To be honest.... 99% of the Servers are Light at Prime Time. 20% of their subs left by the end of their first quarter. EA's own CEO pullically said that EVERY other title under the EA umbrella was more important than SWTOR. Those three are pretty much all I needed to call it quits. Players have vacated the game on a massive scale, their own CEO has no faith in the game, and their updates aren't doing enough to bring the game in line with where it should have been at launch. It was a mildly entertaining ride but the ride is over. Good luck if you decide to stick it out. I personally would not do it, but all decisions are for our own reasons in the end. Time to make yours.

I second this. My guild was actively involved in the development of SWTOR tracking tools for PvE Progression and we have done a lot of searching/scouring for information during our development time and I've never once heard of UMBRA. It definitely depends on your server and what table you hang out at during lunch.

The Tour de France analogy is the right one to use here. Why? Instances are released and it's a race against time to see who kills what the fastest. It isn't anything like Basketball/Baseball where you get a nice schedule, there is a set time, and each side gets x time to give it their best shot. Raiding is an endurance event, shortest time wins. Also, because the last boss isn't always the hardest creates problem with #1 being attached to him specifically. In fact, it's rarely the most difficult boss of an instance. Too correctly apply your example to MMO Raiding every boss would need to be progressively more difficult in order to reasonably score the last boss (Kephess in this instance) differently. Otherwise, there is no legitimate reason to inflate the kill score for a end boss when the previous three were harder. I'm not saying the previous three bosses to Kephess are or are not more difficult, but that would be the base requirement. Along those same lines, you run into an issue then of "Why aren't more difficult bosses valued higher for kill scores than loot pinatas"? Raid Ranks scores in a very similar manner to WoW Progress. Just because a guild there cleared H Rag or H Madness first doesn't grant them an absolute World #1 title. In most cases the guild who can clear the zone first will typically snag that place because those few top guilds are all usually within a couple days of each other so the individual kill scores aren't dramatically different, but in the case where you down X bosses much faster than the other guy and it takes them awhile to catch up essentially devaluing the first few bosses but their troubles on the last few are far less so they barely beat you to the end doesn't mean they "win". They have the rank 1 kill for the boss, but not the rank 1 for the entire instance, you were much faster overall. There is a significant difference between the two. This issue would also be less of one if the instance had more than 4 encounters. Alas, it's essentially just a really long Flashpoint. But even most of those have more boss fights.

The problem with lingering dots and Fearful is a bug I suspect, but one that exists on occasion. It also exists on the World Boss when you receive Deathmark. I never said the fights weren't easy, I said the mechanic was annoying for specs that utilize dots. Again, the fail comprehension in these forums is astounding.

You want 110% for Special Attacks. On your character sheet you will see Accuracy: 100%. Anything above 110% Special Attacks Accuracy and all you are helping is your Rifle Shot. Do not stack accuracy beyond 110% Special Attacks it will not be a dps gain over getting more primary/secondary stats.

That is because a majority of Lethality ignores armor as it is tech internal damage. So solo on the dummy you will see higher numbers because you don't have a raid stack of armor debuffs assisting your damage when your MM, Eng, or MM/Eng Hybrid. When you completely remove a bosses/dummy 35% armor mitigation with a full stack of armor debuffs the others pull up along side if not ahead. I've been raiding HM Explosive Conflict as well as the world boss and the only complaint I have with Lethality (which is why I went back to pure MM for progression) is the insane number of damage shields BW has made love to in this new tier of content. It seems like nearly every boss with the exception of Firebrand and Stormcaller and Colonel Vorgath have damage reflect shields that affect CURRENT dots on the target when the shield goes up. That kinda sucks when you stop dps yet you are exploding because your poison dots are still ticking away. This mechanic exists on the World Boss, Zorn and Toth, and the Warrior reflect shield on Kephess. In addition, the add phase under the shields during the tanks Mortar Volley requires pure Single Target DPS so Lethality must forgo their corrosive grenade eliminating not only its dps but also 50% of Cull's poison damage. These mechanics gimp Lethality's dps in these specific fights so I and all our Sniper's have been pure MM for the sake of quality of life until the content becomes "trivial" and we can play specs we enjoy more. This will likely also occur when Nightmare mode comes out, as MM is more predictable and can literally be turned on and off, as there is no ramp up time or lingering dots on a target to worry about.

110% SPECIAL ATTACKS. When you look at your character sheet, it only needs to say 100% or slightly above. Anything more and all you are helping is your Rifle Shot.

Grats guys! That was quick!

I support purging all accounts that aren't attached to the creation of a guild on the site, and letting people go from there prior to 1.2's launch. A discussion still needs to occur however, so this is by no means a statement of intent, just what I personally think should happen if not a complete purge once the "beta" tag is ditched and 1.2 is live.

