I cleared Manaan HM again last night. I asked the DPS to focus on bringing the two droids down as evenly as possible to see just how short this fight could be. We were done in 3:31, and I was only punted around by the Explosive Shells twice before the boss died. The Explosive Shells are, essentially, a soft enrage. The tank is much more likely to be caught by the droids' Riot Grapple during the Explosive Shell phase, and therefore take more damage.

LOL - the bonus boss in Manaan does exactly that.

The fight isn't bugged or boring. Your DPS are not executing the mechanics of this fight properly if you are experiencing either of the following situations: The fight lasting longer than four minutes. The tank being knocked around by the explosive round for more than 20 seconds. The proper way to clear this fight is to split your DPS so both droids are being damaged exactly evenly. That way they both transfer their shields from the boss to themselves at the same time. This provides maximum up-time for DPS to work on the boss while both droids are healing themselves back to full. Having the boss exposed to damage for the longest period of time possible results in a short explosive round phase, and a short fight overall. Explosive rounds begin when the boss hits a certain hit point percentage and lasts until he's dead. If you have a long damage window open on the boss, the boss will be dead within twenty seconds of explosive rounds starting if the droids do not transfer their shields back to the boss. My clear of this boss yesterday lasted 3:52. When the mechanics are done properly this is actually the shortest of the three boss encounters in this flashpoint. The new HMs are very good at exposing terrible DPS, both in the strength of the DPS numbers and in their ability to execute on mechanics.

I cleared TR SM/8 twice yesterday. The first run was perfect with a smooth transition in the Coratanni fight to Phase 2 (the cutscene door was missing). For the second run, the first pull of the last boss resulted in the new bug of Coratanni attacking the escape pod. The second pull was fine.

Last night my team cleared all of ToS SM/8 with no bugs noticed on the Imperial side. The Underlurker fight was operating normally. Collapse Rage Storm Boss leaps to someone Main tank picks up boss Blue cross Devestation, with cross turning green

Here's the wrap-up of the SM clears for The Imperial Order, completed on December 9, 2014. I also updated post #285 with our original seven SM clears from December 4, 2014. Temple of Sacrifice The Underlurker @ 10:35pm EST Revanite Commanders @ 10:47pm EST The Returned @ 11:08pm EST

Guard is a great mechanic for tanks in this game. It adds a bit more depth to the tank's experience, and can serve very useful purposes apart from just "preventing threat pulls." Three example of more creative uses of guard are the following. These are all still useful strategies today, but were even more useful when the content was current and teams were at the appropriate gear level. 1) Nightmare Operator IX: Depending of the strategy used, you can have the tank that's clicking the panel guard the tank that's handling the double Regulators (Champions), who can put out a bunch of damage when double End of Line is cast if they both aren't interrupted. 2) Nightmare Cartel Warlords: Vilus Garr's 20 second Stabbing Spree channel is/was one of the most intense healing challenges in the game. Getting a guard on the player attacked, even if it's a tank, is critical to having them survive it, or at least to allow them to hold out longer before CC breaking. 3) Nightmare EC Kephess: Again, depending on the strategy used, one tank cross-guards the other tank to keep their aggro as low as possible so that when the Warriors and Trenchcutters come out, the Trenchcutters completely ignore the guarded tank.

I just checked after the 3.0.0b Patch and the damage reduction for being in tank stance is still 20% and not 10% as stated in the tooltip and by the Developers in their LiveStreams. Depredating Volts (no saber charge) = 7,188 energy damage Depredating Volts (Dark Charge) = 5,701 energy damage (20.7% reduction)

Yes, I have cleared the HM version on four different days and receive the achievements each time.

This is the Level 48 passive ability in the Medicine / Sawbones Discipline. The text of the ability reads "...increases the duration of Recuperative Nanotech / Kolto Cloud by 3 seconds..." The text of the tooltip for Recuperative Nanotech on my Level 60 Operative reads "Heals the target...over 9 seconds." Is the nine second healing duration correctly including the three second extension from the Level 48 passive ability? It's been so long since I leveled my Operative that I can't remember Recuperative Nanotech only healing over six seconds. Was there a similar passive in 2.10 that extended the duration of Recuperative Nanotech / Kolto Cloud?

Not that this is the greatest example, but I healed Temple of Sacrifice in SM/8 yesterday on my Operative. I was paired with a Sorcerer. I was undergeared in full min/max 180s, and had not trained a single ability from when 3.0 launched, as I was waiting for the training costs to be removed with the patch today. Even under these conditions, I had no problems at all. Boss 1: 5,558 (43% effective) Boss 2: 3,663 (65% effective) Boss 3: 3,713 (73% effective) Boss 4: 5,071 (28% effective) Boss 5: 6,051 (41% effective) Operative healing is perfectly fine for all HM FPs and SM operations. I have not healed one of the new HM operations yet, so I can't comment on that aspect.

