Congratulations to the Imperial PUG that killed the Dreadful Entity secret boss today on The Shadowlands! I'll see you fellow Dread Slayers around Fleet. Raba-ranu (Dark Order of Proteus), and the person who spearheaded pulling the group together. Adibe (Revân's Rejects) Billingo (Exiled then Banished) Fckwaffles (Shadows of Death) Jaisoon (Forge) Mindwalker (Dark Recess) Pockett (seal team sith) Praeco (The Imperial Order) Stdforfree (Hyperion's Lament) Tabnala (Atrum Dominatio) Thalin (Shadows of Death) Tïny (Forgotten Reaper) Zzmanz (The Cake is a Lie) Apologies to the three people who couldn't stay for the screenshot. ~ Praeco The Imperial Order

Operator IX (HM) - the "wake up and smell the coffee" boss of bosses. So much about this fight is top notch; the room asthetics, the voice acting, the very elegant mechanics. However, my favourite aspect of the fight is that >no one< in the team gets a free ride. Everyone must perform their assigned tasks correctly to prevent the wipe. Pick up your sphere, stand in the middle, click your panel, DPS your core, pick up your adds, clear your colours, shield your teammate. Every single person has vital responsiblities at multiple points during the fight and the wheat is instantly seperated from the chaff. May Master Control and Operator IX kill PUGs throughout their existence. "Purgation cycle complete: Reiterate. Reiterate. Reiterate."

While perhaps the healing challenge is a touch overtuned for SM, it is definitely not bugged. I just completed multiple pulls of this fight in eight-man hardmode and went through the healing challenge at least twelve times. I successfully completed the challenge eight or more times in a row. I was on my Operative healer and was working with a Sorcerer. I have also sucessfuly completed the healing challenge in SM. We failed the hardmode challenge the first four times we saw it on the initial two pulls. My fellow healer was also on his own Operative at the time and decided to switch to his Sorcerer to see if it felt any different. We were both geared in fully augmented 72s, and I had a 78 off-hand. The first couple pulls also gave us a feel for just how dire the situation was and how much healing was being asked for. Diversifying our healing types was a noticable change as we were able to compensate for the weaknesses in each other's classes. He was able to slap down an instant purple pool before the captive was even able to be targeted, while I had to wait and extra couple seconds to be able to target the captive. I was able to bail him out at the end with surgical probe spams. Specific Operative healing strategies were the following: - Enter the challenge at the same time as all other people on your team (including tanks and DPS) with the healing buff from the boss' crystal, 100% energy, three stacks of tactical advantage and the following cooldowns available: clicky power relic (arkanian for me), stim boost, triage adrenal. My other relic was the Arkanian SA power proc relic. - Pop power clicky relic once you're through the portal. It lasts for 30 seconds, which is essentially the entire length of the challenge. It will be off cooldown exactly when you are entering the challenge for the second time. - The Sorcerer mitigated the inital plunge in the capitive's heath while I applied all my HoTs, starting with the ones that last the longest: kolto probe, kolto probe, recuperative nanotech, kolto infusion - Time for a stim boost to speed up the big casts. I also have 8.9% alacrity on my Operative, so kolto injections that usually take 1.7 seconds are brought down to 1.5 - 1.6 seconds. - Cast four kolto injections in a row (at least one should crit, I have around 27.5% crit) - Use adrenaline probe to recover energy - Cast two more kolto injections - Recast kolto infusion - Spam surgical probe as required until the challenge ends, and to help recover energy to prepare to heal the tanks upon exiting the challenge I never had to actually use my triage adrenal, and my energy was above 60% when exiting the challenge so that by the time the tanks were back in my healing range I was at 80%+ energy. The Sorcerer and I had our rotations down so well for the challenge that we were keeping the captive around 20% health at the time it ended. And for everyone that naysays alacrity and crit, this boss is just the prime example of where those stats shine.

