IMHO this is really stupid. EV and KP nightmare were removed because they were deemed too easy compared to the remaining nim operations and therefore would be silly to offer top tier gear from them. Now, with nightmare mode failing to drop the gear it is meant to, the only opportunity to obtain 224 gear is the highlighted hard mode each week. This means, the single most sought after piece of PVE gear is now obtainable for the first time in the game's history getting dropped from the easiest final boss of any operation to date in a difficulty setting that is EASIER THAN NIGHTMARE would have been (assuming it maintained the same patterns as other operations). Not only that...if they wanted to offer the 224 mainhand as a drop, there are 2 other bosses which could have provided a more reasonable challenge for the most important piece of PVE gear in the game. After this week even casual groups can easily be full 224s begging the question, what really remains for the PVE players who continued to stick around. As we saw at the end of 3.0, overgearing can greatly simplify operation checks for dmg healing and mitigation-scaling everything to 65 simply won't be enough to keep even the nightmare operations from quickly becoming too easy.

On imp side this is on the Ziost shadow near the entrance to ev. It is not an interactive terminal, but displays a hologram indicating the bosses (or last boss?) of the instance.

Here's what I run and approximate dps values for the ones the ones i remember: Ravagers Sparky: Engi/Sab (5k+) Bulo: Engi/Sab or Viru/DF (~4.4k avg with both) Tourqe: MM/SS (4.5k) Master Blaster: Engi/Sab or Viru/DF Coratani: Viru/DF (Suggested) Temple of Sacrifice: Malaphar: Engi/Sab (~6k) Storm Sq.: Engi/Sab or Viru/DF (~4.3k) Underlurker: Engi/Sab (~4.5k) Commanders: MM/SS (~4k) Revan: Viru/DF (suggested) Personally, my favorite spec for sniper right now is engineering. I get the most consistent numbers with it without any energy management issues, the best mobility of any sniper spec, and great AoE with Orbital, plasma probe, and sweeping gunfire. However, as you have noticed, on fights where the bosses move around a lot, engi will fall behind the other specs as a LARGE amount of damage comes from plasma probe. (I experimented once with removing plasma probe from the rotation for movement heavy phases and replacing it with snipe...resulted in a 500 dps loss...absolutely not worth it). On these fights I generally prefer Viru/DF unless there are lots of adds such as in revanite commanders and torque. Marksman/Sharpshooter is viable for probably all fights, but I personally prefer to have the mobility the other specs allow for. As for virulence/DF, I would certainly learn it...it's in many ways the strongest spec for snipers with a lot of flexibility depending on the situation. You CAN run 2-cull rotations (even with the new set bonuses) for most fights to keep things simple and improve mobility (energy may become and issue if you're not able to dot spread...but that just takes practice)...the 3-cull lowers the spec's mobility while increasing damage potential, especially in execute range. For examples of how virulence works in these ops, check out flight's sniper guides for hm rav/ToS. As for the 3-cull rotation I would suggest something a little different especially on bosses, its generally easier to apply your dots together in a way such as: (Filler) > Vital shot > shrap bomb > Hemorrhaghing blast > Wounding Shots (Filler x4) > Wounding Shots (Filler) > Speedshot > Hemorrhaghing blast > Wounding Shots TD > Vital shot > shrap bomb > (Filler) > Wounding shots (Filler) > Speedshot > Hemorrhaghing blast > Wounding Shots (Filler x4) > Wounding Shots Note here: Filler priority is (as energy allows) 1) Dirty Blast under Hemorrhaghing blast (especially <30%) 2) Quickdraw 3) Roll 4) Quick Shot (free with utility...if you take this) 4) basic attack

