Many thanks for reconsidering! I understand your thought process here, but I think the changes you've outlined below are better suited for attaining that goal : ) I totally welcome these changes, along with the attacker point boost! Only allowing for 45 seconds of carrying the ball ought to promote faster and more varied play (rather than a tank just trudging halfway across the map popping DCDs and getting focus-healed). I paused a bit at needing 10 points, but setting a hard cap of 10 minutes brought a sigh of relief. Six-point games often went to time - getting ten points with the reduced time given should definitely present more of a challenge, and make a team feel all the better when they can pull it off! Overall, pretty glad at the changes announced, both with the rollback of hinder and with the new time-based changes to promote faster, more competitive play. Should see a lot more ball passing in the future

Dig the incentive to pass the ball, and making it take more than a push+root to win in acid. RIP Scamper in Huttball, though : (

Yeah, it was pretty laughably sad. All this build-up throughout KotFE and KotET about Zildrog, and we get that?! Ball, dropped.

He's talking about the wall around the spawn point that is frustratingly slow to come down when the enemy is capping your node Also, two points per death is not going to outpace holding two turrets. Your third point in this post is a non-issue.

Define "future" - a day? Week? Month? Year?

These look like they'd be some fairly excellent changes. Probably even enough, along with cross-faction queuing, to get me back into playing the game more regularly - always nice to see a focus on people playing the objectives, and any carrot BW can give for that is welcome!

Thread is TL;DR, but I read the OP and agree on many of the points. I haven't enjoyed Warzones in quite a long time, but x-fac could well pique my interest again. My biggest annoyance with Warzones has been the balance of the matches - going 0-6 in Huttball or 100-0 in Novare Coast just doesn't make for a fun match, win or lose, and there would be long streaks of such one-sidedness that would just make the format either boring for me to play (as a winner) or frustrated as hell (being on the losing side). I've long thought that putting all the players in one pool for matchmaking purposes would help alleviate that pain, and I'm glad to see BioWare finally implementing it. The 5.6 changes to GSF got me into that game mode - a revitalisation and rebalancing on that scale in Warzones could get me into ground-based PvP again as well. People crying about lore haven't been paying attention to the game since 3.0, and frankly need to get over it. It's my firm belief that cross-faction queues for Warzones will do more help than harm to the health of the game as a whole. I'm not alone in my frustration with piss-poor matchmaking in this game, and x-fac is probably the best way to help ameliorate that particular problem with the few players this game has left. Faster queue pops on both sides in general is just a bonus.

/5char

Musco said a while back that in 5.9 they'd be swapping the gold and blue icons. Working as intended.

It's your decision to prioritise Conquest over PvP. Simple as that. If you don't like Conquest, don't do it. There are other ways to build out a ship, if you feel that it's really necessary to do that in the first place.

I don't mind gentle nudges to engage in other content that I don't normally do. BioWare isn't holding a gun to my head, and they're not even asking me to jump off a bridge. Yes, I'm willing to do things I normally wouldn't do of my own accord, and I had a blast with my guildies doing it. It's really not as bad as your flagrantly hostile tone implies. That my guildies actually enjoy non-PvP content helped. Trying to "force" Conquest on your guild is your own fault - not BioWare's. My guild encourages participating in Conquest, and we do reward participation. But we don't even really ask our guildies to participate (the typical reminders are just Monday when we give our Top 3 their special ranks, and on Tuesday when an officer mentions Conquest in her weekly guild news reports). We certainly don't try to "force" them. If your guildies are rolling their eyes and interacting with you less because of demands that you're placing on them because you want to participate in Conquest, that's your fault.

Nope. I haven't done Rakghoul stuff in a long time, but I did it last week, having fun with my guild in a Conquest-oriented event. I also hadn't done MM FPs in a long time (or FPs in general - they tend to bore me), and did a half dozen or so of them a couple of weeks ago, just for Conquest. Mostly, I'd been just logging into the game anymore to run Operations, and occasionally some GSF. Other than that, I logged in twice a week for my guild's events on Tuesdays and Thursdays (a couple of OWPvE things), and that was it. I'm certainly not getting my 25-50k Conquest Points each week since 5.8 just doing Ops, GSF, World Bosses or Commanders. I am legitimately going out of my way to get points, because it's fun for me again.

