WayOfTheWarriorX, you have yet to respond to me. Why? If you continue to not respond, I can only assume that you don't have any rebuttals to what I'm saying and agree with me completely.

I'm actually the highest DPS for my raid team when I play a Guardian/Juggernaut. For people who trash Guardian/Juggernauts as DPS, they haven't seen someone who really knows how to play the class. Some of the best DPS I know are Guardians. I don't really understand where you're going with your statements. Why don't you agree? Do you play both melee and ranged at a high level? Please elaborate. This is a very ignorant post. The game isn't only balanced around PVP. Even then, the DPS difference between classes is not the source of PVP imbalance. Mercs are so overpowered right now not because of the damage they put out, but the fact that they have 3 near heal to fulls. They don't die, and thus can put out more damage than most other classes, but not because of their sustained DPS output. I agree that melee should have better survivability than ranged classes, and the only ranged class that is particularly bad is Mercs. 1v1 against any other ranged class, a melee will win if they can manage to stay in attacking range, given equal skill. As someone who plays a Merc regularly because my raid team is heavy with other people who play melee, I'm insulted that you assert that "ranged is clickers who can't stay on targets." I have to work very hard to put out competitive DPS numbers in PVE for NiM content. I wouldn't be NiM raiding if I didn't know my class, and this is a very ignorant statement. The game is supposed to be made for a balanced group, as in, two ranged and two melee DPS. In many cases you can get away with ranged/melee heavy, but each class brings unique utility to a group that you miss out on if you all stack the same class. Sometimes, this is fine, others, it is of great detriment to your group.

Isaac come back!

This time I'm not going to ignore your condescending tone. This is me killing Revan HM as a Guardian: This is the parse log from that kill, the 6th highest DPS log submitted to Parsely pre-5.2: http://parsely.io/parser/view/256083/25 I didn't record my kills as a Merc or a Slinger, oh well. You probably don't believe me that I know how to play those classes. That's fine, I know they're both Revanchists. Whether you believe me is pretty irrelevant. To suggest I don't know how to play both melee and ranged DPS at a high level is to suggest something other than the truth. If you don't agree with my assessment of these fights, then you are entitled to your own opinion. Regardless, it has been my personal experience that there is no handicap for melee on any of the fights you mentioned besides Torque, which is even then pretty minimal. If you are experiencing problems, that is a L2P issue. Either that or your group is making it more difficult for you than it needs to be. The point is that when the mechanics of a fight are executed correctly, there are very few fights where melee is a disadvantage, and is, in fact, at an advantage in many of them. You ignored my point about damage taken differences between melee and ranged. I'm going to assume that means you don't have a rebuttal for it. I in no way, shape, or form, suggested that range doesn't affect uptime. You're taking it as a foregone conclusion that melee will always lose more downtime than ranged, when that is very often not the case. What about in a fight like Firebrand and Stormcaller, where ranged are always going to lose some uptime running to and from the shield for defensive systems? Melee can simply leap back to the tank, and as a result lose absolutely no uptime. What about Draxus with all the target swapping and shields that ranged are absolutely forced to move to and stand in to damage the adds? Grob'thok with the forced movement from mining droids that melee can simply dance around and lose no uptime and two knockups that interrupt casts? For every case where you can think of that melee loses significantly more uptime than ranged, I can think of one where ranged loses more uptime than melee. And no, basic attack does not make up this difference because it's all the ranged can do to make up for the fact that melee loses almost zero uptime. I also did not say I was taking PvP out of the discussion, I said it was beyond the scope of what I was talking about in my original post (though not specifically, sorry if that was vague). Even so, you have not acknowledged the points I made about DPSing in PvP as a melee and ranged class. You continually discount the Parsely leader boards by saying "they are the best of the best". But you know what? The best of the best are the people who know their classes very well and are able to take full advantage of all the tools they have to offer to put out DPS, while mitigating the weaknesses as best as possible. THAT is what the game should be balanced for.

