Normally when I was cc'ed if they didn't attack me (i.e. CC'ed me then tried to go after someone else) I would just wait it out unless that other person needed healing badly. That rarely happened. Usually they CC'ed me then immediately attacked me. I would be forced to use my CC break, but that has a 1 min cool down and usually immediately after breaking the CC I would be re-CCed again. A single use one minute CC break is fairly useless when you can just be re-CC'ed immediately upon freeing yourself, which is usually what happened. Anyway, I'm sure that is by design, I was just noting that as a non-PvP'er healer trying out PvP, it made it not fun.

Not sure what you mean by "bracket." I'm lvl 65 and was just queuing solo for the non-ranked warzones.

Just returned after a year-long hiatus and had to do some PvP for the Lt. Pierce companion quest. Now, while I'm primarily a PvE'er I did a lot of PvP in years past with my two other characters (merc healer and jugg tank). A few things I noticed playing PvP now versus a year+ ago: 1) I can't tell if my set of 204 rated PvP gear's expertise stat actually does anything. I spent the day running solo queue for non-ranked PvP and would alternate between my PvP set and my 216 rated PvE set. I probably ran 20 matches. The difference, every time I wore my PvP set I died twice as much, and did almost 1/2 as much total healing, versus when I wore my PvE set. I also noticed I died a whole heck of a lot faster in my PvP set than my PvE set. That should be the opposite, so it makes me question the value of the expertise stat. But this is anecdotal, at best. 2) The amount of stuns/interrupts is obnoxious. You go from a force choke stun right into an electro-dart stun, then your first ability you try and cast is interrupted, then you immediately get stunned again. Maybe stun-locking is the core of PvP, but as someone who doesn't PvP I can say it really turned me off to PvP'ing. It's just not fun being perma-stunned. Perhaps this would be less annoying if I was specced for PvP with my abilities, but I can't imagine it would be that much better. 3) Whoever at Bioware had the bright idea on some matches to show the class icons so the opposing team knows who is a healer, a tank, a DPS, should try PvPing as a healer sometime. My God what an atrocious idea. As a healer it is tantamount to putting a giant target on you that says "Healer, right here, everyone kill me!" At least in the old days the opposing team had to figure it out first. After running a handful of those 4 vs 4 matches I now know why so few healers PvP, its just not fun getting insta-nuked by all 4 opposing team members. Actually, it's more like stun-locked then insta-nuked, which is actually less fun. The matches I had the most fun playing were the larger maps where the opposing team didn't get to see your healer icon before the start. Still found the amount of stuns/CC to be obnoxious, but at least as a healer I could blend into the crowd and get away often and circle around to keep healing my team. Anyway, just some ranting from a PvE'er that ventured into the world of PvP for a day. Overall as a healer I found it a pretty unenjoyable endeavor and can see why so few healers PvP.

Go to your preferences to the Nameplates tab and try turning off Scale Nameplates with Distance. I have a computer that should be able to run the game on ultra super mega settings with no issue, yet whether I'm playing on the highest graphic/resolution settings or the lowest I still have that stutter when the camera rotates. After copious research on-line I found out that tons of people have this issue and it is almost always related to the Scale Nameplates with Distance setting. The problem is turning that setting off really, really sucks and fills your screen with giant obnoxious nameplates. So, either you have the occasional stutter when moving/rotating the camera, or you elect to play with giant irritating name plates filling your screen. Really Bioware should fix this problem already. Turn off that setting and and see if the game runs smooth. If not, no idea what is causing it and good luck.

While not a very helpful post in relation to what I asked, it was very entertaining!

Thanks! That was very helpful.

