Sorry, maybe I wasn't quite clear. I was talking about people that are able to clear other Veteran Mode Operations not being able to progress past Revan or M&B VM in most cases.

So, it has probably been brought up in the past, but after the recent Exploit making some Master Mode Operations accessible on the live servers, I would like to bring it up again: Eternity Vault, Karragas Palace, Ravagers, Temple of Sacrifice and the R4 Anomaly all lack a dedicated Master Mode right now. The recent exploit (that I have not taken part in) has shown us that there are some interesting mechanics in those Master Modes that do not appear in the current Veteran Mode - so some work has at least been done in the past. I am not asking for full fledge, mechanically challenging encounters - I personally don't really like boss fights where you have to click lots of items, buttons and such things, even though I can enjoy them. However, after the recent Gear-Upgrade to 344 (and even from the raise to 340 from 330), most encounters have become not really challenging without those kinds of mechanics. The top groups can 7-man those raids, and even for the groups that defeated the most challenging Master Modes - Dxun and Gods from the Machine - 7manning the Old, (we call them Legacy-NiM) wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility. What I am asking for is, not to include more new mechanics to those old Veteran Mode (to be MM) Operations - a complete rework would probably take resources you are not willing to invest right now. Instead I'm asking for you to simply upscale those encounters in a dedicated Master Mode when it comes to DPS and Heal-Checks - the release-version of Revan Veteran Mode was much more challenging than today, where you can kill the Machine Core Burn with two DPS alive - you don't even need Healers, if those DPS are Annihilation Marauders. Making those challenges tough for the average Master Mode Operation-player would go a long way in providing us with content for the forseeable future. And not only that, it would also enable you to make Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice more accessible in the Veteran Mode - currenty, Master&Blaster and Revan are serious roadblocks that cannot be killed by a group that was able to beat the Legacy-NiM Veteran Modes such as Dread Fortress, Dread Palace, Terror from Beyond, Scum and Villain, Karragas Palace or Eternity Vault. I would even go so far and argue that Master&Blaster Veteran Mode are, mechanically, harder than many Master Mode encounters right now. So not only would a Master Mode (and thus indirectly an easier Veteran Mode) provide content for the highest-level raiders, but also for the average not-solo player that's currently pretty much only doing Karragas Palace, Eternity Vault and maybe another Veteran Mode Operation once in a blue moon.

I agree. We have some groups that we're friends with that we passed a lockout over in the past and vice versa. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be fixed, but if it isn't it's not the end of the world.

On second thought, this actually creates an issue for us, as we're currently "progging" Gods 16m with our main group plus guests. When we get to the later stages the plan is to prepare the lockout in our 8m raids and then take it from the boss we left off in the previous 16m raid. Se we definitely have to be very careful about this. But from what I hear, changing toons for everyone else but the Operations Leader shoudl still be entirely possible. So prog groups should not have a problem as long as they have a dedicated ops lead that stays in the group for the rest of the day. That's annoying, but workable and shouldn't cause an immediate fallout among our mainraid members. So I'd still say, from my point of view, this is "not that big of a deal".

So, solution for now: If you attempt a Timer, have Ops Lead on somebody who stays in the entire time. We're doing it out of convenience in our Gods Timers anyway, because there is a lot of changing characters still and we don't want the lead to pass onto people that don't notice it, resulting in 5 people not having any assistance lead and the rest not noticing that they're the only ones that can move the relogged people into the right spot in the ops frame or mark bosses appropriately. Passing lockouts however should still be possible, if the Ops Leader has the lockout and stays in the group, no? Obviously farming the same lockout only works 8 times, after that you run out of people with the lockout. Either way, there are workarounds if you know what to do.

Similar issue. Launcher (via steam) taking forever to login, when it finally does and the game launches, the server list is empty.

I think first three boss encounters are fine. They're maybe a bit above the usual story mode operations, but that's mainly due to the mechanics not really well known yet. Lady Dominique is a different thing. I pretty much only killed it in a pug group once - when I switched on Tank and basically tanked everything in burn phase on the tip of the corner, with three vengance juggs smashing away. All other kills were with a group that was progging VM or straight up had the boss down in VM. Recursive Blast is just too punishing for story mode, and it doesn't help that being kicked into the central core is an instant death - Storymode shouldn't have instant-death mechanics. If it was up to me, I would either just remove Recursive from Story Mode or nerf it down to a point that you can pretty much ignore it. Either that, or remove the add-spawns in burn - those are the major obstacle that prevent people from concentrating on the recursive mechanic.

