I am happy the kiting strat is dead good work Bioware! I must say that watching some stream with boss on 30 stacks bombarding the s*** out of main tank and pushing him just 1m forward really looks amazing. Reminds me of wiping on Izax and then your body is pulled back inside blue shield. But in reverse. Looks fun KEKW In my honest opinion, kiting strat was cool for group. Regular non-kiting strat can be fun for DPS who does adds, but for those who tunnel boss its more boring&punishing than Styrak. Such fights are really stressful and not fun. DPS are having same set of mechanics from the start till the end of the fight. Kiting made it more fun (and gave you more numbers) hence it was so loved by the people. But yeah kiting indeed made boss significantly easier than it originally was designed, hence I am happy it is gone. And just like many others, I also wonder why the boss gets changed ~9 month after it made it to live, buuuut better late than never as someone has already put it Feel free to contact me for Apex coaching. Helped couple teams already on regular non-kiting strat.

Yes. Didn't test repside, but I assume it is the same. Please fix.

Good day. So there is new tier of gear. Any word on when is new tier of content? December? November? March?

Did some Huntmaster & Apex, got questions What our group liked a lot is adds responding to threat better and boss actually moving more and desyncing less - that was big hooray! Unfortunately positive and praise-like feedback ends here. Huntmaster's Penetrating Shot & Egg Snipe are same icon. Kinda counter-intuitive - those are different things. Could we please have another icon for Egg Snipe and its Critically Injured debuff? Shelleigh hitpoints seem worrisome. When our group decided to skip Huntmaster and go Apex we click a button. Shelleigh spawned with 1 stack and killed Huntmaster. We had to kill Shelleigh to render a lockout. Those 9.2mil HP were tough. We had one tank spec into DPS to down it. With all raid buffs, sniper shields and errything up. Thats harder than Dread Council burn. Much harder. I dont remember if she spawns with 0 stacks under regular circumstances and maybe that makes her non-stack HP way less, that would resolve the case - namely pushing even one add into lake makes Shelleigh undefeatable unless you bring 6 sages who will purge stacks with barrier and pull each other out of 'Nommed' area (I didn't say this, absolutely no class stacking 'exploit' is intended. Well maybe a little sage is new powertech confirmed). Also I want to say that no new mechanics on Shelleigh is disappointing. Very. Overall Huntmaster is very disappointing - eggs are cool but whole rodeo with add management...how to put it...its overcomplicated, poorly rewarded and doesn't even feel fun. The fight feels like 101 ways to die horribly. Stay there, don't do this, don't touch that, have tanks do everything right and nothing wrong and maybe you stay alive (a bit like Nahut with oneshot mines, but chaotic and for some reason less fun) Like literally from what we've seen NiM brings only eggs as a new mechanic and everything else except pure damage increase is connected to it - Egg Snipe; Kolto Bomb on boss; Possibility of trauma on some group members when dying in two ticks of damage is easiest thing ever. This mechanic indeed makes fight difficult enough to be NiM. But it's not fun. Dunno how to put it better Now a little about Apex: Is spawn rate of Anti-Thief droids correct atm? 2 spawn when battery is extracted and after that they seem to spawn on timer like each 20s, flooding the whole room with their presence. If antitheft droids leave electricity puddle on death..dont let me get started on how anti-melee that is...the real question here is: Why wash doesn't electrocute the whole room? Physics, please!

