I, for one, am absolutely looking forward to 2.5 seconds of increased force regen every 12.5 seconds. Truly, it has been one of my greatest regrets in life that, every half a million years, when I accidentally spam thrash once too many times, I find myself at 30 force, instead of the comfy 55 I usually sit at. And lo, and behold the benevolent overlords have heard me and my great shame has been undone. By Kephes' sweaty cloaca, I can even Lacerate single targets now, if I so choose. On an unrelated note: Remember when the devs said they don't want to stealthily introduce changes to the game? Yeah, that lasted.

That's...that's not how taunts work. Mind Control(Mass or otherwise) does two things: Forces the affected enemies to attack the controler for 6 seconds. Moves the controller up to the number 1 position in the threat table and gives him 10% more threat than whoever was #1 beforehand.(If it's the first ability used you get 10% of 0, which is still 0) A sin tank that uses mass taunt as his opening ability essentially enters a 6 second threat race with the other members of the group. Barring an incredibly crummy group, he will lose that race every single time. I'm starting to get the feeling that there's a pretty big disconnect between how the devs want the classes to be used and how they actually get used.

Whether you have 290k or 16k HP, the reverse-bolster won't address the fact that new abilities make more than half of the operations trivial even at the highest difficulty(minus the last bosses where the multi-phase nature of the encounters will still somewhat challenge people). And that's pre 6.0. With the changes they're bringing to classes, coupled with the reduction in HP(which will not account for the new way most classes function now), my guess is that outside of Gods NiM and the new operation, everything else will be a faceroll.

Thank you for the work you've put into this. Assuming I end up attempting to gear up for OPS when 6.0 drops, this will be invaluable. Wish we'd get some clarification as to the logic behind the amount of modifications we're getting. Was there a thread I missed when the masses of players rose up against the low number of mods available? Who is this system supposed to be fun for?

I remember them saying on one of the earlier streams that they were looking at alacrity and how it works. Kinda not thrilled that nothing has been said about whether it was staying as it is now or being reworked.

