I have the right to air my grievances and let these guys know why I'm a unhappy customer. Because these opinions and facts being aired happens to bother the likes of you makes no difference to me.

You completely missed the point of my deliberately exaggerated example that was intended to show you the basic reason why even "tanky tanks" still need some reasonable level of DPS to remain viable, which seems to be a concept that still escapes you. News flash, I don't play Juggs, I only play VG/PT tanks. How convenient that you selected the one you know is basically escaping the brunt of the nerf bat as your shining example if why this nerf is supposedly negligible. There is nothing negligible about this. Musco himself admitted to Vulkk that this nerf will have a significantly negative impact on players doing solo content in tank gear. His attitude is basically tough *****, and his response to why they can't do more sensible changes to actually fix the broken tanking mechanics in PVP that have been suggested by more knowledgeable players is because they claim to lack the resources and the knowhow, and that would be "expansion level" work that they just can't handle right now. Sounds like a cop-out to me, so they can continue being as lazy as possible. Either that, or they are just actually too stupid to do their jobs right and fix this game without just breaking it more and more. Do you even realize how painfully obvious it is that you not only do not play any tanks in this game, you have zero interest in ever attempting to play one? Hence the reason you are so keen on having them nerfed into oblivion. You obviously see tanks as nothing but an obstacle to you, not something to appreciate having around. Anyway, as much as I was looking forward to Nathema when it was first announced, thanks to this news I am only dreading it now. As a result, I have renewed my subscription to Everquest2 and I will go back to playing my 13-year-old Berserker tank that they have somehow manged to keep fun to play after all these years, at least until I can find another MMO that is worth investing my time and money into. I will miss my guild, and they will be losing a valued officer and one of the few dedicated tank players they had logging in on a regular basis, but it's time to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. These devs have managed to entirely destroy two of the most important aspects of this game to me in back-to-back patches: Conquests and Tanking. Time to stop feeding the trolls. I am out.

Being what you call a "tanky tank" in PVP is already entirely useless, which is the main reason I avoid PVP in this game. It's not because I dislike the concept of PVP. It's because as a tanky tank, you already can't kill anybody, even with our supposedly "overpowered" DPS according to the devs, but you sure as hell can get killed left and right. There is no point to it. There is no incentive. You are just dead weight and a sitting duck that's only there to give more points to the opposite team. People rolled skanks to have a chance at making their tank toons become worth something in PVP, and I have seen them increasingly being used in PVE Flashpoints as well. So the incentive to even bother playing a real tank in this game anywhere outside of maybe Master Mode Ops is already abysmal as it is. And I personally have zero interest in putting DPS mods on my tank, or switching to a DPS class for any purpose in this game. I only like playing "tanky tanks" in MMOs, and that's all I play and ever have played in this game. These proposed changes will either force me to put DPS gear on my tank to keep doing solo and group PVE content within reason, or I will just have to quit the game. And I can tell you that I will quit the game before I put DPS mods on my tank. It's that simple. So if these changes go through, for what it's worth, I am planning on quitting SWTOR. I will just have to find another MMO that doesn't treat its tanks like dirt. By your faulty logic, tanks should be perfectly happy to have their DPS nerfed all the way down to zero, because in your warped mind they are not meant to be able to kill anything under any circumstance, not even in solo content OR in duels with other players outside of the PVP arena. News flash, this is not how tanks work in any other MMO I have ever heard of. Because there is nothing about that concept that is remotely fun or even realistic. Just like there is nothing fun or realistic about having a DPS class with only 1 health point and 0 mitigation that will always get one-shotted if they ever take any damage, because they too would be entirely unable to complete any solo content, and would be equally useless in any kind of groups.

