With 4.0 we will have 48 ops bosses available simultaneously, all dropping loot. I wonder if lockout system can remain as is, as this way everybody doing them multiple times a week will be fully geared in SM gear in weeks.

This can only be nice if people then continue on harder content, if not then you gear all alts and have nothing more to do. Unfortunately a lot of people do not, and jump in difficulty from SM to HM is significant enough that less skilled and experienced players would be overwhelmed and discouraged from doing so.

Furthermore, if highlighted operation is of HM tier and you have done it before on the same week you might get locked out of it, if there is no way to know in advance what will be available this week. If so, you would be forced to avoid doing non-highlighted HM ops at all, and as a result endgame progression would be such that you go as deep as you can in each op each day and if you don't manage do kill some boss you will have to try again in the future from scratch and if your group does not raid every day and these ops are decent challenge... you might not even getting a chance to do some highlighted ops for a long time.

With 4.0 we will have 48 ops bosses available simultaneously, all dropping loot. I wonder if lockout system can remain as is, as this way everybody doing them multiple times a week will be fully geared in SM gear in weeks.

 

This can only be nice if people then continue on harder content, if not then you gear all alts and have nothing more to do. Unfortunately a lot of people do not, and jump in difficulty from SM to HM is significant enough that less skilled and experienced players would be overwhelmed and discouraged from doing so.

 

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Thing is because there's more ops of different difficulties in regards to mechanics it will be much easier for people to step into HM raiding after SM. People can now progress how it was intended and learn mechanics from older fights first rather than just jumping straight into the deep end and being expect to clear the latest and greatest ops which generally get significantly tougher than the last lot.

I mean look at 3.0 with ToS and ravagers, they were essentially "NiM lite" and there's a lot of half decent guilds that still haven't cleared them despite them only being labelled as a HM and you are often expected to be a competent NiM clearer before even setting foot in these. This was a lot different for other HM's, where while they were tougher than SM and some bosses required a good few wipes you didn't need to be an overly hardcore player to clear them.

In essence 4.0 makes at level HM raiding less exclusive as 3.0 made it and opens it up to everyone.

Furthermore, if highlighted operation is of HM tier and you have done it before on the same week you might get locked out of it, if there is no way to know in advance what will be available this week. If so, you would be forced to avoid doing non-highlighted HM ops at all, and as a result endgame progression would be such that you go as deep as you can in each op each day and if you don't manage do kill some boss you will have to try again in the future from scratch and if your group does not raid every day and these ops are decent challenge... you might not even getting a chance to do some highlighted ops for a long time.

I think the highlighted HM resets on reset day like everything else so if you already stepped into it then it would be buffed anyway with the new gear. Obviously some highlighted ops like ToS or ravagers might prevent more casual people from doing their weekly highlighted HM some weeks however they can still get gear in the long run.

In essence 4.0 makes at level HM raiding less exclusive as 3.0 made it and opens it up to everyone.

Well if I am right your 8man raid team can be ready for HM in two weeks. SM Pugs will remain active longer, but without transition to HM raiding I fear there will be nothing else for them to do. Not sure what will be the purpose of coms and HM FPs if SM ops gear will be so abundant.

If my understanding is right the weekly highlighted OP will change on the weekly reset and not daily, so that way guilds have time to actually do progression,

Ah nice, I missed that. Its better but still your guild can miss opportunity to get best mainhand or such, as I understand only highlighted operation will give best gear and you have no control over what is available and when.

Well if I am right your 8man raid team can be ready for HM in two weeks. SM Pugs will remain active longer, but without transition to HM raiding I fear there will be nothing else for them to do. Not sure what will be the purpose of coms and HM FPs if SM ops gear will be so abundant.

SM pugs will transition into the easier HM's, EV & KP for example even if they do end up being tightly tuned with dps/healing checks the mechanics themselves aren't anything more advanced than anything in later SM ops. They were essentially SM+ rather than anything like the HM's bioware have been releasing for the past 2 years and shouldn't be that much trouble for groups who have finished all the SM's.

Ah nice, I missed that. Its better but still your guild can miss opportunity to get best mainhand or such, as I understand only highlighted operation will give best gear and you have no control over what is available and when.

From what heard there will be 3-4 bosses that drop each piece of loot some easier than others. So if one particular highlighted op your group can't do there's always going to be an easier one another week that drops that particular piece just it will obviously take you longer to get it then a more hardcore NiM clearing guild would but at least you have the opportunity to earn 224 rating gear at some point and not stuck to SM or vendor trash like things are currently.

Thing is because there's more ops of different difficulties in regards to mechanics it will be much easier for people to step into HM raiding after SM. People can now progress how it was intended and learn mechanics from older fights first rather than just jumping straight into the deep end and being expect to clear the latest and greatest ops which generally get significantly tougher than the last lot.

Just IMO, (mechanically) newer (story mode) operations have become easier. With the (definite) exception of underlurker - leaving the cross aside, its DPS requirements do not align with the other 47 bosses - and possibly one or two others, I would say that at level, Denova was a more difficult SM operation than the following 4.

And of the latest two, only UL and release version of SS were in that same category. Part of this is certainly the addition of augmentation, but IMO theres more to it.

The first three operations typically had a few mechanics that mattered, and HM/NM level versions involved new mechanics. I believe this is because when the first few operations were created, they were not designed with NM in mind.

It is pretty clear comparing pre-TFB to post-TFB that NM was considered in the original fight design in all of the latter encounters. The problem as I see it was how BW chose to implement things. In general, newer fights had many mechanics in SM but they were radically watered down versions of them. In other words - TFB -> present story mode encounters had a large number of ingnorable mechanics. I feel better design would have had fewer mechanics but actually made them matter.

I don't think I am alone in saying that the average skill level of the casual player has declined over the past couple years and I believe it is a result of poor execution of NM mechanics appearing in SM operations as nothing more than ignorable castbars.

That said - to your point - I do not believe content will be consumed "intended" - i.e. there will be a natural progression of SM -> HM -> NM. What's going to happen is simply many players are going to run all of the SMs for a week or two and then spam fleet chat for "highlighted" HM pugs. These are going to be some of the scariest things ever.

I mean look at 3.0 with ToS and ravagers, they were essentially "NiM lite" and there's a lot of half decent guilds that still haven't cleared them despite them only being labelled as a HM and you are often expected to be a competent NiM clearer before even setting foot in these. This was a lot different for other HM's, where while they were tougher than SM and some bosses required a good few wipes you didn't need to be an overly hardcore player to clear them.

 

In essence 4.0 makes at level HM raiding less exclusive as 3.0 made it and opens it up to everyone.

It certainly does but I think may people are going to be very, very surprised at how difficult even older HM raids are if they have joined the game within the past 2 years and have historically been SM-level players.

Well if I am right your 8man raid team can be ready for HM in two weeks. SM Pugs will remain active longer, but without transition to HM raiding I fear there will be nothing else for them to do. Not sure what will be the purpose of coms and HM FPs if SM ops gear will be so abundant.

an 8man raid team that's actually prepared for the expansion will be geared for and clearing most hardmodes in the first week of lockouts. Legacy gear is love, legacy gear is life.

an 8man raid team that's actually prepared for the expansion will be geared for and clearing most hardmodes in the first week of lockouts. Legacy gear is love, legacy gear is life.

This.

Was the same when tfb was rescaled to 55. Everyone and his mother who had it on farm on HM before just leveled up, didn't even bother to get differen't gear than they were wearing the day before and cleared it on the same day 2.0 was released.