I tested the new updated system last night for a bit. Here are the numbers, conclusions at the end: TL;DR: While improved(both quantity and quality-wise) drops are ok. They are nowhere near enough to create an enjoyable experience. Cut down on the RNG. Give a clear path to getting gear which allows players a degree of agency. Taakaana vendor, got batches of 3k tech fragments, bought 12 items, kept the upgrades deconstructed everything else: 1. iRating 289: 6 sidegrades, 4 upgrades, 2 downgrades. 1 item was for a different role. Deconstructing 12 288(ish) items gave me 57 tech fragments. 2. iRating 290: 4 sidegrades, 0 upgrades, 8 downgrades. all items were role-appropriate. Deconstructing 12 288(ish items gave me 54 tech fragments. 3. iRating 290: 0 sidegrades, 1 upgrade, 11 downgrades. all items were role appropriate. Deconstructing 12 288(ish) items gave me 54 tech fragments. 4. iRating 290: 0 sidegrades, 3 upgrades*, 9 downgrades. *of the 3 upgrades 2 were for a different role. Deconstructing 12 290(ish) items gave me 54 tech fragmens. 5. iRating 290: 0 sidegrades, 3 upgrades*, 9 downgrades. 1 of the upgrades was for a different role. Deocnstructing 12 290(ish) items gave me 60 tech fragments. 6. iRating 291: 3 sidegrades, 0 upgrades, 9 downgrades. 2 of the items were for a different role. Deconstructing 12 290-ish items gave me 65 tech fragments. At this point I got a pop for Hammer Station MM. Flashpoint took roughly 30 minutes to complete(going back to a 1.5 gcd, no autocrits etc. is definitely not an experience I look forward to on live), summary of the drops is: 32 items in total: 20 upgrades, 4 sidegrades, 0 downgrades, 3 role-appropriate enhancements and 1 mod. Unfortunately, in terms of what I could equip the number of upgrades goes down to 6(since a lot of them were duplicates). Final boss dropped a general set-bonus piece. Deconstructing everything(after equipping the upgrades, obviously) gave me 151 tech fragments. Completing the weekly added another 100 tech fragments. And the bosses(probably another source I didn't notice too) also gave me 90 tech fragments. Second Hammer Station MM. Flashpoint took about 20 minutes(2 people in optimized 306 were in the group), with an added 5-10 minutes dealing with the "Unable to return to medcenter during boss fight" bug. Drops were: 27 items in total: 11 upgrades, 8 sidegrades, 8 downgrades, 1 of the items was for a different role. Pretty big chunk of duplicates. Final boss dropped a merc healer tactical(which was appropriate, since we had a merc healer in group). Deconstructing everything I didn't equip netted 151 tech fragments. That's all I had time for. Conclusion(s): The good(ish): The more generous drops in MM HS did feel better, I don't know if I was just lucky or if some protections were put in place but the items dropping were within a tier of my item level, which alleviated some of the frustrations from the first phase. As a supplemental method of gearing it's ok. Will have to test drops while chasing BiS items, but I have a feeling the situation is a lot grimmer then. Just to make it clear: Running a flashpoint and hoping you get one of the six items you need out of a pool of 360 is not a good main venue of obtaining gear. The (terri)bad: In the current format, the vendor is pointless outside of throwing some bantha poo-doo at the wall when Kai is gone so you don't completely waste tech fragments once you're close to the cap. Sidegrades are still more likely than upgrades and downgrades can still go down up to 5 tiers(that's the lowest I've gotten, could be worse). Generally, the acquisition rate for tech fragments doesn't feel great. It would probably feel even worse if the vendor had any sort of decent chance at giving out stuff you're looking for. I feel like you guys should make a decision in one direction or another when it comes to moddable gear outside of the endgame sets. Either get rid of 90% of the non-moddable stuff and flood the market with mods and enhancements so people can micro-manage(or not) to their hearts' content OR get rid of the moddable stuff up to iLevel 302, at which point you no longer get non-moddable stuff but instead...*drum-roll* shells with set bonuses and mods. It's not an ideal solution but it will mitigate some of the problems raised by a loot pool that is both deep and almost entirely useless at the same time. The Ug(h)ly: Is renown working as intended? Because the gain of ranks seems slower than a drunk Hutt going uphill and the rewards are...underwhelming.

I'm sorry, I made an attempt at sarcasm and forgot that tone just doesn't get conveyed properly in writing. Also, can we all just take a moment to appreciate the sheer insanity of 6.0? After 3 years(give or take) of being told and shown by the community that making RNG the main drive behind the gearing process is unacceptable, the team(whose public-facing devs have made a point of clearly stating that lessons have been learned and feedback heard) comes up with an even more RNG-driven method of gear progression. This feels like an episode of Tom and Jerry. But with a script written by Kafka and story-boards drawn by Dali.

See, that's very much not true. The loot itself was not RNG, you knew which content dropped which piece of gear, giving you a clear path towards getting what you wanted. The RNG was tied to whether the piece of gear that dropped was appropriate for your class and to whether you actually won the roll for it. You could actually mitigate the second bit of RNG by running with a group of people that you knew. To summarize, you could do a particular activity and know you had a 1 in 4(or 8, for Operations) chance of getting the item you wanted. In 5.0 part two: Electric Boogaloo, the last boss in a Flashpoint drops 1 set-bonus or tactical item from a pool of 484. And then you have to roll for it against 3 other people. How would you rate the odds of getting a piece of gear that you're actively interested in getting ?

After reading your feedback, I must surmise that you think the RNG is slightly skewed towards unrewarding and would like to get *checks notes* more random drops than you are currently getting. I was worried you were going to suggest bringing back targeted grinds for gear you actually had an interest in using. Phew. Dodged that bullet.

