I also have this problem with my smugler

This thread reminds me of when the game first came out. Even though there was a test server the down times for the early patches were a lot longer than anticipated.

While full Rakata is not needed for EC story I would say for the final boss you should have your DPS that use weapon damage with Rakata hilts/barrells to max DPS. It may be possible with one sub par DPSer. Unfortunatly the one time in an undergeared group we ran out of raid time after the second boss and was not able to go again till after reset. It is definatly possible to do the first four bosses in columni though. My advice if you have sub gered raiders who want to do this raid is do the first three bosses then those who have had new parts drop for them exit area get their new gear then come back in. Provided it is only one or two that need to do so this should push you over the top so that your DPS will be good enough for the third bomber.

In story mode atleast if the tank on the boss times his cooldowns correctly he can avoid the need to be healed for a few seconds so at least one of the healers can DPS the boomer.

I have actualy done this. Basicaly swaping ALTS and mains around so at the fabricator droid we rebalanced from 3 mele, 2 ranged DPS and one tank to 3 ranged DPS, one mele DPS and 2 tanks. Great fun and helps a gear up group for ALTs get through.

As other posters have said the players are far more important than the classes they bring. So lets say you have the players then slect the roles they are filling. To some extent this will depend on the opperation you are going to play. As far as roles are concerened EV is the most forgiving as it only requiers one tank though an off/second tank can help with the initial turret towers and adds. The only other requerment is 2 healers. Now at least one sage/sorc would be nice nice for the force buble it is not neccessary. My guild has done this with two commando healers. For EV any 4 dps ranged or mele does not realy matter although each of the DPS classes bring their own individual benifits. Karrag's is slightly different in story mode you can get away with a main tank and an off tank for Jarg and Sorno however 2 main tanks would be better. The with the AOE that Jarg puts out it is best to have at least 2 ranged DPS. However for the fabricator droid you realy need 3 ranged dps so that they do not have for to move beween solving the puzle and DPSing the boss. But in a pinch 2 mele and 2 ranged will do however one of the mele must have some for of leap ability either to get to the boss for the DPS phase or leap back to one of the ranged to get back to the puzzle solving phase. With regards to helers any 2 will do. However if your heal team only includes one sage/sorc you will want him on the lower level so he can get the benefit of the residual heals from slavation to bring his own health back up when he noble sacrafices. Explosive conflict is definatly a two tank opperation. With regards to the heal team one sage/sorc and a commando or scoudral would be ideal but in a pinch an two healers will do. For the DPS team at least two ranged dps although as others have said it is possible with full mele and full DPS. The DPS team should idealy be ballanced to make best use of special abilities such as gunslingers shield, sentinals insperation and commando/sage condition removal. The real trick to the first boss on this opp is removing the orange DOTs as soon as they appear so having one or more of the DPS team with a cond removal realy helps.

The main advantage to the campain armor set is not the small overall stat increase the set carries compaired to Rakata but the fact that you can pull the armorings and transfer the set bonus by droping them into a crafted orange armor part with an augment slot. To some extent I think BW designed the stat distribution on campain gear with the expectation that players would do this then fill the aug slots.

Talking of hard heroics the H2 in the bonus area on Alderan (the one you have to go through to get the endurance +3 datacron) actualy has the mob composition of an H4. Made it a pain to get the datacron before lv50. Partied up with a lv 50 guildy when I was level 45 in the end to get it.

BM and WH is fine for story mode on Eternity Vault and Karagas. In fact WH is better than Tionesse and almost on a par with Columni. So Just one gear up raid in story mode to get one or two Columni peices to swap some expertise to your primary PvE stat and you will be good for hard mode. Pleease not that story mode Explosive conflict is between hard and nightmare modes on the other two opperations gear wise. If you have a very good rotation and the rest of your party are in full columni or better there is no reason not to go straight to hard mode opperations. *Sigh* Raided last night Karagas HM with a player that had near full BM gear and had actualy sliped WH armmorings mods etc into his one peice of Rakata. Made the raid slightly harder than expected but we got through.

*Sigh* I can't help but agree with the points raised here on my heal sage I am going to end up getting nearly 2 complete black hole sets then pulling mods armorings etc and sloting into my Rakata just so I can keep a similar stat balance to what I had with Rakata.

Another trick that can be used to help other players is that although you can only use one attack or heal to help you can interupt as much as you like. My guild have used this trick to help new healers through it. Means once you start interupting for them they can drop self heal from their rottation and max their DPS and down it before enrage.

The trick to solo or duoing this quest with a heal comp is to have the comps CC ability (Carbinizing Stream, Deploy Holiday etc) acitve when taking down the trash but turn it off for the boss fight. The standard rules for taking out trash apply start with the standards, then the strongs and finaly the elites. For the final boss if you are well geared there is no need to move out the AOE just soak the damage.