I just returned to the game with the launch of 4.0 after a year long hiatus and to mix things up a bit decided to shelve my level 60 jugg tank and sniper and do the instant 60 and made a sorc healer. I've been 65 now for a few weeks and am about 50/50 208 and 216 gear and just ran my first 8-man HM Ops tonight. I have yet to augment my 216 gear, but was curious if sorc healers should go heavy on crit, power, or alacrity? It seems most my spells are instants, or instant after a proc. I rely on my resurgence + innervate crits to proc my consuming darkness, which keeps my force power from depleting. This seems to hint that crit is a vital stat for us. I also tend to get procs that makes my dark heal and revivification instant. So it doesn't sound like we benefit too greatly from alacrity. But I recall from when I used to play my DPS sniper that there was diminishing returns with crit, so too much only returned marginal value. Also, i remember from my WoW days (even though I was a tank) that healers always talked about going heavy on power, which over long raid encounters would provide more stable healing than the spiky healing from crit-heavy healers. Anyway, hoping for some feedback on what stat mix I should be shooting for. Oh, and I'm guessing I don't need accuracy at all for healing, correct? Thanks in advance!

The concept of taking an existing instance/FP and just making it harder - and therefore by default, more time consuming - by increasing the stats (mob health, damage output, etc.), altering the mechanics (mob does A and B, instead of just A), or adding more mobs and then as a reward bumping up the loot tables a notch, is nothing more than a sign of a lazy development team. Give me new content (i.e. more FPs/Ops/Instances/Raids, not the same content just slightly more difficult with slightly better rewards that takes me longer to run. I hated it when WoW did it, and I hate it in ToR.

I agree with you. I'm kinda tired of micromanaging my gear. It's just one more time sink that detracts from the fun and time I have to play a MMORPG. Although I haven't played WoW since it was in its vanilla state I kinda miss just getting a piece of gear towards a set and being done with it. Need my helm? Get it from Onyxia. Need my boots? Head to Molten Core. Etc. I like ToR's token system in conjunction with drops being usable by multiple (or all) character classes (e.g. instead of the boss mob dropping a helm that only a Jugg tank can use it drops a helm token that anyone can turn in for their desired helm), because in WoW it sucked running a certain Instance/raid millions of times and watching gear get tossed because everyone already had theirs but yours never dropped. I know these games need artificial means to balance the game's economy, and I feel like enchantments, augments, or whatever are just implemented as a means to advertise more crafting things to do and to siphon money out of the game's economy. To me augments or enchantments, etc. just become a necessary, and un-fun, evil of the game, especially as a tank where your stats really do matter a lot.

