Yay for the Ace of the Armada!

Will the encounters be rebelanced to the point that *any* of given 3 defensives will work for given encounter, or will the MM Operations be tuned to require a specific one? For example, TFB MM, Ciphas boss, any Jedi Guardian on live can currently use Blade Blitz to survive Doom mechanic if they skillfully time the Blade Blitz so it happens exactly when Doom is activating. Since every Guardian has the skill now, it is not an issue; however with the changes, not every Guardian will have Blade Blitz anymore, unless they decide to have it in their loadout. My question is - will the Reflect and Enure also be able to remove Doom, or will every Guardian need to respec before fight to have loadout with Blade Blitz? If the latter, it will be so.. much... fun... when you start a pull on a no-death run and hear a "Whelp.. I forgot to respec to Blade Blitz loadout... let's pray I do not get Doom, or we have to restart again...". I am also really afraid that it will go the way ESO is currently set up, that people have saved different loadout (including set items/weapons/skills) for each and every single boss encounter and also loadout(s) for trash pulls. While on the one hand the top 100 players will immensely enjoy this feature and min-max everything as much as possible, on the other hand it will create a huge entry barrier for anyone who might think about going into top PvE content, because they will need to google for external sources for loadouts for each boss, set up their bars and be very mindful of switching before each battle. Constant switching of skills on bar also makes one very vulnerable to mistakes where you press the button with your only defensive and instead of healing up and cleansing you suddenly dash 20m forward and fall from the cliff. If there will be allowed cross - class switching in operations and flashpoints (like entering as a Marauder and switching to Sorcerer), will all the mobs gain stealth detection, or will it be intended that everyone changes to a stealth class and run from boss to boss without killing adds (thus making it even harder to get achievements in FPs to kill bonus bosses)? If cross - class switching in MM operations is allowed, I assume that again it will go ESO route with FOTM setups where tanks will be expected to change on demand between jugg and sin, healers between operative and merc and dpses will either stack 4 same setups, or 2 + 2 where melee and ranged is required to be present, optionally 3 + 1 utility dd (like Marauder for predation on certain fights)? It might be hard to justify sorc healer or pt tank due to lack of ability to change on demand in case the fights in the operation are tuned that certain dcd is required for the mechanic, or where aoe healing is neeeded. I am not criticizing, just asking if this is the intended route. It is a big change of game design, it has it's positives and also negatives. While having more freedom sounds great, in ESO it also resulted in system where dps varies between 3k - 110k depending on what build a player chooses and how well they execute the rotation, everyone is free to make themselves strong - or pick all the bad choices. And balancing *that* is something that no developer can do. Strict system with less choices is just easier for balancing, because you need to tune it for much less possible combinations of what players can have chosen as skills and what they might not. Like the Ciphas example above - either you gut the current boss mechanic to enable any choice, or a specific loadout will be created that will be required to do the boss and no other will work, or the FOTM class for this fight might be a Sin dps and any balance for Jugg is irrelevant, as it will not be used.

