13 tiers, oh no, such a big scary number! You can easily get from one tier to the next one in just a couple of days. Did you expect to get max gear in a week? If you did, what's the point of playing an MMO? Clearly, not a game genre for you. Grind is in the nature of MMOs. And this new system is totally reasonable to me.

It also increases your damage by 10%, and there is a utility that essentially makes it last 30 seconds. It's like a better Cloak of Pain.

Well, they did warn us about it. A bit late but we still had 4 days or so. Our guild made sure to hit 5million (we were on Large Yield). Finished with around 5.2mil - only got over 5mil on Monday evening. Took us more guild runs of fps and ops than usual but we worked together and accomplished it. I can see how guilds that can barely hit the "old" Large Yield might not have been able to get that much. So I agree, it's not the greatest situation. But if someone is surprised by not getting rewards and says "if we knew, we could have pushed harder", that's on them. There is no way there is not even one person in their guild who follows Dev posts. And if there truly is no one, then guild officers/guild leader should really start doing that.

It was removed a while ago from PTS. It was gone by the start of Phase 3, for sure, may be even earlier.

These articles are written by writers without ANY feedback from Combat Team. That was said by the Combat Team themselves. They are clearly just meant to showcase the "cool" things you can do with new items. They are in no way relevant to what actually happens in the meta/game as a whole.

"Reduces damage taken" does not show up on the character sheet. It is calculated separately and it is working but you won't see it anywhere except combat logs or watching the incoming damage FlyText. There are a ton of those, 15% from Maul in Deception, 40% from Invincible on Immortal and so on. Typically, if it is worded "Increases Damage Reduction by X %", then it will be directly added to the DR on your character sheet. If it is worded "Reduces damage taken by X %" or "Target takes X % less damage", it will not go onto the character sheet and it will be calculated separately from your regular DR.

Tell this to people who got triple autocrit Mauled on PTS. Sin's Burst on PTS was nuts. Double Cloak allows them to drop in, deliver huge burst and drop out very often. You clearly didn't test all the tacticals and set bonuses available to you. Sins are not supposed to face tank anyone for long, they have always meant to be a CC-heavy, burst-heavy glass cannon. And so far it's looking like in 6.0 they'll be performing this role even way too well.

"Reduces damage taken" does not show up on the character sheet. It is calculated separately and it is working but you won't see it anywhere except combat logs or watching the incoming damage FlyText. There are a ton of those, 15% from Maul in Deception, 40% from Invincible on Immortal and so on. Typically, if it is worded "Increases Damage Reduction by X %", then it will be directly added to the DR on your character sheet. If it is worded "Reduces damage taken by X %" or "Target takes X % less damage", it will not go onto the character sheet and it will be calculated separately from your regular DR.

The fact that OP is comparing Force Speed absorb to ED and, oh god, Kolto Overload, shows how clueless they are in what tanks need and what they don't. And how tanking and mitigation works in general. Sin might not be the main tank for every single operation anymore (unfair, I know, those PTs and juggs really don't deserve to tank anything ) but simply because of Force Shroud it will always stay relevant for many fights. Force Speed absorb should have been nerfed long, long ago...

