No Nute/Jawa Nerf
I'm appalled at the behavior of EA/CG.
The fact of raids is that when you get very powerfully synergistic combinations of characters, and that synergy happens to find a conducive home in a particular raid phase, then you as a player do massive damage.
There is no raid with a large number of guild participants where the top damage dealer and the lowest damage dealer are separated by no more than 50%. In our guild, the top AAT damage dealer does close to 10M and a few folks do 0 damage because they only have 1 x 6* or 7* toon. A few more do < 20k. A few more actually survive more than one attack per character and inflict 20-120k. Then there's a jump as people get squads to the point where they can inflict there first topple. Those folks do 200k-500k depending on how many days it takes to finish the raid. Then there's people who inflict somewhere between 600k and 2M.
It's not just that we inflict vastly different damage, it's that different strategies apply in different categories. Before you have your first 6* toon, getting ANY toon up to 6* is a help, because as soon as you have 1, you can stick that toon into the raid, get killed and do 0 damage, and still collect raid gear.
When you have toons that can do some damage, you want to collect shards for specific toons that synergize with your best toons. Maybe you collect Rex because you already have 5s, or Barriss because you already have QGJ and Yoda.
When you have toons that can last through one round of tank (or GG or RocketB2) attacks, then you want to up your healing so that the toons that are already your best can last longer. But you should at this point already be looking forward to creating strategy-specific toons that work well together, and farming them, and planning priorities for which toons get your raid gear.
Then you get to a point where you've got a strategic core, and you're trying to figure out how to augment that group until you can finish it. At one point I had Wiggs-Lando, and threw in Vader & Lumi in phase 4 because Lumi would would throw up a party-buff against Air Raid damage and heal Vader while vader augmented the damage of Wiggs-Lando.
Then, eventually, you have that killer combo that completely trashes the Raid Boss.
EA/CG can say that Nute/Jawas do too much raid damage and have to be nerved because Raids are guild-cooperative endeavors.
But the heavy hitters never needed the the guild members doing 0 damage or <20k damage to finish the raid.
THE COOPERATIVE ELEMENT OF THE RAID IS THAT THE HEAVY HITTERS RELY ON THE MUCH MORE NUMEROUS GUILD CONTRIBUTORS WHO GENERATE RAID TICKETS,
WHILE THE MORE NUMEROUS SMALL CONTRIBUTORS NEED THE HEAVY HITTERS TO DO THE DAMAGE TO FINISH THE RAID AND GET THE GEAR SO THAT THE SMALL CONTRIBUTORS BECOME MEDIUM-HEAVY HITTERS.
2-3 months ago I came back to the game after a year break. I had almost forgotten how to play. I joined a guild and gave them raid tickets. I jumped into the raids and got whacked. I had more than one 6* toon to begin with, so I never did 0, but I spent several weeks doing <20k damage. AND YET, I WAS IMPORTANT BECAUSE I WAS GENERATING 600 TICKETS/DAY. Over 3 months, that means I generated a Rancor raid by myself and most of an extra AAT raid.
Meanwhile, i still can't get the Teebo TM thing to work for me with the heroic Rancor, but I do fine in P2 and P4. I'm up to 2M damage over the course of the Raid and I'd do better if the Heavy Hitters didn't slam through p4 so fast. Usually once p3 ends (I struggle in P3), the raid is done in maybe an hour. I can do 600k - 1M with one attempt of my best team in p4.
The Point of all this?
EA/CG is outraged - OUTRAGED! - at the fact that a single person can solo most of a raid phase, but EA/CG is entirely forgetting all the people like me who spent hours playing the game to get the raid tickets to make it possible to play the raid at all.
In my guild, we share items generously. I needed stun cuffs - but I needed so many and I needed them for my 2nd or 3rd best characters, while I needed Mk5 Fusion Furnaces for my best toon. Soooooo, I gave away all the Stun cuffs I earned in raids - I didn't save them up - and other people gave me my furnaces and Mk7 Sec Scanners. And I don't mean a little bit, I mean that there was almost never a time when 24 hours expired with a gear request undone.