So I have tested the changes to the AP/Tactics Tactical. Let's first get the DPS parse values on 10m dummy for other Melee DPS Burst classes. I'm using the tenth best parse in order to get a sample that is executed well, but also not just based on sheer crit luck. Carnage: 31218 Deception: 30783 Concealment: 30812 Rage: 32294 Vengeance: 31876 Considering that AP/Tactics can get up to 15m range for their core rotational abilities, I'd also like to include ranged DPS classes in that consideration: Arsenal: 28369 Marskman: 27611 Lightning: 28754 Current AP/Tactics 10th place parse is 28677. I did a very similar parse of 28698 very recently in live state. It still took me a lot of tries to get that high, so we're already in crit luck territory. I then did one parse on PTS, doing 29769 DPS with current PTS values. With the new tactical, of course after the recent changes. This was completely cold, first try and I already outparsed myself by about 1000 DPS. Putting as much time into it as I did with my live server parse, I would probably be able to squeeze 500 DPS more out of it. That would put as at about 30200 DPS. With that number we would still be below any other Melee Burst class (600 DPS below Deception and Concealment), but also way above any ranged DPS class (about 1500 DPS above Lightning). I think that we are at a good spot with that. AP is still a Melee class and should perform better as Lightning, while at the same time it is much more dynamic than all other Melee Specs, including even Pyrotech (10th place 31117 DPS, ~900 DPS more than my hypothetical AP parse), so it should obviously parse below those. So I also agree with the balance team that the previous buff was a bit too much and the changes made is putting AP/Tactics into a better place overall. I'd also like to defend the Devs intentions of buffing the class in general: AP is currently in a difficult spot in PvE. In most PvE encounters where you need a Powertech to play mechanics (sonic rebounder and hydraulic overrides), you would take a Pyrotech these days. Even for Ignite Core in Scyva Master Mode, or for Turrets in Nahut Master Mode you take a Pyro because it's doing more or at least equal burst damage under Explosive Fuel in the time window that you need to do that damage compared to AP, while also doing more sustained damage in the overall boss fight and additionally coming with more survivability (Kolto Damage Reduction and Cooldown Reduction). This change will put AP back on the table and provides a viable alternative for people like me who only reluctantly rerolled to Pyrotech, but enjoy AP more in general. So this particular change gets a thumbs up from my side.

Are those changes on PTS already? I'm already seeing the updated text, both in the ability tree and in the description of the tactical.

A while back, they changed it that you cannot travel to the stronghold while moving. So in that infinite falling situation, a stronghold won't do you any good. Being invited to one might help though.

There is a more simple solution: Right now, Credits are coming with the mail anyway. You can only withdraw as many credits as the cap allows from the mail. Everything else remains, until you free up your inventory (by putting it into the legacy cargo hold for example). I believe it might even work that way right now.

I've been thinking about this from a pure PvE perspective. And Juggs just need some kind of movement-speed-on-demand in order to become viable for endgame content. For example, on Nahut NiM, the class- and DCD-framework would fit the boss very well - but it's really awkward to play the mechanics properly due to not really having a movement speed ability - a jump to a location of your choosing withing 30 meters would be very helpful - and that's not just for that Boss, but for most of the harder endgame encounters.

You all forgot the oneshotting of bosses like Calphayus, Tyrans, Kephess-Walker, Ciphas and the Writhing Horror we got back in the day? Uncapped Reflect is a really bad idea. Jugg Tank is overall pretty good right now. There are only two things I would change: 1. Give us both, Reflect and Mad Dash at the same time. 2. Give us some kind of fast mobility option that doesn't require an enemy or allied target at where we want to go. My suggestion: Change Intercede into an "AoE"-type ability that you can place in an area, making you jump to that area and giving the Intercede-effect to all allies in that area.

Like many classes, you obviously don't just spam your one AoE skill - in case of Deception, you would replace Voltaic Slash with Lacerate, if there is more than one enemy. However, I can see an argument for deception to teleport to one enemy after another and discharging them out of their misery - the reset on that ability is putting the class in quite a unique position to do that. However, even in this situation you might even consider using the AoE tactical, making Discharge arc to multiple targets. I'm pretty sure doing a Discharge arcing to 4 or 5 targets every 4 seconds for 30 seconds is a pretty powerful AoE. Generally, the introduction of Tacticals have brought many classes new AoE-options. Some are worth taking it, some are not. I don't accept "This class is not doing any AoE-damage" as an excuse for doing stupid things.