Here is some feedback from my group. Containment Protocol trash encounters: New group added at elevator tends to fall under floor, often evading. Organic Purge seems to do quite a lot of damage to adds, simply kiting Combat Medics kills them within ~30s. There is a chance for player to receive 2 stacks of Organic Purge and they stay up even in the room with Titax. Had to wait for person to naturally die, we revive and debuff doesnt reapply luckily. Now the worst: battery seems to clone itself under some unknown circumstances...and it keeps reappearing even after we use elevator. It basically keeps re-spawning in Titax's room every time we wipe. And sometimes you choose to stand in Fires of Greus instead of accidentally picking that battery. We even though this is intended and you had to carry it up to Apex...alas we couldn't make any stims off this battery The biggest laugh I had was wiping on Huntmaster and seeing battery spawn on top of my body. Now down to Mutant Trandoshan Squad. Overall design of the fight does not feel pleasant (I mean its NiM but still). To minmax everything and fulfill the DPS check we need close to ideal boss killing on rails (especially with amazing short Titax torpor - we loved it, no sarcasm, really). But the fact that Divebomb, Crush the Weak and Titax Strike involve big repositioning of corresponding boss and don't have a very strict timer (kiting the boss literally delays his Titax Strike from 20s to 30s, easy)....it means that bringing these bosses to rails at appropriate time is even more of a problem and it all comes down to a bit of luck regarding timer correspondence and hence frustrates those who rely on skill (all NiM raiders). You'd say Titax Strike doesnt involve that big repositioning if we do a tank swap, but he becomes tauntable only after running 10m towards pushed target or it is that famous desync. Also you can tell that Divebomb and Crush the Weak are both skill check - target person could move in the right position for everyone's convenience. But their circle is same color so person doesnt know which boss he is targeted with. Also Divebomb 3s cast time doesn't really provide reliable repositioning chance. Overall boss is difficult and fun, we like it. But it is rather clunky to deal with. So suggestion I have is: Change color of Divebomb/Crush the Weak to be able to quickly distinguish them Increase cast time of Divebomb on the price of idling time Greus has between Divebomb and Pyroclasm (literally 2-3 standing waiting doing nothing) or on the price of Pyroclasm. Also as I've said in the previous post we didn't seem to catch any dependence of Caustic Plume to extreme heat sources. And yeah Pyroclasm kind of lost its reflect component, not sure if intended, but it kinda makes RDPS > MDPS again. Not cool I don't know how this is still a thing, but why the hell Titax Strike stunlocks so badly. Can't we make it work like Impel on Revan? You literally have no warning of being stunned to death unless you were lucky to be in cool position. This is super clunky if you include boss' big hit box and his tendency to dance around the player changing the push angle by 30 or even 60 degrees. Stairs: We hate you, Matt. Not being able to jump on stairs down is the worst feature ever. We are glad on PTS you can access elevator without stairs down, but seriously...I know its a good troll, but you gonna put time run there right? Imagine all the hate? Terrible, absolutely terrible... Huntmaster: So its nice...fun...everything, maybe not tuned well enough, we only damaged him to 70% at best when he goes first lake. I guess it could be possible to push him to 35% with <2 lake phases but requires some mad skills and add management being a bit RNG does not help...so biggest and most disappointing things we encounter on Huntmaster: Huntmaster's position being desynced and melees can't hit it (I know its not new but you tell you release NiM on June - please fix it!) Huntmatser's position being desynced and group cant protect itself from Powershot Volley (I know its not new but you tell you release NiM on June - please fix it!) Light moves, Huntmaster teleports and immediatelly after does Egg Shot, oneshotting the guy who had the debuff already and had no idea about boss teleport (I know its not new...) Now last one seems to be the biggest problem. Boss doesn't teleport midcast. So if flare moved out of him during the cast he will teleport only after. This often leaves tank who takes Penetrating Shot outside flare and hence adds jump on him....you imagine what happens next. Alternatives are a) group being outside light b) tank being in light with group, PENETRATING them all. All I am saying is that with groups' perfect movement and Firestorm Grenade placement it is still impossible to maintain desired inside-flare uptime and avoid all the unnecessary damage that often oneshots you. I know its NiM, but it is really bad design here. I say flare movement should be synced with boss casts. On HM it was easier to deal with since tank could stay out and get aggro of wild animals. Now animals seem to have higher threat on fresh person to exit light even if tank outside has just taunted the adds. Its ok - makes fight harder, we love it. But rendering situation when it is not fortress and standing inside light is impossible due to boss' casts...that puts big frustration on our souls. Bird mechanic and Kolto Missile is hated by part of our team, but overall is fine. Still this doesnt make this fight to feel like a complete NiM yet, just saying. Everything doing big damage is cool, but needs more mechanical additions, really. And yeah melee unfriendly raids...come on, this gets worse and worse. Aggrotable of Lurking Beasts leaves mdps no chance.

Caustic Plume doesn't seem to react to extreme heat sources as described somewhere before.

So with this trandoshans being around with amazing changes and huntmaster not really seen ye mucht, can we get a kill button for pens for easier testing? Pens 2 only became killable since yesterday (according to patch notes, not sure if anybody tested it) and Trandoshans already received 2-3 updates since last time they were accessible. There are also no devs around at EU raiding times to ask them for 'kill pens for us plz we wanna test trandoshans etc'. Pretty please And I second what Hercology says about Red - this corona lockout thing is not nice, it breaks the concept and overall makes some classes that are bad for movement (sniper turret style I am looking at you) kind of garbage. It shouldnt be memeful easy boss, but right now you are making it way more complicated than just 'entry level test' boss. Think about casual players, how else will they access these new lit set bonuses except farming Red and not being able to do Pens! Also I genuinely wonder why PTS is down every time my EU team is ready to test some bosses @Hercology a rare bug with Acid Jet hitting other direction than VFX shows is not so rare here on the other side of the Earth. It is latency-based and solution we found is: 'if you are main tank. don't touch those movement buttons much when Jet is soon, your screen position and your server position are not very synced' it still means some desync in Acidic Jet itself, but the fact that you encountered it once and we encountered it a lot just proves me that it has something to do with lag.

