I still have yet to see confirmation that Power has no diminishing returns after the 1.2 patch. They made a reallybig deal of the fact that they were changing the underlying combat formulas specifically because some stats had diminishing returns and other stats didn't. One would expect that as a result of this, Power would now have diminishing returns.

I really wish people would stop repeating the 98% accuracy number. Now that we have damage logs and test dummies, we know that number is wrong. Whether it's always been wrong, or whether something changed in 1.2 at the same time as they added the logs and dummies, is (I think) unknown. The correct number is 100%, because raid bosses have 10% (not 8% as previously thought) resistance/dodge/whatever. This isn't something people should be arguing about, because it's very easy to go wail on the Mark V training dummy and then upload your log to one of the bazillion parsers that are available. If you have 100% accuracy, you will see misses from Strike and from your attacks that use the offhand weapon (since offhand weapon accuracy is much lower than your total accuracy), but you will not see any misses from any of your other powers. If you then do the same thing with 98% accuracy, you will see misses from attacks that just use the mainhand.

If by "progression raiding environment" you mean guilds that have already cleared 4/4 in Hard Mode EC, then you are correct. I have no doubt those people are using Exotech Adrenals 2 or more times every fight. You are also talking about way less than 1% of the players. If your argument rests on "it's fine for way less than 1% of the players", I think you don't have a very strong argument. If by "progression raiding environment" you mean guilds that have had HM and maybe NM EV & KP on farm for a while now, have cleared SM EC, and are working on HM EC, then you're flat out wrong. Indisputably, completely wrong. These people are not using Exotech Adrenals. Maybe your particular guild or your friends do, but to generalize that to everyone else is crazy. My guild is the largest on our server (at least Republic side), and we progress faster than any other guild I know of (there may be a small one that does 8 mans that's faster that I don't know about), and NO ONE in my guild uses Exotech adrenals. The SWTOR mailing list I'm on at work has a couple hundred people on it, and NO ONE has ever spoken up and claimed to use Exotech adrenals when we've had long mail threads lamenting how much better Bio is than any other profession. You'd have to be utterly insane to think that the average guild that's currently struggling on HM EC is filled with player that use Exotech adrenals, so I'm just going to assume that your definition of "progression raiding environment" is the first one I described, and that you're only addressing you arguments to the <1% of the players that are in that group. In that case, what you say is true, but I don't think it's very compelling because it applies to so few people.

I did the same thing this weekend. A bit frustrating that almost no lower level ingredients were available on GTN, so I had to send my crew out on boatloads of missions, but still didn't take long. And yes, we were missing out. The initial burst DPS with the Adrenal is just sick.

Words fail me. Yeah, you're right. Some pieces are identical (boots, waist). But for others, the Pummeler Heavy Armor pieces have mods that are better than those in the Foestopper set. For example, here's the headgear: Pummeler's Headgear: 121 Strength 108 Endurance 82 Critical 57 Accuracy Foestopper's Headgear: 98 Strength 158 Endurance 54 Critical 57 Surge And here's the chest: Pummeler: 121 Strength 108 Endurance 82 Critical 57 Surge Foestopper: 98 Strength 158 Endurance 54 Critical 57 Surge

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No worries. My experience is it's very useful for doing dailies, as you're always being attacked; and it's very useful on trash pulls, where you're often being attacked; but it's only useful on some of the bos fights, and even then not to the same degree. Basically, you can't live through a boss attacking you constantly, so Rebuke isn't actually firing every 1.5 seconds on boss fights. Still, there are plenty of boss fights with AOE that comes out fairly regularly, so it feels to me as if it still generates a reasonable amount of focus in those fights.

