Yeah, get rid of the enhancements with all that excessive accuracy, and swap them out for ones with Shield/Absorb or Shield/Defense. Can take them from other gear pieces with better itemization, get a lucky enhancement drop from an OP, or even buy them off the GTN (they're like 300-400k a piece on my server, but I guess thats not really an impossible amount to spend with how easy money comes by in this game).

If you want to faceroll through content without bothering to bind many keys or have many things in your rotation, perhaps tanking isn't for you? People in this thread have suggested powertech as the 'easiest' one, but I'll tell you what skills I regularly use: For 'rotations' - rocket punch, rail shot, flame burst, heat blast, explosive dart, unload, rapid shots Extra aoe for mob packs - Death from above, flamethrower, flame sweep Utility moves - grapple, taunt, aoe taunt, jet charge, interrupt, explosive fuel, 3 defensive cooldowns, relics, whatever else i've forgotten to list. Thats like 20 or so different things I'm regularly using throughout instances. Good luck just facerolling through though

You can't say 'peak time'. Whats peak time for some people, is a great time for other. What time would you want them to do maintenance? Presumably at a time whilst you're asleep, and other people are at their peak time instead? Thats rather self-serving. Perhaps though it would be good if the scheduled maintenance rotated round to different times on different weeks, so everyone would lose an equal amount of time, and we would know what time it was coming next week so we could plan ahead. The unscheduled maintenance though, not much we can do about that I guess.

He's only terrible and dies in every pull if you haven't bothered to give him any useful gear.

Just wanted to call you out on your own false statement. The guy you replied to was saying that bracers and belt could be obtained through crafting, which is completely true. You can craft rakata bracers/belt via armormech/synthweaving - my own rakata bracers and belt are better than normal rakata, as they've been crafted to have an augment slot.

I'm still running with a 128 rating mainhand too, whilst being rakata/columi everywhere else. Don't whine on the forums about it, keep playing and it'll drop for you eventually. I look forward to a better one dropping, and there are so many opportunities for me to get one - Columi: SOA HM, Karagga story, Dr. Lorrick HM; Rakata: Karagga HM, Warlord Kephess Story. Thats 5 places to get an upgrade not even including campaign/black hole mainhands, do them and it'll happen eventually. All these 'wahh wahh wahh I can't get my gear in 5 minutes' threads are starting to annoy me a bit.

Some full rakata groups have found it nigh on impossible, whilst at the same time other groups clear it with gear at columi level and below. This suggests to me that any difficulty with this HM FP is not a gear problem, its a player problem. If you learn the mechanics of the fights properly and have a nicely co-ordinated group of players, you can happily do it at a gear level where the columi rewards would be useful for at least some members of the group, and the rakata chest is an excellent bonus too. The weekly black hole comms are the icing on the cake, to make those above the level for the gear drops to have some reason to keep running it. I think what it drops at the moment is perfectly fine. Sure, some people find it too hard even with good gear, perhaps they need to watch some videos and understand the fights better. You can't have it dropping vast amounts of top-level gear because then it makes doing EV/KP somewhat pointless, so the black hole weekly is a nice compromise to get people who out-gear it still to want to run it. Anyway, whats wrong with doing it only once a week for the comms? You don't need to have content which is constantly farmable for gear, its quite nice to just visit something once a week so you don't get burned out on doing it. As much as I would like or benefit from extra drops such as schematics etc, I think the loot level for this instance is just about right already. For people without much columi but who are good enough to understand that they have to play the fights well to get through them, it will be a nicely rewarding challenge. To people with columi already, the rakata chest will surely be a nice thing to grab. For people with rakata already, the black hole comms make it worthwhile to run every now and again too.

