I said I will continue to oppose your line of thought and I mean it. You may want to read my last couple of posts, but let's try again Such thing does not exist in the game. To quote myself, you get the player, not the class. Maybe, maybe not. At most you can say that on *average* shadows do less dps. Which is arguable because the sample of parses is not scientifically determined and can thus skew the statistics by quite a lot. You should really calm down a bit, you seem quite excited there. I assure you I understand quite correctly what you're saying. I just disagree on part of the content and wholly disagree on the presentation (mostly, the location where you're trying to press your points). Possibly. I'm not debating this, nor I ever did. I just oppose the notion that his is relevant once it's been proven that they are able to complete all the content in the game. And on that note... Assuming that from some point of view assassin is the worst DPS ac (and that's already debatable as the utility they bring may/may not outweigh the potential DPS loss, as has been argued in this very thread), your concerns may be legitimate BUT this is not the place or the way to voice them. What this thread, this kind of thread, do, is raise false alarms and ostracize players (IE: random guy reads this thread, judges shadows badly and refuses to bring any into his operations). As I discussed above with Kitru, when talking about operations, you always bring the player not the class. And the kind of content that allows you to bring a "random" person you can only judge based on class and one-sided statements, is also the kind of content that can be completed by any class with bad specs because in those cases the actual class performance is MUCH LESS important than actual knowledge and execution of the mechanics (AKA: player skills) And to make it clear. I'm not discussing whether assasin has or not the best/worst dps. I don't care. You could be discussing it has the best dps for all I care, the answer would be the same (though less forceful cause it'd be less likely to ostracize people). I know what you're saying, I "grasped" that the first time. What you don't understand is that it has and should have the same relevance as worrying about stepping on an ant crap. And finally, just for the sake of discussion, let's say you're right. So what? You have concerns? Make a feedback thread, you know, constructive criticism. The fact that shadows are able to complete all the content suggests that the problems may lie more in the learning curve than in the end output so you have that avenue to explore. THAT would be a great thing to do because, unlike this kind of thread and your kind of statements, that would have a chance to assess the real issues and perhaps find ways to fix em. Instead you're just saying APPLES ARE NOT AS GOOD AS ORANGES, which is debatable, as a broad statement is mostly false in the specific cases it actually matters and does NOTHING to actually fix the issue, while perhaps condemning some "apple producers" to failure.

To be honest I've never used either (norm was just a sphere or a geometric point). I've just read that spherical cows are what is often used in other countries (probably a urban legend or a relic of the past, still achieves comedic value I guess). Beside the fact that threads like this tend to inflate the issues (whether real or imaginary), I'd say that it's still quite irrelevant. You're not going to pug the hardest stuff and probably not even hard content unless you're sure that regardless of who you're getting (unless that dps actually manages to HEAL the enemies), you'll pull through. That basically leaves story mode content and it's really easy enough that the class will mostly be irrelevant, while comprehension and execution of tactics will be paramount. Again, I'd rather (and I know I did) choose one guy who knows the fights rather than a random guy who has a "better" class. Pulling enough dps to clear the content is not an issue in just about any fight I will accept pugging. Of course if you're not pugging then you get the "player", and we're back to what I was saying above.

And while I agree with what you said about specific performance of the classes, that's a discussion that's worth making but in the proper way and in the proper form. You know very well that balancing is hard and it would be foolish to believe that each class performs in the same exact way. The problem is: this is NOT a balancing/feedback thread. It wasn't meant as such and for all the discussion that went on here, it still is NOT a balancing thread. That's my issue. As such I refuse to discuss any class in the terms that the OP and many of the following posters are doing. About the specific of skill vs class, I see what you mean but you have to remember that we're not talking about a mathematical model or cows in a vacuum here. The very real issue is that you can't ever detach a character from its player, nor you can obtain a "model" of how the player "works" and simply transpose it on a different class. It doesn't work that way. Yes, you can say that on average shadow performs worse than most classes, which certainly has a statistical value and can be the basis for a balancing pass. However, as that is not the point of this thread, when talking of "who you can bring to an ops", you can't simply state "this class can, this can't" as, and this is my point, you're not getting the class, you're getting a player. If that player is able to clear the content you want to clear while wearing mismatched greens and a badly specced class, as much as it may be painful for minmaxers (and I say that as one of em), you can't really argue with what he's doing and his class cannot be an obstacle to his taking part in content. If, and only if, he's not up to the content, he can be given instructions on how to better his own playstyle/gearing/spec. And I assure you, 99% of the time, if that is not enough, changing class to a "better one" won't do any good either, as for the end results, the actual player is more important than the class.

