Once you go down the Rakghoul Overlord achievement path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

I am changing my vote to this. Several of us had to dig out the floor blocking boat mounts from KP/EV to ensure that the encounter had its maximum effectiveness.

Like the title says. Still broken, I presume. How does the workaround go again? Take off all gear outside instance, zone in, put gear back on?

Top 5: 1.)SOA is still, after all this time, the best and most epic fight in the game. 2.)Grobthok is an awesome boss fight with a great boss design. 3.)Cartel Warlords: great fight. 4.)Titan 6: awesome. Boss actually has personality. Somehow. "Titan 6 needs no allies; Titan 6 stands alone": proceeds to summon waves of allies constantly. 5.)Tile Boss in Dread Palace. Awesome. **If the middle phase of the Styrak fight was just a little bit shorter, it would probably number two, or maybe even number one. On that note, the Terror fight is 30-50% too long. ****The only "puzzle bosses" done right in this game, IMHO, are the Pylons and the minefield. The rest of them are tedious exercises in patience with obnoxious and typically dull wipe components.

Powertech is the easiest tank to get a handle on and manage as it trades numerous abilities for more baseline mitigation. Asstank and Juggernauts have a lot more abilities to juggle, procs to keep track of, and are just plain more complicated. Powertechs also have tremendous quality of life advantages in having a ranged aoe taunt and aoe attacks along with a gap closer AND a pull. These really make a noob tank's life easier in terms of positioning. If someone wanted to tank and this was their first mmorpg or first time tanking, I'd tell them to strongly consider Powertech/Vanguard.

You want to know "How are Merc/Operative healing in PVP?" Well, they do it using abilities granted the class. Mercs use things like Healing Scan and Rapid Scan, along with Kolto whatever. Operatives do it with a minor, resource generating tool in diagnostic scan, than they have a bunch of other healing abilitiese as well. Surgical Probe, recuperative nanotech ... I can't remember all the times but stuff like that. Oh, and both classes can heal themselves using med packs.

There is a far larger dynamic at play here. This game appears intentionally designed to not prepare players, as they level, for end game content difficulty. Basically, the game presents a serious "cliff" of difficulty for which there is no meaningful learning curve. This appears to be a deliberate choice, and I don't necessarily disagree. If difficulty ramped up throughout the game, it would make the core storylines unclearable by a meaningful percentage of the player base. The very, very few challenging leveling fights in the game and they amount of qq they provoke clearly demonstrates this. The leveling content in this game, the leveling flashpoints and the level 50 flashpoints with the exception of Lost Island and I guess maybe Directive 7 do absolutely nothing to prepare you for end game raiding or level 55 flashpoints (which are, themselves, much easier than HM/NiM raiding). EV and KP, with the exception maybe of Fabricator, do nothing to prepare you for the mechanics required by all other raids, including EC. When players hit EC, they basically saw mechanics that if no way shape or form had ever been introduced in a gentler fashion at any earlier point. This trend has continued with each subsequent raid.

Tanking (and healing) is far more work. They take far more abuse. They get the same (typically ******) reward as derp derp classes that, in my experience, are disproportionately whiny and obnoxious to queue with. Why bother? If I feel like, I have no problem hand picking folks to run an FP with. The people who queue as tanks should get a couple ultimate comms per flashpoint. That would fix the problem immediately.

Awesome. Before it became standard, it was pretty awesome when it happened with Malgus. The "gold standard" for dps'ing shenanigans, imho, is to bring 16 uber dps to EV SM. Soa will not stop his speech on the first platform regardless of damage. With a random raid group we had him sub 40% before he finished his speech prior to 2.4. I think if you bring 16 dps, you might be able to down him on the first platform. I assume at that point the server will crash.

I will look for that, thank you.

Is the Conqueror Relic of Reactive Warding arguably superior to the Obroan, and maybe Dread Forged, versions? That one has +21 absorb on it as opposed to +21 power. I'm not sure if it's bugged, or if all other versions are bugged. So you get something like a 1000 point shield plus 21 absorb, versus a 1300 point shield with no absorb.

