The only thing I have read for certain that will be in 1.4 is the new companion. Nothing is on the PTS yet, which leads me to believe if they have new content coming out this month like they mentioned, it wont have a new Op in it.

We got EC back on April 12th, it is now August. With the Devs saying they want to give us something every 6 weeks now and mention they are focusing on getting out the free play thing then another companion first. Are we to guess that will mean at least another 12 weeks before a new Op? If they wait that long so many people will quick simply out of boredom...even if the game is free. Sure, other games have the same raid content for longer but those raids have more then 4 bosses. If raids are going to be this small, they need to be released on a much faster interval and with Nightmare mode.

On paper 8 man is harder as it has stricter DPS & HPS requirements and is less forgiving of mistakes. That said it is much easier to find 8 good players then 16, so often 16 man becomes harder for that reason alone.

I 100% agree with you, the person pulling mobs off of the tank is the one who needs guard. That said, I have never seen a healer pull a mob off a tank unless the tank sucked or was afk. On the other hand, as a good DPSer I am able to pull them off most pug tanks at whim. Healers only generate threat based on the amount actually healed, not on how much the spell could have healed (simply put over healing is ignored for threat). Given healer threat reductions and tank threat bonuses, a tank really needs to be doing such little threat to keep ahead of healers.

If memory serves, it is just double health....but a 16 man as more then double the dps so it ends up with a lower dps requirement for each person to meet the enrage timer. IMO, most encounters on 8 man have harder dps & hps requirements and are less forgiving of mistakes; while 16 man encounters are organizationally more difficult since the raid leads need to coordinate 16 people vs. 8 to do the right thing.....like divide into 4 even groups for shields on this fight with 6 possible shield spawn points. If you can get all 16 people to go to the right spawn on the shields, it is a much easier fight on 16 man.

....ya I am not so sure about that Jugg tank

We also have done the impossible by killing Kephess with 2 tanks. My guild was short on tanks the first couple weeks of 1.2 and still managed to kill 8 HM and 16 HM with only 2 tanks. We currently use 3 because right now we usually are low on active raiders and usually have 3 tanks on line at raid time. If your DPS is good enough to run with 3 tanks then there is a larger margin for error by running with them, but it is hardly essential.

How much DPS are your DPSers doing? I am not talking about what they say they are but what do the logs show? I see so many numbers posted around that are really unrealistic or unnecessary that they are just complete lies. We do that fight with 2 tanks, 4 healers, and 10 dps (although often 1 of those DPSers is simply a tank in DPS gear). Running those numbers your 10 DPSers need to average ~1,000 DPS to beat enrage on 16 man HM (do the calculations yourself if you do not believe me). The actual amount of DPS is really not that hard on 16 man HM and is substantially harder on 8 man HM. The test is to make sure you only get 1 DD per phase. The phase length is boss health based and not timed so if you have the DPS to only get 1 DD, which is time based on how often its cast, per phase then the fight gets substantially easier. If you have the DPS for 1 DD for the phase then you will be able to kill the adds fast enough and kill the bosses before the enrage (just remember that phase transitions happen at boss health levels so if you kill one before the other you need to live through another phase transition; killing them both at the same time makes it much easier).

When standing on top of the tank you get a debuff called Magnetic Stability (or something like that), make sure your tank is getting that buff. It might be some freak situation where your tank is standing in the one spot where he won't get that debuff.

My personal take on using 3/7/31 and 1/12/28 in Hard Mode Operations: I will never believe that Simulationcraft is perfect, but it is very good and by far the best simulator we have right now. It does simulate out both of those within 3% of each other against a stationary single target for a long fight. Since there are no stationary single target fights in any operations one needs to think of it as a starting point and not an ending point when looking at what spec is best. I also want to point out that I am me, I am not you nor anyone else, and I am also human so I will make mistakes and will never run the perfect rotation no mater how hard I try. Since my mistakes may not match your mistakes, what I find out to be the best spec for ME may not be the best spec for YOU. After running both of the above specs I can say the both do similar damage. Similar is relative because simcraft says they are within 3% but my playing is not within 3% from a fight to fight basis...I am much more variable so probably within 8ish% myself from attempt to attempt (pulling that last number out of my arse). So right now I think they are really fairly equal but I find movement in fights easier to deal with as 3/7/31 since I can move and apply dots/death field and can not move while force lightning and I feel this gives me more DPS uptime...but nothing I would consider fact, just a personal feeling and I might very well be wrong. So right now I am running as 3/7/31. But I suggest that you run an operation as both and compare both the log numbers and your feeling as to which one you felt easier for you to play to determine which one is right for you. In WoW there was usually a top spec, here it looks like they are all so close it is more personal preference for us this tier.

The one thing I feel we are missing is a defensive cooldown. As such I would recommend an ability where we summon a Force Ghost (could even be Kallig to stay with the Inquisitor story line) that would get between us and what is doing damage to us to absorb all or part of the damage we take for a few seconds.

I agree it would be time consuming to implement and understand your desire to work on other things but I do think it would not be impossible. One can find out what class a person plays by the spells they cast and then from that there are only 1-2 options for lower threat values on spells cast. With a check for the maximum heal to threat ratio would give a solid indication if they had any of the few threat reduction talents in the game (obviously easier for a web parser that can look over a whole fight before displaying data then a live parser). Additionally Guard shows up in the log for 2 separate buffs on application, shows up when the person moves in and out of range, and again twice upon removal of the buff. It can be tracked for active times. Not perfect, but would be pretty damn close to it on boss fights. I am right there with you on wishing BW would give us more information on the logs. Thank you for all your effort in making this live log parser.

How to parse for Overhealing: As a DPS sorcerer I was noticing my healing through Parasitism was huge so looked at the raw log and saw that only some of the log entries had threat attached to them. My hypothesis was the healing value shown was everything my Parasitism tried to heal me for and not discounting overhealing when I was at full health with the threat value showing the difference between them. I tested this out with a healing sorc friend of mine and confirmed that if you heal someone at full health it shows up in the log with no threat. Using Consumption to get low in health it showed up with threat of 42.5% of the total healing done (2:1 heal to threat ratio with 15% threat reduction talent for healing sorcerers). If the heal only did partial healing, the threat shown was 42.5% of the actual healing done and not of the total value of the heal cast. I urge you to test this also yourself and if you confirm it too incorporate it into your parser.

I do not have that talent in my Operations spec and if I have been too lazy to respec after an operation I go without it a lot. Surviving stealth openers without the blind depends on how many cooldowns I have available. Best Case: I get the 1.5 second stun and wait it out, never escape the first stun, stun him instantly when I get free and sprint away. At this point if he chases me he is dead without help since I am out of melee range but he is in my dps range. Worst Case: Everything is on cooldown and I am likely dead without help.

On 16 man nightmare it is a joke, I totally agree with that...on 8 man nightmare it is still a good challenging fight that I feel is the hardest of this tier. Many people in this thread keep saying 16 man is harder but just look at the difference in this single fight for how that simply is not the case. I get that there are probably less guilds that have completed 10/10 nightmare on 16 then 8 but that is probably due to how much more difficult it is to find 16 good raiders then it is 8. Jarg and Sorno is the only fight I feel is harder on Nightmare 16 then it is on Nightmare 8 and is one of my favorite fights in there. ...but Annihilator droid as possibly the hardest fight this tier?