Way to miss MY point there, which was: personal skill and affinity with the class has more to do with the end results than the performance of the class itself. And I present to you the fact that it's still irrelevant. It's irrelevant to bring it up, irrelevant in real situations, the only real place where this would be relevant would be on a feedback thread with data and suggestions on improvement. This is not the case. And to quote your own post, try to get this "through your thick skull": Any kind of discrimination, even if just for the sake of speech, of classes will see the strongest opposition from me. I'm sick and tired of elitism like this, ESPECIALLY when it's COMPLETELY uncalled for. All classes have been brought through the HARDEST content available, even before it was nerfed because deemed slightly too difficult. Saying that "X is better than Y" is pointless, creates false opinions, divides the community, generates a climate of hatred and resent and is, I must stress this, irrelevant. If you have GENUINE concerns about a class's performance, create a feedback thread like others have done (Kitru for example has both created and posted in several threads concerning Shadow tank's spikiness issues) and bring data and suggestions on how to improve the situation. Threads like this one are just annoying and, most often, ignorant. (Yes I know you're not the OP but you seem to defend his points)

On the one he's best at. A good player will be able to work well with just about any class, but the truth is: you'll be able to get the BEST out of one, perhaps 2 classes at most, regardless of their respective difficulty. That usually coincides with the main char, if nothing else because you usually put more time there, but there is also the affinity each one of us has to a particular playstyle. So that statement that skill is > class still holds true. Yeah, if you start from 0 with no experience whatsoever and with the ability to choose any class, a sniper or a marauder will probably pull higher numbers easier, but that's just learning curve. It has been shown that all classes can compete even in the most difficult and elitist content. Any further discussion will only prove that you just want to ostracize a class for the sake of it. Beside off tanking, I will state that resilience is by FAR the best cooldown a dps can have to cope with predictable raid or character focused damage. Almost 100% of raid damage will be completely ignored by resilience and the short 1 min cooldown will make sure that it can be used very often. The only exception is on burn phases were continuous raid wide damage is expected, then blade ward is better than deflection.

Or to keep it in star wars: http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111102015726/starwars/images/3/39/Z6RotaryBlasterCannon-SWE.jpg

Doesn't really matter I guess, people will still believe whatever they want. *sigh*

And with this I agree, though I have to say I don't particularly like the debuff solution either (but it does seem the easier way to approach this). Mostly because I really like the idea of having an op with varying content (up to a point), and the easiest way to do that is having just a single boss change mechanics, and have the changing mechanics tied to the preliminary boss kills. It could be either the order or the combination. Both have pros and cons: tying to the order of kill simplifies stuff, but forces you to a specific order if you want specific stuff and doesn't really allow variation in difficulty (unless you change ALL bosses, which would be a major amount of work) because regardless of order, you'd still be killing the same bosses. The "selection" of bosses allows you more variation and it allows you to tie more important final boss drops to harder mechanics both on the final boss AND on the preliminary boss needed to unlock them. It does also mean that you have bosses that can't be killed every week and an overall higher amount of bosses in development, for the same weekly raid time (though it will end up with a higher longevity of the content). Personally I *really* like the latter option or variations thereof (say, a tiered system where you get 8 underbosses, 4 bosses and 1/2 final bosses that vary their mechanics and loot based on the tiered kills). It does pose problems, but if the GF can be skipped then the biggest one is avoided. Rest is development cost, but it could be an op where you can gather ALL the gear of a tier, so the cost would probably be justified.

Unpredictable is just the threat drop that the gold dustclaws have. They randomly change target basically.

So did our shadow. Really, those are "oh crap" moments anyway.

