Definitely the hard enrage. Once he hard enrages he spams his aoe missiles for 20k aoe. We had trouble with this on Nightmare one week when we decided to bring a couple under geared dps.

You should really try to use more periods

lol, it's impossible to notice bad acting/directing/writing? I really hope you're trolling. What are we 5 years old?

BH are actually a bit better than Sorc's at MT healing, but Sorc's crush them when it comes to AoE.

First of all, I agree with most of your post. However, this statement is completely false, at least the first part of it, and the fact that you say something like this makes me somewhat doubt your story of having all 3 healing classes at 50. What server do you play on, and what our your character's names? If sorc's actually did regen faster than the other 2 classes, they would be comically OP as healers(your talking 30 f/s +) Sorc Natural Regen is 8 f/s, which is DRASTICALLY lower % wise than the other two healers. In other words, Sorc's regen MUCH slower than the other healers most of the time(the only exception being a max heat BH ect.). Sorcs have a constant ~ 1.2% force regen/second, compare this to a BH who (assuming good healing) should be around 5% heat dissipation/second. To account for this, they have tools like consumption and a larger starting pool. Don't get me wrong though, I do think Sorcs have the easiest mana management system, but it's not because they regen faster(they don't), it's because of simple math really. The BH at his best regens about 5x as fast as the Sorc, they key being at his best. Meanwhile, the sorc always starts with 6.5 as much force. Also, all three healers have some kind of tertiary heat/force regen mechanism; BH can dissipate all heat, Sorc's can sac health for force. However, I don't these tertiary methods are in any way equal, and I think that most people would agree in saying that consumption is > than the others (especially when combined with fb+innervate).

What server do you play on, and what is your character's name in game?

Interesting ID OP, but fore the most part it's just wrong, and anyone who's 10/10 NM 16m will tell you that. While 16 Sorcs would no doubt work, it's far from ideal. Ideally you'd want to trade 1-4 of those sorc dps for Aresenal DPS for their superior DPS(especially with heat sig stacking), and a 1-4 Marauder's for their slightly superior dps and bloodthirst, also you'd probably want a few IA dps for their bubble (your not trading for revivification since reviv is a 31pt healing talent). In the end, a balanced raid force with Sorc healers (they are the best healers) and Mixed DPS/tanks would blow a 16 INQS raid out of the water in terms of overall raid dps and raid utility (sniper bubble, bloodthirst, undying rage, and superior dps from MAR and BH).

EQ2 actually had a ton of raid content at launch, but for the most part you're right. Age of Conan actually had less to do (significantly so) than this game.

Those were actually two of my favorite planets. I loved how big they were, and the overall grand feeling I got from riding my speeder across a giant ice tundra.

Have noticed the random multiple switches causing him to spin 360 while swiping. This seems to be a recently introduced bug. The 30k hits is not a bug as far as I can tell. When he pounds someone into the ground, that person gets a debuff for a few seconds. If the affected person gets hit by the swipe before that debuff wear's off, he gets hit for 30k+.

Have you actually tried a 16 man? That's a rhetorical question btw. It's obvious by your post that you haven't. Your entire post is based of napkin math that doesn't actually apply in game. Anyone who has stepped into a 16 man will tell you that's it's not only harder than 8 man, it's WAY Harder. In fact, from our personal experience 16 man normal is a lot harder than 8 man hard and approaches the difficultly of 8 man Nightmare. In terms of difficulty(not talking difficulty in forming the raid). It's 16 man NM > 16 man H > 8 man NM > 16 man N > 8 man H > 8 man N In terms of rewards 8 man NM = 16 man NM > 8 man H = 16 man H > 8 man N = 8 man Hard

Sorcs not stacking surge/power are bad sorcs

Dear god, you guys must be really good.

I've never lost a 1v1 against a sorc healer when I'm in dps spec. If they are doing more dmg than you as a heal spec, you're doing something wrong.