I didn't read all pages so much of what I have to say may have already been said. I've played a tank for most of this game since '11, and in most prior MMOs was also a tank. I've MT and OT for many large raiding guilds in numerous MMORPGs. You want to know why there few tanks in group finder queues? Read on. Playing a tank in a MMORPG is, generally speaking, a chore (and frequently an unrewarding one at that). To be a competent tank you want to spend time leveling, perhaps even if it is just your last few levels, in your tank spec. This means doing your quests, dailies, etc. will be slow, plodding, and pretty dull all the while your DPS pals are having a blast (literally, blasting everything in sight). Finally, after you reach max level and feel able-enough in your tanking skills, you decide to charge head first in to that instance/FP in a group! And what typically happens? The other non-tank players in the pug group take a look at your fresh tank gear and argue that you are "under-geared" for the FP. It's probably not that you are under-geared necessarily, but the other players know that they will just have to work that much harder DPSing or healing, spend that much longer running the instance/FP (due to slower pulls), and spend that much more in repairs (due to more wipes) with a new tank versus the seasoned tank in end-game epic gear. So you decide to do some dailies, spend some coin, and upgrade your gear. Fantastic! Now you queue for a instance/FP and have at it again. This time instead of griping about your gear the pug party members complain that you don't know the mechanics of the instance/FP. You don't know where every stealthed mob is, where all the shortcuts to avoid certain pulls are, and you don't know the minutia of each boss fight - which all tend to require a lot of work for a tank positioning the mob, moving the mob around the room, running in/out of AoE, taunting, re-taunting, keeping up on threat, using defensive abilities, running halfway across the map to taunt off the DPS guy that never uses his threat reducer ability, etc. etc. So now you figure you best spend some time on YouTube watching boss fights and memorizing strategy guides for instances/FP so you know what to do next time. Well guess what? Now that you have spent all that extra time getting gear, and spent all that extra time on instance/FP strategy, your pug group expects you to also lead the group, mark targets, tell everyone how you will pull and who should do what, and then explain everything twice to the DPS guy that just freshly hit max level and has green gear and did none of what you had to do just to be accepted into the group. Finally you feel geared, skilled, and ready to tackle a raid/Op. Raids/Ops are very demanding on tanks for the most part. Unlike DPS, you can't just set to auto-fire and sneak away to grab a soda and no one notices. If the tank goes AFK, the raid stops (unless its just pulling trash, which the the off-tank can sometimes handle alone). And if the tank ain't pulling every nanosecond of the raid, everyone starts complaining. As a tank in an Op you are usually the de-facto leader, general, president, and dog catcher. So not only did you have to spend far more time than everyone else in the Op studying/researching strategies, watching videos, etc. you usually are expected to lead the Op or at least have some leadership responsibilities. And you can bet whenever there is a wipe it's a guarantee you will be blamed by one or two pug raid members, who will feel its their sole purpose in life to exit the raid, hit general chat, and proclaim how bad of a tank you are and no one should ever group with you. Eventually after you went through everything above you begin to tire of getting into pug groups where all the work you did to become a competent tank isn't appreciated, or worse the group's DPS or healer suck or don't know the instance/FP mechanics and causes you to wipe over and over and over again. After all that work you feel ready to join a guild. Well guess what? Most guilds only need 2 tanks, and most guild usually already have them. So now you join a guild, re-spec to DPS, and start getting DPS gear. Or you might just shelve your tank and either only play him when one of the guild's primary tanks can't make the raid, or when your guildmates need a tank for a guild instance/FP run. Eventually you realize that pugging as your tank sucks, so you only tank in guild runs or with people you know from your friends list. The tank in traditional MMORPGs is a role that becomes a thankless chore that is a lot of work (or at least more work than the other roles). Why deal with all the above when I can just roll a DPS or healer and do none of that and just enjoy the game? That my friends is why there are a million DPS to a handful of tanks and why you spend an eternity in PUG group-finder queues waiting for a tank. BTW the above doesn't necessarily reflect my personal experiences as a tank. I enjoy tanking, and since I have kids at home I have a lot of patience even for pug groups. I also enjoy leading FPs and Ops, and don't mind spending the time researching boss fight mechanics. But I've seen the above and heard it from a lot of other tanks.

Well, I re-subbed for 1-month but am now Kinda sorry I did. I played my lvl 60 Juggernaut for a few hours through the (new to me) content on Ziost, and it was just ho-hum. I tried paying my lvl 60 sniper and some of my healer alts but I just was going through the motions and not really having fun. Then it kinda dawned on me why - the characters in Star Wars The old Republic are really just bland and boring. There is really nothing special to them, no character, nothing endearing that makes you "love" your character. Sure the story-lines are entertaining, but outside that your character is just unimaginative in their animations and persona. When I played the original Everquest I loved playing my Bard. It was very unique and the different instruments and little songs each played were entertaining. In vanilla WoW my undead warlock or shape shifting druid were just flat out a blast. And in Rift my rogue tank was just so different and cool porting all around the place (and surprising people that a rogue could tank so well). While I absolutely love Star Wars, SWToR's characters are just too cookie-cutter and there is almost no skill/ability customization now with the disciplines other than one spec is for PvE and one is for PvP. Since I paid for the month and will get the KotFE expansion I will try it and will give some of my healer characters a shot, but I think trying to mix it up playing healers isn't why I'm struggling to find that "fun" factor in SWToR.

Hoping before I use my free 60 on a healer class I might not like someone can reply.