Skanks will not only still exist, but there will be even more of them after this change, because people who used to play pure tanks with the correct gear they were meant to wear are now going to feel like they have no choice but to switch to DPS gear to make up for the huge DPS nerfs they are proposing. This idea of theirs is completely assbackwards, and it makes me lose all trust in the SWTOR devs critical thinking skills. And the fact that this bright idea comes right after they completely ruin CQ with no word on how, if, or when they ever plan to do anything to fix that mistake (which they have admitted, albeit in a roundabout and joking sort of way, was a mistake) makes me feel like this game is doomed as they systematically destroy a little more of it with each and every subsequent patch. I have spent a lot of money on this game, well over $1000 worth of CC alone since I started playing last year, not even counting my sub fees I have also been paying since my first week in the game, because I didn't mind helping support the continued development of a game I have loved playing. But I am not going to keep throwing money at people who don't care about what they are doing, and treat their jobs like it's a joke. Just the other day I was thinking about buying some CC to unlock some legacy perks on my new biochem toon, which I would normally do in a heartbeat because I can afford it, and I like having everything like the cargo holds and repair droid fully unlocked, especially on my crafters. But then I thought better of it when I remembered this thread, and how bad CQ is messed up, and how much it depresses me, and I decided against it. I won't keep rewarding bad behavior.

It was only broken in so far as the actual bugs that were preventing people from getting the points they were supposed to get for completing objectives and the rewards for gaining the required points in the end that sometimes would just not pop up for some people. Nothing else about it was actually broken. So like I said, all they needed to do was fix the bugs, they did not need to re-design the entire CQ system or screw up the recipe for War Supplies to make it 10 times harder than it used to be to craft one. And the objectives still do not give you your points half the time you complete them, so they couldn't even fix the main problem the CQ system had in the first place for all their efforts in changing the whole system. Everything about their proposed changes to tanks' DPS makes zero sense and is 100% contradictory to what their goals should be regarding fixing tanks. They admit the main problem that has prompted this change is skanking in PVP being overpowered, and that their "fix" will hurt PVE tanks in the process, but they don't care about that. And threat does nothing for me in either PVP or soloing, so that does nothing to make up for the loss of damage that will effect me in both of those areas, and it will hurt me and my groupmates in PVE on boss fights with enrage timers. The main problem with thier logic is they fail to grasp the simple reason why people started making skanks in the first place - because pure tanks suck too much at DPS already, and their actual tanking abilities don't work well enough to make up for it, so they are basically dead weight, especially in PVP. Hence the main reason there are barely any tanks in the game at all right now. Ever notice how hard it can be to find one when you actually need one, especially if you have to go pugging for one? Well that situation about to get 10 times worse after 5.9, mark my words. Since the proposed changes will hurt pure tanks even more than skank tanks, even less players will want to play pure tanks anymore, and more players that did still play them will want to switch to skanking now to make up for the major hit they are about to get to their already bad DPS. So basically the end result of this will be that there will be even less tanks of any kind around in the game at all, which there is already a drastically short supply of as it is, and the majority of those who bother to stick around are going to become skanks, which will drive healers nuts and make them want to quit playing healer classes on top of it. Because healers do not enjoy having to work their butts off healing squishy DPS all the time because of a lack of tanks in the game, or lack of tanks that actually wear the gear they are supposed to. So good luck queuing for any master mode PVE stuff that requires balanced groups now, because the game is about to become even more flooded with DPS classes who refuse to play anything else, which is already a bad enough problem as it is. The worst part about this for me is that I will probably be forced to switch my tanks to skanks just to solo on them after 5.9, or just give up tanking altogether and switch to pure DPS specs on my VG, PT, and Assassin. Or maybe just quit the game. I can absolutely prove that their logic on this topic is flawed, because I have a video of myself playing through the entire Eternal Championship solo without dying, as a pure tank specced VG, with my comp set to heals because I could not survive without it, which is laughable. The reason I bring this up is because people generally laugh at the Eternal Championship because of how easy it is...on a DPS class. On a pure-specced tank I can assure you that it is a total nightmare. The Eternal Championship is basically one long DPS check, as the longer you survive without killing the boss, the more chances you have to screw up and fail to get out of a circle or something in time that will instantly kill you. When you can burn down all the mobs in mere seconds, then there is no problem, it is like a cakewalk. Tanks cannot do that with the DPS they have right now, which is about to be cut in half if they go through with the proposed changes for 5.9. My video is nearly an hour long of me sweating my brains out the entire time trying to stay alive through the fights on a pure tank, and I only just barely make it through without dying, and this was after having to retry the entire Championship about 20 times until I got lucky enough to survive through every round just to get the Deathless title. This wouldn't be the first time they have admitted to their lack of knowledge and skill involved in programming the game they are in charge of, and laugh it off like it's just a joke, instead of acting like adults and adress the serious problem it is. That attitude is going to destroy this game. They clearly do not take their jobs seriously enough.

