Having played Clarion in the new meta for some time I still have mixed views of its effectiveness. It is inferior to the Star Guard and Pike, IMO, but still not that bad. I'd argue that in non-meta (whatever the meta will become) matches the Clarion is still very effective. I've found its old survivablity to be a lower due to the lockon time of missiles now and the increased cooldown on power dive. It's definitely far more effective than it used to be, and I can pull off a lot of my usual crap in one. The question was simply a matter of getting used to the new style of flying it. In terms of what's best for the Clarion - Combat command is useful for accuracy but that's about it. It doesn't help railguns, so it's not great in a support role for gunships. It's useful on a node in some regard if you have a bunch of battlescouts but really shield projector or repair probes would be superior on a node. In terms of copilot ability, running interference and wingman are still the best choices for it. I still usually use wingman. Remote slicing is a lot more viable as a troll build, I agree. EMP missiles definitely seem to be a great choice for it now. I'm curious as to what you all use for your builds for Clarion. I don't play too much to experiment and work this stuff out.

Isa I tried to explain this to you over the past week but you've been somewhat reluctant to listen. Missiles are not unbreakable, distortion field only breaks the lock now - once the missile has been fired at you, only your engine ability will break it. And once the servers merge queue pops should go through the roof - current estimates say "Star Forge" will be larger than Harbinger currently is. Besides a bunch of your friends are coming back to the game because of these new changes and the upcoming merge + new map.

It may be a bit early for this - for example I'm still trying to figure out the optimal Clarion build (I've heard mixed opinions on the usefulness of EMP and Shield Projector for Gunship support..). It's clear Yuun is preferable over Tharan for Engines now, however.

As I've said elsewhere - shadow parses aren't usually representative of the class due to the increased RNG aspect and the much wider margin of error. The 10,500 and 10,700 parses are the exception - most of those parsers regularly did 10,200, which is where Shadow was. The class was in a great spot, it was exactly where it needed to be. Nerfs over DPS did nothing to affect its viability in PvP (it performs almost the same) but absolutely destroyed its usefulness in PvE. The changes need to be undone, hands down, end of discussion. The class is worthless, again, because Bioware can't properly balance it (which is true, the class doesn't have an actual rotation so whatever nerfs they do are going to have a slightly greater effect on Shadow Infil/Sin Deception than they would on other classes). Every time they did a serious update to the game (4.0, 5.0) it ends up "OP" (which it's not, it's merely viable, not OP), and every time they "fix it" (which it didn't need to be) it gets nerfed into uselessness. The Classes without raid utility/raid buffs, IMO, need to be higher parsing than those that do have it in order to create an actual trade off in choice. You can have either a really high-parsing DPS spec or a normal one (which in the case of mara usually ends up high parsing anyways) with a Raid Buff that increases group DPS. This class would still benefit a lot from undoing the RNG procs and giving it an actual rotation, TBQH. It also still needs the soft position requirement removed.

Yep. Back to uselessness for Shadow DPS. At least we were somewhat useful while it lasted.

I've noticed the Clarion wasn't buffed nearly as much as I thought it would be. Had to switch up my build to Running Interference and take Yuun instead of Tharan now to stay useful. It seems to only be decent for running combat command for gunships. Had to change my playstyle too, the nerf to power dive had a pretty big effect on Clarion's effectiveness, surprisingly. Honestly if I could undo one thing from this patch I would put power dive back up to 5s off the cooldown instead of 3s.

Honestly with the sheer number of missiles pike puts out I'd like to see them put the missile break back on distortion field. That would keep scouts and gunships from getting killed so easily by pikes. Pikes are basically the new Battlescout. Except instead of BLC they have massive missile output.

