What about a limited opportunity, two months after the release of 6.0 (and each other x.0 update afterwards)?

So, first of all, I want to thank the Devs for taking time to look into those issues. I surely don't know, what ressources were available and what priority this matter had. However, i want to propose an alternative, that also can serve as an addition to the already announced changes. As far as I know, your (the devs) main goal is, to force players to not use skank tank builds. I don't think, that these changes would work out in this way. I propose to alter the goal in providing an alternative for skank tanking. Currently, there is an high amount of defense rating on tank gear. Especially on Mods, there is just defense rating. So, we can decide between unlettered Warding, Warding B, unlettered Lethal and Lethal B. Lethal Mods don't have defense rating but power rating. B-Mods have more endurance and less power/defense, unlettered Mods have more power/defense and less endurance. With full-tank-equipment and unlettered Mods, we are acting deeply in diminishing-return areas - so, the stat is not as valuable as other stats would be. That forces us into taking B-Mods. However, even with Warding B-Mods, we are still in the diminishing return area. I am currently using Lethal B-Mods, and I am still inside of the diminishing return area. I am also using some non-token-tank-enhancements for my shadow tank and I am still inside of the diminishing return area. With full-tank-equip, I am ending at around 37% defense rating. With nearly 50% less defense rating, I am still at 31% defense rating. Regarding this, I am insting on the fact, that we have way to much defense rating without any valuable alternative in our equipment. That forces us into trading one useless stat into one stat, that is not as useless as defense rating, into power. My suggestion is now, to reverse the changes to warding mods made with 4.0: Reintroduce Modifications with Absorb and Shield Rating. That would clear the mess, that tank stats currently are a bit and combined with the other change I propose in the next section, would provide an alternative to skank tank gearing in PvP. A problem mentioned by some in this thread is the use of guard by DPS-classes. My suggestion for this topic - and to use the mods mentioned above - is the following: Change Guard, that it requires tank stats to work. Guard now has the following effects: The guarded target has a chance of mitigating incoming attacks. If attacks are mitigated (A), the damage can be reduced (B) and/or redirected © on the tank. Defense Rating increases the amount of attacks affected by Guard. (A) Absorb Rating increases the amount of damage reduced by the guarded target. (B) Shield Rating increased the amount of damage redirected on the tank. © Without any stats, Guard has the following base effects: 10% chance to mitigate any attacks. 2% damage reduction. 5% damage redirection. The maximas, that can be reached by distributing all possibly stats to one of the three options are the following: 100% chance to mitigate any attacks. (diminishing returns up from 80%) 100% damage reduction. (diminishing returns up from 50%) 100% damage redirection. (diminishing returns up from 65%) The optimal distribution with full gear would probably be 70/25/50 with a small range to adjust these values. (These numbers are highly speculative and not the result of any mathemtical calculation.) With these changes, tanks in PvP have to decide, if they want to do damage with DPS-equipment, or if they want to fullfill their tanking role by having a better Guard. DPS specs do have a basic guard-abiliy, that is far from being as powerful as tank-guards. TL;DR: Reintroduce Absorb/Shield for Modifications and Guard is affected by tank stats. So, I cleary hope for a Devs feedback and I would also ask other players what do you think about this suggestion. Be aware that I am not a native english speaker, so some phrases are not as eloquent as they could probably be.

Is it possibly to change the distribution of the required Crafting Materials a bit? We can easily earn tons of PvE-Mats through hightlighted Groupfinder Ops. That leaded to the situations, that I currently have 22 PvP-Mats and 153 PvE-Mats. Also, we need 2 PvP-Mats and just one PvE-Mat for a 236-augment. I would request to swap these numbers around.

From my perspective as a NiM-raider, lockouts are very helpful to progress on certain bosses and to farm final bosses for the specific loot pieces (like Wings). It is also much easier in the current raiding community on Tulak Hord to - for example - find people for a quick TFB final boss as for the complete operation. The Devs have to value (the loot from) the non-final-bosses higher, if they want us to do them more often and not punish us to do them by removing lockouts.