This lol

Actually I'm pretty sure this boss is still killable with just tionese/orange gear. The HM version is probably killable with orange/green gear. HM is a joke of a fight (like every other fight except SOA).

You've yet to show any evidence to support your claim that this is faulty info. The vast majority of people are reporting the opposite of what you claim (that normal is in fact harder than hard).

We actually do right/mid for both Normal and Hard. We don't have trouble with either anymore, but we still kill hard mode way faster.

We didn't learn from youtube videos lol. In fact a couple days ago was the first youtube videos of that boss fight I'd ever seen.

The number's are right (though the wording may be wrong). 5890/4170 = 1.41 (ie you need ~40% more dps for Normal mode). As for your other points. I tried my best to account for the armor stacks on the boss, but since I didn't know exactly how much it reduced raid dps for each stack I just had to account for it with educated guesses. If anything it's probably in the Hard Mode's favor. If I knew the actual values it'd probably be a bigger gap between Normal/Hard. Your second and third points are somewhat irrelevant to what my numbers are showing. How much dps each of the solvers is doing doesn't matter. All that matters is total raid dps, and Normal mode requires quit a bit more raid dps for your average starting raid (20-30% up-time). You also said that you've cleared this on NM mode. You may fall in to one of the groups for which this raid is actually easier on Normal for (though I doubt it). Also, if your having zero trouble with either mode it can be a bit more difficult to tell which one is actually harder. But, for anyone just starting Normal raids, the fight is almost certainty going to be easier on Hard Mode, and quite a bit easier it that. When we first figured it out a few weeks ago it was a night and day difference. Hard mode felt like a complete cake walk in comparison. We spent 3+ hours wiping to enrage at 30% on Normal(we eventually just called it), only to 2-shot him on Hard the very next day(without enrage). BTW none of the math I used in that post was based off youtube videos. I'm not sure where you got that idea. The only thing I got from youtube was a general sense of what most guilds were getting as far as % up-time on the molten debuff(virtually all of them are within the 20-30% range). You've still yet to provide anything more than anecdotal evidence to support your claim, and even still there's farm more anecdotal evidence against this claim from various posters in this very thread. The vast majority of people here agree that this fight is easier on Hard than he is Normal, and the math actually backs up the majority in this case. I think there's something to be said there. Like I've said before, I'm not afraid to admit when I'm wrong. If you have ANY evidence to support your claim and prove me wrong, please post it; it might give me a little more faith in Bioware that they actually have some idea of what they're doing. Until then, I can't really take you seriously(though you sound like you know what you're talking about). Don't let you're ego blind you. @the OP If your adamant about finishing Normal before hard mode % up-time on the molten debuff should be your top priority. Use 1 healer + 2 dps if you have to(the fight can easily be solo healed). If your not opposed to trying the Hard Mode version, I think you be pleasantly surprised at just how much easier it is. Like I said earlier, we went from wiping at 30% to enrage on Normal to 2 shot with no enrage the very next day on Hard. We've since gone back and beaten Normal, but it was still harder than Hard was the previous week(with less gear).

Prove me wrong then. So far you've done nothing but slew insults and act as if you know what's going on when the math clearly shows that you don't. That being said, if you have constructive feedback to give or some kind of evidence to show that going from Hard to Normal amounts to more than a 40% raid dps increase for your average raid, by all means, post it. Otherwise, you just look like a fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Sorc healer isn't really going help here. Healing Soa you have to heal through a lot of what I like to call "burst random single target dmg". Sorcs aren't really any better at healing this type of dmg than the other classes. In fact, their actually slightly worse equipped to heal this kind of dmg than Merc healers, and somewhat on par(maybe slightly better) than Agent healers. Where Sorcs really outclass the other 2 healers is in predictable large AoE dmg situations(ie healing the falling dmg from the platforming, annihilation droid, karagga). If you have a dps sorc in the group, make sure he/she is bubbling the ball targets.

