Hello. I farmed slicing on Onderon and got a bunch of Mission Discovery items (as usual). The Treasure Hunting grade 11 mission discovery ones appear to be bugged. My Artificer has all rank 700 crew skills (pictured). But when I click on the Mission Discovery item, I'm getting a "YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT SCHEMATIC" error (pictured). https://i.imgur.com/kLSeCPa.png https://i.imgur.com/EYkfriB.png

I only want to talk about a few things, and this is all just from reading the spec. I haven't been able to parse yet due to constant interruptions IRL. I have played/main'd a sorc since nearly launch (May 2012 or so) and I play all 3 specs in both PvE and PvP content, although mostly PvE w/Lightning these days. I have a few comments from this perspective. General I'm fine with moving raid buffs and threat drops to optional for all classes. I know that Cloud Mind has DR on it, but it hasn't always. It was only added as a utility in 5.0 or something like that. While it's really nice, Sorcs can live without it in PvP content, especially with everyone else's dcds scaled back as well. Overall I find the sorc dcds NOT gatekeeped in the tree to be a little overpowered compared to other classes. We basically have every tool we've always had over the years except Force Slow, and likely Extrication in most content. Force Slow is a dcd that only really has use in PvP, and even then, I feel like I'm the only one that ever uses it in PvP. PvE rarely has a use for it, and I can't even think of an example. So losing this is no loss to most sorc players. Extrication is lost if you choose Force Barrier which most people probably will for both PvP and PvE content, but Extrication was never a dcd for sorcs anyway. It was always about Sorcs adding a bit of utility to a team in a unique way in a few circumstances. I most frequently use it in Huttball/PvP, and losing it means sorcs are further reduced to number farming instead of trying to win in PvP. I get that you can choose to take it instead of Force Barrier, but if there's no way to know you're gonna play a Huttball match, or if the game continues to restrict respec'ing in PvP, then that will mean most Sorcs will choose Force Barrier instead just to save their own hides, since it's more universally useful, and lose this extra bit of utility they can choose to bring to a team. Outside of Huttball, it can be used on various things like saving allies from being dogpiled in PvP, or pulling people up to mid in CW, etc. PvE uses are pretty infrequent, such as pulling the tank for Xeno to the column during Thermal Tolerance or whatever. Sorcs have long been the beating post of PvP. I had to wonder when I saw these specs if this was the devs trying to swing back the other way, or if this was the devs accidentally letting Sorcs keep too much compared to other classes, I don't know. I mean sure, I'd love to keep nearly everything we've always had, but I don't want it to be unfair. Given the other things the other classes are forced to choose between, Sorc feels overpowered from this perspective. I'd also like to address Force Speed/Emersion and Overload/Electric Bindings. Right now, Electric Bindings has been given to Overload (the Sorc KB) as an intrinsic trait. I would've much preferred to see Force Speed have Emersion intrinsically instead, and make Sorcs have to choose to take Electric Bindings if they want them. I realize that Styrak NiM is cheesed wtih Electric Bindings and this may be the only really good PvE usecase for Electric Bindings. Otherwise, Electric Bindings is pretty much a PvP-only dcd. It should be selectable, or eliminated entirely from Sorcs. One last general grievance. Please return to the days when Extrication did not break an ally Sorc's Force Barrier. When FB first came out, Extricate could pull a Barrier'd sorc w/o it breaking, then later this was changed. It's tiring listening to the whining about this when it accidentally happens in PvP. Lightning The selections here feel underwhelming compared to Madness. That said, the thing I mostly want to talk about is Overloaded Strike in tier 20. As others pointed out, selecting this added another active ability to my bar which makes no sense. If you're gonna keep this (which you shouldn't, it's junk compared to what Madness gets), make it a passive buff to Lightning Strike and Lightning Bolt. Lightning Strike is a base Inquisitor ability that is replaced in the Lightning tree by Lightning Bolt at level 55. My suggestion here is to buff something that's already a part of Lightning's dps rotation. Lightning Bolt is the worst wet noodle filler of any dps class or spec. Just straight-up buff it. Or let it put a debuff on targets to make them take more damage from all sources. Or let your dots (Affliction, Crushing Darkness) build stacks where Lightning Bolt will be proc'd for insta-cast whenever your dots crit (up to a max of X stacks). These are just examples. Lightning's AoE capabilities are already stronger with Affliction/Force Storm/Chain Lightning; having Lightning Bolt hit two people is an AoE ability that won't be used unless you're trying to tunnel someone in PvP who just happens to be standing next to someone else. In PvE settings, Affliction/FS/CL will always be better. This is minor, but Finish Them (same tier) isn't useful in a rotation that is already force positive. The only time you need Force in the Lightning rotation is if you died and were rez'd, or if you are in PvP and you run away and heal yourself back up. Of course, if you have time to run away and heal yourself up, then you have time to consume for 5 minutes and wait till the debuff stacks fall off before going to rejoin the fight. Madness Tier 15 Unrelenting Affliction and tier 30 Downfall, if they work like I think they do together, sounds like a crazy good dps boost for Madness. Unrelenting Affliction will persist the deathmark stacks available for just nearly the entire rotation of the spec, which is a flat dps boost, and Downfall will occasionally consume an extra deathmark when Creeping Terror ticks. Since this is not based on critting, it is guaranteed and will always function in this manner. Together, these two will make Creeping Terror hit harder, and all DoTs generally (including CT) hit harder for longer in the rotation. If it doesn't work like this, then I'll be a little disappointed. This has a really good synergy with how the spec already works. I haven't really looked at other class's dps buffs to see if this is overpowered by comparison, though. Anyway, what Madness gets seems way better than what Lightning gets, that's for sure. Corruption The changes to Corruption seem overpowered, and steals the thunder from the main thing Operative healers do. Sorc heals were always about single-target healing, not HoTs. Dark Infusion gets a HoT component (Sustained Corruption), and they can spread Resurgence to nearby players (Dark Resurgence). I don't like it because it makes the classes too similar. Rather than making Sorc heals like Operatives, buff healing Sorcs from an energy-management and single-target healing standpoint. Energy management has been trash in Sorcs since 5.0. You don't have to overbuff the energy management like in 2.10-3.*, but just make consume not needed quite as much. On that note, make Consuming Darkness build stacks that buff the next (Dark Infusion, or something), either increased heals on it or auto-crit or something. Buff Static Barrier with more damage absorbed, heals, etc. Buff Innervate, one of the best healing abilities of the class (but not HoT spread!! make Innervate single-target stronger in some way). The tactical already buffs Roaming Mend, so I don't think anything needs to be done with that in the spec. Conclusion These were just my initial thoughts real quick. I hope I have time to parse a little before they take the PTS back down. I believe I have decent notional builds for all the content I do. I think Lightning's tree buffs are much weaker than Madness's. I think Corruption's tree buffs step on the toes of Operative/Medicine, and should be redesigned from a single-target heals and energy management perspective. I still think the dcds are too much compared to what other classes are forced to choose between in the tree. I think it says a lot that I feel my biggest loss here is Extrication, an ability doesn't really do anything for me at all.

