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

Higher-ups posting updates on the forums does not mean they arent working on problems. A single update once a week in the announcement page would take ~10-15 minutes. Besides, there are likely a large number of people working collectively on the bugs, so 1 taking the time to post an update would help the community more than hurt, as you see it. They could even use their media department to post these updates so no time is wasted to begin with.

its their 31 point talent though, if i recall correctly? kolto missle isnt that far into our tree, and i would much prefer our single target free heal

kolto missile is such a useful tool in pvp. its another instant heal you can use in a bind that hits 3 people and costs a minimal amount of heat. with your csc charges, it can reduce inc damage by those hit by 10% and apply a healing buff - neither are things you can really ignore.

that or hit 3, but apply the healing buff to all hit in the area.

I do feel like kolto missle could use a slight buff, as in applying the increased healing buff to everyone hit in the targeted area. The heal itself hitting 3 people is okay to deal with, and the 10% damage reduction to the healed targets is fine as well. I've healed all the hardmode flashpoints and normal/hardmode ops 8 man with an operative as the 2nd healer. Even though we don't have a ton of AOE heals, we can still keep up with raid damage pretty well, even to the point where I can pop in some dps with fusion missile/railshot/rapid shots. Even without any buffs, I still think were strong healers. It's just managing heat, knowing when to pop vent heat and use your CSC charges. It also helps to have my tanks and dps in Vent so I can tell them when they should start thinking about popping medpacs because I'm running high on heat with no heat dissipation ability up. What really helped me was understanding the basic rotations and how effective they are for certain situations. Now, I'm not saying that you stick to rotations all the time, but knowing what they are and do can help you in specific situations.

my group did it with a dps spec'd OT with tank gear on and an assassin MT. the powertech was able to tank the duo bounty hunters pretty handily.