Ok, some feedback: 1) the idea of the speedrun tournament was great. Not necessarily the competition itself, but just the fact that it demonstrated an outreach of BW to the playerbase attempting to engage them in a fun and different competition. I agree with many others that a PvP tournament makes much more sense as it would be far easier/simpler to set up, but at this point, regardless of whether I intended to participate or not, this announcement actually excited me about the game. 2) The whole thing seemed unnecessarily rushed. The original post about the tournament was posted on Monday, February 23rd, just over a week ago and noted that they really didn't have the rules fleshed out yet. Why the rush? Perhaps the timing was determined by ESL, but we have no way of knowing that. I would have suggested posting the tournament announcement at least 2-weeks in advance (more likely more like a month) after the bugs had been fixed, after the rules fleshed out, and with plenty of time for players and groups to work on their strategies (or even level/gear toons if all-stealth teams would reign supreme). Worried that players haven't been completing ToS? Give them the incentive (and time) to learn it if they want to participate. Heck, if Bioware had never posted at all as they worked behind the scenes to try to make the operations capable of handling such a tournament, the community wouldn't be so incensed as they wouldn't even be aware they were missing anything. 3) Perisitance of bugs. I think after this debacle, BW needs to look long and hard at their QA...The Coratanni bugs have existed since launch of 3.0. People have been complaining about them for 3 months (more potentially if you count closed PTS). While fixing coding certainly takes time, the lack of apparent effort to fix the bugs before this tournament was even an idea has certainly been weighing on the player base. That said, my guild clears both ops at least 5 times each week and we maybe see one of the Coratanni bugs once every other week (mostly the reset after using escape pod). Personally, I would have acknowledged the problems with the Coratanni fight, taken a step back on the prizes (no real money, no trip...just in-game items, decos, titles, etc), and offered consolation prizes for any group who ran into a bug. Other possibilities would be to run this on a PTS server and remove lockouts such that if you hit a bug, you can repeat the instance...these are speed runs afterall...wouldn't expect them to take more than ~30 mins if you want to be competitive. 4) Ravagers vs. ToS. While I certainly understand the appeal of "dominate Revan to win real prizes," to think that you would cancel (not postpone, cancel) this event because you might have to do things out of your preferred order seems ludicrous! As for only a fraction of people completing ToS (which is mostly due to a relatively high bar being set for dps output and mechanics for a sm op in the first place)...this really should be irrelevant. Your whole plan included a ToS finals in the first place...so, these groups HAVE to complete ToS in order to really have a chance at competing anyways and even if they get passed the first round, they would only have a week (with the associated lockouts) to not only beat an operation they previously hadn't...but to be comfortable enough with it to compete in a speedrun. The tournament could certainly been done in reverse order where ToS was used to make it to the finals and then, once ravagers was fixed, have a consolation tournament on ravagers outside of the finals where the groups NOT in competition for the top spots could have a competition of their own where they're not placed against powerhouses like Zorz, Hates You, D&T, etc who have more experience, gear, dps, characters, and likely time. All-in-all I think this whole situation was extremely poorly managed and thought out. I love the fact that BW attempted to engage the community and was quite looking forward to seeing what people could come up with and how my group may fare (i expect not well, but hey, that's the fun of it). However, now the whole thing has just left a bad taste in everyone's mouth (whether you liked the idea or not, having the rug pulled out from under yet ANOTHER thing is just bad). Most of all, I'm disappointed that Eric's posts seem to indicate that the result of this test is that such a tournament is no longer even in the cards...

