the changes to severing slash are meaningless. who's ever gonna pick it over shroud?

Deception main here, raider. Can't you just give up on Severing Slash? No sin player I know likes it, we didn't put it on our bars *before* it was a choice with Shroud, of all things. The problem with Deception/Infiltration in raids is that we don't bring anything that's uniquely ours in terms of group utility. The armor debuff and the taunt don't cut it because sturdier and more useful classes also have it. There is no reason other than personal preference to run Deception/Infiltration and you need a team that won't suffer for your subpar choice (or be amenable to work around it). To be fair, it's almost always been this way. But it's worse now. The dmg increase to The Awakened Flame is interesting: is it your intention to make the "traditional" way of playing Deception competitive with the current preferred build with BotE? It's worth noting that right now we can't really afford to take the Force Cloak CD reduction (Fade), since it's a choice with AoE DR (PAAIIINNN), but "traditional" Deception needs it (or, well, should really have it because it's clunkier to play it without it). Speaking of clunky, I much preferred Phantom Stride off the GCD, regardless of the occasional orbital flights. A QoL change that needs to happen: either make Voltaic stacks built by Lacerate count for Voltaic Engine or give us a way to build the correct stacks out of combat. Perhaps you could bake them into Dark Embrace. So we could just quietly wait for the pull in stealth, no twirling like maniacs while hyperaware on our stealth keys. PS: I want phase walk back

the mount is bound once it drops, and it's only tradeable among the group members for a couple of hours. you can inquire if there are raid teams on your server doing sale runs for the Wings, aka willing and able to carry you through the fight for you to have it, for a price (billions I'd imagine at this point). It should be a bit easier once the next level of gear is introduced (it's on the PTS now so inside the year hopefully).

first you make a new loadout and with that selected you make the changes you want. the system saves automatically to the loadout you have selected.

Hi, did you actually mean master mode operations ? generally you don't jump from solo PvE to master mode operations. unless the poster above interpreted correctly and you meant flashpoints, to break into NiM raiding you want to start with: a guild that teaches new players. become familiar with the hm versions (veteran). know your main class inside and out: rotation, defenses (what type of damage they mitigate and when it's best to use them), which utilities to eventually swap to according to the fight. if you're a dps, being equally comfortable with a burst and a sustained discipline will also come in handy (or alternatevely swap to a different class for either). keybinding: some players are capable to dps at NiM level clicking but in my experience they are the exception. also keep in mind that with the exception of Dxun, all the operations, regardless of difficulty mode, are scaled level 70, which means your endurance, mastery and power are capped. therefore, for those, ideally you'll want to gear a little differently, prioritirizing tertiary stats (crit especially) over power when choosing your enhancements (those +451 ones). with power capped, you can also swap all your mods for defense ones if you're so inclined. and the relics of choice are devastating vengeance and primeveal fatesealer (because they boost crit and alacrity, which are uncapped). I would only bother with this for the harder capped master mode ops though (Gods especially) which, tbh, you are unlikely to tackle anytime soon if you've never raided before. For Dxun, all power mods (lethal R2s are the best), high power enhancements (adept, nimble and initiative r19s, r18s, r20s), and serendipitous assault and focused retribution as your relics.

I don't use it. Not even for the MCI tact because if I need/want AoE, I respec to Hatred. And if I need/want mobility and good defenses with my dots, I play Anni Mara. I miss phasewalk the most and will never understand why they stole it from us (yes I'm being dramatic ). They didn't even explain why. All we got was "we felt Assassins were too mobile". Compared to what? On Mara I can have two consecutive force charges, predation, mad dash and in a pinch there's also force camo. Granted, there's three utility points in there, but for PvE, at least, I'm not giving up anything essential for them. As Deception there's really only force speed, because phantom stride is used rotationally for dps. It's not a terrible trade off currently to keep it in reserve on occasion to use it for mobility, as dps generally is quite OP compared to almost anything PvE can throw at us, but it's the principle of the thing that bugs me. Same thing with the speed boost on ball lighting, either I count on being lucky that it'll trigger exactly when I need it or I'd have to delay it, which is a dps loss (and breaks the flow). And with all of that, I'm still less mobile than on my Mara. Who also has more dps potential, more and infinitely more reliable raid utility and it's not that behind on the cheesing either, between undying, mad dash and force camo. I also miss the 30 mt range crushing darkness and death field that made Hatred so diverse to play. And blackout and actually having force management on Deception. Deception is still my favorite spec above any other but it's only gotten worse in terms of fun and engagement over the years.

killed it last night, doing colors and everything, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

You don't need to be in 306 gear, much less the full SB. Don't queue in GF, waste of time. Ops are formed on fleet, be there and /w who is advertising looking for the role of your choosing (DPS or healer as you're a Merc) Don't offer to heal if you're not prepared to spec into it and if you've never played it before. Exception only if they're looking for a DWH (dps with heals) for queuing purposes and you won't be expected to actually heal). ALWAYS say you are new to the OP. I can't stress this enough. Some people may turn you away but that's for the best because you don't really want to play with people who can't have a newbie in a storymode operation. Generally what sets people off is players who only admit they're new after a wipe. Don't be that player and you'll be okay. You will always find at least one player who will give you the necessary pointers if they know you're new. And if you don't, just follow the other dps and copy what they do. It's rarely anything more complicated than "shoot the boss, don't stand in stupid" anyway Don't stress over it. SM Ops are very easy and it's extremely hard to mess up in such a way that will compromise a fight, especially so as dps. Since you're new, consider starting out with Eternity Vault or Karagga's Palace, the absolutely brain dead easy, in vet mode as well. Consider joining a conquest guild, they do SM ops regularly for points and the environment for new players should be potentially friendlier than a random group (but most random groups are perfectly fine, don't worry).

I just did it right now because you got me curious and she seemed normal. She did almost killed Andronikos but only when she jumped to him *after* she had enraged already, before that he was barely feeling her jumps and had no issues healing me. I am fully geared though and he's 50 so that might be it. No buggy behaviour that I could discern.

do you run out of her range or use a defensive ability during her cyclone nova? her enrage timer is about 70 seconds btw but she only one shots you if you're close to her at the end of cyclone nova.

Are you sure they're not hitting enrage? BT's bosses all get very murdery when they do and their enrage timers are shorter than most other MMs, curiously.

People don't random queue on GF for ops, that's why it's not working for you. People form on fleet and then use GF to queue. Be on fleet and when you see a group forming for the ops you want, you whisper that person. If you're DPS be quick, it's the role that fills up the quickest.

Probably related, it also resets every time someone stealths out during that phase, even if they're not tanks. I play sin dps, we often have a op healer and generally 2 sin tanks and none of us can stealth out. (so if a stealth rez is needed we need to wait for the light thingy to be back)

I don't think there's any need to hit him during that phase. My group's even killed it with three melee (HM). Slow down and intercept the adds during that phase or don't and go for the special achievements

today is backend maintenance (no patch). these are the conquest changes they're working on: https://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=9825617#edit9825617