I like the new system, overall. It needs some dials to be twisted a bit here and there, but on the whole, I think the system itself is indeed an improvement to what we had before. When there are new objectives (e.g. GSI, Gree, Rakghoul), I think that's just pretty neat. I got bored of Old Conquest after about a year and a half, because it was just the same old thing every week - GF FPs, GF Ops, Heroics, PvP, and occasionally World Bosses or Commanders. Objectives were fairly diverse every week, but it was same ole same ole. I'd stopped participating entirely about seven months ago. Now, like I said, there is actually new stuff to do in several events. That helped freshen things up, and as a result, I've participated every week since 5.8 dropped. I also like the new interface. It's not perfect, but with the polishing that's coming to it in 5.9, I think it'll be closer. I like the consistency in the repeatability icons with the other mission icons elsewhere in the game. I don't agree with all the decisions BioWare has made in categorising their objective by repeatability (e.g. Heroics, Weeklies), but I like the flexibility in having Daily added to the system. I also like feeding the fires of competition in my guild by pointing to the Top 5 list (which is easier to point out to members than setting a column in Guild window to show Conquest points and sorting that). The best thing about New Conquest, I think, is the fact that guilds need to cross a minimum threshold to collect rewards, rather than vie for a spot on the board. That's another thing that nudged me into competing again - I just gotta help my guild get 200k points to earn some rewards, rather than bust my tail for 750 points only to get knocked off the board Monday morning and get nothing for my efforts. I've already touched on a couple of examples above. I think Heroics and Weeklies should be infinitely Repeatable, or let the former stay one a day (to balance, say, Hoth and Ilum) but set the point award to max value for a Daily (it's currently the lowest value). Also, while they've given us some awesome new objectives in a few of the Conquest events, there have been two weeks now where they were far more limiting. I think I've mentioned it in this thread, but Flashpoint Havoc and Emergency Operations are very narrowly targeted, and should be expanded upon. The former should give points for SM/VM FPs, period, and the latter should include all Ops, including Mono and Fury. In addition, there ought be non-MM FP/Ops viable ways of gaining points, such as the invaded planets' Heroics, Weekly, Rampage, and Slayer objectives - all of them, for each of the three planets. Also on that note, I don't like that it's only three planets every week. I like even less than each of the planets seems to be assigned to a certain size yield - this week's Large Yield target will never be a Small Yield, so even if BioWare is successful in enticing more Medium and Large guilds to invade an appropriately-sized target, Small guilds will never have a shot at the title. I've said in the past that Small guilds shouldn't be able to compete against Large guilds when it comes to taking a planet, and I still hold to that - but Small guilds should have a shot at competing with other Small guilds to take a planet. As an aside, I appreciate the sincerity in how you asked these questions. These threads could use more cordial conversation, and less slinging of mud.

Porsa's count was biased - for one, they blatantly admitted omitting my own positive vote, because they think I'm just contrarian for the sake of it. I did my own survey of the responses and found four generally positive ones. Most of the responses were random/off-topic. But it was a biased survey with a biased person running it, and should be taken with a mountain of salt.

I, personally, am fine doing MM FPs or Ops for Conquest. I haven't done any ops this week, but my play time is pretty limited until Fridays. My distaste for these two events is purely out of consideration for how narrow in scope they are (you literally almost have to do MM FP Bonus Bosses or the five most difficult Operations to effectively earn points), which is something I'm against in principle. At least with Rakghoul Resurgence, you could still do Corellia Heroics and Rampage and Black Hole stuff, in addition to the much-easier-than MM FPs/Ops Rakghoul missions. Flashpoint Havoc and Emergency Operations are both much more limited in available point earning opportunities.

I've liked four out of six weeks better in the new system so far. Flashpoint Havoc and Emergency Operations are the only two that I think are genuinely pretty abysmal.

Indeed, and when someone shows they have that mindset, that's when I generally decide to stop engaging with them (as I have). BRKMSN and I tried to offer sensible explanations for our grammatical interpretations of Musco's statement (to wit, that they're not dumping all Tank DPS numbers in a blender and seeing what comes out, but that there's actually a chance they looked at Tank DPS numbers with Tank gear in isolation to come to their conclusions), and otherwise make reasonable statements as regards to possible - perhaps even likely - methodologies used by BioWare to gather and interpret data on Tank DPS numbers. Then one of our illustrious opponents had to unzip and whip out his Pretty hard D...egree... and wave it around the thread, going off on a tangent about corporate project management and a test-driven development philosophy that the studio in question obviously does not follow anyway. I'm grateful to Dasty and Andryah for their own well-reasoned responses to the Degree-waving, because it means I didn't have to waste my time on it.

🍿 /5char

Yes, four DPS doing 9.8k can clear the content. Not every team has four DPS that can pull that off, though, and I don't begrudge those teams for whom the extra 300-400 DPS they've got now to help them clear content.