Just as the title says. If you use Bushwhack at 1 Upper Hand, it refunds. If you are at two, it updates timer and doesnt refund. So technically I see it refunding first (but 2 is a cap) and then spending, so despite the "refund" I remain at 1 Upper Hand if I used Bushwhack with 2 Upper Hands. This info comes from PTS since I did not farm Auhtority set on live and on pts its easy to get. Decided to test it as an alternative to the nerfed Tactician set. I don't think Authority set was touched on PTS by any changes at all, hence I believe live version has the same bug as what I noticed on PTS.

Okay did Pens again, some feedback: When Shrieks die they put a yellow circle. Its real range is way bigger than visual shows. I estimated 20m range. Can we get a proper visual for this important mechanic? Predator Droid seems to not always go on a target with yellow arrow. If yellow arrow (debuffed) target drops aggro, he goes on its last tank (highest threat basically). So I said everything i perfectly balanced earlier, taking that back. The dtps seems slightly unmanageable. Predator Droid actually does seem to do quite big damage. Bringing a shadow tank there is a bad idea overall and guardian/vanguard cannot tank it without a heavy defensive cooldown reliably. Reaper Cats do insane damage - 300k Devour. If we skip Flare for just 1 second we loose 1+ raid member. I do believe it implies you aren't allowed to spend even a split second without Flare, but what if you make it slightly less punishable, like 200k or 250k so people don't have to do a combat res or raidwipe due to just 1s delay on Flare. And yeah wanted to go Huntmaster after Pens and that Trandoshan kill button still doesn't work.

Had a PTS raid tonight, tested Red and Holding Pens. Here is the deal: Red: Flowers on Red don't seem to respect the change you mentioned in the last post. They keep emitting Phosphilapse Corona for 30s as before. All other Red changes are in order and it feels like a solid NiM fight now - less Flower duration will result in more movement, less dps and longer fight. Not sure if you did your math right there, to me it seems like this is on the very edge and calls for solohealer or even solotank which I bet is not intended. The damage on small adds from melee attacks seems surprisingly wrecking (and it was before, but at least green puddle wasn't doing anything - paired with slow adds' its quite a pain). Red is actually doing way less damage if tank avoids Acidic Jet and healers can half-afk before adds spawn. Not sure how intended is that, maybe re-balancing of Red/add melee attacks damage is a good idea since solo tanking it and Resiliencing/Emergency Powering/Enuring Festering Wound 30 stacks is quite easy and due to Red's large body can be done away from the group. Holding Pens: Sound crackling cases are very often. Reaps our ears. Overall the fight seems surprisingly very well balanced. And our team loved the mechanic a lot. Never thought that correct group running can be turned in such an exquisite mechanic. Very well done! I am not sure if there is any enrage timer and if its intended - sometimes we were able to go on with 5-6 stealth revives like on good old Coratanni->Ruugar transition. If there is an enrage, then we just didn't progress long enough to get the punishment, but for research and learning purposes it feels great to have the pull going in such manner. We weren't able to kill the boss cuz bad, but at least we opened the first gate \o/ Hopefully getting to see Pens #2 tomorrow. Also bulls on holding pens seem to be stunnable but dont have Red's stun limit. Probably something to add for overall complexity Also @Camera Two I have your discord id from Friday and some logs to send, but discord says your account doesn't accept friend requests Please add me if you want the combat logs: nom#7342

Can we finally have Commando being able to cleanse Hissyphus? At the very least. Having Jugg/Guardian Endure Pain/Enure to work would also be logical.

So did some wipefesting on Red yesterday. Overall it seems a lot like unexpected Dxun NiM on live with 6.1 release. The new stuff is cool too, my group liked it overall. There are some weak points and leaks though that made me want to post here. So I have two main things to tell: Bull looses its Boss Immunity upon engaging combat. Stunning, pushing, pulling...lots of fun. Guess not intended. When we pop flower (spores) it emits blue light and gives us protection from the Red Venom. Then light disappears. But protection keeps being updated on players to its full duration for the next 30 seconds. If it is intended, I ask for animation to stay there for the duration of protection deliverance. If it is not intended, then spawn rate of adds makes this fight way too hard. Group has to move from flower to flower all the time and looses dps to it. Also adds are doing big damage, we cannot DPS boss with adds around. Explosion caused by tank stacks can be abused with Sonic Rebounder. On 30 stacks its a 70k reflect, 7 people reflecting it is 490k damage to boss. Its feels good so far.

