Too easy? Run it in 178 gear, as recommended. Considering what they drop, the rewards...they are just about right.

The community was far more positive after Eric said we were getting a series of fixes...until they then ignored the community and delivered "fixes" that were completely unresponsive to what the community had discussed, here and on PTS forums. That kind of put a negative spin on the thoughts and posts from the community....after EAWare ignored it and proved themselves unresponsive to it. Go figure.

A dummy parse is all but meaningless, as it does nothing to capture the difficulty of melee play...you get to stand there in melee range and do nothing. Watchmen is conversely the absolute WORST pvp option as its rotation coupled with melee range restriction is epic bad. The GBTF change would have been fine if the damage was upfront...then healers aren't wasting their healing...and it should have been left at 2 min. But they just had to nerf the CD on it. Force camo change is again ok, but NOT responsive to what the community asked for or elaborated on when it comes to the MAJOR problems facing the class.

Of course group make up matters. It matters immensely, especially in a game with severe balance and mechanics issues like this game has. To deny that is to deny the basic state of the game. What good is patience when their process is broken? The issues with the class are clear. The issues with the disciplines are clear. Any fool could see them, especially if you actually took time to play the class. It is also just as clear that 3.1.1. did little to nothing to address our issues or appreciably improve our class or its relative competitiveness with other classes. It is still bottom tier for many play areas. Having to "make it work" or expend extra time and group effort to accommodate progression is failure. Design failure that Im not willing to tolerate. We pay them. They are responsible for adequate customer care and responsiveness. They do NOT pay us. They are responsible for producing a professional product. Does anyone think that 3.1.1 was responsive to us, as customers, or improved their product, or was even a professional effort? I sure as hell don't.

The raid environment is not the only one in this game that mdps, and specifically sentinels, are underperforming in...so yes, change is the order of the day, and change is not necessarily a simplistic buff. But something needed to be changed to move the needle in the right direction, and that clearly did not happen, anywhere. But here is a clue, horrendous raid design isn't the only horrendous design we are living with in this game atm.

I had a conversation with one of my guilds raid leaders a couple of weeks ago. He made it clear that he, as an experience raider in this game, sees nothing but downside to taking mdps and sents in particular on raids...and I can see why. 3.1.1. did absolutely NOTHING to improve our status or change that...

According to EAWare, HM 60 FP only require 178 gear. Makes you wonder if anyone there plays their own game, doesn't, it?

Watchman in PvP? Man that is just masochistic...I couldn't do that to myself. And Watchman was my preferred spec, too. But it is just too painful, beyond the unbearable baseline sentinel pain. Which is why my sent is shelved. EAWare did the damage, and have made it plain that no help is on the way. I will be leaving this game again, just a matter of time. They have repeatedly killed any good feeling as a customer or loyalty to them I might have - but this time they killed it and drove a stake through its heart with their incredibly bad work product. They do not deserve my money. GW2 expansion is around the corner. I'll head there for a while.

Main point was that their fix did nothing to actually address or fix our issues...with the class in general or any, ANY of the specific disciplines. Got it? The community agreed our issues were time on target and relatedly, lack of cc resistance, particularly with movement impairing effects that also reduce our time on target. Secondarily, the community agreed that melee is at a general disadvantage in the game by many of the mechanics in different encounters, where there is NO reason to have melee versus taking a ranged class. Sentinels are particularly susceptible to this weakness. We also agreed that watchman and combat needed specific changes to have their gameplay make more sense. Sure, there are a lot of threads expressing disappointment and disbelief, but when you fail this bad EAware, you get another one. Questions?

The community reached a consensus about overall changes for the class (time on target, cc issues) and specific changes to each discipline (e.g., rotation changes for watchmen, precision changes for combat, etc.) and specific changes for our utilities. So we get a marginal gbtf change which no one asked for and a force camo change which also does nothing to improve our time on target and/or cc movement issues...brilliant. Instead we get complete crap. We have THREE utilities that revolve around rebuke. Why? Two utilities, one of them heroic, that revolve around leg slash, when what we wanted was CRIPPLING THROW brought back. Now you want us to spend utility points for a skill we had as baseline before you screwed us. Way to piss on our backs and tell us its raining. No thanks. Contemplation should be a passive rolled into our skillset. So should defensive forms. Utility points should be optional, customization tweeks...NOT MUST HAVE, BASELINE skills or passives that everyone has to take in every build, no matter what. That is a good litmus test for you. To think you actually posted in the forums to make us think that positive, appreciable change was coming and that community feedback would be considered. COMPLETELY insulting. You guys have, unfortunately, shown yourself as clueless nubs whose design kung fu is so so very weak - and you fail to listen. This is not a professional product. You guys could find a way to screw up tacos...or bacon.

That's just it "these" aren't tough. Just Bloodhunt and to a lesser extent rishi. JUST bloodhunt. And they are NOT supposed to be that tough. These are NOT ops. They are flashpoints, meant to be group finder pug'd, MEANT for 178 gear. I think you are starting to see the point. Think about it a little more.

well written post.

There is no debate. Guardian. Its a no brainer. It also has a better coolness factor...you get a saber throw earlier, plus force push, plus guardian leap, plus a saber reflect. It is a better jedi play experience. Period. EAWare should be embarrassed and ashamed of their inabilities.