In my guild, I asked lots of advice of the people who played the game more, who knew what zetas were and how to get them, who were familiar with high-level strategies that take a long time to come to fruition. They generously helped me for a strategy that worked for me. Even though the most active chatter of our heavy-hitters is a Sith-lover, he recognized that I'm more defensive-minded and he's more offensive-minded, so he thought about my toons, my inventory, my style and gave me advice that worked for me.
Now that I'm level 84 and doing 500k Heroic Rancor and 2M AAT, the new players look up to me, and I try to do as well by them as my guilds most experienced players have done by me.
Few of us, few even among the heavy hitters that started playing in 2015 and never took a break, have Nute Gunray leveled/geared up. Not very many have Jawas, and those that do only have them for the Mod Challenges.
The fact is that Nute Gunray is not useful outside of the effect of his leadership in AAT. To get this strategy to work, you have already passed through all the stages of growing and getting better at the AAT. You've done it so long ago and so well that you have enough Raid Gear to through at a completely useless characters. And then, someone who played the game faithfully and had enough spare gear AND had some creativity and was willing to risk doing poor damage the first time the strategy was tried, that person discovered a brand new strategy, one that works only in certain phases of a certain raid.
That's exactly what's supposed to happen. And the people doing <20k damage in the guild of whoever invented it? They played their part by earning the raid tickets that made the experiment possible.
Contrast this with zeta Kylo in Phase 1 of AAT.
No one needed an excess of resources to throw at a useless toon to get zeta Kylo. Kylo is already useful in many phases of the game. Zeta Kylo completely subverts the slow roster-building that is part of success in every other phrase of every other raid. Kylo doesn't need any other toons during the raid, so someone is free to pick their best Pilot toons regardless of synergy to pick up the zeta.
And yet, you won't nerf Kylo, but Nute Gunray is such a disaster that you have to give an emergency announcement within 48 hours of the release of youtube videos describing the strategy?
You've already announced that you didn't intend for individual toons to solo AAT p1, but Kylo stays and you'll just design the next Raid differently.
You should have the courage to do the same for Nute/Jawa teams. If someone is going to spend their time and effort developing toons that won't help in Arena, won't help much in GW, work only in a single Mod Challenge and maybe 1 or 2 marginal events (not vital events, like credit heists), THEN THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO VERY WELL IN THE 2 PHASES OF AAT WHERE THEY INVESTED ALL THEIR RESOURCES.
Design the next raid differently. Design the next raid to favor Tuskens or Geonosians. Nerfing Nute or the Jawas is just ridiculously hypersensitive and over-reactive.
People who have the extra shards and gear to spend on Nute - or who choose never to get Emperor Palpatine & Yoda & Maul, so they don't have extra but choose to spend the few resources they have on Nute - should get the benefit of a leveled/geared up Nute.
Your reaction to this is entirely wrong-headed, EA/CG. Raids were never cooperative in the sense that everyone did about the same amount of damage and it was impossible for 3-5 heavy hitters to complete a phase while no one else in the guild even participates. That already happens. I'm barely into the group that can survive AAT from topple to topple, and I can do 750k+ with one team on one attempt during one phase.
The cooperation of guilds go far beyond the distribution of damage amongst players. It starts with guild chat and sharing ideas and encouragement and goes through gear sharing, activity participation, and raid ticket generation long before it ever gets to phase 2 of the AAT raid.
Nute will not end the guilds in this game. Nute will not end cooperation and interaction and mutual support in this game.
What will end collaboration and the sharing of fun between players is treating the game as if none of those things exist because you're in a panic about how much damage some guy on youtube did to the AAT in phase 2. Focus on one video of massive damage to the point that you can't see the friendship and sharing that are the foundation of strong, long-lasting guilds means that ultimately you mis-understand you players, misunderstand what they want and what provides fun and enjoyment, and treats the people who are generating most of the raid tickets as if they don't matter.
Well, I generate raid tickets. I can't solo anything. And I matter.
Nerf Nute if you must, but I will take that for what it is: a statement that you don't value me, that you don't see me as one strong link in the entire chain of my guild that must remain strongly joined together if we are ever to lift the heavy burdens that make up the tasks of a guild.
