Keith, Thank you for increasing the positivity around this game. Through simple things like this communication. So my question(s). How will this work exacltly? Will there be a separate queue for Umbara? Will Umbara be in the MM queue, but if you don't meet the requirements it will force you to deselect it and lose out on the daily bonus? It will be in the MM queue, state clearly that you don't meet the requirements, automatically deselected until met and not affect the daily bonus? How will the 242 average be determined? Specifically, I like you have a lot of alts I like to play from time to time, but I mainly gear through hand me down mods. So would a Chest piece with 236 Set bonus armorings, 246 mod and enhancement be counted as 236, 246, or 242. How about the weight of Armor pieces vs MH,OH, and left side. How do Augments impact the average? Will someone with A mods and high endurance enhancements be counted equally with someone with unlettered and low endurance. This is how I would calculate things. I would ignore the gear rating and look at the stats. 50% augmented and un-stimmed 242 has a total stat budget of 13211.(sum of Mastery, Power, Acc, Crit, Alacrity.)(For reference this is slightly less then augmented and stimmed 236) If a player has more than this(Including the stats they get from stims and augments they have equipped), then they meet the check. -=-=-==-=- Edit quick note Also in my suggested calculation, I would give a bonus for 246/8 MH/OH so they could meet the gear requirement with slightly lower stats.

Wow you are on a one track mind with this. I think most forum readers have gotten the what and the why by now. I believe that these changes will affect the merc overpopulation. To summarize why since pve and pvp gearing are intertwined ArsGunn dominance in pve won't bleed into pvp as much. Also as gearing has become more alt friendly people are more able to switch. Why are these half-assed? Why do you think your way of balance is better then another? Often in multivariable problems you try to isolate one variable to find its affects. Balance in swtor is a multivariate problem. PVE balance has been out of whack far longer than PVP balance. I feel it is appropriate that they focus on a few variables and then reassess. Btw please take this to another on topic forum. Ad hominems are boring. Argue the content not the poster. See above. One thing that I find that annoys me, and must annoy the team is often times forum discussions get really repetitive without offering any additional insight other then some sense of scale. How does this play into the feedback process? If something is pointed out by one person with good reasoning is that any different then many people offering good reasoning, no reasoning, or wrong reasoning. This problem is partially solved on reddit through the up/down vote process, but not completely. Often people will repeat things because they feel like they are not being heard. Is there a way to address this?

If you love a spec it is never painful. Balance shadow here since 2.0 If you are skilled they all are. Do you know your class? are you skilled? The last time we had to worry was back when (*cough cough*) BHTroopers were hydraulically overpowered. Asked, answered, and they have been listening a lot more lately.

There is a lot of doom and gloom around here and I think a lot of it is exaggerated. Look at this. http://ixparse.com/stats/ Of the people who parse and upload their data over the last 16 weeks when using the raid settings in starparse, CMDO/Merc is over-represented by 200%. 1/3 of people who fit the above description when they dps are cmdomercs. 93% of them play gun/ars. If the internal data is anything like this then merc/cmdos need a dps nerf. They are kinda the brain-dead option to clear content. Their only drawback is they don't have the full 35 m range of tk and snipers. I can't think of a single fight where I would not take a skilled mercmdo. Since I don't play my merc/cmdos beyond casually, I can't comment on the specific way they chose to nerf the dps, but my math puts it at more of 400 dps drop and more in line with Hatred Pyrotech. We'll have to see how it operates when live and how players adjust to it, but this is in line with the balancing objectives stated in the past. Re: dummies. I have already shown how they are over-represented in pve, but a would like to add a few notes here. 1. The earlier dev post never said they took dummy parses into account. 2. Top parsing specs are always over-represented on leader-boards. I parsed my infil shadow till I felt like I had learned all I could comparing it to other peoples parses then I stopped. (I don't have the patience to wait for a lucky parse just to be the top of the sin/shadow leader-board) Lethality is a different matter because it could be the server/world top. So, I might do more. This effect magnifies as you go further down. PVP Yes they didn't get the utility nerfs many are calling for, but cmdos really are not the problem in pvp. It is the FOTM nature that is. Stacking any class causes problems. If fewer people queued on their cmdo alts one to three in a match would not be that big a deal. Personally the problem class is snipers, which can ruin a match without class stacking. Additionally, I suspect the the overuse in pve bleeds over into pvp because of the current gearing system. If their pve use goes down, I suspect their pvp use will as well. Final comment, With a sufficiently difficult fight all specs should parse equally is in effect their goal. Do we think the mechanics in many fights are strong/weak enough that lethality losses enough up-time and rotation quality and mm maintains near perfect up-time and rotation quality to justify a 10% spread. I don't know, but I do know that Arsgun can maintain up-time and rotation quality to outperform most specs.

This whole post is just ....completely ridiculous.

