Weekend Master Mode Flashpoint Pugs

I'm glad to not have to think about seasons anymore for a while, but that doesn't mean that I was unaware that one of this week's weekly objectives was to run a random master mode flashpoint. I decided I might as well server hop and queue for a few while there was increased interest in the activity - not for seasons, but for fun.

I started by logging into Tulak Hord quite late on Saturday evening, expecting a long wait in the queue - if anything was still going to happen at all this late in the day - but got a nearly instant pop for my Commando healer. It took me to the Esseles, which was welcomed as this was one of the flashpoints that character still needed for her Aratech Ice quest.

I was kind of amused when the tank asked whether he should rush through and drag a bunch of trash mobs along like people do on veteran mode, because in my mind, playing like that is usually a sign of someone who's in a hurry and has little consideration for the other players in their group. Someone politely asking the rest of their team whether he should be rushing felt quite bizarre to me. There was a bit of back and forth about it in chat which mostly revealed that nobody had a strong opinion on the matter, and the tank eventually just settled on taking it (relatively) slowly and going at a more relaxed pace instead, which was fine by me. (Though we still didn't really go slowly, we just killed things as we pulled them instead of going for some giant drive-by pile-up.) We also did the bonus boss and everything.

I then logged over to Satele Shan, where I queued my Shadow as both tank and dps but seemed to have no luck. Just as Mr Commando was telling me that he was going to bed and I replied that I was thinking about doing the same, I finally got a pop as dps. (It was close to midnight my time by this point.) It was for Shrine of Silence.

There was a part of me that immediately thought that this was a baaad idea, starting a difficult master mode with a low chance of success so late. Mr Commando came over and looked over my shoulder. "Oh, you're doing that one," he commented. "Which difficulty is it?" I responded in the tiny voice of someone who's very aware that she's done something naughty: "Master mode". He rolled his eyes and said that he'd see me in two hours then.

In reality, I did get a chance to say good night to him a bit earlier, when I died on the second boss and was stuck being unable to revive for several minutes, which was a good opportunity for an AFK break. However, he wasn't entirely wrong otherwise, even though the group progressed through most of the flashpoint with no major problems, including the bonus boss. On the second encounter with the two mystics both the tank and I got knocked off the platform (which was what enforced the above-mentioned AFK break) but the healer and remaining dps were able to finish the fight off without us.

I had opened up Starparse at one point to get an idea of our dps since I remembered the last boss being a brutal dps check, and both the other dps (a Guardian) and me on my Shadow were pretty close in terms of numbers - not amazing, but not terrible either. I was starting to get my hopes up that maybe we could do this, but when we actually did reach the last boss I got an immediate reality check when our first attempt resulted in a wipe with the boss still having more than 30% of his health left.

After the second wipe I honestly half expected the group to fall apart - everyone had been very nice and communicative up to this point, so I wouldn't have been upset or surprised if someone had piped up with something along the lines of "sorry, but it looks like this one's not happening" but in actuality, nobody in the group showed even the slightest doubt that we'd be able to do it if we just kept trying, so I felt like I owed it to them to do my best as well (and I could definitely tell that I had room for improvement).

At one point I realised that I'd misunderstood one of the tank's instructions about the adds, and when I correctly started to completely ignore them, the next attempt went a lot better. I did notice that the Guardian dps still seemed to be chasing adds however, so I suggested in chat that we should both just focus the boss at the end. He didn't really respond and just kept doing the same thing, but our attempts kept getting slightly better regardless, which led to us wiping at something like 5% at one point.

Suddenly the Guardian spoke up to suggest that we should just nuke the boss and I was like "that's what I've been saying, yes!" - and on the next attempt we killed it with nobody even dying. It was sooo satisfying. I looted a cool trooper armour set as well, which I put on Lieutenant Iresso. It was getting close to 2 a.m. for me by this point, so Mr Commando had been more on point than expected, but it felt so worth it.

