Since we are getting 14 augments on our pve gear, how will this affect our pve experience? Rakata without augments and rakata with 14 augments is a huge difference.

Considering I already have 10 pieces of gear augmented, I doubt an extra 4 will make that big of a difference. A lot of the content is very strat based and not too much can be mitigated by stats. You may eliminate gibs from being undergeared, and perhaps 2nd double destructions from occurring, but beyond that it's more about execution at this stage.

 

As a side note, better gear tends to make Zorn and Toth harder, go figure!

Edited June 20, 2012 by Zypyst

As a side note, better gear tends to make Zorn and Toth harder, go figure!

 

what do you mean? lol

I mean the fight is purely based around percentage timers. However, certain abilities that the bosses do are timed, so burning it to a certain percentage will trigger the start of one timer - but maintaining a high dps will only require you to wait until that timer has expired. For example you typically have to hold dps around 70% and 30% in order to prevent wipes. Higher dps will only make this wait longer and increase the chance of raiders spacing out and pushing before the timing requires, causing stupid wipes.

New content will be tuned with augment but yes current content will be easier.

New content will be tuned with augment but yes current content will be easier.

 

^^^ As always, dulfy speaks the truth. =)

 

They already said that new content will assume fully augmented gear is possible, and thus be tuned with that in mind.

just like how you cannot outheal stupidity,

 

you cannot outgear stupidity

Most high end players all ready have 9-10 aug slots so I don't think it will make a huge difference.

I mean the fight is purely based around percentage timers. However, certain abilities that the bosses do are timed, so burning it to a certain percentage will trigger the start of one timer - but maintaining a high dps will only require you to wait until that timer has expired. For example you typically have to hold dps around 70% and 30% in order to prevent wipes. Higher dps will only make this wait longer and increase the chance of raiders spacing out and pushing before the timing requires, causing stupid wipes.

 

This. DPS too fast and the tanks might not be topped off before the jump happens.

It's even worse, sometimes they would bug horribly, not jumping at all etc.

We have to be extremly carefull with Toth and Zorn every week, it's the only boss that wipes us anymore, it's just bad design.

Edited June 21, 2012 by Shinaa

It's even worse, sometimes they would bug horribly, not jumping at all etc.

We have to be extremly carefull with Toth and Zorn every week, it's the only boss that wipes us anymore, it's just bad design.

 

Or bad discipline, not every defeat is the games fault. On HM our guild has had issues during the berserk phase of over burning the mob so that the swap happens before the rock is thrown. After we realized what was happening we adjusted our strategy and now it's much easier.

Or bad discipline, not every defeat is the games fault. On HM our guild has had issues during the berserk phase of over burning the mob so that the swap happens before the rock is thrown. After we realized what was happening we adjusted our strategy and now it's much easier.

 

Or a boss mechanic simply fails to activate, even when the fight is being done 100% correctly up until that point. Not every person that blames a bug is QQing.

As Dulfy and others said, it'll make the current content even easier. The Hard Mode of new content will most likely be geared to require a decent amount of Campaign gear with augments assuming the new content comes with a new tier of gear.

As Dulfy and others said, it'll make the current content even easier. The Hard Mode of new content will most likely be geared to require a decent amount of Campaign gear with augments assuming the new content comes with a new tier of gear.

 

The next new content coming is NMM of Denova, and most hardcore players already have 5-8 augments or so, it won't make that much of a difference.

Or bad discipline, not every defeat is the games fault. On HM our guild has had issues during the berserk phase of over burning the mob so that the swap happens before the rock is thrown. After we realized what was happening we adjusted our strategy and now it's much easier.

 

Right because it is so much fun to say: guys slow down, go afk or something. Our DPS are doing exactly that, they hold back all cooldowns and if one of them dies because he fell asleep, we let em lie till fight is over, because THAT makes the fight easier, really, how much sense does this make?

And it's not only this fight, most fights in Denova do have that problem because they seem to be desinged around boss health instead reasonable timers.

Tank fight: skipping phases, not spawning shields or adds.

Kephess: Bombers not spawning because the walker is already at too low health (phase 3, you just can't do anything at that point, just wait till you die, fun? ...), Walker destroyed before bots spawn is also funny.

 

Anyway, my main point is, a fight should be challenging and fun, it is NOT fun if you have to know every technical detail about it, just to avoid bugs and unintended behavoir. It's also not fun if someone cannot play at a high level/maximum performance of his character because he would break it and wipe you.

 

But I also wanted to add to the original question: They will balance new content around the fact, that you can have so many augments. I think it will make it even harder for the normal player if he does not have his gear optimized in this way.

Remember that there are huge RDPS nerfs coming in the form of removing armor debuffs. 1800-2k DPS in 16 mans will fall down to 1600. 16 mans will become significantly more difficult, while 8 mans will become easier. 8 mans become easier because the augments will caused increase DPS, while not really suffering from much if any loss from armor reduction, while 16 mans will take a huge hit in armor reduction that won't be made up for by augment slots.

I can't recall where I've seen it but in content coming later in the year (perhaps the new Operations) they will be assuming that you have gear which is fully augmented.

 

Some evidence of this already exists in how the stat budget for campaign & black-hole is set out to assume you will be using "main stat" augments in order to not have too much main-stat stacking....the downside being that this effectively makes any Augment not carrying a main-stat a lot less desirable.

Edited June 22, 2012 by SkuzBukit