This page needs more organization. https://imgur.com/a/BfjJge9 I suggest two tabs, one "Conquest Objectives" and the other "Priority Objectives". Clicking on stuff in either tab would fill in the pane on the right that has the detailed description of the objective. Additionally, another UI control needs to be added next to the "Sort By" one (pictured), called "Filter By". It should be a sub-control of the tab (so should appear separately on both tabs) and contain (multi-select): Priority Objectives (only if the objectives aren't split into tabs) Conquest Objectives (only if the objectives aren't split into tabs) Infinitely Repeatable Daily Repeatable Once a Week Missions Crafting Rampages Operations Flashpoints PvP GSF ...etc... That objectives list was already too long with just the conquest objectives and I still have trouble finding stuff in it on live. This priority objectives/galactic seasons system adds even more to it, and it needs to be filterable.

They could just move the conqueror banner to the planetary load screen. All planets have it. Load screens are up for about the same (intended) amount of time as the current banner, and it would automatically disappear as usual once the planet has loaded. They could also put more info on it than just the current conqueror if they wanted since you can't really do anything else during a load screen so it doesn't matter if you cover up 80% of the screen. That said, I don't know if there might be some reason why the load screen for each planet may be required to be a static image. If there is a reason currently, this may require a bit of a rework that may introduce more problems/bugs than it solves.

(I apologize ahead of time that this post is so long despite being about a "somewhat" trivial topic) I'm going to attempt to summarize the issues regarding the wookiee-hugging achievements here and why they're a problem, so both the devs and the players who haven't looked into it at all can understand from just one post what the problem is, why it's a problem, and what should be done. What's going on? This year, a fifth tier was added to the wookiee-hugging tier of achievements under Achievements > Events > General > Life Day > (bottom row) called "Hugs For All". This achievement is for hugging x/1500 wookiees during the Life Day event. However a number of things were handled badly related to this: Tiered achievements not stacking - If you completed some number of wookiee hugs last year, that progress should have applied to the new tier as well, like tiered-achievements work everywhere else in the game, but did not. Incomplete Achievements having their Progress wiped -- If you started, but didn't complete, any subset of the wookiee-hugging achievements last year, then all your progress on those achievements was reset to 0, without your consent, despite doing the work. Number of wookiee-hugs required to complete the entire tier of achievements now varies between players -- Lucky people who started this year only have to complete 1500 hugs to get the entire tier of achievements, including the new tier. Unlucky players who started last year will have to complete whatever they completed last year plus another 1500 this year, up to 2500 hugs if you completed the Wookiee Hugging Champion achievement last year (which is [1500*1.667~=2500] 66% more hugs for an already grindy achievement than players just starting out this year). Why is this a problem? What happened with this is a violation of the unspoken contract between the devs and players on how achievements work. There's a reason why the old NiM Eternity Vault/Karagga's Palace achievements (etc) were moved to "Feats of Strength" (aka archived) instead of just removing them from the achievements list completely. People exerted effort to do something and want recognition for it, even if it's no longer a valid mode of gameplay. So let's talk about how this unspoken contract between the devs and players regarding how achievements work was violated: Unrequested achievement progress reset by devs -- There should never be a time when a player's legitimate progress on an achievement is reset or cleared or even touched at all without the player first requesting it though CS and CS *only then* approving it if the player's issue with it is deemed valid. A player's legitimate effort toward something should be counted, always. (Note: "legitimate". This does not apply exploiting or punishment for exploiting). Tiered achievements not stacking -- Let's look at an example. Achievements > Location > Alderaan > Player vs. Player > the bottom row. Those achievements are for killing other players on that planet, and are tiered: x/10, x/50, x/100, x/1000. When you kill one player on Alderaan, each tier increases its completion/progress by +1 (for an overall 1/10, 1/50, 1/100, 1/1000 on your first kill). All other tiered achievements in the game work this same way, so there is an expectation that they will continue working this way in the future. Different players having to do more work than others to complete the same achievement -- by any reasonable measure, this is unfair, and is self-explanatory. I don't think Jackie's statement of this working as intended is untrue. I think that the devs probably did intend for it to work like this. That said, I do think they went off to add some achievements and did not really consider the ramifications of what implementing an achievement in this manner meant to how players expect achievements to be completed in this game. Boss-person probably said: To which someone on the dev team replied: Boss-person: Dev team: Please see the disclaimer at the end. What should be done? The devs need to recognize that they made a mistake and perform an out-of-cycle maintenance which adds original progress on wookiee-hugging from last year to the current progress for every achievement in this tier of achievements, including the new one. This old progress value on hugs for every account should be recoverable since we just went through 11 months where no one was allowed to make any progress on it (unless they don't ever backup the live game data, and/or don't store it for at least a little while, which if so, yikes). What should have been done? The devs worked hard on the Feast of Prosperity, so I don't think anyone would've blinked an eye if Life Day launched without any new content/achievements/etc. This is probably the way it should've happened. New things on the Cartel Market and at the Life Day vendor are perfectly acceptable ways of adding content for the Life Day event when you weren't given a budget specifically for significantly reworking or adding to the event itself. Going forward In general, the devs need to realize a few things: Suggestions Disclaimer