That's what you get when your MMO is very story-heavy. People come here for single player experience and are completely ignorant of the MMO parts. This guy you replied to is a special kind of solo player, though. Picking an example of some terrible player dying on lvl 75 on DK and saying that this proves that it's too hard. And the fact that most of even "average" players are not dying does not matter? He cherrypicked one small example that fits him and tries to look smart. I also totally agree with you about difficulty. These people think that this is "super difficult"? Seems like they have never even played a single player game (a story-based one!) on hard difficulty. Oh, the memories of Dragon Age Origins on max difficulty... You get amazing story AND great challenge together. That's a well-made video game, right there. Anyway, this is an MMO. Same rules don't apply. In the open world content you can't have a Nightmare difficulty for players like me and an Easy difficulty for people who want to watch an interactive movie. You have to have a middle ground. One of a few very good points raised in this thread is that over the last few years we have seen an influx of players who join group content but are not prepared for it. What else can prepare them for it if not the main story line? It's not like they have anything else to do before they reach group content. We now have Story mode flashpoints that are a great intro to instance-based content but they are clearly not enough to teach the basics of playing your class. Especially, as they were originally designed to cater to these "story player" needs - to have minimum/no challenge for watching the cutscenes. Personally, I think that vanilla was great in difficulty. Some people needed help to fight their story bosses? Well, that's great! That teaches you cooperation and how to group up with other people - it's an MMO after all! Or they could bash their head against that boss for a while, get better and do it on their own. I, personally, feel really great when I overcome a challenge by myself. Level scaling made things easy, way too easy - but level scaling as a whole was needed, yes. It was not right that max level players could one-shot everything and even solo world bosses. That's not a good design for an MMO. So, we have to keep the level scaling, for sure. But making low level planets harder, making it so story bosses take at least one rotation to kill? That is what is missing compared to vanilla. We need it back. For "high-end" players to not be totally bored, for newbies and just bad players (sorry not sorry) to have something to push them into getting better. I can see how some people are concerned that the game will get "too hard". That's why this testing phase was needed, that's what balancing is. A middle ground needs to be found. In my opinion, the latest version of level scaling we have seen on PTS was ok. It was definitely not "super difficult" how some people called it here. If stuff like this is "super difficult for you", you should really stick to watching movies and not demanding for Multiplayer games to be scaled down to your skill level. And unless you have an actual disability or you are of a senior age, don't tell me you can't get better. I don't believe you. You are just being lazy or there is some other lame reason. At the very least you can group up with someone, if open-world content is truly too difficult for you - that's one of the things this difficulty is supposed to encourage, as, again, this is a multiplayer game, so: a) Not everything is supposed to be soloable and b) You are supposed to seek help from fellow players if you are indeed having difficulties. Be it getting carried, fight getting explained to you, a guide being suggested for a read, does not matter. People who spend hours on the forums complaining that some trivial fights are too difficult for them could have used this time to learn their class/learn the fight/get a friend or a guild and beaten that fight (and many others) long ago. This game is far from becoming "super difficult", the story part of it, anyway.

As the above poster said, the 2nd lightsaber has tank stats. Yours is better for Deception (DPS). The reason why it might appear better than yours in the amount of different stats it gives is because your lightsaber does not have an augment installed. And the 2nd one has a 230 rating Versatile augment, I believe. Buy an Augmentation Kit MK-10 from GTN, go to an item modification station (scatteted around the Fleet and in other places) and install an augment slot. Then craft/get from Copero flashpoint/buy an augment and add it to your lightsaber. You can do this with all of your gear, if you haven't yet. Get at least an Advanced Augment 45 (228 rating), otherwise just wait until 6.0 with augmenting. To get even better mods than what you already have you can simply do the Flesh and Steel mission on Ossus and pick a lightsaber as a reward. Or earn Masterwork crystals on Ossus and buy it directly - in either case you get 252 rating mods that can be upgraded to 258. Or keep playing as it is, may be get the augment, may be not - up to you. In 11-12 days you will be leveling to 75 and getting lvl75 gear with much higher stats.

That's exactly what happened when everything was nerfed to the ground and made easy as it is now. " Those who complained endlessly about difficulty got their way" - yep. At the expense of players who want more challenge and can actually press more than 10 buttons a minute. So back then such changes were ok to you, but now - shame on them? Pretty clear you are heavily biased here.

Yeah, Arsenal already has 20k+ parse. Might be possible to push a bit more.

From the parses I have seen (you can go to parsely.io and select PTS in the server dropdown) it seems like 20k is going to be the "minimum" good parse. Almost every spec has a parse over 20k. Highest parses are around 22.5-23k. Of course, there will still be changes and people probably haven't been using the most optimal stats, some rotations might be different and so on. But these numbers seem plausible. Kind of like current 9.5-12k parses. Seems like a similar spread. Some specs are still completely missing from parsely as they are not very popular in PvE, like Concealment. But, basically, as long as you are above 20k, you are doing well enough. P.S. Not sure about the alacrity guild perk bug, how much it is abused in PTS parses. But well, just 2 weeks (hopefully ) and we can all start working on our characters and see for ourselves.

