Here's some healing tips. If you get to be picky as to exactly what combination of healers you have coming, here are some ideal set-ups. Four healers: 1 Mercenary 1 Sorcerer 2 Operatives Mercenary The Mercenary basically deals with the tank the entire time and shells melee DPS when they have the chance. The other healers will begin to assist with tank healing the further into the fight you go, as The Hateful Entity's damage output increases. Sorcerer The Sorcerer bubbles the tank and the melee DPS, and anyone else they can afford to. They will drop their puddle in anticipation of where the tank and melee DPS are heading in the next 4-8 seconds. They can also perform spot healing on any players who dip critically low, but they have to manage their Force over an 8.5 minute fight, so they can't be singly-handedly saving everyone who's in trouble. Operatives The Operatives split the group into two sets of eight players. Each operative healer then takes responsibility for keeping two Kolto Probes up on their set of eight players the entire fight, casting recuperative nanotech on cooldown (one healer casts on the tank/melee cluster and the other on the rDPS/healer cluster), and spot healing any crisis situations, ideally with Kolto Infusion (maximum HoTs). Five healers (only if the DPS is outstandingly strong--like nightmare Dread Palace strong): 1 Mercenary 2 Sorcerers 2 Operatives Under this composition you have the extra Sorcerer drop their puddle on the rDPS/healer cluster, also bubble (divide the group into two sets of eight players and assign them to each Sorcerer), and perform more spot healing. Smart Healing A key point to note for healers is that as each player is hit by Hate Touch (the single-target 30 meter knockback ability which repeats every 10-12 seconds) the player hit receives a debuff called "Hate Touched." This debuff lasts a variable amount of time between 1-2 minutes and any player who is Hate Touched cannot by hit by the Hate Touch knockback again until their debuff wears off. Therefore being Hate Touched is actually a good thing, as that player (and the healers) know that they will not take a Hate Touch hit while the debuff lasts. What you'll see as the fight progresses is that every single player will be hit by Hate Touch and receive the debuff before any player is hit by a second Hate Touch. Once most players have the debuff, the healers, if they're really good, can see who has yet to be hit and can therefore anticipate where shells and bubbles will be most needed next. There will usually only be one or two players without the Hate Touched debuff at any given time once you're about two minutes into the fight, as the oldest Hate Touched debuffs fall off and new ones go out.

Just some strategy clarifications for you. Tanks Two tanks are needed for fighting a 10-stack Dreadtooth, and will make the fight with The Dreadful Entity easier. However, for the fight with The Hateful Entity, it is a one tank fight. One of your two tanks will have to swap to an appropriately geared DPS or healer (depending on what your group needs). You will absolutely not have enough DPS, or healing, to kill The Hateful Entity if you bring two tanks to that fight. Deathmarks You have a bit of unclear information posted regarding exactly what will happen. The correct information is the following: Eight cleansable/purgable variably timed countdown debuffs applied to random players in four pairs. If the debuff is not cleansed/purged before its countdown expires, that player is killed. Deathmark is a 2 second cast every 63 seconds. The pairs of debuff icons and their respective countdowns are: Skull - 4 seconds Dead body - 7 seconds Screaming face - 10 seconds Mummified body - 13 seconds Anyone in your group who is on an Advanced Class that cannot cleanse or purge themselves (e.g. a Marauder) seems to be a preferred target for Deathmark. The healers assigned to cleanse those people should expect to need to do so every time Deathmarks go out.

Just to re-clarify my information on this part concerning the orb. The orb will never go on cooldown for the person who possesses it as long as they have The Hateful Presence targeted when they use the orb (i.e. they don't mistakenly trigger the orb when they have nothing targeted). For example, either of the following two scenarios will work. Bob the Sniper has an orb he won ten months ago on a clear of The Dreadful Entity. He brings that old bound orb to your run. Your group can skip the Dreadtooth and Dreadful Entity stages and move straight into the nightmare S&V phase to prepare to summon The Hateful Entity. Bob will be able to summon The Hateful Entity as many times as you need. No one in your 16-man group already has an orb. Your group kills The Dreadful Entity and you take the orb drop for yourself. There is no need to trade the orb to different people during its bind timer. You can just keep summoning The Hateful Entity yourself for as many times as your group needs.

You can just move them around with Legacy weapons, such as the Corruptor Blade or Gree weapons.

