I didn't bash the game, I made a legitimate claim that the community was mistreated by the game's PR representatives. Oh, and I cited sources and provided hard editorials from credible and popular sources. Two different things. When did I say I ever hated the game? Sure it has problems, but that is not the purpose of this post.

I'm not saying its possible for EA/Mythic/Bioware to change their current community image regarding the game. However, once you get a bad reputation for shady dealings its hard to get rid of. Trust is something hard to get back once you lose it. When dealing with a game that had (past tense) over 1 million subscribers at launch, bad PR is the LAST thing you can do. Even simple mistakes spread like wildfire. One bad article for a credible source can cost hundreds of subs in a week. You want to believe in the devs and game, but when bad news is ringing all around you and you get articles like this: ____________________________________ Source: Force Junkies (2012) ____________________________________ "The Bright Side of the Ranked Warzones Delay Date: May 3, 2012 | Written by Er Moonanite | Posted Under: Article, Editorial | DISQUS With Us: No comments yet After canceling the release of Ranked Warzones a single day before players were expecting them, Bioware has yet to give us an update on their status. They haven’t even said the typical “we’re working on it but can’t set a deadline” and no one on the dev team has commented. Unfortunately, if they had good news I bet we would hear it, but right now all we get is silence. Of course the fans aren’t being silent. There are rumors that thousand of players resubscribed to the game just for ranked warzones. From their perspective, Bioware waited to announce the delay of ranked warzones as a marketing and business plan to gain subscriptions." _______________________________ When even the game's own fansites are bashing the game for bad PR... well how do you recover from that?

You will happily tolerate repeated instances of a developer spewing lies and shady actions at you?

Those were only minor supporting examples. Breach of trust namely comes from the PvP scam that caused resubbers to be screwed when the Ranked WZs were denied half a day at the last minute after a suspicious surge of resub posts and excitement in the forums. Also they devs gave no date as to the state of the matter. People are just boiling in the pot right now. It's hard not to feel slapped in the face. Moreover, slapped in the wallet.

"All in all, Instant Adventures is something Trion is very excited about and, in our opinion, has hit a home run on. As Hartsman has mentioned, the developers have “leveled up” and have begun to come up with new and unique ways to use this system. Not surprisingly, down the road, post 1.8, we will see a Mentoring system. Everquest II players should be familiar with the concept of mentoring; where players mentor “down” in level, to play with friends . On the surface, this is a way for a max level character to spend time with lower-level friends, and create a stronger social environment in game. Not only that, but mentoring also offers an incentive for max level players, as it will give them another avenue to gain Planar Attunement experience. The mentoring system ties into the motivation of “Instant Adventurers Everywhere”. The RIFT team plans on creating these IA’s all over the game so that leveling players and end game players alike, will be able to experience the game in a whole different way. Not only does this open up the whole entire map to veteran players, allowing them to explore and visit places they haven’t seen in a very long time, it gives them a reward for doing so as well." Source: Interview with Scott Hartsman, Lead Developer of RIFT Interviewer: Jason Dodge, 2012 Riftjunkies _________________ Raid content only? Sure you keep thinking that.