I am going to wait with play testing for next iteration, as even with just reading the posted changes I strongly disliked the direction. Vengeance juggernaut is probably the best class I played in any game - the rotation is natural and all abilities seem to be well thought out and complimenting each other. With removal of essential skills and dcds I have no idea how I would do the things that I already did in game. No death under 15 min run of Eternal Championship without Enraged Defense and Reflect? Not even a Saber throw to get an attention of an add spawning away from boss? Master mode chapters? Or even just Vet mode? Are people expected to switch Combat styles a lot, so the bosses will be intentionally doable only on some CSs and not on others? Older content like H4 on planetary weekly missions, or Heroic fortresses, where it is almost impossible to get a group going? Are those supposed to be only run as stealth CS avoiding all mobs because you cannot survive fighting multiple gold mobs at the same time, rendering all trash/non-objective mobs placed everywhere from normal planets, heroics to flashpoints and opses irrelevant? Without the defensives, I would also never assume dwt role anymore - taunting the boss and keeping it on me in veteran dungeon with no tank. I appreciated I could to this and it made the run smoother, but now I do not see how I would survive this without constantly running from one kolto station to another. And that is extremely easy content. I assume soloing vet/master mode FPs or Uprisings (to see if I can do it, because it is much slower than in group) is also getting thrown out of window? I assume that next iteration will bring back stun, interrupt and stun breaker, because otherwise some encounters will have to be completely redesigned (Corruptors on Draxus, Minefield, Operator IX... actually easier to name those that would not need redesign...) so I will play test after the skill set is complete, as otherwise the feedback would be based on incomplete data. I was also one of excited people that first thought that the change was going to be implemented in a way that instead of seeing 3 advanced classes I would see 12 and be able to pick one as they are existing now, so my jugg main could switch to corruption sorcerer and go heal a nim ops instead of my sorc that already has the titles that he does not use, as it would destroy his name (Darth Marr's Companion, no way I can use any other title than Darth). I did not expect to loose signature skills and choices in utilities, that allow for some very niche and very fun optimizations (reflect on tanks in EC, utility to increase damage when slowed on ToS Underlurker, or even taking more tank-related utilities when soloing a vet/mm chapter). Taking all this away will make it more simple, yes... and more homogenous and boring. If there is an ability bloat, maybe taking away 3 for each CS that are not used/needed at all as a first step would be better. That way a new player would not use something that they should not, it would make CS feel more unique (as you can for example remove Retaliation from Vengeance and keep it on Immortal). However if you make too many utility skills (dcds, movement, stun, stun breaker, interrupts, resource gain, group buffs) specific to one CS, switching to different CS will actually be much harder for a new player, as it will bring too many unfamiliar skills. If they get used to CS with Enraged Defense dcd, switching to CS that has only Mad Dash dcd will feel unfamiliar, confusing and players will die because of that - and if they die, they will complain and switch back to previous CS, and will think twice before trying to switch to some other CS again. Also it is in human nature, people just hate when stuff is taken from them without agreeing to it or getting something better in exchange. In RPG computer games, people want to get stronger, have more choices, shinier gear. If our Jedi can throw a lightsaber for years as those Jedis could in the movie, and somehow now he forgets it completely, without any replacement? Who would like that?

