(Ashley Schaeffer voice) If I recall correctly, Benedict Arnold used the same excuse to justify his traitorous ways. No, in all seriousness, the line about traitors is just poking fun at my old imp buddies who rerolled around the time Infidels left for GW2. No harm intended, you were just lumped into the category of good healers who quit for pub side. Although it seems I may have struck a nerve ^_^. I don't mean to derail this thread talking about all the imp baddies, especially madbads like darkmagician, please continue. Also in all seriousness, grisha/flak/cates is Benedict Arnold and CM/rippernine is John Wilkes Booth. -Eked

Wrong. Sorcs we still have (in no particular order) durwin, nova, klinsmann <3, psychospider. Ops anna'ka, shatterwoman, strykez, dize, jalblurr. Mercs reighner, regis, moonrunner, amigo?... Pug healers are depleted except for the occasional sorc but to say all the top imp healers are gone would be incorrect. It's my opinion that we are missing top end dpsers, that's why I often run dps to pick up the slack. A lot of my healer buddies still play minus Vandis but the vast majority of top dpsers on my friends list are gone. Sure there were traitors like combatmedic, amigo, okku (on vanish), neb, and especially grisha even though he doesn't heal, but there are still quite a few top imp pvp healers around. In pugs I find that imp dpsers don't focus well or peel which leaves the healers at a big disadvantage running solo. Can't tell you how many times I am the only person attacking Neb in a pug, even after I put a big target on his slippery ***. Sorry to pick this line out but I have to respectfully disagree. To the OP- run merc we need more quality healer tanks. It is more difficult to heal as a merc in high end pvp due to properly timed interrupts/CCs but when played right they are a force to be reckoned with. -Eked

11 deaths: +100

100% agree. Some people will argue that EQ truly hit its stride with the release of the Velious expansion and the Temple of Veeshan. Bioware could learn a TON from studying how Verant/Sony designed ToV. It had 3 different wings of difficulty with 2 armor sets for each class and the boss of the entire dungeon, Vulak'Aerr, dropped the pieces of uberness described in this post. I had the first Hobart's Helm in the game and it was absolutely thrilling when it dropped on our 2nd kill. The northern wing was the most challenging and it also had about 13 bosses to kill that all had a rare drop that made them worthwhile to kill. The Cloak of Thorns is a perfect example, this cape was so über I used it well into the next expansion because it had a self-click damage shield. Where are these unique items/item effects in swtor? Fast-forward ~6 years. Some people will argue that WoW truly hit its stride with the release of Blackwing Lair. Bioware could learn a TON from studying how Blizzard designed BWL and copied EQ. It had 8-9 bosses of varying difficulties, including several gear-check/gateway bosses and the boss of the entire dungeon, Nefarian, dropped the pieces of uberness described in the previous post. The most difficult bosses dropped set pieces, however each boss had a rare drop that made them worthwhile to kill. I can remember the wing buffet dragons dropped an uber warlock piece we waited a long time to see and Nefarian dropped the BiS healer offhand that I waited quite a while to acquire. Farming the instance for these rare drops proved to be invaluable in progressing faster through the next major dungeon, AQ. Why hasn't Bioware picked up on this yet? To conclude, these items of uberness are what make or break endgame itemization for hardcore raiders. Being able to be the only person in the game or on the server to have the aforementioned item of uberness is something we hardcore guys strive for! Damn right I was pimping my robe off Nefarian or helm off Vulak'Aerr when I knew nobody else had it yet. Bioware is kinda sorta on the right track with Kephess itemization. The armorings and ear/OH that only he drops somewhat fit this mold, but mostly miss the mark. So what can Bioware learn from these dungeons that put their respective games "on the map" so to speak? 3 things; #1. You cannot make all itemization cookie-cutter style and expect hardcore raiders to keep running endgame content without a carrot on a stick in the form of these items of uberness. #2. Create a long and difficult dungeon with ATLEAST 2 gateway bosses that people will get stuck on for a week or more. This dungeon must be your masterpiece in order to set swtor apart from its competitors. #3 From studying these dungeons you will see that Swtor's boss mechanics are right on par (if not better, as they should be) with its predecessors, keep it up! But I would ask for an increase in difficulty, sure the casuals will complain, but when they see me rolling around with one of these items of uberness, guess what? They will be motivated, they will get better, they will down it. Fin. P.s. before anyone asks, NO I don't want space dragons! =D

The new gear set for NiM EC is prefixed Hazmat (found this on torhead I believe) and is a halt step up. So itemizing must be taken into account for the development time as well. I would love to see a time-consuming legendary item quest released with NiM EC. Something that required a rare drop from each boss in NiM EC plus crafting/farming would be ideal to keep the progression raiders interested. I know this is a stretch but it would be a relatively quick fix to the stale end-game that we currently find ourselves bored with. I think they could hammer out one solid quest-line in a matter of weeks that could keep us occupied for a month or two until 1.4.