Blah blah, everyone says that about every other class. Sometimes I'm the only BH in the raid, other times we have a second, we'd be in full rakata if we got most of the loot, as it happens, we don't. What we've noticed in our raids recently is a ludicrous amount of imperial agent drops, with only 1 in the raid (practically full rakata in 2 raids? happy days). But thats just RNG again, another person will come here and say a different class gets all the loot. Have a look at your raids class composition, you'll often find that the class you perceive gets all the drops is the class least represented in your raid. It just *feels* like that class is getting more drops, as its all going to one person, but your 5 sorcs are all having to fight over the same gear piece when it comes up so it feels like the sorc stuff is never dropping. Thats the prob for our raid, usually 1-2 BH, 1 IA, 1 SW, 4-5 SI - hence our assassin and sorcs are gearing slower.

Odd, i prefer the actual speeder traveling in EV than the instant load speeder in KP, sort of nice to see the scenery fly past. In a way, the KP speeder is completely pointless - if clicking it will bring you instantly to your destination, why doesn't that just happen when you enter the instance without you having to click the speeder?

So it does seem that in my haste to post, I completely ignored the shield/absorb relics: Campaign Relic of Shield Amplification: +57 end +41 power shielding attack grants +405 absorb for 6secs, can only occur every 20s Campaign Relic of the Shrouded Crusader: +57 end +41 power On use: +255 shield/absorb If those are considered more useful than the defense cooldown relic, which would take priority? And would you ever consider a more offensive cooldown (the +405 power) as a decent choice, or always take the stuff to up your mitigation?

Would you like to elaborate on why a shield/absorb relic outstrips defense on a PT? PTs usual tanking is based around shield/absorb meaning they already have a lot of it and are probably at the point of diminishing returns from adding more. However, they have not so much defense, so a cooldown with defense should give a much greater increase in survivability for that duration than a shield/absorb one does, which they already have a lot of in the first place. Unless I'm missing something. Also, as far as I can see, theres no crit/surge campaign relic

So with the beginning of 1.2 and new campaign relics, does anyone have any thoughts on the best ones for a tank to select? Some options: Campaign relic of boundless ages: +84 endurance Activatable +405 power Nice to have an activatable damage bonus to start off boss fights with to help you gain that immediate threat advantage over your dps, also a number of bosses which are only available to attack at certain times so you need to maximise your burst for those moments (SOA and fabricator for example). With the tight enrange timers, its also probably quite useful to give the tank as much extra damage as possible to aid the raid. Of course the endurance isn't bad either ^^ Campaign relic of Imperiling Serenity: +57 Endurance +41 Power Activatable +405 defense Well, the defense activation is excellent for a PT tank. We're a bit lacking in good defensive cooldowns compared to the other tanks, so this could be a great 'get-out-of-jail-free card' for those massive incoming damage moments. The decent power for that added dps bonus cant be forgotten either, useful for doing your bit on those enrage timers. Matrix Cube M7-Y3: +52 Aim +60 Endurance +18 Defense Rating No activations, but the matrix cube still seems to remain a decent choice, that extra damage from aim will come in handy, and the defense rating is great. Unfortunately, although the constant defense will increase your damage avoidance for the whole fight, its missing out on that great defensive cooldown that the powertech misses. I think I'm going to take one with the defensive cooldown, and one with the power bonus, but I'd like to hear some other options.

What do you want then? Boss fight -> gear, boss fight -> gear, boss fight -> more gear? At least a bit of trash makes you work for your reward. I do agree that stupid weak trash all over the place is just mindless and boring; but you picked out Kaon! Kaons mobs can be a real pain in the *** if you don't deal with them in the correct manner, its not just zerg through like most trash, it forces you to think a bit at least, assign cc and kill orders etc. Sure it makes the flashpoint longer, and makes your precious gear drop further away, but whats the point of giving gear out quickly and easily? Shouldn't you work for it at least a little bit?