Now that 6.0 has gone live, I have set about trying to pursue crafting, mostly just Biochem right now, while having the whole affair impact my cash reserves as little as possible. First of all: 500,000 credits per discipline seems like way too much for unlocking crafting up to 700. Not only do I have my main 6 crafters, I have my 4+ auxiliary gatherers (slicing etc), plus a set of 6 auxiliary crafters (and probably other toons with crafting). Already this is getting to be in the realm of 25 million credits JUST to give most of these toons the privilege to grind their way to 700. Getting from 600->700 did not take long, between having 8 companions at influence 50 on my Biochemer plus crafting/mission efficiency on the guild ship. Felt like a short two hours. Of course, I had the benefit of preparing for 6.0 by leveling this many comps on all my crafting toons because I knew it would be a lengthy grind from my experience on the PTS. Anyway, I leveled Bioanalysis and Diplomacy at the same time, then Biochem afterward. For Biochem, I crafted the green Cell Grafts until 665, then swapped to the blue Cell Grafts until 700. At this point, I realized the mats vendor on fleet was selling the recombinators for way less than on the PTS (300 per unit for white, vs iirc 3500 on the PTS), so instead of running that Bioanalysis mission, I just bought stacks of white/green/blue recombinators from the vendor. Adrenal schematics start at blue quality, so I left those alone at first. Implants start at green quality, but STILL require the blue-quality isotopes, so I left those alone as well. Stims and Medpacks start at green quality, so I crafted some of them up and then started REing stacks of them to learn the blue schematics. This didn't take too long. I was lucky, and was able to learn the blue Medpack/Med Unit/Proficient/Versatile/Fortitude/Command within no more than 5 REs per item. This was nice, and within the 20% tolerance each time. But I only realized after this that it was merely "lucky". There is no RNG protection on Reverse Engineering. After finishing all the green RE-ing I was going to do in order to focus on blue RE-ing, I was a bit miffed at how far these mats I had run missions on did NOT go towards crafting actual items. So, I decided that instead of running the missions, I would instead run a gathering circuit on Onderon. This was better, and stopped hurting my bottom line so much. However I'd like to point out that here I was swapping money for time. Money is more important to me, so I waste time instead. My first plan of attack after getting a healthy stack of blue Cell Grafts crafted, was to queue up each item I wanted to learn a purple schematic for and hope that REing them would give me at least one recipe. All of these had a 10% RE chance, and I had enough mats to craft 18 stacks of stuff. I crafted, in terms of stacks of blue quality: 3 x MedPacs, 2 x MedUnits, 3 x Attack Adrenals, 2 x Triage Adrenals, 2 x Shield Adrenals, 2 x Versatile Stims, 2 x Proficient Stims, 2 x Fortitude Stims. Out of these 18 stacks, all with a 10% RE chance, I learned Advanced Proficient Stim, and nothing else (I should've gotten 2 things if my luck were average, and 1 thing if my luck were bad, or 0 for exceptionally bad luck). I considered one recipe for 18 stacks to be within acceptable tolerance (if barely), so I moved on. After this, I gathered for another couple hours on Onderon, crafted up another set of blue Cell Grafts, and this time I crafted loads and loads of blue quality Medpacks for REing. I spaced them out so I could RE each stack individually as they completed so as to not waste my items if I learned it early. Haha. Well, all told, I RE'd 40 stackcs of Medpacks (including the 3 from earlier), and did not learn the purple Advanced Kyrprax Medpac. This is supposed to have a 10% chance. I should've learned the recipe 4 times on average. 37 of those REs were during the same instance with no logouts. This is a huge problem. I think going forward, I'm going to return to crafting all different things and hoping something will train, rather than all the same thing because while it doesn't actually matter which method I do, it still feels like I'm wasting my time less if I do different items, which helps keep the frustration at bay. Anyway, while the farming on Onderon makes the monetary expenditure slightly more palatable, I just don't have the time to farm mats day in and day out for eternity just to not learn the schematic after way more than the threshold REs I should need. Also, this is a boring way to spend time in the game, and I shouldn't be forced to do this in order to avoid spending millions of credits just to not learn purple recipes anyway (and I still have the legendaries to go too!). This makes me feel like I've wasted my time and/or money, and the worse luck I have the saltier I get about it. I haven't seen anyone yet say they enjoy the crafting changes, or even feel neutral about them. So again, I invite the devs to go here: I wrote up a detailed post in the PTS forums (here). JediBoadicea wrote up a more succinct post in the PTS forums (here). Almost all of these issues from the PTS still remain at 6.0 launch. Devs, please do something to reduce the grindiness and cost of crafting. Plus all the broken things related to crafting that have not yet been acknowledged (war supplies imbalance, iokath recombinators still being used in dark project schematics but you can't get them from anywhere, etc). Crafting should be a mindlessly enjoyable activity, a strategic Conquest activity, or a slightly less efficient gearing supplement, not a major monetary sink and grindy frustration that feels much like a second job.