Just something that came to mind. I am a survivor of Aion and I sort of see SWTOR heading the same raid (hence the term "Tortanic.") I wanted to see SWTOR succeed, but the main driving force behind my animosity with the game and my return to my previous home in RIFT was due to distrust of the developer. There are several alarming incidents that caught my attention. Namely the first being patch 1.2 and the community being promised to know when it was hitting. We received little more than 3 days before it dropped. PVP ranked Warfronts were promised to use and dangled like carrot on a stick, then suddenly pulled after a surge of competitive PVPer resubscribes. The Rhakghoul event came and gone and the devs didn't even have the courtesy to leave a vendor up. Tickets disappear from customer services and fade into thin air, even when they regard serious issues like players being locked out of a raid, permastuck, or when the game is crashing their machine and burning up hardware due to optimization issues. I feel like I did with Aion. The game Aion was a great concept but it was badly mismanaged. As a reminder, remember this video? This was the Aion 3.0 that was promised as early as 1.2 and never happened. It was just bait to hook people into the game and make them feel like it had a future. Aion is in 3.0 now and it looks nothing like the false advertisement in that video. The guild summit PR events seem selective and the weekly dev. reports nit-pick at silly questions when they should be addressing serious problems in the game. Story development and the "Starwars saga" we were promised is on hold at 50 and doesn't look like its going anywhere anytime soon. Servers are drying up and dying and we are constantly being told things are ok. It's one thing to have problems in your game, that much I can tolerate. That's to be expected. However, the one thing you can never do is lie to your community and make false promises. Things like the PvP ranked warfront scam, the disabling of illum, the promise of moddable armor and wardrobe then restricting it to only endgame gear that no one has, the promise we would be informed about when patches are coming out then they are suddenly thrown in our face with no warning. I can deal with a company struggling with a new game if they are honest. This type of PR to the community and the consistent treatment of us like we are idiots. Keeping us in the dark when its beneficial (such as the PvP ranked scam where the feature was pulled at the last minute after a surge of pvp resubs.) Oh and do we all remember the suddenly "missing" un-subscription button in the account menu? This I cannot tolerate. I love starwars and the starwars universe. But I will not sit here and be lied to, be scammed, be treated like an idiot, and be kept in the dark concerning the state of the game. I am so disappointed in how this was all handled and how the community was treated. I didn't think SWTOR was bad, but I do think the way the community has be tugged around and cheated was wrong. People are willing to go through alot for a game and world they like and are attached to, but they will not tolerate being mistreated. I was with RIFT since headstart, I was never lied to by their devs. Yeah they made some mistakes, but they always formally apologized and came out with a good community PR. They didn't try to hide their failures on some hidden blog or tweet out in cyberspace then redirect the forums to it 1-2 days too late. Mismanagement is the major issue here. This is another NCSoft with Aion. If the community is so important to the game, why are we being treated like this? I am not surprised that EA won the consumerist Golden Poo award of 2012 and now that bad PR is leaking into Bioware and TOR and ruining the game for everyone. http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/04/05/ea-wins-worst-company-in-america-golden-poo-award/ ^ This is nothing to be proud of. I liked starwars, I liked my community. However I will not sit by and just be another sheep to be tugged along by bad shepherds. This game has no chance of survival until the community can be shown that the devs behind the game can be trusted and loved.