1. You have to do them all. In an operation, you have to fight boss 1 to unlock boss 2, boss 2 to unlock boss 3 etc. However, there is a way, you can avoid bosses 1-4: There are sometimes forming groups for Final-boss-lockouts (for conquest points, I guess). You can complete the Weekly Mission by killing just the final boss. 2. The Weekly is completed by either Story Mode or Veteran Mode. You can switch difficulty by clicking on your personal portrait, then phase and then you can chose 8m/16m and SM/VM/MM. For GftM, there currently is no MM, so you won't be able to enter the operation, if you selected MM. 3. The most important information - and one, that most of the players are not aware of: You don't need gear, you need skill. The bosses in operations are difficult encounters, that require coordination, raid awareness and most of all learning aptitude. Wiping isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. The least important aspect of operations are DPS/HPS/DTPS. And that is, where gearing comes into play. Of course, proper gearing is often helpful. However, with superior DPS/HPS and bad execution of mechanics, you won't clear most VM/MM bosses. On the other hand, with superior execution of mechanics and bad DPS/HPS, you surely can clear most VM/MM bosses. I hope, my answeres were helpful. If you have any further questions, feel free to ask. Otherwise, have fun with GftM!

They said, the cannot say it on stream, due to the fact, that we would be able to conclude the story development, if they reveal it. So, in fact, that have said nothing of value regarding this question.

I don't know, who you are or where you come from, so don't feel offended. However, I am currently raid leader of one of the best groups in the german community. From my perspective, any bosses, that are not MM-last bosses are literally trash. With very few exceptions, every boss that is not a MM-final boss can be cleared with any class compositions easily, given, that the players know their classes and the encounter. The only challenges currently given are the final bosses. And within these final bosses, there are certain phases, that are more difficult and others, that are less dificult. Brontes NiM for example: The only difficulty is the Burn Phase. All other phases are a joke. Deception has here both, great burst potential and superior dcd's and utility (just press Force Speed right before you receive Fire&Forget). It is just not "really good" because other classes can do more DPS (PT) or bringing superior raid utility (Sniper). Deception/Infilitration is "really good" for 2 out of 5. it is completely viable for the other 3, bringing superior survivability and decent DPS. So, I have to disagree with you: If one of our members is asking me, if he can come with an Infilitration shadow this raid night, I would let him, given, that he can play the class. However, from the points you made, I fairly doubt, that you are aware of the full potential of Deception/Infiltration. Just an example: From all DPS, Tank and Healer classes, Deception/Infiltration is the only one, that can eat Slams of the tunneling tentacles at TFB NiM without any cooldown. Ask a juggernaut/guardian, what he does here... aoe-taunt every 45 seconds I guess. So, probably, you are right. There are classes, that are "really good" in 5/5 (PT, Sniper, Mara). However, in terms of overall greatness regarding all last boss encounters (please, don't come up with Underlurker or other trash bosses.. thats not even Master Mode) I would spontaneously make the following list: 1. AP, 2. Virulence, 3. Annihilation, 4. Marksman, 5. Fury, 6. Deception, 7. Hatred, 8. Lethality, 9. carnage, 10. vengeance, 11. pyrotech, 12. Innovative Ordnance, 13. Concealment, 14. Madness, 15. Rage, 16. Lightning Be aware, that that's just my personal view. Having Lethality on 8 (behind Sins and Fury) is surely disputable, however, from my experience, operatives are mostly scumbags and are not really useful for the raid. And to do maximum DPS (the only thing that matters for operatives) you have to be a scumbag. Though, Operatives are not the matter here. Regarding your "you showed me nothing that disproves it": Your have made a statement, that Deception is not "really great" for hard content, without bringing up any arguments. As far as I am willing to show you, that your assumption is wrong, I'll ask you to tell us, 1. what do you mean with "serious PvE" 2. what do you mean with "really great"? I showed you my point of view, what "serious PvE" (--> NiM final bosses) and what "really great" (--> superior and/or decent performance in all of those encounters) means for me. Without those basics, we will probably be at crossed purposes until one of us quits the disussion.

