I must be extremely lucky then, because I pug a lot of end game HM FPs (usually 2 - 3 a day) pretty much since GF has been out, and I rarely get the derp fests the other posters suggest they get. I typically pug as a tank or healer, so that could be part of it. I have had a few derp fest FPs that required me to quit / vote kick, but in my experience it is the extreme exception not the rule.

LOL, I see you conveniently ignored my previous response. Affliction: Automatic refresh based on application of another ability: mechanic Buffs other abilities: mechanic Therefore, not identical. Similar, but not identical.

Those two skills are not identical mechanically. Affliction is really only a setup dot which buffs other abilities (especially for lightning) and does low damage. Not to mention that in lightning spec, it auto refreshes so if you pay attention it is a fire and forget for the entire fight. In madness, affliction's benefit is the heal and the buff to Force Leech. Force rend does about 5% more damage (as a percentage of other abilities), and consumes no rage if used properly and doesn't buff any other ability. You should have chosen a different set of skills to illustrate your point.

I didn't see this one. One of my personal favorites.

That's HDCP which is a form of copy protection which performs the content encryption in hardware so that you can't perform a man-in-the-middle attack on the data stream. What you are describing is not DRM which is a form of content protect ensuring that only licensed users can access the content. Rather you are describing disallowing a feature solely on the premise that the hardware can't run the software at some arbitrary performance level. The problem is, that type of performance analysis is tricky at best and no sane developer would ever try it. I can't tell you how many times I've had software crap out because it checked for a specific version of Windows, and I just upgraded to the latest OS. Even though it would technically run fine. Same thing would happen in your OP. New version comes out and boom, the hardware certification process is broken. The only place that level of certification is done is in engineering software and that's because the software vendors are billion plus dollar companies only certifying 6 computer manufacturers and only a subset of other hardware like graphics cards. And even in that scenario, it still takes 6 months to certify new hardware. I do have my doubts about BW sometimes, but even they are not dumb enough to try that.

I would love it if BW put in a droid class. Make it relatively simple - 1 AC, 3 disciplines (tank, dps, and heals). It would be unique and could mirror across factions logically. No need for different animations and skill names. Only creatable @ lvl 60, need legacy level 30 to unlock. It would also force BW to make decent droid token and comm gear which would address those who have always complained about droid gearing. But I doubt it will happen. Would be nice though.

It's entirely possible that the energy cube spawned outside of the Tomb. I know of at least 2 spawn locations in the first area of the planet, one near the willpower datacron the other one near the imp outpost a little ways out from the initial base. (And I'm not imagining it. I was like "W.T.F?" when I saw them. Got a screenshot of the willpower one somewhere) If there is only 1 active on the planet at any one time, it's possible it's not in the Tomb.

No Arenas: No Huttball:

I always just turned the grass off because it was then easier to see the Rakata Energy Cubes on Belsavis for the datacron and then I was too lazy to turn it back on.

Unless they give you the model that they used (like Orderken does for healers), it's going to be difficult to map them to 190 gear. If you are up to it, you could just look at all the ops gear at the vendor, determine the stat budget for power / crit, then accuracy, surge and alacrity for 192 then scale it down to 190. That seems like a lot of work though. What I do for dps is get the good crafted Power / Accuracy implants and ear pieces, 4 accuracy enhancements (either crit / power) and 1 accuracy augment. That gets you close to 100% accuracy. Something like 99.6. That leaves three enhancements for surge / alacrity. I tend to favor surge though. Then I just use crit crystals and mods to play with my crit / power level.

What they should do is give each character a similar interface to how you move the Guild Ship. Select Planet, then Select the Bind Point and then give us a button to instantly travel to that point. That I could see paying travel fees for. Hell you could even put it as a character perk and charge 2 million to unlock it.

In general, I like the concept of having all the ops scale as long as there is still the option to run them at the original level. But, and it this really is par for course with BW, they ALWAYS swing too far on the pendulum. It's like they can't under ANY circumstance ever take a balanced approach. What they should have done is make 1 new OP and make a few old OPS scale. Then over the course of a year, slowly release all the old ops with scaled versions. That way, you get new content plus older content that is still relevant.

In general, I like healing on a sorc better, just because if you are over geared for operations, OP healing is basically just spam probes on everyone which is boring. If you are doing progression raiding, then OP & Sorc healing is about the same from a difficulty and interest perspective. PvP wise, I think both are fun just with different strengths. DPS wise, I'd have to go Concealment OP for both PvP and PvE. Only real downside is it's overall lack of AOE. Madness sorc was fun in 2.0, but suck now IMO. And lightning sorc isn't bad, but I prefer melee over ranged so OP is better for me.

I also think it is annoying. The stuns are a little too much. And yes, I mean annoying, not too long, not too easy, not too hard. Just straight up annoying. It's a perception thing. Not being able to control your character whether it is PvP or PvE is frustrating and annoying. At least from my perspective it is. What I would like BW to do. Just change the twin saber throw to not follow the target so you can step out of it. And if you are hit with it, remove the knockback / CC component and replace it with a 30% snare. The snare is more annoying for melee, but the combat system doesn't have a slow AFAIK which would affect movement & cast time and impact ranged as well. Does it *have* to be fixed, no. But I would suggest to BW that they may want to consider how NPC's control abilities impact a players fun in future content.

It's somewhat understandable given BW's history with this game. BW has stated that their focus is story and BW has proven more often than not that they always take the extreme approach. IE they always over-nerf and over-buff rather than take a more conservative, phased approach. Take that into account and it is extremely likely that BW will not create any or much group content for the foreseeable future. Do I think they are abandoning group content? No. But I do think that there will be an extreme dry spell while they focus on single player story. I hope that they can deliver more story while also adding group content, but I'm not expecting it.

