Respectfully, you didn't seem to even slightly care about this three months ago. Why the change of heart?

I believe so too. The entire management team - Olsen on down - needs to be removed from this IP. They need to bring in people who can upwardly sell the value of investment into this game in order to make effective change possible, then bring in MMO-minded leadership to make this title into an actual game again, instead of this crap microtransaction platform. A team that understands that they actually have a responsibility to grow the community by releasing content encouraging growth. A team that understands that instead of the nickle-and-dime "Look at our new pack!" business plan, a real stream of varied, quality content at a sensible cadence would net them far more millions than they have now. And even then, it's probably too late. Is there anyone out there that truly does not believe this game could/should have had millions of subscribers right now? Is there anyone out there that truly feels this game lived up to its initial $200M cost? Every year it's gotten worse. As an actual game, this title is a running joke. For the last couple years, I've wrestled with loving aspects of the gameplay while hating what was happening to its direction. The balance has shifted too far for me, and I lasted far longer - years longer in most cases - than most of my friends. I do hope things change for the rest of you that opt to remain here. Personally, I am happy to have finally cut the cord and have no intention of even considering coming back. I've been looking at other games and it's sad to see the contrast in quality between them and this title.

Too little, too late.

He's just being contrary. That's his thing. I have him on ignore, and only see when someone quotes him. I've geared out via crafting as well. All 240, my whole team did. To do this on alts is not trivial. It's a lot of VMCs. A lot. At the end of the day, all I am seeing is that the studio is doubling down on one of the worst, most unpopular decisions they've ever made. I've personally decided there is only one viable reaction left, and as such I've unsubscribed. http://imgur.com/OY3cxwY No point talking about it anymore. It was fun, for a long, long time. But it's just not fun anymore. /shrug

All indications are they are doubling down on this too. I barely log in anymore, and think it's safe to say the end is in sight for me.

The 197k hit happened to me the other day, I assume the healers didn't cleanse. /shrug As far as the enrage - as long as you interrupt the cleave during enrage you oughta be fine.

But the larger question is are you going to bump the cap from 300 to something higher and essentially force everyone back to square 1?

I really think they need either another defensive or a shorter cooldown on at least one of them. It would be nice if we got something even in the same universe as the Sin Force Speed talent. I would love to see EF drop it's duration and cooldown in half and change its defensive function to a cheese or 50-60% flat damage mitigation. Or maybe Kolto just needs to also be more of a mitigation buff or something. I'm not sure exactly what but I just feel they need a small boost in the active mitigation department.

It's not a question of being able to take more being better than taking less. It's a question of wondering why a tank has to choose between taking less damage over time vs. having enough health to live through spikes. Um.... hyperbole much? A tank wearing B mods is "far more difficult to keep alive"? I doubt that. I doubt you'd even notice, since all he's really trading is defense at the very top end of the scale. Reality is my job as a tank is not to reduce your resource utilization. It's not to make your job easier. My job is to stay alive by using active mitigation and having the common sense to walk into the instance with enough health to live through two or three hits in a row. Yes, I should focus on mitigation, but currently I have to do this after I have a realistic health pool. I don't think it's ridiculous to suggest that max mitigation tank gear be altered to give the tanks a higher starting HP pool. I agree that it is too low as it stands and the fact that nearly every tank I know uses at minimum B-mods tells you something. The fact the a lot of them use Lethal B mods tells you how ridiculous the "you'll be too hard to heal" crap is.

Sure, but 18 months later they make sure everyone can get one.

I don't think this is as much the issue as the studio's stance on unique/special items. They seem to have this idea in their head that special, significant unique items are in some way bad. As such, rewards have become diluted. The conversation Eric had with Snave shed some light on their thinking. Now pretty much everyone has a rancor, everyone has Kell Dragon weapons etc etc. I am frankly surprised that wings have not yet appeared on the CM. Give it time.

rofl just.... no words.

Far more so than the garbage we've been served since 4.0. Edit: To be fair, I can't speak to its timeliness or its quality yet. But it certainly reflects variance, which has been catastrophically lacking. As such, I look at it as nothing more than a positive first step.

Quality, timely and supported content of all types is all the "sub reward" I want.

I think you are mischaracterizing the nature of the "need" people are expressing; certainly you are overblowing it. What many people want is simply a situation where we do not have a bad gearing system. There is far too much time wasted on these forums of people talking about something other than that.

I guess you must pug a lot. I'm not going to lose a lot of sleep over a pug's viewpoint of gearing for content that is typically done with teams. From the team point of view, I do not care which DPS gets a mainhand, one of them will. the next time, another will. After 4x, all 4 DPS have mainhands. Then we go to healers. Then tanks. That is how we have always done gear. No one cares which team member gets it because the entire point of gearing is to improve team DPS output/heal output etc. In that particular instance - sure, it's random. They have a 1:4 chance of obtaining a piece. However over the course of four runs, there is zero randomness. They will all have the piece. I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept to understand. From a team perspective, there was zero RNG. Kill boss, team is now better equipped.