Thank you for this post. Hopefully at least some people can understand what is said here. By the way, you didn't mention Shield Chance and I believe that sins have the highest passive Shield Chance through their rotation, as well. I believe that Absorb on average is a bit worse than PT's but also better than jugg's. Damage Reduction is pretty much their only "weakness"... Complete removal of this DCD might be a little bit too harsh, but then, leaving it as at least somewhat decent DCD would still keep it at a way too strong of a level. Sins were the best tanks for most fights even before this utility was added. People seem to forget that or they just haven't been playing back then because it has truly been way too long since this utility has been added and never changed. I myself am really tired of seeing 2 sin tanks in almost every HM/Nim operation. Occasional jugg that appears is usually just the guy who respecs to DPS on every possible occasion. Only drastic changes like this one could change this situation, and I welcome them. You will still see at least one sin tank in almost every ops. May be it won't be a main tank anymore, but Force Shroud is still a thing and you just have to have a sin tank for many mechanics.

Um, it makes total sense to me that a character with high gear rating should have an advantage over a fresh character. Let's put it the other way around: why is it ok for a person who worked hard for his max gear rating to have almost exact same stats as a person who is not even max level yet? And it's not like it penalizes anyone. You'll be fine with 0 stacks of this buff. It's not like low level planets are going to be unplayable unless you grind to max gear... Why do high geared players come to low level planets, usually? To do heroics or grind some achievements. It's going to be great to have more DPS on, say, DK or Balmorra, so I can be done with it quicker, as I have already done it dozens of times. And yes, this is an MMO, grind2win is in it's core. Grind gear to get better, grind the dummy to get better, grind the same fight over and over to get better - it is how it has always been. By the way, even now, a full 258 geared person is stronger on low level planets than a lvl20. Because he also has his 1859 alacrity, 1800 crit and accuracy that the low level person does not have. If it has never bothered you before, why are you mad now?

Take a look at your own screenshot again and notice that there is an orange icon. Your sorc has 1 stack, your shadow has 0 stacks. From a reddit post about this:

It mostly depends on the manufacture's rules, if the warranty is serviced by them. For example, I've got a Dell G3 with a 3 year warranty from Dell themselves (EU as well). Not sure about adding a hard drive (but if there is an empty slot, it isn't much different from adding RAM) but when researching about it, I found a post by Dell community manager on Dell official forums that changing thermal paste and adding/changing RAM is totally allowed without voiding warranty. Unless you break something during that process (you would need to be really careless to break anything when doing such a simple thing ) and they can prove it, warranty will still cover whatever happens to your laptop in the future. Also from experience with my previous laptop (Acer) - I have changed the screen on my own (default one was real garbage) and added an SSD instead of DVD drive (which required a special caddy from Ebay) and I still had warranty when a year later couple buttons on my keyboard got broken. Repairs were done in a local service center that had partnership with the store I bought the laptop in. Even if they noticed my upgrades, they didn't say a thing. Anyway, if you contact the store or the manufacturer and ask them, you will know for sure what you can do without warranty void.

This sounds like bad target management or low DPS issue. I guess you can't fully counter-play guard if you have super single target focused specs. But even Concealment and AP could get some cleave damage happen which helps bursting the one who guards. Everyone else can put a decent chunk of pressure out. And having even one DoT spec is already a win in my book. Basically, when DPS is guarding another DPS, you should be able to cleave them both and the one guarding will pretty much take 150% of the usual damage (I mean, that is what guard does, duh. But as he is not a tank and has no real mitigation, it doesn't bring much profit to guard full-time). Unless your team has no good damage dealers, I don't see how DPS guarding a DPS is an advantage in a 3dd + heal game. It could help in a 4dd game when one person is just super hard focused. But in a 3dd + heal game PT or Sin will get completely blown up, jugg can do this longer but after he is out of ED stacks he should die pretty quick. You should be hard focusing the person who guards while dealing as much AoE damage as possible to the one who is guarded by him. Healer should be cced as much as possible. To be honest, even a freecasting healer won't be able to keep the guarding DPS alive for long (unless again, your group has no damage) but cc will make it much easier.

