I'm having an issue where it says I cannot connect to the update server, and subsequently can't start parser at this time. Has anyone run into a similar issue? I have run as admin.. but unless I know the ports the developer has used to connect to I cannot forward those.. I'm at a loss. We're trying to use this as a guild tonight for our first HM Denova attempts but this is proving futile. The whole guild can use it except me.. and I have no firewalls or anything. Halp!

Hate to bump an old thread, but I AM AMBROSIUS! Sorry for stealing your name. Had it for years and don't mean to part with it any time soon. *edit* Ambrosius ingame, Ambrossius in here because the real Ambro was taken from me as well

Yeah this fight is one of those "guaranteed" kills for us on hard mode. I tank at the right panel when facing the boss, the rest of the group goes to the left. On Normal mode the tank takes an OBSCENE amount of damage. When I only had 15k health and just hit 50 it was really really really healing intensive. We CC the droids the first time they come out, and after that we just do whatever tab stun tab or AoE knockbacks we have and click the panels as fast as we can if they get repaired. It's easily the tightest enrage in all the flashpoints right now.. but even when we brought a green/blue geared Mercenary in there we still beat the enrage or hit it at absolute most 3 or 4%. If we have someone forget to tab back to the boss or something briefly we might hit the enrage at sub 4% so it's not really that challenging. Tank takes almost no damage on hard mode.. but every time I get stunned I do lose aggro briefly and the group might take a cleave. Tanks save your taunt for when the stun breaks! Whether the fight is bugged or not on hard mode is debatable. Normal mode is definitely bugged and they stated in 1.1 his damage is being nerfed. If you kill the droids every time, you DO NOT have the DPS to beat the enrage. Especially if you're just starting out in hard mode flashpoints. If you CC them / spam knockbacks.. the enrage is much much easier. I'm still not sure which one is the intended mode of completion by the devs.. but I don't look at CCing droids as an exploit so. *edit* For those interested, group comp is usually; Assassin Tank Jugg Tank (If he's online I respec DPS) Sorc Healer / Merc Healer (Sometimes our merc and sorc trade roles lol) Merc / Sorc / Marauder / Jugg / Operative / Assassin We've done it with all those comps.

My only gripe about Biochem is the fact that all of our raiding consumables use the Grade 5 compounds/samples. I have to log on all day every 30-60 minutes to send TWO companions on Bioanalysis Grade 5 missions because THERE ARE ONLY TWO MISSIONS THAT YIELD RAID CONSUMABLE MATS!!! Seriously, I just looked at my list (I'm 400 btw) Moderate: Compounds Moderate: Compounds Moderate: FRACKING SYRINGES Abundant: STUPID HYPERIMPLANTWHATEVERS Rich: STUPID HYPERIMPLANTWHATEVERS ...can't make Stims for the raid tonight if there aren't enough SAMPLES IN THE WHOLE GALAXY! This is what it's like every time I log in pretty much. It's unbelievable. And I assume it's that bad for everyone because there are absolutely no Grade 5 samples on my galactic trade network. ...now let's look at Grade 6 where all these raid stims SHOULD be; Abundant: Samples Moderate: Samples Abundant: Compounds Abundant: Samples Moderate: Compounds ...oh how I wish Grade 5 had some missions like that. -_- /rant over. =( I should have stayed Artifice.. it's useless for tanks but at least I had fewer headaches.

All of you people who hate dual spec must hate me. I respec twice a day. OMG I must be doing it wrong! Several hundred-thousand credits a day to help my friends out! Imagine that. I voted a very emphatic YES! for dual spec. Seriously I can't understand for the life of me why anyone wouldn't want this feature. I already have dual spec.. it just costs me a couple hundred thousand credits a day. You all need to stop being ridiculous.

This is fine if you only care about yourself and have no desire to help your guild or raid, but it's completely unreasonable otherwise. If one of our DPS is sick one night, and we have too many tanks on, I'll gladly drop the 100k creds on a respec so that we don't have to call the raid or pug another member and make one of our own sit out. It's about the good of the guild, not all about you. Dual spec would be amazing. I respec daily because 4mans don't need 2 tanks and I will never tell a guildy "no" and search for a random person in general chat. This is just a courtesy and respect for other people that's lost on the majority of individuals today I guess. It's all about ME ME ME ME ME I DON'T WANNA LEARN A 2ND SPEC SO NOBODY SHOULD BE ABLE TO!