So with yesterday PTS build I've noticed a significant change in new Power Yield ability and one of the Heroic utilities. Current Power Yield tooltip: So that is a total of 10% damage done increase at 5 stacks. Looks ok, why not. Something similar to Cloak of Pain, but in a different manner. Now let us take a look at the utility change. Before it was a utility that gave damage bonus to tank and damage reduction bonus to dps while Explosive Fuel is active. Now it is reworked towards Power Yield. And for PT dps it looks quite op. For PT tank it is still lame and that is my concern. So, the description: To decipher that, tanks receive 4% damage done buff per stack and dps receive a possibility of 30 seconds of Power Yield. So with ideal circumstances a DPS receive 10% damage done bonus for 30 seconds each 120 seconds. I actually like that overall, good job there, devteam. But, but, concerns are many, answers are little... I express my concern with the fact that PT keeps receiving more passive damage bonuses from taking damage constantly. It now has one more mechanism in addition to quite powerful previous ones. If this class was really designed in such a manner, it would be normal to at least have it balanced along with other classes. I.e. have it do significantly lower base damage and only be very slightly ahead of other classes in 'reflect'-possible encounters. So it remains viable, but far not the best in no-reflect encounters and doesn't make hard encounters easy as it does right now, examples granted: Brontes burn phase and Nahut are killable with a PT dps in a much easier manner than other classes just because of this 'reflect' mechanism, so I consider this quite imbalanced, especially due to the fact that Nahut stopped the most of Gods MM progression teams. Yesterday on PTS my team did Nature of Progress Veteran Mode and on boss #1 (btw great job picking his HP - it finally feels like a proper boss fight, not too long, not too short, kudos devteam ) our AP PT was focusing boss and the Bull. Thanks to the DoT damage ticking quite often on people as a part of the encounter, the utility described above could be used in its full potential. So yeah, Lightning Sorcerer and Vengeance Juggernaut - the classes who cleave adds during their single target rotation - got outdpsed by PT AP guy by 1k each. I know we aren't into Stage 3 yet, but the change is on PTS so technically I am allowed to test it And I am telling that this does not feel balanced one bit It does get tiring to have one same class being far ahead of the rest in many expansions in a row (PT keeps being sort of a pve fotm thing since 3.0). I wonder what community thinks about this change. I am also concerned about PT tank being at a loss. Power Yield doesn't actually work as an amazing defensive cooldown. It didn't even provide 10% DR last time I checked. And its only kinetic/energy while PT tank is well known for its internal/elemental vulnerability. When first boss Red does its cleave (I/E) both Assassin and Juggernaut have easy way out with minimal HP loss - Shroud/Force Speed or Mad Dash. PT needs to save hydraulics for that to make sure he won't be pushed/rooted/slowed by adds. And PT will still take significantly more damage from the cleave.

Did HM today with friends. So it was the first time we went so far in the landscape with the first boss. After finally dealing with invisible Stampeding Bull that was wiping us (i still cannot tell if its a mechanic or a bu..feature), we managed to get to the endgame where boss enraged at 18%. The new hit points pool seems to be way too large. Okay, there is a lot of room to use but the mechanics do not differ and it just becomes 8 minutes of the same old things. Plus the enrage doesn't actually seem to work properly - its not 300% damage, its at best 30% damage increase. Also the newly added trees add a lot of complexity with line of site and boss positioning. Not sure if that was what you had in mind..but nice trap On second "boss" adds hitpoints also seem rather high. Especially the droid. This doesn't feel natural. I doubt people will do hardmode only when they are in full 306 like we were. In 306 it should feel easy because this is the overgear, isnt it? But in 306 we feel like we are 1 or 2 tiers behind because everything dies so slow. We also didn't get past 2nd boss because of the door, but you probably know about it. Thanks for being ready to let us through @Matt and even looking for us on repside, but at that time we gave up already.