You obviously don't follow the forums much or you would know EV and Soa specifically are very buggy. It's much better than it used to be, but there are still a lot of bugs lingering. Good luck getting help though, we've never had an instance reset for us, and we've had Ancient Pylons bug out and become unclickable before and they wouldn't reset until the weekly maintenance and the servers reset. I hate to say it, but get used to it in the current tier of content.

Pretty much this.

I've often times mistaken guys for that "chick"...

A month later? Might as well do nothing, that's just silly.

Streams are reliable depending on the site. Sites such as Twitch.tv catalog streams so they can be accessed by viewers afterward and time/date stamp them. It's a reasonable alternative assuming you have people who want to stream their raids, their failures, their successes, and their nerd screams =P

Both could take equally as long.

Pretty much this. My guild missed out on the Infernal title prob .. 4-5 times because of Ancient Pylons locking up and the panels then not unlocking at all without forcibly resetting the zone if the panels unlocked at all (We had them lock up and never unlock until the Tuesday maintenance server reset once, now that sucks). Retroactively receiving the title falls in line with a boss bugging and not dropping loot, BW won't retroactively reward loot because their own system failed. They aren't likely to retroactively reward the title because their own mechanics or network failures gimped you out of your reward. It's happened to the best of us, multiple times.. Really just gotta solider on.

Inzi, you're a genius... but WHAT IF.... Verizon decides to be douchey and not send my text right away and hold it in their network for an hour first and someone beats me?! So ... WHAT IF we email our screenshot of ourself, in front of our computer, with the google UTC time overlayed onto the Star Wars UI with the codex entry while still having every member of your raid visable with their guild tag showing and readable while having the loot box open and you must be holding a clock in your hands showing your local time and it doesn't count without having the date on it, not forgetting a signed copy of your combat log promising you didn't alter it ... and we should include all the BW dev's emails in the email blast everytime we do this so they can independently verify the kills for us until they decide to assist the community with an API. Sounds easy enough. Sigh.. I just want an API.

I haven't experienced this, but without experiencing it I honestly believe it. It falls in line perfectly with how warzones would refuse to credit for daily/weeklies if the original WZ leader left the match.

Zone in to Karagga dying. It is not first combat or first boss kill to Karagga. You cannot reset the instance at any time after zoning in either or you will forfeit the achievement. I have both Unyielding and Infernal and on the various times we've screwed around or tested the first combat/first boss death the title was not given to those that had yet to receive it. So unless a dev posts to correct me if i'm actually wrong here I really hope they do for simple clarification, it is zone in to completion and we've tested other scenarios to come to this conclusion.

Unless it's time stamped achievements that can be pulled directly from the servers via API's then it's going to be subject to manipulation eventually. Perhaps not right away, but it happens and likely will happen. This is why BW really needs to get a team together that can create at least this one single API in order to say "hey, we want to support competitive raiding and we'll give you this tool to inject some life into the community and allow you guys to do the work and do the ranking on your own." This must happen in order for the system to be "accurate without question." Any time stamp based on screenshots, logs etc can be altered quite easily by someone with only moderate talent. So I implore you BW, please assist us in supporting competitive raiding like you are supporting competitive pvp.

This is in the works, I believe somewhere in the page 6-8 area I mentioned we are implementing a paging system so you can look beyond the top 10 of each section without going server by server. Should be here soon!

Because once you have the PvP gear, many keep PvPing for the fun of killing people. Once most raiders have full PvE gear, they usually only continue raiding to help fellow members out. If you could get completely BiS gear in one week, your guild wouldn't keep doing raids most likely. It's easy to say you would, but it's honestly unlikely. PvP is a bit different simply because matches are more dynamic than boss encounters, so people continue to go back even after they have their entire set.

We encourage you to input your information at http://www.swtor.raidranks.com and check into this thread http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=381222 should you have any questions, suggestions or feature requests. Thanks and congrats!

You can make up to the "22" level hilts/enhancements if I'm not mistaken, but for the higher level ones they are drops from Hard/Nightmare OPs along with the weapons that contain the 41 stat crystals (which can currently be purchased on the fleet from the Geologist). This will however change when 1.2 arrives, since you'll be able to RE almost everything and learn the schematic so you can craft/sell it.

Not entirely true. While I've completed all the available content and I have BiS gear, I'll still occasionally group with people looking for a DPS, though I will sometimes ask if they are going to spacebar it because perhaps I have a time constraint and I know watching all the dialogue/custscenes will extend my play time past what I want it to. When I'm not in a rush and the group wants to watch the dialogue I'm generally okay with it. Do most groups want to spacebar? Probably. Though I rarely find people who get upset when someone says they want to watch the cutscenes. I don't find that most people are out to destroy your experience, just bring it up ahead of time and I find that most people are more agreeable than being blindsided with the request at the first cutscene.