Do not read if you don't want to be spoiled. Datacron Maps (Area & Detail): https://imgur.com/gallery/H5WhnTe Datacron Capture Video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/491253319 I also posted about the Mastery Datacron here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=968734

Everyone: Do not read if you don't want to be spoiled. Devs: the datacron is visually red from a distance (good) but when you click on it and go into the cut scene, it's green (bad). Mastery should be red (Green == Endurance usually). Also, Devs, I loveLoveLOVE the design of Mek-Sha. It's visually arresting and there is so much to look at. It's very different from any other place in the game. The paths are labyrinthine like the Nar Shaddaa bonus area and there are people standing everywhere and junk piled all over the place. I especially love the massive stacks of glowing crates, and the atmospheric force-field shell with the port hole for entry/exit surrounding the whole asteroid. It's just cool, I really like oogling all of it. (I can't wait to get some of the new decos created for this place) Datacron Maps (Area & Detail): https://imgur.com/a/nbVOgAP Datacron Video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/487557194 I also posted about the Endurance Datacron here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9769430#post9769430

That was intentional. To accommodate the devs wanting costs being higher than previous grades, I suggest to bump the green ACs to 12/12/12, then halve for blue, then halve again for purp. Then add that to the suggestion that the blue ACs would require fewer green ACs, and purp ACs would require fewer blue ACs, which would end up being less mats overall. I'd still prefer 2/2/2, but I honestly don't think they'll do that even though many people are pushing for it.

+1 I have also experienced the city rendering going haywire yesterday with buildings disappearing all over the place, and the area map for Onderon is splotchy with cyan and ugly green and is generally hideous to look at and hard to use (it wasn't like this on the PTS phase 1).