"Let me tell you that you are not supposed to write what you have been writing here, because this topic has nothing to do with it. But after I do that, I'd like to have the last word in." What kind of conversation style is that? If we're off-topic, a mod can show up and tell us. Tanking and DPSing cannot and should not be insular topics. They are intertwined. Earlier it was brought up that I was seeing this from the perspective of having a bad tank and trying to compensate. Quite the opposite: I'm saying what optimal tanking should look like and how DPS should act in that case. Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan of being able to compensate the mistakes of others, but do we really want to adapt sub-optimal play because of others? Because that's what single target DPSing one enemy at a time is. On high level content, no one would ever have the idea of doing something like that. Every target has to fall - so doing "boss"-damage, while spreading/fluffing/AoEing the rest is the go-to-alternative. Deception and Arsenal both have AoE-abilitites that work in a circle - Lacerate for the Deception Sin and Death from Above and that other thingy for Arsenal. The AoE-Tactical for Arsenal is quite interesting too - the same goes for Deception. Saying those classes don't have decent AoE reveals your lacking knowledge about those classes. On that we can agree. But that wasn't my point of critizism. I guess here we have to agree to disagree. In 90% of situations spamming blindly AoE into a group, so that it hits the most targets, works. Healers in flashpoints do not have the capacity to heal up their group against two DPS doing AoE and a Tank. But they do sometimes have the capacity to heal themselves up against a half-assed single target attack by one DPS, and a tank failing around by hitting each target once, as OP suggested. OP said that DPS can take aggro of some mobs for a short period of time. That's right. So move in so enemies you pull aggro from don't run after you, then place your AoE so it hits everything. Many classes can "prepare" their AoE while moving in (dots and precasts). If you want, you can place a well-timed interrupt on a healing enemy - off GCD by the way, so you don't lose damage - but most of the time it shouldn't matter. I said move - not pull. You can force push mobs with a Jugg. Pushing adds is a form of moving and, no, you don't push a target somewhere where it doesn't help. It's about pushing targets that are "outsid" of the AoE area into it. You have legs as a Tank. You can move to the target, position yourself in a way that the target is between you and the center of the AoE and then push it in. This is, by the way, also a good advice for DPS. Push enemy targets into a position where they can die faster. It's not always helpful, and it's not always necessary, but it helps sometimes. That's why were here, no? To give advice that is generally helpful. Obviously not every solution applies in every situation. I imagine people reading this are smart enough to understand that. I think you're underestimating the players in this game. Most of them have the desire, if not to learn what they're doing and why they're paying more then ten bucks a month for a subscription, at least to finish the content they're doing fast and successfull. That's why corner pulls have been established for example - even though more than 90% of them don't really bring you any gain. Nevertheless, people will do something, find out it's problematic and then don't do it. That's why Tanks should lead by example and play optimally, so the DPS can learn good gameplay naturally, instead of trying to teach them some arbitrary kill order using single target abilitites, while there are five mobs waiting to be bombed around the tank. So, you criticized me for only handing out bits of information. Here is my, very short, guide for DPS: 1. Follow your tank. Like it or not, you can't play against the tank. If he wants to pull mobs around the corner, better let him do that. 2. The best way to kill mobs is to kill mobs: Use your AoE abilitites to hit as many mobs at the same time as possible. That often leads to the most DPS and the fastest time to kill the mobs. 3. If you play a ranged class, still move into melee range. Otherwise mobs will come running towards you if you lay down your AoE abilities. 4. If there is a healer in the enemy group, use a well-timed interrupt to interrupt his casts or - if tanks and healers didn't do it already - use a stun. Interrupts are preferred, as they can be used off-GCD and don't impair your ability do Damage. 5. In boss fights, things work a bit different. If you switch target while the main boss is still taking damage, make sure you do a soft switch - keep for example Dots running on the boss and, if your new target is close enough, prioritize splash damage. At the end of the day, the boss needs to die. 6. And lastly, it goes without saying, don't pre-pull a group of enemies or let alone a boss unless you have sufficient DCD's to survive it until the tank can use his AoE taunt or most enemies are dead. And please, next time someone wants to write a guide, don't start it with "I actually never play DPS". The intention might be good, but if you have no clue what to do, it won't help other people either.