Part of how to deal with underlurker is dependent on classes. If dps output is an issue, than it's most likely people doing things improperly for this fight (for example, not immediately swapping to adds when they spawn). For this fight, it's fairly difficult to beat beat the enrage if even a single person is slow on the uptake (For example, in a recent run i was >4700 dps on my powertech and the group still hit enrage...it happens...). Some general tips for this fight (in no particular order): 1) AoE Dmg reduction-if you have a utility for it, take it-your healers will thank you. 2) 5 dps the fight-there's seriously no need for 2 tanks (if having difficulties with the dmg behind the boss, have a sniper or operative evasion the cross damage) and 5 dps makes killing adds as well as beating enrage far easier. 3) Sonic rebounder-if you have powertechs, this can save your hide, use it at every cross (note: sometimes this won't keep people from dying, but rarely will a cross outright kill players if they're at full health.) 4) if you have a good defensive cooldown like Entrench or energy shield up you can stay out from behind the rocks to DPS the boss during rage storm. Note: this is only good for story mode. 5) Before hiding behind a rock, apply dots, fire-and-forget AoE's, etc.-This can greatly improve your time to kill for this boss. I mostly play engineering sniper and always try to apply both of my dots, and plasma probe (possibly explosive probe or Orbital strike if i hadn't just used them) to be the boss before hiding...getting the adds down quickly greatly helps with this (other examples include AP-Powertechs...apply your bleed, use magnetic blast, rail shot, TD, and/or Electro dart while running to the rock or before hiding) to keep the bleed applied while hiding). These sort of tricks can maintain some dps 1-2k depending on the class while hiding and positioning for the cross. 6) Stack the boss on one of the adds-there are many ways to handle the adds, but at least keep the boss on one so that AoE's, dotspread, etc can provide your group with more passive uptime on the boss. Assuming the tank has strong aggro on the boss, can also taunt the add to give mele dps a breather from the adds mele attacks. 7) If AoE'ing the adds with skills like Lightning storm, orbital strike, or suppressive fire, the 2 adds closest to the the door are easier to hit...don't know why, but the middle one and far one have a tendency to miss one (or both) targets if AoE is placed not JUST right. 8) if you have a powertech tank, Oil slick is great for ignoring rage storm 9) Once the boss gets low, group up away from the adds and burn the boss to zero. (if by chance you get a collapse, this is a great time for defensive cds/oil slick, sniper shield, etc to avoid having to hide.) If you get a cross, DO NOT ignore it, complete it as usual. 10) Anything to avoid the knockback at the end of rage storm 11) stack up on the same rock whenever possible...keeps the boss from moving/jumping away after rage storm which allows positioning for the cross to be that much easier, increasing dps uptime. 12) apply anything you can on the move while positioning for the cross. I'm sure there are plenty more pieces of advice, but this list should at least get you started. Good luck!

Kinda ironic,but I just posted in your dulfy guide yesterday with some tips and tricks. Figured I'd add them here. I've Been running engineering for awhile now and I really enjoy it. After some experimenting, I've found that the using roll as often as possible in the listed rotation has some drawbacks. Mainly, EMP discharge has a static, 18 second cooldown, so "rotating" covered escape passed it gets kind of wonky. If you raise EMP above covered escape in priority the rotation smooths out again, but then you lose the opportunity to use frag grenade for energy management. A fix I have found for this is to change the order of the rotation: SoS > PP > IP > CD > (filler) > SoS > PP > EMP > (filler) > EP > (back to start) This allows covered escape to rotatate through and delay (if necessary) IP, CD, and either filler. Using this rotation, Covered escape is used on cooldown for 4/5 of rotations (as opposed to 2/3 rotations if using the standard engineering rotation. However, if I'm not using covered escape exactly on cooldown, I prefer to split up my dots when possible as using EMP discharge immediately after interrogation probe ensures that the target will not die before getting to use emp discharge. (Note: you can certainly switch the oder of SoS and PP here, I simply find it easier to keep track of PP by using it after SoS even at the expense of capping out on energy on occasion) In situations where AoE is important, an alternative to any of the listed rotations (including the one I have above) is to change the rotation from an 18-second rotation to a 20 second rotation. This pushes back all of your abilities by 1 gcd every rotation, but allows covered escape to be used on cooldown. While this alone is a slight dps loss, every other pass through your rotation, Orbital strike will be off cooldown and can be cast without the use of energy cooldowns. The end result is damage approximately equal to the standard engineering rotations but with increased AoE potential. The rotation ends up looking like: SoS > PP > IP > EMP > FG > CE > SoS > PP > CD > (filler) > EP > SoS > PP > IP > EMP > OS > CE > SoS > PP > FG > CD > EP > (back to start) Using the free proc'd frag grenade before corrosive dart after using orbital strike is to limit time spent in the secondary regen range (can generally avoid it entirely). While at first glance delaying CD in the orbital strike-containing pass through the rotation seems like a DPS loss, in fact, as you let the dots fall off for a GCD in the 20-second rotation, it's exactly the same as the next pass through re-applies without a GCD delay. As noted in the guide, but not explicitly stated, another quick trick with this spec for AoE situations is using explosive probe in combination with suppressive fire. Putting cluster bombs up on a target will make the energy drain from suppressive fire far less severe, allowing you to more easily continue into a single-target rotation or use suppressive fire longer before requiring energy cooldowns. Enjoy.