For my first Sprint Champion (under 15 min) run back in 5.x era I had full 248 gear with augments (it was before 252/258 was released) and lvl 50 Shae + lvl 50 Lana companions. I did the run on vengeance juggernaut, it is a class I like and play well enough - though I am not and was not on a nim-level with veng jugg at that time, I reached nim-level skill only on my sorc healer, but my jugg was and is fine for hard mode opses. So you do not need to be best of best, but you need to have decent understanding of your class, it's skills and mechanics of the bosses in arena. It also took me many tries, a long time I was stuck at 18-17 minute runs and it was fun to figure out where I can gain a few seconds to improve. Plus I wanted to get all the decorations and so I wanted to get the tokens and rewards, Rancor was also nice. Speed run setup: Most rounds I did with Shae as a dps and without using any healing station. You need to keep an eye on what Shae is targetting and sometimes switch her to focus different enemy - like when you must bring down the K'lor'slug to regenerative state before you push the boss, or keep her focused on boss while you deal with adds in next round - but as a dps she sped up the fights by a LOT. As in I did not need the heal unless I really messed up, and even then I could use one of jugg heals to last a bit longer and Shae would finish the job. You can rest between rounds to get back to full, or switch comp to heal for a few seconds to get a shield/heal buff just before next round starts. Round 1 - Shae's aoe and Jugg"s aoe with dot spread will usually kill the droids before they can do anything, otherwise kill healing droid first, red droid second and boss last. Round 2 - focus Shae on the boss, play with the adds and circle, it is over super fast. Round 3 - focus Shae on the boss, the add can be ignored or I think you could stun it or push it around. Again the boss will die fast, usually before the big circle on the ground explodes Round 4 - I usually started with Shae focused on boss Conraad and me focused on the Chompers, what you need here is to get Conraad to about 40-50% health and then push Chompers really low, so Chompers starts regenerating and at that time both Shae and I killed Conraad and then the rest of adds that comes. Round 5 - Focus Shae on boss Lanos from start to end. When adds come, as a jugg you could use Slam to stun the 2 shielding droids to immediately interrupt the shield. Shae will kill the boss while I played around with adds and mechanics, I think Lanos managed to do only one circle around arena. Round 6 - the longest round in arena and here I switched to healing Lana companion. Lana is not ranged, so she will not kill herself from boss reflects. In this round you can use Unity and then Heroic moment at the start when all 3 bosses are alive and beating on you and companion. Taunt was useful here to keep Brawler focused on me, while killing one of add and Lana keeping the aggro of the other add.. Enraged defense can be used in this round too, but Deflection and Endure pain are better left for next round. Round 7 - the one you struggle with I had some issues here as well. I found the optimal strategy to be having Shae as a ranged dps companion - though it took some deaths to figure out how to survive this strategy - and start with killing Drake, but if possible, make sure you spread dots with Slam on Nocturno. You have to deal with positioning and avoiding damage as much as possible, you might use one or two healing stations - not more - but as other people suggested, you need to kill Drake as soon as possible, ideally before the droid abductors happen. After Drake dies, he drops a belt on the ground that you should pick up (you have time while Nocturno is enraging, she is standing still for a few seconds). It will give you ability to drop a mine that stuns Nocturno, so I usually dropped one just next to me and let Nocturno charge into it, hit her a few times and then run from her. It is good to use Deflection and Endure Pain in case she hits you a few times. Also make sure you relocate with Mad Dash or Intercede on your companion to get away from her when the mine is on cooldown. Shae will keep dpsing Nocturno and kill her, but it is definitely a stressful strategy and you might be better off using a ranged healer - in that case you will have to deal with Abductor droids and kill them fast to free your companion when Drake is low on health. Round 8 - Shae as a dps again, focus her on the rancor, keep yourself safe and alive, kill first handler, you can usually ignore the second as the fight is over. Enraged defense works well here. Round 9 - Shae as a dps yet again, though I used a healer here for a long time before, I had to change to dps companion just to get under 15 min. Shae should be focused on the boss at the beginning, make sure the boss is turned away from her to keep the laser beam far from her. I usually kept it facing left or right wall (from the entrance) and when 3 yellow circles came, I placed them around the back wall so the droid will end turning 180 degrees and face the opposite wall, and this way it would never face towards the companion that is somewhere between entrance and middle of the room. When 2 droids came, I would focus Shae on the B droid to kill it and then back to the boss, while I would lead the A droid somewhere to the side to try exploding on me and use Leap to the boss or Mad dash to avoid the explosion. The 4 droids in middle mechanic is super easy with dps companion, make her kill one while you kill a different one. Round 10 - Shae as a healer - a change! Let her stand in the middle of the room and focus her to attack the boss (she likes to shoot at the fire probes otherwise). You can mostly ignore these and focus on not getting hit much by circles on floor and keep dpsing the walker, use any remaining kolto stations if needed. At 50% the boss comes out from walker, focus it with your companion so it does not shoot the walker that is invulnerable, and try to do as much damage as possible while the boss constantly stuns you and pushes you around for 30s. After that boss gets back to walker and walker will start beaming on you - on jugg I just popped my 5s reflect damage and the walker basically killed itself, but you can survive the full beam with Reflect + later Enraged defense if needed. After that, the big final stage starts and at this time you can use whatever - usually Unity is a good choice to protect your companion, Heroic moment for a slight healing over time, if not used before then Deflection and Endure Pain should be available too. Make sure the companion is standing in the inner circle - put it to passive to run to you if it is not - and try to put the circles away from it so it can keep healing you. Random fact - I managed to do this arena also as a tank with deathless run, so it is not a pure dps race unless you go for the 15 min achievement. But the lower dps you have, the more mechanics you need to do and survive, so it is actually harder as you need to do some mechanics several times, while with high dps and dps companion you can push the bosses and skip most of mechanics - that is how you do the 15 min runs, but it is not how you do the first run usually. If there is a round where you die and feel like you are getting close, but need just a bit more to survive, consider taking a small break so that all your defensive skills including heroic moment / unity are recharged and try using all of it to get to the next round. After you beat the boss once, next time it is a little bit easier, and if you run it 30 times, you will start having an easy time at some of them and that is a time where you will feel comfortable to switch healing companion to dps companion to speed up things.

