So our guild was working through SM EC 8m tonight. We only have 3 people who aren't FULL Rakkata. Both tanks weren't full Rakkata and 1 healer. (One tank was full columi and the other tank and healer were missing just a few Rakkata pieces.) The mechanics are fun and engaging. The issues we had was with enrage timers.

This leads me to believe that either dps stats were nerfed of the content is slightly over tuned. Now before you yell baddies at us, we had EV HM on farm at the beginning of January and KP HM on farm the second week it was out, and have cleared them (save for Soa on the really buggy weeks) every single week since. So our entire 16m raid (or 8m since not enough people showed up.) are fully geared out for this, and it's not the mechanics but the enrage we struggle with.

A few core problems are because of the lack of a viable means in which to judge, record and deal with metrics. Since we can only look at our own dps, we have to go through great lengths to get every single person to get their dps at maximum potential. Now even if we knew everyone's dps, it doesn't change that BW's toxic attitude to theorycrafters has made them walk away. I spent an hour or 2 just trying to find some healing numbers to compare mine to and found nothing. Worldoflogs can tell me tons about healing and dps in WoW in a single easy to go place, And Elitistjerks can help me achieve that goal.

So you stand at a cross roads BW. You can man up and make a full team real time combat log so we can all improve as players and as a team. Or you can force us to struggle on invisible enrage timers which are too tight because metrics are shunned and theorycrafters are told to go away.

TL;DR: Mechanics are great and I love them. Making me jump through hoops to work on the dps of my team after you shun all of the theorycrafters is unacceptable, especially given how insanely tight your enrage timers are for people in FULL rakkata gear.

You obviosuly missed this for some reason - its been the talk for the last two weeks among the progression raid guilds:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=402530

Btw. the new content has been live for *less than a week* - I think it's way too early to begin talking about nerfing it already, even the "story mode". As far as I have understood it you're supposed to clear the previous tier 1 content on all levels before you start on tier 2 content. I bet you'll have this on farm too in a month if you keep at it instead of complaining about it. Ofcourse, then the complaining about everything being too easy will start yet again. Rinse and repeat.

So our guild was working through SM EC 8m tonight. We only have 3 people who aren't FULL Rakkata. Both tanks weren't full Rakkata and 1 healer. (One tank was full columi and the other tank and healer were missing just a few Rakkata pieces.) The mechanics are fun and engaging. The issues we had was with enrage timers.

 

This leads me to believe that either dps stats were nerfed of the content is slightly over tuned. Now before you yell baddies at us, we had EV HM on farm at the beginning of January and KP HM on farm the second week it was out, and have cleared them (save for Soa on the really buggy weeks) every single week since. So our entire 16m raid (or 8m since not enough people showed up.) are fully geared out for this, and it's not the mechanics but the enrage we struggle with.

 

A few core problems are because of the lack of a viable means in which to judge, record and deal with metrics. Since we can only look at our own dps, we have to go through great lengths to get every single person to get their dps at maximum potential. Now even if we knew everyone's dps, it doesn't change that BW's toxic attitude to theorycrafters has made them walk away. I spent an hour or 2 just trying to find some healing numbers to compare mine to and found nothing. Worldoflogs can tell me tons about healing and dps in WoW in a single easy to go place, And Elitistjerks can help me achieve that goal.

 

So you stand at a cross roads BW. You can man up and make a full team real time combat log so we can all improve as players and as a team. Or you can force us to struggle on invisible enrage timers which are too tight because metrics are shunned and theorycrafters are told to go away.

 

TL;DR: Mechanics are great and I love them. Making me jump through hoops to work on the dps of my team after you shun all of the theorycrafters is unacceptable, especially given how insanely tight your enrage timers are for people in FULL rakkata gear.

Well said story mode is meant for people who don't have as much time to play as hardcore raiders, so it should be easily clearable on first try. Not something you grind week after week.

Well said story mode is meant for people who don't have as much time to play as hardcore raiders, so it should be easily clearable on first try. Not something you grind week after week.