Classes that have really lacking AoE are the exception, not the rule. All Snipers can do decent AoE. All Mercs can do decent AoE. All Powertechs can do decent AoE. All Sorcs can do decent AoE. Lethality Operative can do deccent AoE. Carnage and Annihilation Marauders can do decent AoE. Vengance Juggs can do decent AoE. All Shadows can do decent AoE. That leaves you with three specs that are a bit lacking: Concealment Operative, Rage Jugg and Fury Marauder. And even they have some form of AoE that goes further than "just a frag grenade", even though I would personally not render a final judgement, as I very rarely play Concealment and have never successfully played Rage or Fury. In every case, doing at least some form of AoE damage until you're down to few, if not one target, is more efficient. Don't underestimate the potential many classes have. Lightning Storm, Suppressive Fire and a Dostspread are the beginning of wisdom, not the end. As I mentioned above, every Tank class has at least one ability to move a stationary target. Powertech has two Grapples, Sin has Force Pull and a Knockback hitting multiple target. Jugg has one single target knock - I give you that it's a bit harder to control multiple ranged enemies with Jugg. But you have a different way of doing that: AoE Taunt and Reflect. The latter one builds a ton of aggro. In no way should any healer get aggro from one of those enemies. What you're writing here sounds like you tried very little, but you're already out of ideas.

If we go back, it should be the 3.0 Gear system. Whatever you do, you gain a currency that you can buy non-set gear from vendors. And the new operations are giving you tokens you can exchange for set pieces. That's nice and easy to understand.

That is not correct. Currently, Pyrotech is the best Burst Class in the game. And if you think about that, the reason why we get an AP buff will become apparant.

Occasionally, when I'm asking by friends. Generally, that's a Tank issue. Get the weaker mobs close to the stronger mobs and they will die from AoE and splash damage. Especially if it's those kinds of weak mobs that you, as a healer, would kill with three spells.

Please don't take this personally, but there is a lot of incorrect information and solutions that are searching for problems in your text. So, this sounds good on the surface, but it completely ignores a key factor of what you, as a tank, and the player you're directing your advice to, the DPS can do. And that's AoE Damage. From your advice I would imagine that I should go single target DPS from one target to the next. If I'm going to do that, I will not only pull aggro from the target I'm currently DPSing, but also it'll take a long ass time to go through - many classes rely on a certian build up of abilities to do their damage. Killing some standard mobs might only take a few seconds, so you gotta start from scratch every time, further decreasing the damage the DPS I'm doing and it'll lengthen the fight unnecessarily. However, many DPS classes have AoE abilities that are more than sufficient. Those are often more efficient to use at multiple targets than their single target abilities. Additionally, and here comes some advice for you, it makes it easier for the Tank to maintain aggro on all targets, because I don't generate high threat (DPS -> Threat) on one random target that you can't possibly know beforehand. You're going by it the wrong way. The DPS are not in the group to support the tanks - it's the other way around. You're not the one killing the targets, the DPS are. It is your job to make it as easy as possible for the DPS to defeat the current encounter. And that means holding aggro of all NPC's involved. Taunts are also the wrong devices to primary hold aggro. Taunts don't generate aggro on their own. But let's start from the beginning. If you enter a boss fight, you will start the fight with 1 threat generated on all targets, while everyone else in your group will have 0. If you use Taunt, or even Mass Taunt at that point, you're multiplying that 1 with 1.2 if I remember correctly. So you're holding 1.2 aggro afterwards. That's not an awful lot. Instead of taunting, you are immediately starting to use your AoE abilities (if there is more than one target in range of, let's say a Flame Sweep or Slow Time). Depending on the situation you can continue with one or two more attacks. There is something in this game that's called an aggro threshold. Someone pulling aggro of a target does not only need to have generated more threat than the one currently holding that NPC, they need to have slightly more (there is also a difference in the threshold if you're below 10 meters or above 10 meters from the target). What this means is, that at the start of the fight, if you're spamming some AoE's, you will always maintain aggro of the targets even if you're not the very first in the list. After three or four GCD's, you can finally use your mass taunt or - in case of good DPS - the weekest enemies are dead already and you can use your single taunt to maintain one stronger enemy, while continue to DPS other strong enemies. Hitting every enemy with one abilities at a time, as you suggest, sounds like you would want to use a Flame Burst on each target in a row. Aside from very very few circumstances, you don't want to do that ever. I also mentioned that it's your job to support your DPS earlier. As a Tank, you have certain abilities that CC, root, push and/or pull enemies. So what you want do, instead of letting enemies march toward your DPS after your two rapid shots were - who would've guessed - not sufficient in holding aggro against a full single target rotation by a Virulence Sniper, use your grappel to pull the enemey towards you. A Carbonize afterwards, and if the DPS are bombing properly, everything will be dead by the time those NPC's would continue doing DPS again. Yes, you want to get all enemy NPC's as close together as possible and maintain threat for your DPS to use their AoE and Dotspread abilities to do DPS efficiently. I disagree. Damage Dealers are usually doing fine. Even the most inexperienced Lightning Sorc will find the button for the Lightning Storm. It's the tanks who let enemies run rampant and have them kill the healers and DPS. No CC's, Mass Taunts at the very beginning and very little AoE is what I'm usually seeing. Contrary to what you said here, it's not the DPS job to manage a group of enemies. That's your job as a tank. You have sufficient abilities for that. When a Healer gets aggro from trashmobs, it's your fault, not the DPS. They're not here to do your job. Otherwie they would be queuing as tanks, no? Btw: This ineptness of tanks has made me adapt a certain mantra when doing trashmobs: If you want to bomb (--> do lots of AoE), move into melee range. All DPS class, with no exception, have DCD's to "tank" enemies for a small period of time - and I'd rather take a little bit of damage if it means that those mobs don't run towards me, out of my AoE-circles. That's the only advice I would give DPS in Flashpoints these days.