Due to the fact, that Eric/Matt said, that no guild had killed Izax yet at the time of their last stream, one could assume, that there was not much space for testing all over. Especially "testing" the last phase was probably not given. However, I second Zwirni. If there is not enough time, there should have been more groups on the PTS. More groups = more pulls = more feedback. And with all due respect: The devs will probably comprehend Germans, when we say "P3 is boring and P6 is way too easy, add Healercheck/DPScheck/Tanktasks." So, overall, it's not a critic towards the guilds on the PTS, don't be offended. You've probably done everything within your power. It's more targeted at the devs, to plan the release schedule more wise, so that sufficient time for testing is given. That is also another argument for Master Mode: You can release Veteran and Storymode, to see, how the players are doing and then you can pump up the DPS and DTPS numbers and add some additional mechanics.

We have already discussed this in our group and with other players on our server. My opinion: 1. phases 2 and 3 are too easy regarding mechanics. In phase 2, there would have been much more potential: There are four amplifiers, and you only need 3 charges to break the shield. In my opinion, it would have been better, if they would have given the boss a certain amount of stacks, for each hit with a 1-stack amplifier, one stack disappears. Also add a timer, so that you don't have much time to break the shield and so have to use more then one amplifier, to get the shield down in time. Phase 3 is just... yeah... boring. Tanks are hanging around at the tether droids and one healer is doing the mechanic. Some sort of healing check here would have been nice. 2. Healing- and DPS-checks in general would have been nice. P3 could have been harder here, P4 is ridiculously easy, if you do it right. P5 is okay - maybe add 1 or 2 percentages of boss damage, that has to be done while defending the Gemini-Droid. In P6 (Burn Phase) the DPS-check should be harder, also add a healer check. Maybe Izax can deploy some more Tether Droids and Mines, the tanks have to deal with. So, @Matt, don't get me wrong, Izax is great. But the encounter is far too easy in my opinion. Most of the time, you are standing around doing nothing. And standing around half the time in a 16-minutes boss fight becomes quite annoying over the time. Maybe it's just me. When GftM started a year ago my raid team was freshly formed out of players, who hadn't progressed in the past and we probably weren't as good as we are now after having around 200 raid nights in the past 13 months. My suggestion for future operations is, to reintroduce Nightmare/Master Mode. Then, you can tune down Hard/Veteran Mode and Storymode, so that a wider population is able to do it. With a third level of difficulty, you can create a really hard encounter, irrespective of the VM-raid-community.

We finally cleared Izax 16m VM. Team 16 <Infinitas & Friends> Republic - Tulak Hord - Link

I totally second this. Just an example: Here, on Tulak Hord, there is a raiding group, who's leader said, that they don't want to have information about Izax, so that they can progress through the encounter the regular way. However, they stated, if 5.9 is near and they haven't killed him until then, they probably would consult guides and videos. So, obviously, it's their decision, not to ask for information - not our decision, not to hand it over to them. We don't force them to use our videos and our guides to make them kill the boss faster. So, it's more or less a decision, made by each raid - some members just want to progress the regular way without external information and others are watching out for every piece of information available. I personally really enjoyed our cooperation with 4 other raiding groups regarding strategies and mechanics. In the end, it helps everyone - and I am not jealous about Berserk killing it 10 minutes before us. It's a great feeling, being part of a wider community, that was built up in the last 10 months. Playing with each other is better, than playing against each other - that's the reason, I prefer PvE over PvP.

The Crystal works, the more DPS you do yourself beforehands. It increased your damage done by 30% - if you do 8k DPS, you cann add 2,4k, if you do 9k, you can add 2,7k, if you do 10k, youcan add 3k. However, the use of NiM-Crystals is frowned upon by most groups. For example, we don't allow our raid members to use them, because we are claiming to do all content without them. And we won't take a stranger with us in a random-raid, who always uses NiM-crystals.