I'm going to ignore your condescending tone and address the points you bring up. 1. Of the fights you mentioned, the only fights where the uptime loss is significantly higher for melee than for ranged are Torque and somewhat in Bulo. On Revan, the loss in uptime for melee on the first floor is balanced out by a loss in uptime for ranged on the third floor. On Underlurker, the only uptime loss for melee is if they don't position themselves correctly and get slowed by the adds. On Sword Squadron, ranged DPS need just as much time as melee to run out from Gravity Missile, if not more. On Dread Guards, melee should never need to chase a target, and nearly every class has a hard cheese for Doom. On Terror, you must be on the same platform as your target to do damage to it, thereby providing ranged no benefit. On Thrasher, you can simply drop the firebugs close to the boss. Even for Torque and Bulo, it's maybe ~15 seconds less uptime for melee through the entire fight. Source? I have cleared all of those fights as a ranged DPS and a melee DPS. I have seen and cleared almost every fight in the game - I know the mechanics. 2. I never said melee was not more affected than ranged by certain mechanics. Essence Corruptions on Revan, for example, are much more of a hassle for melee players than ranged players, but only in 8M, because the only way to have enough room in 16M is for everyone but the people getting cleansed to stack on the boss. In terms of taking more damage, there aren't as many cases as you think there are where melee are forced to take more damage than ranged. Specifically I can think of Gharj, Jarg and Sorno, Karagga, Toth and Zorn, Dash'Roode, Cartel Warlords, Draxus, Torque, Coratanni, and maybe Revanite Commanders. The vast majority of the time, the damage that goes out is actually raidwide and unavoidable by proximity. Why did they design fights this way? So it would be a better check on the healers no matter the group composition. Melee-specific forced downtime on bosses is actually pretty limited. I'm thinking of times like on Operations Chief when he flash grenades the people nearby - when you absolutely cannot avoid downtime. Times like Titan 6's Airstrike are not good examples because everyone needs to avoid the circles, and melee can maintain uptime with correct positioning. Sure, it's easier as ranged to position yourself correctly, but the trade off is that you can't use a casted or channeled attack when re-positioning. If someone is having trouble maintaining their rotation while dodging stupid, then that's an issue with them executing the mechanics. 3. PvP is not in the scope of this discussion, but having played both a Juggernaut and a Mercenary in PvP, I can say it's really not significantly easier to maintain uptime as a ranged DPS. Ranged is more prone to being LoS'ed and absolutely needs to kite a melee attacker, which reduces their uptime by an amount similar to what melee loses by getting ranged. Melee is also more mobile and has several high-mobility and gap-closing abilities, while ranged generally has only a single high-mobility action (rocket out, sniper roll) with the only exception being Sorcerers. Further, those casts (yes I'm going to keep bringing them up because they are a huge hindrance) are very easily interrupted in PvP, pretty much every casted ability for a ranged class is integral to their rotation (Trace Missile, Cull, Force Lightning, Force Leech). If you aren't able to get one of those abilities off, your rotation basically breaks. It's not that melee doesn't have difficulties maintaining DPS uptime, it's that there are different difficulties that melee and ranged face and they are about equally hard.

The other thing to consider is that the range classes are: Merc, Sniper, and Sorc. In total they made up roughly 55% of DPS classes over the past few weeks, and I can bet you that the slight ranged preference overall is almost entirely due to FoTM Mercs. Even so, 45/55 melee/ranged is pretty even.

I can only think of a few fights where a heavy melee composition is unviable. Last night I cleared the first 3 bosses of EC NiM as the only ranged DPS. I routinely play a Juggernaut DPS in HM/NiM operations. In fact, on many of these fights, it's better to have more melee because it's easier to DPS as a melee. Looking at the overall distribution on even HM operations isn't a great barometer because there are plenty of FoTM players using Mercs because of the DCDs and snipers because they have 2 of the 3 highest parsing specs right now. Plus that takes into account EV and KP, which any semi-decent player can clear. These make up over 30% of the total data set. It's not that being melee isn't detrimental in some ways, but being able to put out DPS is not one of them. If having too many melee on a fight causes you to wipe, it's most likely due to mechanics, not DPS problems. Iif it's DPS problems, then that's a gear/L2P issue.

