That's your choice, as it is my choice, and many others, to raid. Our time, effort, and the level of skill we have to develop has, in part, been crapped on with this patch and any other patch that has/will come out that gives these kinds of things to others who choose not to raid. And "not having time" is not an excuse to not being able to raid in this game. Gearing up and getting 8 ppl together to run an op is ridiculously easy in this game. Hell, im the raid leader of my guild, and i live in Japan though the guild is primarily stateside, and i can find the time to raid. So if i can do it, anyone can. Dev's making decisions like this may appease a vocal minority of casuals whom have self entitlement issues, but will lose the raiders for a new home that can appreciate the effort and sacrifice that raiders choose to go through to have all those nice shineys. Then all that $ that was spent on making those endgame components of the game will have been wasted.

The game is supposed to be more about PVE than PVP though. Getting tired of PVP changes constantly screwing up the PVE scene, and frankly expertise should offset PVE gear by alot since it gives such large bonus's for PVP combat.

Why not just say that both have their pro's and con's, and which ones outweighs the others is all just a matter of play style? Really, from what ive seen, both can dish out roughly the same amount of damage and get about the same amount of kills depending on who's behind the wheel with what spec.

Really, depends on the setup and what match it is. Huttball, sadly, we arent so great. Can dish out some pain, no doubt, and we really arent all that bad on defense, but between jugg's leaping and sorcs force pull, we dont bring much to that kind of a match. But in voidstar, we really shine. Great on attack and defense since its all set around a stationary target, and Alderaan is pretty much the same. And since there's no telling what match you will get (unless they give us the ability to choose our matches) then I could see teams setting up with snipers.

While this is indeed a welcome addition to the game, I dont think this is what most ppl mean when they as if there will be new gear. Personally, and im sure there's quite a few out there that share my view, i would love to see more varied set bonus gear, as well as unique non-modded gear, as well as larger stat bonus's on any new gear that may come out via operations. I know if 1.2 comes out and the only thing dropping in the new operation is just more rakata, it will be a gigantic disappointment and a new preorder for Tera...

Honestly i dont see why they would need to nerf it. Instead they should just be fixing it so that it does what the tooltip says it should do, and reduce accuracy by 45% instead of nearly 100% like it does now. During Annihilator Droid's missile salvo's, on nightmare, just 2 snipers using this ability, one after the other and not at the same time, can get the whole raid thru without taking any damage. Almost every salvo is a miss with this ability on, when it should really be hitting you once out of every 2 shots + an occasional extra shot. Retarded to nerf it to where its not usable on bosses at all, since that basically makes it pointless to have outside of PVP. Even in PVP its only ok to use once in a great while against an opposing sniper/gunslinger.

They should just implement new gear, including gear that is exclusive to raid bosses and HM FP bosses. That and the moddable gear stuff thats coming out in the next patch should ensure that ppl dont all look the same, as well as providing much more needed variety to the loot platter.

Unfortunately, i have to agree with OP. Itemization in this game is incredibly lame. If the bosses at least had their own non-token loot that could only be gotten from them, AND was better than T3 gear, then i could see it being worthwhile, but as is everyone is gonna be a cookie-cutter of everyone else of the same class in another month or so. Dont get me started on how ridiculously bugged the operations are...

Unfortunately that would most likely just create a lot of resentment from the PVP crowd, as well as ppl that are now using PVP gear as their main, or only, set. It could have been a good idea before the game launched, but by now its too late to go that route without angering a lot of ppl.

Before i rant, i just want to state for the record that i do indeed love this game and dont think it will "fail" at all. However, i do have an issue with the itemization in game, especially when comparing raid loot to PVP loot. All this last week me and my guild have completed EV on normal, killed Bonethrasher, and mopped up 4/5 of the bosses in EV hardmode. The only drops of note were columni pieces for handins, a few rakata pieces from the hardmode, and an ugly as sin speeder from Soa on normal mode. As well as crafting components and a few schematics. Earlier today, i got bored so decided to try and investigate the stat differences between the tiered tionese, columni and rakata gear to the centurion, champion and battlemaster gear respectively. And man was i dissapointed. As it stands, the T1 gear for both PVP and PVE sets were near identical, with PVP having the added expertise stat of course. T2 PVP vs PVE was almost the same, except the weapon was a little bit better for PVE but only barely. T3 sets were again almost identical, but the PVE weapon was actualy way worse than both the T3 PVP and the T2 PVP and PVE which made absolutely no sense whatsoever! After that kind of comparison, its obvious that the easiest way to gear is via PVP, and the PVP sets are actually way faster to get than the PVE considering lockouts and the need to have a raid force, or at least a full group willing to do the few FPs that arent bugged out for PVE comms. So for those of us who love our raids, and love getting all the shinies, it really defeats the whole reward system set up for the raids. Now i did actually enjoy the encounters themselves and had a blast doing them, but the rewards were definately nothing to get excited over. So i would propose to the dev's as a solution to add more unique, non comm/unassembled piece loot to the loot tables of the bosses that is noticeably better than the corresponding tier pvp/pve loot that come from the vendors (ie normal will have an upgraded version of the T2 stuff, while hard would have a slightly better version of the T3, and nightmare just having an out of the ballpark great item set) or, at the very least, buff up PVE vendor loot for both T2 and T3 by a considerable margin. Otherwise, most ppl will most likely go into those raids simply as something to do and see and then never run them again since there is really very little point in doing so. Which would be such a shame to have so much content snubbed simply over the lack of any real motivation to go in there beyond the first or second time. Just my 2 creds...

A few nights ago we were rolling thru EV on hard mode and when we reached the Ancient Pylon part of it it would bug out where after both sides are complete on the 2nd tier, the controls would no longer light up. After exitting and resetting a few times, we managed to finally get an instance of it not bugging out and moved on to finish the Council and call it a night. Just wondering, for future reference, if anyone else has encountered this bug, and if so, if there is any kind of workaround. Much appreciated.

Having been in the beta and played sniper for 3 months, i believe i have found a solution to the energy crisis (at least for moderate length fights, longer fights tend to really focus on your rotation and keeping an eye on the bar and arrows iteself). Simply spec into the 10 extra energy, as that energy is all added to the four arrow region of the bar, and invest in the ability for 1 extra energy regen in cover. Once you get those, you wont have to worry about energy nearly so much any more.

Dont forget your melee stun, works great against leaping jedi. Aside from that, i just usually kill anyone that engages. After doing 5 PVP matches tonight, i was top DPS and kills for 4/5, which is my usual trend. Dont worry so much about CC unless you see a big group of em to throw a flashbang at. And be sure to spec mostly into Marksman for Followthrough and its cooldown/energy reduction skills. You tend to be able to eat through opponents like nothing with that.