There is no current operation content in the game where a boss or mob has greater than a 10% buff to their Defense chance. With tanks in 3.0 getting a free 10% boost to their Accuracy from simply being in tank stance, they will have 110% Force/Tech Accuracy with zero Accuracy rating on their gear and every taunt they do will perform exactly as it does now. With tanks simply being given 100% Melee/Ranged Accuracy and 110% Force/Tech Accuracy, it will actually be easier than ever to hold aggro as a tank in 3.0, the opposite of what you predict.

Well, the Catch 22 is that the Developers have no specific information to give you. Based on their comment (paraphrasing here), "We delayed doing LiveStreams into November because things are changing on the PTS all the time and we wanted to show the players the Class changes only when they were as close to being in their final state as possible," the damage reduction is likely in flux constantly on the PTS. The Developers have had one specific discussion regarding their damage targets in 3.0. I wrote the transcript of it in this post. The logical conclusions to be drawn from that discussion are: 4,125 DPS is the Developer's current target level for Deception Assassin's sustained DPS in non-optimized 198 gear. 4,125 DPS is likely close to the target level for all other "burst" specs in the game, in non-optimized 198 gear, to maintain general Class balance. The Developers intend for Madness Sorcerers to have a higher sustained DPS output than Lightning Sorcerers, the burst spec. The Developers DPS target level for "sustained" specs is higher than 4,125 DPS for players in non-optimized 198 gear. These DPS target levels are lower than what the Developers expect players to actually be able to achieve as, "players pull a lot more out than that because they optimize their gear and other various things.” TORparse has been down for months, so there are no DPS leaderboards that I can point to in order to "prove" the following numbers. However, among the top-end nightmare players in full min/max 186 gear, dummy parses in the range of 4200-4500 are being performed across multiple Advanced Classes in sustained DPS specs (e.g. Madness Sorcs, Madness Assassins, etc.). Since the Developers' 3.0 burst spec target is 4,125 DPS (and something higher than that for sustained specs), for players in non-optimized 198 gear, I expect that those same top-end nightmare players will end up with slightly higher DPS once they are in optimized 198s as compared to their current optimized 186 parses. Stat-wise, those players will only be moving up two gear tiers (186>192>198) plus one tier of augments (MK-9>MK-10). It also has to be taken into account that players will be five levels higher than they are now. This game has consistently provided a reduced return on player stats the higher they progress in levels (i.e. you don't end up with 100% crit chance as you keep piling on stats level after level). Therefore, to end up at the Developers' 3.0 DPS target numbers, with only the stat boost from two gear tiers and one augment tier, and the negative stat-return impact of five additional levels, I would expect that the damage reduction would be in the neighbourhood of 200-400 DPS--which is approximately like a player performing at a 180 gear level when wearing 186 gear. P.S. And just in case someone reading this becomes obsessed over the fact that I based my analysis on "top-end nightmare players," the DPS reduction would be approximately the same for everyone--performing as though they were about one gear tier lower--a 200-400 DPS reduction.

Wow. No wonder you're so stressed out about the damage reduction if you're working on the assumption that a player in 186 gear will suddenly start performing like a player in 156 gear once 3.0 launches. What the Developers actually said when discussing how the damage reduction will feel in nightmare Dread Fortress and Dread Palace was: If you're not familiar with clearing nightmare Dread Fortress, and especially nightmare Dread Palace, having that content become "a little more difficult" would mean having players perform as though there were one gear tier lower at most. A damage reduction of that size would make the nightmare Dread Palace fights very challenging for many nightmare progression guilds who are currently up to Council. If players performed as though they were five gear tiers lower, as you assume, they wouldn't even be able to pass nightmare Nefra, let alone anything in nightmare Dread Palace.

Once 3.0 launches, I would expect that running DF and DP SM in a PUG of Level 55 players as they are currently geared today will feel like it did back in March 2014. That is, still easily clearable but players may actually have to pay attention to what they're doing for five minutes during a pull. Of course, once 3.0 launches, DF and DP SM will never be run by PUGs that are completely full of Level 55 players as they are currently geared. There will be plenty of Level 60 players in 192 and 198 gear mixed in, resulting in future runs being essentially as easy as they are now.

Yes, but the statistics that players currently see on their gear (e.g. 325 Surge or 1104 Power) will not change the morning that 3.0 launches. Players will still have 325 Surge or 1104 Power, whatever they had the day before. The damage reduction will be performed through back-end changes to stat return formulas and individual ability balancing that reduces the damage numbers in tooltips. For example, Snipe did W-X damage in 2.10 and now does Y-Z damage in 3.0 for a player in the exact same gear with the exact same statistics.