Its a FP, that is what people seem to be forgetting to factor in...FP, not OPS. FP. HM FP is fundamentally DIFFERENT than a HM Ops. FP are designed to be pugged. They are supposed to be doable in 178 gear. Not only is this not doable in 178 or even 186 gear by your average pug, this is also FAR out of balance with the other 4, even 5 FPs. It needs to be fixed and balanced. There is no rational debate here. Any other position is completely unsupportable given the existing facts.

Those parses are in UBER gear, BIS in many cases...FAR beyond the stated requirements for these AND IN MORE STATIC situations...the movement and potential snares, etc in this encounter will drop those dps numbers like a bad habit...But the thing is, this fight is AN EVERYTHING CHECK. It is a heal check, a dps check (again the adds and their spawn rate is WAY overtuned), a tank check and a WHOLE GROUP movement check.

EXACTLY the point, the adds are the main problem. You have to have incredible damage and A VERY good healer to keep up with the dps required by the adds spawn rate...and soak up ALOT of damage...and move your butt off. This guy is claiming he pugged it in a grp where 3/4s had never done it before...and they wiped "once" then "crushed" him. That is complete BS unless they were INCREDIBLY geared and INCREDIBLY skilled, or just unreasonably lucky.

Cleansing the DoT is nothing...the problem is the rate of spawn of the adds, their hp, and their damage (plus mechanics that require an extreme amount of movement, especially by the healer), and the overall damage int eh encounter...plus the movement required by the bosses mechanics. But if you toned down the adds AND their respawn rate (compare this with the adds in the 2nd and last manaan boss encounters to get a clue how incredibly far out of balance they are) then the boss would be remotely reasonable given a concept of balance. Basically you are saying you did it with a pug, 3 of which had never been in the fp before, and only wiped once...I find that either INCREDIBLY lucky or total BS. With an experience, GEARED group, in a voice chat...maybe. Easily crushing him is also total bs. In the dulfy guide video, the healer doesn't even survive, but dies right at the end...they didn't have an EASY time at it, he wasn't crushed, and it sure as hell wasn't their first or second time.

Thanks for the replies...this is very frustrating...yesterday, I amazingly got 3 gf pops, and EACH TIME we got bloodhunt....EACH TIME. So inspite of three pops and over an hour wasted in gf q's, I was able TO GET NOTHING DONE, nothing completed, and HAD ZERO FUN. In fact, I had a ton of annoyance, which was far less than zero fun. Negative fun. There is no excuse for this level of imbalance. Anyone home EAWare? Update...first gf pop today, after another hr sitting in q...BLODDHUNT. Yeah that's random. FIX THIS YOU NOOBS. Balance this crap out

I skimmed through that, didn't see anything about toning down bloodhunt...was nice that they say they fixed rishi where it would count for the weekly, since the one time my group completed it, none of us got credit towards the weekly for it...that was a real treat. My dps in the group was in all 192's with two 198s thrown in...again far far far from 178 gear. Also, if you look at how they toned down manaan, which is FAR FAR easier than bloodhunt, this will make bloodhunt even more out of line. As far as the other comments in the thread...again...if they wanted to move these two into another tier, with higher requirements, higher reward, and detach them from the weekly that the others belong to...then IM FINE with that...but that isn't the case

I have less than zero faith in the competency of this dev team. It is embarrassing.

Then you are clueless. I don't know what your five toons are, or what your playstyle is (pvp, etc) but if you have a veng jug, or sin, or powertech, or just about anything else, you just aren't getting it. I guess if all you did was solo pve and are still trying to level, you might not catch on, but, tbh, you should.

They are the same level, have the same gear requirements, and offer the SAME reward, yet they are no where near the same in difficulty. Rishi is doable, but still a notch up in difficulty. The first boss in Bloodhunt is very difficult for a pug, and far and away more difficult than any other boss in any of the other fp's. What is the rationale, defense, or justification for this lack of balance? GF is a real pain to use, depending on your server and your time of day...then when you do get a pop, to see content that is so far out of balance to basically being undoable...is unacceptable. I'm sure you hardcore types snicker, but again, look at the gear requirements (178, YES, 178), the casual pug nature of the encounters, and the simple fact that these two, bloodhunt in particular, are NOT even remotely balanced with the other content that gives the SAME rewards. It is very disappointing that after this many weeks we haven't seen a balance pass. Again, keep in mind, the recommended gear level for these is 178...178...I would LOVE to see ANY gf pug in 178 gear complete the first boss in bloodhunt. I have yet to see a group in 186/192s make it. Oh and the 11 min or so lockout when a grp is forced to reroll because of the developers inability to balance their content weeks after release, that is also another real perk ;(

There are much better choices....vigilance guardian, for example. Same story, much better game play, much more viable in pvp atm.

The copper color crystal pretty much is the bronze one...also, the silver blue crystal or the teal crystal pretty much covers the teal crystal. The viridian and silver (wasn't it called adegan, maybe Im mistaken) would be nice to see.

Yeah, and its a real shame, because you have some very nice modeling work...and a game that promotes dye packs and coloration to customize your sets...then you release new armor sets that don't take advantage of the quality and detail of the models or the dye feature. I really hope they make these boots consistent. Please. As it is now, the boots have virtually no secondary dye spots on them, so they are all primary color...which means no variability, not additional color to show off the intricacy and model features of the piece...and no matching lighting/highlights.