Automating 10% of my decisions is not the same thing as having macros play the game for me. "Playing the game for me" would mean it makes all decisions for me. It's unnecessarily insulting. I believe you when you say that you find it easy to keep track of the very small iconos that appear in completely different places depending on how many of them are active at a given time, while at the same time monitoring the cooldowns of a half dozen abilities by looking at your quickbar, while at the same time watching the action going on. I truly do. But many of us can't, and we shouldn't be asked to. There's absolutely no reason why you can't have bright, obvious visual clues placed right next to or around your character. There's no reason why every time a major ability procs you shouldn't get an obvious sound played through your speakers. Being able to move your eyes from the center of the screen to the small icons to the quickbar over and over again multiple times per second is indeed a skill. Given the current state of the UI, a player that has that skill will do better than a player that doesn't. But I don't think it's a particularly interesting skill , nor do I find it a skill that's enjoyable to employ. I don't see it as being any different than if the game rewarded players for, say, solving complicated algeba problems very quickly: it would be a skill, people that could do it quickly would outperform people that couldn't, and even though I could outperform 99% of the player at it, I still wouldn't find it fun. I don't think the ability to monitor your procs and CDs with the current UI is interesting. I don't think it should distinguish good players from bad players, even though it currently does. I would much rather have good players distinguished from bad players by their ability to make interesting decisions on the fly, like where to stand, who/what to attack, which abilities to use based on focus management, when to employ defensive CDs, when to interrupt, how to direct other players, and so on. There are huge differences in skill between good and bad players on these dimensions, and unlike monitoring procs and CDs, I find these decisions to be interesting. Using macros allows me to partially compensate for the cruddy UI and spend a higher percentage of my time and attention making decisions that are interesting to me. This may be true, but it is not necessarily true. It is not the case that it is a logical necessity that it be true. Monitoring CDs and procs is a mechanical process. It consumes time and attention, and some people are better at it than others, but I don't think it's "hard" in any interesting way. If I am using the time and attention that I would otherwise be spending on monitoring those procs and CDs on calling out directions to my teammates on vent, or timing my Inspiration correctly because I'm tracking what the other DPS is doing, or intentionally drawing aggro for a few seconds because I can see my tank is in trouble, then the game has not become any easier for me; I've just replaced one use of my time with another use of my time. Put another way: if you're saying that macros automate something that other players are needing to spend some amount of time or effort or thought on, then that means someone using macros has that amount of time or effort or thought available to spend on something else. If he just wastes it, then yes, the game has gotten easier for that person-- he's able to relax a bit more. But if, instead, that player uses those resources to do something else, then the game hasn't gotten any easier for that player-- he's spending just as much effort as he was before. He's just traded one set of tasks for another set of tasks. I lose about 100-150 dps by using macros, at least on the training dummies. So it's not lke the macros give me everything that I would have if I was playing manually, PLUS the ability to concentrate on something else. I pay a price for using macros, because I think it's worth it to my raid for me to make the tradeoff to be able to spend more attention on other tasks. It's a trade, not an addition. Whether the trade is good or bad, whether the trade resultss in me spending more or less effort, is an empirical question, not one that can be answered by simple logic.

Aren't these statements contradictory? I also think you'd make a better case for your viewpoint if you stopped saying that macros "play the game for you". That's so obviously untrue that it calls into question everything else you say. You are still faced with a nearly overwhelming number of things to keep track of. I have all of my attacks macroed down to 4 main button presses, with another 3 that I use situationally. Despite that, I have 21 buttons keybound that I use on a regular basis. If SWTOR gave me adequate proc and CD tracking-- e.g. easily recognizable visual and audio clues that did not require me to look down at my quickbar-- I would probably un-macro most or all of what I have macroed right now. As it is, no longer needing to track as many procs and CDs has given me enough of my attention back that I can usefully guide my raid, call out instructions, cover for mistakes I'm seeing, etc. The game has NOT become any easier for me; it's just that I'm now paying attention to different things and making different decisions.

I don't understand your math. Where do you get the number 4 from? If you're being attacked, Rebuke is up for half the fight. It continuously refreshes because you're being attacked, up to the 30 second maximum, so it's up for 30 seconds at a time. The CD on it is 60 seconds. So it's up for half the fight (again, for those fights where you're taking damage-- and yes, getting hit with an AOE on a boss fight DOES refresh Rebuke). During the time that it's up, it deals damage every 1.5 seconds, assuming you're being continuously attacked or taking continuous damage from an AOE. Obviously that's a best-case scenario, but you were claiming that 4 was the absolute maximum, so we need to consider best-case. Every time it deals damage, you have a 50% chance (with only a single skill point) or 100% chance (with two skill points) of gaining focus, but you can't gain focus more than once in 3 seconds, which is why I only go with a single point-- the 2nd point seems like it would be wasted much of the time. So in a single 30 seconds stretch, Rebuke could fire 20 times (if you were constantly being attacked), and best case you'd gain 10 focus. So that's 10 focus in 30 seconds (and also 10 focus in 60 seconds, since for the next 30 seconds Rebuke is down). Is my math off? If so, where?

That's an extra 5% damage. From a single slot. How is that useless? That's enormous.

Why not one point in Jedi Crusader and only two in Dual Wield Mastery? Isn't the extra focus worth more than the paltry 12% on off-hand attacks?

