I agree to an extent. Yes, if someone in your own group is able to secure their own lockout and bring it to raid there should be no problems at all, (assuming they dont dc) The main issue like others have pointed out is if your group is unable to get their own locks. Not everyone has the time to be able to prep their own raids, currently the bug is basically just middle finger to those groups. (Though an argument could be made they should be good enough to clear to their prog point anyway) but some teams only meet once a week.

https://twitter.com/SWTOR/status/1750565827965853903 It just the basic "we're looking into it, will update later" but at least they're acknowledging it at the moment.

The group leader is free to leave the phase and re-enter with no problems. The issue only occurs if Lead is passed to someone else after anyone has phased into an instance. Note: I just noticed a twitter post indicating that they are looking into this problem so hopefully it is fixed soon!

Right but it still doesn't quite make sense in my opinion because no one in the group had a phase set to Veteran so based on the patch notes it should not have changed as the only active phase was set to Master Mode. So I dont believe it is currently working as intended.

This morning my raid team and I noticed something weird. We entered a phase in Master Mode, and after clearing the first boss, we had 2 people swap toons for the next encounter. However, after they left the group (one of them had group lead when he left) The instance changed from Master to Veteran. This was replicated after our raid time as well. It appears currently that if you begin an operation on Master Mode and the group leader either leaves or passes lead to someone else that the phase changes to Veteran even if everyone is still inside the Phase. Im curious how this will affect groups that Utilize lockouts for their progression if the person passing the lock is not joining the group for the raid. Unsure if this change was intended or not, but if it is I feel like this is a giant hit to the raiding community.

Logged into Server just fine. Ping was comparable to Satele Shan for me. I copied a character over and everything seem to be working fine on that end. Only problem I experienced was with the last boss of Black Talon. My group was unable to complete the Flashpoint due to the cutscene prior to the boss not starting for 1 person in the group.