Posted the following in the suggestion box. Do people agree or disagree with my assessment?

Using the 4-set bonus from 180-186 gear, Virulence sniper is in a really good place. Using either the pre-3.0 "2-cull" rotation of: cull > Takedown > corrosive dart > corrosive grenade > weakening blast > cull > Takedown > Lethal Shot > Series of Shots > (repeat) or the new "3-cull" rotation which actually ends up in 6 cull windows due to Series of shots and weakening blast being used every other cull: Cull -> Takedown -> SoS -> CD -> Cull -> Takedown -> Weakening Blast -> Filler -> CG -> Cull -> Takedown -> SoS -> Filler -> Cull -> Takedown -> Weakening Blast -> Filler -> CD -> Cull -> Takedown -> SoS -> CG -> Cull -> Takedown -> Weakening Blast -> Filler x2 -> (Repeat) Filler = Covered Escape, Lethal Shot, Calculated Pursuit Overload Shot or Rifle Shot depending on energy. In both cases, the rotations are sustainable, sometimes using energy cooldowns or a free attack for energy management. However, without the Dread Maser (or below) set bonus, the energy management of both rotations essentially removes the ability to cast lethal shot at all as the energy drain is unsustainable (i think you can afford it to use it once every 12 culls even including energy cooldowns). in the "2-cull" rotation, even using the slot allocated to lethal shot yields a -5 energy for the rotation over pre-3.0 and in the "3-cull" rotation of the 5 fillers available every 6 culls, 3 need to be used for a free energy skill just to match pre-3.0 levels and if either of the remainder are used for lethal shot, it's -10 energy compared to not using lethal shot. Ultimately, this makes the new and improved skill that virulence gets little more than a waste of space on the quickbar. As for my suggestion, either include the -5 energy cost into the spec (for example into lethal takedown, even if it REQUIRES the proc to get the reduced energy cost) or add it back into one of the setbonuses as all 3 specs could use it, though none require it as much as virulence. Thanks for your consideration.

One other benefit of the "3-cull" rotation is more opportunities to manage energy. I haven't begun to gear up into 192's yet, but losing the old 4-set bonus combined with the continual casting of takedown in virulence may make energy management a chore with the old 2-step rotation. Comparing the two rotations: The 2-cull rotation of pre-3.0 leaves 1 rotational opportunity for energy management (rifle shot, roll, or overload shot [if talented]) every other cull (assuming one wishes to use TD on every proc) or 3 fillers every 6 culls. The "3-cull" rotation enables 5 fillers every 6 culls. With dot spreading energy is a total non-issue when adds are present, but in more single-target fights, it may be more beneficial to utilize the "3-cull" rotation.

I've tried both the above rotation and the 3-cull rotation (well, kind of 6-cull with the wandering of weakening blast) does seem to do more damage. However, it is much more complicated (and not quite under my fingers) then the old lethality-style rotation and more prone to fumbling. Honestly, either will work quite well. Edit: the old 2-cull rotation is probably better until you re-itemize your gear as you're clipping your dots more frequently so the lack of accuracy isn't make or break (can add a dot after SOS if needed before cull).

This is how I read the changes as well. If this is accurate, should make virulence a much more interesting spec as all the Lethal shots can be replaced with rifle shot, overload shot, or corrosive mine depending on the situation. Still don't really see a good place for Orbital (or suppressive fire which we're apparently supposed to use now) for AoE...maybe instead of a SOS or a double Lethal shot...or simply in situations where it's better to just AoE than deal single target we should: Orbital precast (assuming things are not stacked up) --> corrosive dart --> corrosive grenade --> suppressive fire/single target rotation