Is the Conqueror Relic of Reactive Warding arguably superior to the Obroan, and maybe Dread Forged, versions? That one has +21 absorb on it as opposed to +21 power. I'm not sure if it's bugged, or if all other versions are bugged.

A friendly, but spirited, discussion about the relative difficult of the following operations (with an eye towards completing all bosses) was had last night. I would like ya'all to weigh in. Please rank these in difficulty from a tanking perspective (assume equally/sufficiently competent dps and healers): EC NiM SV SM TFB SM Your input appreciated.

Wut. [MESSAGE TOO SHORT]

The game does need this. Badly. However, I think it will result in MORE healers to a far greater extent than tanks for the simple reason that it will not solve the problem of needing a separate dps and tanking gear set. This is a larger barrier to entry than skill. Nobody in their right mind is going to build up a dps and tanking set between levels 50-54, that would be utterly tedious. So what's the quick fix for this problem? Hand out a "recruit" type tanking set that's equivalent to campaign, with no set bonus, to anyone who reaches level 55? Ugh. Not so sure that's a good idea.

I'm not sure how this is turning into a manhood measuring contest between healers and tanks, but I'd say my healing companion (admittedly, in full 72s) is significantly better at his job than a good chunk of pug healers (except meltdown and lost island, with their companion eating aoe, the flashpoints can be easily cleared with a companion healer). Healers are never as scarce as tanks for the simple reason that respeccing from dps to heals is easy. With the exception of accuracy, there's really no stat changes to worry about. Respeccing from tank to dps? Many problems. Namely: none of the tanking classes have a popular dps spec at the moment, an entirely different set of gear is required, and the skillset gap between tanking and dps'ing is neither intuitive nor easily learned.

Oh, I don't know. I'd think you'd do it for a rancor mount, an all black glossy version of the Desler, or the chance to earn rank 75 gear mods. I could be wrong. I would love to see stats on the tank population right now versus pre 2.0. It must have dropped precipitously, right? Pre 2.0, even bad tanks could get by in HM flashpoints and the HM/NiM variations of two of the four raids. Post 2.0? All of the new HM FPs and the the new raid (even at SM) have noticeable tanking mechanic checks. The two raids that required essentially no tanking mechanics (except, I guess, Fabricator) stayed at level 50, and so did EC HM/NiM. You want to do level 55 content as a tank, you gotta have some idea of how to handle mechanics. And don't tell me SV SM and TFB SM are so easy even bad tanks can do them. As someone who attempted probably 15-20 SM SV and TFB raids through groupfinder for the ultimate comms, a significant percentage of people queuing as tanks could not handle the most simple of tanking mechanics.

As a tank, I get an instant pop. To the hordes of folks rolling DPS, you are not owed a tank. And, to be blunt, most of us see little incentive in queuing in groupfinder as we can always find folks we know will not suck who are eager to join us. As a matter of fact, my last two runs of the new Czerka flashpoints, in HM, we brought a dps companion rather than queue for a second dps at my request. I just don't want to deal with groupfinder I've become so soured on it, and more loot for us. Expanding the queue to multiple servers is not going to make more tanks appear. In particularly, it will not make more COMPETENT tanks who aren't just tossing on random garbage suddenly start queuing. There are three solutions to the lack of tanks: 1.)Bribe tanks. Get another dps, get a healer, everyone chip in 50k. That will probably get it done. *shrug* Yeah, that sucks. But, it works. 2.)Roll a tank. Let me guess, you want to be a sniper/gunslinger or marauder/sentinel? 3.)Bioware implements a reward that actually encourages a tank to join the RANDOM groupfinder (as opposed to queueing with four people). Call it "tanking comms." If you complete a flashpoint with a full RANDOM group as a tank, you get a tanking comm. Get 20 tanking comms, or something like that, and you can purchase one rank 75 (or whatever the highest rank at the moment is) mod/enhancement/armoring. Tanks love gear. We LOVE gear. And we don't mind working at improving our toons, that's why we're tanks. If such a system was implemented, you would see tanks flooding groupfinder. If not gear, maybe unique titles, unique mounts, unique pets, something. SOMETHING. Cause right now, I see absolutely zero incentive to enter the random groupfinder queue.