The next morning I queued for a master mode flashpoint on Leviathan (I'd already been trying earlier on Saturday but with no success) and when I finally got a pop as healer it took me to Hammer Station - a place I'm not usually a fan of, but after Shrine of Silence it seemed like a good palate cleanser. That's what I thought at first at least, but then one of the dps typed in chat that we should just run and charged off through all the trash on their own. Unsurprisingly, they died, and then all the mobs they had aggroed turned around and killed the rest of us. I sighed and rolled my eyes, but in fairness, the person actually apologised and then we just did everything normally and it went fine.

Finally, in the early afternoon I threw myself in the queue with my trooper on Star Forge, queued as both tank and dps. I was surprised by how long my wait was, considering my flexibility and how busy Star Forge usually is. At three different times I got a pop that someone declined instantly, before anyone could've possibly had had time to even look at the proposed group make-up, which I thought was weird. Finally on the fourth go an actual group formed with me as its healer.

We got into Crisis on Umbara, another flashpoint that I tend to think of as not exactly trivial on master mode, but things seemed to be going well enough. Our pace was on the slow side and there were some deaths from people clearly not being familiar (enough) with certain mechanics, but nothing really major. We even managed to kill the Alpha Slybex.

I was just starting to think how nice it was to be in that stage of an expansion where everyone is a bit overgeared and you can carry a couple of people not really knowing what they're doing but then we got to the final boss and it wiped the floor with us. I went through every single one of my cooldowns but the adds were just absolutely swarming us and things weren't dying nearly quickly enough. After two wipes I suggested that we could pull the boss down the hill to create a funnel and make the adds a bit more manageable, and even though nobody responded, people complied. That wasn't an instant success, but I think we got the boss down on what was overall our fourth attempt or so. So that was good, I was just a bit weirded out by the way people were clearly reading and acting upon the chat but not responding to me at all. Apart from a "hi" at the beginning and a "ty" after a revive, nobody but me said anything all run, which was quite a contrast to how chatty my groups on all the other servers had been.

Either way, I quite enjoyed this round of pugs and I'll try to keep using seasonal master mode objectives as a reminder to queue up for these more often.

The Shrine of Silence is Pretty Spiffy

As announced during the 7.3 preview, the new flashpoint Shrine of Silence is a bit of an experiment/return to the game's roots, in the sense that it's the first flashpoint since 2014's Kuat Drive Yards to not be part of the main storyline. And I'm happy to say that this seems to have worked out well!

Kinda like in the days of Hammer Station and Athiss, you just pick up a little breadcrumb that leads you to an introductory conversation that explains why you should be going there, please and thank you, and then you're free to go at your leisure, with no further cut scenes inside. The wrapper mission is still story-gated a little bit as I don't think you can pick it up before you've been sent to the Interpreter's Retreat as part of the main story, but because it's just a minor side mission, it doesn't feel too bad to just go in there whenever and without the story quest if you happen to do so.

The mission is also done in KOTOR style, except this one time it bugged out (?) for me and showed the normal UI, which meant I couldn't actually read the conversation options in full.

An interesting side effect of the flashpoint being independent of the main storyline is that its solo mode features the return of the GSI droid, a fellow we haven't seen since Battle of Rishi. This makes sense because there isn't an official story companion that should be accompanying you, so you can take whoever you like and the droid is there to provide support if needed, no matter your choice.

I was personally never a fan of the GSI droid because to be honest it's both OP in the sense that it makes the player feel kind of redundant (I seem to remember seeing videos of people just /dancing during trash pulls while the droid did all the work), but also kind of dumb in the sense that it doesn't care about what role your character is specced for, will constantly taunt off you if you're a tank and so on.

That said, the flashpoint is easily doable without the droid as well if you don't like it. I know this because during one of my run-throughs I was playing as dps with my companion also set to dps (since the droid provides endless healing anyway, whether you like it or not) and somehow managed to lose the droid at some point... and I didn't even notice until my health just kept going down and down and down on the second boss fight. However, I was still able to complete it easily by just running through the provided kolto power-ups whenever needed.