These changes are not enough, so I'm going to spend 4 hours typing up an itemized list of suggestions to improve Grade 11 crafting after having spent 50+ hours on the PTS just playing with crafting. Devs please, PLEASE take these suggestions into serious consideration. The aim of my suggestions are three-fold: To relieve some of the pressure from crafters (i.e., reduce complaining from when the changes go to live and to prevent people leaving the game over it), to fix some problems with the implementation and make it more internally consistent, while still making it harder and more expensive to do than in previous grades (which the devs seem to want). First off: the burden of game inflation should NOT be lumped solely on the shoulders of the crafters. This is completely unfair, and a lot of people will be upset enough to leave if some of this stuff isn't addressed. And if they don't leave, we will have to deal with endless whining on the forums until the devs do, grudgingly, change it anyway. And then we'll end up in a "we told you so" situation regardless, which no one really wants. Things what MUST be fixed: Reduce companion mission times to be linearly in-line with the other grades Fix the Synthweaving grade 11 Assembly Component crafting time to be the same as the other grade 11 AC times (~3m for lvl 50 companions) Reduce all crafting disciplines to have 1 craftable green, 1 blue, and 1 purple Assembly Component Remove slicing and other unrelated gathering discipline material requirements from Assembly Component crafting Crafting disciplines that make augments: augments should be crafted using appropriate ACs + x slicing mats, as they always have (do not require slicing mats IN the AC) Augment kit mat requirements need to fall back in line with other grades from previous expacs. Given the 19 tiers of gear we have to grind through, it's unreasonable to gate augments so hard. Change the mats required to craft Assembly Components to, at a minimum, the following: - Green AC = 12 green, 12 green, 12 white standard mats (recombinators/fluxes) - Blue AC = 6 blue, 6 blue, 6 green standard mats (recombinators/fluxes) + 2 green ACs - Purp AC = 3 purp, 3 purp, 3 blue standard mats (recombinators/fluxes) + 1 blue AC Change the recipe for Dark Projects to NOT include purple Iokath Recombinators anymore Change all conquest crafting grades of mats as follows: (Type A -- grade 3, 5, 7, 9, 10) and (Type B -- grade 4, 6, 8, 9, 10) At a minimum, add RNG Protection to Reverse Engineering (20% requires max 5 REs, 10% requires max 10 REs, 5% requires max 20 REs, you get the idea) Jawa Junks should go into the materials inventory Jawa Junk prices for grade 11 should be reduced (by half at least, IMO) Green quality items (earpieces/implants/etc) should have AT BEST green quality mat requirements and no higher; change all recipes to reflect this Blue quality items (earpieces/implants/etc) should have AT BEST blue quality mat requirements and no higher; change all recipes to reflect this Purple quality items (earpieces/implants/etc) should have AT BEST purple quality mat requirements and no higher; change all recipes to reflect this Legendary quality items (earpieces/implants/etc) should have AT BEST legendary quality mat requirements and no higher; change all recipes to reflect this If (ear/implant/etc) crafting needs to be gated, make acquiring the special mat (of appropriate quality) be like acquiring the old magenta crystal components (grinding tat->hoth->ilum) ALLLL gathering missions should return green mats, with a chance of blue and purple mats too that scales with tier of mission (wealthy > rich > bountiful > abundant > moderate) Deconstructing ANYTHING of level 75 or at grade 11 should 100% of the time produce MK components to craft aug kits even if not on a toon having that crafting discipline Things what SHOULD be fixed: Preferred changes to crafting Assembly Components: - Green AC = 2 green, 2 green, 2 white recombinators - Blue AC = 2 blue, 2 blue, 2 green recombinators + 1 green AC - Purp AC = 2 purp, 2 purp, 2 blue recombinators + 1 blue AC Reverse Engineering: increase ALL chances to learn all quality of recipes back to 60% Increase gathering node density on Onderon to be similar to that of Yavin 4 Jawa Junks should stack in single stacks up to 999,999 Jawa Junk prices should be changed to 50 per unit. This needs to be a viable supplementary system but is currently waaaaaaaay too expensive. Add the purple grade 11 conquest mat and blue grade 11 isotopes to the Jawa vendors at a higher rate than the base green/blue/purp grade 11 mats All types (w,r,b,a,m) of gathering missions for grade 11 should yield more mats than previous grades due to the more complex and more numerous mat requirements for crafting at grade 11 Please fix the old gear that is non-deconstructable to be deconstructable. I got some drops in Hammer Station VM that couldn't be deconstructed. 12 companions should now be deployable. Given the zillion comps we acquired from KotFE/KotET and insane mat requirements for grade 11, this needs to be increased significantly Number of available-to-run grade 11 missions of each type (r/b/a/m & supplementary) should be doubled Specs for the Adrenals and Stims need to be boosted a little bit. These are barely better than grade 10. If they're gonna be so hard/expensive to craft, at least make the stat gain way better. Add grade 10 and grade 11 grenades to Cybertech Let's talk about the Jawa Junks. The devs have dug-in so far about the cost of grade 11 mats on the Jawa vendors. This is worrisome, since everyone dealing with crafting on the PTS has specifically called this out as a problem. I have spent somewhere in the range of 50-100 billion credits on the PTS to learn all purple pharmaceuticals and 2 legendary pharmaceuticals plus crafting some stacks of purple pharmaceuticals for my guild to run Dxun, using the RE->Jawa Junks system to short-circuit the absurd mission times. Given the high number of mats I was able to buy for such an exorbitant price from the Jawa vendors, it is sad that I was only able to make so little. And this with infinite money; imagine having to do this by running missions and farming nodes and REing garbage drops on toons with the appropriate crafting discipline (which will yield far less for way more time/effort). This is a painful punishment levied onto crafters for no reason that I can see other than it's easy and convenient to do so. Crafting has only rarely been allowed to produce viable end-game BiS gear (e.g., the 240 augs), so why punish crafters in this way when they're still gonna be crafting less-than-ideal items anyway? Some crafting philosophies that must be adhered to going into the future: Cost and time for missions should scale linearly with previous grades Assembly Components should be cheap and easy to make (in terms of mat requirements) Assembly Components should be restricted to 1 green type of AC per crafting discipline and possibly 1 special blue one used to make end-game items If Assembly Components must have common green/blue/purple quality versions, limit it to 1 type of each using ONLY mats acquired from the associated gathering disciplines Green gathering mats should be very easy to come by in large numbers (with blue less, purple even less, and legendary requiring special missions and tasks and such) Craftable gear and components should not have a mat requirement of higher quality (green/blue/purp/legendary) than the quality of the item you're crafting Flux (and the like) missions should always be the shortest and cheapest mission, and should produce more mats than any other but the wealthy missions Reverse Engineering should be a straight-forward and relatively easy way to learn recipes - forcing people to waste tons of mats and credits and and time trying to RE something is going to cause people to complain endlessly again (as they should). IF you must gate the production of higher quality items, gate it with mat requirements to craft the item they just learned. Learning recipes via schematic drops in content is also a totally fine way of gaining recipes. Let these be unbound so they can be sold on the GTN for profit. Biochem in particular should not have onerous crafting requirements for the drugz because raid teams go through drugs quickly - I have crafted all of the drugs for my PvP guild and its progression raid team since 4.0 and I won't be able to do that anymore in 6.0 if the cost/time/effort of doing so isn't reduced significantly (this is just too expensive for me and I have in excess of 1 billion credits in my primary server legacy in live now) Devs, please do not nickel-and-dime us with crafting changes. Make an across-the-board set of real changes to crafting, and put it up on the PTS for us to test. Add vendors on the PTS that sell the blue isotopes and purple conquest mats, and other rare mats (maybe the Legendary Ember), so we can actually test the progression of learning the higher level recipes finally. I have spent a lot of time on the PTS playing with this stuff. Please do not trivialize the time and effort I and others have spent testing this for you for free. My biggest concern is with the game dying rather than my own in-game finances or other factors. Please read my post. Please address these problems. I don't want people to riot and leave in a rage; I want people to stick around in this game long into the future. Seriously consider everything here. Please.

Your guess/estimate is really low. I made a post calculating the cost of crafting (here), but basically, one purple drug stack crafted totals 712 mats used. It's even worse than you thought, heh.

To add to this -- Just faceroll Hammer Station VM over and over. The conversations take longer than getting to the next boss, and your life is never in danger whether or not you have a comp out, no matter how poop your gear is. The bosses die just as fast as the trash mobs.