This is not correct. There is something called "Rest XP". If you're sitting in a resting area (like your stronghold, the fleet or a random cantina), while you're not logged in, you gain Rest XP. You consume one Rest XP for each regular XP you gain and get twice the XP! So, if you're sufficiently rested, it only takes half the time to get from, let's say, 79 to 80. Also, the recommendation of Heroic Mission is wrong here. Just do the regular story, it'll give plenty of XP, way more than Heroics. Sometimes you even have go there talk to them missions that award their XP after just using your galaxy map and quicktravel. That's basically XP for free.

With tacticals, relics and legendary options we have, it's actually not that hard. You could put more decisive effects on those items than just something that generally only amounts to a damage boost in most cases (one good example was the Neural Triggers tactical for PT). You obviously also have to compensate for the effects in the skill tree. Give the players a choice between a tactical that gives you something like an 8% DPS boost or, let's say, Carbonize for PT DPS. Give tanks the choice between an additional DCD or reduced CD on Taunts (I would imagine the latter would be more impactful in PvP). Ultimately, you can also bring back certain PvP stats (we had Expertise back in the day) on Legendaries that you don't need in PvE - and give us the option to take more DPS for PvE content. That would also allow the devs to properly scale the DPS along the Range-Melee-Dot-Burst range, while also not having a style of a class lead to an imbalanced situation in PvP - AP PT's for example will always be very strong in PvP if they are sitting at their supposed DPS spot on that balance range as a Melee Burst DPS.

But you can jump around like a monkey! At least, if there are targets and allies to jump to. Speaking of that, here is a thought: Change Intercede, so that you don't jump to an ally, but instead to an area you're targeting with an aoe - and everyone within 5 meters of that aoe receives the damage taken reduced buff from intercede.

Is that a flat buff, or are Energy Lodes in general redesigned? Right now they are only buffing Energy Burst / Cell Burst and are consumed by it? If we get both, we'll be having 100k Energy Bursts - twice in a row. I wish Sorcs good luck surviving that in PvP.

So, what is happening right now if you want to repair your armor? You have to spend your credits at a vendor. Let's say you pay 500.000 Credits for an almost complete repair. You now have 500.000 Credits less. With the new currency, repair costs will be slashed by a factor of ten. So you have to spend 50.000 new credits. How do you get 50.000 new credits? By exchanging 500.000 of your old credits into 50.000 new credits. What's the result? You have 500.000 old credits less. You notice anything? We have the exact same result as before. It is not taking away anybody's wealth anymore as before. This is not the American health care system - you cannot chose to not participate. It's the game. The only thing that would be preserved is the "perceived" wealth of having billions upon billions of credits and not have those taken away. You would still be able to do with those credits whatever you did before, only with the additional step of trading them in for another currency before. As for your second problem: You can still obtain old credits from other people, so I assume that there would be a market for retrading. But I don't know why you would want old credits instead of new ones if you're selling an item - the only things you can do with those is trading into new ones.