So I did some parsing (and so did Zannah, was talking to him today) and it seems the class got hit by about a 900 DPS nerf (Zannah went from 10500 to 9600 playing around with crit and alac for optimal stats, I went from about 10K to 9.1/9.2K) On most bosses in HM, as an average shadow (before the nerf I could pull over 10K DPS), I could do 7500 DPS before the nerf. If I did things right, and worked my butt off, and did my rotation right, I can occasionally pull NiM-capable numbers (8K DPS). After the nerf, I was doing 6600-6800 DPS on HM bosses tonight. That sucks. I mean that's absolutely abominable. Those are 4.0 numbers. This was way, way, way too much. As I've said elsewhere, as a single target DPS the only thing Shadow has going for it is raw numbers. This class needs a serious buff to fix it.

Wait... what? Quick Charge shield is better than Directionals?

"The Hot Prospect" was a ship Zayne Carrick acquired when he sent Marn Hierogryph (of all people) to purchase a replacement for his old ship. For reference.

Not dead last, but yeah anything over 14th place is, evidently. I'm getting roughly 5.5% DPS nerf so 600 DPS, not 800. Still pretty rough on a class that has basically a range, not an actual parse.

These changes in a nutshell: "All Shadow DPS, you have to switch to Mara DPS or tank." And that's how it always is. Shadow DPS is a useless spec because Bioware can't balance properly. Hatred is awful, Deception will now be even worse (for the first time in 2 years, actually), the only thing worthwhile to play is Tank. And they'll probably nerf that into the ground too. This is what bioware needs to do: EITHER: 1. Classes without raid utility should be in the top parsing specs. This means Shadows, Powertechs, and I think Juggs are the 3rd one. OR: 2. These classes need to be given a raid buff. Shadows get the Sorc Buff. Juggs the Sentinel Buff. And Powertechs the Merc Buff. That will vastly improve their raid utility, although they will still need to be properly balanced to be viable DPS-wise. And no matter what, the position requirement on Shadow needs to be completely eliminated, end of discussion.

Yep. There goes this class. Again.

We don't get a heal on AOE taunt, unless you refer to shadow's shelter which used to be tied to phase walk (no idea what it's tied to now). And like I said, I already mentioned that. It was really useful in 3.X, was useless with 4.0 coming out.

They're all pretty bad. PT at least has rebounder, Jugg an invincible reflect. Shadow has nothing, literally nothing. No puddle for a 2% heal buff like 3.0, no phase walk like 4.0. And no raid buff - the 5% damage raid buff of a mara trumped a sin before this nerf. As usual it now utterly destroys any usefulness of a sin. Serenity/Hatred should technically be outparsing Deception but death field on them got nerfed to oblivion (starting in 3.1.1 but nerfed even more over the past 2 years) because of sages so they're basically a useless spec. Stealth Rez doesn't do much for raid utility. It's either tied to your rotation, or you're going to loose a lot of DPS using it. And that's if it works, because it's currently broken for some people. It breaks off at 2.4 seconds each time for literally no reason every time I use it, and no it's not AOE/heals/etc. The only thing we briefly had was the ability to reflect and cheese stuff for a little while, but they quickly removed all of that and capped reflect. We cheese things with phase walk as tanks/dps in 4.X (useful for the beam on revan 1st floor, for example). Can't do that anymore either.

I thought powertech/vanguard gets a buff? Still, even then it has more raid utility than Infill/Decep. Deception/Hatred/Infil/Serenity either need to get a raid buff OR be top DPS. Position requirement needs to be eliminated completely no matter what.