Before 6.0, I soloed KDY on vet on my vengeance juggernaut a few times. It was not exactly as easy and smooth as for example MM RR is for a sin dps, but it was doable with ranged healing companion and with correct usage of dcds, but it was not fun enough for me to keep at it to get all possible achievements in KDY. Duo killing Mokan in MM Rishi 25 times for an achievement was much better and more fun compared to this, though it had much less room for error. KDY solo felt.. well, too long and high difficulty and not that great rewards, similar feeling like soloing Heroic Fortress - I can do that on my jugg just fine, but there are not many reasons to do that. So I never ran it in 6.0 or later, because there was nothing I wanted to do there. If you do not want to try KDY? I would try Cademimu, I did not try to solo it but it seemed rather nice and easy when I did that. On a jugg in situation when there are kolto stations around, I sometimes switch to full tank with Grit teeth tactical, Shae Vizsla as ranged dps companion and with my self heals, dcds, general tankiness and kolto stations it is sometimes safer than playing a dps with healing companion. But it takes slightly longer (though not by much).

For the reroll objective thing and sharing - now I do not know the implementation in code, but instead of rewriting it completely to be able to "share" with group, how about introducing specific activity tokens? It would work like this - if player has no token in inventory, then reroll is random exactly as it is now. It would be good for people that hate one specific activity, but do not care what will they get instead. If player has a token in inventory, the objective will reroll to a specific activity (or if player has two or more tokens, it would either show a message to prompt player to stash/sell/destroy some of them, or reroll randomly between the two or more he has tokens for). The tokens for basic 4 weekly activities (GSF, WZ, OPS and FPs) should be sold for some cheap price like 100 credits at a Galactic Season vendor - so instead of "sharing" the weekly PO activity, people would go to vendor on fleet, buy a token, reroll an objective to be guaranteed to have for example weekly PO for ops or fp objective same as their friends (or, in case of PvP players, change FPs or OPS to one of PvP objectives). Also it would bring players to the vendor to check the items there more often. You could also add some daily activities that you want to promote to the vendor - for example you can have a token to reroll daily objective to a GSF or Warzone, as those are group objectives and people playing those activities often do not like PvE content. For people that do not like PvP content, you can have a token that would reroll to an objective to do X daily quests on Black Hole, Oricon, CZ-198, Iokath.. However, daily objectives are not as much of an issue, so if it would be too much work (because there are so many different weeks with different dailies) it could be skipped in favor of faster delivery of weekly PO objective changes. For adding a new PO (weekly or daily), you can use the token system for example to create a weekly / daily objective for a very specific activity that should not be part of a "random roll" or initial assignment during weekly/daily objective reset. For example, you could add a token for Space Combat (on rails) weekly to finish 4 Operations (which is a name for mission that tells you to complete 1-2 specific Space Combat missions). Or a Weekly PO to finish a GSI weekly mission (which would take probably a lot more than an hour, but it is a solo activity - I think any solo activity weekly PO should be a bit longer than group ones). You could have a weekly to dig up 2 "big" treasures with seeker droid (now sure how they are called, but when you dig that treasure, the dig area disappears for some time and an achievement to dig 100 of these treasures increases). For a specific activity group content, perhaps there can be a weekly objective to finish the mission to kill 3 world bosses (the WBs die fast, but the effort to make a group and travel to different planets/instances will take a lot of time). Maybe a token Weekly PO to finish Weekly Story: Uprisings mission - now this would be also soloable for some players, but it is definitely faster with 2 players and 2 companions, fitting the "play same PO content with your friend". Similar to the above, a token for Weekly: Star Fortess mission, which allows either solo story mode fast and easy mission (but you need to run it 6 times), or longer and harder heroic version which is best to be done with a friend, but you only need to do it 3 times. Access to these weekly tokens can optionally be gated by completing an achievement or having enough reputation (for example having certain amount of reputation with GSI to be able to buy their token, or having an Imperial/Republic Aviator achievement that you finished all space missions for given side to buy the Space Combat weekly mission token) What I would not like to see is a weekly like "Do 10 heroic missions" or "Kill 250 npcs" that would be too easy and too obvious choice that would not make players do anything new that they are already not doing. I know they would be popular. I would probably use them myself. But what I like about GS is that pushed me into one last activity I avoided for years - the dreaded GSF. I like to get achievements and would do all weird and hidden stuff to get them (sitting over 54k points now), but GSF I avoided all the time, and while I am still very bad at it, it is not really worse than a warzone match. I do not care how the match ends and will try my best to help, it is over soon enough so time spent is similar to a rampage and for whatever reason I find less frustrating getting shot down 10 times that competing for bugs with several players at the same area. What I like is that GS pushed me to an activity that I do not usually do, so I am now progressing some achievements I did not have (similar to warzones that I also do not play unless I have to for some specific achievement/quest). So I would love any new weekly / daily PO objectives to keep that pattern and point players to activities that are not "mainstream", but also I think it is important that these specific side activities are not forced on players - so an opt-in token would be best.

