Hi Devs, This thread has a lot of info here so I'll try and keep it short. Now like many people here I do agree this is probably the worst way to implement the new augments. Having said that I do think adding them, in general, would be good but maybe in a different way. Let me explain myself here. Firstly - many people are complaining from both ends about now having to step into Ranked or NIM's. We got ranked players saying you are locking this behind NIM's and NIM players saying ranked is now being forced upon them. I understand that you are trying to mix the communities so I would suggest the follows: 1) Keep the drops from ranked and NIM and maybe make them slightly more frequent. ]2) Then introduce them to HM and regs. Don't make them a regular drop but maybe make a low drop chance from regs and HM ops. If you make the drops too frequent tho people will farm this and not play properly in the regs. So what I would do is make these a lower drop than ranked and NIMS but enough to keep the player base happy. Maybe 1 mat in 20 games (with loses for PVP)? Maybe one Mat from LB on every third OP run (as make it a 33% drop chance only from LB in hm)? These are only proposed ideas but making it also obtainable from other content may be a good idea. This doest take away from the players grinding ranked and NIM and could make the drops for frequent for them. This would also sort out the hyper inflation problem that the mats would currently have as more of them will be flowing through the game. I have seen the idea from people on here to make the MATS only drop from PVP or drop from NIM. As in have to separate ways to make the augments but one way through PVP and one way through NIM. I think this is a bad idea. The point here is to get more players to play each mode and although you guys not he forums are upset currently I think its about how much of the ranked or NIMS you'd have to do if you don't play either. You wouldn't mind having to play some regs a few times a day for a few mats. So I think the issue here is the amount that Bioware expects us to play both ranked and NIM's. Me myself and I, I play ranked and have a prog raid team. So in theory Im sorted. The issue I see for some of my friends is that they play regs and do NIM's or they play ranked and do some HM ops here and there. Majority of players don't have time to do both like the no life I am . I think making the mats drop at a lower rate from other content is a good balance while also keeping the higher drop rates from Ranked and NIM. In terms of how the augments feel - I have played the PTS and they do allow me to more freely stat myself up and use stats in other places. So think the stats are pretty balanced. I didn't craft them as I cba sitting on the PTS and doing that so I can't comment on the crafting side of things. I hope this was constructive rather than negative and hope that we can get a balanced sort of arrangement for these new augments. May the force be with you. PLEASE NOTE: I can see my idea on 33% on HM boss could be abused in KP or EV so make the chances different on each boss. EV and KP can have a 1% drop instead... Something along these lines

If you are finding it hard to find a friend just q in group finder. Im getting pops every 3 minutes on the PTS

Hi Eric, Hope all is well. I have previously been on the forums complaining about the 6.0 content and gear. Let me start of by saying that phase three feels much much much much better. Gearing makes more sense now and I don't feel like I want to log off. Prices of some things may need to be tweaked but that is for a different thread probably. With regards to FP's. I did a few runs of the FP's and they do feel better. A lot better than phase two. I would say that you are almost spot on with these changes. Perhaps a tad easier (not like crazy easier. Maybe easy enough for 2 players to run VET mode. Other modes feel good imo), although if it will make it too easy I think I prefer it being a bit more challenging with better rewards (if that makes sense). Regarding abilities being OP. I have not really noticed anything, although I haven't really played the PTS for a period of longer than 2 - 3 hours. I would say that I have been Star Parsing and my DPS seems on the low side but that may be for a number of reasons such as gearing, new stats, new rotation (kinda) and so on. So overall I haven't really experienced anything that makes something too OP. Ity also may be since the FP's are still in balancing stages On the other hand I have really come into problems with new abilities. Especially on my sorc assassin and merc. The new abilities seem lack luster and especially on the healing side of the merc and sorc I dont ever end up using the new abilities for example with the sorc, it just doesnt make sense for me to switch target to the boss in the ops/fp's just to build stacks of the volt rush and then lose a player (perhaps even the tank since I stopped healing and decided to DPS). For DPS on the merc and sorc things may be different but for heals it makes no sense to force us to DPS so I just leave it out my rotation. Perhaps may I suggest a new heal ability for heal specs? Not sure how that would work but it seems more useful imo. Regarding the assassin's the ability is cool and works well with some tacticals but I just dont think its better than low slash. Therefore I haven't added it too my rotation either. I think maybe the new abilities should have a overall look at since they definitely need tweaking. Overall I am impressed with what has gone on with the PTS phase three however, I think the classes need a bit more ummfff. Gearing and content now feels good but my class feels stale a bit. Need the new abilities to engage me more and feel rewarding to use. Rn it they just feel a bit forced. Have a good day eric. Would love to hear some feedback from you on my thoughts if possible. Even just a hi! I'll fan girl a lot :D:D