While there are multiple annoyances from fellow players in this game, the one that always, always grabs my attention is when someone has zero capability to form any sort of personal opinion. Examples from general chat: "Should I play a Marauder or a Sniper?" "What class should I level up next?" "What's more fun in PvP, a Jugg or a Merc?" These people need to try performing a little bit of introspection about themselves to discover what their own personal preferences might be, and then go with their gut. I'm fine with people asking sensible versions of the above questions where they are actually missing key information. For example: "I'm interested in end-game PvE content, which class is in higher demand, Marauders or Snipers?" "Which class had your favourite storyline?" "Are Juggs better than Mercs for killing people in PvP in 2.4?"

I just did Dread Palace SM (8 man) as a guest DPS with another guild that I am very familiar with. I noticed they had two Sorc healers in their group and I asked how their clear of Dread Fortress SM (8 man) went. They didn't have any significant problems with Draxus after they got the add prioritization sorted out, and there were no complaints about DoTs that the Sorcs could not cleanse. When I asked them specifically about that tech DoT they stated, "we just had everyone spread out so that only one person got it." This was the "B Team" for Operations for that guild. Double Sorc healers are fine for this fight. Dread Palace also presented no difficulties for this double Sorc healing team. Please do not change the mechanics of this fight. Players need to be working on improving their individual and team's skills, not begging to have basic fight mechanics nerfed.

The tanks need to ensure that the boss is always facing away from the rest of the group and does not target and fire at a healer or DPS. Taunt, the moment you see target-of-target flip off a tank taunt again and if your taunt is on cooldown the other tank taunts and then taunts some more (each tank saving a single-target taunt to deal with the Dismantler one-shot, as needed in the appropriate wave.)

We cleared it in 8-man SM on Wednesday and 8-man HM on Friday.

I will always bring the player and rarely care about class. Player skill is far more valuable in clearing content than a specific class spec. My guild clears S&V HM with Operative, Assassin (deception), Marauder and Sniper DPS, and we're working through NM TFB with the same composition. Three melee DPS make fights a challenge, but player skill can overcome that challenge. Two sage healers can work. Ensure your DPS are saving any self-cleanses they have for the that DoT you can't remove and are managing their defensive cooldowns throughout the fight. Also, double purple-pool stacking for the win!

As the previous poster mentioned, this fight is about understanding the mechanics and prioritizing the adds and how to handle them (ignore, interrupt, stun, kill, or some combination thereof.) Your DPS and tanks need to be fully coordinated and pre-assigned to each add in each wave so that everything is addressed as efficiently and effectively as possible. My guild cleared Dread Fortress (SM) last night. The second boss is a good challenge, and definitely the PUG killer of this Operation. P.S. Your DPS need to manage their defensive cooldowns, including self-cleanses, throughout the fight to ease the strain on the healers.

Ah, my mistake. I was DPSing on my guild's run, so I don't know exactly what our healers were up to (one Operative and one Sorcerer,) but they did request more use of defensive cooldowns and stacking, when possible, by the DPS to help them out. The healers complimented the DPS on the run when we downed the boss because we took so much less damage than our other attempts. It certainly requires an entire team effort to mitigate the damage. Maybe your DPS can save any self-cleanses they have for the corrosive grenade toss?

The problem here isn’t that Sorc healers are underpowered, or that this fight is poorly designed. The problem is with your team’s strategy for handling Corruptors in this fight (i.e. you are not approaching the mechanics properly and therefore are struggling with healing damage that should be totally avoided.) Corruptors have an eight second cast time on their Mass Affliction. Combined with the four second pause that an interrupt will give, that is enough time that any DPS can single handedly interrupt every Mass Affliction cast by a Corruptor. Between four DPS and two tanks there is no phase where there are so many adds up every Corruptor cannot be interrupted by a DPS every single time they are casting. My guild completed The Dread Fortress last night and Mass Affliction was never applied to our team. Assign you DPS to specific corruptors and you’ll never have that DoT to cleanse (or not be able to cleanse as the case may be.)