Very true, most of the rewards are straight delete (you cannot even sell them, at least the stims in swtor could be sold). The big reward of month is now usually a pet (how many of these do you really need?) or a tattoo / accessory (usually hidden by armor, so.. thanks?) or 100k gold - which is not really much, I make more each day, but new players seem to like it, so the similar 1M credits in swtor would be probably ok too - you can make much more every day just running the easy heroics anyway... There used to be more valuable rewards when the system started in ESO, like a mount, free dlc (though truthfully it was one that no one really liked so much, so sales of this dlc were probably non existent) or free crates (that I can imagine in swtor too, maybe a grand chance cube once per month for subscribers?), but over time the monthly rewards decreased, so that even now, on December calendar rewards - you know, Christmas time - we will just get another pet to add to the dozens that we already have. So the comparison of the two games for a veteran player is very similar - most rewards are trash because you simply outgrew them, but they are nice boost for new players to catch up a bit faster. Few of the rewards are usable by vets in both games - but I look forward to companion gifts, cartel market certificates, valor boost, dyes... and I expect that the "nicer" rewards will sometimes appear in the subscriber rewards, you know, similar to what we had until now - be subbed on specific date and get a mount / pet / companion / armor pack as reward. Now they can put it there and everyone in game will see it, rather than only those that visit forums.

The Roaming/Wandering mend behaves differently after you cast Resurgence. If you cast Resurgence first, then Roaming mend second, the Roaming mend will instantly do all 3 jumps and heal 4 targets. If you cast Roaming mend without Resurgence first, it will stay on target until that person gets hit, then move to the next person and wait for a hit... basically you never want to cast Roaming Mend without Resurgence first, unless you know whole group is taking constant damage every second. It seems to me that you did not check your Resurgence usage, or did not mention it here at all.

The world boss Primeval Destroyer on Belsavis, needed to get an ingredient for feast event, does not respawn now like it used to or how other world bosses needed for ingredient are respawning now (with 5 min respawn time). Currently neither PvE nor PvP instance has boss spawned for more than 20 minutes, with several groups waiting there. Note that yesterday the respawn worked fine at least in PvP instance, now it does not. From other player's reports, the boss stopped respawning about an hour or two ago since this post, so it seems reverted to 4 hours timer?

CM-1337 ingredients are: 15 OEM-37 25 RPM-13 5 Legendary Embers CM-1337 ingredients should be: 15 OEM-37 5 Legendary Embers or 25 RPM-13 5 Legendary Embers In other words, there should be 2 recipes, one that will make raiders happy, other that will make pvpers happy. Farming nim bosses require certain level of skill and full group of 8/16 people sharing the loot, so people that are not able to do this (and want to get augments or mats to sell them) will go pvp route as before. Raiders will not be forced to pvp unless they choose to. As someone calculated above, it will take several months to outfit the team *if* the team is just farming the bosses and not actually, you know, progressing a boss, as that would mean they do not get any drops at all... I get that you (and other MMOs) want people to participate in all content, and these augments are meant for top tier competitive players, but please finally acknowledge that PvE and PvP are two different beasts and at the highest level they differ so much that they should be kept separate. On low tier (aka conquest with rewards for story mode operations and unranked pvp) it is fine to push people to try everything to find what they like in game and what not, but once they find it and get good in their chosen area, trying to push them into the other direction will cause backlash and unhappiness. Let PvEers kill bosses, PvPers kill other players and those few that can and like to do both do whatever they feel like on that day.