I know they kind of explained this in the stream, but perhaps someone can help me understand a bit better... With the changes coming to dps output, cleanses, and accuracy it seems like the dev team will need to go back and re-balance a whole lot-thus creating a lot of seemingly unnecessary work for the devs. They've already said that they're fixing leveling content, though people have raised good point about mobs using high damage cast abilities (ex: terminate, ravage, spinning strikes, death field, force storm), but the changes they will need to make to current end game content is going to be large as well. Even without a stat re-balance, simply removing 3% accuracy and 6-9% mainstat from most dps specs will bring the dps down as people will need to swap out surge for accuracy (according to how they phrased it in the stream it sounded to me as though we'll need at least 1-2 more enhancements for accuracy). Additionally, if the changes to alacrity make it useful, people are going to have less enhancements to balance these stats, which seems a strange decision. According to the stream, it sounds like nim DF and DP will actually be getting relatively harder for players at level 55 and not appreciably easier for those at 60. (For example, if dps number increased from 4-4.5k for most classes to 5-6k, meeting the 4k dps check on council would be much easier meaning mechanics don't need to be properly followed for as long). Thus, rather than making content more accessible to casual players, it will actually not change. Basically my point is, if they're going to scale everything down, what's the point of doing it at all (at this stage) as it simply creates a large amount of work and balancing for content that is already relatively fine (only top few guilds are clearing nim). And, if they're not going to fully re-balance all the content (not saying this is the case), it will simply make it so current content is less accessible to players. Just seems like a lot of man-hours to fix something that isn't really broken.

I honestly don't understand this mentality, or even where you got this information. We have information thus far on 3 specs, for 1 class. Assuming people playing full trees (as yes, hybrids are being removed but that hardly makes it a new game) a lightning sorcerer now relies around: 1) casting thundering blast as often as possible (on targets with affliction) 2) Using Chain Lightning Procs 3) using force lightning with lightning barrage procs 4) using crushing darkness 5) casting lightning strike (possibly shock for movement) With the new disciple system you keep all automatic procs (forked darkness and forked lightning) and the only things changing are: lightning barrage is being removed, lightning bolt replaces lightning strike, and you have a new skill (lightning flash) to be used on cooldown. On top of that, you get a couple fancy new bells and whistles such as instant lightning strike/bolt on proc, increased targets for chain lightning, thundering blast while moving (if you so choose), affliction will automatically get refreshed, a bloodthirst-like ability, and a big increase to force storm for AoE-heavy situations. As for madness, with the disciple system, you still will 1) keep your dots up and not clip them 2) cast crushing darkness (or now devour) only with wrath (unless pre-casting) 3) use death field on cooldown (damage + deathmark) 4) use lightning strike with wrath when crushing darkness/devour is on cooldown 5) force lightning spam Again, the spec stays essentially the same as it is now. You gain lightning barrage (which changes nothing, but adds a nice boost to your force lightning every 10 seconds), a life-leech skill, devour as a replacement for crushing darkness, increased targets for death field, automatic dot refresh and/or spread (honestly i'm not totally clear what pestilence does), a bloodthirst-like ability, a deacreased force cost on wrath-cast abilities (though less bonus dmg). As you can see with the above comparisons, although there are some minor changes (as there were when 2.0 was released, and as there will be when any major expansion is released), the general playstyle of the specs that we have information for remains virtually unchanged. People will not be starting over, and with the exception of unnecessary hybrids, little will really change.