IMO the class didn't need a nerf, and here's why: Infiltration/Deception has literally nothing going for it but raw DPS. Infil/Decep (and Hatred/Serenity) is the only class that doesn't have a raid buff. In fact, it has almost no raid utility at all, since its stealth is tied to its rotation, and on top of that stealth rez is still broken for some people (it breaks at precisely 2.4s each time with NO AOE, buffs, heals, etc. etc. I have been stealth rezzing for 3 years I know when it's broken). It has severely limited AoE and is only good for single target DPS. Finally its gap closer is tied to its rotation as well, which affects mobility although it's much better than used to be when it comes to adds/trash. Furthermore, Deception/Infiltration doesn't have a single DPS number - you can't bring it down to a target DPS, you can only bring it down to a target range. That target range currently has a margin of error of approximately +/- 500 DPS. The easy way to explain it is that one of our most important procs is basically RNG, it's not guaranteed, so we don't have an actual rotation. As a result the spec can get 10,000 DPS or 9,000 DPS by doing the priority order perfectly; it will be pretty random, although crit/mastery stacking for a really high crit chance narrows it down pretty well. This is far more than any other DPS spec. As a result, our DPS wasn't nerfed from 10,500 DPS to 10,000 DPS, it was nerfed from a range of 9500-10500 DPS to about 8700-9900 DPS (the reduced crit chances have resulted in an expanded margin of error), with the average being nerfed from 9800-10200 DPS (the target range) to 9300-9700 DPS (below its intended target range.) So IMO, this class didn't need to be nerfed. It has never been wanted in NiM due to its position requirement and low DPS, and complete and utter lack of any raid utility. The only reason it is ever remotely viable as a class is on the off occasion Bioware has accidentally made it "OP" by their standards, which is really where the spec should be, and it is not actually OP. The least you all can do is make its DPS in front of the boss the same as behind the boss, so there's no position requirement at all anymore. Nerfing it to a soft requirement was an improvement, but not enough. The best you could do is either give us a raid buff, or make us one of the top DPS.

Yeah I would farm the Star Fortresses for the lamp decos, those were nice.

And you also help my point, they increased the rewards for CXP from Flashpoints back January, but it did very little to encourage people to run them. The flashpoints were great because they tied together and gave unique rewards. And that's what makes people want to do them - unique rewards from each piece of content. It's the same reason why I think the old unique boss drops from NiM EV/KP/EC/TFB/SnV/DF/DP need to be brought back. Like the Kell Dragon Armor, and the named Rakata gear (as empty shells). And not just because I want Bastila Shan's lightsaber... but yeah I want Bastila Shan's Lightsaber. I mean people used to actually do deco farm runs on Flashpoints since they dropped awesome decorations, especially for guild ships or themed strongholds. Or they'd run it to help someone in the group get the mount from the end of "The False Emperor" (etc.). Nobody does that anymore because the drop isn't guarenteed.

Hey Keith, One of the biggest gripes I hear from players regarding Flashpoints, and the reason people don't do them, is the abysmal rewards. Before 4.0 Flashpoints had some great rewards. Unique speeders, armor pieces, etc. Decoration drops were guarenteed on Hard Mode for the bonus boss and the last boss. That was on top of the chance to drop unique mounts, etc. Returning the drop rate back to 3.0-era levels for all the old flashpoints would go a long way to making them more rewarding and making people want to play them. These flashpoints had some of the coolest drops in the game, and some of the best decos, but nobody plays them anymore since they have virtually no chance of getting these items.

Any chance you could elaborate on why JC is having so many issues Keith?

Well Denon Exosphere isn't at Kuat. AFAIK Lost Shipyards isn't either.

Hey Keith, How will this affect credit caps? Will all the players' individual caps be combined? I ask because I know a few people that have hit the 4.3 billion cap on most, or all of their toons, and also am wondering how this will affect free to play and preferred. 350K isn't enough for players to buy things anymore, not even basic supplies for crafting, stims, adrenals, medpacks, etc. The preferred cap really needs to be increased to probably 10 million, as this will also open up the market (I regularly play and understand the market, and somewhere around 5 to 10 million is really the optimal point for F2P/Preferred). Thanks! (P.S. If you're one of those people with dozens of billions and they reduce the cap so you're going to loose credits, I will gladly take them. )

Freelancer is also the basis for GSF's control scheme.

HM Styrak is easy for deception, all you have to do is just time your shadow stride right because it resets if you kill the add in less than 10 seconds. Mobility isn't an issue on that one anymore. However they fixed HM underlurker so you have to take force speed + egress utility on him, otherwise the lurkerlings will slow you right after you activate force speed. Face maul fixes the only issue with deception on HM Brontes. For most fights, with the insta-cooldown on Shadow stride if the add dies fast, it's fine. The issue now is with knockbacks or when the boss jumps everywhere, like Pearl/Cora/Ruugar (although I can't comment on HM, never been on a team that has gotten that far).