As honored as we are feeling to be mentioned as World 7th, Berserk killed Izax 10 minutes before us, so you probably have to swap the last two entries.

Team Gold <Infinitas> - Republic - Tulak Hord - Link World First Pubside, I guess. Special thanks to Team Allstars (Nox), for raiding on Tuesday/Thursday, so that we were able to practice the strategies before having our own mainraid. Edit: Also thanks to The-Force/Berserk for a constructive cooperation & discussions regarding mechanics and strategies.

Serious? I mean.... serious? The only encounter, where I would currently say, that Deception is not one of the best choices, is Brontes NiM. In all other encounters, Deception scores with superior survivability and burst damage, mediocre sustained damage and insanly good target switching. It's like AP-PT without range, better dcd's and no energy management. Even for Brontes NiM, Deception scores with mediocre DPS-potential and superior survivability in burn phase. It's probably not the easiest choice here, due to some abilitys, that are useful, but not as obvious as other classes abilities. Decetion is probably not in the top 3 of all specs for PvE... but it's definitely in the upper third.

The title says it all: The new GftM-Achievement "Par Three" disappears, when you relogg. It's very similar to the problem with the Yavin Ruins Achievements.

The guilds did their progression on the PTS - so, 5 weeks of wiping on the PTS. That's new content, isn't it? Regarding PTS-concerns: That was already discussed a few days ago. Move on folks, this is not a "we are so great with our world firsts"-thread, but a tracking thread for kills. And, as we see, there are just two groups, who were able to kill Izax until now, so probably this boss is a bit harder then the other 4. My impressions until now are also good - the mechanics are not easy, but after one raid night we are about to understand most of them. Now, it's time to execute them well. Some groups come along with raid times from 4 PM to 2 AM, others are just doing raiding 3 hours per day. Don't be cruel, don't be jealous, do you stuff. As others said in other threads: The only kill, that matters, is yours, not the kill of people, living hundreds and thousands of miles away, playing on other servers, people, you don't know and never will know. Let them have their world firsts and move on.

Be aware, that doing this Mini-boss also takes its time. For SM, you can plan with about 1:40-2:00, for Veteran, I think it's a bit more... maybe up to 2:30. The reduction on the way back to Scyva is about 40 seconds. So, you have to wipe four times in Storymode and six times in veteran mode for it to be worthwhile.

"It is possible" is very vague. Except of Terror, Styrak, Brontes and Hateful NiM, all bosses were cleared in the first week of 5.0 with old 224-equipment. However, that's not the rule, but the exception.

One of my first Ops-experiences was Dread Palace SM, with noone in the group besides me have ever done it before, so I were called to do the raid lead - dulfy-guide on one screen, swtor on the other screen. Well, it was in 3.0-times, but I would compare storymodes nowadays with the 55-storymodes back when we were level 60. So, for SM, gear is completely irrelevant. Make sure, to have at least one person willing to do the lead even if this person does not know the Op. This person should prepare himself beforehands, maybe he can do the Op, when there is a PUG forming on the fleet before your guild-raid takes place. And even if you enter the OP unprepared, be honest, tell your group "well, we probably have to figure out, how this works..." and don't be afraid of a wipe or two. Regarding gearing for Ops in general, I want to provide a list, what gear to use as a not a top-tier-raiding group, but for a group with players capable of learning and getting better in playing their classes and in recognizing experiences made in the raid. All SM-Ops: Gear is irrelevant. HM Eternity Vault: 230-236 Karragas Palace: 236 Explosive Conflict: 236-242 Terror from Beyond: 236 Scum and Villany: 230-236 (last boss probably 242 or higher) Dread Fortress: 230-236 Dread Palace: 230-236 Temple of Sacrifice: 236-242 Ravagers: 236-242 Gods: 242+ NiM: 248 for all last bosses, 242 for everything else. Be aware, that Ravagers and ToS both have on boss (Rav probably 2) that is way more difficult then the other 4 bosses in terms of executing mechanics (they can be viewed as NiM). However, when you execute them correctly, Item rating 236 is sufficient. The damage- and healerchecks for Revan are scaled for Hardmode. The only Nightmare-boss in HM-Operations currently is Blaster&Master. For all Ops, there is one rule: Better gear makes it easier. You can DPS/Heal through certain mechanics, so that executing them is easier. So, have fun doing Op's and don't let you getting demotivated through wiping or Gear Grinding.