Parsing my Vanguard onna-stick, I was doing about 3,500 DPS in full tank gear, and only went up to about 4,200 DPS when I put in Lethal B mods (Shielding Amp and Serendipitous Assault relics for both). My DPS in real-world tanking with the mods is 3.8-4.2k, so probably around 3.3-3.5k if I kept the basic tanking gear - certainly more than 3k. I haven't played my Guardian Tank since 3.x era, so sure, maybe they do less damage indeed. That would certainly explain the love tap they got while Vanguards are getting a sledgehammer to the face. But like I said, the numbers used weren't mine. I've only used my Vanguard for tanking in the past year or so, I personally just don't have the figures to math it out. The numbers the Discord user showed looked accurate for Vanguard, and reasonable for Shadow from what I've seen from other pure-tank-geared shadows (my guild's best Tank uses a Shadow, and sans-Lethal mods she was in the 3.5k DPS range with it in real-world parsing). Your 3k DPS does seem low to me, but from what I've personally seen of Vanguard and Shadow tanking from me and the guildy aforementioned as well as other Vanguard and Shadow tanks I've run with, the figures I quoted were pretty close for those two classes. Sadly, the only Guardian tank I see regularly is another guildy that only takes it out for OWPvE stuff (World Bosses, Commanders, etc), so I have no basis for comparison there. I thought the 3.5k figure used above was reasonable, but it very well could be closer to 3k. You're right, the sample size is insufficient to demonstrate a trend or properly calculate an average. Kinda wish I'd cared to make such comparisons earlier - I could have taught myself Defense Guardian and Kinetic Combat Shadow again (classes I haven't used since 3.x and 4.x, respectively). All I've got right now is my personal experience with Shield Specialist Vanguard in both pure tanking (one relic notwithstanding) and Lethal B'd gear sets, and what I've observed with other Vanguards and Shadows. I'm not gonna go to all that trouble in the week before the patch, though

Because he's about to lose a few hundred DPS and needs that edge back? Tanks are losing 5-20% DPS when 5.9 drops. Some are hoping the 240-rating augs will close that gap a bit. Teams that are barely clearing the content now may not be able to do it at all with the drop to tank DPS.

I'm not going to bother going into why the rest of your post is wrong - that's covered ground, and no minds are going to be changed in a back-and-forth on the methodology of gathering and reporting statistical data. You've got your professional opinion, I've got mine, and neither are going to agree with the other without a direct statement from a gold-poster confirming their methodology one way or the other. But VG/PT tanks got the biggest nerf because they were doing the most damage. The three tanks are not equal in the damage they're doing today, but all three tanks likely have the same DPS target that BioWare is aiming for. To that end, one spec will be taking the biggest hit, one spec will get the smallest hit, and one will be in the middle. I didn't do the math myself, but these are the numbers someone came up with (using the numbers they pulled from dummy parses): 5.8 Tank DPS Guardian 3,510.88 Shadow 3,427.22 Vanguard 3,784.51 [*]5.9 Tank DPS Guardian 3,357.89 (-4.36%) Shadow 3,059.21 (-10.74%) Vanguard 3,079.36 (-18.63%) Now, looking at these figures (not my figures, I can't verify the accuracy of the math or that the parses sampled were optimal), they're aiming for 3-3.1k DPS for Tanks. That they're not getting there properly with Guardians should surprise no one who's seen other "balancing" actions by BioWare miss their marks. Or it could be that Guardians, having less raid utility, are just designed to do a few hundred more DPS to make up for it. Again, without a direct statement from the devs, we don't know. But the baselines, as reported by whoever did the math, were not equal, so the balancing action was not equal. Vanguards got hit hardest because they did the most damage, in tanking gear, than the other two classes. BioWare did not necessarily take an average of every Shield Specialist regardless of gear to arrive at that conclusion, and nothing they've said to date has implied that they did. Personally, I think they plugged in numbers for 248-rating tank gear (with no changes to mods or enhancements, and using Bulwark/Bastion implants and ears), and probably 228-rating Shield/Absorb augments (236- and 240- augments are said to be outside their balancing targets, they've made no mention of other augments). Using these stat values, they then run computer-generated simulations of optimal rotations (as Bant did for his BiS gear project), and used those numbers to see where Tanks were at, and tweaked the input of certain abilities until they got to their target values. You seem to think they're literally just taking all the combat logs from everybody in Shield Specialist spec, taking the average, and balancing by that value. Right now, we have no evidence either way. I like to think they're smart enough to do in-house testing, you apparently give them less credit. Without input from BioWare, we may never know which technique they used. But it is entirely possible that BRKMSN and I are correct, and they really did balance Tanks looking at tank gear stat values. Graphics for the number-crunching used in the example in this post for dummy, plus VM Anni Droid from EV.