A slight update on my crafting experience -- RNG protection does NOT apply to Reverse Engineering things to learn recipes. To learn the Legendary quality Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2, it took me Reverse Engineering 40 stacks of purple quality Advanced Kyrprax Medpacs. 31 of those stacks were done in one sitting (no instance changes, no logouts, just me standing on the guild ship with the drug factory in high gear). If there was RNG protection, I should've gotten it on the 20th RE given a 5% chance. This means I blew 28,480 mats JUST to learn the Legendary recipe. Even with infinite money and infinite materials on the PTS, this is way too much. Way too much mats, way too much failed REs, and even still, way too much time spent crafting all the build-up Cell Grafts just to be able to craft that many Advanced Kyrprax Medpacs to begin with. The stats for the Legendary Advanced Kyrprax Medpac MK-2 are at the bottom: https://imgur.com/a/ssNSe67 Devs -- Please make some changes to Grade 11 crafting based on the tons and tons of feedback you've gotten Please put some of these changes up on the PTS for us to test Please, at a minimum, acknowledge that you've heard our voices and are making SOME changes to Grade 11 crafting before 6.0 goes live

I'd also like to add the following: Either Hammer Station VM is too easy or Hammer Station MM is too hard. I would boost the difficulty a little on Hammer Station VM, personally. Even as a solo player, you can breeze through VM in terrible gear, take nearly no damage, and annihilate everything including the bosses in seconds. I'd also take out the conversation requirement to complete the Flashpoint (and any other flashpoints that have this). It's kind of annoying to have to go back to the terminal if you forget you have a conversation to finish to get credit and accidentally go back to your house or wherever you were and then have to travel back. Everyone should get their own crafting mats drop per boss for any crafting discipline and they shouldn't have to be rolled on, if Flashpoint bosses are going to be in the business of dropping crafting mats. Since crafting is so time consuming and expensive, getting mats of any type is good for the players, and getting a handful of random mats per boss every time is not really game-breaking given the ludicrous grade 11 crafting requirements. And since the mats inventory is a thing now, you can just stuff 'em right into the mats inventory as soon as you get them. I don't think you should have to roll vs others to receive these. Shouldn't MM Flashpoints bonus and final bosses be dropping a set piece or tactical? I don't recall getting to roll on that for the final boss of Hammer Station MM. Maybe it was only the harder flashpoints that are supposed to do this... I can't remember. Random piece drops (from bosses in Flashpoints, renown crates, etc) should not look at your overall gear level, but should instead look at the specific piece's item rating that it randomly decides to drop. Combine this with a rolling style (like Takanna) that gives an upgrade almost all of the time, and you'll be guaranteed to get at least something decent for your effort. Ear / implant / relic rolling still needs A LOT of work, and changes to that should apply to Takanna, boss drops, and renown crates. Because you're getting a random piece instead of picking the specific piece you want, it's bad if it looks at your overall gear rating and continually randomly picks to give you pieces you already have in the higher tier (instead of the ones in the lower tier that you need to replace). If you keep not randomly getting the particular piece that is your lowest for replacement, you could spend A LOT of time hovering at the very end of a gear tier, which leads to endless frustration, which is yet another failure of this RNG system.

Latest Patch gearing observations -- Hammer Station MM: Ran with a full group My gear was in the 292-294 range Ran it 1 time Each boss seemed to drop 3 pieces of gear or modifications for each individual in the group (none were augments) All gear pieces were side-grades or downgrades I was on Sorc DPS Lightning and got a moddable piece with a defense mod and an accuracy enhancement No Isotopes dropped (why? they do on live) Hammer Station VM Ran with a full group My gear was in the 292-294 range Ran it 4 times Each boss seemed to drop 2 pieces of gear or modifications for each individual in the group (none were augments) All gear pieces were side-grades or downgrades I got a barrel as a drop on a Lightning Sorc I was getting gear with tech-class specific amplifiers on them on a Lightning Sorc No Isotopes dropped (why? they do on live) I was getting random green gear for level 17 or whatever from trash mobs.... I'm not sure what should be done about this. But either way, this gear was not deconstructable and probably should be I was also getting gear I couldn't equip because it was bound to other base classes, like Sith Warrior (I was on a Lightning Sorc) For 5 Hammer Station runs (1 x MM, 4 x VM), I got a total of 33 gear drops and none of them were upgrades. This seems like a problem? This is definitely a problem if this is intended to be the primary method for obtaining gear. I was running at a gear level of 292-294 so I had plenty of room to grow on my gear. Also, please remove the base-class restrictions from the set gear. There is no need for this. It kind of defeats the purpose of having all legacy gear that you can dump onto any of your toons. If the base class of the current toon doesn't match up with the intended base class for the set bonus, then deactivate the set bonus. Changes to Vendor Takanna: Head / chest / hand / legs / feet / belt / wrist all seem to work as intended, and nearly every time I got an appropriate and min/maxed upgrade Ear / Implant / Relic is still an RNG nightmare. One gear tier I had to pull 25 relics before I managed to get the Focused Retribution one for that tier. This is baaaaaaaaad. It should not take this many pulls. Please just make the Ear / Implant / Relic available as a direct 1-to-1 purchase for a specific type in exchange for TFs at the current gear tier. Still getting Offhands (focus) occasionally when I pull a Mainhand (Sorc Lightning DPS) All DPS MH seem to be Crit, all DPS OH seem to be Accuracy now? All Heals MH seem to be Alacrity and all DPS OH seem to be Crit now? I am on the fence about this^. On the one hand, I like that you know exactly what you're getting when you pull MH/OH, so there's no RNG associated with it. On the other hand, if I want an Alacrity MH and an Alacrity OH, I should be able to arrange my gear like this. Between the loads of tiers you still have to go through, the lack of upgrades from actually doing content like FPs and Operations, the terrible RNG on Ear/Implant/Relic from Takanna, and the still far too costly and time-consuming Augment crafting, this system still needs a lot of work. ACCURACY: 3 x 306 Enhancements + 1 purple Grade 11 Proficient Stim == 1557 Accuracy Accuracy needed to hit 9% (+1% companion bonus = 110%): 1589 Add 1 x (formerly) 240 Accuracy Augment to any piece of gear, which have been nerfed on the PTS, but still have enough of the stat to bump you over. It will add 58 Accuracy, and will boost your Acc value to 110.12%. Since grade 11 augments and kits will be soooooooooo hard to come by, you can get by with minimal grade 10 stuff for now, at least.

