R4 is definitely in need of a nerf on sm.

IP- 2 consoles to click, not 4.

Watchdog: I kind of think this is fine as is.

Kanoth: Fine as is

Lady Dom: Definitely no to Monstrosities in SM. It would be inherently easier in burn, but is that enough? The dps required seems too high. Would removing the monstrosities make that doable? I'm not sure.

I did the ops last week. I was in a group which was half good raiders and half pug raiders. We were on voicechat. We oneshotted the bosses till last boss, which took us 4 tries. We went in with 5 dps and 1 tank.

Its true the fight required 129k dps, but one of our dps for example did less dps than then tank, but yes, we carried him. It wasnt hard to explain and follow the tactics, rest was just dps. People werent all in full 330 gear.

I think the ops is fine, not puggable, but fine.

Before R4 came out, the SM design was set up so that just about anyone could do it. The design of R4 violated that design philosophy. Were SMs easy? Absolutely. That was the entire intention to give maximum accessibility to the vast majority of the player base.

 

In creating R4 SM, they created encounters that the majority of people cannot defeat. Most of the player base are not raiders. They are casuals, RPers, and solo/story players. Previous to this, they were still carriable if need be. No one can be easily carried through R4 SM unless the rest of the group is extremely proficient.

 

I have yet to hear about a single true PUG group complete the op. Very few even beat the first boss, much less Lady D. To make matters worse, even after a week, I've not heard of anyone outside of a NiM or Hardmare team clearing the op. I have heard of a few PUGs getting to the last boss, but not many. And of course, they did not beat it.

 

As for the Lady D fight itself, most of it is actually fairly straightforward. The real fight doesn't really start until the burn. That's the part that overwhelms people. For a SM, it should not be as difficult as it is. Between the adds and the knockback, things could be going fine, but the next moment, they are not.

 

SM should not be designed for dedicated raiders. As previously mentioned, there are a lot of people that want to do it for their story quest, which was given as an alliance alert of all things, which means there will be a lot of true story mode players that want to do it just to see the cut scenes. As things are, they'll never be able to see it.

 

To those of you who say it's fine as it is, I propose a challenge to you. Go form a random fleet PUG, not some pug via discord. Take 7 other true SM randoms in to R4 and see how hard it is to complete it, if you can. The odds of a successful run under those conditions are extremely low I would suspect.

Can we elect this man as the casual representative to the player council? Jests aside, you articulated everything I felt. Well put, sir.

I did the ops last week. I was in a group which was half good raiders and half pug raiders. We were on voicechat. We oneshotted the bosses till last boss, which took us 4 tries. We went in with 5 dps and 1 tank.

 

Its true the fight required 129k dps, but one of our dps for example did less dps than then tank, but yes, we carried him. It wasnt hard to explain and follow the tactics, rest was just dps. People werent all in full 330 gear.

 

I think the ops is fine, not puggable, but fine.

That a SM is not puggable is the problem. It should be. Additionally, that 129K dps means that everyone (including the tank) did on average over 21k dps, assuming healers were not dpsing.. Your tank wasn't hitting that hard, so that means that everyone other than that 1 lowest dps was juicing. Let's just say the tank and that lowest dps count as 1 dps, so that would mean on average over 25K dps per person. All that says is that the run is sellable, and even then, the buyer would have to be able to do the knockbacks

Additionally, that dps check is higher than HM Styrak, in 7.0. I haven't done it this week, so I don't know what it's like now. I mention Styrak because SNV is universally accepted as the first real HM op, as far as difficulty is concerned. That a SM boss has a higher dps check than a HM boss is flawed design.

As for not being in full 330, good for you guys. That means you know your specs and can perform, even without the best gear. That's not the majority of players. They depend on gear to help them overcome their deficiencies. Your average player does not pull over 25k. Your average prog raider might, but not your average player. SM is supposed to be designed around your average player, and not your average prog raider.

.....

 

To those of you who say it's fine as it is, I propose a challenge to you. Go form a random fleet PUG, not some pug via discord. Take 7 other true SM randoms in to R4 and see how hard it is to complete it, if you can. The odds of a successful run under those conditions are extremely low I would suspect.

