Killy Brontes HM(?) With the entire team dead except for a sage healer in her invincibility bubble hoping that weaken mind and mind crush would be enough to kill Brontes before the barrier wore off. Smashing through TFB SM trying to see how far we could get purposefully ignoring or going against all the mechanics. Box Kephess was apparently the stopping point. Pretty much any first time kills that we had been working at for a long time. Just that excitement when the boss goes down and you can hear everyone whooping on mumble. It's great!

Decided to queue for a tactical on my Juggernaut to practice tanking a little and procrastinate doing school work. One of the members says that they can't zone in right away. No biggie, we wait what is probably only two minutes. The missing dps starts loading in when the healer drops group without a word. The other DPS who was waiting with me leaves without saying anything either. We queue up again again and get a level 15 operative healer and a 65 DPS sorc. The sorc says that they were just kicked from their last tactical for not being a healer. WTH right? Honestly though it was a great group. We got to smash through everything with no deaths (except for when I accidentally walked off a cliff that I'm pretty sure none in the history of swtor has fallen off of), and the whole group was just really chatty and friendly. Like there was a conversation or jokes going the entire time. It was pretty great. We decided to queue up for a second one together afterwards, and I would have been down for a third if I didn't have to get back to my paper. Guess it's not really "The weird people you meet in GF" but it made me pretty happy to be playing an MMO.

Lingering Destruction shouldn't land on the healers either (not sure about off tank, but I'm guessomg it's based on spec rather than threat generation), so if your dps are all running colours one of them will probably always get it. We generally have one of the tanks do the colours, but when one of the colour DPS has linger destruction they need to be the last one to get into the wheel. This way they won't be stunned with LD under their feet.

Not really what I would call weird, just kind of unfortunate. I don't do HM FP very often any more, so I couldn't really remember all of the specifics of each boss outside of the obvious ones when I zoned into Korriban Incursion on my medicine operative. It probably would have saved us a lot of time if I could have. We get in, everyone says hello and seems friendly enough, but before we even get to the first add pack the Jugg DPS pipes up that he's actually a tank and hopes that it won't be a problem. He then says that he'll "Off tank if it seems like the queued tank can't handle things." (Sounds rude, but the way he phrased it seemed more well meaning if misplaced). I tell him that I don't know how well two tanks will work since I don't remember anything about possible enrage timers for this one, but that I'd leave it up to the Tank and other DPS since they'd be more affected. Neither of them say anything so we head on. No problems until we reach the droid boss. The first couple pulls the sentinel would die almost as soon as the red aoe went out (took us a bit to notice that his gear was all red, once he repaired that problem was solved), and the DPSTank didn't know that he shouldn't stand in the red circles. No problem. I explain to him to move out of those and everything improves immensely. From that point onward we wipe multiple times with everything going well until the boss is about half way, then everything goes from "This is what I expect a fp boss to be like" to "Holy **** I'm healing HM Cora and my co-healer is dead." Eventually I get suspicious an open up star parse and notice that on every single one of our pulls at the 2 and a half minute mark my damage taken triples, and stays consistently high for the next minute or two until we wipe. I assume this to be a soft enrage maybe? I bring this up to the group and the DPSTank offers to drop. The other DPS leaves at this point too. Tank and me Queue up again and we get two new DPS, or so we think. The operative soon admits that she forgot to uncheck the DPS option... I mention that I'm a terrible operative DPS and probably shouldn't DPS. The second healerDPS laughs it off. I kind of assume that she respeced. I was wrong. We wipe again at the 20% mark. This time I respec as I figure that even as lousy as I am I can probably out DPS a tank and healer. No more problems for the rest of the FP.

I haven't had a lot of time to do pug raids in a long while, but in the past two weeks or so I have been running as many as I can as often as I can in order to gear out some toons that I am really interested in learning how to play. Whenever I bring my main I ask about the loot rules, and clarification on the "one set bonus piece per" rule prior to the raid actually starting so I know if it's worth bringing my BIS healer or if I should try to fake it on one of my gimpy ones. So far, every time I have been told that rolling for alts is both accepted and expected, which is awesome as far as I'm concerned since it makes it more likely that people are playing a character that they understand well. Similarly when I take one of my lesser geared alts, I fully expect that the 198 bis DPS roll on items against me for his alt as well. It's only fair, and in all likelihood someone who is raiding enough to be kitted out like that doesn't need the 16 ultimate comms or whatever the reward is. My advice to whoever has a problem with their current server culture is to ask ahead of time. If you don't like rolling against people who already have it, don't group with people who have that as their standard rules, but it's not fair to assume that your rules are the correct ones without asking first. If you want specific rules form your own group, but don't be too surprised if you get shakier people or have trouble finding people who are interested and willing.