I was thinking more of a set number of bosses but you CHOOSE which to kill, without being able to kill them all though (say, 8 bosses + final, but you only get to kill 5 of the starting bosses each week, your choice of which). I guess lockout may be a problem on the groupfinder, it shouldn't be a problem on normal groups though, just use the lockout of the first one to enter (or group leader) and tie it to number of kills rather than specific kills. Let's say, the gray secant wants more advanced combat specimens and sets up an elaborate gauntlet with single fights: you get to rooms where you can summon the boss tied to that location. After the boss is defeated, a scorekeeper of sort will mark what you kill and how many you have killed, changing the final fight (or possibly the subsequent "pre" bosses too) depending on what you killed. After the threshold of kills is reached, the scorekeeper locks you from summoning more bosses and presents you with Xeno Analyst mk3 and its fight. Doing this with the GF may be tricky (definitely trickier than now), but if you can bind the lockout to a number of prebosses rather than specific kills, then the matching part is done, just match people who have the same or lower amount of kills. And for the specific of the last, "custom" boss, I'd say the easiest thing is probably tying the instance to the GF chosen group leader.

You do realize that a shadow has EXACTLY THE SAME utility? They have taunts, tank form and defensive cooldowns as well. Plus stealth rez and cc

Not necessarily, though it would require a bit of reworking, but if the lockouts are on the number of kills rather than on the specific boss kills, it's not a huge problem.

Cool Idea but I think it could be done even better... Basically the whole operation is a puzzle, you don't get to kill *all* the bosses each week, but only some of them, with loot spread out among all the bosses so you can't just farm always the same ones. The bosses you kill grant/remove abilities/mechanics from the end boss, making the final boss fight unique for every combination of boss kills. [edit: possibly use the same mechanic for the small bosses too, slightly changing the fight mechanics depending on the order of kill, with slightly different bonuses/loot depending on order, so as to avoid focusing on just ONE order]

The log would still show a "resist" entry if that were the case.

Can't say I noticed this happening, but last S&V run there were some hiccups with CCs when there's usually none... Since that's what you were doing in the parse I assume you know that some mobs are simply immune to cc, but if that's not the problem then it's difficult to say. While unlikely, it IS possible that somebody broke CC... Unfortunately we can't see that from the log (nor, apparently, who was the target for the concussive round) The fact that mobs start to hit you is just normal if you've done the CC before somebody else pulled.

Given that spikes come as often as 30 seconds (IIRC), wouldn't really solve the problem, and the general idea is getting away from using cooldowns in that way.

It's debatable that an MMO goes into maintenance proper (well, they do, but it usually takes longer), especially when there's still a long planned life for the game. But beside that minor (and mostly rhetorical) question, I'll say that yes, it's not uncommon, but it doesn't mean it's good. Having one person doing the actual implementation work of the changes may be good and efficient as he'll be able to gauge the differences between classes and the changes he's about to make BUT there is NO way that ONE guy is able to do a normal day time job AND know the classes well enough (and not only from a pure numerical perspective) to do a great job. I haven't had a job in the last year and still I can say I *REALLY* know only a class or two (and not all the specs), despite having characters of all the 8 different ACs. Many games have "solved" this issue by having either council of players report their class balance issues or dedicated "developers" or at least representatives for each class. Just this would go a long way toward eliminating some issues (like, completely changing the way a class works for the sake of "balance", see vigilance guardian, the spikiness, the change to the commando/merc dps set bonus, etc.). And this is another issue. Here we're in agreement; everybody (with a minimum of sense) can tell you that balance is, if anything, asymptotic: something you can only ever try approaching but never reach. And the best way to do that is small incremental changes, not BIG SWEEPING CHANGES across the board. If class A is underperforming, it's not a good idea to put the fix for class A along with BIG changes to ALL classes at the same time. Best case, A will still be underperforming. Worst? Changes only make stuff worse and create even bigger gaps than before.

Because the engine appears to be heavily tied to animations (due to the synching of hits with deflects and dodges) and due to this (and probably other issues), the game suffers from a lot of timing issues. The symptons are many: the missing last ticks of full auto/master strike, unfired skills, false skill activations, edge effects at the end of combat (like combat ending before the hit that actually kills the target strikes), you name it. That's why I said the fix was CHEAP. Fixing the REAL issue behind this would require a major overhaul of (likely) the game engine (not to be confused with the graphic engine). And while the positive effects would be countless, the fact that it will require a lot of work makes it quite unlikely we'll see something like that if not in the VERY long run. Now that the game is profitable again we can at least HOPE for a real fix, but until then this is the kind of fix we can expect.