Hey Rydarus, Skyesora here. A few thoughts: 1. Completely agree on Saber Reflect; it's pretty dumb that the Merc reflect is actually a better cooldown than the original one that they copied. This would make it much more dangerous for anyone to attack us during SR and basically force the use of AoEs, stuns, or kiting. Perhaps changing it to "all direct single-target damage" is reflected would work. 2. Not sure I agree on accuracy affecting Focused/Enraged Defense. I think I'd add like a 10-15% DR to it and increase the base heal so it's a lot harder for people to just hit through it. Right now, it's pretty useless against burst specs because the max it heals for is about 15k (and that's on a crit). Perhaps making it scale with Mastery as well as Power would address how weak it is at times? 3. Gather Strength/Pooled Hatred in this manner would allow for some absolutely enormous crits to be lined up. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but something like a 50k hit is certainly possible (I've achieved slightly over 41k; higher is definitely possible - http://imgur.com/a/t4onZ). To be honest I'm not sure why stuns don't give stacks of it already. The DR is interesting but might be a bit OP. Some things I'd add: 1. Grant Focus/Rage the same threat drop AoE DR that Vigilance/Vengeance has. I don't really understand the logic behind it not being granted to both, and it'd really help when you're caught in the middle of a scrum. 2. Allow Guardian Leap/Intercede to be used while stunned and increase its cooldown to 45 seconds/1 minute. Seriously, we need a hard escape.

Yeah it's different in PvP, but that's a separate discussion. In all honesty though I've played both Juggernaut and Mercenary in PvP and the only difference in DPS potential I notice is that I die more quickly on my Juggernaut due to not having the Merc's godly DCDs. But that's a completely different issue.

I am by no means an expert on all classes, but I play Guardian/Juggernaut and Commando/Mercenary at a NiM level and have played Gunslinger/Sniper, Sentinel/Marauder, Sage/Sorcerer, and Shadow/Assassin all at a HM level as a DPS in the past. And from my experience, it's actually significantly harder to keep uptime on a boss as a ranged class in many cases. Why? Because ranged classes have casts and channels. This makes you prone to interrupts whether by being knocked back/pulled, being LOS'd, or the target becoming immune to damage due to some mechanic. Any movement you have to do absolutely must happen at a set point in your rotation for you to be able to maintain uptime. Finally, switching targets mid fight does not allow you to pre-cast, which is essentially a 1 GCD loss of uptime. Let's take a few HM ops fights. For Dread Master Brontes, in the top 50 DPS logs submitted to Parsely, there are 22 melee specs and 28 ranged specs. For Warlord Kephess, it's 21 and 29. For The Terror from Beyond, it's 26 and 22 (ignoring the top 2 parses that are bugged with combat times too short to be true). Obviously, some fights are tilted towards melee and some towards ranged, but there isn't a clear favoring to one over the other in my experience. I specifically selected bosses where AoE potential and reflecting ability wouldn't skew the results, but ranged and melee classes as a whole are performing about equally well right now. Some classes are definitely over/underperforming - there is an inordinate number of Mercs and very few Sorcs - but on the whole ranged and melee classes are about even. That's not even taking into account how executing mechanics affects certain classes. For example, target swapping on Vigilance/Vengeance is trivial, even though it's classified as a DoT spec because there are no hard DoTs you apply to a target. For Dirty Fighting/Virulence, on the other hand, target swapping is an absolute nightmare because you have two high-cost DoTs to apply. Movement affects Gunslinger/Snipers especially hard, but it usually isn't a big deal for Commando/Mercenaries unless it happens at a specific point in their rotation. I understand why it seems like being melee should be a disadvantage for maintaining DPS, but that's balanced out by the fact that no melee classes have casted/channeled abilities anymore. Thus, in practice, the people you see doing the best overall are those who know their classes and the mechanics of the fights the best. That's how it should be.

Skyesora - Guardian/Juggernaut - Max hit - 41219 - http://imgur.com/a/t4onZ

Formatting question noted for future reference. As for proof, it was sloppy of me not to click the ship. I do have the combat log from that night, which would reveal that I'm using a combination of abilities that is only possible on a Flashfire, though it's a bit difficult to interpret without a parser.

First post! Skyesora-srw (Skyesora) - Flashfire - <Shadowlands Reconnaissance Wing> - Jedi Covenant - 18 medals - http://imgur.com/a/of5XL

Hello everyone! <Lightning Masters>/<Pull Burn Profit> is a small group of raiders who recently transferred from The Shadowlands and we are looking to recruit 2 DPS for our progression team, which runs on Friday and Saturday 8:00-10:00 pm server time. We have downed Revan in hard mode are currently looking at EC NiM as our next step for progression, but we are also aspiring to work on the remaining apex bosses in HM (Master and Blaster and Colossal Monolith) as well as the rest of NiM eventually. Our progression team will be running on the Imperial side but we will also run some things on the Republic side. Ranged would be preferred. We would expect you to have cleared most of HM. We are all pretty laid back and are looking for people who are driven to progress and also want to have a good time while raiding. Our current composition is: Tank: Assassin Tank: Assassin DPS: Juggernaut/Mercenary DPS: Assassin DPS: (open) DPS: (open) Healer: Sorcerer Healer: Operative If you are interested, please contact Copernica via whisper or in-game mail, and we can setup a trial run.