Is Gods SM fleet PUGgable? So we have now 2 operations which cannot be pugged on SM? From what? 12? (if I count multi boss ops only) Maybe having something little bit more difficult won't hurt.

What is bad is hiding a story behind it.

Is Gods SM fleet PUGgable? So we have now 2 operations which cannot be pugged on SM? From what? 12? (if I count multi boss ops only) Maybe having something little bit more difficult won't hurt.

 

What is bad is hiding a story behind it.

I have random pugged Gods and Dxun SM successfully. Granted, i had to get them into voice eventually, but I got them in, explained things, and called stuff out as we went, and we cleared them. As posted by another person previously, having something a little bit more difficult is ok. Having it be a lot more difficult is not, for a SM.

That a story is gated behind it is terrible. R4 has low accessibility for story players.

SM is already difficult for many pug groups, between 1st boss check, people blowing each other up and moving when not supposed to on watchdog and the chaos that is dom.

Personally I love the op (minus hallway of death. Y'all need to fix that).

Now I get to 1st boss of HM. Nerf the boss. The check is too high IMO. And it's not even boss health. Overload and inferno droid having 2.7 mil hp. Big bombs shouldn't drop you 40% if you used your aoe Dr on a previous bomb.

When calphy, styrak chain, terror and ec kephess to me are a easier dps check on NiM, there's a issue.

I have random pugged Gods and Dxun SM successfully. Granted, i had to get them into voice eventually, but I got them in, explained things, and called stuff out as we went, and we cleared them. As posted by another person previously, having something a little bit more difficult is ok. Having it be a lot more difficult is not, for a SM.

 

That a story is gated behind it is terrible. R4 has low accessibility for story players.

Well, that's the issue - I don't see anything difficult about Dominique nor the operation on SM. Yes, you need to know how to do your rotation. That should be IMO the basic knowledge without which you should fail any SM operation. SM operation should be a basic test of your basic game mechanics. Which include proper DPS rotation and the ability to see a circle at your feet.

Also I generally don't join PUGs as my experience isn't exactly... good. I saw people wipe on EV so telling me that a PUG made it through Gods is ... sure, why not. Some PUGs may be lucky, but in my books Gods are big nono on SM with general fleet population.

Anyway, I say no to the nerfs, there's nothing hard. Actually I would like to other operations to get harder, so the step from SM to HM isn't as huge as it is now.

SM is already difficult for many pug groups, between 1st boss check, people blowing each other up and moving when not supposed to on watchdog and the chaos that is dom.

 

Personally I love the op (minus hallway of death. Y'all need to fix that).

 

Now I get to 1st boss of HM. Nerf the boss. The check is too high IMO. And it's not even boss health. Overload and inferno droid having 2.7 mil hp. Big bombs shouldn't drop you 40% if you used your aoe Dr on a previous bomb.

 

When calphy, styrak chain, terror and ec kephess to me are a easier dps check on NiM, there's a issue.

Don't bring tanks to the first boss. They're useless.

Well, that's the issue - I don't see anything difficult about Dominique nor the operation on SM. Yes, you need to know how to do your rotation. That should be IMO the basic knowledge without which you should fail any SM operation. SM operation should be a basic test of your basic game mechanics. Which include proper DPS rotation and the ability to see a circle at your feet.

 

Also I generally don't join PUGs as my experience isn't exactly... good. I saw people wipe on EV so telling me that a PUG made it through Gods is ... sure, why not. Some PUGs may be lucky, but in my books Gods are big nono on SM with general fleet population.

 

Anyway, I say no to the nerfs, there's nothing hard. Actually I would like to other operations to get harder, so the step from SM to HM isn't as huge as it is now.

 

 

 

Don't bring tanks to the first boss. They're useless.

Your argument hinges on that the average skill of the entire SWOTOR community is that of a Hardmare/NiM prog raider. Most people that play Swotor are story players that casually raid with friends or pug for the story or fun. Devs should be focusing on the community as a whole when developing content. Gearing content so that a vast majority of players can clear content at its most basic level to experience the game. After that, then offer a challenge to the more experienced raiders. To cut out a vast majority of players clearing story content is a formula for failure. As ultimately people will leave a game where developers create content that is story based and is too hard to complete. You can keep HM/NiM at the difficulty where it takes hard work and dedication to beat. When it comes to SM however, it should be relatively easy to complete.

