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Vaidinah

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  1. Hey Phalczen, this is Aeralos. I think I was the one who explained the situation when it comes to relics to you so I want to clarify. For tank relics (and stims + adrenals), the amount of mitigation you gain in those items is almost unnoticeable and so I favor using DPS relics, DPS stims, and even DPS adrenals when I play a tank on many fights. I don't know the exact % of mitigation gained using these pieces of gear, but it's vastly less than the DPS you gain as a tank for using DPS relics, DPS stims, and DPS adrenals. You can gain 300-400 DPS alone from running these items (along with increasing your burst during burn phases), which is a great deal. Tanks that know how to do their rotation in PvE and maximize their DPS to help their team can put up to 2k DPS in fights (depends on fight, tank class, gear and other stuff, but this a rough top end considering mechanics tanks normally deal with) and so an extra 300-400 DPS is massive as you gain about 15-20% damage and lose very little in comparison in terms of survivability. This is especially true if both tanks are doing this as you've increased the team's overall DPS by up to 800 DPS. Now I main a Jugg tank, but I do this on all the tank classes when I have the items available (even Ruusan relics are easy to craft and are great). I have done this for a long time because on any fight with a DPS check (especially during progression), the entire team's DPS is incredibly important. Healers will DPS in fights, especially initially because the beginning of most boss fights generally have low incoming damage and their resources are full, tanks can throw out extra DPS with these items, and DPS will DPS as normal. There is more to it than that, but the point is, all DPS matters during progression and beyond. There is a tendency among most tanks to view DPS as not their job because it is not their main responsibility in that role, however, it's amazing for your team when you can do your rotation correctly. There is no benefit to not doing your rotation well enough to put in significant DPS as a tank so this is one option available to us tanks to aid our team on any fight with any kind of DPS check.
  2. Scoundrel DPS has a number of useful utilities for a team; probably more than any other class in the game. They have some off-healing, battle revive, off-cleanse with Triage, self-cleanse with Dodge, the 10% crit boosting team buff (Stack the Deck) and most importantly, stealth resurrection. If you know how to stealth res very well, you're a huge asset to the team on many fights (especially Coratanni). No one does it better than a Scoundrel DPS since you have no cooldown on your revive and can try to stealth res every 1.5 minutes (with the right utility) allowing you to resurrect multiple people at times. In terms of DPS, they parse quite high and can do very well in raids (though they do not really gain DPS in fights like Sentinels/Marauders, Guardians/Juggernauts and Vanguards/Powertechs do) when it comes to single target damage. It is true that their AoE damage is amazingly awful, but almost every class in the game can do good AoE damage so it shouldn't ever a be a problem for your team. When it comes to survivability, Scrapper Scoundrels are one of the best in the game with their Scamper roll giving them 100% immunity to almost all damage in the game for 1.5 seconds and can be used twice every 10 seconds if necessary. They also have 30% AoE damage reduction, some other good defensive cooldowns like Defense Screen + Pugnacity (when used with the appropriate utility). and Dodge (mainly good for Underlurker, but has some use otherwise). Scoundrels also have good mobility thanks to Scamper being able to be used twice every 10 seconds and Sneak giving a decent speed boost. They can gain even more mobility with Holdout Defense if necessary (not recommended in general) and have a 15% standard speed boost with the appropriate utility. Their main downsides (outside of the aforementioned awful AoE damage) is that they have no way to prevent pushes and pulls (very useful in current content), no knockback (mainly useful on Revan). They are also a melee class with a heavy emphasis on being in melee range to do damage, which is more difficult to deal with in current operations. You have more ranged options to do damage than most melee classes (exception being Vanguards/Powertechs) and still maintain most of your DPS, though. There is also more of a positional requirement for the class as you want to be behind your opponent roughly every 12 seconds for Backblast. Overall, Scoundrel DPS is highly underrated and brings a great deal of utility to the team. If you take the time to learn it properly, you'll be a huge help to your team.
  3. Ah oops, sorry about that purple circle then. Hopefully I'll get a chance to test some of these reflect possibilities out soon on my Jugg.