Ok so Im not trying to add salt to the wound but I'm going to add my two cents. Many people have said similar things here and I will probably say things which sound pretty similar. I spent a few hours (not a crazy amount) on the PTS and have been playing around with the gearing. Firstly, if the only way of getting the gear is by randomized vendors then I will cry. That was literally the one thing I didn't want to see in the game anymore. I don't mind high prices for things (so that I need to grind), however, the fact that I can spend 12k fragments and only walk out with one semi decent gear for my char. I have many alts but I don't get why I would ever want tank gear dropping on my sorc healer. I play a certain char to level and gear that one, not my other alts. I think you need to change the amount of unnecessary items dropping for some chars and classes. It's just plane unnecessary for me to get random gear from these events. It clutters my inventory and I dont end up using it on my other chars because when I play the other alts I end up wanting to gear them themselves. It just doesn't work for me having loads of gear all over the place. Now, tbh I don't have such a problem with the rate the gear drops but because of the above reason it makes the game pointless for me. If I was getting gear that makes sense with no RNG and I knew what I was grinding for then I would enjoy it. However, rn I can spend 5 hours playing and not getting anything for the char that I want to play. It just seems stupid to me. You guys said RNG was going but now it seems that there is more than ever. Every single thing is RNG. Even the rotating vendor is RNG because it's RNG how they rotate weekly . There needs to be some way that I can grind for 3 - 5 hours a night and get something that I want and know what im grinding for... RN why would I want to come home from work and grind for hours only to get nothing that I even wanted? There needs to be some sort of system like 1.0 (or even 3.0) where you can walk up to a vendor after many many many hours of grinding but you at least get something that you have been working towards. RN its just all based on how the RNG feels that day and I don't feel rewarded when I log on/off. Lastly, what is the point of renown? I doesn't give anything useful to my char (as of rn). It seems to just be there because you get a bar to grind... therefore, causing players to want to grind it. However, the rewards from the packs don't give you anything. Well, they give me less than I get rn from a command crate... Overall please please please please please please please I beg of you to do away with the RNG. Let me grind ( I don't mind that) but please let it feel rewarding. I honestly think that this might kill the game for me. It's so bad. I can't sit and gear even for 3 hours. It seems pointless to give so much time to a game yet get almost nothing that I want out of it because the RNG sucks that day

I agree with this fully. That is probably the best way to go forward. Although I feel like it's easier for them to code a tactical to increase crit rather than completely change teh base stats for healers. I hope in Phase 2 of the PTS something has chnaged

Well tbh that theory could be 100% true. I know that the gear is not the top rated and you are correct that it would feel a bit different than the top gear. What really puzzles me is the difference in crit vs reg heals. On live ill do 25 - 30k crit heals and around 15k non crit. The difference you don't really notice. I don't generally notice the differences in gear when they are small amounts however, the change from a 50k crit to a 22k reg is amassive. That would mean I heavily rely on crit even more and it only proc's every 2 - 3 casts. It just felt very clunky to play as a healer ont eh PTS. I was almost holding my breath for every crit. All that did was end up using my resources quite heavily. On a side note from the above in PVP I notice with these issues that its almost impossible to outheal the dps output. When you got three DPS's all hitting crit's at 40 - 50k DPS (thats half a char health in total). All i can do is pray I get a crit heal for 50k otherwise im going to be spamming big 20k resource heals just to feel comfortable with the targets health. I ofc want the game to be more challenging and harder and I like the direction of the new ideas for the classes. I just find that healing is really really going to/is suffering atm. We need more set's and tactical's that get those crit heal hits up if we are going to rely on them that much. i can't be holding ym breath till i get that crit hit

