith gave, can be changed. I'm sure it's a pretty big and costly change at that. But cross server queuing is still the one thing that could have turned things around for SWTOR - at least, if it had been implemented say about a year ago. Other MMOs show that it's possible and the boost it brought for group content was enormous. I think it's shortsighted not to allocate the needed resources into that. Cause that's what any change comes down to in the end: Anything is possible, it's always just a matter of resources allocated. Any of you guys us could easily write a list of things implemented in the game that any regular player could have guessed beforehand are not a good priority. E.g. I doubt that GSF had a good return on invest. Cross server queuing is certainly an enormous invest. But are SWTOR devs aware of its return? I doubt it.

Did I miss something or why is server merging and the problems it causes discussed instead of cross server queuing for all group activities in the game? It's a far more elegant and long term solution.

It was interesting to see what you meant to do with the story in such detail. However, the fact that so many people apreciated what it did for them so much, shows that the game's storytelling was maybe not implemented all too well. Personally, I think this is partly due to chapter timing which pretty much ripped the story in pieces. Also the Jedi part was Vanilla, so that's way back. Either way, my main concern is that SWTOR has moved from a vast open world experience with 8 unique story arcs into a one size fits all corridor content game. It's very much like why people who loved Dragon Age Origins hated Dragon Age 2. I'd love to see SWTOR return to exploring vast planets like Alderaan or Voss instead of narrow quest hubs. But, alas, that's probably not gonna happen. Since SWTOR has gotten so narrow, the argument has been "story driven MMO" and I do agree such a concept can work, if your storytelling and cinematics are as enticing as say in the Mass Effect Series (especially in the first two games). But the game engine of SWTOR alone puts limitations to that. And, going full circle, storytelling in SWTOR is not as good as it would have to be to make up for the letdowns I listed above. Very sorry to say that, because all that being said, I appreciate the lengths you guys have gone to working on the game. I just think a few management decisions as to where to go with this game have been substantially wrong. On a side note, going token based endgame loot to command crates and half the way back was not a wise thing to do and you could have known how players would dislike it and why. That's just a general motivation killer and I'm surprised to see you still haven't abandoned the system completely. I don't mean to be rude, but if all this is not only about lack of manpower, it might be a wise thing to go for a nice cup of coffee with some of the guys of the vanilla team and just ask them why they did things in specific ways. Maybe you could get inspiration from that. It seems to me some things from the old days got changed in a process where noone was aware you were doing away with stuff that players appreciated on a subconscious level. Hence some of the salty criticism that seemed to lack objectiveness.

I’m quitting the game. Here’s a very big THANK YOU to everyone who played with me, especially to all my long time guildmates of „Taking the Jawas to Alderaan“. And very especially to Silvane, our sweetheart "pink pony", who must have been the dearest person in all of SWTOR. Also a big bow to Oofalong, my fellow dedicated Sentinel and one of the nicest people the game has made me meet. And thx Kristina/Dulfy, KNJ, Gorband and a lot of people who probably won’t read this, since they quit the game long before me. Also a big thank you to everyone who’s worked on SWTOR with dedication. Up to 3.0 it’s really been a blast. Which leads me to... WHY? Short answer: Force Melt Medium long answer: All my long time guild mates and favourite fellow SWTOR players have left the game a while ago – mostly for similar reasons as mine: I loved the feel of open world gaming on vast and beautiful Star Wars planets with 8 (!!!) different storylines. But that obviously ended with 3.0. Since then it’s streamlined corridor content that made any kind of specific fantasy you established for your characters obsolete. Big downer for me, and pardon me, but I can’t see Lana’s or Theron’s face anymore after doing all chapters with several alts. Not enough raiding content in the second half of the game’s life cycle. Generally lost my trust that the game is going in the right direction. In the first two years I didn’t agree with every move devs made either. But I had the impression they knew their players, their playstyle and what players wanted and made somewhat reasonable decisions based on that understanding. In short: I trusted that devs knew what they were doing. I lost that trust and thus the trust in a long term perspective for the game. CXP gearing is the worst offender showing that, and for me, the last one. „Streamlining“ everything, thus killing uniqueness in the game and imagination and creativity on the players‘ side. Every class plays the same now, quests are the same, story is the same. I don’t feel free in this world anymore. Last point brings me back to my short answer: I could have lived with all that’s bothering me these days, if I could at least still do all that „streamlined“ corridor content with the ingenious spec design of Watchman Sentinel that was killed with 3.0. The 4 GCD rotation with Cauterize proc interplay is still the best rotation design any class in any RPG / MMORPG has ever had imo. Learning that post 2.X. devs never understood what players loved about the vanilla design of that spec and that altering its beauty basically meant turning the spec into something completely different and alienating the most loyal fans of it, was the beginning of my losing trust in what is being done with SWTOR. I’m aware this is a very personal and probably unusual way of looking at it, but the game has given me so much in its first two years that I wanted to give my honest reasons for leaving it. I sincerely wish everone continuing SWTOR all the best. And thank you again for playing with me. El’ethon / Rick / Ardarell_Solo / chameleon2000 / Boris PS: I’ve already promised my stuff to someone, so the answer’s no 😉