After nearly a year long hiatus I decided to resubb in anticipation of the KotFE expansion. Before I had played off and on since 2011 with the majority of my time spent on my jugg tank or operative sniper. But on the side I was leveling a Merc healer and absolutely loved it. I've played a healer in many prior MMOs but usually found them dull because it was always the same thing - just stand still and cast the same few heal spells over and over again. But what I loved about my Merc healer, while probably trivial, was I actually got to use my weapons as a healer! Blasting my teammates with rapid shots to build supercharges was really fun. The animation was cool, the sound was cool, the fact that as a healer I actually got to use my weapons as cool. it was just flat out fun. Now I find out that was removed (apparently a long time ago) and replaced with this boring single shot Kolto Shot with a lame animation and sound that looks like it is coming out of my wrist. Yawn. Now my merc healer is back to just standing there with dull animations casting the same few heal spells over and over again. I get absolutely no enjoyment from playing my merc as healer anymore. With KotFE we get an instant lvl 60 so I'm contemplating trying one of the other healers (sorc or operative) and wondered are either of them any fun like how my merc used to be? Or will I find both pretty much are just stand there and cast the same few spells with little animations or enjoyment?

I just returned after an 8 mo hiatus. After patching and launching my game stutters horribly whey I pan the camera or use the keys to rotate my character. Whether I'm on Ultra settings or the lowest settings it makes no difference, and I'm getting over 60 FPS in ultra settings. I never had this problem before with my PC. The only thing I've changed since I stopped playing 8 mo ago was I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Through the process of elimination I found the culprit - Scale Nameplates with Distance. Turning this off fixes the problem, but then my screen is plastered with huge name plates everywhere. I did some Google searches, and found that this problem dates back to 2012. Is there a fix to this? Thanks in advance!

No, I still had choice. I had the choice to read some website that claimed spec A was the optimal spec, and I could choose to spec that way. I had the choice to ignore min/max'ers and number crunchers and explore the talents myself and learn what I felt was optimal for my playstyle. I had the choice to spec as a hybrid or not. I had the choice to pick talent X or talent Y because I thought it was beneficial, or liked what it did, or it thought it worked well with my playstyle, or just because I thought it was a cool talent. I enjoyed the debates with fellow guild tanks and healers as we discussed which builds and talents we thought were better for a given boss fight or Op. Now all that choice is gone and I'm left with a bland cookie cutter character where all I do is grind on womp rats to level and obtain new gear.

Most the talents (left side of the discipline tree screen) remained much the same, but the new abilities on the right side (whatever they are called in the three categories) are mostly PvP oriented. As a PvE tank I don't need stuff that reduces my cooldowns on anti-stun abilities, or increases my movement speed for 5 seconds after being stunned, etc. And most those things are PvP oriented.

Basically ToR is now CoD with the illusion of character development and sabers instead or AR15s. It all basically boils down to the fact that every single character of a specified class is pretty much exactly the same, with the only differentiation if you opt for that character to be PvE focused or PvP focused. It begs the question, why even bother with the discipline system at all? Just let players pick a class, like Warrior, and create three sub-classes, tank, DPS, and PvP. In each you don't pick any skills/talents/spells, they are all pre-defined and just unlock at different levels as your toon levels. All the player has to do is toggle between which sub-class he/she feels like playing at that time, and the only individual customization the player controls is gear/stats. Gee, that sounds like a fun MMORPG worth paying $15/mo for.

Interested in the new expansion, and hoping for a WoW-esque expansion with tons of new lands to explore and dungeons to conquer, I came back after a 8 mo hiatus from the game and am sorely disappointment in the $20 I spent for it.. The discipline changes in 3.0 have pretty much ruined the game for me. My Jugg Immortal Tank is now absolute junk. All the new discipline abilities are PvP oriented. Great I guess if you like to play a tank in PvP, but for the other 95% of us who play MMORPGs for the PvE content there is ow absolutely zero enjoyment out of playing and leveling my Jugg tank. Thinking this might be just poor design for one class I tried out my Mercenary Bodyguard healer. While, again, most of my Discipline abilities were PvP-oriented, what was a total deal killer for my Merc healer was the removal of my ability to fire my guns at my comrades to heal them. Playing a healer generally is kinda dull, but Star Wars ToR brought one glimmer of hope to making healing fun, and that was the ability to use your primary weapons in a healing fashion. With that removal, my Merc healer is totally boring to play. Here is to hoping Tom Clancy's The DIvision comes out sooner rather than later so I can say good bye to Star Wars ToR permanently. 3.0's discipline changes totally missed the mark. BioWare you should have spent that dev and programmer time making other changes, like adding more new content to make this feel more like an expansion than simply another patch. Another dissatisfied customer.