Also I've tested Hotswap utility in many situations and it doesn't really feel sufficient. Quick examples from Hammer Station: On boss #1 (sorry I am bad with names) you often get this beam and when stacks are high and hitpoints are low, you find yourself wondering what else is there to use. You see translocate, you equip Hotswap tactical item, you guard your groupie, you Translocate him to make him take stacks for 6 seconds with increased DR, but that does not happen...channeled abilities don't seem to react to this. I understand that they are designed in such a way - for such channels I should have my groupie translocated for the moment boss starts his cast, but then he will keep having that beam for the full channel time, not just for the time he has DR provided from Hotswap. To make it more beneficial for players, you can make it work like Force Cloak on sin - being Translocated makes you un-targetable and breaks all channels/casts on you. Not sure how OP is that and if you are willing to provide PT with such a boost, but the way it exists now is counter intuitive. Another problem, the aggro. You can't really make a taunt there because taunt in PvP also means reduced damage dealt to all players except the taunter. But if lets say I am a tank and I've engaged a group of adds. I made sure no Ion Gas dot is ticking there, no damage from me exists atm, hence no threat, but I still retain aggro for the moment I cast translocate. I cast Translocate on a guarded target and that target will hold aggro for a split milisecond, after that all adds will swap to the 2nd target on the threat table - most likely dps who is attacking them the most - who does not have 30% dr from Hotswap! If Hotswap is designed for somebody else to tank for 6s, it should provide HUGE threat boost for these 6 seconds of increased DR, not just same DR that Translocate caster had. And one more. After 6 seconds Translocated players are being swapped back, It is always very unexpected. What if there is some impossible to miss graphical representation of it? For example the orange/blue glow becoming stronger every second? This way players will memorize the brightness of the glow at 6th second and can predict when they get translocated back. A little bit more on my vision on how to put PT in line with sin and even jugg in spike tolerance. Some kind of anti-spike cooldown should be added and it is better to be tied too one of the already existing abilities. Now there are two questions to discuss: 1. In what way will the spike get countered? There are many methods. Bullet proof one is like Force Speed - absorb %% of damage taken for a very short time. But it will be boring to repeat same on different classes, I would love to see other tank classes being in line with Assassin without being same as Assassin. Another option - provide defense/resist chance. Everything below 50% defense/resist chance doesn't feel sufficient to provide an anti-spike tool, everything above is OP and doesn't really fit the lore setting of powertech. Defense is for guardian - he can parry everything with his light saber. Resist is for shadow - a stoic consular who can ignore tech/force factors of the reality for a short period. Powertech is a tech guy (and is supposed to have power, coming from name Kappa yes I know this pun is horrible). High defense/resist doesn't align with his style. Just splat DR bonus - he already has Energy Shield for that. Active self healing? Guardian with Enure and Focused Defense sort of covered it, plus it is going to require a whole new ability for Powertech which is unwanted, I believe. Shield is what really comes along. It is called Shield Tech or Shield Specialist. But Shield has a chance to proc. Making it a guaranteed proc is what will work. I have suggested +50% Shield Chance before assuming that with stats players will reach 50% on their own. It does feel awkward and I don't like it myself. What if instead the mitigation method for PT will provide a guaranteed 100% Shield Chance for the upcoming series of attacks? Either number of stacks that get consumed on taking damage (will be weak against multiple targets) or the buff lasts for a couple of seconds. This guaranteed attack shielding won't work against internal/elemental damage, but PT is already weakest at it. What if it remains as a class feature? I/E damage should be coming to group mostly, not tk tanks, so it makes PT weaker, but in a solvable manner. To prevent offending PT tanks with such I/E weakness, you may as well make them slightly better at K/E DR - like reaching more than sin or jugg on K/E non-rng potential. 2. What ability should that be? Best if it is off-GCD ability. Generic options are: Shoulder Cannon, Heat Blast, Hydraulics Override. More sophisticated ones: Vent Heat and Thermal Sensor Override. Useless ones, because they are a DCD already: Energy Shield, Kolto Overload, Explosive Fuel, Power Yield, Oil Slick. So generic ones involve one that doesn't quite fit - Hydraulics Override, assigning it here will draw a way too noticable parallel to the Force Speed. Heat Blast has quite short CD and pairing Shield buff with Absorption buff is way too OP. Thats why I've suggested reworking it towards Shield. But still it feels op if turned into guaranteed Shield - because too often. And if you nerf it to prevent being OP, it won't actually save from spikes. Shoulder Cannon feels very nice, hence I've been suggesting it and I still think it is the best. With current average DR as 53.47% and approximate absorbtion rating being 60% (considering 45% base and average Heat Blast gain which is roughly 15.125%), a 100% Shield Chance from each Shoulder Missile used will grant: 53.47 * (1 + 0.6 * 4 * 1 / 90) = 54.89 average DR if buff duration is 1 second 53.47 * (1 + 0.6 * 4 * 2 / 90) = 56.32 .. 2 seconds 53.47 * (1 + 0.6 * 4 * 2.5 / 90) = 57.03 .. 2.5 seconds 53.47 * (1 + 0.6 * 4 * 3 / 90) = 57.75 .. 3 seconds And so on. This ccalculation isn't quite accurate due to Shoulder Cannon taking time to charge up. Additionally, the actual usage happens in sync with environment;s heavy damage attacks, so 90s cooldown is unlikely to ever happen and average DR potential is in fact lower. There is also another on-GCD option which is weird, but you may like it. Harpoon. It comes along with Holotraverse. One can use it when he is Holotraversed, thus far enough from a target. You can also use it in advance most of the time, so being on GCD doesn't hurt. An approach that gives 100% shield with multiple stacks that drop per attack is better for it rather than buff with a short duration, because there is travel time of target to you or you to the target. It may also be abused in 2 boss fights - I am tanking one, but Harpoon another that stands far. Doesn't really come along with reality setting. But still, an idea to consider