  4. I did this fight in 16 man with Intrepid several months ago, but I don't recall Phase Walk acting in that way. It would be pretty odd for that skill to change specifically with 16 man, though, and in current 8 man teams with Assassin tanks that cheese the knockback, I've never heard them comment on Phase Walk not going on cooldown. That seems like an interesting bug, but I haven't done 16 man Master Blaster in a while. When you say tank him directing to the edge, I assume you mean tanking him in phase 1 by facing towards the outside of the map away from the entrance and exit of the fight? If so, you don't need to actually do that, even in 16 man. If you tank the boss facing towards the entrance or exit (in the non-flying V strat way), there is actually quite a bit of space in front of the boss for healers, ranged DPS and even melee DPS. That's a video of Intrepid doing it back in March with only 2 melee DPS (though, vanguards, aren't arguably mDPS for the most part), but we had some kills soon after that with 4 melee (I believe it was 3 sents + 1 vanguard). Not exactly a super clean kill, but it worked. That is kind of pushing the limits of space for them to actually get meaningful DPS in, though, and was unnecessarily painful in terms of team composition. Also, yeah, the multiple mines are pretty ridiculous ever since that started happening months ago. I assumed it would get fixed because I don't remember it ever happening to us when the fight came out, but ever since we first saw it, it has been here. Unfortunately, I doubt it will get fixed.
  5. Missed this post earlier, but thanks.
  6. Push is now 10/10. Also, I wanted to add in another guild to the list. Rogue Elite is an Imperial guild that has a few teams that have progressed in the current operations. Team 1 is 7/10 and Team 4 is 8/10.
  7. Unfortunately, it doesn't prevent the throw itself, but you have time to Force Leap back to the boss before he moves to you if you time it right a little before you hit the ground. Unlike Force Shroud/Resilience, I don't recall Saber Reflect ever negating any actual effects from bosses; it just reflects damage.
  8. That's a fairly complete list and I only have a few additions with some comments about best use of the skill for those fights. There are some other skills I recall reflecting at some point, however, those other skills aren't worth the Saber Reflect, anyways, so I won't bother with them. If anyone has any corrections about any skill I mention not working with Saber Reflect, that would be helpful. Ravagers: For Sparky, I would add Shoulder Throw to the list for tanks. I typically reflect the first Shoulder Throw, then use it on either Brutalize if I'm supposed to take it or on future Shoulder Throws. Temple of Sacrifice: On Walkers, I'm almost completely sure you can reflect the mine that spawns from the orange circles on each boss as either tank or DPS. I believe it can also be used against the purple circle Squadron #2 drops on his aggro target for tanking. Overall, it is best used against the normal attacks from the Walkers if a tank. For Revan, if you are a DPS, I think you can reflect or at least negate the damage from the droids during the HK phase if they are targeting you and aren't killed quickly enough. Dread Palace: With Calphayus, you can reflect his Inevitability attack as a tank. If you are tanking Bestia on the Dread Council fight, it works on the Force Push attack. I'm not sure, but I think it also works on Calphayus's crystalline-looking attack where shards fly in and strike the tank as well on that fight. Colossal Monolith: Just to add this boss in as well since it's a somewhat important boss in the current game, you can reflect the ground slam-like attack the boss does as DPS or tank that hits everyone.
  9. That is probably true as many groups I've seen do look for DPS that can be recognized as tanks in the group finder. That makes the difference between the DPS checks between Sword Squadron and Underlurker around 500-700. That means the group needs to pull around 28-39% more DPS just for Underlurker with an arguably more mechanically more difficult and less intuitive fight.
  10. I know my post above was very long so I wanted to comment on one aspect of the Temple of Sacrifice operation that contains an unique problem. Before I mention, I would mention that everyone would pretty much agree that the Temple of Sacrifice operation is the hardest SM one in the current game. Now when players complete their storyline on Yavin IV, they are given the option of beating Revan solo or doing it through an operation. I believe this choice is there to encourage players to do operations and to give raiders a way to complete the storyline without doing a bunch of extra quests (although really, the quests don't take much longer than doing the operation with a solid group). However, this choice has in part created the monster of the problem that exists with the Underlurker boss fight. Since Temple of Sacrifice is the hardest SM operation to do, new players really shouldn't start their raiding here. They should start with the first operations and work their way up, ideally with a guild guiding them. However, due to this quest, many probably do and go into PuGs trying to finish the storyline they did while playing solo to get a feel for group dynamics. Of course, since the requirements for successful raiding are far steeper than leveling, players inevitably will play poorly, which most likely leads to a bad experience for everyone involved and turning these players off from raiding. This problem became clear to me as I stood in front of Temple of Sacrifice operation while waiting on some guildies. A random person asked me if I was interested in doing the operation so he could complete the storyline. After speaking to the player, but declining due to my aforementioned guildies, I checked this player's achievements and noticed he had almost none for operations. This player had chosen the operation version of completing the storyline instead of fighting Revan solo. I politely discouraged the player from doing the operation as a PuG as it was the most difficult one and recommended joining a guild as that was the best chance at completing the operation. Also, every player should really do the Revan fight solo at least once because it's a great fight on a dramatic level due to the inclusion of all the storyline NPCs. Anyways, this is a small issue, but I believe it is one of the many reasons why such a great deal of solo players are doing operations like Temple of Sacrifice and getting frustrated with both the game and the community.