As per the discussion on the Flashpoint/Operations and PvP threads, the direction of 1.2 has started to worry me. I came from the background of a hardcore tournament player in Guildwars 1 (top 100 rated guild, played mesmer and was yelled at on vent for missing .5 second casts). I also went to wow and RIFT, which were both excellent and raidcentric experiences. Out of all the games I came to before trying TOR, I enjoyed RIFT the most due to it's dynamic class system, world events that involved large numbers of people, and well crafted raiding. The competitive raiding in RIFT was extremely difficult to the point where our guild was pushing 4 days a week 4 hrs a day and barely progressing. So then TOR comes along with this idea of the "4th pillar" of story. I am a big fan of the Starwars universe and decided to give this a try. Many people come to this game from places like Starwars Galaxies. Some people are traders, entertainers, or immersion RPers who never touched combat or a raid. In my experience the competitive raiders and pvp community tend to be the loudest, especially on the forums. What I'm generally saying is that alot of people have come to SWTOR to become immersed in the starwars universe and enjoy the promised story driven "4th pillar" promised by the game. The class stories are good, the planet quests are ok as well. The companions and their subjective stories were decent (while some were excellent). I kind of game to this game almost expecting it to be handled as a television show where we would constantly be getting updates on the direction of the galaxy, our personal stories, companion dialogue expansions, more RP-friendly abilities that help expand the feeling of being in a starwars universe. With 1.2 and the direction of the patch the game seems to be headed in the direction of wow. With corellia and 1.2, instead of a deep and immersive story, we were handed a box filled with dailies. We got a plague event that was almost an exact copy of the lich king expansion opening (although the newscasters were well done). We are still in the dark as to the direction of our class stories, as to the future of the war, as to the unfinished cliff-hangers left off by the end of some of our companion quests. Key characters like Malgus and Revan feel like they are almost forgotten to pave the way for raids, progression, and pvp. We have received no updates on same sex relationships and character/companion customization improvements for the RP community. The planets are still bland and arid without any ambience, passive wildlife, or even atmospheric sounds. So 1.2 comes out and we get a new raid and flashpoint with a difficulty rating so high it bars out the majority of the casual players. Most casual immersion players dont get to see the inside of denova or the story there. The new flashpoint and operation create a gear differential that is so great between casuals and "raiders" that the community has effectively split into a raiding "upper class." The only option that casual players have for keeping up is subjecting themselves to a terrible daily grind in corellia for a limited number of black hole commendations. So while progression players enjoy new content and vistas, the majority of the playerbase spends weeks in a crammed rehash blackhole district made up of corellia zone rebuilds -doing the same quests over and over. The majority of the casual players gated from entering new content stand around bored in fleet or are stuck doing illum/belsavis dailies (which are equally boring). With the advent of corellia now the average players has THREE planet fulls of boring dailies to do just to keep up with the "upper class" raiders. All the while we have had no huge impacts on story, no personal story progression, no companion story progression, no alternate leveling zones and low level story sequences to save people rolling alts for legacy from seeing the SAME story conversations they saw on 3 other toons over again (let's face it, the class stories are great but they only comprise a % of the leveling process. People alting are liable to spacebar everything but the 3-4 class quests on each planet). People are bored. Bored people leave. 1.2 has effectively moved SWTOR into a raid progression and gear carrot direction without even touching on the "4th pillar" of story that the game promised. Since launch the amount of "story" content that is relevant to individual players and their companions is little to none. Instead we have rated warzones and a new raid with an absurd difficulty level for casual players to appeal to COMPETITIVE players that make up only a small % of the millions of subs on TOR. I feel like my favorite show was put on a permanent intermission to play highlights from ESPN sportscenter about some football game that I really don't care about with 1.2. I thought TOR was trying to establish an identity as a story driven game and now all the people who left raiding games to come enjoy their personal starwars immersion, all the people that came from starwars galaxies that don't have a competitive cell in their body at all, all the RPers, all the people who are dying to know what their companion is going to next or what is going to happen to their character... All these people are getting left behind for competitive raiders and pvpers, who are now starting to dominate the game with superior gear, exclusive items (like the desler turbo), raid obtainable lightsaber crystals with unique colors, and the list goes on. While the people who alt get race unlocks for material already in the game, a few useless legacy talents like rocket boost, and the honor of suffering through hours of spacebarring through the planet quests that they are sick and tired of, or being stuck in claustrophic boxed in zones like Taris or Coruscant. Right now I'm currently still subbed to both RIFT and TOR. Eventually I will have to choose between the games. If I wanted to raid and be a COMPETITIVE player, there are other games out there that have well established competitive raiding and pvp environments that have had years of polish. If SWTOR is not delivering on the promised 4th pillar and doesn't even have half the features (like addons, macros, support classes, dungeon finders, raid fingers, guild perks, dual specs...) that a full blown competitive raiding game does... I mean what is left? What kind of identity is SWTOR trying to make for itself after 1.2? If it is not going to deliver on the "4 pillar" story driven platform that the community was promised, how is it going to compromise? By delivering us half baked raids that barely hold a candle to raiding games that have already mastered their encounter creation tools? Or will they attempt to compete with PvP driven games like guildwars 2 who have their entire development process dedicated to nothing but pvp combat? SWTOR needs to make up its mind. If it doesn't capitalize on this 4th pillar and make people feel like they are apart of starwars and not just chasing some progression carrot, people will just leave.