I don't know what the level requirements will be, as the Developers might have a different philosophy about that, but the historical structure of commendation purchasing power is pretty clear-cut. I expect the following gear hierarchy in 3.0. 186 commendation gear (Basics) - no set bonus, no min/max stats 192 commendation gear (Elites) - no set bonus, no min/max stats 186 tokens (DF/DP NM) 198 commendation gear (Ultimates) - no set bonus, no min/max stats 192 tokens (new operations SM) 198 tokens (new operations HM) So a player in 186 token drops from nightmare DF/DP coming into 3.0 is unlikely to replace their gear with 192 commendation purchases, and is unlikely to bother with replacing any of their gear with 198 commendation purchases either, other than 198 armors that don't affect their set bonus, and any min/max 198 mods that might be available. Nightmare DF/DP players will only begin to see meaningful gear upgrades with 192 and 198 token drops from the new operations.

Hmm...I suppose I always just complete the missions that I pick up. I would have thought that if you abandon, say, the Karagga's Palace or Kaon Under Siege missions before watching their intro cutscene, the mission marker would reappear on the seed-mission NPCs. On the topic of the Macrobinocular and Seeker Droid quests, coincidentally, I just helped out a person yesterday in the exact situation I described in my earlier post. They had abandoned one of the missions long ago and had no idea how to pick it up again to finish it. Having the mission marker over the droid in Fleet solved their problem. You can read that short thread here.

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No problem. The procedures to follow are: The player with the correct nightmare lockout enters the phase first. Everyone clears all the trash between the Titan 6 gate and the Thrasher gate (excluding the trash at the top of the stairs). Your group very, very carefully kills the trash at the top of the stairs, keeping them in their room. All these trash mobs must be taken under 20% HP with none of them dying. You can tell when a mob is at the correct HP level because they gain a consumption debuff. If this procedure is performed correctly, and all mobs have the debuff at the same time, they will all instantly be killed at once. If you group fails to kill the trash properly (and it's trickier to pull off than you think), then have everyone exit the phase, reset it, and repeat Steps 1-3. The Hateful Presence will appear in the room. It is a wispy dark cloud. The player with the orb targets the Hateful Presence and then activates the orb in their inventory. The activating player will be stunned for ten seconds while taking damage from the Hateful Presence. The Hateful Entity spawns! If your group wipes, everyone will be teleported all around the first part of S&V and you can reform at the Hateful Presence and repeat Steps 6-8 to try again. Some players will be teleported to the other side of the Thrasher gate though, so it's usually more efficient for everyone to click "Return to Area Start" when it becomes available if you're in a phase that doesn't have all the bosses cleared.

Well there are several differences between the two systems that make a comparison of "fairness" difficult. Commendations carried into 3.0 PvE: Basic commendations (third highest tier) PvP: Warzone and Ranked commendations (second highest and highest tiers) Gear tiers purchasable instantly at the launch of 3.0 PvE: 186 gear (third highest tier) purchased with Basic commendations PvP: New Warzone gear (second highest set tier) purchased with Warzone commendations, and new Ranked gear (highest tier) purchased with Ranked commendations Number and quality of pieces instantly purchased with carried commendations PvE: Entire set of 186 gear (third highest tier) PvP: Two or three pieces of Warzone gear converted into Ranked gear (highest tier). An entire set of Ranked gear could be consolidated onto one character immediately if Legacy gear was used with enough alts. Commendation generation rate PvE: Limited by weekly caps of 200 Elite and 150 Ultimate commendations (can be mitigated using Legacy gear) PvP: Unlimited generation of Warzone and Ranked commendations on a single character Set-bonus acquisition rate PvE: No set-bonus armours are purchasable with commendations. Tokens must be won through loot rolls in story mode (second highest tier) and hard mode (highest tier) operations. Each operation boss can only be killed once per week (can be mitigated using Legacy gear) PvP: Set-bonus armour can be directly purchased with Warzone commendations (second highest tier) and Ranked commendations (highest tier). An entire set bonus could be consolidated onto one character immediately if Legacy gear was used with enough alts. So overall the situation will be: A PvE player will be able to purchase a full set of third highest tier gear, with no set-bonuses, and then will have to start clearing operation content under weekly lockout restrictions to earn Elite and Ultimate commendations, which are also capped weekly. They may start to acquire their set-bonuses through winning loot rolls from operations A PvP player will be able to purchase two or three pieces of the highest tier gear, with set bonuses, and then will have to start grinding an unrestricted number of regular or ranked warzones to earn commendations, which are not capped, in order to complete the purchase of their total set bonus gear. A character could potentially be geared into a full set of Ranked gear, with complete set bonus, instantly if Legacy gear was used with enough alts. I would say that the two systems are different enough from each other that declaring one approach more “fair” is impossible. They are simply different.

