That's mb, I forgot that Thundering Blast was an autocrit. However since the title and thread simply refer to "Force Potency" and "Surge" damage and made no mention of auto-crit, I didn't put 2 and 2 together. It might be the way TB is coded since all other Auto-Crits are buff dependent (i.e. on your character's side) whereas TB is dependent on your opponent (i.e. it's not a crit until it hits an opponent).

There's nothing to bump... Critical RATING increases your multiplier damage. Force Potency only increases Critical Chance and doesn't affect your rating. The only time it may affect your multiplier is if your Critical Chance is >40% and if the game takes Potency as now being an "auto-crit", however the notes are worded ambiguously and I haven't gotten round to testing it yet.

Actually, the more amusing thing is that PvPers are the ones who were whining from the start about the lack of individualised rewards that were specific to PvP and Bioware granted their wishes when Ranked PvP rewards dropped and they had the first Rancor in the game. The issue at hand here is that the "apex" of PvP rewards are given in the form of unique looking Legacy Gear, previously this wasn't the case... the original Victorious Set was simply a BoP set given to those who qualified. Legacy Gear for PvP and PvE is pretty much considered the de-facto gear to have, especially with the advent of the Costume system. However whilst the Victorious Armor and Weapons have their counterparts in the Dread Master gear set, the Furious and upcoming Predacious set do not since Bioware decided not to release NiM modes of either new Operations (and probably won't). At the end of the day, the fact that PvPers can get rewards which have such large utility as well as "prestige" (unless Bioware change how future rewards are handled, nobody will be able to obtain Victorious, Furious and Predacious gear sets in the future), whilst the only "exclusive" PvE content are the "Conqueror" and "Deposer" titles from the DF/DP Nightmare Buff... any competent raider and their dog can now stroll through NiM TFB/SnV/DF/DP for their Helix Hyperpod/Titan-6 Containment Unit/Wings of the Architect/Dread Enhanced Rancor, all of which are still obtainable and much more easily than they were previously, diminishing any value that they have as rewards.

Just have Cannon Barrage come back during the transition .

I don't think they've stated the latter, but iirc they did state that the increased difficulty was intended to try and prolong the lifespan of relevant content when the issue was brought up on the PTS.

Except you don't *need* to kill Revan... you just want to. But apparently not enough to put the time in though.

Unfortunately it's one of the first responses thrown out because... i don't know... style points or something. I'd love for you to explain how it exactly qualifies as an elitist jerk mentatlity... I'm not here judging players as being "bads" nor discouraging them from trying content because they "don't belong". I don't really give a damn who plays the content, but that's the difficulty it's set at and if you want to down it then it'll highlight where and how you need to improve, be it class' rotation, awareness or simply just attitude. Cool story... so just because *you* and others don't want to put the time in, somehow that justifies Bioware catering to your whim? I'm here in exactly the same position, putting in the hours to try and get Revan down and rather than ************, whining and saying that it's too difficult, I relish the challenge because I know that our group is capable of rising up to it. If this one boss isn't worth your time in order to learn the fight, then don't do that boss... if you're willing to pass on EV, KP, EC, TFB, SnV, DF or DP every week, then 1 boss out of 10 isn't really going to make much of a difference. Just go down Revanite Commanders, /ExitArea and go kill "[Weekly] The Enemy Within" (so you at least feel like you've completed the Operation) and leave the people that are willing to put in the time to go about their thing.

Fact is that times change and if you could clear all HM content before, with a chunk of good work, then surprise surprise, you can clear HM content now, with a chunk of good work. Maybe it's more work than you're used to, but if you or your team lose faith in your/their ability to down said content, then that's *your* fault, not the content's. And what happens with the players that find Story Mode too hard and struggle through? For those that don't have the DPS to down Underlurker or Torque? Should we further nerf those encounters to appeal to more people? People always want something to be able to best a challenge and thus "prove" that they're good players, but more and more people are unwilling to put in more effort than they expect in order to achieve results. There are *always* going to be Teams that are stuck in between Tiers and at the end of the day, those Teams need decide what sort of Team they want to be, one that simply gives up because they're not good enough or one that keeps persevering to finally get the kill. Or they'll just join new guilds that *can* clear the content and thus the status of "SM/HM/NiM" Tier guilds will just re-stabilise. In reality what you're really saying there is "I don't think a player of your skill level can perform up to the standard i *think* we need in order to kill this boss within a reasonable timeframe". Which when you break it down is either one of two considerations: a) That you know that even if his class were played perfectly, that you would still wipe. Which as mentioned in the thread, is not actually about "viability" of a class so much as "optimal"; of which there are no non-viable classes, simply sub-optimal ones. b) That you believe he *does* have the ability to defeat said encounter, but the time he'd take to optimise his play would hamper your group's "progression" and so you're willing to trade out for a different class where he wouldn't have to play as close to optimal. At the end of the day, it all comes down to how much of a dick you're willing to be for the sake of "progression". Except here we're talking about a Team/Mindset that wishes to clear the content as quickly as possible regardless of any other factors. At which point you're always going to get "cheese" comps, be it the double Hybrid Sin comp. vs. NiM Brontes to stacking Snipers for 16m progression. People are always going to try and "maximise" their chances, but that's not the fault of the content difficulty, more the attitude towards clearing it. It's only a problem if we regard it as one. Everyone's so fixated on the whole Revan BH-cheese that they're either unwilling to put enough time into progressing with a standard comp. or like you said, would just prefer to funnel gear and experience from the cheese comp into their standard group, minimising the time needed to kill it with that group. That's not so much "balancing" as it is simply maximising efficiency of raiding time. Also, we're basically talking about 1 encounter out of 10... people are progressing through at various rates of the other 9/10, but because 1 encounter is being cleared by cheese comps, it's a sign that the entire tier of content needs to be nerfed?