In general, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and quick the flashpoint felt. There's trash to help pace things, but it doesn't come in copious amounts and dies pretty quickly on all difficulties. No Spirit of Vengeance style slogs here! It's also very easy and I've got to admit I was slightly disappointed to find that the devs managed to resist the urge to give any of the vine mobs knockback abilities, even on master mode. With all those holes in the ground, you know that would've been delicious...

The environmental design in general is also appealing. The flashpoint takes place in a mix of ruins and dark caves, but mysteriously glowing crystals and strangely ethereal golden shimmers in the air prevent things from getting too gloomy. Instead the atmosphere is slightly strange and mystical, which I suppose is what the designers were going for. All the deep chasms make for good old-fashioned "people falling down holes" fun, whether by accident or because a mysterious glow lured someone into exploring just a bit too far (I've seen both).

The boss fights are also interesting without being too complex, and as a bonus there's a bunch of achievements for doing things in different ways. (My favourite of these was when we were doing the bonus boss on master mode and a guildie pointed out a strange button on the wall. We pressed it and got an achievement called "Wonder what this does" - how appropriate.) There's also a very basic puzzle early on that can be used to unlock the bonus boss.

My only slight criticism here is that some things aren't very well communicated, e.g. you can miss out on the bonus very easily by not realising the importance of the early puzzle, and some of the boss mechanics are a bit opaque. For example the Vorantikus boss puts a white circle on someone that you can put over the boss to... debuff him I think? I'm still not entirely sure precisely because it's not super clear. Basically, we all know that red circles are bad, but yellow or white could honestly go either way and with no other indicators of what's going on it can be a bit tricky to figure things out on the fly. Again though, it's not as bad as the first and third boss in Spirit of Vengeance for example. In Shrine of Silence, you'll generally figure out what to do pretty quickly on the higher difficulties (and on the lower ones it doesn't really matter).

I remember running the flashpoint on master mode and thinking: Wow, this is so much fun. Everything's just perfect! This might be the best flashpoint that the SWTOR team's created in years. I mean, the previous ones weren't bad either, but there's always that one boss whose tuning is completely out of whack and who makes things a bit of a pain. They seem to have managed to avoid that this time! Naturally, this was when we got to the last boss on master mode and it was a wipe fest. While we did get it down eventually, it probably shouldn't have been as hard as it was, especially considering that our group was in 339 gear. The issue is that the boss has a soft enrage mechanic that causes more and more untouchable adds to cast disruptive abilities, and the dps check to overcome this is insanely tight on master mode, never mind the poor healer who's supposed to keep everyone alive while everyone's running in circles and being knocked about (*cough*me*cough*). I can't imagine the nightmare that must be in pugs. I'm sure it'll be nerfed eventually.

Let's call it a draw.

Still, overall I think this flashpoint is a big win for devs and players alike. I've had fun re-running it multiple times already and I didn't miss it being integrated into the main story at all, so I hope we'll see more of that again going forward.

7.3 Livestream Review

On Wednesday the Bioware team treated us to a livestream to preview what to expect from the next major patch, 7.3. It even started at a really good time for me! I've got to say I really like the way they run these streams nowadays. I still remember when these sorts of streams were always in the middle of the night for Europeans so that I rarely bothered to watch them, and even if I did watch the replay later, I didn't always find it very interesting. The current format is always entertaining to me though.

I was wondering a bit how things would shape up after Charles Boyd's departure since he was always such a great cheerleader for the game, but Musco and Jackie have continued to hold the fort just fine. There was a moment where Jackie completely stunned Musco by suddenly whipping out a fan that made me laugh out loud.

In terms of what was revealed about 7.3, as is my wont I won't be discussing every single thing here. If you want a full summary of the stream, Swtorista or Vulkk have got you covered as usual. This is more about sharing thoughts about the items that particularly interested me personally.

