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Sad state of operations


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This thread is not, as you might have expected, a criticism of Bioware -- it's more a problem with how the player base is tackling end-game operations.

 

It seems as though player skill is at such a sad point that people forming ops groups are imposing gear restrictions way beyond what they should be for a given operation. I am gearing up an alt DPS sorc, and I got turned down from SM TFB twice last night due to my gear, which is full rakata except for two pieces of columi. Um, am I delusional or does SM TFB drop rakata? How am I supposed to gear up if groups doing the content that drops the gear I need will not take me? You really want me to grind black hole comms and credits to buy individual mods/armorings to gear up, just so I can over-gear content and put ops leaders' minds at ease? No thanks, I'd rather do it the old-fashioned way. It's pretty simple: I need rakata, SM TFB drops rakata. Thus, I should be doing SM TFB.

 

Come on people, this instance is not that hard. I do 16M HM on my main with my guild, and people are acting like you need full campaign for story mode. 80% of TFB is about mechanics -- get them down and you're good, as long as you can do decent DPS (and have tanks and healers doing their jobs, as well). Has player skill really dipped to such a low that people don't feel comfortable doing the content unless they completely out-gear it?

 

Anyone else found this to be the case? It's pretty sad. Man up and challenge yourselves.

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You have to remember that generally speaking, there is a huge difference between a reliable rakata raid member, and a rakata PuG. It's very easy to clear TFB in Rakata with people you can depend on to do what is needed, but PuG's on average tend to be all over the place.

 

To make up for this loss in comfort and reliability, the only option is to request for over geared players (who you can roughly assume knows whats going on since they already have the gear).

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You have to remember that generally speaking, there is a huge difference between a reliable rakata raid member, and a rakata PuG. It's very easy to clear TFB in Rakata with people you can depend on to do what is needed, but PuG's on average tend to be all over the place.

 

To make up for this loss in comfort and reliability, the only option is to request for over geared players (who you can roughly assume knows whats going on since they already have the gear).

 

Good points. For what it's worth, I did tell the guy that it was just an alt I'm gearing up and I know what I'm doing. He also had an issue with my gear itemization, but he did not seem to understand that this was not my final gear configuration. I'm gearing up! He complained that some of the mods in my gear were not updated...well, that's because they were lettered mods and the columi mods I already had were better (I look at main stat + power in comparing mods). He also complained that all of my pieces were not augmented. You really want me to augment pieces that I plan to upgrade shortly? Come on....

 

It just seems that, with almost all of the gear available without having to set foot in an operation, the art of running ops to gear up has been lost. Do people not do this anymore? People just hit 50 and immediately buy all the campaign gear and run operations that are way too easy for them? Sounds like a whole lotta fun...

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Do people not do this anymore? People just hit 50 and immediately buy all the campaign gear and run operations that are way too easy for them? Sounds like a whole lotta fun...

 

Unfortunately no one does this anymore, probably because most people, like you, are gearing up an alt. No one wants to use their BH comms for an implant (350 for an implant with small stat boost) no thanks. I'd rather use them and buy BH gear and give the mods to my alt through legacy gear. What are you saving your BH comms for on your main?

Edited by Fayme
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I agree with the OP totally. So I should only grind BH comms with my main so I can transfer over the mods through legacy gear... So when should I play my alt? Only when I have all BH Mods?

 

The main problem I see also is there is a huge gap in gear advancement. Please tell me if I'm wrong but there are only 2 ops which drop campaign and higher which is of course EC HM and TFB HM. Since the majority of people believe that you need to have all BH mods to even attempt those 2 what is the point of doing EC HM if not for the main hand HILT. Oh sorry and to clear the quest for the nightscythe. The fix is simple enough. We have tionese comms, columni comms, and then BH comms? Why do they not have a daily or weekly for rakata and campaign comms?

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I didn't say you should, I'm just saying I did, and I would assume most people do. I play an alt for a change of pace and a different play style. I've seen all the fights of the endgame content except the last two bosses in TFB on HM. I am glad I don't have to do the gear progression again on an alt.

 

I don't see a problem with what the OP is saying, I was just answering his question in regards to if people work their way up in gear progression. Why should I if I don't have to? I would accept a rakata geared player in TFB SM or EC HM since that is the next logical step in gear progression. But I don't understand why you wouldn't gear for an alt with bh comms if they are just sitting on your main? But you might as well wait til 1.5 at this point where you will be able to buy the campaign armorings directly with bh comms.