Looks like only one of these will chart (solo kills), but here's a match I just played: Scout deathmatch: Skyesora-srw (Skye) - Flashfire - <Shadowlands Reconnaissance Wing> - Jedi Covenant - 35 kills + assists Skyesora-srw (Skye) - Flashfire - <Shadowlands Reconnaissance Wing> - Jedi Covenant - 240.43 DPS Skyesora-srw (Skye) - Flashfire - <Shadowlands Reconnaissance Wing> - Jedi Covenant - 20 solo kills Proof: http://imgur.com/a/HscSJ

Hello! My raid team is moving here from Shadowlands due to recent losses in personnel and are looking to recruit raiders on Harbinger. I haven't had a chance to post in the forums yet because we're still setting some things up, but we will be running on Fridays and Saturdays, probably 8:00-10:00 or 11:00 server time (PST). You can find me Impside as Copernica or Pubside as Lorentzin currently. We plan to do progression Impside but will be raiding on both sides. You can send me in game mail or a private message if you find me online for more details. Edit: I should note that we are currently at Master and Blaster HM in progression, and plan to move to EC NiM afterwards.

Hello everyone! <Council of Light> is a small guild with an active core and one progression team that is currently working on Master and Blaster, having killed recently killed Revan. Right now, our team has a few extra members and thus we are exploring forming a second raid team. Where this group starts will depend upon the skill level of players we find, but everyone currently on our team is capable of all hard mode fights and at least some nightmare fights. We are looking for players who are adept at playing their class and roles, are familiar with hard mode mechanics, and able to raid either impside or pubside. All roles are currently open, and all classes are welcome. If you are interested, please message Skyesora or Tsouyen (pubside) or Soraskye (impside) via private message or through in-game mail. We will organize runs with members of our main group so you can get to know us and so we can establish skill levels.

Hi, I'm a bit late to the party, but if you're interested in Rage, I have posted a guide for Focus Guardian (the Republic mirror) on Dulfy: http://dulfy.net/2017/01/28/swtor-5-0-focus-guardian-pve-guide-by-schwarzschilda/ I'm working on the Rage version right now since there seems to be a fair bit of interest from Imperial players, so you can look for that as well.

Right now, Flashpoints are a decent way to get Refined Istotope Stabilizers and CXP, but they don't really have a place in endgame gearing, and didn't in 4.0, either. With the gearing changes coming in 5.2, there is a clear answer to making Flashpoints relevant again to endgame gearing: Make the Master Mode Flashpoints drop 230 set bonus gear on the final and bonus bosses, as 230 gear will no longer be dropped by operations or available for purchase from the gear vendors. Have these bosses drop a random 230 unassembled token, and they will serve as an entry level for endgame gearing and set bonus. The other bosses could drop 230 blue non-set bonus gear as well. Here are some other possible options. The item grade I have chosen is lower than obtainable from operations because I don't believe you should be guaranteed to obtain the best gear in the game from non-endgame content (meaning Raids and PvP): - Have Veteran/Master chapters drop 230/234 gear, respectively to give solo players a guaranteed way to obtain their gear - Add 230/234 gear to Veteran/Master Flashpoints rather than just 230 to Master mode - Add 230/234 gear to Veteran/Master Uprisings Since Flashpoints are so quick and have no lockouts (Chapters and Uprisings are similar), this would create an abundance of 230/234 gear. THIS IS A GOOD THING, because it would allow for quick and efficient replacement of last tier's gear and an incentive for non-raid players to participate in the endgame. These changes would not reduce the amount of work necessary to obtain legendary-level gear as 230/234 won't be part of the gear progression, and make it much easier for players to get their characters to a playable level in endgame content.

It turns out that Bioware is bad at math and phrased it incorrectly. The bonus is you are earning 250% of the normal requisition, or a 150% bonus. It should say "you are earning 250% of normal requisition" rather than "250% faster requisition". I do believe that this is occurring, since I've gotten well over 2k req in some matches.