I like 1.4 gcd. 1.3s felt like I am on speeds. I once watched a recording of myself playing in 1.0 with 1.5 gcd. Damn it was slow. But I had so much time to consider what to use next, how to make it optimal. It did feel nice to make it slow - i look around, I notice other players, other mechanics, I am not bound to mashing keyboard in a very quick manner.

So I've talked to people in my raid group, to some other people, totals about 60 players. And most of them know this game since 1.x patches. Pretty much all of the people independently came to telling me that there isn't a better system than it was in vanilla. It was balanced, rewarding, fun and it actually restricted people from getting a new toon geared very quickly without much effort (which current system doesn't do - all gear is Legacy and transferring 306 gear to a new toon so he gets high ilvl loot for his spec - this is the most obvious abuse of a badly designed loot system) Let me remind you the vanilla loot system: there were tokens that drop from raids and that reward BiS gear with set-bonus. And there were commendations that supply high rating gear which is not fully optimized and does not have a set bonus. PvP gear was also separate from PvE and that actually maintained some quality in PvP (which is hard to find nowadays). I even remember times when you got full Recruit PvP gear from doing an introduction warzones quest so you get base expertise, but low stats and no set bonus. So with the old system the players who were not really skilled in PvP couldn't enter the warzone in full PvE gear and nuke everything - they had no expertise. They had to grind for PvP gear and while they grind...they learn something In the old system who were not really skilled in PvE couldn't enter a raid and oneshot everything with their PvP gear. Same with the grind part - getting gear was parallel to getting skill. Learning something new passively while you play - isn't that awesome? It was an amazing split. What the old system lacked was being friendly to more casual players who do not enjoy doing hardcore raids to get top gear (I still struggle to understand why would they need to have top gear - tolerance can sometimes be pointless like in this case, but okay). The biggest issue that more casual players had was: I do not have the set bonus and my class isn't as fun without it. To get the set bonus i need to do raid which I do not want to do. And top tier armorings that provide set bonus were tied to top tier PvE. So even if a person got lets say Tionese set bonus (which was low ilvl) and put high ilvl non-bis mod and enhancement from commendations, the person would still have low ilvl on the set bonus armoring - commendations as a supplementary system didnt provide that. And getting a Rakata token was impossible for a casual player on tier. But that is fixed now. The set bonuses are tied to the shell, not to the armorings. That is by far the best change to the gearing system that I can see in this patch. Also tacticals. They are neat, I like them. Except the part that as a stealth class I can exit the combat and equip a different tactical and it can give a huge advantage that other classes do not possess. I suggest that changing a tactical in the field required more than just swapping a gear slot. A suggestion regarding gear system: Leave Kai Zakken as he is. He is a fun chap. Maybe form boxes out of set bonuses and reduce number of items he has available weekly. Each box has its own chance to be on his weekly list. The boxes are like in cartel market. Upper Body Right Price set bonus provides chest gloves, what else is upper? You know better. Maybe call it differently so that Tech Fragments correspond to the contents of the box. Right now his sell list is huge and its inconvenient to scroll. Reducing number of items he sells weekly will hurt people who want to buy from him. Grouping his inventory in boxes - thats gonna work, trust me, I am a data science engineer Remove Takkanna (or rework, read next) Add vendors that sell role-specific no-rng no-set bonus items for commendations (tech fragments). So lets say when I spend Tech Fragments I know for sure its an upgrade and it will have the stats I want. If I a buy greaves and I am a dps, I want to choose between Alacrity, Critical and Accuracy. I dont want to spend commendations (tech fragments) and get the thing I don't need. It is lame. Lets say you fix the rng and it gives upgrades more often. But you cannot fix the Alacrity/Critical/Accuracy choice with the RNG system on. The RNG should be limited, not overwhelming like now. Add token drops to the raid bosses (or even final flashpoint bosses) that allow buying set bonus gear and tactical items. Add vendors that allow exchanging tokens to gear. Make bosses/flashpoints/crates drop gear only according to your current discipline. It is big lame when I get tank gear on a Scoundrel or Commando. Even if I am Assassin, what if I prefer DPSing? Give me dps loot, thats why my current discipline is Hatred or Deception, why does the game think I care about tanking if my class has this option? Respect my choices, aren't they supposed to matter? Choices matter, innit? So back to the good part where I don't rage. Buying gear for commendations should be rewarding. its like paying in supermarket, you see whats in your basket, you dont have anything random there. Getting drops from crates or pve/pvp content - why not rng, why not.