Your argument hinges on that the average skill of the entire SWOTOR community is that of a Hardmare/NiM prog raider. Most people that play Swotor are story players that casually raid with friends or pug for the story or fun. Devs should be focusing on the community as a whole when developing content. Gearing content so that a vast majority of players can clear content at its most basic level to experience the game. After that, then offer a challenge to the more experienced raiders. To cut out a vast majority of players clearing story content is a formula for failure. As ultimately people will leave a game where developers create content that is story based and is too hard to complete. You can keep HM/NiM at the difficulty where it takes hard work and dedication to beat. When it comes to SM however, it should be relatively easy to complete.

Yes, devs should be focusing on the community as a whole and the community has to realize, that they are not entitled to do everything and succeed just by participating. Maybe if the story mode wasn't so easy to start with and generally the game wasn't as easy, maybe the players would know better how to play their classes. I know, crazy idea. I still remember how I had to use properly interrupts in the story otherwise I would be dying...

If you want to socialize or have fun in an ops - while do you tie it to the successful clear though? If I want to have fun and socialize in an ops, I join an ops with peopl eI will have fun with and many times we don't clear it - so what. At least we had fun.

Maybe I am missing something. Raid should be the hardest PvE content in the game, story mode should be the first step. Thus it should be a basic check of the group's skillset. Hard mode should check advanced skills and Nightmare should check everything the group has to offer. But hey, I am probably just weird in thinking the top group content in the game should be at least reasonably challenging. And yea, the approach of removing any skill checks from SMs didn't help exactly either. Now you join HM which is - compared to their SM - horribly overtuned, because SM is requiring nothing. Best example is mentioned Dread Fortress, which is pathetic on SM and then many players are surprised you have to do something on HM.

That the majority of the player base is not interested in HM and NiM ops is WHY there is a SM. It is meant for those players to do their stories. Back in the day, yeah raids were tougher in SM, but it was nerfed to open that content to more people. A whole bunch of raiders left when that happened. When 7.0 came out, again a bunch of people left, and it wasn't just raiders this time. It was people of all play styles leaving en mass. Fast forward to now, and you have a supposed SM op that only the best players can clear.

So for maximum satisfaction for the greatest number of players ( ie subs and their fondness for buying CCs ), SM should be clearable by just about anyone. HM and NiM exist for a reason. People have to be better to move upwards in difficulty. Those that want to do more difficult content know that, and they work towards that end. With 7.0 people who had been doing HM suddenly couldn't anymore. With the recent HP reduction, it will help people move back up the raid scale. It will help fill the gaps left by the mass 7.0 exodus.

Now having a supposed SM harder than some HMs is a slap in the face of the entire player community. As things stand, most of those people won't get to experience those stories. So yeah, it needs to be changed unless they want to lose more people because again, players are being told they're not good enough for something. You can't push people to do things they don't want. They will just quit.

Previously, most story players were afraid of Gods and Dxun because of the toxic elitist attitudes they would encounter when all they wanted was to do an op for the story. The same thing is gonna happen again with R4. The story will be gated behind an op that they're being told they are not good enough for ...in SM.

I find it difficult to take at face value some of the boasts happening here. The only guild on my server that flexes how easy SM R4 is, is the sales guild. People with a 100% Ops completion who can 7man NiM content. Everyone else knows the score. People with 80-90% completion have a hard time with the final boss. People with 40-50% wipe without ever succeeding and disband. That's what I observe across my raiding community. These are not stupid people, they are skilled, they do the required DPS, they listen, they pick up mechanics on the fly. The operation is just as difficult on Story Mode as HM. And just as difficult on HM as some NiMs.

And, again, my original issue is: some of you say that the SM should be more difficult. That it should be the hardest content in the game. First of all, I, personally, disagree. This is not the only MMO I play, and there are others still where this is just not true. Difficulty is gated by the mode of difficulty. Story should never be difficult, that is why it's story. Which is why this game has Master Mode Flashpoints that are more difficult that Story Mode Ops. That seems perfectly reasonable to me.