Same issues with login are also in other games and services (Discord, Google etc.) https://downdetector.com/ Sadly there is nothing that swtor team can do about it

I have 10 of Marr's statues in my DK stronghold dedicated to Darth Marr / Imperial / Sith theme. Plus a few extras for other strongholds. For reasons Anyway, a tip that also applies to other statues - play around with lightning above or around the statue if you place it inside building. The statue looks much better when placed in room with (red) Imperial Ceiling Light above it and Senator's Rugs (red carpets) or the round Imperial rug decoration (I cannot remember the name now). Alternatively a bright white/yellow light, or a lamp (for example the ones that dropped in Star Fortress FPs, Zakuulan standing lamp or something like that - they look nice and are in good enough height to illuminate the statue nicely). If the statue is placed outside, you will get an effect on it - like it will be darker and wet when it is in the rain outside on DK balcony, or it will get leaves/moss on Yavin 4 outside. Some effects look better on some statues. So you might want to try placing it in different strongholds and different places to see if you get some effect that you really like, and if you decide to place it inside room, the surrounding decorations might have an effect on the outcome too, so you can surround the statue with other decorations for example to alter the looks of it.

I liked the event, races are not too hard to complete the quests, the achievements are much harder as they should be to give sense of accomplishment. It gave enough points to cap my character for conquest and it will be a good way for me to cap either healers or characters on classes I do not enjoy so much playing as dpses/tanks, as it does not favour any role or class, so I can race on them and then switch to classes I like to play for heroics. If the small planet yield is added (maybe Ziost? it is small and there is a quest with speeder racing with those green jumping pads... not exactly swoop racing, but probably as close as it can get) it will be a very good week for making conquest. I am glad it is not as fast and hard as kotor racing tbh, I found it always an excercise in frustration... current speed is enough for me to still miss many objectives. The kotor-style conversations were a bit sad, I like to hear my character, but it is probably because of no voice recording possibility during covid lockdown.

Lucky you. I got 3 parts from Kai gambling over 2 months, as I started doing that when the change was on PTS and I decided I must have that set Although I was lucky enough to finish the set with only 1 duplicate part, so there is that...

Last part was the hardest for me too, took also about a month to get it. Anecdotal evidence: - not one part I have came from Dxun HM. I saw people posting screenshot that it dropped here, but even running Dxun HM it felt like overall set drop rate from bosses was lower than running old HM opses. Of course our group could be very unlucky (as in we had 0 set drops to roll on in one of our Dxun HM runs, nothing from Red to Apex) - 2 parts came from old nims and 1 from old hm ops. In nims you are almost guaranteed to have some set item or tactical drop from every boss, so probably that is "fastest" way to get a drop just because you will get more drops. - we tried a "gearing" run 2 or 3 times with 7 sorc/1pt tank composition speeding EV and KP HM and then some easy fast first bosses like Nefra, Dashroode, Titan 6 - alas no EO piece. But we got it to drop when doing HM ToS Revan lock run with much more varied class composition, go figure... - Kai was not selling directly any part when I was making the set, so I had to gamble on him the random set item. I eventually got the 3 parts I needed from him. It is expensive (I stopped counting, but it was way more than 100M credits) and you need a good source of tech fragments - best for me was running TC and capping conquest in large guild. That is now easy with conquest changes, I did it when the conquest changes were not present yet and capped about 10 characters each week. So when Kai appeared I was already sitting at 10k, and afterward ran TC GF with every character to get more tech fragments during the weekend... boring, mind numbing, and if I hadn't tested the set on PTS I would probably give up. Also you will get EO set pieces from gambling on Kai in healing spec, no need to switch to dps spec - I tried it and it had no effect. - I got a duplicate EO piece in a renown box you get when you level up renown rating. I figure chance is like... one to million? Definitely not a reliable way to get the set, but it can happen, so do not just deconstruct the stuff from the box. All I can say, good luck and keep at it, it will drop eventually.