Just a small reminder that Juggernaut and Powertech still suck. I am pretty sure this isn't high on your priority list, dear developers, but if you at least agree to the base of this thread, I don't think that implementing the changes I've offered will take a lot of programmer's time. I am a software engineer myself and while I do not know how your game engine is exactly designed, I've observed enough of it to deduct that implementing all of the changes shouldn't take more than 1 day of a skilled developer's time. Maybe you are hiring more keyboard hands Kappa

The idea of weekly vendor with high quality random stock gear is cool. Except the random part. I agree with the price comments. Everything is rather expensive. If this game turns into big grind again like it was for Gtfm MM with Masterwork crystals, its not fun. Grind should be present to just block people from getting new alts geared in 1 day. Making it weeks to gear just one toon is stupid. So, why the RNG on all the stats? Okay I know I am buying this set bonus item, but I have no idea about the stats. Can we get some kind of mod/enhancements vendor like on pts stage 1.5? It could sell them for Tech Fragments. But at least players would know what they are buying. Its almost like I come to a market, I want to buy tomatoes and cucumbers, but there are only vegetables packs available. I buy a pack, I pay for it, I cannot refund it. I open it. 10% of it are tomatoes, 15% are cucumbers, rest is cabbage. And you are like: seriously? This is crazy, nobody will ever have fun with this. Did I also understand you correctly that vendor's stock will vary from week to week? And it is going to be random stock? I really dont like this random thing again. What if I have all except 1 item from the set bonus and that 1 item is not spawning for a couple of weeks in the row? Those who respect themselves and their time are likely to unsub and you are going to loose all the community except the pitiful no lifers. The game needs a reliable and stable way to get the gear each role/discipline needs. Like it was in a classic way, before the command crates - each boss drops a token, some gear can be bought through commendations. I detest WoW loot system where min maxing stats takes a very long time. It's pretty much the main reason I don't play WoW. I would really hate to see SW:ToR becoming like that.

Is it really 12s? Maybe my understandings are slightly outdated. Anyways, this active mitigation thing is really something that makes tanking fun. I love it. Maybe Force Speed itself needs a slight redesign to not be so powerful, but personally I would leave it like it is, design top tier content that is impossible to run without smart usage of Force Speed and then give other tanks something like that. It would really make tanking skill threshold high. Not just 'taunt that, keep aggro, use some random dcd when healers tell you, move some targets together, now farm some dps, boi'. Tanking shouldn't be about maximizing dps, tank should be quite busy with his own survival kind of stuff. Saber Reflect became a part of this game in 2.0. EC was released in 1.x. The fact that they work together in a weird manner is really worth forgiving. Saber Reflect is great for PvP and for raids that were designed with Saber Reflect in mind - it should provide a place to use it, but not everywhere and not when it will become too overpowered. I genuinely love Saber Reflect, it is a great feat and I would hate to see it go. Yeah sorry I got back from my vacation not so long ago and couldn't make my deep analysis earlier