Given how development works, especially of a MMORPG, it's extremely unlikely they've been "dropped". I'm 95% certain that the VAST majority of the assets generated by those datamines has been or will be reused in some form or another. Worst case we'll see name changes and stuff like that, but I expect them to be mostly valid. The most recent example is S&V itself. If you just check the initial conversation with the npc, as reported on torhead, you'll see that it's basically EXACTLY what we have in game. Also, there have been much more recent datamines, and at least in one of them a "Czerka world" is mentioned. Now, I'm not saying "we're definitely getting this stuff", but it's extremely difficult for stuff to get scrapped altogether, as many of these things are mostly ready, so there was time spent making them which makes scrapping them not a good economic move unless there is some kind of technical/economical difficulty.

You may want to re read my post. It may or may not be the worst dps class. Given the fact that you can clear the hardest tier of content with it, it makes the question irrelevant. The problem arises when people like the OP start saying stuff like "you shouldn't bring one EVEREVEREVER". This ostracizes players, creates a FALSE idea about how the game works and generates a wholly unhealthy environment for what is a game. Again, just to make it even clearer for you: I'm not saying ANYTHING about whether shadow is best/worst. I'm saying that it's stupid, close minded and ignorant to make that kind of statement.

I don't mean this with hate or disrespect, but the way they handle some of the stuff seems amateurish, like this. I mean, I felt the same way when Peckenpaugh (hope I got the spelling right) said he basically is the only guy on class balance. I was like "WHAT? You're kidding right?". Then a lot of stuff made much more sense =/

Bullcrap. People saying this are simply pulling out stuff from their arses. My guild is NOWHERE near hardcore. We killed the first boss in TFB NiM on the FIRST try, with a shadow dps. And a very mediocre commando dps, barely breaking 2400 dps on a dummy (that would be me). Sure maybe we won't kill the DG right now, but general consensus is that they're overtuned anyway. S&V Hm is a WALK IN THE PARK, the only moderately difficult fight is the last one, and still we beat it with no problem with that shadow dps regularly in our group and I can assure you that he's not getting carried, if anything it's the opposite. Kitru has already touched the (real) issues shadow tanks have but let's get this out of the way: SWTOR is NOT a difficult game, PVE wise. Aside from hiccups like the DG overtuning and current shadow situation, the content is doable with much worse gear and suboptimal compositions and even suboptimal personal dps/mitigation/healing output than the best you can achieve. Shadow may or may not be the "worst ac". It's still truly and completely IRRELEVANT and people that make statements like the one quoted above should have the right of speech removed from the forums. Yes I'm pissed (as much as you can get pissed by writing a long and elaborate post on a forum), because that kind of attitude ruins games for *everybody* and also it's the same kind of thinking and behaving that creates FOTM classes. So, drop it. I have already proven that statement wrong. I'm sure plenty of other people can do the same.

I assume you're running with unlettered mods given your low health (and probably a bit undergeared too). While this is not a problem per se, it means that a pug (possibly inexperienced or straight bad) healer will have less reaction time, especially in case of a string of non mitigated hits. Not much you can do about that except following Kitru's advice AND always checking that the healer is 100% ready and focused.

These are 100% made-up-on-spot hypotesis, but given the context and what has been done before I'd say: The flashpoints will be lvl 55, possibly with a slightly lower level story mode (Maybe from 51 to 55, to cover the hole of other FPs). Hard mode will definitely be lvl 55, to complete the low amount of flashpoints we currently have at cap. For the same reason, they will be strictly 4 man, as the GF will try to find 4 people ANYWAY (it even does that for esseless/BT) Given leaked info from the past, it's fair to assume that the flashpoints we'll be receiving are: 1) Titans of Industry - a Czerka themed flashpoint were the objective will be to recover some kind of tech 2) The Imperial Warlord - here the objective will be to defeat a rogue imperial officer.