But you can level from 0-400 in one day WHILE STILL RAIDING OR RUNNING FLASHPOINTS OR DOING DAILIES. It eats up maybe a grand total of 30 minutes of your time, to figure out which recipes to craft, hit the GTN for any mats your guild bank doesn't have or you don't have left over from previous professions, assign your crew members to missions, etc. So saying "I'm going to keep my 400 Artifice because someday it will be great" makes no sense to me. None. I don't get it at all. I could get keeping it for roleplaying reasons. I could get keeping it because your guild relies on you to make their crit lightsabers (thought I think that would be a lame reason, I'd still understand it). But I don't get keeping it because it will be good "someday", when the cost of moving between professions is 30 minutes of your time and a small outlay of credits (we can argue about the number, but certainly well less than you can get by just doing the dailies in Ilulm and Corellia, so 60-90 minutes of your time). I also don't understand people who are saying that you should keep artifice because you can make lightsabers with augment slots and high end color crystals. Please explain this to me. I need 2 lightsabers and 2 color crystals. I could get all of those for the price of the materials from someone in my guild who isn't into raiding and has Artifice because they're not interested in min/maxing. If I wasn't in a guild, I could take the crystals out of my rakata lightsabers (we are talking about raiders here, let's be reasonable, they have access to +41 crystals without needing to resort to an artificer), so I'd only need to buy the lightsabers. The price on those varies from server to server, and hasn't stabalized yet on all servers, but worst-case scenario you're looking at a total of maybe 600k. Probably a lot less, but shouldn't be more than that. So you're saying that it's worth staying in Artifice to save 600k? It is true that you can use Exotech adrenals that are better than the re-usable adrenals that Biochems can make. If you are one of the handful of guilds that is clearing Nightmare mode Ops within a week of 1.2 coming out, then yeah, you're going to use those. For everyone else, there's a serious tradeoff to be made. We're not talking about a couple of hours of farming dailies to buy a couple of lightsabers. If you're using an Exotech Adrenal every time the CD is up on every boss fight, you're talking serious amounts of cash. Even if you're getting them for the cost of the materials from a guild mate (and I pity the guy that's making stacks of exotech adrenals for 5 other people that want to raid), you're still looking at spending many hours every week just to pay for your adrenals. Or you can live with a slightly worse adrenal that's free. That's actually a real decision, it's not a slam dunk to pay for the exotech; and in fact, I don't know of a single person on my server that actually uses the exotech adrenals. Ever. I don't really care, I'm not that interested in crafting and the overall DPS increase from using the adrenal vs. not using it is small enough that I'm willing to live with it. It would make the difference from time to time-- for example, running a bunch of undergeared guild mates through HM EV last night, we wiped when Soa had 8,000 health left, which probably would have been accounted for by the free biochem adrenal-- but it wouldn't make the difference often enough to get me all worked up about it. It just means an extra attempt from time to time. If I was in a high end progression raiding guild, then of course that attitude wouldn't be acceptable.

It took my guild way more than a week to clear EV on normal mode. It took us way more than a week to clear KP on normal mode. We cleared EC on story mode in a week, and it wasn't particularly difficult. We made it way harder than it needed to be by doing the first 3 bosses on 16 man (and would have had the 4th down if our main tank didn't need to log off)-- Bioware still hasn't fixed the 8/16 man balance. To give you an idea of how NOT hardcore my guild is: I've wiped 30+ times on the 2nd boss in the new HM FP with two different groups (all guild members), the majority of us in full Rakata. I still haven't killed him. If we can clear EC in story mode in a week, I just can't imagine it's overtuned. I'm sorry, I hate the false-bragging-by-claiming-the-content-is-easy tactic as much as the next guy, and it bugs me to know some of you are going to think that's what I'm doing, but... it really, truly isn't hard.

That's just crazy. I think it's perfectly valid to want a "story mode" where you can kill the bosses and see the content without being a "hardcore" guild, but being able to down every raid boss you encounter in 6 or fewer tries isn't raiding. Players that get frustrated that easily should realize that they don't enjoy raiding (there's nothing wrong with that) and find something else to do wiith their time. If they truly just want to see the story elements and the pretty scenery, they can wait until 1.3 comes out, get overgeared, and then go back and see the 1.2 raid content. Also note that I don't even think that the 1st boss is the hardest one. I think that depending on your Ops composition, the 2nd fight (with the two tanks) can be significantly harder.