  11. Temple of Sacrifice as a whole is mostly fine with Underlurker being the only really problematic fight for many players. People keep talking about it being a DPS check, but I don't think it's really understood just how much different it is compared to the other fights there. I'm fairly sure anyone who has done SM Temple of Sacrifice or Ravagers knows Underlurker is a significantly harder DPS check than any other boss in those operations, but few specifics are given. Now personally, I PuG a decent amount on the Harbinger (typically as a healer, but sometimes as a DPS) and about 8 out of every 10 groups I join, beat Underlurker. Sometimes there's a wipe or two, but for the most part, it's fairly smooth sailing. I'm aware that my numbers will differ from others in terms of success rate on this operation because I'm a very experienced raider in this game. The reason I mention this is I have done Underlurker many, many times on both SM and HM and know the fight far better than the average player in a PuG. I know how to maximize damage and survivability (including adding DPS as a healer, which helps a great deal on that particular fight) plus I can help fix mistakes while figuring out what to do as a team to make progress. Most players have nowhere close to this level of experience with raiding in this game and for a SM fight, I would say that Underlurker is overtuned for that population of players. This is why so many players complain about this fight and ask for a nerf. Let's look at the numbers so we can see the fight in a more objective manner. Underlurker Enrage is 4:50 (290 seconds) Lurkerling: 89110 x 3 for each wave x 5 waves = 1,336,650 Underlurker: 2,615,644 Total = 3,952,294 for 5 waves, 3,684,964 for 4 Combined DPS check = 13,628 for 5 waves, 12,706 for 4 Pure DPS check (5 waves) = 13,628 - 1,000 (one tank) = 12,628/5 = 2,525 Pure DPS check (4 waves) = 12,706 - 1,000 (one tank) = 11,706/5 = 2,341 With the numbers above, the combined DPS check is the total DPS required to kill the boss. I assume healers will not be DPSing significantly (although I do this all the time, most pug healers don't) and tanks do about 1,000 DPS (a rough estimate based on my experience). I also assume a team comp of 1 tank, 5 DPS, and 2 healers as that is what most PuGs run. I've separated the DPS check for two common strategies for the fight. The first is killing all 5 waves, then burning the boss. The second is clearing 4 waves for adds, hide behind a rock while ignoring adds, then finishing the boss before the enrage. There is another strategy that involves starting the full burn on the boss itself right after the 3rd wave, but the cumulative damage from Lurkerlings jumping adds up quite a bit at this point and in my experience, most PuG healers will not be able to keep the team alive. Going along with the healing required, this fight is unnecessarily brutal on melee DPS as the Lurkerlings have an attack that only hits nearby targets. Any team with 2 or more melee characters (including the tank) is going to take significantly more damage on the fight and those melee DPS will also have a harder time switching targets if needed to help kill the other adds. So if you see the DPS check for the 5 wave and 4 wave strategies, it's actually quite high for SM. Somewhere between 2300-2500+ DPS is required for each of those DPS players. To compare this with the HM version of the fight, you need roughly 3272 DPS from each DPS, which is a bit too close. This equates to what is realistically an unreasonable amount of DPS for the average PuG player to do while dealing with mechanics for a storymode operation. Since the team is already running 1 tank, you probably can't replace the tank with a DPS and the healing is significant enough that you still want 2 healers. The average tank that does go DPS as well generally are less familiar with DPSing and have less DPS gear so they are likely to do less damage than a standard DPS player. In contrast, we can look at what is probably the 2nd most difficult fight in terms in the current operations on SM: Sword Squadrons. Almost every group I have done this with has done this successfully with it only becoming a barrier for progress when it first came out. Part of that was just the learning process that comes with every new operation and the other part was the higher degree of coordination required to kill both Sword Squadron bosses in quick succession, lest they enrage and kill the team. After the nerf, there