Let me start by saying that I hate it when people use hyperbole when talking about videogames(I mean "oH MaAh GaWHd, tHe gAMe iS ruINeD aNd tHe dEvVS aRe aS bAd aS dAhMeR!"- type arguments), but after testing the gearing systems currently in place for a good couple of hours, all I can say is that they are atrocious in their current state. In no particular order: 1. Upgrades never jump a tier. If your ilevel is 270, you will get 272s until your ilevel is 271, at least. Downgrades, on the other hand can go as low as 12 ilevels. And that's from the vendor. Burning through a 3k stack of tech fragments at iLevel 288(12 items) gave me 6 downgrades(272-282) 4 sidegrades(286-288) and 2 actual upgrades. One of the upgrades was a tank off-hand, the other was a healing relic. I was playing a marauder. 2. Having all classes and specs in the loot-pool when determining drops makes gearing even more agonizingly slow, especially when hunting for set-bonus shells. 3.The ridiculous cap on tech fragments, coupled with making the only vendor that sells stuff that isn't determined by a roll of the dice available only at specific times is the exact opposite of "play your way". If you work during the weekends(I tend to) you're very much left holding your polesaber, since you can only get maybe 4 or 5 items off him(depending on how efficiently you grind tech fragments during the one day you have access to him), 4.Playing without any sort of set-bonus or meeting any of the stat thresholds that mark power spikes for your toon for a long-*** time is gonna drive whatever's left of the raiding community away faster than you can say "MM Dxun is coming about six to eight months after 6.0 launches). 5.The ridonckulous crafting requirements for even the most basic stuff means that there won't be any cheap-ish augments available to mitigate some of the problems raised in my previous point. It feels like Bioware decided a long time ago that it can't create content fast enough to keep up with what players wanted and, rather than try to find a middle ground went with insanely time-gated releases that get slowly improved over time.

See, this is why I have trust issues. Does acquiring gear feel too fast? Too slow? Actual progression feels too slow. And the issue is made worse by the fact that a. there is no point in optimizing your stats in any way shape or form(leading to a poor game-play experience) b. your damage output in content that is supposed to be the fast-track to better gear is on par with what you get when you're bolstered pre-level 70 on live. Do you understand what to do to get gear? Yes. Do you understand how, once Onslaught goes live, off-putting it will be to grind 30-40 minutes only to have to roll the dice at the vendor and hope you won't get a tank off-hand as a marauder? How do you feel about the primary sources of getting gear? (playing content and Missions) I very much look forward to running Hammer Station MM 845 times, in order to maybe get decent enough gear to run Karagga's Palace VM 357 times so that maybe, just maybe, as my nephews leave for college in 50 years, I can actually try my hand at the Dxun operation in VM. How do you feel about the contribution of the supplementary systems? (vendors, crafting, Renown) I can't even pretend to be angry about the layers upon layers of RNG at the [uNIDENTIFIED PIECE OF EQUIPMENT] vendor or about the prohibitive cost of getting set-bonuses or tactical items that I need in order to play the content I want to(bonus points for making the mods inside of those random, too). At this point, I'm just disappointed.

The old set bonuses are going away with 6.0. As in they won't be active on the old armorings either, so there's that to look forward to.

Bumping because, while my bigly brain definitely understood all the math, some kind soul may be interested in translating this into dum-dum speak. Which I definitely don't need. Since I absolutely understand the curving equations and solving for c. Shut up.

Yeah, that bug was annoying, thankfully I only seem to get it for the ferocity(and obliterate when using Fury) ability, which made testing the 50% permanent armor penetration thing relatively easy. It doesn't keep up with the rest of the spec, even with adjustments. That was my point. Ravage hits like a wet noodle and DB and Gore, even used more often(it's not that huge an increase, btw) don't even come close to the damage output under 100% ferocity. The only saving grace is the Vicious Throw procs(with the appropriate set bonus), especially in the execute phase, where you can cram 3-4 of them in a very short window. That being said, it might perform better on a lower alacrity threshold with a tonne more crit built up. Haven't had a chance to try that yet, it'll probably have to wait until phase 1.5 Look forward to seeing what you can do with the Hyper TAC build. Be sure to share

Uhm. Wat?