The fact of raids is that when you get very powerfully synergistic combinations of characters, and that synergy happens to find a conducive home in a particular raid phase, then you as a player do massive damage.
There is no raid with a large number of guild participants where the top damage dealer and the lowest damage dealer are separated by no more than 50%. In our guild, the top AAT damage dealer does close to 10M and a few folks do 0 damage because they only have 1 x 6* or 7* toon. A few more do < 20k. A few more actually survive more than one attack per character and inflict 20-120k. Then there's a jump as people get squads to the point where they can inflict there first topple. Those folks do 200k-500k depending on how many days it takes to finish the raid. Then there's people who inflict somewhere between 600k and 2M.
It's not just that we inflict vastly different damage, it's that different strategies apply in different categories. Before you have your first 6* toon, getting ANY toon up to 6* is a help, because as soon as you have 1, you can stick that toon into the raid, get killed and do 0 damage, and still collect raid gear.
When you have toons that can do some damage, you want to collect shards for specific toons that synergize with your best toons. Maybe you collect Rex because you already have 5s, or Barriss because you already have QGJ and Yoda.
When you have toons that can last through one round of tank (or GG or RocketB2) attacks, then you want to up your healing so that the toons that are already your best can last longer. But you should at this point already be looking forward to creating strategy-specific toons that work well together, and farming them, and planning priorities for which toons get your raid gear.
Then you get to a point where you've got a strategic core, and you're trying to figure out how to augment that group until you can finish it. At one point I had Wiggs-Lando, and threw in Vader & Lumi in phase 4 because Lumi would would throw up a party-buff against Air Raid damage and heal Vader while vader augmented the damage of Wiggs-Lando.
Then, eventually, you have that killer combo that completely trashes the Raid Boss.
EA/CG can say that Nute/Jawas do too much raid damage and have to be nerved because Raids are guild-cooperative endeavors.
But the heavy hitters never needed the the guild members doing 0 damage or <20k damage to finish the raid.
THE COOPERATIVE ELEMENT OF THE RAID IS THAT THE HEAVY HITTERS RELY ON THE MUCH MORE NUMEROUS GUILD CONTRIBUTORS WHO GENERATE RAID TICKETS,
WHILE THE MORE NUMEROUS SMALL CONTRIBUTORS NEED THE HEAVY HITTERS TO DO THE DAMAGE TO FINISH THE RAID AND GET THE GEAR SO THAT THE SMALL CONTRIBUTORS BECOME MEDIUM-HEAVY HITTERS.
2-3 months ago I came back to the game after a year break. I had almost forgotten how to play. I joined a guild and gave them raid tickets. I jumped into the raids and got whacked. I had more than one 6* toon to begin with, so I never did 0, but I spent several weeks doing <20k damage. AND YET, I WAS IMPORTANT BECAUSE I WAS GENERATING 600 TICKETS/DAY. Over 3 months, that means I generated a Rancor raid by myself and most of an extra AAT raid.
Meanwhile, i still can't get the Teebo TM thing to work for me with the heroic Rancor, but I do fine in P2 and P4. I'm up to 2M damage over the course of the Raid and I'd do better if the Heavy Hitters didn't slam through p4 so fast. Usually once p3 ends (I struggle in P3), the raid is done in maybe an hour. I can do 600k - 1M with one attempt of my best team in p4.
The Point of all this?
EA/CG is outraged - OUTRAGED! - at the fact that a single person can solo most of a raid phase, but EA/CG is entirely forgetting all the people like me who spent hours playing the game to get the raid tickets to make it possible to play the raid at all.
In my guild, we share items generously. I needed stun cuffs - but I needed so many and I needed them for my 2nd or 3rd best characters, while I needed Mk5 Fusion Furnaces for my best toon. Soooooo, I gave away all the Stun cuffs I earned in raids - I didn't save them up - and other people gave me my furnaces and Mk7 Sec Scanners. And I don't mean a little bit, I mean that there was almost never a time when 24 hours expired with a gear request undone.
