you are right, we did do normal. This was a spontaneous raid, our first time in with no strats and we cleared to council and the exact bug you mentioned caused us to agree to return the following night and finish up after some bug research. We also had Soa reset several times randomly sub 10%, members getting thrown in the air while the boss crashed the floor and be stuck in "purgatory" as we started calling it lol. My point is we probably would have cleared the place first night w/o a single vid or strat were it not for the bugs, that's not a good thing IMO. I asked one of my officers on way in to EV, "think I should look up some strats?" his response was "nah, if they're anything like the FPs we'll have no problems figuring them out on the fly", he was right and that definitely isn't a good thing. Again, enrage timers are poor encounter design and really only make sense in the hardest mode on certain bosses IMO.

you make a good point, what I probably didn't do a great job communicating is my intention with the stacking power buff on death mechanic would be so the raid needs to work together and ensure the council members are killed in a logical order so the final one/two council members end up being the one(s) the tank(s) are on. This mechanic emphasizes strategy and coordination over raw numbers even though at first glance it doesn't look that way. the random buff mechanic can even be taken a step further in nightmare by making it so anyone who assists while they don't have the same buff as the final tank impacts the encounter negatively, for example a healer trying to heal when he doesn't share the tank's buff would actually heal the council member instead or a DPS beating on the council member when they don't have the same buff as the final tank would have all their damage done affect the final tank and not the council member. This would punish people for assisting at the wrong time and therefore require more raid awareness and strategy. as a side note, I rarely advocate "raw numbers" as a viable encounter primary mechanic as it's not fun, not replayable and very gear dependent; it's a lazy/unskilled way for an encounter designer to setup a fight and so all these enrage timers are kinda stupid IMO.

Hi Stephen, I'd like the option to apply to attend via web conference. There are several web conferencing providers out there who handle everything for you affordably and I would be happy to recommend a few we've used in the past. I've done several disaster recovery events in this manner and if they work for that, they'll certainly work for this.

we've recently cleared EV for the first time and I wanted to give a little feedback from a Guild Leader of a transferred semi-casual raiding guild. Annihilation Droid XRR-3: fight is fine as is, kinda easy but that's what it should be on normal for a first boss IMO. Good intro fight. Gharj: needs an additional mechanic in normal mode as this is a really boring fight as is. Ex. mechanics - *"have to jump and be in the air as the boss lands from his jump or take a damage spike" (timestamp boss's jump and give players 2.5? seconds to jump) *"stalactites fall from the ceiling each time the boss lands, hitting the platform that the raid is on and causing raid members to have to move out of the impact spot or take a damage spike" (pull code from Revan fight in Foundry and adjust art/density/damage/speed). Ancient Pylon: sort of a "chess event" (WOW, Khara), fine for what it is. We were pretty surprised that this was the boss and not the way to access the boss. Feels anti-climactic IMO, not sure how to change that w/o complete rework. I don't have an issue with these types of events but it should be clear that the event is the boss so players aren't left scratching their heads waiting for the real boss to spawn. The chess event had an obvious conclusion so players knew what to expect, this one doesn't. Infernal Council: I was excited about this one as it looked pretty cool and while it has promise, it lacks any depth. Add another mechanic in normal which gives the encounter some spice. Ex. mechanics - each time a council member is killed add a stacking buff to the remaining council members causing them to hit harder/gain health per stack. Also, add a rotating buff to the attacking player, this buff should randomly appear on additional raid members allowing them a "window of time" to assist the attacking player. Soa The Infernal One - I like this fight pretty much as is but it is buggy. One change I would make is to have the pylon (floating thing in Phase 3) cast a light spot or shadow to make it more intuitive where the tank should park the boss in order to pop his bubble as camera angles can get pretty wonky. Aesthetically the instance looked and sounded great and minus the bugs (there are many) it ran very well too so great job from your art team on this IMO. As a general Suggestions: I understand that the harder versions don't include additional fight mechanics, this is bad IMO. Hard modes should offer additional challenge by way of more cooperation and learning required, not raw numbers. Further, harder modes should unlock some additional content as a reward, perhaps a bonus boss or something that isn't available to normal mode with exclusive loot and bragging rights (Alganon from WOW is a good example). I would also make all boss damage output, percentage based to allow these encounters to scale with gear and keep updating the loot tables, this effectively increases the amount of content, give players more choices and adds re-playability. This should be done in hard mode FPs at the very least. I really dislike the auto-assigned loot in its current implementation, this should be a choice and not mandated. Further, allow those assigned loot the option to pass and let others of the same class roll for the item. Permit items to be traded to other members of the raid. It's a good intention but the implementation screams of poor planning and lack of experience. The above are simply suggestions and I'd love to see others' input in a similar format. *What do you like about each fight? *What is your favorite boss mechanic in SWTOR? *What is your favorite boss mechanic in another game?