Level of difficulty wise.. Easiest to hardest I'd probably go; Black Talon = False Emperor Directive 7 (Bulwark is a really tight enrage) Battle for Ilum Boarding Party = Foundry (Last bosses only) They're all pretty easy when you've got good players, but just starting out you might hit some ugly gear checks. Bulwark in D7 will ruin the tank when he gets stunned. The 2nd? or 3rd? boss in Battle for Ilum is pretty dependant on your DPS having AoE that locks the targets down like Death From Above for Mercenaries. He spawns 3 stealthed adds that will obliterate an undergeared tank extremely quickly. We've been clearing them all for a while now so they're all doable, but Boarding Party and Foundry end bosses are extremely challenging compared to the rest of the content.

lol "Nothing". That's pretty much my response. Once you have the Power Conversion Module and Proton Torpedoes, there isn't much left aside from the social gear. I've been spending mine on the epic box whenever I get what is it.. 240? commendations. You can sell whatever's inside on the auction house. That's pretty much it. And yeah there is only one vendor in the game right now that accepts fleet commendations. If you're patient I'd say hold onto them as space combat in general is really limited right now and definitely needs some expansion added to it. Otherwise in its current form it was just a huge waste of developer resources. Awesome combat, controls, etc. No lasting reason to do the missions. Expect a patch in the future to give you a reason to hold onto your fleet commendations I'd say.

I completely 100% agree with you. In my raids, 3. Period. In pug 4 mans I frankly don't care what your numbers look like because I can just carry you and never see you again and we can both play the game our own "fun" way. I'll have my min/maxing and you'll have your mindless faceroll. You win this thread.

I completely support an ingame damage meter. Or at least a parse-able out of game combat log when they get the log flooding dealt with. Some of the most fun I have playing an MMO comes from seeing someone who's better than me.. analysing their gear/rotation/spec against mine, and then bettering myself for it. Right now I have no idea what's going on. We're killing bosses and not hitting enrage timers.. but what happens when we do hit an enrage timer at some point? We'll have NO idea why. Is the overall raid DPS too low and we need to gear up? Or would 2 or 3 people using bad specs make the difference by respecing? This game isn't like WoW where there has been patch after patch after patch to make Fire and Arcane the same (or very close to a margin of skill rather than talents) so it's still very possible that Deception falls MILES behind Madness for Assassins. All of the people saying no to meters because you don't like playing the numbers game.. you're so selfish. I play MMO's to PLAY THE NUMBERS GAME! It's so much fun for me being able to spend a couple hours at work writing a combat parser and going over all my numbers and figuring out where to improve. If I can't improve.. then where's the fun in playing a game about character progression? lol Just getting purples means nothing if I don't know how to properly use them because I don't have any empirical data to go through. I won't tell you you're bad in a pug, I don't care about pugs. Get carried -- fine by me. Play the game the way YOU want to play it.. I completely support your freedom. But don't take my favourite aspect of MMO gaming away. Even the debate factor.. where half a dozen guildies can get together and discuss numbers and where to improve and where to scrape that extra 1 or 2 DPS out of.. I love it. The community of bettering yourself and bettering eachother as a guild is just so rewarding when you can actually figure out where you're going wrong.

I typically don't "S Key" or move backwards when I have to move out of stuff quickly.. I'll just right click and whip the mouse around and autorun forward.. with my 5600DPI mouse it's pretty well instant and it's only a twitch of the wrist. You also move way faster forward than backwards. I do "S key" all the time when I'm trying to perfectly position a boss or a group of mobs in and around ground targetted AoE heals or DPS from my group though. I still have W bound to move forward.. it's easier to just double or single tap W or S than it is to pray you untoggle autorun fast enough lol. I also use A and D for strafe left and right. I completely leave "keyboard turning" unbound because I find it a hindrance. I also completely agree with the poster above me.. don't keybind EVERYTHING right away.. you're just gonna rage when you start hitting Force Cloak instead of Wither or something ridiculous like that.. because you absolutely can't memorize all that stuff in one day lol. I keybind my stuff in this game the same way I did in the past in Aion/Rift/WoW .. not the same abilities of course but they're all very similar. Like my targetted AoE's when I'm DPS are always Shift + Q in every game I play.. reactives are usually Q and E and if there are none I just use Q and E for frequently casted stuff. 2 is Stormstrike.. 2 is Shock.. you get the idea. So my bindings are perfect for ME and have been for the better part of a decade. Really depends on your playstyle. Being a tank.. if you whip out Talos Drellik he can heal you through every champion mob in the Belsavis dailies. I recommend binding all your stuff.. let him make you invincible.. and practice your rotation in those 4 or 2 Heroic quests. It will take you like 5-10 minutes to burn the boss down because tanks do dick for damage.. that's plenty of time to get a good handle on what to press.. just take your time. Talos can keep you alive forever =) Do that every day and in 2 or 3 days you'll be a keybinding boss. And you'll have epic mods. lol