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... But you might as well wait til 1.5 at this point where you will be able to buy the campaign armorings directly with bh comms.

 

This is what I'm stockpiling black hole commendations on my main for. As they have added new items to be purchased and we know they will be doing so again, I am hesitant to waste comms on gearing up alts when I can just run ops with my alts, which is fun. That's the point -- I do actually find it fun going through the gear progression with a new character. Although I've experienced all of the ops and bosses, I find it new and exciting doing them with a different character that accomplishes things differently. Plus, it's actually exciting downing a boss again when you know there might be an upgrade in it for you. That is, if you are even given the opportunity to be there...

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I don't really see this as a design or ops flaw, but more of a guild flaw. We are running SM, HM and NIM EV and KP for fresh 50's and fresh 50 alts. We also run them through HMFP (fresh 50s) so that they can gear and get comms plus learn the instances before we throw them to PUG HM FPs :p. Personally I would love to do all the ops on each of my alts, but many times I will still do them with my main since the group is short a healer (be glad to get my commando to 50 so I am not doing SM EV with a campaign geared sawbones). Most of my alt have been/will be geared through legacy and crewskills, but I skill plan on doing all the ops on every alt for no other reason than I want my speeders. Edited by mikebevo
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TFB SM have a very lenient gear requirement. It's designed for players in Columi, which is why it's dropping Rakata.. This just demonstrates the raid leader is clueless and relies on being 'overgeared' to get through the mechanics.

 

Right, this is my point. Unfortunately, this seems to be a widespread perception. My post is both lamenting that fact and hoping to inform people to the contrary. In fact, just in this thread, someone equated TFB SM with EC HM. It's confusing, but the real hierarchy is NiM EV = NiM KP = EC SM = TFB SM < EC HM < TFB HM. Wish more people would understand that.

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The trick is finding a guild group running an alt run. I got my Sorc alt into a ECSM run wearing only Columi. I told them I knew the fights inside-out, and they were confident enough in their own abilities.

 

Try to avoid a pug if they're pugging more than 3 people. When half the raid is strangers, I think that's the turning point where pug leaders go from confident to nervous.

Edited by Pubsam
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Right, this is my point. Unfortunately, this seems to be a widespread perception. My post is both lamenting that fact and hoping to inform people to the contrary. In fact, just in this thread, someone equated TFB SM with EC HM. It's confusing, but the real hierarchy is NiM EV = NiM KP = EC SM = TFB SM < EC HM < TFB HM. Wish more people would understand that.

 

TFB was just released, so before that the gear progression was (rakata) NiM EV= NiM KP= EC SM -> (campaign) EC HM. I don't see what's confusing. I said it was the next logical step in gear progression.

 

PLUS...

 

I AM AGREEING WITH YOU!!!

 

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I often find the same thing as the OP - there are plenty of gear snobs to go around. In truth, knowledge of mechanics and good team play goes much further than the 5% (if that) difference between being in full Rakata vs Columi. Hell, I'd rather run an Op with someone in recruit gear who is a good team player than someone in full BH who has no idea what they're doing.
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In terror SM last week we sevened manned the first boss, while carrying a fresh 50 literally dinged his first fifty a few hours before we started, and was in recruit gear. Someone, another relatively fresh 50 logged in and we downed up to kephess with that group before one had to go.

 

Attempted to seven man Terror and got him to 7%. Pugged someone in battlemaster and a couple of pieces of war hero who had never done an operation before, had no vent and downed Terror in one go. Only unfortunate bit was the pug died in the last phase and tried to res like flashpoints allow you to do now so missed out on rolling for loot because he wasn't in the instance for the kill.

 

In conclusion too many bad players this is not hard at all in SM. Gear requirements are almost non existent if you can get at least 2 decent dps.

Edited by brrr
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Though the raid leader is probably just clueless, sometimes when I'm running a guild raid I will request people with more gear. I very rarely do this, but sometimes I'm already carrying new guildies(alts) who are significantly undergeared (recruit/tionese), and need more geared people to help balance them out. I prefer to do this only with guildies, but possible smaller guilds might need pugs to help out.
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.

Try to avoid a pug if they're pugging more than 3 people. When half the raid is strangers, I think that's the turning point where pug leaders go from confident to nervous.