Resplendence no longer removes the health cost from Noble Sacrifice. Valiance now reduces the health spent by Noble Sacrifice by 2% per point (up from 1% per point). Conveyance no longer unintentionally allows its buff to be applied to more than one healing ability. Its effects have been slightly redesigned. It now increases the critical chance of Benevolence by 60% and reduces the Force cost of Deliverance by 30%. As it stands at current with maxed Valiance (2) and Resplendance not procing the health sac from Noble Sacrifice is 13% (15-2x1) When 1.2 goes live Resplendance no longer negates the health loss however this is offset by Valiance having more of an effect for a Nobale Sacrifice health loss of 11% (15-2x2). So for a fresh lv 50 with 12000 health the loss would be 1320 For an OPS greared 50 with most datacrons with 18000 health the loss would be 1980 The force cost fore deliverance however is now reduced under convayance for the base 55 to 37 (55-55*0.33) reducing the cost by 18 or with Inerstrength maxed (9% reduction) from the base of 51 (55-55*0.09) to 32 (55-55*(0.33+0.09)). In the 1.5 healing rotation the total force cost of a healing rotation is reduced meaning that nobal sac will not be needed quite so often to keep force up however it will always result in a health hit meaning some force will be requiered for self healing. I would recomend the Rejuvinate part of the the rotation for this and imediatly follow this by nobal sac before poping the deliverance on whoever needs the big heal. Obviously there will be cases where deliverance can not wait under that situation do rejuvinate and deliverance on who needs the big heal and then just start the next rotations Healing Trance on yourself to get your health back up if your health is below 75%. Note on Noble Sacrafice In 1.5 (Always costs health. Resplendance only prevents the Force regen loss) Noble Sacrifce still gives 8% of your maximum force so for A base lv 50 with 500 force it gives 40 With 2 points in longevity 600 force 48 And for longevity and heal tier armor 650 force gives 52 With the effects of the 1.5 update it is now vital that Seer spec healers max longevity and get the 4 peice tier set bonus as soon as posible. Where as pre 1.5 this did not matter so much now with the need to self heal a lot more it is esentional as otherwise all the force regained will be spent on self healing.

My rotation tends to be healing trance, rejuvinate, deliverance (if a big heal is neaded or salvation) and finaly noble sacrafice if resplendance trigered which is most times (have a crit chance of 35% so prety much garentied with the four ticks on healing trance).

Unless its a group of fresh level 50s just stack up under him during missile barage and have your sage/sorc healers pop their AOE heals.

It's better to have ranged DPS working on the puzle. For best results use 3. Just after the gun fires they can DPS for a few seconds when the droid is most vunerable. Mele DPS on the puzel will hit a lot of problems with the mines. Ranged DPS can just remove them if necessary.

Scalling flashpoints would be a good idea for sub lv 50. However at lv 50 just run an opperation.

There is a workournd for people being in a cylone when the transition from phase 2 to phase 3 starts. You need a Sage with rescue or a sorc with pull to pull it off. Basicly it goes like this the sage stands near the iner edge of the ring as if he was going to jump like normal after the central floor drops and targets the flying party meber. He then waits for that member to come within 30m as the drops from the cyclone are normaly near the centre this usualy happens. When the range to party member hits 30m or less hit rescute pop a fast heal then drop as normal. With this meathod there is no nead to time SOAs health tightly as you can just play as normal giving one less thing to think about near the end of phase 2.

Even if you are a fresh 50 no need to kite if the healers are on the ball.

The floating bug can sometimes be beeten by an on the ball sage healer. There is just enough time between the start of transition and the jump down to cast rescue. Basicaly Just target the floating party member stand near the inner edge of the ring and as he comes within 30m rescue. If he is too low on health to make the jump down pop a benevolance. Should bring him up enough for the first jump. Then is needed a bit of rejuvinate before the second jump. Should still be enough time to pop salvation after the second jump and heal the party from the falling damage.

Just a quick update on my last post. My guild raided again tonight. Encountering all the bugs including a despawn when SOA was at.... Wait for it.... 110hp Before killing him at 3hrs 59min into our raid on what would have been our last attempt of the night. Total time spent on this boss this week alone to down him 8hrs 10min. That excludes attempts by our other raid teams both this week and previous weeks.

OF the three Qyzen, Zenith and Nadia. Nada does the best DPS. Qyzen is probably the lowest even in his DPS stance.

Throwing my guild into the hat. Started on Tuesday evening raid did all of Karraga's HM no probs, then the first 4 bosses on EV HM also no probs then we hit SOA. Only took one attempt on him on Tuesday as we were getting tiered did not make it to phase 3. Wednesday night. Warmed up on NM Kragga just stormed through. Then we went to EV HM to finish of SOA. Got to phase 3 every time even on one occassion with a peice of floor missing in phase two. Could our Shaddow tank hold agro for more than a few seconds? No. Random damage? Yes. Party members being flung around at the end of phase 2 not available in phase 3? Yes. Though on one occasion we were lucky and his corpse made it down and we were able to rez. Comming out of a mind trap straight into a lightning ball? Yes Pillers hitting and not taking sheild down? Yes. Best result 8% health left on SOA. Worst part was when he would do random damage to several party members just as his sheild came down resulding in mad frantic efforts by our healers (both of as seer build sages) to bring the party health back up in the small window when we should be DPSing as well. On one occasion one of our commando DPSers was off healing at this point just to prevent a wipe. In short the bugs are all still there. After two hours we gave up. The concentration requiered to work around the bugs is huge, strainging and tiering. Come on Bioware this is a game and ment to be fun not hard work. Still we will be trying again this evening (Thursday) probably with a NM EV warm up before doing hard mode SOA.

I had this happen today. Used shortly before a pullout on EV due to buged pylons. Went in again the cooldown debuf was removed but still could not rez. So an exceptionaly squishy sentinel stayed dead.

With regards to crit as a heal sage anything above 30% is a waste as you mainly need it to crit on healing trance for a free noble sac. If you regularly party with a smugler only 25% is needed. Once you've reached that put in power or alacrity.