I actually think you lose. 9 times out of 10 my Dark Ward is off CD BEFORE the charges are all expired. So using it early with your macro means you're wasting 10 force power and wasting the 2 or 3 stacks that are left. Also, your AoE macro.. there's NO WAY you'll have enough Force Power to spam Lacerate unless you have terrible gear and are getting punished by mobs with your 13k health and 30% shield chance. Yeah your macros are really good for a novice tank with two terrible DPS in the group who can't put out max DPS and threat-cap themselves.. but for anyone who's reasonable skilled or a seasoned tank.. all you're doing is handicapping yourself with these macros. I can't even think of anything I would actually macro as an Assassin tank. None of our abilities permit it. It's all situational. I would never Force Lightning unless I very recently put up my Wither and Discharge debuffs, and I would definitely never macro Lacerate into anything because Lacerate produces garbage for threat and costs 40 friggin' force power. Walk into a pull - Discharge, Wither, Lacerate then single target each mob because your AoE abilities CANNOT out-threat any half decent DPS. *edit* Not to mention macroing Shock with Recklessness is an absolute waste because the beauty of our shock is our proc that makes it crit. Without the crit (and the subsequent lil shock from the Madness tree) it really does dick for threat. So since it already crits all the time with our talent what's the point in using Recklessness for it? Save your Recklessness for a time like on Darth Malgus when the other guy finishes kiting and you're out of range.. pop Reck - Force Lightning - instant snap aggro when the boss comes back to you after the random party member is kiting. No sense in wasting a crit buff on an ability that always crits... lol

Yeah, it's really debatable. It depends on your role.. if you're specing more for trash pulls.. then yeah Electrocute/Spike and get behind the target could be a savage boost in threat.. but I tend to spec myself more for single target boss tanking. Having been a hardcore raider in WoW and Rift.. I find spec'ing for trash really isn't the most optimal route. But really it's whatever floats your duck. My spec is http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200rIMokrskbsZZf0cM.1 .. which seems to be the best balance between single target and AoE.. while providing me the most mitigation possible through Wither. When I start getting better gear... when I start replacing my orange gear with 50-51 epic mods with raid epics, I might be able to switch to a different build. But for now I've done a week of dailes and a week of Black Talon and have about 19k health, 50% shield, 45% absorb, 25% defense and I really can't afford to lose any mitigation talents yet. And I figure if buddy is asking about keybinds he's probably not at a raid geared level.. because as a clicker you really can't get there =P so I'm probably right in assuming he's around the same level as me. Struggling with hard mode Revan but trouncing Black Talon, Boarding Party, The False Emporer and Directive 7. Also, whoever posted about having the Razer Naga.. I don't understand how you can use that thing! I've been a move with my mouse -- kill with my left hand player for like a decade. I can't imagine switching to a 12 button mouse and just letting my left hand float around all useless like. My pocket Sorc who makes me invincible in every hard mode flashpoint we run uses a Naga though.. so I guess I'd swear by it for healing.

Yeah Maul is only used by Deception because of the talent at the bottom of the tree.. and you have to be behind your target to use it.. which makes it impossible as a tank lol It's also incredibly costly without the proc from that talent

Main Quickbar ------------------------ 1 - Saber Strike 2 - Shock 3 - Thrash 4 - Force Lightning 5 - Overload Q - Wither E - Discharge Shift+1 - Elecrocute Shift+2 - Force Slow Shift+3 - Force Pull Shift+4 - Mind Control Shift+5 - Lacerate Quickbar Right below it --------------------------- ` (tilde) - Stealth Shift+Q - Dark Ward Shift+W - Force Cloak Shift+E - Blackout Shift+F - Deflection Shift+G - Recklessness Shift+T - Jolt Shift+V - Mind Trap Shift+C - Force Speed Shift+X - Unbreakable Will Shift+Z - Tumult Shift+H - Mass Mind Control Left Quickbar ---------------------------- Shift+6 - Seethe CTRL+Z - Mount CTRL+3 - Force Shroud CTRL+4 - Assassinate CTRL+5 - Sacrifice (Not that it matters.. no companions in flashpoints/ops) CTRL+6 - Medpac 6 - THROW THE HUTTBALL! lol 7 - Overcharge Saber Shift+`(tilde) - Spike That's it.. everything else I click, and I don't use Whirlwind in this spec. 2 sec cast for 8 sec CC is worthless. All the buffs and saber charges and stuff are on the right quickbar. I'm thinking of changing force cloak to something else because I'm hitting Shift+Q right beside it every 15-20 seconds so I'm always terrified I'll accidentally vanish while tanking.. hasn't happened yet but it's a scary thought. *edit* Oh, and you absolutely can't click your abilities and be a good tank at 50 in hard mode flashpoints or operations. I can't even fathom being able to pull it off.. you really gotta get away from clicking lol. I'm constantly clicking mobs and casting abilities within a fraction of a second of doing it.. can't move that fast when you click the mob then click the spell. Good luck broheem. Tanking is so much fun in this game. Definitely more challenging than WoW/Rift/Aion