The problem as I understand it is that skank tanks in PVP are overpowered due to the amount of DPS they have coupled with the amount of survivability they retain in their tank spec. It is not because skank tanks are out-DPSing true DPS classes, it's because they can do too much DPS for the amount of survivability they have over the DPS classes. This is why people make skank tanks as opposed to true DPS classes in the first place - for the survivability they have over true DPS classes. Otherwise they would just make true DPS classes, because skank tanks still do less DPS than true DPS classes. Therefore the appropriate solution in my opinion is to nerf the amount of survivability that skank tanks possess, as a penalty for wearing the wrong gear that is not meant for their class. Either that, or simply make it so that DPS mods are not wearable by tank-specced players at all. I would be happy with either of those options. The devs however are going about it the opposite way, by nerfing the already low DPS that tanks in general have compared to DPS classes, which was the reason why players started making skank tanks in the first place - because they felt like pure tanks were useless in PVP, due to their low DPS. The proposed changes will only encourage more tanks to switch to wearing DPS gear all the time, including in PVE, which I think is the exact opposite of what should be intended.

I don't understand the logic of lets nerf all tank's dps to get rid of skank tanks in PVP. Seems counterproductive and will only serve to further encourage tank specced players to wear DPS gear, or even worse, make tank specced players that normally wear the correct tank gear feel like they are required to wear DPS gear to be effective in all aspects of the game. I think it would make more sense if there was a defense/shield/absorb penalty applied to tank specced players that wear DPS gear, in order to discourage them from wearing the wrong gear in the first place.