If you disagree with this understanding, that's fine. Maybe SM Ops content should be more difficult. As some of you have pointed out, right now SM does little to prepare people for HM, and the learning curve between is quite steep. This is a whole different conversation entirely, about the balance of the Ops in the game.

My original point, however, is that this operation is tied to a story that was given to people in Alliance Alerts, which they will want to do as part of the story, because it has an interesting KOTOR hook. And it is gated behind difficulty that is on par with HM final bosses. That is my issue. I should not be saying to people who just want to experience story that they need to "git good" and pull 25k on average, in order to do this. Again, I've seen other MMOs, where raids are a part of the main story. Not a side story, like Oricon. MAIN story. You get to that point, you queue for a raid, you hopefully read up on it first or it is explained to you in shorthand in chat. And, what do you know? You clear it. Because it's story mode.

Regardless of whether or not SM Ops should be more difficult or not, this change has not yet come to SWTOR. This operation was specifically released in a way that dumped it in the quest log of story people, who currently have no hopes of completing it.

R4 is brutal. And it's not because of the mechanics.

The DPS checks are absolute ********. 100% complete bull ****.

People are bringing 6D2H into IP, and Lady Dom has WAY TOO MUCH HP.

The mechanics are fun difficult. The dps checks are unfun difficult. Just make the DPS checks easier, fix the damn hallway, fix the bosses falling through the floor, and we're good.

And let me get to 334 blue on SM R4. sheesh

This fight is just uncalled for

Seriously, we can make the checks dropping our tanks and that's uncalled for. Why make a raid only to promote this toxic guild BS benching our tanks who don't have or never dps'ed only to bring extra dps/heals. The floor moves too fast, 2 big bombs is just an FU to the group who has to already deal with splitting so far and wide. Than you lock 2 sets of gear in VM. How are we suppose to get the stats to actually do VM? I'm sitting here in 331 gear and gold augs which is just dumb when we clear the SM for nothing, no rewards and the tokens should just be 1 R4 universal token that buys 332 gear and upgrades instead of 2 different tokens and a 3rd item token for 340 gear.

This either gets a nerf and the floor timing lowered so ppl can actually process and move or you make it so these SM tokens can buy 332 gear and upgrade it running SM than walk into VM like every other MMO....Get gear in one mode to than get better in the second mode....progression. Stop trying to be different and just copy what works, your team is lazy and clearly you hate the players if you think this boss is working as intended causing guild drama just to sit our tanks in order to push a boss phase.

People are bringing 6D2H into IP, and Lady Dom has WAY TOO MUCH HP.

That is only because there is nothing to tank, and the only thing tankable almost exclusively does AOE DMG favoring DwT's even more. A tank takes more damage, and does less - why bring one?

That is only because there is nothing to tank, and the only thing tankable almost exclusively does AOE DMG favoring DwT's even more. A tank takes more damage, and does less - why bring one?

Also it's easier with more dps

R4 sm should be made easier so that the story players can finish it in a pug.

I finished it with a raid group and I can totally understand that there are at least 2 points there pugs would fail.

Also if the first boss in vet mode requires no tanks and is easier with 6 dps and 2 heal - it´s just bad design.

Please: tanks are rare in this game!

Don´t make it harder for them by making them useless in the one operation where they get the best gear.

it does need nerf in HM

droid and boss HP mostly

also having the droids spawn faster ( on 1st set of bombs instead of later? ) would probably be better and tanks would have to do stuff with them in meantime. even though droids do have tank swap mechanic, any dwt can deal with them for long enough thus tanks are obsolete there

having droids spawn sooner and the debuff be more potent while shorter (so tank swapping on 2, 3 at most stacks is absolutely crucial) would change the fight for the better

maybe add some tank swap mechanic to the boss himself so tanks are actually needed ?

with all this, you could have proper encounter where every role has stuff to do and dps checks are reasonablea

btw the stupid cooldown on consoles alogn with one´s GCD is just... who came up with that stupid idea ?

i guess its prevent ppl to spam it like madmen but with 3 bombs, you need 9 clicks and i dont think i ever saw someone to solve it within 15s or so just coz how the consoles work

i actually think that having faster consoles and/or slightly more time while adding some punishment for mistakes with puzzle would be better design ( as in - if someone clicks out of order, everyone gets stacking debuff of some sorts)

Asking for nerfs only few days after realease...