In PVP, pushback, utility, and escapability/defensive issues make merc healers noticeably subpar given equal skills amongst the players. You can be effective, but you aren't going to find a way around those inherent issues. The "god bubble" and roll, alone, create a very wide balance disparity. Overhealing is a difficult problem to chart, but given that I hear it all the time, I imagine that it's a real issue. In PVE, merc healers seem like they at far less of a disadvantage for fights that don't generate a ton of raid wide damage. As a tank, I love that when RNG strikes, a merc healer can get me back up without breaking a sweat. However, once a bunch of widespread damage becomes an issue, heat management becomes a pain in the ***, you end up wasting energy on overhealing situations, and you lack the powerful group tools that sorcs in particular, and operatives to a lesser extent, have. I think a merc paired with a sorc is a great combination. Merc with an operative, also good. Merc with a merc? Hmm....for a lot of fights, I don't see that working unless the mercs are very skilled and willing to work very hard at tasks the other classes don't have issues with.

I don't think NiM is too hard, in general, but I do think it's pretty wonky that in TFB NiM the hardest boss by far (at least until this week) is the second boss. We were kind of stubborn about progressing and it held us up for weeks. Supposedly Operator IX is also more difficult, particularly in 16 man, as opposed to Kephess or TFB NiM. That doesn't seem quite right. Similarly, on NiM SV (which admittedly I haven't really done anything at all with yet), apparently Thrasher is either the most or second most difficult boss in the encounter, particularly for certain raid group compositions. This seems like a weird state of affairs. NiM should be a nightmare, but to have these weird spikes of difficultly for the first few bosses does not seem like a wise design decision.

The two piece set bonus for tanking (one extra second to blade barrier) is not working. Instead, blade barrier, isn't triggering at all. I tested this multiple times, not my imagination. Supposedly removing and putting gear back on will fix this problem, but it didn't work for me.

Leaving as a tank is so satisfying. You know you are dooming them to queue-hell.

The very last level pug flashpoint I have ever done was Lost Island (of course). I ask "everyone done this before?" Don't care about response, just want to explain fights if needed. Everyone says yes. The healer and I are both level 55, I'm in about half underworld and half arkanian. Healer similarly geared. Two dps are level 50s, but whatever. One dps, an assassin, dies of first lightning ball to droid. Rezzed. Dies again almost immediately to lightning ball. Never even attempts to move. We kill boss. I ask what he was doing. Says he died due to lag. A common excuse. Whatever. Get to donkey kong boss. I call out buttons. People say yes. Assassin doesn't even attempt to stack under boss, dies. Of course, his button was the one that needed to be pressed, we die shortly thereafter. I ask again: what is going on, do you know this? No response. We spawn, go back. This time, I ain't doing anything till I get some clarification. "DO YOU KNOW THIS FIGHT?" No response. I literally have my character sit down. Finally he says: "no, never made it past first boss." "Why didn't you say something?" No response. "Would you like me to explain things so that we can be on the same page?" Maybe thirty seconds goes by. My finger is hovering over vote to kick. I then get this response. "Meh. Whatever." Told him good luck finding another tank and left. It may be another year before I pug a flashpoint again.

If you're going to qq and ragequit. This is the way to do it.

I totally understand, and I'm very sorry if my comments were misconstrued. As opposed to any tank balancing or functionality issues we've experienced before, what's happening right now with assassins basically renders them completely useless. I also see no reasonable course of action other than unsubbing. No class has ever had to deal with the calamities currently faced by assassins/shadows. Let's keep the focus on Kitru and how much of a loss this will be for the community. I sincerely hope he reconsiders. And if posts dripping with sarcasm might prompt him to do so, so be it. I will carry that cross. **okay, enough facetiousness: assassin/shadows have a severe problem with spike/RNG damage. Various tanking classes have had their own serious problems on prior occasions. I can remember WAY back in the early days when Powertechs would complain that bosses like Foreman Crusher were impossible given their lack of cooldowns. I can remember the entire upper half of the Juggernaut tanking tree being worse than the lower half of a dps tree. Lots of folks quit over that stuff, too, but the wheel comes around eventually.