I've attempted to heal HM Czerka Meltdown six times, and failed miserably six times. I'm a Merc bodyguard in mostly level 66/69/72 gear, all augmented. As soon as the tank gets Duneclaw to the green glowing barrel, and Rampage starts, everyone's health plummets to like 40%-50%. It seems like no matter how you position Duneclaw over the barrel he gets off at least two ticks of Rampage (which ticks for 4k per person per tick, more if people are too close and the damage overlaps). By the time the group gets to the next barrel, everyone is hovering around 50%-60% health and Duneclaw does Rampage again. At this point I'm chain spamming heals on the tank just to keep him up, and others, myself included, get killed. I try reapplying Kolto Shells, kolto missiles, you name it I'm using every tool in my tool box. But so far I'm unable to heal past the second barrel. Its just too much group-wide damage. I've tried getting everyone's health up in between barrels but I really can't because I need to keep healing the tank. Best I've done is reapplying kolto shells but the few thousand that heals for over time pales in comparison to the damage from Rampage. How the heck am I supposed to heal this? I've healed every other HM FP in t he game, HM Ops, and DF and DP and none of those even remotely came close to the difficulty I'm having healing this one fight in HM Meltdown. And since I can't beat Meltdown, I can't finish my weekly Czerka quest!!

Nice guide, one question, in your guide you stated: Many of the other guides I've read for SM only indicated a need to get the Raptus' and Tyrans' crystals in phase 3. What I can't find is a good description of the benefit each crystal provides (i.e. what does getting Calphayus' crystal do?) Thanks!

We didn't get the crystals in the attempts we did last night (and we were able to get to phase 3 - though it was tough). I can confirm in 8-man SM Stryak is not taunt immune. I was easily able to taunt him to me. But what I did notice was he would randomly de-aggro from me (though I just taunted him back). For Brontes, should the crystal be picked up at the start of the fight, or later on as she nears 40%-50%?

Guild just started running 8-man SM Dread Palace this week. First time in we easily cleared to the last encounter, Dread Council. Second night we went in and spent a few hours on the final encounter, Dread Council. We have phase one down pat, but struggle in the transition from phase 2 to phase 3. When Brontes and Styrak come out, each tank picks up one and we first burn down Styrak then Brontes. I read in the various DP guides that the tank on Styrak should go grab the crystal from Styrak's throne, and a DPS should go grab the crystal from Bronte's throne. What do these crystals do in 8 man SM? And do you even need them on 8-man SM? Thanks!

Got it, thanks!!

I'm confused. So if the "optimal" stat for a given level (per the matrix) is 1,000, but that includes procs that add a %, then how do I compute what is the optimal stat I need to achieve via gear? For example, say the optimal Defense Chance stat for my level is 1,000, which equates a 10% Defense Chance. But my proc adds 5%. Do I then really only need 500 Defense Chance *from gear, buffs, and a stim? For example, my gear/buffs/stim give me 500 Defense Chance, which is 5%. But after my ability proc I'm still sitting at 500 but the Defense Chance is now 10% due to the proc. Or, do I need 1,000 via gear/buffs/stim, which gives me a 10% Defense Chance, and when my ability procs it bumps me up to 15% Defense Chance? If I'm understanding you correctly, the chart tells you numbers based on gear/buffs/stims AND procs. Which means those stat numbers are higher than what can be achieved via just gear/buffs/stims.

So what are the ideal % for each (defense chance, shield rate, and shield absorption) with just self buffs, a stim, and without the procs?