It would be good if the Dxun changes this week or the "rest of the changes" next week include full gear drops for Dxun SM and HM. Pretty please!!!!

Thanks for your detailed update and willingness to address player concerns. In addition, please mention when you can, for some future patch, when a given patch will fix the progression of Dxun so the raid can be fully tested. I want to run it again, but since we can't get past the eternally locked door after boss 4, nothing further can be done. I realize you're busy dealing with the gearing shenanigans right now, but please at least let us know when one of the patches will be addressing this issue. Thanks!

This is a quick fix to the RNG that is making players mad that should, in my opinion, be easy to implement for the Dev team. It's not the ideal fix, but it would work to alleviate a lot of my annoyance (and everyone else's, probably) with the new gearing system. Two things. First, on both Takanna and Kai Zykken, when you pull an item from them there is now a refund timer. If you don't like what it is or what it has on it, you sell it back for a full TF/credits refund. Second, if you equip a piece of gear from these two vendors on your person, then the refund timer is removed (guarded prompt asking you "are you sure?") and you can no longer vendor it back for a full refund. Now players can pull/refund/pull/refund a single piece until they get something they are happy with Devs can keep their RNG-heavy system if they are this adamant about keeping this sort of meta Players don't feel like their grinding effort/time has gone into a black hole if they pull an inappropriate piece the first time You can stand there doing this for as long as you want to waste on it, but You're still locked into getting a side-grade or a slight (1 tier) upgrade on a single piece at best, so it seems minimally exploitable You can't stand there and upgrade to full 306s over 4 hours because the game uses overall gear rating of currently equipped gear and you burn your refundability by equipping the gear piece No new vendors, no new currencies, no added unassembled piece drops. Its a very small change, really. But with a huge impact. What I don't like about this is that it may be too obtuse for new players to understand that if there's a refund timer, you can return the item for a full refund, and pulling a second time will give you a new piece with different stats/bonuses/amplifiers. Anyway, devs, if you won't consider taking the RNG out of this system, at least consider making this change instead. Thanks.

I wanted to address this part in particular. With legacy left side gear and a legacy currency like Tech Fragments, this statement doesn't make sense. I can acquire left side legacy gear items from playing any toon and just reuse it on all my alts. I can get legacy TFs from PvPing my favorite toons all day, my sorc for example. If I want to set bonus gear/tacticals for my PT that I rarely play, I simply log onto my PT, go to the vendor, and buy something with the legacy Tech Frags that I grinded on my sorc. Legacy left side and legacy currencies completely take care of alt gearing with nothing else required. The % chance to drop gear not related to current character/role/spec can be removed completely from the game. Now, if we're talking that the entire system surrounding Tech Frags is all supposed to be completely supplementary, then I would like it laid out exactly what the intended path for gearing is for the following types of players: PvP Regstar PvP Ranked Player Crafter Conquest Crafter (crafts to get conquest) Conquest Player (does content to get conquest) PvE Casual (GF stuff mostly) Progression Raider Solo content Player (storyline, etc) Achievement farmer GTN Wheeler/Dealer RPer Fleet Chat Whiner (wpm in fleet chat generates TFs?) Supplementary gear systems should be specific, tailored, and expensive, NOT expensive and RNG heavy. The cost for outright buying a Serendipitous Assault relic should be enough to give me pause about whether or not I should buy it or grind it. Time investment vs money investment. RNG gearing destroys this because the time investment is variable and sometimes super long when grinding it and you'll get extremely frustrated when RNG is not in your favor and it ends up taking way longer than just buying it outright. And anyway, you're not really using a "supplementary" gear system when you fail to roll a Serendipitous relic because of RNG until the 35th pull (which happened to me on the PTS with Takanna a few different times). In fact, my luck with the Serendipitous relic has been overall abysmal in every tier of gear I have moved up to on the PTS. I was frustrated even when I had infinite money and infinite Tech Frags on the PTS. Imagine how frustrated people would get when spending actual credits and Tech Framgents they grinded out on live server. I think the devs need to take a step back and ask themselves what they're trying to accomplish with the expansion and the gearing system rework. What is the purpose of a gearing system rework? Is it to make max tier gear easier or harder to acquire? Is it to spend more or less of time/money/effort to acquire the gear? Is it to make the gear more or less customizable? Is it to make alts harder or easier to gear? What of these things would make the players happy? Did my gearing system successfully accomplish these? How do I expect the players to respond to my gear redesign efforts? What am I going to do if they don't respond in the way I expect/want? What am I willing to compromise on? If the players really hate a certain aspect of my gearing system, am I willing to capitulate or am I willing to take the player exodus hit? What am I willing to do to keep the game alive? As for me -- I want to play content I enjoy, not spend all my time grinding content I don't like in order to acquire the wrong gear piece or currencies that only give me a slim chance of getting the gear piece I want. I want to say "I need my Serendipitous Assault relic", and then I go grind content that will give exactly that to me, or give me the currencies where I can go to a vendor and just buy it directly.

I just wanted to highlight (coloring and emphasis added by me) this info so kindly provided by JediBoadicea. This is a huge disparity, and these things shouldn't vary this wildly. Probably none of the crafted Conquest war supplies should use grade 11 for any crafting discipline. Just exchange the grade 11 component requirement and replace it with grade 1. This is a low effort fix for this problem, and won't be tied to what the final form of grade 11 crafting is in 6.0, so please consider it.