You only "need" something to be efficient since gearing up your character has been connected to a massive amount of grinding required. Until 5.0 you got your gear by doing what it is for: PvPing only for PvP gear, endgame PvE raiding only for endgame raiding PvE gear in the required quality for each of the difficulty modes. The rest of your time you just did what was fun. And if there was any grinding, it was for vanity stuff or credits. That made players feel at liberty with their playstyle. Now they feel coerced by a system that really nobody seems to like. It needs to be put to an end asap imo for the sake of the game and its players.

I think this will be a neverending process, simply because MMO players will always be looking for the most effective way of grinding and focus on that, no matter how small the advantage. I'd rather have Dev time allocated to new stuff instead of continuous readjustments of CXP values and the monitoring of its effects. But I'm just an old fart who loved playing an open world SciFi RPG with class specific story arcs and cinematics that actually made you feel you lived in a Star Wars universe - rather than endlessly trudging down predefined one-way corridors following a storyline far far away from classic Star Wars. Where anything unique you had established for your different characters is levelled into one generic story with little or no regard to class specific character traits and that only differs in the companions that stay alive. And now we’re supposed to grind that exact stuff to gear up for outdated endgame content, always shifting our focus depending on the latest CXP adjustment? Well…

Thanks for the detailed info. My thoughts on the "appropriate delivery mechanism": No new Command ranks please. I have 10 alts on the bench atm that I used to and loved to play regularly. I don't have the nerve to push more than the two character's I have been working on since 5.0 trough any Command Ranks whatsoever and I'm hearing the same thing from friends and guildies. So please do determine a different delivery mechanism. Otherwise I will be having a very hard time trying to find reasons to stick to SWTOR.

I'm impressed you have 2 different phrases to combine with "cry". Another reason why PvP and PvE gearing has to be kept on separate systems. The only thing I can side with is that you shouldn't throw gear at people for mindlessly grinding stuff. Attach it to the hardest content like you said you would. All this adjusting CXP / components numbers is just shifting the focus points of the grind, it will still be a grind: quantity of play instead of quality of play like it should be. As long as you object to correct that you will continue to lose players. Besides, every command rank you add will be a reason for players not to return. You really expect returning players to grind 400 levels to see the new operation once it's done? You bet they'll stay in the competition MMO games that must not be named here instead.

I don't like having to play PVP to get the best gear for my favourite PvE encounters. Numbers would have to be much higher than the ones you're planning for me not to feel forced to do sth I don't like doing in the first place. I'd agree gearing was to easy in 4.0, but that was mostly due to highlighted HM operations. Before that gearing in both PvE and PvP was better than in any state of the game past 5.0. You moved the speed of gearing from depending on skill and organiszation to depending on mere play time. This really, really puts me off.