Im at 2125 willpower, 970/755 bonus dmg/healz, 31.5% crit before agent buff. You are right on point with your surge/alac ratio. I think 77/8.5 is my sweet spot. My power to crit rating ratio is 790-250 so I'm a little higher than the 2.5 estimate. I would suggest dropping one crit/surge enhancement for power/surge and switching out all mods with the 60+ willpower for ones with 41 power. That should help boost your bonus damage a bit. Also don't forget you can get an extra 1% crit/surge from max companion affection. In the end, the difference between 1350 and 1500dps comes down to min/maxing, how effectively you can execute your rotation and proper use of recklessness, trinkets & adrenal.

Let's bring the healers in on this one. My biggest crits. Thundering blast: 5713 DF: 4923 Dark Infusion: 7899 Innervate tick: 2287 With raid buffs I have 2137 willpower, 800 power, 950 force damage, 730 force healing. The 7k crit TB is possible in WZ if caster has 1000+ expertise and target is squishy with 0.

I think everyone is missing the part where it said "coming this year". Meaning the highlights include 1.3, 1.4 and possibly 1.5 (if they can push it out by December). With NiM EC not coming with 1.3 we've got a long while until a new operation drops. I'm thinking September or later.

At all? This is the most healing intensive fight in the game. If you don't have great healers you will never see kephess sub 60%. Good positioning for bombers/ walker dps phase reduces the need for insane dps. Good positioning for adds/pulsar droid phases reduces the chance of a raid member getting insta-gibbed. Healing during the kephess phase cannot be reduced or mitigated except by excellent healing. This fight is a positioning and healer fight however you break it down. Even on 8m where there is more emphasis on maximizing dps, you only have two healers, which makes their skill level even more important. No boss in the game delivers as heavy and consistent damage as kephess (only comparison is nightmare Jarg). You can make it up to kephess dropping with mediocre heals/dps but once he comes down from the walker, if your healers are not skilled/ready it's a wipe every time.

HM Kephess is a positioning and healer fight. The OP here wrote a lengthy segment on proposed changes to healers. These threads are getting hijacked by healers but that doesn't mean it's off-topic from the discussion at hand.

/agree. The expection to my rule of keeping the bubble in your pocket is when you can anticipate a spike. This is a lesson most good sorcs/sages have learned innately a la bonethrasher swipes and Soa ballz. I guess my point is that before resurgence/force-bending was fixed we could heal through any burst with the rejuv-innervate-dark infusion or rejuv-DIx2 combos, now that those are gone the shield becomes our primary tool for mitigating burst whether it's used proactively or reactively. I have found that the few times kephess has dropped our tank I had used my bubble too early and allowed it to be eaten by boss melee damage right before the burst. My strategy is aimed to avoid the situation where the tank takes unexpected burst while bubble/innervate are on CD and he dies before a 2.3s DI can land.

#2 I'm gonna have to disagree. Especially on heavy tank damage fights like Kephess you need to reserve the bubble for the heavy burst dmg. Once he uses arching slash or whichever ability hits for 7-8k I use bubble-rejuv-innervate to recover. If you don't have the bubble for this burst you can lose the tank if big heals aren't already incoming. As far as when to tap(noble sac/consumption) during kephess encounter. I tap regularly throughout but I find it necessary to use it 3-4 times at two points of the fight. First, following the 1st walker burn phase right before the adds spawn I will tap to about 50% health, shield/rejuv first AoE taunt tank and then drop aoe heal to top myself/mitigate raid dmg. Second, during the droid phase I will tap 3 times on both the 2nd and 3rd transition once we are all safely in position and an aoe heal is down. The reason for choosing these two points of the fight is because they require an aoe heal for the raid and they follow a walker dps phase. I do about 100k dmg on this fight by helping burn bombers and dpsing during walker burn phases 1&2, so it is especially force intensive for me and tapping following the walker burns is a must. If done correctly, I go into the kephess 100-60 phase with about 70% force.

Nope. We've never had a problem with this. Focus fire the first warrior where he stands then myself (heal sorc), our dips merc and dps sorc all drop AOE. Usually 4-5 seconds of downtime before 2nd wave spawns. I imagine it's even easier with a sniper AoE. We run 2 maras so they leap to the warriors and kill them where they spawn.

I like Duffy's idea to tank the add phase behind the walker however I think less experienced guilds will have trouble downing the bomber should he pop at one of the two spawn points on the far wall. We found it easiest to tank the adds next to the bunker until the walker aoe drops right next us then transition to mid once aoe pauses (about 2/3rds through final wave). This allows us to pull/kill bomber at mid before walker aoe makes its way back to us. Another useful tactic is to have maras/sents leap to the warrior on the 2nd/final waves and solo them away from the group. Heal aggro will draw the rest to the bunker but the maras/sents will need to be topped between waves.

