Surely that city is the city of angels, yes?

Just some scrub. I hear he used to play or something. Aww. Sometimes you feel like you don't have a partner?

/not surprised.

Yes, well, your proper /eat doesn't work. :<

/eat.

copey pasta?

2.1.1 - "We don't like it when Sorcs heal. At all. They are mean and abuse mechanics."

Unsurprisingly enough, it is not that difficult to face players with a variable latency of 20-50ms when one sits on a variable latency of 263-468ms. Sure, they are going to have an innate advantage, and if this game were a first-person shooter, you would most likely be absolutely screwed unless there were a reasonably large skill gap between yourself and your opponent, skewed in your favour. However, one of the greatest things about PvP in *this style of MMO* (where combat isn't heavily positional or directional) is that latency is a lesser factor. Significantly. This will not kill PvP for the Asia-Pacific region. Nor will it, more specifically, kill PvP for the Australian or New Zealand region. The greater part of the Asia-Pacific region will probably see similar or better latency coming out of the merge. Right now, you are getting exactly what you paid for. When the server transfers are done and through, with the forced merges complete and all of the Asia-Pacific server's population displaced across the three North American-west servers... should you continue to pay money for this game, you will continue to get *exactly* what you pay for. It's just what you pay for then and what you pay for now will have changed. EA is a business. At the end of the day, they are most likely going to fall under the category of "wanting to make a better profit". Now, I don't know the inner-dealings between then and Telstra to run servers hosted locally, but I can't imagine it's terribly cheap, otherwise I would've assumed a company such as say... Blizzard would have jumped on the opportunity to do a full-on expansion into the APAC region with local servers. It would have boosted subscriptions... most likely. Just because they have money doesn't mean they want to piss it down the drain, so-to-speak. If they feel (for valid or invalid reasons) that the investment into Asia-Pacific servers is not one that is bearing enough monetary fruit, they are well within their right sto cut their losses and cease their continued investment. Hell, I highly doubt the majority of the Asia-Pacific population plans to quit over this merge (maybe they will and prove me wrong), so the monetary loss of closure is probably not going to be as great as the monetary loss of continued operations. More so, there is some logic behind the merge from a "best interests in the player" point of view. Some. The opportunity cost of losing our beloved double-digit ping to the server does come at the gain of such things as a larger playerbase and a larger (and probably cheaper) economy (although some are going to... not like that). Whilst it may not be a cost all of us would willingly pay, it is still something to consider. In all honesty, so much of the Asia-Pacific community has been acting so entitled over the server merges. The thing with subscription-based services is that at each given point in time you know what you pay for. For the now, we have been paying for access to this game with the assumption that these servers will be here whilst we play. Next month, the same thing happens. We pay for access to this game with the same assumption. Now we know they play to close these servers in the foreseeable future. Until then, continue to play the game under the same assumptions. When you are finally forcibly removed from this server and plopped onto one of the North American-west servers, either you can pay the same amount as before for a somewhat-inferior service, or stop playing and stop paying. Thus I must restate for clarity's sake - right now you are getting. Exactly. What you pay for. If this is an investment in future gaming enjoyment months and months from now and that investment hinges on having a latency in the low double-digits, then cut your losses now. The most despicable thing to come from the announcement of the Asia-Pacific server closure has been some of the Asia-Pacific community's reaction. A decision has been made that adversely impacts you (although not to the degree that you seem to believe). It happens. Be less entitled about it.

On the upside... Who am I kidding? There is no upside. /mourn stacking set-bonuses.

I suspect we both assumed it wasn't intentional. Whilst we could have verbally abused Kacoo for making this thread, instead rather linked him to the forum rules thread outlining why this thread isn't "allowed". Totally. This one time we were doing this one thing in an Operation and next thing you know there were four squad cars surrounding my building because I called someone bad for getting cleaved. I'll have you know, Gomerik, it took a substantial bribe to get the police to go away. You owe me for that. Also, Carth, whilst it's a game... as with anything, there are those that will take it very seriously. Whether that be PvE or PvP or lore or roleplay... or even the forums (sometimes various things at the same time. There are a *lot* of threads on this site about very serious people making very serious comments about PvP - I stay away from those threads though. The concentrated levels of butthurt gives me headaches). Hey, some people even take you and I seriously, although for different reasons. How far it gets them varies from circumstance to circumstance. See how far it gets them. A callout thread for bads and those that I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole would be wonderful, if it were allowed. Unfortunately (although for understandable reasons) BioWare doesn't want a "trash" thread because of the negative impact it will have on some of the people playing.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=5970892 Specifically: Whilst your intent may be noble, Gomerik is right. This type of thread is against the rules.

Depending on the fight, I actually encourage a DPS to pull ahead of me in the early stages. Some fights really don't lend themselves well to this mentality, but for the most part your overall threat will increase if a opener-heavy DPS goes all out at the start of a fight, rips aggro off of you around four GCDs into the fight and you use their 130% of your threat to boost off of. Instead of going to 130% of your threat (which may be roughly on par with theirs), you can use them to go to 169% of your threat (providing they don't threat dump before your taunt, and you taunt within a very small period of time).

Discharge (to apply Debuff) > 3 Stack Harnessed Darkness Force Lightning > Wither > Shock > Assassinate > Maul (with Conspirator's Cloak) > Thrash > Strike. Although one can argue the placement of Assassinate higher up in the priority for the damage gain, that's where I personally put it (and it doesn't fall into the opener anyways). Discharge on cooldown is a bad idea. If there are multiple enemies (in excess of three(?)), by all means use it frequently. Single-target? No. Get the debuff rolling and move on. A typical rotation may see you going Discharge -> Wither -> Shock -> Thrash (+ more Thrash?) -> Proc Shock -> Force Lightning. Still. Don't quote me on this because this is recollection with no active source, but I believe healing threat is 50% of the amount healed to all engaged enemies. That's against your 200% damage to your active target (most fights are a one-boss opener where it matters, or at least a "focus one boss" opener). I don't see how the Operative would out-threat you in this circumstance.

At what stage in the fight are we talking about here? Op healers shouldn't... really... out-threat a tank. Your main Sorc DPS makes more sense though. There's a pesky Commando that I have a helluva time holding aggro against. /shakes fist. Personally, Assassin threat-generation seems perfectly fine right now (unless there are some deviations between Shadow and Assassin threat-generation that I am not aware of). Some of the open-threat-heavy classes can be a pain to deal with, but that's where a strategic taunt-boost does wonders. Once the opener is dealt with, you should have little to no problem holding aggro for the remainder of the fight. If push comes to absolute shove, taunt-boost off of yourself a little ways into the opener with a single-target or an AoE taunt (if circumstances permit, I prefer to use the latter although in most fights it really doesn't matter. Just make sure you are not screwing over your off tank or your strategy by doing so). If, when all is said and done, you are still having threat issues... either ask your DPS to tone it back a bit (unadvised), or have the Juggernaut maintank. You may want to do a bit of revision on your ability priority also if that's the case - just to make sure you are doing everything you can to boost your threat-generation from a mechanics PoV.

Well, he's that too. ohsnap.