If you were on a team, your team got the piece. Guaranteed. Unless you're particularly selfish, that's all that needed to happen.

I would love a toggle in GF for a no cutscene version of FPs. They're neat once or twice but after literally hundreds of times it's insane that someone would want to sit through them.

Why will editing these numbers take one month?

I think you'd see a lot of NM Nefra farming

lol 5char

OK, first - I'm not clear on why I should be un-subbing. Because I am recommending a change that is outside the scope of what you suspect is possible? And aren't you the same guy that posted the "Worst business model" thread? Of course it's true. You've just listed two ideas that prove my point. Scale PvP gear acquisition back you say? You believe - honestly - that's what needs to happen? I just stopped laughing so let me ask you this - how do you define "time investment in Operations?" Like a clock? That'll go over great - people afk'ing in Ops is exactly what this game needs. But you don't mean that, do you? You mean bosses killed. Ahh, I gotcha. Here's the problem though. Killed by who? PuGs? Have you PuG'ed ToS lately? EC? What about groups that are trying to kill harder stuff? Groups just getting back into NM that struggle for a night on a boss? Or should you scale it to groups that can Farm HM's and a lot of NM stuff, leaving everyone in the dust? As I said in an earlier unrelated post the number of players doing Ops is debatable, but the size of the skill gap is not. So - anyone behind who you aim it at gets the shaft. Anyone in front has such a massive advantage it's not funny. But, you thought of all that already 'n stuff. Your other idea - removing gear from PvP altogether.... I'm not sure how that's any less farfetched than putting loot back on bosses and bringing back PvP commendations. Regardless though - now you're just screwing Ops players. And forget about the fact that it does not in any way touch my point (which you seem to be ignoring) that a common system for PvP and Operations gearing cannot be equitable. I'm not sure how much clearer I could possibly be in this font - correct, they "should" stop trying to improve it and focus on removing it as the intended primary mechanism for Ops and PvP gearing. You're making a lot of noise but I haven't seen a proposal by anyone, including you, that would be more fair. Context bro. You're failing at trying to play semantics. The problem I am referencing is certainly being glossed over by you. If you need to reread, do so. The fundamental idea of putting Ops and PvP gearing into the same overarching mechanism is a flawed idea. Period. I promise you, if you really want to keep on this - put up a solution with values. I will find the point of failure in under a minute. I have not seen anything that makes me believe this is even remotely reality, because at the end of the day gear still requires a constant throughput of CXP. And you haven't defined "doing the content" in a way that is equitable for PvP and PvE players. I do not disagree the system could be tuned to be fine for one or the other. But I am saying it cannot be for both, and the best you're hitting back with is "yes it can" and some backsass. Show me an actual fix that is fair for all, with numbers, or you have nothing.

Or they could just create LFR mode as a 4th option. While the playerbase is not massive, the spread in skill is. Reality is the cost of creating an LFR mode would be negligible. Remove enrage timer, reduce damage output to nonsensical levels... Bam. LFR.

My entire point is that there is no sufficient improvement possible. I think I've been as clear as can be on this. There are too many inequities between the playstyles of Operations players and PvP players to make CXP-based gear acquisition fair. The two activities cannot be scaled in a way that is equitable. "Improving it" has gotten us an additional layer of RNG within the instances, an additional currency, the need to check a light/dark thermometer every hour (soon to be every 30 minutes!) and additional vendors. What's next? Another gold icon on my screen? CXP gain for wipes? When you have to spend more time rolling out fixes than the initial release - isn't that indicative of a problem? I do not care that GC exists for players that do not primarily PvP or run Operations. I'm glad if it's good for them. And sure, keep "monitoring" "tuning" and tweaking". Bolt on whatever is needed to further render this system unrecognizable from its initial state if it helps those players. But it should have nothing to do with how to obtain gear in Operations and nothing to do with how to obtain gear via PvP because it is not a system that can ever serve both functions equitably. I have seen no "improvement" suggested that changes this, nor do I expect to.

At the end of the day, while you're making your point clearly, you don't seem to be giving anyone else's opinion the same credence. I fall squarely into the camp of "slowly getting better" = becoming a different level of suck. IMO, it still sucks, and the direction they are going - "tuning" and "monitoring" - will not get them to "good". It will keep them in suck. I do not want "better". I want "good". As do many others here. Why you somehow feel that's a less valued point of view than your own - I guess I don't get that.