Seriously, Conquest has been one of my favorite things to do in this game since I started playing over a year ago, even though many aspects of it were obviously broken. But it was still fun enough and easy enough for me to make my CQ goal every week that I maintained a lot of interest in it, and used it as a motivating tool to get my guildmates together to do content with me. Note the past tense word "was". And when I heard about the 5.8 patch coming out and having a bunch of fixes in it for CQ, I got very excited and felt gratified that its longstanding problems were finally being looked into, for the purpose of making actual improvements to the system, most importantly to fix the known bugs that prevented people from getting the rewards they had worked for. Little did I know that 5.8 would break the CQ system so badly that it would actually wind up being so much worse than it already was, that now I can't even complete my CQ goals half the time any longer, and it's still buggy as hell. For example, I just completed the Mandalorian Raiders Flashpoint on Veteran difficulty with a friend, and it did not give me credit for it. It still says the objective is incomplete, even though I completely finished the FP and made sure I did the final turn in for it on the fleet to make sure it was actually completed. My friend also did not get credit for it either, so it wasn't just me. And whose bright idea was it to change the recipe for the War Supplies so that it takes all the mats from every tier now just to craft one, instead of only two tiers worth of mats like it was before? I do not have the time to harvest mats from almost every single tier in the entire game just to craft one War Supply. The travel time between planets alone makes that goal no longer worth it to me to attempt. So not only is the CQ system still bugged and unreliable about updating CQ objectives for players that have done the things the objective tells them to do, the points for the objectives have gone down the toilet, so that even someone like me who has the full 150% bonus from strongholds has to struggle very hard to even get the minimum points requirement to get a basic reward. And it seems like this week in particular I am just screwed because what few objectives there are for me I am capable of completing aren't even working as intended. What I don't understand is why the devs thought that the CQ system needed to be entirely overhauled and changed so drastically instead of just fixing the main problems that were there, mainly the actual bugs that people were complaining the most about. Then see how that goes and then maybe adjust some more things later on based on player feedback, instead of trashing the whole system so I can't even make myself care about it at all anymore. Oh I know why, because that would have made too much sense. All I know now is that 5.9 better be damn good, or I might have to consider quitting SWTOR for real, because it's just getting too frustrating. The level and quality of service we are getting at this point is becoming less and less worth the subscription fee, because the devs don't want to think things through before getting wild burrs up their asses and trying to completely overhaul major aspects of the game that really only need a few minor bugfixes. In fact the only thing I am even looking forward to at this point is finally finishing the traitor story on Nathema, and maybe trying to get the new augments which better be worth it and not too ridiculously hard to get for whatever actual difference they make. Related is the fact that I heard they are trying to nerf skank-tanks in PVP with 5.9, which I don't have a problem with except for the fact that they intend to nerf tanks DPS in general as a solution, which they admit will hurt PVE and solo tanks in the process. And their attitude about that is basically "oh well". This bothers me a lot because my main character is a tank. And I mean a real tank that wears actual tank gear all the time, not a skank-tank that uses a tank spec but wears DPS gear. I don't play PVP very much, but every time I do I wear actual tank gear, mainly because I have no interest in carrying around extra sets of gear with me everywhere I go and having to swap out all my items to do one thing or another. Which brings up another subject, that they said they are thinking about returning PVP-specific gear to the game. Well, that's perfectly fine with me, since it will give me another excuse, and probably the best excuse ever to avoid PVP, because I can just tell my friends who try to suck me into it, sorry I don't have the gear for it, nor the time required to farm for it. Notice I am not a big fan of PVP anyway, but I don't know that they are thinking things through again if their actual goal is to make more people more interested in PVP instead of just driving more people away from it altogether. As it is, tanks are few and far between in this game overall due to them being underpowered compared to DPS classes in both group and solo content. Hence the reason why people resorted to making skank-tanks in the first place! Of course they don't seem to realize that, so their solution to the skank-tank problem that only affects PVP is lets make all tanks even less fun to play in the entire game, so that literally no one wants to play one anymore under any circumstance. Yes, of course, that will get rid of skank-tanks for sure, but what a stupid idea. I honestly would rather let people keep making skank-tanks and just continue being a little underpowered compared to them in PVP on my pure tank than resorting to that. I have a better idea, how about lets just "keep it simple stupid" and make the DPS gear that skank-tanks are using to become supposedly overpowered simply unwearable by anyone in a tank spec, so that all tanks are forced to wear tank-only gear whenever they are in a tank spec like they are supposed to? That seems like it would be the simplest and easiest solution to me that would have the least amount of unintended side effects. Seriously, why not just make the DPS mods unequippable to any tank-specced players, or give them a -100 defense penalty and/or suspend all their shield/absorb abilities for wearing it? Actually all they would have to do is just add a negative stat to all the DPS mods that are still wearable by tank-specced classes that immediately deducts 5000 points worth of shield and absorb as soon as they are equipped. That would easily take care of the problem right? Of course, but no, the won't do something that easy, because once again that would just make too much sense, which seems like something Bioware is allergic to these days, and they would rather go through the trouble of nerfing every single tank class's damage abilities in all aspects of the game, which will probably spill over to effect all the legitimately DPS-specced tank classes as well, just to fix one specific problem in one specific area. Do they actually not realize they are just making their own jobs even harder on themselves, due to the level of backlash this stuff is going to cause and the amount of hotfixes they are ultimately going to have to write to make up for it before they lose even more players they can't afford to lose if they want to keep their paychecks coming in? I don't know, but as much as I love this game, it's starting to get too frustrating for me to keep swallowing all these recent decisions that are either too hasty or too over-thought that are breaking the game down worse with every patch instead of doing anything to make it better, and most importantly MORE FUN instead of just becoming an even bigger pain in the butt to slog through, on top of all the other longstanding bugs they haven't even scratched the surface on trying to fix yet.