 

I couldn't agree more. I would never try to run a OPS that wasn't a guild run. If they were a alliance guild ,on your freinds list and some one vouches for them. Bring them. Now the OP said he is in rakata, many of us rember when rakata was a commodity. I disagree with the raid leader who declined your admittance. BH is to easy to come by, give a guy who has full rakata and it proves to me he has some experiance as a raider. As a shadow tank most of the rakata is better than the black hole.

Now on player quality vs. gear- i would rather have a optimized rakata/BH geared tank for story mode TFB. Why you ask? The FINAL phase of TFB is a bit hectic. Even if all people know the fights well enough the issue becomes how many mistakes can the group take before its a wipe. With that said, the OP would have easily passed my requirements for a raid with us.

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I would really argue that Nightmare EV and KP are substantially harder than SM TFB and EC. They actually do have hard gear-checks; I wouldn't walk into them with a Columi-geared group. Nightmare EV/KP are somewhat above SM EC/TFB but (far) below HM EC/TFB.

 

Now, hard mode EV/KP are very definitely at the same level as story mode TFB/EC, if not slightly easier.

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This thread is not, as you might have expected, a criticism of Bioware -- it's more a problem with how the player base is tackling end-game operations.

 

It seems as though player skill is at such a sad point that people forming ops groups are imposing gear restrictions way beyond what they should be for a given operation. I am gearing up an alt DPS sorc, and I got turned down from SM TFB twice last night due to my gear, which is full rakata except for two pieces of columi. Um, am I delusional or does SM TFB drop rakata? How am I supposed to gear up if groups doing the content that drops the gear I need will not take me? You really want me to grind black hole comms and credits to buy individual mods/armorings to gear up, just so I can over-gear content and put ops leaders' minds at ease? No thanks, I'd rather do it the old-fashioned way. It's pretty simple: I need rakata, SM TFB drops rakata. Thus, I should be doing SM TFB.

 

Come on people, this instance is not that hard. I do 16M HM on my main with my guild, and people are acting like you need full campaign for story mode. 80% of TFB is about mechanics -- get them down and you're good, as long as you can do decent DPS (and have tanks and healers doing their jobs, as well). Has player skill really dipped to such a low that people don't feel comfortable doing the content unless they completely out-gear it?

 

Anyone else found this to be the case? It's pretty sad. Man up and challenge yourselves.

 

Nothing short of god mode is going to fix the player base, and sadly bringing it up in a forum where only 1% of the player base exists won't help matters.

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I just ran a full PUG SM TfB run. One of the DPS was in all 61's but was a terrible player. Group consensus was to kick the player and get a replacement. Picked up a full columi DPS replacement and sailed through. It does not tale long in an Op to see who is not cut out, regardless of gear.
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I believe it's more about the poor quality of players. I've been with many people who believe they're all decked out and hot **** when they have more endurance then main-stat for a full 61 dps/healer. If you're hitting enrage in TFB SM, that's pretty bad. TFB SM is easy enough that a group in Columi shouldn't have too much trouble. Provided they have some idea about what they're doing.
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I often find the same thing as the OP - there are plenty of gear snobs to go around. In truth, knowledge of mechanics and good team play goes much further than the 5% (if that) difference between being in full Rakata vs Columi. Hell, I'd rather run an Op with someone in recruit gear who is a good team player than someone in full BH who has no idea what they're doing.

 

agree with you, the other night we took a couple new members on a gearing night in EV/KP HM, one of them didn't even have recruit gear, but orange modded with lvl 49 mods, that player even didn't have any operation/raid experience whatsoever, maybe there was a bit lower damage output, but they did better then some of our geared members. skill/teamplay > gear

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the other day someone asked for a healer for the last boss of KP via group finder... I joined, hell it's free bh comms faster than a HM FP. Now I understand why most people ask for overgeared members if pugging. If I haven't been full BH+ geared as a healer I could've hardly healed through this boss even on SM. People completely lacked the knowledge of any kinds of tactics, weren't using cc on trash, or breaking it asap, spreading out in all kinds of directions, standing behind Karagga despite telling them not to, etc. A columi or lower gear level healer couldn't have handled that kind of healing I had to put out to keep everyone up. Afterwards I was bored and pugged a SM EC, same goes there. Even the tanks didn't have a clue what to do with Kephess. So yes, there is reason behind asking for better gear than the operation is tuned for in case of pugs- because if you can't get the tactics down well enough, you will still have a chance to do it by brute force.
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I believe it's more about the poor quality of players. I've been with many people who believe they're all decked out and hot **** when they have more endurance then main-stat for a full 61 dps/healer. If you're hitting enrage in TFB SM, that's pretty bad. TFB SM is easy enough that a group in Columi shouldn't have too much trouble. Provided they have some idea about what they're doing.