In my guild, I asked lots of advice of the people who played the game more, who knew what zetas were and how to get them, who were familiar with high-level strategies that take a long time to come to fruition. They generously helped me for a strategy that worked for me. Even though the most active chatter of our heavy-hitters is a Sith-lover, he recognized that I'm more defensive-minded and he's more offensive-minded, so he thought about my toons, my inventory, my style and gave me advice that worked for me.
Now that I'm level 84 and doing 500k Heroic Rancor and 2M AAT, the new players look up to me, and I try to do as well by them as my guilds most experienced players have done by me.
Few of us, few even among the heavy hitters that started playing in 2015 and never took a break, have Nute Gunray leveled/geared up. Not very many have Jawas, and those that do only have them for the Mod Challenges.
The fact is that Nute Gunray is not useful outside of the effect of his leadership in AAT. To get this strategy to work, you have already passed through all the stages of growing and getting better at the AAT. You've done it so long ago and so well that you have enough Raid Gear to through at a completely useless characters. And then, someone who played the game faithfully and had enough spare gear AND had some creativity and was willing to risk doing poor damage the first time the strategy was tried, that person discovered a brand new strategy, one that works only in certain phases of a certain raid.
That's exactly what's supposed to happen. And the people doing <20k damage in the guild of whoever invented it? They played their part by earning the raid tickets that made the experiment possible.
Contrast this with zeta Kylo in Phase 1 of AAT.
No one needed an excess of resources to throw at a useless toon to get zeta Kylo. Kylo is already useful in many phases of the game. Zeta Kylo completely subverts the slow roster-building that is part of success in every other phrase of every other raid. Kylo doesn't need any other toons during the raid, so someone is free to pick their best Pilot toons regardless of synergy to pick up the zeta.
And yet, you won't nerf Kylo, but Nute Gunray is such a disaster that you have to give an emergency announcement within 48 hours of the release of youtube videos describing the strategy?
You've already announced that you didn't intend for individual toons to solo AAT p1, but Kylo stays and you'll just design the next Raid differently.
You should have the courage to do the same for Nute/Jawa teams. If someone is going to spend their time and effort developing toons that won't help in Arena, won't help much in GW, work only in a single Mod Challenge and maybe 1 or 2 marginal events (not vital events, like credit heists), THEN THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO DO VERY WELL IN THE 2 PHASES OF AAT WHERE THEY INVESTED ALL THEIR RESOURCES.
Design the next raid differently. Design the next raid to favor Tuskens or Geonosians. Nerfing Nute or the Jawas is just ridiculously hypersensitive and over-reactive.
People who have the extra shards and gear to spend on Nute - or who choose never to get Emperor Palpatine & Yoda & Maul, so they don't have extra but choose to spend the few resources they have on Nute - should get the benefit of a leveled/geared up Nute.
Your reaction to this is entirely wrong-headed, EA/CG. Raids were never cooperative in the sense that everyone did about the same amount of damage and it was impossible for 3-5 heavy hitters to complete a phase while no one else in the guild even participates. That already happens. I'm barely into the group that can survive AAT from topple to topple, and I can do 750k+ with one team on one attempt during one phase.
The cooperation of guilds go far beyond the distribution of damage amongst players. It starts with guild chat and sharing ideas and encouragement and goes through gear sharing, activity participation, and raid ticket generation long before it ever gets to phase 2 of the AAT raid.
Nute will not end the guilds in this game. Nute will not end cooperation and interaction and mutual support in this game.
What will end collaboration and the sharing of fun between players is treating the game as if none of those things exist because you're in a panic about how much damage some guy on youtube did to the AAT in phase 2. Focus on one video of massive damage to the point that you can't see the friendship and sharing that are the foundation of strong, long-lasting guilds means that ultimately you mis-understand you players, misunderstand what they want and what provides fun and enjoyment, and treats the people who are generating most of the raid tickets as if they don't matter.
Well, I generate raid tickets. I can't solo anything. And I matter.
Nerf Nute if you must, but I will take that for what it is: a statement that you don't value me, that you don't see me as one strong link in the entire chain of my guild that must remain strongly joined together if we are ever to lift the heavy burdens that make up the tasks of a guild.