still a bug and I'll confirm that this workaround still works, TY

I think the intention behind this system is cool but the implementation is HORRID, there is no way anyone on the Bioware team has any real experience with raiding from looking at the holes in this system. Here's why it sucks: 1) it is mandatory, is Bioware telling us we're too stupid to know how to assign loot in our own guild?! 2) this system doesn't check to see if someone has better gear in that slot before assigning loot to them. What if I want to give priority to my tanks and healers? Seriously, how do you force this on your players w/o closing that pretty major hole in your system first? 3) if someone already has better gear for that slot, the system doesn't look to see if that loot is an upgrade for someone else. 4) players who are assigned loot don't get the option to pass 5) Master Looter means NOTHING! I have a feeling that Bioware looked at how Rift handles loot with their dynamic content and tried (very poorly) to mimic it. Raiding is not dynamic content, most of the time people who raid together know one another, dynamic content is the opposite and so a system like this works for that format. At the very least this system should be optional and some Bioware employees need to get some raiding experience under their belt. Instead of alleviating headaches which I guess is the intention of this system, I'm left running damage control as my officers question why I brought our guild to this game.

I completely agree that each difficulty mode should add an additional boss mechanic to contend with on top of the existing mechanic. The additional mechanic should require a bit more learning and cooperation, not simply "raid-wide debuf..." type stuff but a real and engaging additional mechanic to tackle.

I think daily quest rewards are the problem, not crafting. Sure crafting still needs to be tweaked but an overhaul is a bit of an over statement. Problems IMO: 1) better mods are available thru dailies than crafting, this should be corrected 2) high level crafting mats are BOP, they should be BOE 3) We were "sold" on the idea that we could mod up and wear whatever gear we like when this is clearly untrue at end game because the NM Rakata gear is better then the crafted gear. The Rakata gear should come with empty mod slots. NM mode gear can include an augment slot as well to make it comparable to crit crafting gear. maybe a few more tweaks but you get the idea

had an idea that may help bring some actual PVP to Ilum: 1) give players a reason to be there, better gathering nodes etc 2) every 10-15mins identify one player from each faction as a "Rogue Agent" 3) Give the rogue agent a 15sec warning and then 30secs of stealth to get away from anyone they're nearby. 4) make the rogue agent FFA PVP flagged 5) mark an icon on the map of the "last known location" of the rogue agent, this is the location they were at when they got the warning. This will give others a general idea of where they may be. 6) mark an icon on the map of the rogue agent as a "safe spot" 7) rogue agent can't mount, stealth is limited to 10 seconds, run speed is normal 8) safe spot is at last half the map from the rogue agent's start location 9) it should be unlikely that the agent make it to the safe spot but possible 10) decent rewards for damaging/killing the agent, time based rewards for the rogue agent ranging from good to stellar the longer they stay up and the closer they get to the safe spot. 11) once the agent is dead another random set of agents is chosen this could be varied several ways like make it 2 random players from the same side, one random player based on population, extra rewards if the agent outlasts the other and even better if they kill the other. Obviously this could be used somewhere beside Ilum but Ilum is a great map for this, an urban map would be nice too. the purpose of this thread is really to get devs thinking (and players chatting) in a different direction for Ilum as I feel the 1.1 changes will only break Ilum worse for many servers. Please feel free to critique the idea and post your own ideas for fixing Ilum.

