The craftable armor that can have augment slots requires valor ratings

personally, i am fine with 16 man raids, especially considering the state of the game. i am not pleased with how loot is allocated between 8 and 16 mans. 16 mans should give better loot, not just more of the same loot. killing something with 15 other people feels a lot better than killing something with 7.

easiest way ive seen him done is to tank him in an alcove next to the door you walk into. the tank stands with his back to a pillar and never moves while the dps and healers stand with their backs to the wall. at no point during this should anyone be anywhere close to being knocked off.

are you doing the turns optimally? with 3 people clicking?

a threat meter wouldnt necessarily make the game easier. having one would make it so that people could see if their tank is doing his job. a tank who cant hold constant threat might be doing something wrong. the same goes for damage meters. you need to see whos not pulling his weight.

From what I've experienced, it seems like running through people is more effective than running around. I have no proof or a ton of cases where this has happened, but I notice this sometimes. Has anyone else?

aggro in this game is pretty odd sometimes. in my experience, chaff flare does nothing. its aggro drop is not nearly as significant as any other class's. instead of using chaff flare, i always jet boost the mob closer to the tank and electro dart him. if hes still on you, bring the mob to your tank. you could even cc him with concussion if need be.

one of bulwarks abilities does aoe damage all around him. if your healer is having trouble, melee needs to move back for one of the abilities (the ohter is just a frontal cone now). if you have trouble with the enrage timer if you do that, then the dps needs to help the healer out (stims or medpacs).

i use the crit/surge one becuase im partial to crit/surge. but i might try others later

ive tuned the sound of rapid shots out since i got CSC. a lot of my friends find it annoying when i spam it though.

I started with this theory, but as I got more power gear/mods, I was not healing as much as my OP friend who was stacking crit/surge. Without a lot of crit/surge, rapid scan heals for ~25-2800 on average is what I noticed. When I dropped a lot of my power for crit/surge, I noticed healing was significantly easier in large damage fights in that I need to cast less heals to heal an ops group. I dont know my stats right now, but fully buffed I have around 500 bonus healing, 41% crit, 77% surge. I will probably try gearing for power again once I get more pieces to play around with, especially since the DR of crit seems to hit hard in the high 30% (seems kind of a waste to have so much crit). Power is a pretty underated stat for healers, from the ones I've talked to, but it does scale pretty well (better than aim). The only problem is, power doesnt really become valid to me until you have a high crit/surge. Crit and surge are simply much more noticeable in the early phases of gearing (~tionese) and seems to be a little more forgiving in terms of getting behind in healing.

find yourself a pocket healer?

more often than not, i agree. most people who cant kill healers dont interrupt. as a pve spec'd merc, if my big heal gets interrupted, my other heals arent that big unless they crit to keep me alive a lot of the time, granted it can still take a long time to kill me regardless.

immune to interrupts but not stuns, knock backs, or knock downs.

i dont know if this is anything, but whats the debuff he puts on you after you get pounded into the ground? both times people got 1 shot was after they got pounded and then took raid-pound damage. it might just be a bug with the debuff. ive personally never encountered this, so i dont know what could cause this - this is just speculation