Yes and those people who have continued to play the game in those regions have been relying on the servers that were still located on the west coast of the USA to get at least a halfway decent ping-rate. Now they won't have that any longer, and many of them will be forced to quit due to the game being made inaccessible to them. No level of "optimization" is ever going to fix the problem of having your signal routed through thousands of miles worth of extra lines, so that you will double or even triple the number of hops, skips, and jumps you have to make to get from point A to point B and back again to maintain a connection. Yeah, and Europe is a continent that is going to be keeping 3 different servers on it, yet you were griping about Americans wanting 2. Don't lie, you were making derogatory generalizations about Americans supposedly being selfish and spoiled compared to Europeans. Of course you have now deleted your post, so it's hard to prove that, but I wonder why you did that?

It upsets me also. First they try try to give us the *******st possible server name just because one certain individual found it oh so hilarious. They clearly think everyone on the west coast is a joke. Now there won't even be a west coast server at all. And to make it worse they lie to us and spring this little surprise after they've already pushed it through, and then lie some more about how having a higher ping rates is not going to impact your performance, because they claim to have some magical way of making thousands of miles of space not matter. Who do they think they are kidding?

What about the people in Hawaii and Australia, and the other Pacific islanders who were already struggling with bad pings as it was having to use a sever on the west coast of the US, that will now have to deal with upwards to an extra 3000 miles worth of signal routing to keep playing with their established friends and guildmates who are all getting sent to an east coast server by default? You act like Americans are so selfish, and maybe a lot of them are, but honestly I think plenty of you Europeans are just as bad. Plus you seem to so easily forget how much physically larger in landmass the US is compared to your own tiny countries.

No, that is just them trying to blow smoke up our butts. I don't care how good the new server is hardware wise, or even if you had your own identical megaserver that you were using as your home PC for gaming, there is absolutely nothing that can physically be done on on their end to get rid of latency that is caused by extra expanses of geographical space between you and the server you are connecting to.

Then you need to start paying more attention before you go running your mouth, because they did say over and over and over that there would be 2 north american servers, one for EAST coast and one for WEST coast. There is no WEST coast server if both of the north american servers are going to be physically located on the EAST coast. Get it? This is a completely idiotic statement considering that I was never a part of the pro-merger crowd, but since I am on the west coast I have to suffer for no good reason other than this company is greedy and wants to cut corners at the expense of our gameplay quality.

I think this was a terrible move on their part (the SWTOR devs). Making decisions like this ruins my confidence in their technical skills. How could they have not foreseen that many players have already been struggling with slow connections due to the lack of a server in their immediate area, or even remotely nearby, and their signal has had to travel hundreds or even thousands of miles as it was? And they don't think it's a big deal to add another 3000 miles on top of that? This is sheer stupidity, and I am very saddened and frustrated by this choice. Plus the way they kept the info from us until after they had already made the change was really low, on top of the fact that through all the hype for this server merger business, they said we would end up with both an east and west coast server. Well, that was a scam, because it's not a west coast server now if it's not actually on the west coast. I really don't understand what is going through the minds. First they try to give us a complete joke name for our server, and now we are basically not getting an actual server. It will just be 2 east coast servers that the entire US, plus everyone outside the US that is not close enough to Europe is supposed to share. What a crock.

I agree, I don't know WTH they are thinking. There is nothing they can physically do to make ping times better for west coasters and other pacific players who were relying on their being actual servers located on our side of the planet to have decent connections to the game. I can promise you what is going to happen is more players from our side of the world are going to be getting randomly disconnected more often than usual, and a lot of people are going to quit over it. And that means I'm going to lose friends in the game. I'm really starting to lose hope for the future of this game now if this is the kind of people we have running it. Also the shadiness of this decision is another thorn in my side. Lovely how they kept this a secret until after the fact, and now they are just pissing down our backs and telling us it's raining with this "it will have no significant impact on your gameplay" because "our testing indicates the impact is negligible" and "we will resolve all performances issues at a later date" BS. Who do they think they are fooling?