SUGGESTION: require an invite from an existing account in order to be permitted to create a character on high pop servers. This would ensure that new people are in fact creating toons on these servers because they have an actual tie to someone already playing on the server. as a side note: I made a thread in beta (SEVERAL months ago) with this suggestion as well as asking that Bioware had character transfers and a server merge plan in place at launch. I was flamed by fanbois and Bioware discretely deleted my suggestion thread. I reported this deletion to Bioware at the time and asked that the thread be put back, I didn't receive a reply.

why not? Rift has free UNLIMITED transfers on a one week CD. The queues on assigned servers are 100% BW's fault, they should make amends IMO. I transferred my guild from WOW and have some very upset guildies to deal with due to the queue on Shadow Hand (our assigned server). Most of my guys are working professionals who only have a few hours a night to play, they get to play for 30mins after waiting in the queue for hours, it's ridiculous. Bioware should offer free server transfers like Rift does AND should provide complimentary game time as we certainly didn't buy the game to sit in a queue. While in beta I asked for server transfers and a merger plan to be available from day 1 and was flamed and BW deleted the thread.

I love knock back, especially in huttball. Leave them alone PLEASE oh btw, I main a jugg so I'm the victim of knock backs constantly, still love them. Leave them alone they're fun.

^^^after careful investigation I've isolated your problem for you^^^

highest healing nearly always gets my vote

I would suggest being able to choose 1 not to get into, that way it is still a little random but you can avoid one if you like.

my eyes went wide and I was like *** lol?! when I saw the title to this thread but yea, 31 and I get rolled constantly. It's funny, if I'm near our ball carrier in huttball, they will peel off him just to kill me, which happens pretty fast and often. Had a sorc attack me 1v1 (he was level 16, me 31) and I couldn't get thru his bubble long enough to drop him to 75%, was pretty embarrassing. I played Sorc, assassin and merc in beta and they're all much better in PVP, can't speak to IA as I haven't played one yet. PVP is still fun but yea, Juggs need some love in a big way

I understand the lack of fluidity that the OP is talking about I think, ex. if I start to cast Ravage as a SW it always fails in PVP unless my oponent just sits there and eats it like a dunce. Also the lack of auto-attack makes it appear less fluid (it created a temp and "illusion" of action in WOW for example); this doesn't need to change IMO, players just need to recognize it for what it is and create their own tempo. As for arenas, I hate them and if BW puts them in I hope they offer nearly no reward as they kill BG if they're propped up anywhere near what Blizz does with theirs. Oddly enough, Blizz recognizes their mistake here and this is why they've released rated BGs (too little too late). In fact WOW is a prime example of what NOT to do with PVP IMO and I have friends that work at Blizz (sorry guys). PVP Ladders I think are a cool idea, especially if they add them to the website and allow you to pull that data to your guild site and social networking pages. This isn't going to "keep PVPers in SWTOR" tho. PVPers like every type of player need a few things to capture and keep their attention: 1) a goal they believe is worthwhile for both themselves and their group if they decide to be a part of one. 2) sufficient challenge attaining that goal 3) some outward sign that they're progressing toward that goal which sets them apart from their peers (rewards along the way). 4) a new, fairly different goal shortly BEFORE or right when they hit their initial goal. my PVP background if it means anything: I'm an old school Grand Marshal from WOW, had one of the most prolific PVP guilds in the game at the time (we held nearly every ladder spot for honor gained for a year straight on BDF). Top 3 first to hit rank 6 in Rift on my server, top 3 to hit 8 when it released (disagree with OP on Rift PVP btw, I like it a lot) and I've done a tun of PVP in other games like WAR, AOC and others.

I lmao when someone gets a good knock back on me, it's one of the main things that makes PVP in this game fun IMO. Don't nerf it, don't change it, love so please let it be (I main a SW btw so yea)

I'm a tank and if I get ANY heals (usually do) I MVP vote the top healer nearly every match. I've scored 4 goals in a single huttbal and gotten ZERO votes, not sure what else to do for MVP votes.

they need to add this now and then they need to FIX the queues. Having queues on "assigned" servers is a HUGE failure on the part of Bioware.

long queues on assigned servers is already a huge screw up for bioware

my guild was "assigned" to Shadow Hand, 45min queue not only that but we were put on different servers then our ally guild AND our adversary guild 5mins is an acceptable queue, not a minute more. This needs to be addressed now before it's too late