407 crit rating is too high. Switch out the crit mod on the saber and both crit augments for an aptitude 26 & resolve augs. Also I would lose one surge enchancement for a quick savant to better min/max the DR on your alacrity and surge.

As far as trouble with burst damage goes.. Your bubble is now the burst mitigator for healing. Do not use your bubble when the tank is full HP unless you know heavy damage is coming or it is the start of the fight. I've always thought of Sorc healing as a combo-move class. Pre-1.2 You could get away with using only two combos, rejuv-innervate-Dark infusion or rejuv-DIx2 due to the rejuv bug. Now that this is fixed in 1.2, you no longer have the burst offered by the 1.4s DIs. The solution is to change the combo move to incorporate your shield such as shield-rejuv-innervate or shield-recklessness/trinket-DIx2. This requires that you use your shield more diligently so that is available to mitigate the heaviest burst with these combos. Another combo I use often is trinket-rejuv-aoe heal to min/max force-heal ratio. My filler heal is DI when everything is on cool down and I use consumption almost as often as pre 1.2.

Agreed. Benevolence will become almost 100% crit with the conveyance proc, assuming 30% unbuffed and agent/smuggler buff. This makes it decent as an "oh****!" heal with quick cast time and about 3k crit, but it would only be a filler that must be followed with an innervate or deliverance. So the overall effect of the nerf requires sage/sorc healers to use their shield and benevolence more wisely when someone is taking unexpected burst damage. Right now the only fights that require such healing would be nightmare bonethrasher or jarg & Sorno.

The real nerf to sages/sorcs wasn't the change to consumption/noble sac, that just requires smarter use of the ability. The true nerf was the change to conveyance/force bonding. They did the right thing by eliminating the double-proc, 8-12k heals in 3 seconds was out of line. However, changing the effect on deliverance from -1s cast time to -30% force cost will severely gimp our single target burst healing ability. It doesn't hurt skilled proactive healers who know how to anticipate and pre-cast but it's going to be a rude wake-up call to reactive healers. Basically the gap between the good sage/sorc healers and the mediocre ones just got a whole lot wider. Personally, I can't complain because now the most skillful sages/sorcs will shine and the EZmoders will play their commando alts full time.

I think they added the Black Hole commendations for the item required to attempt the final boss in Explosive Conflict. I think this item that protects you from the final encounter's mind control costs 30 comms for 4 hours. Like columi I'm hoping it's 3 from each nightmare boss for a total of 30.

It is my opinion that Bioware needs to take a page out of its own book and apply it to Ops. Why do they have optional bosses in FPs but not Ops? This would essentially kill two birds with one stone. Add 2 optional bosses to an Op that are on a much higher difficulty scale (I.e. the droid in Kaon) for the more experienced/talented raiders but allow everyone else to finish the instance without killing these optional bosses. Heck, even make the story/final boss fight different if one optional boss is killed and different still with both dead. This would allow many mechanics to remain in place, therefore optimizing dev time as prior posts discussed, and not require an entirely new raid zone for hardcore raiders. The other option would be to add a Ragnaros/Nefarian as the final boss which would require a few weeks/month of farming the instance to gear up in order to take them down. However, this does not work as well with the difficulty modes. This brings me to my final point, Loot! Far too easy to gear up in this game. Bosses need to drop 1 piece of tier gear each with a CHANCE at a rare drop as well. These rare drops should not be part of the tier set but instead be superior quality and have interesting procs/buff effects on them. This would serve the dual purposes of making gear choices more fun/complex and keeping people from getting bored of raiding because there is still über loot out there for them to acquire. These rare drops should also have cool names that relate to the lore. And bring on the legendary-quality item quest that must be assigned to a specificly pimp raider because it benefits the entire raid if used properly! I'm of the opinion that we are in vanilla swtor right now so the mass panic is an overreaction. Give these guys some time to get stuff right, 1.2 seems to be a step in the right direction from my point of view. TLDR- add optional bosses for the hardcore guys to work on and the new guys to aspire to kill. Reduce the amount of loot from each boss/add rare drops to keep people interested in raiding.

Same thing happened to us tonight with Gharj in 8 man nightmare, thankfully he didn't aggro though. Was the initial Gharj fight bugged for you? He didn't drop the first island for us until about 30%. Instead, he just chain stomped the tank which made the fight face roll easy with the melee out. I was dps'ing 90% of the time as the primary healer. Pylons also bugged out hard and Soa despawned on us twice with tank in mind trap. Made for an interesting night to say the least.