I leveled Biochem / Bioanalysis / Diplomacy naturally (without using the RE cheat) using 8 x affection 50 companions. I started on Thursday night and farmed for a few hours, then got back on Friday morning and farmed a few more hours. I got Bioanalysis to 700 first, then Diplomacy, and then crafted Cell Grafts (green then blue) to get Biochem to 700. All of this probably took me somewhere around 4-6 hours total. You can get to Biochem 630 (or whatever Crafting Skill you have) by crafting grade 10 green cell grafts (assembly components) and then the blue grade 10 cell grafts (that use the iokath whatever mat). Then you can get to something like 665 with green grade 11 Cell Grafts, and after that you have to go buy the blue grade 11 schematic from the vendor and craft blue grade 11 Cell Grafts to get the rest of the way to 700. I don't consider any of this particularly onerous. The bad parts about it are when you're trying to get enough mats to do some actual serious crafting on your crew skill rather than just trying to level it. Then you really start to feel the time and cost constraints imposed onto grade 11 crafting. Anyway, during crafting leveling, the biggest gotcha is that you have to realize you can only get green mats from "moderate" and "abundant" missions, so if you have the rich missions unlocked and you're only running those, you won't get any green mats. It took me an unfortunate amount of time to realize this so I ended up wasting about an hour farming Bioanalysis and Diplomacy and not getting anywhere on my mat stockpile.

It's modeled after Indiana Jones. When he takes the idol in Raiders of the Lost Arc, he has to make it out before the boulder crushes him. In this case, once you get out of the cut scene, it's a race against time to get out before the timer kills you. I don't know if there's supposed to be a mystery gas that isn't showing up on the PTS or whatever, but just haul butt the second you're out of the cut scene, make it out of the instance before dying, and its yours. Here's a clip of me getting it: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/474647560

Just for informational purposes; I realize this already a known issue. Dxun 8m SM Containment Protocol (Hissyphus, Greus, Kronissus, Titax) Wiped on first pull because of a 1) derp pull and 2) miscommunication about when the train console should be clicked Managed to redo the boss w/o having to re-clear the instance by: everyone zoning out by various means (quitting group, kicked from group, etc) while the group still stayed formed. I passed lead and had new lead remove me from group. When I rez'd outside the instance, she gave me lead back, everyone else zoned out of the instance. Then, we went back in without resetting and were able to get back to boss 4 for a second pull. Second pull got the boss down but couldn't exit the room Second pull video: Sorc DPS Perspective I was the console clicker. Also shows us trying to figure out how to get out of the room after killing the boss, to no avail.

Regarding the Kai Zykken vendor specifically: Move Tacticals from Kai to another vendor. Give him a sidekick vendor, and put the Tacticals on the sidekick vendor (it can appear or not as Kai does). Tacticals can stay expensive for TFs since you know exactly what you're getting and you'll only be buying a couple of them per toon (no RNG). Kai's set bonus gear should be shells only with no mods, and the TF price should be reduced significantly. RNG on the set bonus gear amplifiers should be related to your current character's load-out. So a Biochem character should get % chance for Adventuring bounty, a % chance for a Biochem buff, a % chance for a Bioanalysis buff, and a % chance for a Diplomacy buff. You should not be getting Armormech bonuses on a Biochem toon. Since the currency is Legacy, there is no reason you can't swap to your Cybertech toon to get Cybertech bonus gear. In general, reduce gear RNG all around to be related to things specific to the current toon and their current spec (and the gear they're wearing). Remove the credit cost for the set bonus gear (paying money for RNG is gambling). Keep credit costs for the Tacticals (you know exactly what you're getting here, no RNG) . General Gearing-related changes that should happen in conjunction with the above: Change Takanna to sell only MH, OH, Ear, Implant, Relics. People have plenty of options to acquire legacy or non-legacy moddable gear shells with no set bonus from elsewhere in the game to use before they can buy set bonus gear. Add another vendor that sells the hilt, barrel, armoring, mods and enhancements w/random amplifier in exchange for TFs (you can buy specifically an Adept Enhancement, but the amplifier will remain RNG-locked). Price should be cheap and reflect what you can grind in a reasonable day's work (2-3 hours for non-crazy people). Add a cool set of color crystals to this vendor unique to the Onslaught expac (that also cost TFs). Mods vendor should probably also have MK-11 kits in exchange for TFs + money and base green quality grade 11 augments for TFs + money. Make the MK-11 TF cost high enough that there can still be a market on the GTN for this for crafters. The augments it doesn't matter since base green augs are not the end-goal of gearing anyway. With Kai only be available some of the time and the tiny amount of TFs you can carry, you could easily hit the TF max and be unable to spend TFs until Kai appears. This would discourage people from playing until Kai appears so they don't have an overage. Have Kai's sidekick vendor appear when he's not there so people have something end-gamey to spend TFs on all the time. Generally, any currency that is legacy-bound (TFs in this case) should have a cap of 100,000 minimum In general, you should be able to buy one set piece with mods (or Tactical) in a reasonable week's worth of gameplay. RNG and prices of the gear etc should be set with this in mind. Running operations and getting loot off the Operations bosses should short-cut this time investment. PvP, at this point, should be completely divorced from the PvE gear grind. Basically, there should be a PvP stat distribution screen where you can allocate a set of points based on your character level (and maybe your valor rank) to distribute to stats in three tiers (t1 - mastery, endurance), (t2 - defense, power), (3 - crit, alacrity, accuracy, shield, absorb). PvP queue won't let you (or your group) queue if you haven't allocated all stat points. Equipped gear should be completely ignored for PvP.