 

that endurance thing is funny to see really ;) seeing dps' with more life then the tank hehe.

anwyays, i wanted to quote on the last sentence.. something that we like to do with our guild is never read up on tactics and try to figure it out ourselves, which is really fun, because imo that way you really get to know the encounter, because you start off wiping a few times, looking at all buffs/debuffs and things the boss does, trying to find a way to cope with it and get passed the encounter. By far we will have a flawless tactic the first times we go through the op, but it's a challenge compared to groups that go watch tact videos overa nd over and don't think about what's really going on in a fight. so ye, especially with new ops, we don't have a clue what we're doing ;)

though that doesn't make us bad players, does it? ;)

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All good stuff on here; it is interesting how end-game performance has developed.

Two points:

One of the main issues from PuGs is the disparity in knowledge of fights. A group (or part of a group) that hasn't seen all of TFB is most likely going to struggle with mechanics unless they are preparing appropriately. This is an area where in my opinion many people fall short. When I join an operation, be it pug or with my guild, I am always trying to improve my performance on fights and do the best I can to be ready for new encounters when we get to them. I feel it is my responsibility to contribute my role to the group as much as possible in this way. For example, the first time I need SM TFB I joined on last boss, but knew the fight better than most of the group because I had watched the video guide in detail. Unfortunately, I see many people taking a more casual mindset along the lines of "I'll just listen to whatever the raid leader says and assume I'm doing everything right unless he/she says otherwise." The raid leader might know the basics of a fight, but cannot be actively looking at every player for mistakes and ways to improve, so it should fall to the individual to improve as necessary. This lack of responsibility contributes to a lot of "poor play," and adding in the fact that a pug player is not really held "accountable" by any means, the lazy way out is very easy to take.

 

Second, some people lose that drive to improve even more when carried by an overgeared player. The high gear level of one player can make up for a multitude of mistakes on story mode operations, which creates a negative chain effect by only reinforcing the mistakes or bad strategies players are using. If they can complete the story mode content while playing badly, but always get carried by a higher geared player, it justifies (incorrectly) the mindset of not needing to improve. The issue becomes apparent, and can present a lot of difficulty when you reach content that cannot be carried through, or at least not easily. Players set in their ways will have a hard time changing, but they must do so as a few amazingly geared people is not going to cut it in terms of mistakes being made.

 

Going back to the OP, the group you encountered may simply have wanted to be "carried," or thought you were not dependable because your lower gear level suggests (once again, incorrectly) less knowledge of fights. I'm not sure how many people would lie about their fight experience to get in a group, but I can see it happening. However, in that case, it should become obvious simply by watching the player, so there was no reason to deny you the spot in the group as you could be replaced if you performed inadequately (which you wouldn't).

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I believe it's more about the poor quality of players. I've been with many people who believe they're all decked out and hot **** when they have more endurance then main-stat for a full 61 dps/healer. If you're hitting enrage in TFB SM, that's pretty bad. TFB SM is easy enough that a group in Columi shouldn't have too much trouble. Provided they have some idea about what they're doing.

 

The default black hole gear isn't well optimised for some classes as you obviously know, but if you're in Rakata the increase in armouring and hence survivability means trading up for BH is still a good option, even if you stack more endurance and less of your main stat. I consider it an acceptable transitional phase while you're building up credits and comms for optimised armouring / mods, or running ops to get campaign gear, and it should be more than good enough for TFB SM.

 

My scoundrel healer has 23K health in augmented Black Hole gear. I've left the Rakata implants in because they're better optimised and have no armouring bonus. Whatever augs you go for on a scoundrel, you stack yet more endurance, hence more HP, but it's a necessary evil.

 

Now, what makes me really laugh is tanks with 30K HP upwards. You don't stack that much endurance with regular gear, you have to deliberately optimise for it. The only way to do that is to neglect other things. Invariably when I see one - and they're rare - their defense, shield and absorb are absolute pants. Any tank with over 27K HP in the current gear available makes me very, very suspicious that we have an idiot in our midst.

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