Oh boy, where to start... I guess with one of the most incorrect statements, that cover is useless against melee. What? They can't leap on you while you are in cover. Only Fury/Rage can and only from 10 meters. That automatically puts you at a huge advantage, you can do a decent chunk of damage to any melee player before he reaches you. And then you can gain some distance again. Learn to kite and keep them away from you. For example, Engineering sniper is by far the most powerful anti-melee spec in this game. Snipers do lack healing, but they aren't the only ones. Marauders, Powertechs, assassins also have almost no healing. You are actually at a better spot then they are. Read the Legendary utility "Tactical Retreat" and understand how much healing you get if you roll on cooldown. Healing from Ballistic shield got nerfed but it is still pretty powerful. You have more healing than 3 classes I mentioned above, easily. What sniper does have are amazing defensive cooldowns. Evasion makes you almost completely untouchable; time your roll correctly and you can completely resist biggest hits; shield probe is like a small heal. Hunker Down makes you unstunnable and has pretty much a 50% uptime. Sniper is the only class that has anything like this stun immunity. You just can't be globalled when you have that up. And every 3 minutes you can completely reset ALL of these DCDs. Also, ballistic shield makes you pretty tanky against all incoming damage, helps your team and can heal you for a solid amount if you have the appropriate utility. Another thing, one of the most powerful tools of any ranged class is kiting (keeping melee classes at a distance while you damage them). Sniper is amazing at that. You have tons of slows, knockbacks, movement speed boosts. Use them right and every melee will hate you. You can't be talking about PvE here, so PvP, I guess? Virulence is indeed on the weak side, as it is so easy to deal with Cull for many classes. Engineering is one of the best PvP specs in SWTOR, though... Okay, so are we talking about PvP after all? You can't cleanse DoTs with a merc. "Cure" and similar skills don't work against DoTs in PvP. In conclusion, mercenary is by far the strongest PvP class. You can't really expect everyone to be on that level, so you shouldn't compare sniper to it so much. That said, in a 1v1 scenario a sniper can totally beat a merc. Under group focus, sure, merc is much better. But overall, snipers are perfectly fine and above average, easily.

You can change it in Windows settings, so that left click works as right click, it's just a quick toggle. Just keep it open and whenever you need to right click, swap that toggle, do a right-click and swap it back to normal. If you have WIn10, just search for Mouse settings, it's the first option called "Select your primary button".

There is no animation cancelling in SWTOR, it doesn't have action-based combat. Ataru strike is just a passive, think of it as just bonus damage, not an actual strike. If it procs, it procs. The only way to not get damage from it is for the enemy to die right before it lands; or if it gets mitigated by some DCD.

That is not true. If they have the same rating, Resistive armorings have more endurance then Versatile armorings (but less Mastery) and Warding mods have identical endurance to Lethal (if it's the same number, like 54B vs 54B or 52 vs 52). What doesn't have endurance at all are tank relics, that's why we use DPS relics on tanks.

It's not about item rating, it's about what kind of stats you have. Tank has defense, absorb, shield - all of these are useless for DPS. DPS needs Crit, Alacrity, accuracy. DPS gear also has higher Power and Mastery than tank - tank gear is heavier on Endurance and Defense. Without accuracy you will be missing your attacks (tanks have built in 10% accuracy, so they don't need it), without crit rating and Power you will hit like a wet noodle. So yeah, even unaugmented 230 is better for you than whatever tank gear you have.

Pretty sure the new ones are not meant to be better than old ones. They are different and or/weaker, I think that's intended.