So I am not sure if there is another thread about this, but I have a lot of things to express, so might just start another one. Intro I am mostly a PvE player who enjoys Master Mode operations, so my thoughts are going to be from the perspective of top tier PvE content. Let's look at current tank balance on the live servers. How many Powertech tanks have cleared 5/5 of Gods of the Machines Master Mode? What about Juggernauts? I am pretty sure those who did at least one boss feel pretty proud of themselves and their team because it is a rather heroic feat. The main reason for that being that Assassin have Shroud and Force Speed absorption and other tanks have nothing comparable. These two cooldowns are short and overly strong. They have no RNG and, if applied correctly, reduce the amount of damage taken to an extreme extent. They basically address spikes - large hits with the potential of killing tanks who are not at full health. The overall design is quite clear - Juggernauts and Powertechs are high armor classes with high base damage reduction, they are meant to handle spikes more passively. Assassins are squishy - they have relatively low armor, and rely on precise use of defensive cooldowns. Tanks with long cooldowns won't have enough abilities to counter the regular spikes, and dealing with these regular spikes is the bare minimum to clear the hardest content. Sure, Juggernauts also have some spike-proof abilities like Saber Reflect, Endure Pain, Mad Dash, etc. but these are not sufficiently reliable! Blade Blitz involves relocation and is often impossible. Saber Reflect also doesn't help in all situations. Endure Pain is great, but it has a one minute cooldown, while Force Speed is 15 seconds and works on absolutely everything except scripted death. Powertechs are completely unfit to deal with spikes. Their defensives are mostly RNG (shield/defense) and when it comes to big spikes, RNG can easily fail you: Heat Blast absorb - if you dont shield you die; Oil Slick - if you don't parry you die; Explosive Fuel - if you don't parry/resist you die; Energy Shield - while good itself, if it is on cooldown, you die. Average damage reduction potential So I did some calculations that exclude RNG stats like Defense, Resist and Shield. Pure DR, average potential of each tank class, their guaranteed durability for the case when damage is dealt in a linear manner, continuously, not discretely. Why did I exclude those stats? Well, they are RNG and I want to examine the situation of the worst possible luck. These calculations were done from the PTS in full 306 gear. So yeah I assume you did something like this before you thought that Spike was good to add. But... Potential of managing burst damage income You might think: Hey, without Spike the Assassin will fall so far behind! You would be totally right if only tanks were taking same amount of damage constantly. But it doesn't happen. Damage is delivered in spikes and not constantly. Sometimes it is big damage, sometimes there is no damage. Tanks swap as well. Damage taken is a discrete value. Calculating the variance of each tank's damage reduction would be great, but it is easier for me to write a simulation script. Let us take a look at how big damage reduction each tank can reach for just 1 second and how often it is possible. This gives an idea of the variance of values, considering that average DR is roughly the same for these classes. Obviously no sane tank would ever use all cooldowns at once, but the potential still matters. Juggernauts also have Endure Pain, Assassins have Shroud and Stealth out. What do Powertechs have? 1.5 second Translocate cast...eh. Kolto Overload - good, but doesn't help against high burst damage. Internal/Elemental DR potentials It is well known that Assassins are well ahead of other tanks on I/E DR. This kind of damage is not dealt in direct tank attacks mostly, but there are obviously many exceptions. Just posting some quick numbers: Almost double the difference. Summary It is very fun to tank when there is some spike damage. It makes you active. I believe all Assassin tanks love timing their Force Speed to the bosses high damage attacks. But why don't you give other tanks something like that? On the average they may look balanced, but Juggernauts and Powertechs just feel obsolete compared to Assassin even on the live server. And the situation is becoming even worse with current state of the PTS. Of course the classes are different by design. Juggernauts have unique abilities to play with their hitpoints - Endure Pain and Enraged Defense. They can trick death in many ways, not just by not taking damage which seems most obvious. Powertechs can do their Kolto Overload and some passive healing from AoE damage, but we can see that these do not compare with what the Assassin tanks have. Avoiding melee/range attacks with Oil Slick or Explosive Fuel is similar to Saber Ward and Deflection on other classes. The Resist part of Explosive Fuel kinda gets in line with Shroud and Endure Pain/Blade Blitz/Saber Reflect, except it's RNG. Energy Shield, Overcharge Saber and Invincible are relatively close potential abilities, and are more or less balanced. However Force Speed and new Spike on Assassins - Powertechs and Juggernauts don't have anything like these tools to handle the situations where healers encounter high pressure and won't be able to heal the tank sufficiently. Suggestions So here are a couple of ideas that may not be hard to implement and they won't break any in-game balance. They will improve the experience for the currently underpowered Juggernaut and Powertech tanks. For Juggernauts: For Powertechs: So, what do you say devs? Would you please consider making Juggernaut and Powertech tank depend less on their low shield chance and defense chance and more on some user-input defensive usage? It is really not fun to stick to one class for Gods From The Machine progression, and seeing this happen in next expansion is really disappointing. I promise I won't make any of my friends unsub if you make tank classes fun again P.S. About Assassins once more, everything is good up to a certain limit. Assassins are interactive enough as it is on live servers. Adding Spike to the active rotation is likely to have this class too complicated and self-centered instead of encounter-centered. A more passive DR buff would be more sensible and satisfying.

side is irrelevant

If I bring tanks, that would be better yeah. Make sure most of your dps are ranged, please. And give me exact number of how much people you need. I will discuss it with others tonight and see if we are in or not. And yes, I am Nom.

looks legit

okay, reading forums is harder than i've imagined. what does my agreement have to do with it? You have quite a lot of people that you think are capable of killing m&b 16m. i could bring myself and a couple more people if you really want to, but I cannot guarantee a kill because: a) Out of 16m raids I've only organized & raidleaded Hateful Entity, thus I am not as experienced as any NGE or DoB officer b) I have no idea who are the people you bring. More important, I am not sure those people are aware of my temper and are fine with it c) I won't spend too much time on it because I don't feel like doing 16m progression