Personally, I liked the state of the game before 1.2. The poster has made some very valid points regarding the current status of the game. "Story" mode Denova far exceeds the difficulty "hard mode" operations. This has effectively gated the majority of the playerbase from participating in the new operation. Because the game does not promote heavy community partying throughout the leveling process, players are less likely to organize for difficult raids unless they are in a raid-centric guild. This is evidenced by myself standing in republic fleet that was populated by over 118 people and being unable to find a tank to do a four man hardmode. Most casual players quickly lose interest in the new content and roll alts as promoted by legacy. The problem with this is that many of the leveling planets repeat the same quests and the class quests only comprise a small % of the leveling experience. Even while leveling alts, players are exposed to roughly the same experience unless they play cross faction -which effectively cuts them off from their familiar communities. There are no "alternate" leveling planets like in wow, where you had the choice of 3-4 or even 5 different zones that you could level in. Now rated warzones are coming, operations are requiring more organization and actual raiding guilds, and the majority of players are -barred from new content due to difficulty -forced to replay rehashed material while leveling through the "new" legacy system which offers fluff options and race reskins -running repetitive dailies Also with the community info from the new patch, the new updates are sending most players BACK to belsavis for dailies on a planet they are already sick and tired of. For a casually centered game, this direction and the failure to expand the game at lower levels will strangle TOR. TOR can't hope to compete with already established raiding games like RIFT, which just launched 1.8 with an amazing content patch that blows almost all of the raiding content aside from maybe WOW out of the water. With WoW and RIFT so established in "raiding" and wow holding the title for ranked PVP with guildwars 2 coming shortly to welcome PVPers, where does SWTOR come in? Bioware released TOR with the idea of the 4th story pillar, but where are the new companions, the same-sex relationships, character customizations, interactive environments, expansions on lore and alternate leveling planets with new stories? Instead we are getting more raids and ranked WZs. The info leading to patch 1.5 simply brings 2 new flashpoints and 2 new operations + 2 small quesh-like planets with dailies to the table. Where is the companion expansion and continued story arcs? At this rate we can't even hide helmets on companions or put their hoods down when RIFT 1.8 came out with a full wardrobe customization system that lets you look anyway you want and its not even an RP game. TOR was such a huge project with a massive budget, yet it released feeling 5 years behind its time. On top of that, instead of getting more story, we are getting the gear and progression carrot that is seen in every other MMO when TOR doesn't even have a strong basis on raiding. Classes have been super simplified to the holy trinity of tank, dps, heal. Advanced classes almost have no flexibility in how they are built, requiring almost 31 points in every effective build while RIFT's soul buidler allows you to mix and match over 32 classes while still gaining better class balance than TOR (evidenced by classes like scrapper being completely unplayable in PVE). TOR was supposed to expand on story, yet we are all sitting at the epilogue gaining more and more "progression" content a la WoW. If I wanted to play a progression game with AAA raiding why would I even be on TOR when there are games that are already established for it. I fear for the direction of TOR. It was supposed to carve a niche out with story, yet instead of getting a constant stream and future vision of a never expanding story... we are getting ranked WZs and more raid content. We are getting the same development cycle seen in games that already do the same thing TOR is now shifting to do. The content in the other games is also better, with better supporting systems. Soa was bugged 2 months after launch and we are getting more raids and not chapter expansions? Companions are leaving us hanging for people drawn to story and yet we are getting massive PVP changes on a weekly basis when Gw2 is about to release as a complete PVP mmo? What is TOR trying to do? Does this game even have an identity?

Here are some of my own suggestions for scrapper improvement: Make the Kessel: Scrappers get their own version of the Jedi Consular's force speed as a gap closer. Shoot First: Remove the behind the enemy requirement. Now usable outside of stealth and deals (maybe 35-50% less damage or something better balanced) if used in this way. Used as an alternate means for generating upperhand quickly, applying flechette round, and allows it to be used as a filler attack without taking away from it's original usage.

Just a disclaimer: Please keep PVP related discussions out of this thread, this discussion is purely in place to address PVE scoundrel performance. The performance of a PVP and PVE Scrapper are completely different due to the functions and design of the class. I just wanted to start a thread purely based on Scrapper PVE performance in order to compile parse data, improvement ideas, and other useful tidbits of data that would be help Bioware improve the current and future states of the scrapper class. The parse data for Scrappers and Concealment Operatives can be found here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4039844 An guide to PVE Scrapper DPS and rotations/talents can be found here: http://wearenex.us/forum/m/2934557/viewthread/1784315-captain-malvs-guide-to-space-pirating-scoundrel-scrapper-dps Now in my experience I am a 50 Scoundrel who leveled as sawbones, I did mess with Scrapper a few times but I am by no means an expert or even remotely good with the class. I opened this topic because I run the Thursday and Friday community raids for the Ebonhawk server and I have almost NEVER seen a Scrapper in our raids. Many consider scrapper in PVE a "Dead Class" because of underperformance issues. In all of the experiences I have had with bringing Scrappers into PvE content, they have all been bad. I think several factors contribute to this. These might include: -Scrapper is a melee class with no speed boost or gap closer. -Scrapper has difficulty maintaining sustained DPS -Scrapper rotations are very difficult because many skills and mechanics of the class have layered per-requisites in order to use properly. This includes positioning behind the enemy, upper hand, the presence of a DoT on enemies, or stealth. Missing a skill in the rotation can cause a massive dps loss that is unrecoverable due to long CD times on scrapper skills or the dependency of the rest of the attack chain on a skill that the player misfired. Anyway since I'm not an expert on the class, it would be better if the scrapper community (or what is left of it) could offer insight on how to make the class PvE viable.