have been little to no issues with PuGing the fight and to this day, it does a fairly decent job of teaching the players how to do the fight to be somewhat ready for HM while still being fair. Sword Squadron Enrage is 6:00 (360 seconds) #1: 1,795,180 #2: 1,795,180 Total = 3,590,360 Combined DPS check = roughly 10,000 Pure DPS Check = 10,000 - 2,000 (two tanks) = 8,000/4 = 2,000 Initially, you may look at the total health of the Sword Squadron bosses and then the Underlurker. With just that comparison, the health totals seem pretty similar. However, the much lower enrage timer on Underlurker (70 seconds shorter) makes the fight much more difficult. The average player only needs 2,000 DPS to beat this fight (300-500 DPS less than Underlurker) and if there are issues with the DPS check, a tank can run a DPS discipline and use DPS gear to help close the gap. There isn't much DPS downtime in the fight as players with the Huge Grenade will typically move away from the team to prevent damage, but can still DPS. If Sword Squadron #1 is immune, players can simply switch to #2 in the meantime. Also, the mechanics of the Underlurker fight cause many players to miss out on a good deal of DPS when they hide behind rocks or scramble to rejoin the team during the cross. While HM healers can just heal through players standing out and DPSing full time, the average PuG healer will not and most PuG teams consisting of average players will need to group behind rocks to let healers keep up the team. This means that players are spending even more time not doing DPS to help the team than say Sword Squadron where the only time players don't really add DPS is if Sword Squadron #2 is very low and the team is waiting on a bomb on #1. Based on the numbers and the difficulty of dealing with mechanics while DPSing on these two fights, I would agree that Underlurker on SM should be nerfed a bit. While the fight does a good job at getting players accustomed to the mechanics and DPS requirements for HM, it's an unfair fight on SM for the average player as there is a large distinction between the highest tier of difficulty that currently exists in HM and the lowest one in SM and this fight does not reflect that difference very well. From this information, I would say that on SM, the specific attack done by the Lurkerlings to nearby targets should either be removed or greatly decreased and the boss himself should have about 500,000 less health. With about 500k less health on Underlurker (such that he has around 2,115,644 health), the average DPS needed per player with using the 5 wave strategy goes down to only 2180 DPS and with the 4 wave one, becomes 1996. This is more on par with Sword Squadron while still being a more difficult boss in general.
  12. Hey Camels, your parse is a great example and you should definitely be proud of it. I wish I could go back and play Saboteur on Torque again, but I don't think I'll have the opportunity as I'm mostly healing on my pub guild now. If I do, though, I'll definitely try it out as well. Lack of intention is still irrelevant and always be regardless of how many times you bring it up. There are many other unintentional aspects to this game and many others that improved the gameplay and roll-in-place was one of most positive ones for a number of reasons (even beyond boosting Saboteur's damage). Also, there is no evidence to your claim that roll-in-place did more harm to Saboteur than good. Roll-in-place has been gone since around 2.10(?) and guess what, Saboteur has only gone downhill from there.
  13. Thanks. I wrote a post on another thread about it that I'll quote, but you use Orbital Strike, Plasma Probe while filling in the gaps with Suppressive Gunfire while utilizing the energy return from Explosive Probe + free Frag Grenade (with EMP Discharged used before adds to get this). You still mostly use Suppressive Gunfire, but Orbital Strike can also hit 3 targets (it's stronger in Engineering due to a 1 second lower cast time and does more damage) and Plasma Probe is very powerful when hitting 2 targets if you can maintain it. Since I wrote it as a Saboteur, I'll list the equivalent terminology below. Orbital Strike = Freighter Flyby Plasma Probe = Incendiary Grenade Suppressive Gunfire = Sweeping Gunfire Explosive Probe = Sabotage Charge Frag Grenade = Thermal Grenade EMP Discharge = Sabotage Adrenaline Probe = Cool Head Target Acquired = Illegal Arms
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