Fact. BRKMSN is here describing a methodology for collecting data that is extremely common, not just for games, but for statistics in general. An analogue to the statement would be: "When we look at teenage pregnancies (controlled for race, class, and other environmental factors), we find that there is a higher rate of pregnancy among those that receive abstinence-only sex education." Note that the above is an example of the sentence structure, not a fact to be taken at face value - I don't actually know the data on teenage pregnancy rates. The point is, we're talking about controlling for a variable. To make this concept more clear, I'll build on BRKMSN's example. We also don't know what BioWare's DPS target is, but for the purposes of this example, let's say it's 2,450 DPS (about a quarter of what appears to be the 9,800 or so DPS that damage-dealing classes are targeted for). Tank A (full mitigation gear, Warding mods) does 3,000 DPS Tank B (full mitigation gear, Lethal mods) does 4,200 DPS (well, I do, anyway) Tank C (full DPS gear, Tank spec/armorings) does 5,500 DPS A 20% nerf (as has been calculated by people-not-me that took the time to analyse combat logs to check the effects on Shadows and Vanguards - Guardians got hit less, but let's not complicate things) would change the values thusly: Tank A now does 2,400 DPS Tank B now does 3,360 DPS Tank C now does 4,400 DPS This would put Tank A - in full tanking gear, not stacking Power or Crit or Alacrity - right around the target value. Tanks B and C are still well above the targets, of course, but ask any Tank in the game whether the nerf is an effective action against skanking. The smart ones will tell you that it's not. Just like BioWare did not balance around Shadows' double-stance bug or the Sages' Telekinetic Throw bug. They've got their DPS targets, they've doubtless got simulations for optimal rotations (e.g. Bant's formulae for calculating optimal DPS), and Tanks in BiS tanking gear were simply not supposed to be doing 3,000 DPS. An Ops group with two tanks and four DPS with Tanks doing 3,000 DPS and DPS doing 9,800 DPS has a Group DPS of 45,200. Few fights require over 40,000 from the group, and nerfing Tanks to 2,400 DPS would bring that total down to 44,000 DPS. I could see BioWare being comfortable with that 10% margin. But in any case, tank gear is something they controlled for. That's how I (and BRKMSN, and others) have always interpreted Eric's statement, because I've read many articles regarding statistics, and know what it looks like when someone is controlling for a variable. "Regardless of gear" is literally saying "It's not just the gear; Tank abilities themselves, with no help from extra Power or Crit stats, are doing too much damage."

Yeah. Here are some changes I would suggest to the two harshest weeks we've seen so far in New Conquest: Flashpoint Havoc Critical Missions: Galactic Flashpoints should be a Daily at least (really Repeatable, certainly not a Weekly) Each Flashpoint with their Bonus Boss as an objective should also have had completion of the FP itself - in any difficulty mode - as a Daily objective Heroics and Rampage objectives for Taris, Balmorra, and Ilum [*]Emergency Operations All ten Operations should have been Weekly objectives, not just the five most difficult Toborro's Courtyard and Worldbreaker Monolith should be Daily or Weekly objectives Again, Heroics and Rampage should have been objectives for Belsavis, and Rampage on Section X Section X and Yavin 4 Weeklies should have been an Objective (and, in general, I believe the Weeklies should be Daily or Repeatable objectives) I think these changes, in addition to the point increase and new Activity Finder objectives coming with Game Update 5.9, should be added to these two Conquest events. I also hold the position that Heroics should be Repeatable objectives, or the point value for the Daily be worth the max Daily value of 825 (2,063 with full SH bonus, so still leaving you 2,622 points short of Personal Conquest Goal doing a Heroic every day). Edit: I also think the planets should not be tied to a particular yield, as I'm pretty sure they are (you can see a scoreboard that lists the invasion targets at particular sizes, and who holds them).

Well, I'm home, and... Yeah, solo/casual players are definitely screwed this week, sorry. Primal Destroyer may be doable by four players on top of their game (I usually do it as a guild activity where we've got six to twelve members around - I've never tried it with less than six, but we've cleared it with that few). Lance Squadron Command Unit isn't being taken down by any group that couldn't just do Operations, anyway. The Daily objectives are GF Ops, craft an IF (if you still have a stockpile of War Supplies, I guess), defeat 25 players on Belsavis (with the dearth of OWPVP activity in this game, this would have to be organised on both sides), and Yavin 4 Rampage (the only one easily done here - kill 100 mobs, gain 825 points; if done all six days, 4,950 points). The Repeatables are, of course, the usual crafting and PvP/GF FP grinding. Again, I'm predicting scores and participation in this week's Conquest to be on par with what we saw in Flashpoint Havoc. That is, to say, pretty dismal. There is no lipstick you can put on this pig for people that don't run ops.