I don't understand why everyone is making this same statement. Lost island feels pretty perfect with respect to its difficulty and gear rewards. You can happily do HM without rakata gear, making the chest piece a very nice drop; and people have been brought along still with some tionese gear too, so the columi drops are also useful rewards. Add that to the fact that it goes towards a weekly for blackhole commendations, and I think the rewards are just about right. Justifiably better reward than the other HM FPs, as its harder to get through; but not so much reward that you could farm it through the day (HMs are repeatable remember) and forget about running HM EV/KP or SM EC for rakata gear. Just because *you* overgear some new content, doesn't mean that the content needs to be given extra rewards

Just for the record, ran this for the first time with some guild mates today, straight into hard mode (no story run first). Took us just under two hours, which I guess is long for a flashpoint, but not too bad considering it was the first time going in there. Group composition of powertech tank, assassin dps, marauder dps, sorc healer. Not 'overgeared' for the content, mostly columi with a few rakata pieces, assassin still had some tionese pieces. The columi/rakata drops were still of direct use to our group. I won't deny that we found the boss fights hard, but they were doable after a wipe or two and learning the mechanics properly. So there you have it, first time run through with melee group most certainly not having to be full rakata, the drops were still very much useful for us (especially the end chest piece). Yeah, its hard, but I fully recommend anyone who likes a challenge to go and do it, its really fun to have a flashpoint with a lot of boss mechanics and not something you can just power through without thinking. Honestly, from all the chat on these forums, I thought we were going to be there wiping all night, but in actual fact we found the droid boss alright with melee after a few tries. Everyone stays together so the bomb is only going to go in one place, tank runs off to next spot for droid to follow too, a dps stays near boss to interrupt incinerate, rinse and repeat, everyone's happy. Its fun! Everyone should give it a go! And people need to complain less about perceieved 'too hard' stuff, this was a great level of difficulty - challenging, but still do-able, to give a good feeling of reward at the end (and a nice rakata piece to boot). http://i42.tinypic.com/153xs8o.png tldr; I think the bosses on HM at least are of a good difficulty, you need a bit of awareness, but essentially its all killable with lower gear than the end boss drops. Plus the fact that it adds up to a weekly for black hole comms means its well worth doing. Don't nerf, keep it just as it is, I think its perfect in terms of difficulty, fun and reward!

Just while we're here, to all the people in this thread who said "omg the heroic corellia quest is super easy, I solo'd it, you must be bad": Realise that there is a difference between the republic and empire dailies. By the sounds of it the republic one is easy (certainly if you can solo it); however the empire one is most definately not solo-able, and it could be quite hard with a bad group make-up (I've done it with lots of CC, so it was pretty straighforward, but without appropriate CC there could be issues). People are too quick to jump up and call other players bad.

Says who? you? You can't just talk in absolutes (there *should* be, etc) without properly justifying why. Just because you think you should be able to do something, doesn't mean thats the way it has to be in this game. Anyway... isn't it possible to reverse engineer the rakata for the customisable shell, and then craft for the augment slot whilst keeping your rakata look? Admittedly you lose the set bonus, so you can choose whether you prefer that or the augment slots, but that won't matter when you start getting the next tier of gear as the bonus is tied to the armouring slot.

What I'd say is that the beauty of getting into PvE is that you don't need a 'recruit-like' set, because you've been levelling in PvE gear all the way along! If your gear is all orange (customisable), and you're filling it with decent stuff, then you'll be fine. As I recall... corellia quests give lots of nice L47-49 blue mods right? Once you hit 50, you can go to Ilum and belsavis to do the daily quests too to get some of the L50 purple mods (armouring from vendor, mods/enhancements from heroic quests). A decent mix of high level blue/purples filling up your armour, and you'll be fine to go into the easier hardmodes, and no-one will say "we won't take you, you're not geared" - that tends to come when people try to waltz in with L40 green mods filling their gear. You dont need to religiously farm dailies for weeks to get gear full of purples, rakata earpiece, rakata implants (unless you want to of course, in which case, feel free)... just once or twice through and your gear will already start looking a lot stronger. Make use of your crafting skills too if you got any. If you picked up synthweaving, craft yourself the rakata belt and bracers (even go for the augment slot if you want the best of the best). If you went cybertech, craft yourself all the purple L49 armourings/mods you can to fill out your gear with, and make yourself an earpiece too. If you have some money, it might not be a bad idea to browse the GTN for some decent deals on those mods. To start off, you'll want to run HM Black Talon. Its by far the easiest on the empire side and really doesn't need a whole lot of gear to get through. After you're comfortable with that, maybe look at boarding party and foundry as the next ones to go for, as they're pretty straightforward too. Things get a bit harder after that; FE isn't too hard but it might take you a few goes to get your head around all the boss fights; Kaon bosses are easy, but all the horrible trash might be a bit daunting on your first run through; D7 is pretty ugly (and probably still buggy, though i havent done it in a long time). But yeah, work your way through, you'll be fine, and build up some columi/tionese gear ^^ After a few HMs you'll probably also be ok to go into the normal mode ops, the first 4 bosses of EV aren't particularly hard. Good luck and have fun!

