Is it really that difficult to understand that it's possible to design mechanics with progressively higher requirements (whether it be healing output, tank interactions, raid coordination, burst dps, etc) that can replace hard enrages? I'm particularly disinclined towards hard enrages as a healer, because once they happen my skill level basically ceases to matter. Even simple stacking raid damage mechanisms are better, because they can let the group with 99th percentile healers and 95th percentile DPS have a fair shot along with the 95th percentile healer and 99th percentile DPS group.

It's only a poor reason for content to be nerfed because the option exists to balance the relative efficacy of classes. That being said, your general attitude is a little disturbing. There should only be one reason for an inability to clear Nightmare mode with properly geared toons: a lack of player skill or raid coordination. We shouldn't be blithely accepting of class disparity as it stands. We all agree that MMOs are never perfectly balanced in practice, but I've played much more complex competitive games with better balance than this. However, if Bioware isn't willing to address class balance more pro-actively then content needs to be adjusted, because it is unfair and patently wrong that the world's best SWTOR player might well be unwanted because he's playing an Infil Shadow. I guess if mercs get nerfed in the next major patch you'll be one of the leading mercenaries in story mode raiding. I can't agree with this enough. Progressive soft enrages >>>>>>>>>>>> hard enrages.

It's very subjective, I suppose. The latency isn't such a big deal for healing or tanking, but it puts a not-insignificant hurt on DPS. Certainly a pretty serious factor for this fight. In a perfect world of class balance and flawless connections I'd like to see fights tuned for the 99th percentile of player skill. But in the real world, doing so means that raid teams on overseas connections simply can't complete the fights (at a prescribed gear level), nor can teams with significantly underpowered compositions. There's also the fact it's clearly out of line with the rest of the instance. I don't think it's really practical to expect multiple levels of Nightmare difficulty, so I think a bit of down-tuning is inevitable, and required.

That's not really fair or realistic. Let's say your ops group is a couple of Jugg tanks, two Commando healers, and maybe some Sage/Shadow DPS. Or, let's imagine you're not fortunate enough to be local to your servers, and with foreign latency you're losing (at least) a couple of hundred DPS per person across the board. Still "just a hard fight"?

I think it's much ado about nothing. D&T killed Op 9 and Kephess before anyone else, and nothing can change that. The trade-off is that they sacrifice the ability to compete for a world first DG kill this week, as a well as a world first clear, both of which carry more prestige at this point, it's fair to say. That's a much bigger penalty than all the pointless QQ in this thread. And in the process, they discovered a serious issue with the final boss that would have undermined everyone's progression in the future.

I find this bizarrely irrelevant. Since when are we determining what people find "fun", exactly?

I would presume you kill them all again and take valid screenshots as you go.

This is actually what I thought you meant originally - that's what I get for skim-reading at work At any rate, whether or not we participate in this thread ultimately, I do think it's a good solution and well-handled.

I think that's fair enough. My guild will be skipping the boss because of various IRL commitments - we only get two specific raid times per week, so we have to make the most of them. Guilds who can/do wait to complete progression properly should be recognised for that.

I would be more enthused about this if I wasn't in an APAC guild where most of the raid team are over 200ms now. If the fight's tuned this tightly, then the lost APM and false GCDs will make it genuinely impossible.

Makes sense. The only reason I bring up practical experience is that I am almost always delaying HT past its cooldown to finish a cast (rather than idling), so alacrity in the small quantities we're talking about let me get a little closer to casting it on CD, meaning I am actually using it more often in a fight.

Perhaps I'm fundamentally misunderstanding your hypothesis. Are you saying that Alacrity's efficacy with respect to HPS is reduced because you have to use a larger number of inferior filler abilities while waiting for cooldowns?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that chasing BiS gear is worthless, or disparaging anyone for it (after all, I do). It's just that, sadly, I lack the motivation to contribute any more. That being said, I have to question your hypothesis, NIbbon. In my experience, typically one already has to choose between idling and delaying a higher priority ability past CD because of a filler delaying it. You seem to be saying that higher alacrity results in a statistically significant increase in the number of times when you would delay something like HT or Salvation. I haven't found this to be the case in practice.

It's quite interesting comparing our approaches: http://www.torparse.com/a/220401 Clearly we would disagree on the frequency of using Salvation. It does highlight the difficulty of mapping ability usage for healers, insofar as you can't quantify an ideal rotation in quite the same way as you can for DPS. Ultimately, however... I'm no longer motivated to really delve into theorycrafting anymore. This game is so phenomenally easy it just strikes me as utterly irrelevant. It doesn't matter how you gear, and it barely matters how you play

I think the most interesting note is that server closure is apparently two months away. I hope Carth pops in here; he was making all manner of rude comments about my apparent lack of intellect last week when I asserted that Bioware wouldn't merge right away with 2.2. Oh look. I was right.

It was fun while it lasted.

Could you provide some quotes from the thread? I struggle to recall any real instances of this. In fact, the only notable incident related to the speed of progression that I recall was a guild who actually tried to make a point of clearing TFB a few hours before us (well after NS had done it), then left the thread shortly thereafter. /shrug Maybe it does. You could also argue that the other half of this forum as a whole is poorly constructed flaming from the PVPers. Pick your poison. I can only assume you guys have been lurking this thread for quite some time, because you have plenty of opinions for people who aren't participating anymore. I don't know about you, but when I publicly excuse myself from something I don't pop back in a few months later and start taking snipes at people. I mean really... you guys basically threw your toys out of the cot with no constructive dialogue whatsoever, and now Strudel comes back out of the blue and tries to paint a picture of holier-than-thou PoA who only left because they were above the alleged pettiness of the thread. Right.

Poor Ryan, keeps getting lumped with tanking. And look at you Chubs, focus targetting the other healer like a nerd.

Those woolly, woolly coats, the waggling tails, the soft bleats, and that come hither look... the sheep wanted it. I'm just a victim here.

Your issues are better summed up as egotism born out of a measure of actual grandeur, which I'm much better equipped to deal with. I need a degree of self-awareness to work with.

Agreed. I didn't fully absorb the content of the post (at work right now), but that's pretty poor behaviour. I remember when I was back in TEAC (inbetween Reverence and TEHEE), and when they cleared HM EC they were ridiculed and derided for it in general chat, since they were a few months behind the curve, so to speak. At the end of the day people have different motivations, ability levels, circumstances, etc, and there's no justification for attacking the achievements of others to further your inferiority complex. I won't name names, but for the record some of the players I've seen engaging in this behaviour are actually quite lacking in the skill department themselves. You know who you are*... *Actually, some of you don't know who you are, because you labour under some tremendous illusions when it comes to your competency. I'm not a psychologist, however, and I'm hardly equipped to deal with delusions of grandeur.

They did kill it, and I mentioned their lack of participation in this thread to one of their members, but they seem to have no interest in involving themselves with this part of the community, so clearly the recognition doesn't matter to them.

In addition to the above, you also (as has been mentioned several times) kill Fury/Centering generation for a whole minute. On top of all of this, you'll still lose DPS versus a balanced composition on some fights because they just favour ranged so heavily.

Looks like most of the raid is sitting just outside the sandstorm zone. I'm guessing the rest is just utilising personal generators and tank swapping.

If the healer was roughly at-level, then people dying on Athiss is just poor healing. I respect Cleet_Xia's input, but in this case he's overthinking it, in my humble opinion. You can heal Athiss at low 20s wearing half-empty orange shells (I speak from experience ). Furthermore, you don't need the middle tree talents at all. Force Suffusion can be nice, but there's a time and place for overload. Largely speaking, lowbie flashpoint trash pulls are not that place.