Yes, BitRaider is an absolute mess. If you plan on staying with SWTOR for any length of time, it's best to use the original deployment method. It's fairly easy to change the config, but requires a full download of the game again. I understand what BW was trying to do with BitRaider (play the starter planets after downloading what 5GB instead of the full 26GB), but BitRaider is buggy as hell. And yes, this type of issue is entirely on BW. It really isn't that difficult to write a system that denies logging in if you don't have the correct client version and only downloads the patch when you have it entirely configured on the server side. I've written those systems, it's not exactly rocket science or brain surgery.

To answer you question on how they dealt with Vitiate. They just keep feeding him Kephess. Since he never dies, and merely revives when killed, they just threw Kephess and Vitiate in a room together. Vitiate has an endless supply of life to consume and Kephess keeps being reborn which apparently is his favorite past time. It's a win / win.

To be honest, that is because the microchip and microcontrollers in vehicles have excellent logging and diagnostic utilities now. You just plug the car into a computer, load up the data and analyze it. It's pretty amazing stuff. I would bet my salary, SWTOR is no where near that level of sophistication in their logging and diagnostics utilities. Which goes to my previous point that BW should have a logging system that can be fed into a replay test system. They should be able to take the logs of an operation, flashpoint or any instanced content and push it through a replay and watch exactly what happens at any point in time (from a server perspective). That way when an issue is reported, they can pull the logs from the server run it through the replay system and see if they can duplicate the issue. If the issue can't be duplicated, then it could be a client issue or the system isn't stable or deterministic. If BW doesn't have this type of system, that is a failure on their part. It would make identifying the root cause of bugs so much easier.

And even if the OP didn't provide enough details, it still is on BW to address the issue by doing one or more of the following: Sending a follow up email asking for more information like Instance Owner, Time and Dates of the runs, Strategy, etc Creating a proper bug report form that has separate entries for Expected Results, Actual Results, Steps to Reproduce, Attempted Workarounds, etc. Implement better logging on server side, bonus points if they actually create a logging system that can actually feed a replay system (replay all the actions of the characters and npcs through a debugger enabled test system) Test it themselves under various conditions What BW (and apparently some in this thread) needs to realize is that not all are familiar with Software Development and QA testing. BW needs to improve their feedback processes so that they get the information they need to actually fix the issues.

I don't think he meant no communication at all. I think he meant no communication on this particular stalking situation.

If they don't have the tech, then they should be pretty close to having it. I mean doesn't logging into a toon that was last in the Rakghoul tunnels after the event has ended port you somewhere safe? That seems close to what should occur in this instance. Although the problem is likely what triggers the porting process.

It was part of the response to the cancellation of Operation Victory tournament. http://dulfy.net/2015/03/02/swtor-operation-victory-tournament-canceled/ Damn, beat by Dawn. I blame typing on my smartphone.

From my perspective, I don't think that ranged over-performing is the reason - outside of HM Revan. I think it is because a) a lot of melee (a lot of players really) fail to use their DCDs and b) the fights just aren't fun on melee. I love my mara and my PT, but running any of those fights on my mara is just not fun. It's not the loss of up time per se, it's the constant running back and forth and feeling useless. In other words, it's the annoyance factor for me, rather than seeing my dps drop. My PT isn't nearly as bad because most of your primary skills are 15m so you can still dps when Sparky jumps all over the place, Pearl decides to go on walk-about or the many other mechanics which require a ton of movement (at rates faster than melee's gap closer CD).

That's subjective. The hard, incontrovertible truth is that Force Storm is very competitive compared to other ACs spammable AOEs. Here are the raw numbers from my many non-progression alts that are basically old 168/180 set armorings, unlettered 180 mods and crafted 186 enhancements. To get truly accurate numbers I'd have gear everything exactly the same and look at damage types and well that's too much work for very little benefit. The numbers are close enough for a decent comparison. Sorc: Force Storm 4632 over 3s for 60 / 600 resources (10%) Assassin: Lacerate (I don't have a dps Assassin) Merc: Sweeping Blasters 4805 - 5755 over 3s for 32 / 100 resources (32%) PT: Flame Sweep 1698 - 1863 over 1.5s for 15 / 100 resources (15%) Mara: Sweeping Slash 1735 - 1987 over 1.5s for 3 / 12 resources (25%) Juggy: Sweeping Slash 2147 - 2408 over 1.5s for 3 /12 resources (25%) Sniper: Suppressing Fire 9434 - 11406 over 4.5s for 45 / 110 resources (40%) Operative: Carbine Burst 2152 - 2410 over 1.5s for 15 / 100 resources (15%) * *Also consumes 1 TA but that should change in 3.2 so that it only costs energy If you normalize that group to the damage and resources consumed over 3s, all spammable AOEs are very similar damage and resource wise with ONE exception - the sniper. It does 6289 - 7604 for 27% resources. I suspect you may see a slight nerf to it in the future. If you count the fact that Sorcs AOE only costs 10% of their resources, that could be 2 exceptions. In which case, there is strong case to increase the resource cost. As for the ST nerf, I don't feel it was too bad. I think I dropped 100 - 150 dps. I do believe they should have buffed madness before nerfing lightning ST damage though.

Lightning Sorc ( 180 unlettered mods, 186 crafted enhancements, overkill augs, old 168 set bonus armorings) 4525 over 3s, costs 60 force out of 600 total resources (10%) AP PT (all 192 set bonus stuff, reflex augs, missing 1 initiative enhancement) 1837 - 2003 over 1.5s, costs 15 out of 100 total resources (15%) Apples to Apples (as best you can) LS: 4525 over 3s costing 10% resources PT: 3674 - 4006 over 3s costing 30% resources Looks like Lightning Sorc got a pretty good deal, imo.