This is interesting, a lot of the posts concerning raid dps on AskMrRobot show gunslingers extremely high on the parse over most other classes (probably due to grav round/tracer missile being broken atm). Sentinels come up there to be competitive, this might just be a reflection of player skill. Thanks for the number crunch on this, this is interesting information.

I won't say that the fight is unbeatable with a full melee group, but what I am saying is that a melee composition vs. a range composition raises the difficulty of the fight exponentially. Sure you can down the boss with a 4 melee composition (which is a tad easier if the tank is a shadow or assassin since that tank type has better built in abilities for dealing with the bosses' mechanics), but bringing ranged makes the fight significantly easier. My issue isn't that the boss is hard, I think that his difficulty level is not too bad, my main gripe is the difficulty when its a melee composition vs. a ranged composition. There are many encounters in TOR that face similar issues due to the game's reliance on enrage timers in order to set the "bar of difficulty" for an encounter. As you layer more and more movement mechanics into a fight, playing melee becomes significantly harder due to the enrage timer and the difficulty of having to stay in proximity of a boss that is dropping aoe and movement abilities while still trying to do enough damage to beat the enrage. I would not mind if the fight was only slightly more difficult for a ranged composition vs. a melee one, but the difference here is night and day. When creating an encounter, having the difficulty of one composition (melee) vs. another (ranged) vary so widely leads to behavior that is bad for progression players which includes what we saw in pre 1.2 nightmare raids with people stacking up to a full raid of commandos and gunslingers to deal with bosses like Bonethrasher and Fabricator while exiling melee dps. When determining class balance and gauging encounter design, it is important that every class has something unique and appealing to bring to the encounter. For bringing melee dps, there should be some benefit vs. ranged. In many fights melee leans more and more towards being a liability due to unfavorable mechanics. L5R is a perfect example of this. Yes you CAN clear the boss with seasoned melee groups, but good players can overcome many challenges with skill. Does this make it balanced? In this case I would say no. Because an extremely geared group can clear it with all melee doesn't mean is balanced in a sense that is it fairly accessible to the majority of the population's group compositions. I posted several decent suggestions on how to go about making the encounter more melee friendly. It can be as simple as making it so that the boss takes MORE damage from melee based attacks to compensate melee players who have to avoid blanket area attacks while working with an extremely small space (in order to be in proximity of the boss and beat the enrage). Right now in most encounters (Bonethrasher, Fabricator, L5R, Gharj), there is almost NO punishment for stacking ranged over melee to decrease the difficulty of the encounter. Many melee players feel cheated or that their class value has been diminished because of this, and in this context they have a valid point. If its perfectly fine to create encounters with global abilities that generally may not favor melee, but when it is done to the extreme (like in L5R's case), counterbalancing mechanics such as: -AoE boss aura that decreased aoe damage to melee players -Boss takes increased damage from melee abilities -Area effects prioritize ranged -Disruption abilities done in melee range have additional benefits (such as locking down incinerate for a longer period of time) There also many other options that the community and devs can come up with.

With a shadow tank the encounter is significantly easier. The tank can resilience out of incinerate and mindsnap can interrupt from outside of melee range. I imagine it was much harder for our guardian tank during our last kill.