Are not casual players playing for fun ? Without objective of cleaning content as fast as possible ?

Maybe R4 SM is the SM as it should have always be : with some reflexion (maybe the fight doesn't need tank ?), kinda mistakes friendly, where people have to play together (MMORPG you said ?).

What is the point in complaining R4 is difficult when it's the only new endgame PVE content we have to deal with until x months (years ?).

Fact is you actually have to think about what you're doing when you play. I understand that might hurts some old SM lazy ego, but think about the new challenge you found, like maybe few weeks before giving up.

it does need nerf in HM

 

droid and boss HP mostly

also having the droids spawn faster ( on 1st set of bombs instead of later? ) would probably be better and tanks would have to do stuff with them in meantime. even though droids do have tank swap mechanic, any dwt can deal with them for long enough thus tanks are obsolete there

having droids spawn sooner and the debuff be more potent while shorter (so tank swapping on 2, 3 at most stacks is absolutely crucial) would change the fight for the better

maybe add some tank swap mechanic to the boss himself so tanks are actually needed ?

 

with all this, you could have proper encounter where every role has stuff to do and dps checks are reasonablea

 

btw the stupid cooldown on consoles alogn with one´s GCD is just... who came up with that stupid idea ?

i guess its prevent ppl to spam it like madmen but with 3 bombs, you need 9 clicks and i dont think i ever saw someone to solve it within 15s or so just coz how the consoles work

i actually think that having faster consoles and/or slightly more time while adding some punishment for mistakes with puzzle would be better design ( as in - if someone clicks out of order, everyone gets stacking debuff of some sorts)

Thing is, back on PTS people were using 340 gear, so in the final tuning of the encounter, they actually tuned it up for 340 gear, that is why it requires 5-6 dps to actually kill the boss. I think biggest problem of this encounter is that Tanks are pretty much useless and I dont think it should be this way. Also the GCD on console is a bad decision , in that case they should have increased bomb cast to 35 seconds, even thou its still doable if you are super fast, but sometimes people can't reach the console in time and it delays the clicking. Also 5 seconds is enough to kill the bomb, but if you de-shield all bombs, its always very close to explosion. I dont think boss HP should be nerfed at all, its fine the way it is, but they could decrease the dps check on last phase by adding atleast 5 seconds for timer.

I remember in PTS Phase one it was 60 seconds, and even with 5 dps it took ~50 seconds to kill the boss. Hard mode is supposted to be hard, but not overtuned, I manage to kill the boss already, but i can say for sure the fight is unbalanced. But they shouldnt nerf it to the ground, they should make some tunings according to the data and feedback they receive from players.

in that case they should have increased bomb cast to 35 seconds, even thou its still doable if you are super fast, but sometimes people can't reach the console in time and it delays the clicking. Also 5 seconds is enough to kill the bomb, but if you de-shield all bombs, its always very close to explosion

Then... be there when the bomb spawns? Just go fast?

Asking for nerfs only few days after realease...

Are not casual players playing for fun ? Without objective of cleaning content as fast as possible ?

Maybe R4 SM is the SM as it should have always be : with some reflexion (maybe the fight doesn't need tank ?), kinda mistakes friendly, where people have to play together (MMORPG you said ?).

What is the point in complaining R4 is difficult when it's the only new endgame PVE content we have to deal with until x months (years ?).

Fact is you actually have to think about what you're doing when you play. I understand that might hurts some old SM lazy ego, but think about the new challenge you found, like maybe few weeks before giving up.

okay so you can clear any content in the game good for you but did you try R-4 anomaly on SM with a pug group ?

it's almost impossible to complete Lady Dominique is Hard and it doesn't suppose to be hard on story mode not everyone can do 20K + dps against her or heal against the swarm of adds she spawns which requires VM level of healing, now let's get back to the first boss : the aoe it's too much there is aoe everywhere and the dps check is also kind of high. so..... we need a nerf.