I thought of a more provoking way and just name our video "Worldfirst w/o PTS" but your suggestion seems a bit more decent. And it will probably not devalue any other kills - the groups on the first places will still remain on those. It moreover shows, who contributed to the development and made a mostly bug-free and well-tuned boss available. That's nothing to be ashamed, but more a thing to be proud of. And if others treat the world-firsters about having an "unfair advantage"... who cares? I doubt, that they need the appreciation of others. However, since the OP is taking the effort into making the list and is active in tracking the kills, he can probably do it his way. I can admit, that we apparently did not put enough effort into getting onto the PTS and we - as far as I can talk of my group - are just into endlevel NiM-raiding for a little more then one year and the old content is obviously not as old for us as it is for others, who spent years in progressing, farming and selling this stuff. So, be free to do it your way - as far as I know, none of the german guilds have gained huge advantages regarding Izax until now, so we probably have our own little progression here.

I appreciate, that you inform us that early (No /s!). Moved our planned Izax-super-special raid into the following week. In addition, I hope, that things can be figured out properly and that Izax will be as promising as it sounded until now. Keep up the good work!

Granting Achievements by the Customer Support is all in all obsucre. There is proved information about guilds doing Blaster&Master 8man HC, switching the mode to 16m, killing Cora and getting the Blaster 16m achievement granted by the Customer Support. There is another story about a player, who killed Colossal Monolith 8m HC and she got all Monolith-Achievements, 8man and 16man, after asking the Customer support. I would request Keith to establish a clear agenda on this topic, so that the CS doesn't confuse itself and probably ask for unfalsificable proof, before granting the achievement.

With all due respect... but as far as I experienced, the German raiding community is pretty much excluded from PTS testing. Both me (as raid leader of Infinitas) and our friends at Berserk tried to get access to the PTS, but none of us even got an answere on our requests. So, it's a bit more complicated than that. In terms of kill videos, we discussed that yesterday after reading your initial post and we agree - from both perspectives. On the one hand, we are benefiting from those videos, on the other hand, others are benefiting from our videos and our guides in the german forums. However, I would suggest, to have a certain date, from when kill videos can be released, so that we can probably release all our videos at the same time (if killed until that date). The reason is simple: When you release a video, why should others wait until they got the same amount of kills (or other requirements) you set for your upload? How long it needs probably depends on you - the groups progressing on the PTS. I currently have no clue about the level of difficultie, the encounter is offering to us. If it's a one-shot (or: first raid day shot) for the top-tier-teams, then we can talk about one week. When the difficultie is more like Revan pre-nerf or Brontes-with-242, we should consider two weeks or more. Regarding your requirement of "members with new achievement" that can be a bit punishing to my second group. I am currently part of two groups, one has 12 members, the other has 9 members. 4 players are in both teams, so if one team kills Izax and we enter the other groups raid and also kill Izax, this kill would be invalid due to just 4 players receiving the achievement. I also would suggest, that you seperate 8man and 16man progress, if it is not already planned. We all know, that 16man is sometimes painful (partly due to performance-issues), so maybe we can credit groups, who are willing to do that.

Seine Begründung ist, dass er das nicht in den kommenden 60-90 Tagen liefern kann und insofern nicht in der Roadmap ankündigen kann. Im Wesentlichen will er nicht ein Datum für etwas ankündigen, was er nicht einhalten kann. Keith hat übrigens vor ein paar Tagen ein eher positiveres Interview gegenüber dem BadFeelingPodcast gegeben.