Vader is actually pretty decent as a toon considering how long it's been since they reworked him. He still hits (sometimes very) hard and he's got that essential role in a Palpatine squad.

And that last bit there is sort of important. You put him in there by his lonesome, no Sith or Empire allies to boost his speed, only one rebel enemy, of course it's no surprise that you get pounded.

I do agree that Vader could use a little touching up though. But then so could Maul, Savage, Sidious, ++

It's designed for Rebels. That's pretty much the entirety of your problem.

My point is that if you think the problem is GP + Players, then you should only be citing GP + Players.

If you cite # of GLs vs. # of GLs, you're making the argument that it's not fair for a guild with fewer GLs to go up against a guild with more.

This is wrong. And other people agree with me, so I can't be completely crazy on this point.

Additionally, I'll just say that this still contains a strong flavor of "stronger guilds are doing this on purpose", even though Kyno tried to stamp that out.

No one voluntarily foregoes TW rewards so that their guild mates can get one extra zeta mat and 2 extra Mk3 Holo salvage. I'm currently in a guild that's only a short step from the top guilds in the game. We're expecting 30* in DS Geo TB and have 255M gp. I spent 6-8 months exploring other guild options on & off before finally leaving my old, underperforming guild (but that had great people - there are good reasons I stayed so long!). My general sense is that there are quite a few guilds out there who encourage going mercenary, or at least make it easy for members to do so, in between TBs.

Since TWs never run when TBs are ongoing, that means that the top guilds are losing players for TW so that folks can get in multiple extra raids, because the rewards for doing a single HSTR - other than zeta mats - are dramatically better than for doing a 3-day TW event. With mercing, you can get in 3 or even more HSTRs, often paired with HAATs, over the same three days.

While there are many top guilds where merc'ing is not the norm, you're not seeing the top guilds where all 50 players stay home, because they're not matched up against you. So it might seem like this is common behavior, and it might seem like this has something to do with TW, but my best guess from talking to a lot of officers in 240-290Mgp guilds is that a significant fraction, if not the majority, of the strong guilds that enter TW shorthanded are in that shorthanded situation because their members are off getting better rewards from doing raids while also helping out lesser guilds that would struggle to complete HSTR without mercenaries. This is helping the lower guilds, not hurting them, since they get a much quicker start on g13 than they could without HSTR, even if none of the guild members are actually finishing top-3.

So I don't mind saying that the algorithm should be adjusted for active players in addition to total gp. I think I've said that myself at other times and have no problem echoing it here.

But what I've learned makes me think that this problem has nothing to do with guilds trying to artificially increase their competitiveness and everything to do with people recognizing that the rewards for TW simply aren't worth the 3-day commitment when they could help themselves AND starter guilds at the same time by skipping TW to do more raids.

And that conclusion makes me think that "Sandbagging" is drastically misnamed. Even if you don't outright say that guilds are lowering their gp on purpose to beat up on lesser guilds, it's implied in the "sandbagging" name.

I don't think that's what's going on, and I think that it's much more fair to acknowledge that the raid & TW reward structures, combined with the need of young guilds to finish HSTR as early as possible, make this kind of thing inevitable.

This isn't guilds doing something wrong or trying to get an advantage. At least not most of the time, not from what I can tell. This is top guilds helping newer guilds and the accidental effect is medium guilds get hurt.

But not impossible

Well that’s just lucky I guess. Most I’ve gotten is 5. I’ve been playing for 3 and a half years now. I guess the drop rate is far below 1.

The "possible rewards" say it can go to 7, but I've never seen more than 5. Always thought it was a lie, lol. Do they think it would break the game economy to give us those extra 2 carbantis every once in awhile?