As others have mentioned, the problem with hybrids is not really when they're underperforming, but when they're over performing. I, too, dabbled with a corruption/balance hybrid for leveling/PVP/dailies on my Sorc. However, I will say that for all but PvP at least, i found myself just going more and more towards full balance if I wanted to improve my dps as it simply was better for the content. A hybrid such as corruption/madness, while being neither particularly good at healing or dps, provides some large advantages in PvP when the matching system thinks you are pure dps, thus manipulating the system to allow a semi-healer into an all dps game. On the other hand, if we look at the more popular hybrids, they clearly perform in ways that was not intended. The original hybrid FOTM was sorc madness/lightning casting chain lightning off of wrath proc. While not nearly as overpowered as it was made out to be, this did give sorcs improved AoE burst that was unintended and quickly nerfed. The more sever example of overpowered hybrids were PT-hybrid (pre-nerf @ 2.0) and dotsmash. When 2.0 dropped, according to the 2.0 dps leaderboard (i know this is not the end-all-be-all of what specs can do, but it's the best of what I have to work off of): Class dps Saboteur/Engineering 2951 Hybrid (sniper) 2742 Dirty Fighting/Lethality 2520 Watchman/Annihilation: 2826 Balance/Madness 2438 Telekinetics/Lightning 2661 Tactics/Advanced Powertech 2592 Gunnery/Arsenal 2727 However, in the 2.0 PTS, hybrid powertechs with auto-crit railshot were hitting for >3100. This puts it more than 17% above the average, 9.7% above the next highest spec, and even 5% above wall-bang snipers. Even after the nerf, hybrid powertechs were the best dps option available for the class. Come 2.4 people had discovered dotsmash. In 2.4, the dps profile (according to the 2.4+ dps leaderboards) looked as follows: El'ethon - Sentinel - Dotsmash - 11/2/33 - TTK 4'8.466 s 4025 TrillOG - Sentinel - Combat - 6/36/4 - 4'19.809s 3849 Pizza'dah'hutt - Mercenary - Pyro - 2/8/36 - 4'3.883s 4100 (Broken due to offhand bug) Kishekzun - Guardian - Vigilance - 4/36/6 - 4'18.308s 3871 Lunagazer - Gunslinger - Dirty Fighting - 5/5/36 - 4'22.751s 3806 Jurbsy - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'30.758s 3693 Raulos - Scoundrel - Scrapper - 3/36/7 - 4'3.661s 4104 M-knightrider - Shadow - Balance - 8/2/36 - 4'35.229s 3633 Tal'ii - Vanguard - Assault - 4/6/36 - 4'33.952s 3650 El'ethon - Sentinel - Dotsmash - 11/2/33 - TTK 4'8.466 s 4025 TrillOG - Sentinel - Combat - 6/36/4 - 4'19.809s 3849 El'ethon - Sentinel - Watchman - 36/8/2 - 4'20.377s 3841 Xintake - Marauder - Rage - 2/8/36 - 4'50.921s 3437 As you can see, dotsmash hybrid was doing slightly above average damage and was parsing ~4.5% higher than the next highest marauder spec. However, in addition to putting out higher single-target numbers, it retained roughly 80% of the AoE capabilites of Rage marauders making it the go-to spec for essentially all content. Additionally, dotsmash performed particularly well by interspersing force abilities with direct damage abilities, thus drawing out the dot from deadly saber, something clearly not intended as it's not practical to do in the tree it's designed for. Finally, if we compare dotsmash's damage to the other AoE-heavy specs we find it to be clearly superior without having any real trade-off in damage or survivability. El'ethon - Sentinel - Dotsmash - 11/2/33 - TTK 4'8.466 s 4025 Jurbsy - Sage - Telekinetics - 3/36/7 - 4'30.758s 3693 (9% behind) Battkt - Vanguard - Tactics - 8/36/2 - 4'46.858s 3486.04536 (15% behind) Xintake - Marauder - Rage - 2/8/36 - 4'50.921s 3437 (17% behind) So, while hybrids allow for some fun and interesting play styles, in reality, they're more trouble than they're worth. And, as the devs have said, if hybridization forces them to move important skills further up the trees to prevent hybridization, it makes the leveling experience that much more miserable. In the same vein, if they begin tying the majority of passives and abilities to a stance or cylinder, etc then the ability to hybrid will disappear anyways.

As others have said, the boss immunity is a bleed over from nim (though arguably should have been there the whole time). First thing to note, this fight is NOT a dps race. I've never seen enrage on this fight, nor have i heard of anyone that has. So, the priority is controlling the ads (don't let the gold get off a cast, interrupt/kill the med techs, and keep the silvers off your healers) and dps'ing the boss comes once that is all done. It shouldn't be necessary, but you can increase uptime on the boss by having the tanks tanks LoS the ranged adds so they group up and your AoE attacks can nuke them. For tank swaps, what my guild does is simply do a tank swap as soon as stacks drop off. It's not always necessary, but really, unless you're totally out of cd's, why not. The boss really shouldn't be losing aggro, as he does not have an aggro dump mechanic other than gravity field (Which only hits people who fail to get out). A trick for grav field, grav field comes after the 3rd mine, then the 2nd mine, then the 4th mine. I forget when it comes after this as we normally push him before a 4th field. If your players are having trouble getting out, you can use this to anticipate it. Corruptor zero is one of the harder fights in DF HM, i remember our failing over and over again on this fight when we first started, but do it a couple times and it becomes second nature. Keep at it.