Ug...Nefra. What a travesty of nightmare content that was.

This seems pretty clear--unassembled tokens will be able to be turned in for their original set bonus pieces, as that gear is not being removed from the game.

Well, we are playing an MMO. Having players sit in front of their screens for as long as possible is the fundamental underlying goal. By limiting the amount of PvP commendations that can be carried into 3.0, the Developers are simply requiring PvP players to gear up by spending their time in the game after the 3.0 launch date and not before it.

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That's a good explanation. There's also the fact that to get the highest tier of PvP gear you have to exchange the equivalent piece of the immediately preceding tier. It's super-grindy. Ultimate commendations just direct-purchase the top tier of gear (non-optimized, obviously.) So PvE players will have a huge slew of Basic commendations to buy 186 gear, likely most of a entire set if they are maxed out after the conversion, and PvP players will have a huge slew of PvP commendations to buy a couple pieces of the Regular gear and then convert them into the Ranked gear.

Hi, visiting from The Shadowlands. I saw this mistakenly posted to the Ops/FP forum originally. I have killed The Hateful Entity multiple times and I have a major correction for your planned run, a good one. You only need one player with one orb to be able to pull The Hateful Entity as many times as you want in a row. The orb never goes on cooldown! The orb acts differently than the amulet. You can wipe twenty times or kill it twenty times, the orb can summon forever. So the actual, bare minimum, requirements for farming The Hateful Entity are: Everyone in the group is wearing a Dread Guard mask from Dreadtooth. One player in the group has the orb from The Dreadful Entity. One player in the group has a S&V nightmare mode lockout to the first two bosses (you do not have to clear Thrasher). Your group kills the trash correctly to activate The Hateful Presence. Any time you wipe, The Hateful Presence reappears and waits for you to use the orb to summon The Hateful Entity again. It's actually quite an efficient boss to pull. That should save you a massive time commitment and help you find more people willing to run. Of course the other trick to farming The Hateful Entity is actually killing it. ;-) Best of luck with your run. Even in 180+ gear, it will happily give you a run for your money! P.S. My #1 Tip for defeating The Hateful Entity is to find the absolute best tank you can. 60% of what it takes to kill it is solely dependent on the tank performing flawlessly.

"Why did you lower/change the commendation rewards!?" People are ignoring the expected slower rate at which they will be earning Elite and Ultimate commendations. People are going to freak out.

Updated: November 17, 2014 @ 17:00 EST

Start saving your credits now. I would expect the costs of training all available Ranks for all abilities from 56-60 will be in excess of 750,000 credits. Training all Level 55 abilities (since they all received an upgrade when you hit the level cap) was around 200,000 credits. I would expect that hitting the new level cap will mean every ability will receive a new Rank to be trained, with a total cost of over 500,000 credits (i.e. at least 35,000 credits per ability x 15-ish abilities). Add a few hundred thousand for training the Ranks you receive from Level 56-59 and there you go.

That's a bit of a tough question. Check back on the space dock at Fleet. There are two droids outside of either the east or west elevators that give out the Binoc and Seeker Droid missions. Check if they have mission markers over their heads.

Yes, I will absolutely guarantee that for every boss fight from Eternity Vault to Dread Palace, your taunt will be 100% effective on any boss or mob that is not displaying the Taunt Immunity buff. You will be able to walk into 3.0, turn on your character's tank stance, and have 110% Force/Tech Accuracy. Congratulations, you are now fully geared for Accuracy on your tank in one click of your mouse. P.S. And with the Developers simply giving every tank in game a free, no gearing required, +10% Accuracy, every tank will be even more efficient in holding threat on the old operation bosses than they ever were before, as tank attacks will have a 0% chance of being defended against. You will never see "Parry" or "Resisted" popping off a boss as Fly-Text again for any ability other than your free attack. Therefore, you may find that you have to taunt even less than you ever had to before when running the same content in 3.0. Tanking is becoming mathematically easier with this change, not harder.