Ah, you've mis-understood slightly. What they mean, is that a modifiable item (i.e. orange, or end-game purples) can be reverse engineered for a schematic of an empty orange shell of the item. So you could then craft the items to get orange pieces with the possibilty of an augment too... so its an improvement over the initial item because now it can have the added stats of an augment too. Unfortunately, seems it hasnt been implemented very sensibly and the only items you can actually do this for are the end-game PvE and PvP gear. Normal orange gear can't be RE'd for the schematic, apparently you need to find the schematic via 'other means'.

Whats the difference? Either way it makes it harder...

I don;t see a problem, it just promotes the idea of doing the whole range of activities in the game to maximise your gear progression - the raiders not only raiding, but also doing some other stuff on the side. Fact is, to get a whole 'raiding gear set' by not raiding, would take you 82 weeks from the 6 comms/week, and it wouldnt even be best in slot gear because it doesnt carry the campaign set bonus, and by that point after future updates it would be obsolete anyway. So tbh I don't see what all the whine is about. Doing a weekly for a couple of extra comms isn't going to be detrimental to the game, and its certainly not 'giving solo players raid gear' or whatever some people will try to complain about.

As the tank, more often than not I find myself also getting hit by the pillar as it drops down to break SOAs shield in the 3rd phase. Is there a trick I'm missing to being able to judge better where I can stand to keep soa under the pillar, but myself out of its damage area? Also on the same note, is it known how much damage the pillars do on the varying difficulty levels? Any help is much appreciated.

I wish people would stop promoting the idea of getting pvp gear in order to do pve content, its completely unnecessary (and now even worse an idea with recruit set being vastly under-par for PvE content). To start running HM FPs you just need orange gear full of Blue/purple L49/50 mods. If all of your group are starting HMs at the same time, it might be worthwhile spending some extra time on the ilum/belsavis dailies to make sure you're all well kitted out in the armour/mod/enhancements... doesnt take too long though because you can buy L50 purple barrels/armourings for 8 dailies a piece, and the heroic quests drop mods/enhancements.. your gear up shouldn't take long. As suggested, probably start with BT first, its generally quick and easy. Move on to BP, Foundry, FE and kaon isn't that hard once you get the hang of knowing what to do with the trash mobs. D7 is a bit more tricky though, but still perfectly doable. End bosses drop tokens for columi gear as follows: BT - bracers; BP - gloves; Foundry - boots; FE - Chest; Kaon - head; BoI - offhand; D7 - legs. Those are a great step up in gear and will make the stuff easier to run. Through the HMs you will also pick up tionese commendations and crystals, which you can use to purchase stuff from the tionese vendor. These are great filler items before you get full columi, as they contribute to the set bonus along with the columi items. Once you've got a bit of columi/tionese, you can also walk into the normal mode operations, for more columi drops + tionese crystals. Good luck

So with 1.2 arrived, the question arises - should I be looking at AP, pyro, or some sort of hybrid, to be a solid pvp dpser... and what gear should go with that - eliminator/combat tech? I'm used to doing one of those tank hybrid specs (iron fist mostly), but I've always ended up feeling ineffective at dps and still not very survivable, so perhaps full dps is the way to go. Unless you can perhaps convince me otherwise about the tanking ones, and in which case... combat tech or supercommando?

"zomg all the content is faceroll easy, *** bioware this game is rubbish" *bioware makes harder content* "waaaaaah! content is too hard, I cant just walk through it without trying, *** bioware this game is rubbish" same old story, people are never happy.