Not true at all, Story Mode shouldnt be easily clearable it should be something you have to work at regardless of how good your group is due to the fact that it is dropping rakatta gear/BH comms, and to answer the main question the answer clearly is that your dps is slacking a ton, I used to heal on my sorcerer for our raids till I decided it would be best for my guild if I were to dps and replace myself with an operative, I have full columi set for dps spec and none of my other dps are in full rakatta yet we had zero issues with damage, the fact that your group has full rakatta but cant down the new raid is a testament that the content pre 1.2 was too easy. I will continue to say it, hats off to bioware for getting pve right in 1.2

I think the enrage timers are too leniant in hard mode, and probably just fine for story mode.

Get MOX raid parser to see everyones damage not just your own.

The enrage timers were tight before, but they already nerfed it before going live. Personally I think they're fine - not had any difficulty with enrage timers on Story 16man and currently running with a pretty average geared guild.

So yeah as others suggested - use MOX Raid meter thing, and see if you can find out which dps are letting your team down.

We did not get to clear them but had issues with coordination/tactics not enrage timers, at least first 2 bosses dont seem to have that tight timers, might be later on tho but so far it seems pretty fine to me. It takes time and figuring things out.

As said above, there is no excuse not to use MOX its working fine, lack of combat logs/ability to judge dps is gone. As for theorycrafting...There's still sithwarrior.com with decent info, as well as some other resources all over., and why don't you do your own, instead of wanting to get it done by others and served on a platter anyways? DPS check is easily done on ship dummies for starters, etc etc.

Not true at all, Story Mode shouldnt be easily clearable it should be something you have to work at regardless of how good your group is due to the fact that it is dropping rakatta gear/BH comms, and to answer the main question the answer clearly is that your dps is slacking a ton, I used to heal on my sorcerer for our raids till I decided it would be best for my guild if I were to dps and replace myself with an operative, I have full columi set for dps spec and none of my other dps are in full rakatta yet we had zero issues with damage, the fact that your group has full rakatta but cant down the new raid is a testament that the content pre 1.2 was too easy. I will continue to say it, hats off to bioware for getting pve right in 1.2

What on earth are you talking about? BioWare themselfs have said that Story Mode is just that mode for players mainly interested in story. Anyway I'm 100% certain the SM of EC is getting nerfed within next 4 weeks since it doesn't really fulfill the function BW designed for it atm.

After learning the encounters by heart, the only real visible enrage timer can be felt during the Minesweeper boss in which there can emerge a certain bug that does not spawn the probe you are meant to kill in order to move forward on the minefield. If you basically miss one probe there, meaning one defusal kit, the turrets above the minefield enrage and oneshot you.

Going there the first time, sure, the enrage timers are definitely a wake-up call, but these fights essentially leave nothing left to chance once you get to know the tactics.

What on earth are you talking about? BioWare themselfs have said that Story Mode is just that mode for players mainly interested in story. Anyway I'm 100% certain the SM of EC is getting nerfed within next 4 weeks since it doesn't really fulfill the function BW designed for it atm.

Here is an idea. Work on improving your group as a whole before crying nerf. We raid 6-8 hours a week as well due to jobs, kids, school, etc and we cleared the entire dungeon in one night and cleared nm KP and hm Zorn the next night. We don't have time to raid like other raiding guilds but it doesnt matter when you are skilled and put 30 min on a training dummy with MOX to maximize dps. EC is fun because it is harder. Nerf it and it will be boring like EV.

After learning the encounters by heart, the only real visible enrage timer can be felt during the Minesweeper boss in which there can emerge a certain bug that does not spawn the probe you are meant to kill in order to move forward on the minefield. If you basically miss one probe there, meaning one defusal kit, the turrets above the minefield enrage and oneshot you.

 

Going there the first time, sure, the enrage timers are definitely a wake-up call, but these fights essentially leave nothing left to chance once you get to know the tactics.