The solo-mode of the Forged Alliances FPs and the two new FPs can only be completed once per character. As well, the solo-mode Forged Alliances FPs are only available if you have never completed the prelude before on that character (i.e. if you have never done them).

That's a pretty tough request. The purpose of the solo-mode FPs is to ensure that absolutely everyone gets barrier-free access to the relevant story content. As unfortunate as "I could probably just stand there and have the droid clear the fight" difficulty is, it would be a larger issue if really unskilled players got stuck in a solo-mode FP and couldn't progress their story and were unwilling to clear the FP in a group. They would be at significant risk of drifting away from the game. Have hope though; the HM versions of the Forged Alliances FPs are very intense at gear-level. Unprepared players are not treated kindly by the bosses...or the trash.

I assume you're talking about SM? My group cleared the fight in SM/8 with all of us in 186 Dread Master gear. The damage was certainly more interesting than what's typically been experienced in SM. I would describe it as "HM-lite." The Developers did mention that content is generally getting harder this cycle, and this boss seems to be in-line with that philosophy. As has been mentioned, make sure no one is taking unnecessary damage. Everyone needs to work to lighten the load on the healers. Make sure people have speced into the optimal Utilities (i.e. AoE damage reductions).

Commendation gear was terrible before (except for the min/max mods), and is now even worse since the mods are now non-optimal as well. Buy your Ultimate off-hand for the 198 armor/barrel and the one piece of Ultimate gear with a 198 armor that will not be part of your six-piece set bonus and you're done. The rest of the gear is absolute trash. Gear up through SM and HM operation tokens, now more so than ever.

I have never seen Extermination Mode, and I have cleared this flashpoint three times in HM. Better DPS is the optimal solution to this mechanic.

Yes, the server is down.

I've whipped through all four HM FPs multiple times on my Assassin tank being exclusively healed by a Sorcerer friend of mine. He's breezed though all of it without a peep about problems. The only change I've noticed is the excessive calling out of "Bounce Heal!" whenever the Roaming Mend animation ricochets around the group.

^ Truth. Free markets are premised on there being no collusion. ...though we are playing Star Wars with the Hutt Cartel being a central organization. Nice role-play OP.

Main-hand tokens will drop from the last boss of the Temple of Sacrifice operation (192 SM, 198 HM) once the loot table is fixed and the boss actually starts to drop tokens. Main-hands are rarely purchasable for commendations. I remember purple 162 main hands showing up on the CZ-198 reputation vendor was pretty unusual. The Developers want to motivate people to run operations. Therefore the latest operations are typically the only place that the top one or two tiers of main-hands are available. As mentioned, 3.0 resulted in 186 main-hand schematics becoming available, therefore have your 186 main-hand crafted.

Don't know what to say then. I've cleared the fight twice and have always cleared all fours shields every time the adds appear.

This is the most effective and efficient strategy. You perform a four-way split of your team to the four adds and each player lines up their boss orbital strike on their add. All enemy shields are removed immediately. The earliest you can see the arrival of the adds is by keeping an eye on the minimap. The adds' dots appear there first, even before the character model animation flicker.

Have you walked into an EC phase to see if there are any adjustments to your cleanse and interrupt cooldowns? The Developers said they would make adjustments to ensure that old content is playable. Another potential solution is if they adjusted the length of time between Calibration casts on the three droids, which you'll only be able to determine when you get to the fight. A non-optimal solution is simply to brute-force your way through that part of the fight with your team over-levelled and over-geared. The Calibration mechanic has a maximum number of stacks. I have been in a pull where one droid got to its maximum stacks and it was simply slightly more annoying to kill. If you split an 8-man team across the three droids by tank/healer, tank/healer, four DPS and assign an interrupt rotation, you should still be able to get most of the casts interrupted and have the droids killed before they become a more significant problem.

The stats on these two weapons are definitely bugged. They are way lower than other Devoted Allies weapons, as mentioned by the first poster. As well, both the tank and DPS versions (Defense and Assault, respectively) have the exact same stats on them. This results in the Defense version having alacrity and the Assault version having absorption.

I looked at you legend for 3.0 and saw a mark for Story Mode clears, so... The Imperial Order has cleared 5/5 in The Ravagers (SM/8) and 2/5 in Temple of Sacrifice (SM/8). The Ravagers Sparky @ 8:37pm EST Quartermaster Bulo @ 9:07pm EST Torque @ 9:20pm EST Blaster and Master @ 9:40pm EST Coratanni @ 10:05pm EST Temple of Sacrifice Malaphar the Savage @ 10:23pm EST Sword Squadron @ 11:03pm EST