We cleared him with a JK tank, Shadow DPS (me), Commando, and Sage Healer. Everyone in our group had to be on the ball, me and the JK tank were all over the interrupts. The incinerate is really punishing and has to be interrupted IMMEDIATELY as it channels down from 3 seconds and immediately does damage over time, usually doing 100% dmg during it's full duration. You can't wait, if you hit it too late the tank will be near dead after just 2 seconds. For the floor, we generally healed through the flames and our commando took care of the adds (since I can't run through lightning storms to hit a ranged add standing in a bubble and gunning the healer). The fight is INCREDIBLY melee unfriendly. Taking 2 melee is possible but almost a near death sentence due to more lightning storms spawning on the tank. You need incredibly high DPS as you do not want to extend the duration of this fight. The fight is overly hard on the healer due to the insane amount of AE damage coming in from the adds and lightning spheres. *** Here is a breakdown of the bosses abilities: Incinerate: Main ability, uses every 12 seconds. 3 second channel that does massive damage to the tank and stacks a debuff that increases it's channeled damage. This ability is overtuned and used way too frequently (even for an experienced group). This mechanic bars any group experiencing lag from beating this boss. Missing one incinerate and allowing the tank to bake in the full duration is an auto-wipe. Cooldown should be upped in order to keep it in line with groups that have limited interrupt capabilities (such as 1 interrupter with a 12 sec CD). Sometimes the boss delays being moved and uses incinerate while in a lightning sphere. Because no melee or the tank can get to the interrupt at this time this is an auto-wipe mechanic. Spawn adds and Experimental Cannon: The boss spawns an assortment of specimen X ranged and melee adds. The problem with ranged adds is that they hide inside lightning spheres, making them near impossible to kill as melee (yet another melee hate aspect). Overall they aren't too bad and can sort of be healed through if the tank aoe taunts them off the healer. Arc Lightning: The lightning sphere. Puts a blue circle down on one random person and extends a lightning sphere from that person's location. Very devastating if put on the tank or melee. Makes the fight almost impossible if the group dps is comprised of all melee. Is interruptable but interrupting it DOES NOT stop the effect. He will place a sphere down whether your interrupt it or not. The damage radius of the spheres is also much larger than the actual graphic, making this ability very misleading. Floor Lava: Random lava jets on the floor panels, moderate damage and can be healed through. Only deadly when stacked on multiple mechanics (like people in lightning spheres). *** Strategy and Suggestions: We basically focused on incinerate as the main issue. We interrupted incinerate and after each interrupt the tank IMMEDIATELY moved the boss away from the lightning spheres. The boss usually alternates arc lightning and incinerate. He will usually drop one sphere between incinerate casts. The reason we move the boss immediately after he incinerates is to ensure he is in a new position for an interrupt and not stuck inside a lightning orb where the melee can't stop it. Ranged DPS was mortar shotting adds and handling them, we did our best to avoid the floor lava but it was second place to incinerate and positioning the boss. We started at the center with the tank and melee on the center square, the ranged was kiting along the edge and away from the floor. The boss was moved every time he incinerated. YOU CANNOT MISS incinerate, ever. The main problem with this fight is several things. Experimental Cannon and Incinerate are channeled abilities. Arc lightning also has a cast time. This makes the boss very clunky to move because he stops and casts. Because this is a positioning fight, the boss should be more responsive to movement, as the boss standing in a sphere and casting incinerate is an autowipe. The cannon targets one random raid member and does focused damage. It's way too hard on the healer to be trying to focus heal one guy and be having the party taking add damage. If anyone gets hit by a sphere they are dead, not even the healer can keep up. Incinerate is overtuned, he casts it way too frequently for groups without a sentinel to handle. Stopping incinerate requires both the tank and interrupter DPS to be in a interrupt zen. While I can understand the fight needs to be difficult, the frequency at which he uses incinerate and it's lethality to the tank is too much to handle. It immediately does damage on cast and channels down from a full bar. It needs to be reacted to instantly, making anyone who is lagging a liability to the party. We attempted to cleanse the debuff incinerate stacks on the tank but we had no luck due to it applying the debuff and killing the tank too fast. Honestly we didn't even know if the removal worked or not because our healing was too busy tearing her hair out with heals to spare a GCD for it other than once or twice (at which I was too busy being in interrupt zen to notice if it was removable). The boss has to be moved EVERY incinerate due to avoid the growing lightning spheres. Sometimes the boss stops and uses experimental cannon then follows up with incinerate while stuck in a sphere. We wiped every time this happened, especially if the experimental cannon hits the tank and brings him down for an incinerate to instakill him. The fight is very melee unfriendly as well, due to the boss being stuck in lightning spheres, adds being