The main event of 7.3 is going to be a new story update and a new zone. I say "zone" because it's going to be an addition to an existing planet! The Interpreter's Retreat is going to be a new area on Voss, from the sounds of it similar to how the Black Hole was an addition to Corellia for example. I wasn't sure whether it was also meant to be a daily zone because they mentioned that it would feature Voss and Gormak working together and that we could steer them one way or another, which to me seemed to hint at another reputation to work on, but the zone's already gone up on the PTS and apparently it only contains regular missions.

There were some comments about how everyone should love this addition because Voss is many people's favourite planet, but I'm of course not one of them. In fact, when I did my ranking of all planets not long ago, Voss came in fifth from the bottom. However, I still liked this announcement because I always like getting new areas to explore, and it doesn't always have to be a whole new planet - adding to existing planets is fine too. While I'm not the biggest fan of Voss, it does make sense as a place to revisit since a lot has happened there since the base game's storylines.

Now, we didn't really get any information about what to expect of the new story in terms of length, but from the sounds of it, it should be decently chunky simply based on everything that's supposed to be in it. Under the title "Old Wounds" we'll primarily continue the Malgus storyline, but Shae and the Mandalorians are also going to show up, there'll be the aforementioned factions on Voss to deal with, and we'll also get an update on the "away team" we sent off to that mysterious planet quite some time ago now. They also showed a teaser clip of Tau facing off against Darth Rivix, so it sounds like there's a lot going on! I'm looking forward to it.

We'll also be getting a new flashpoint and apparently for the first time in forever it will not be part of the main storyline - Musco invited comparisons to Red Reaper. I tried to think back to when we last had a flashpoint like that, and at first I thought it must've been shortly before the introduction of solo modes for flashpoints, but actually the most recent example I could think of was Kuat Drive Yards, which was added in early 2014. Ever since then, flashpoints have always been used to drive the main storyline forward and wow, that's really been a while!

I've been trying to figure out what might have prompted this change and what difference it even makes - I guess it means they could justify not having any (significant) cut scenes in there? But then with the way they've been handling story in flashpoints since the end of KotET, the group version already had minimal to no cut scenes anyway, and I wouldn't think it makes a difference for the artists whether the cinematics they create for the solo story are set in the outdoor world or inside a phase? Honestly, I got nothing. Maybe I'll have some sort of epiphany when I actually see the result for myself. Either way, the new flashpoint will be called Shrine of Silence and will apparently feature an end boss that's going to look a bit like a plant-based Terror from Beyond.

I'm usually not that excited by the item previews they always do in these streams, but I've got to admit that some of the decorations they showed off looked really nice. I especially liked the giant tree and the Voss lanterns, which I always thought looked lovely.

In terms of systems changes, there'll be more updates to warzone medals - the changes they made with PvP season 1 made them a bit too hard to get sometimes and they're now slowly backtracking on that, while awarding medals for different achievements compared to the past. For example everyone's supposed to get attacker points in the future when the team manages to score in Huttball, which sounds nice.

They'll also continue their rollout of economic changes to battle inflation, which will include taxation of item and credit trades, but the thing that stood out to me the most was that their long-term plan is apparently meant to include a full revamp of the GTN and the addition of a buy order system, which honestly sounds pretty exciting! Still nothing about crew skills and crafting though...

We don't know when this patch will launch, but they already managed to push it onto the PTS mere days later. And while they mentioned on stream that Nar Shaddaa Nightlife is meant to start on July 11th and PvP season 3 on July 18th, they were also quick to add that neither of those are necessarily tied to the patch.

With 7.2 I think they actually launched the patch only five weeks or so after first unveiling it - if they can manage such a quick turnaround again, that would put the patch release into mid-June and would put us at a content cycle of about six months between major patches (with smaller ones in-between). We'll see whether that works out.

What was your favourite part of the 7.3 announcements?

EDIT: Almost forgot: if you didn't watch the stream but are reading this before May 18th, you can redeem the code LotsSahar to claim a free stronghold deco featuring Sa'har.