We didn't run into that. Once our tower player learned how to do it efficiently, it doesnt take long to fly through it. You are forever stuck hoping that player is good. It took him... 7 attempts to master it and now it is like clock work.

We didn't run into that. Once our tower player learned how to do it efficiently, it doesnt take long to fly through it. You are forever stuck hoping that player is good. It took him... 7 attempts to master it and now it is like clock work.

And it took our player 2 attempts to master it ... what I'm saying is that the enrage timer can be an issue when the probe doesn't spawn where it should, it's definitely a bug and it's been present since PTS. And that is the only critical bug we've encountered during the raid. It's not something that is frequent either, so in the end it's not a real issue.

Well said story mode is meant for people who don't have as much time to play as hardcore raiders, so it should be easily clearable on first try. Not something you grind week after week.

Then it should be changed to drop nothing, if you're only there for the story. Right?

People have taken this idea of 'Story' mode to extreme lengths, and tbh I feel BW should have left it named as Normal just to avoid all this bullcrap.

End of the day - its a raid! Even on story mode, it's a raid that's do-able in Columi gear with a well co-ordinated group. Not some imba hardcore amazing player, just a normal casual guild.

And once people learn all the tactics well, Story mode will probably be able to be PuGed by a decent group.

If all you HONESTLY want is to WATCH the Story...go on youtube. I'm not suggesting you should have to work for months on beating story mode. But I DO believe that even in Story mode, content should not be 1-shotted, or even beat, on the first night of any guild trying. (Obviously noted that guilds that did beat EC Story and Hard on first night were on PTS, so not really first night).

What on earth are you talking about? BioWare themselfs have said that Story Mode is just that mode for players mainly interested in story. Anyway I'm 100% certain the SM of EC is getting nerfed within next 4 weeks since it doesn't really fulfill the function BW designed for it atm.

They said you'd still needed to progress through at least HM of the previous tier to do SM EC. You can't just jump into EC like you can with KP and EV. EC is exactly how they wanted it. It was nerfed from the PTS to Live. Other than a few bugs I don't see them changing it until the next tier. If anything maybe adjust the enrage on the 3rd boss for people that can't seem to do it fast enough. But they even said 8m would be much more difficult than 16 cause its harder to coordinate 16 people vs 8 people. If you want a easier SM EC raid 16man.

They said you'd still needed to progress through at least HM of the previous tier to do SM EC. You can't just jump into EC like you can with KP and EV. EC is exactly how they wanted it. It was nerfed from the PTS to Live. Other than a few bugs I don't see them changing it until the next tier. If anything maybe adjust the enrage on the 3rd boss for people that can't seem to do it fast enough. But they even said 8m would be much more difficult than 16 cause its harder to coordinate 16 people vs 8 people. If you want a easier SM EC raid 16man.

If you had needed to progress through hm of previous tier that would mean it expected full rakata, and it drops rakata so it definitely should not be the case. Neither it is the case as it stands, it needs similar gear (columi) as HM KP/EV, which is fine. The difficulty level is same as far as gearchecks go from what I've seen, the level of coordination is higher, which is fine, and quite refreshing as only thing in old content that needed coordination is SOA really - and bugged to high hell which doesnt seem to be the case here. IMO the raid is fine as it is right now.

If you have NM KP+EV on farm and have problems with the enrage timers in storymode EC.... Lets just say have fun with the enrage timers in hardmode EC ;-)

We also have NM KP+EV on farm since weeks/months and a few people are missing a few rakata pieces.

We got absolutely NO problem with enrage timers in storymode.

Hell, you can even heal through some mechanic if you adapt to the healnerf.

If you hit enragetimers your DPS is just to bad.

We have the same problem with Toth and Zorn Hardmode.

We hit enrage @aprox. 5-10% on each boss, then they start oneshotting people.

Our DPS is just bad, we admitt it!

You should too.

People have taken this idea of 'Story' mode to extreme lengths, and tbh I feel BW should have left it named as Normal just to avoid all this bullcrap.