PSA to all of the pilots out there: According to Dulfy, Patch 5.1.1 will be boosting GSF requisition: "Level through your Command Ranks faster than ever before with a 250% increase to all Command Experience gains, as well as leveling Experience and Starfighter Requisition, until Game Update 5.2"

I do GSF and operations mostly, with some PvP mixed in, and maybe a few dailies with the odd uprising. Yes, it would fix the problem increase component gain/make tokens drop more frequently. But the problem with that is it would represent a move towards the gearing system of last patch to the point where GC would barely be necessary. Don't get me wrong, I'd love that, but I doubt Bioware is going to do that - they are insisting on emphasizing GC.

That's one piece per 25 hours of playing, not day. So that means 1 piece every week at 3 hours of playing each day. Sorry if that was unclear. Edit: It's been edited, so it should be clear now.

Bioware, I understand that you're committed to the Galactic Command system for gearing. You've been working to make the system work, and I respect that. But the true problem with the gearing system is something that you, as of yet, have failed to even admit is a problem, and that's the fact that the system is based upon RNG. The rate of crates was honestly not terrible when patch 5.0 dropped, and right now I think it's pretty good (though some of the content needs to grant a bit more CXP for it to be balanced). The reason people were so annoyed is that the vast majority of crates give you pretty much nothing of use. Allow me to provide a concrete example. I am well past Command Rank 300 on my Guardian, having opened in the neighborhood of 160 tier 3 crates. I have, for all intents and purposes, completed the grind, and should be done gearing. But instead, I have gotten crate upon crate of useless gear (green 238 or blue 240). What's worse is when I do get a purple 240 or (very rarely) a yellow 242 drop, there is a very high chance that it is *still* useless. I have taken to collecting the useless drops in my command stash, and out of the past 13 240 purple or 242 yellow drops I have gotten over the past two weeks or so, *12* of them have been useless. Meanwhile, I have yet to receive a headpiece or belt of either set bonus quality in tier 3, and have only received 6 *total* pieces of best in slot (yellow 242) gear, and 2 of those were repeats. That means I have received 1 best in slot piece of gear roughly every 25 crates, or about an day of straight playing worth of grinding. The math only gets worse as I continue, as each piece of best in slot gear I obtain increases the chances that the next one will be a repeat. I can't imagine how bad it will be to get the final piece. The changes in 5.1 helped mitigate the RNG a bit, but the math isn't pretty there, either. I play Galactic Starfighter a lot. Let's generously assume I have a win rate of 75%, meaning I get (.75*8)+(.25*3) = 6.75 unassembled tokens per match. Let's also assume I get 8/14 pieces of my 242 gear from RNG in command crates. That leaves 6 pieces of gear, which will cost in the neighborhood of 1400 unassembled tokens to obtain. That equates to 208 GSF matches, which, at a rate of 20 minutes/match, means I will be playing for 69 hours straight doing nothing but GSF to round out my gear. This is also assuming that I was lucky enough to get 236 drops to trade in for that gear. If I didnt, I'd be looking at more like 100 hours, which would take an entire month at 3 hours/day. Keep in mind, that's as a *supplement* to the gear I'm supposed to be getting, *not* the main source. Let me reemphasize: 12 of the past 13 token drops I've gotten have been useless, and those have taken me a few weeks to get. If even half of those were useful, I would be very happy. But RNG has screwed me over, and thus I am very unhappy with the system. THE RANDOM NATURE OF GEAR is the problem, NOT the quantity. Thus, increasing the quantity of gear is simply treating the symptom, which is that there's not enough gear, not the problem, which is that gearing is RNG based. To treat the problem you need to adjust the drop tables from command crates by making it less likely that repeat or useless gear will drop.

First of all, welcome! I love Guardian/Juggernaut, and if you give it some time to really learn the class I'll bet you will too! A lot of people have said that Guardians have become squishy in PvP. To be honest, I haven't felt any different in 5.0, and the reduction in survivability is actually only relative, since Mercs are so ridiculously OP now and seemingly every class has a reflect. Between Rage and Vengeance, Rage is superior in PvP. Having a root break built into your rotation (Obliterate) as well as a slow (Force Crush) is really nice. Rage also has a pretty awesome burst capability, with Furious Strike hitting for upwards of 25k and supercritting Raging Burst. Vengeance can work as well and certainly has a high DPS potential due to its DoT spreading, plus the addition of Hew gave it a slow built into its rotation. I still find Rage performs better, though. I don't have experience using Immortal with DPS gear, but I will say that Kinetic Shadow with DPS gear worked pretty well.