So currently on live there are a number of tier's for the alacrity and crit proc's (accuracy as well). I have been playing around with the healers on the PTS and am having trouble figuring out what are the obtimal stat levels currently. Currently if I run 12k on Mastery and Endurance, 10k on power, 4k on crit, 1.9k on alacrity I get some crit's of about 50k HPS. Most of the time my regular heals are about 22 - 25k HPS (on big heal abilities). On smaller and AOE healing abilities i'm looking at 9 - 12k hps. To me these numbers seem low. Especially with my health pool at 285k. I am by no means an expert at the game and I could eb getting this completely wrong however, I have seen some other people also mention that healing feels a lot lower than expected. Basically this post is to find what stats, classes, and specs you play (that get anywhere above 50k HPS on crits and 25k HPS on non-crits). Also I am being vaque with the class that I play as I have tried all three healer classes and they all seem to be the same. Tactical's and gear arn't making much of a difference rn to me but. Set's seem a bit underwhleming for healers especially since the 6 set bonuses on live seem a lot better. I 've tried a number of set mixes and tactical's but it still always seems to be the same sort of number's on healing

So Im not sure if I have understood it correctly but here goes with my ideas Tactical Items - Healer: For PVP Below 30% health you can perhaps make two different items where you can choose between outputting more healing to yourself or raising your endurance or shields... In PvE, it could be that if you are generating more threat you could have the same options as above... Tactical Items - DPS: For DpS it could be that you have an instant cooldown of your hardest hitting ability (for example ambush on a sniper) if and once you get out of stun or get white-barred. It could also be something that for example could reward knowing when to stun break in PvP (so if you stun break and are whitebarred your alacrity or crit is increased for a certain amount of time... DPS there are a lot of possibilities tbh but I think these two are a start. If people want more then ask and I'll think of more examples. Tactical Items - Tank: For a tank these would evolve around threat generation, taunt and guards imo. So for example if a tank lowers threat via a guard from a certain target in an ops or PvP they have increased shield or absorb rating for 20 seconds. Or when a tank taunts for 5 seconds they are immune to knockbacks or stuns based off the tactical items. Another idea could be that when a tank hits their phase walk they generate more threat (just for people that have this item). Warning - MY IMPRESSION FROM THE ABOVE IS THAT PEOPLE WOULD NEED TO PICK BETWEEN A FEW TACTICAL ITEM OPTIONS FOR THEIR PLAYSTYLE/NEEDS AND WORK FROM THERE. A LOT OF THE CONCEPTS ABOVE EXIST IN GAME BUT NOT IN A WAY THAT YOU HAVE TO PICK BETWEEN A FEW. Now in regards to set bonuses I would say that it should go back to PvE and PvP gear 100%. I think I liked the game almost 1000000000000000000000 x more with two gears (even tho I grind to grind both). So I am asking if Eric reads this that he thinks about making some different ones for PvP and for PvE. Also, it would be nice if we could have two equipped at the same time so that if we needed to switch between two we could do so with a click of a button. Kinda the way the outfit designer works now where you can have a few armor styles and click which one you want for when. So when you need to PvE just quickly equip it would be cool and for PVP a quick switch back would also be good. For Set bonuses - We could have one that increases conquest points achieved form conquest content. You already mentioned the crafting one which is really good. I would add the PvP and PvE ones for each type of class with maybe 3 or four options per field. SO three for DPS, Three for Healers and three for tanks. Dps could have a choice between faster cast times on certain abilities, Increased damage on successful kills maybe (so kind of like a kill streak (for pve on bosses it could be increased damage per damage hit over like 20k). FOr healers could also do the cast time one but perhaps could try some funky ones like for every teammate in a raid below 50% health you have increased healing or in PvP for every teammate killed within 30 meters you have increased healing for like 20 seconds. For tanks, it is a tad more tricky on set bonuses imo to make them a bit different since the tanks playstyle is generally similar on certain raid bosses. What you could try is to allow tanks increased damage or threat (depending on the set chosen) although it may create a problem for pvp with scank tanks. Which imo then you should definitely have 2 sets of gear and make the gear that is good for pve not really work in pve (and vice versa so you kinda have separate pvp and pve gear). THANK YOU ALL FOR READING AND IF ANYONE THAT IS READING FROM BIOWARE OR ERIC AND WANTS TO GET MORE IDEAS FROM ME (just because I only put a few down here so you can start with those but if you want even more detailed ones I would be happy to help come up with more and even more descriptive ones) PLEASE JUST CONTACT ME VIA IN-GAME MAIL ON THE DARTH MALGUS SERVER. PLAYER NAME UmHeySnip or UmChokeThere. Looking forward to any feedback on my ideas