 

End of the day - its a raid! Even on story mode, it's a raid that's do-able in Columi gear with a well co-ordinated group. Not some imba hardcore amazing player, just a normal casual guild.

 

And once people learn all the tactics well, Story mode will probably be able to be PuGed by a decent group.

 

If all you HONESTLY want is to WATCH the Story...go on youtube. I'm not suggesting you should have to work for months on beating story mode. But I DO believe that even in Story mode, content should not be 1-shotted, or even beat, on the first night of any guild trying. (Obviously noted that guilds that did beat EC Story and Hard on first night were on PTS, so not really first night).

Story mode ought to be doable in Columi gear with a DECENTLY coordinated group, not a well coordinated one, since the stated purpose is for pick ups, and there's no such thing as a well coordinated pick up raid, it's just not feasible. That's where the disconnect lies. I think for some of the fights, they just need to relax one or two more mechanics, lower the damage output of the aoes, lower the range, decrease the mechanics that go along with the tank switch, something (this is for Zorn and Toth, of course).

I believe this because the people that define themselves as "raiders" ought to be the ones progressing in HM and NMM when it's released. I see story mode as a testing ground for people new to raiding to see if they enjoy raiding and as a way for those new people to gear to entry level for the most current progression content. Without this ability, you end up with an ever shrinking subset of people at the very top, and very few working to cross the gap because new players who might want to get into raiding after the train has left the station have a hard time even FINDING groups that are doing content that's appropriate when major gear disparities start to creep in.

So our guild was working through SM EC 8m tonight. We only have 3 people who aren't FULL Rakkata. Both tanks weren't full Rakkata and 1 healer. (One tank was full columi and the other tank and healer were missing just a few Rakkata pieces.) The mechanics are fun and engaging. The issues we had was with enrage timers.

 

This leads me to believe that either dps stats were nerfed of the content is slightly over tuned. Now before you yell baddies at us, we had EV HM on farm at the beginning of January and KP HM on farm the second week it was out, and have cleared them (save for Soa on the really buggy weeks) every single week since. So our entire 16m raid (or 8m since not enough people showed up.) are fully geared out for this, and it's not the mechanics but the enrage we struggle with.

 

A few core problems are because of the lack of a viable means in which to judge, record and deal with metrics. Since we can only look at our own dps, we have to go through great lengths to get every single person to get their dps at maximum potential. Now even if we knew everyone's dps, it doesn't change that BW's toxic attitude to theorycrafters has made them walk away. I spent an hour or 2 just trying to find some healing numbers to compare mine to and found nothing. Worldoflogs can tell me tons about healing and dps in WoW in a single easy to go place, And Elitistjerks can help me achieve that goal.

 

So you stand at a cross roads BW. You can man up and make a full team real time combat log so we can all improve as players and as a team. Or you can force us to struggle on invisible enrage timers which are too tight because metrics are shunned and theorycrafters are told to go away.

 

TL;DR: Mechanics are great and I love them. Making me jump through hoops to work on the dps of my team after you shun all of the theorycrafters is unacceptable, especially given how insanely tight your enrage timers are for people in FULL rakkata gear.

Oh and yeah you can see everyones dps now. if you all want to know how plz ask. would be more than willing to show how.

Not true at all, Story Mode shouldnt be easily clearable it should be something you have to work at regardless of how good your group is due to the fact that it is dropping rakatta gear/BH comms, and to answer the main question the answer clearly is that your dps is slacking a ton, I used to heal on my sorcerer for our raids till I decided it would be best for my guild if I were to dps and replace myself with an operative, I have full columi set for dps spec and none of my other dps are in full rakatta yet we had zero issues with damage, the fact that your group has full rakatta but cant down the new raid is a testament that the content pre 1.2 was too easy. I will continue to say it, hats off to bioware for getting pve right in 1.2

I agree with this 100%!! great job Bioware!!! everything is setup amazing these new raids are tough but definately worth it.