This looks like a good list. Depending on the changes, I think a lot of people will be happy. Personally I would like the balance(will never be serenity) shadow's range and aoe size back. The latter was nerfed with sages for no reason. I would also like to see a way for balance to have the aoe dmg reduction without impacting tanks.

Is this confirmed that his basic attack(Called Melee Attack) can/will kill them.

I have seen this happen/ be a problem with multiple groups. From time to time, but mainly after inversions, Tyth will kill an add at his feet without doing a telegraphed aoe. Does anyone know what is causing this? Is there a way to easily avoid this?

I gotta say a lot of comments in this thread are ridiculous and BW can't win for trying. Starting with the OP, many of the commentators are myopically focusing on just their wants and not the communities. When has gear ever not been a grind. The coming changes give players certainty, goal, and multiple routes to better gear. In 5.0, you could partially get by with crafting, but if it was a new toon w/o the set bonus you were going to have to grind till the cows come home. As with the rng crates, I like to see a system in effect and players adaptations to it before I pass a final judgement, but the 5.1 changes to gearing are a positive step. However, I am already concerned for pvp-only players as their grind could be lessened. We just went though a year+ of nothing but story, story, story. Do you care about anyone else? On top of all that you get a quick response from E.Musco, while group PVE players have had little communication over the past few years. This however, I understand because any mistake or misstatement gets blown up in their faces. If we allowed them to be more human then they could be more communicative. I would prefer statements like, "we are working on ops, but we do not have a timeline for it," or "we just finished an 5 boss operation, but it is so buggy that it is not ready for prime-time, and we want to delay it. These bugs may be unfix-able and the raid may never be released." Then the current silence. Do you know how you get class balance? Have one class. So you have 3 mission slots(Oricon,Macro,Seeker) taken up on alts you don't play. Just abandon them or get in a last boss lockout for the two ops in bolstered sm. How is this the stupidest idea? Annoying maybe, but one of the worst things ever? Get real. Mr. Musco and BW, There are a ton of loyal people that have been through a lot and are looking at this announcement as make or break. Hope you make it.

You have two different ways to display the dropping of two slots' gear tokens. Is there a difference? Also, when two slots are listed does this mean that 4 tokens drop(2x2) in 8m or 8 tokens(4x2) in 16m?

I am not the best operative in the world, and I really didn't dps with it before 5.0. (I raid a lot and saw Bant's numbers on leth, cxp benefis dual role classes, and I wanted to focus on something new. So, the op won the gcxp battle) Maybe because I am new to the spec, or maybe it is my server, but what determines whether I win or not is the same as it has always been in solos. The matchmaking RNG; what comp and what skill level of the players. The times when I am most successful is when the four of us work as a team. I fail when I get tunnel vision or get stuck out of the fight for too long. Are ops the fotm? no. Are there comps that are pretty unwinnable? yes. Could it be worse for ops? Hell yes. They are in the middle of the pack and in the hands of a skilled player can change the fortunes of everyone for a night. I am hovering around .500 right now and a good 30% of my losses were due to WAI matchmaking(4 dps vs 3dps &1 heal, 4v3, or d/c/afk-ers), 15% rangemegeddon, and 55% the better team won(this last bit includes my f-ups). PS. I think Caprica has all the room to get annoyed at this discussion since they have been able to do ranked successfully even when snipers weren't so powerful.

Thanks for this work. One thing I am unclear on with your research is how bolster works mechanically. Does it look at your total stats, each piece of gear's stats, or each modification's stats and bolster from that. Your research seems to point to it being each mod. Therefor legs with 220 set bonus, 240 crafted mod, and 230 enhancement is a perfectly legitimate gearing. Have we ever known this for certain?

I'll give you 2 reasons. Dual Role classes and PVP. I do not want to have to switch stims(esp. since they last 8 hours) every time I switch activities and/or roles. Acc stims are incompatible with pvp gearing and heal gearing.

Overall, I would say that the classes that you targeted and how you nerfed them seems ok. Will need to see it in live; but a hesitant thumbs up. However, there is one big exception and it is the nerf to sin/shadows. You do not have an explanation as there isn't one. FiB/DF doesn't spread dots, used to have a 30m range, and with our limited mobility any bit of range is key. The only thing I can think is you want to be conservative in your game assets, but that is a lousy explanation that can easily be solved by what you did to rs/hib for troopers/bh. Just give shadow/sins a radius boost passive.

As I won't run the story on more than a few characters, my choices are self-limited, but I finally got it on my vir sniper. I think the issue for some of us is that we got it on the pts and assumed it would be calculated the same. On demand burst, variety of defensives, and defensives that reflect damage to the attacker seem to be what is helping most people easily get the achievement. As snipers only have one of those three it was frustrating. What made it even more so was that there were many pulls where I thought I was way under the required time, but did not get the achievement. After my way too many pulls, the timing seems to start when you enter a fresh instance and ends when you kill the last boss.