That math actually had nothing to do with my guild. That math came from the mean of guilds who used two competent solvers on youtube. By looking at the time it takes for all them to kill the boss, and how many fire debuffs they used, you can determine a good average estimate of % up-time on the fire debuff. I'm not doubting that it may be easier for your guild to clear this fight on Normal. Unfortunately, for most guilds, the 2x fire debuff on Normal is not going to account for a 40% increase in raid dps, though I would love to see math backing up your claim that having double the fire debuff amounts to a >40% raid dps. That's what your claiming if you say the Hard mode enrage is harder to beat than the Normal mode enrage. Just a little more math, for those who are interested. Killing the Fabricator on Normal requires ~5890 raid dps Killing the Fabricator on Hard requires ~4170 raid dps (40% less than normal mode). On Normal mode, all three guns give the molten debuff. This results in about 2x the amount of up-time of the debuff when compared to Hard mode. In order for Normal mode to be easier than Hard mode, the extra up-time on the molten debuff needs to account for a >40% raid dps increase. Looking at the math, it should be obvious that the faster your solvers can solve the puzzle, the higher the % raid dps increase you will get from the extra debuff up-time. Here are some figures for guilds to look at and see exactly where they stand, and whether or not normal will be easier than hard for them based on % debuff up-time. Assuming that you use the right gun every other time on HM, you should have exactly half the molten time that you do on Normal mode (ignoring the extra droids on normal). *% given based on Normal mode (HM just /2) *calculations are based on purely boss dps (ie dps spent on the droids doesn't go in) 20% up-time you need ~4200 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~3450 raid dps before debuff for Hard ~22% more dps required for Normal 30% up-time you need ~3700 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~3200 raid dps before debuff for Hard ~16% more dps required for Normal 40% up-time you need ~3300 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~2980 raid dps before debuff on Hard ~11% more dps required for Normal 50% up-time you need ~2950 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~2780 raid dps before debuff for Hard ~6% more dps required for Normal 60% up-time you need ~2670 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~2600 raid dps before debuff for Hard ~3% more dps required for Normal 65% up-time you need ~2550 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~2520 raid dps before debuff for Hard ~1% more dps required for Normal 70% up-time you need ~2450 raid dps before debuff for Normal ~2450 raid dps before debuff for Hard Break Even Point Looking at this data, if your raid can keep a >70% up-time on the molten debuff in Normal Mode, then you'd have a harder time with the enrage on Hard Mode. Another way of saying this is that if you can keep a >35% up-time on the molten debuff in Hard Mode, the Normal Mode enrage should be even easier, at least from a purely mathematical viewpoint. However, there are other things that aren't really taken into account here that would probably push that % a little higher. The biggest contributor to a higher % break even point is the added benefit of the second gun your raid uses on hard mode. I'd say if your raid is capable of >75% up-time(not even sure how possible that is) on the molten debuff, normal mode will be easier, otherwise you'd have better luck with hard mode. As a frame of reference most of the videos on Youtube in which they use 2 solvers, their molten debuff up-time % is about 30%(for normal mode, ie 15% for hard mode). For the vast majority of the raid groups, Normal mode is going to be harder for this particular boss; the math basically proves this. Either make the Normal mode easier, or make the Hard/Nightmare modes harder. Personally, I'd vote for the latter seeing as how not-hard the hard modes actually are. *If you have any questions about the math I used, PM me. I'll do my best to explain my thought process and equations to you.

This, IMO, is the biggest problem. Nightmare mode and Hard mode are far too easy for what their name suggests. None of the bosses on Hard/Nightmare mode should be 1 shot-able just coming from normal(which most of them are). I came from EQ2 and Rift(HK) where it took weeks and even months (Djiin Master-6 months, Akylios-3 months) to down individual bosses.

I see you and two other people saying it's harder on hard. Literally everyone else is saying it's harder on Normal. Besides, all it takes is a basic understanding of math to see that it is in fact harder on normal.