stuck in lightning spheres, or the possibility of lightning spheres being cast in the vicinity of the tank. Having the sphere casted on the vicinity of the tank puts the group in an RNG death situation. If the boss cycles through his incinerate or experimental cannon faster than the group can move him out of the radius, the group will wipe. Sometimes the group cannot control the rate at which he moves because he stops to use a channeled ability and then becomes enveloped by a sphere, making interrupting him without a ranged interrupter impossible without costing a death. Ranged adds in spheres are impossible for the melee to kill. Due to the melee generally taking more damage and not being able to kite around the edge to avoid flames and spheres, they are a liability in this fight. Much of the difficulty we encountered came from the following mechanics: -The boss cycling through his rotation faster than his movement can be controlled, causing him to be protected by a sphere when he casts incinerate next. -The frequency at which the boss casts incinerate too difficult for the party to keep up. The interrupter cannot leave the boss for even a second. If the interrupted pauses to do anything other than watch for the interrupt and the tank misses it, it will autowipe the group. Because the tank is responsible for moving the boss, the tank is not always in range to interrupt UNLESS they are a shadow or assassin, at which their short ranged interrupt makes them optimal for this fight. -The boss needs to cycle through his abilities slower to allow groups to deal with the layered mechanics better. The recharge on incinerate needs to be increased. The boss should not use a near instant kill mechanic that frequently. His cast speed on incinerate reminds me of pre-nerf iron fist. While L5R doesn't chain cast incinerates they still come pretty fast and the great difficulty is managing moving him while still allowing your interrupter (if its melee) to be in range to get incinerate every time. Sometimes only god decides if that's gonna happen due to randomness if lightning and floor lava. If an interrupter dies to mechanics while trying to stay in range to get incinerate, that guy deserves a medal because he was doing it right. -Lightning spheres may want to priority target ranged DPS to make the fight more melee viable. The ranged adds should balance out if the bosses more difficult and unfair mechanics (namely incinerate) are toned down. Personally, I don't think the boss needs alot of tweaking to be "fair." -The fight is tuned to be very melee unfriendly as the melee is dealing with the floors, the heavy damage sphere, and losing alot of DPS on the boss for a very short enrage timer on the boss. The boss might be tunable by having him radiate an aura that causes melee dps around him to take less damage from the arc lightning spheres. **** Overall this guy is freakin' hard. Certain group compositions that lean towards melee make him even harder to downright impossible. I think some of the tweaking suggestions above might improve this encounter, make him more melee friendly, and make things a bit easier for the group as a whole. While I don't want to see this boss trivialized, I do think that he is a bit unfair right now with his mechanics to certain groups. Unforgiving would be the best word to describe this guy. Incinerate being on such a rapid cast rotation and melting the tank in 3 seconds combined with all his other mechanics that prevent your melee interrupters from staying on him makes him hard. Increasing the time between his cast cycles and perhaps cutting melee a break with the aura mechanic I suggested above may balance him out. Currently if anyone messed up, lags, misses an incinerate, or allows the boss to cast incinerate while in a bubble, its a done deal. Currently, it is very hard to prevent the unfavorable wipe conditions above from happening. I would never attempt this fight with two melee in it's current state. I'm sure that we would have been toast without our commando. The boss needs to be toned to be a bit more forgiving to certain group make-ups.

This is a set of suggestions for adding Zeltros: the party planet, to TOR! Zeltros is a pink colored planet known for it's hedonistic natives, the Zeltrons. Reference Link: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Zeltros New race: Zeltron (Pink party people! Yay! They would also be easy to add since they are essentially humans with a different skin tone.) Reference Link: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Zeltron New Area: Hologram Fun World -This would be a new area that is accessible from a shuttle in Zeltros that would center around the famous hologram fun world, which is an amusement park station tied to the Zetron race. Just like a real amusement park, players would be able to participate in all sorts of fun minigames in order to earn tokens that can be redeemed for social items, minipets, speeders, and other rewards. New Operation: Trouble in Hologram Fun World -Hologram Fun World would also have a new operation tied to it. Implementation: Zeltros and Hologram Fun World can be added in incremental patches starting with the planet and the race unlock, then hologram fun world, then an event that leads to the opening of the operation. New minigames and expansions to hologram fun world can be added as the game progresses. If real space combat is added, the original space missions can be relocated to the Hologram Fun World amusement park as a set of minigames and award amusement park tokens instead of fleet commendations. Reference Link: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hologram_Fun_World