I agree, but with regards to previous HM's being easier, clinging onto a previous tier's progression rate as an attempt to judge your "current" ability is really just setting yourself up for failure and disappointment. I mean noone really cares if you got that World First Soa kill at launch if you're not able to clear SM Rav now... at the end of the day, people should be judging guilds not by how well they used to do pre-3.0, but how well they're doing post-3.0 and if you're not doing as well as you'd like? Then make an effort to work on that, instead of trying to ask for the content to be easier (because at the end of the day, there's always storymode if you want easier). And as for tuning content down because there's the potential for NiM to make it even harder... I think that people vastly overrate the difficulty of content when they're wiping on it. The amount of times I've witnessed first-hand multiple wipes on a boss week after week and then the week after it finally dies? Bam! One Shot! Did the boss' difficulty suddenly drop in between? Usually not... but the confidence gained, even if it is subconsciously, that people *are* doing the right thing can make all the difference.

I think the notion of labelling Guilds/Teams as "SM-tier / HM-tier / NiM-tier" is a problem within itself... if you can't clear the HM level of current content, then maybe you're no longer of that tier? That's not a jab at the Guilds or the Teams in question, but originally it was the content itself that determined whether or not Guilds were "NiM-capable" or w.e. but suddenly when the "majority" of guilds can't clear said content (which has always been the case tbh), it's now the content that needs to be adjusted to fit into this plan. I get that everybody hates wiping on content, but simply labelling it as "too difficult" is taking the easy way out. The attitude that content needs to be nerfed instead of people learning their class to its full potential, taking more responsibility in boss fights or even optimising strategy for their group is what's lacking. At the end of the day, what kills raid groups isn't content that's too hard, but the lack of trust between raid members to count on them executing mechanics properly... everyone thinks that they should be able to do the content but the others are holding them back, so rather than simply deal with those issues they'd prefer to blame the difficulty because at least that way they don't have to act like a ****** person to someone else.

I *do* get what your saying and i'm not saying that's it's not an issue. However if at the end of the day if you're failing a DPS check/enrage due to "lack of execute fluff", 99% of the time you can probably put it down to other imbalances (AoE/Single Target, Sustained/Burst, Melee/Ranged) or simply underperforming in general.

If the game's not going to process and make a mob immune quickly enough then you're going to have far more issues with getting the transitions to work. How is it worse to have slightly reduced DPS on a boss compared to potentially bugging out a fight within 2-3 gear tiers? Like I said, it's not that the Execute phase is completely missing, just that it's not as long. Certain fights are always going to favour one set of classes over another... AoE over single target, burst over sustained... and there is no fight out there where it's "meaningless" to take an Execute class because they're "not useful". At the end of the day here we're talking potentially Cora (and only Ruugar who leaves at 9%) and M&B... that's 2/10 bosses on the current content tier and in terms of past operations it's the TFB and... Annihilation Droid? Is this really *that* big a deal?

The point is that it's not like the Execute phase doesn't exist... it's there, it's just not as long / not as much of a proportion of the fight that the OP would like. And yes, in theory making the Boss go immune at 1HP/1% works well on paper, but there are numerous times where you can DPS through such mechanics. Like I said, it's better to accept that DPS will be lowered through such means than having people ***** about having to *not* kill a Boss just so the fight can progress.

Sounds like the perfect way to start a conversation, ignore any logical input that counteracts your own views and only listen to people that agree with you? If i'm (hopefully) not employed by Bioware then you're (hopefully) not a Politician? The only "solution" you have to your issues is to take 80% of their HP (since they run away ~20%) and then effectively make that their "100%" HP. Which means they end up running away at maybe 1-5% HP instead of 20%... the problem there is start running into issues when you can accidentally kill the boss which can either prevent phase changes, push phases too early or just bug out the fight entirely: - Killing any of the Dread Masters in DP Council during penultimate phase during their Channel won't transition into last phase until you push another another. - You can kill the Wealthy Buyer before intended on the Olok fight in SnV - painful. At which point you then have 2 solutions: - Stop DPS on the boss because you don't want to break the fight... whereby people will complain because you know... "how can bioware justify making a Boss you can bug out because you kill it". - Give the boss more HP as "buffer" so it's harder for them to kill the boss... whereby people will complain because "how can bioware justify people having lowered DPS because the boss runs away at 20% HP". --- Also, trying to put the onus on an increased Time-to-kill and not DPS is really just swings and roundabouts because TTK has a direct relation to DPS. At the end of the day... if you don't want a fight to take as long, just DPS harder.

What you're basically complaining about is that your DPS numbers are "too low" because you don't have enough of an Execute phase in order to inflate them as your spec has bonuses to under-30%. However at the end of the day, it's just fluffing numbers because if they gave you an extended Execute phase to DPS to 0%, your DPS from 100%->30% would still be the same and all that will have changed will be the number on your parse will be a little higher at the expense of having a longer fight.