I may be biased in saying this as I was very optimistic when I heard the proposed changes, but after messing around on my scoundrel a bit more and looking over some old logs I'll have to agree with MacroAnt and KBN. This really seems to be doing the class some good, and I think that the adjustments were what was needed to help round out scoundrel healing a bit. As I mentioned earlier, the reduction in SRMP seems to be negligible, and is balanced out by nicely by kolto cloud. Not to mention that this is a heal that typically results in a TON of over heal (In my logs typically about 40-65% of SRMP were effective depending on the fight, but it varied a lot). The effectiveness of my UM is consistently between 90-100%. So in almost all situations, when I need to stop and cast UM, the increase in healing will be beneficial. I don't think the decrease in SRMP will be as noticeable compared to that due to it typically ticking on stable/safe targets. Now don't get me wrong, Scoundrel AOE was/is absurd, but I can't think of a single (PVE) fight in the game where the full potential of it is necessary (Maybe solo healing HM Malafar?). I think sacrificing a tiny bit of that for a little more burst for those unpredictable/oh **** moments is exactly what we needed. __ On a side note, 3.2 my UM crits averaged from about 12k with 13k hits being something that happened once or twice a night when the stars aligned. As of 3.3 they average out to about 13k with 15k being the top end happy accident sort of hits. As far as I'm concerned, that is a significant increase

Does anyone know how much SRMP and Kolto cloud were decreased? I finally got to try out some of the tweeks tonight, and didn't notices any significant change in either my HPS or EHPS. Granted SRMP now makes up a slightly smaller percentage of my total healing, and Kolto cloud makes up slightly more (the sum balances out to be about the same as what it always was), with a very slight increase in the % from UM. I'm not sure, but it may be a strait nerf without the six piece set bonus. After a night of fooling around with a real set bonus though, I have to say that the reduced cooldown on kolto cloud is pretty freaking phenomenal, and seems to balance out whatever hit the hots took, not to mention being able to keep the healing buff up on more people more often. Not only that, but I found the Rugar phase of Coratanni (a fight I really struggle with due to it's spikiness), much more controlled than normal. Weather that was due to the changes to kolto cloud or the buff to UM, I don't know, but from my end it didn't seem as touch and go as usual. Obviously this was just one night of raiding (and I have no idea what things are like in pvp), so It's kind of hard to tell, but in general I really am enjoying the changes to the spec, and don't think it's as much of a nerf as people are saying (at least from a PVE perspective).

First one I got an instant pop for SM Cademimu for an in progress flashpoint. I was healing on my lowbie sorc. They hadn't gotten very far, and were only up to the first elevator. The assassin tank is at level, and seems to be holding threat decently but is exceptionally spiky. We get up to the first boss, and I start getting some really bad graphical lag, so I ask them not to pull for a second and I restart my client. I get back in quickly enough (glad that they hadn't kicked me yet), and the group appears to be finishing up a discussion about killing the robot first. Fight starts, robot gets activated and everyone goes to fight it head on and get carbonized. the sentinel ends up dieing but we otherwise kill the boss. A focus drops; both dps pass on it, and myself and the tank greed on it. I won the focus, and the tank says something to the effect of it being a huge upgrade for him. At this point I decide to look at his gear and see that while he is in darkness charge, he also has a focus equipped. I offer to give him the focus since it really is a lot better than the one he has, and I already have the same one. I do mention to him that as a tank, a shield, even one of lower level, is going to do him a lot more good. He says that he "had a shield but wanted to take more crit." I mention again that a shield will help him take a hit a lot better, but don't otherwise push it since it's not really a big deal. We get to the second boss, and remembering what happened at the first one I ask if everyone knows the fight. One DPS says that they're playing again after two years, the other is a "strait-up newbie," and the tank says that he's never done this instance. Cool, I explain the fight and everybody does exactly what they were supposed to do. ^^ Rest of the instance goes off without a snag, except for someone falling down the elevator shaft, and an accidental face pull in the room where all the trash is really spread out. Before we leave, I mention to the tank again that he should look into getting a shield generator since it'll start getting harder from there on out. It was a really enjoyable run though even if it took a little longer than normal. The tank adds me to his friends list, and honestly I'd have no problem healing for him again since he seemed really nice, and to be having a lot of fun. :-) --- Last night I ended up in Cademimu on my sorc again, and again I was slotted as the healer. I respec and zone in. It's two sorcs, and two assassins. The tank is all over the place, pulling without the group and isn't really holding threat at all. I probably should have checked his stance, or gear but didn't think of it at the time. The sorc dps asks if he's new to tanking and he says "no, but is just messing around." Okay, whatever. We kill the first boss and the focus drops (again ), The dps assassin and I greed on it, the tank and the sorc need. As we're heading to the next area I say to the tank that he really shouldn't need on something that is definitely for the DPS. I mean at this level if it were armor or a light saber it wouldn't have mattered since tank-stat gear doesn't drop, but a focus is a focus. Tank: I'm a DPS anyway Me: But right now you're queued as a tank. That's not fair to the DPS. Tank: I'm queued as DPS it just gave me tank. Me: You can uncheck the tank option if you don't want to tank. Unless it's bugged again (wasn't sure if that was the case, but still wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt). Tank: I don't care about that. Just play the game, you're being childish. So I admit that it is just a game. I was being a little childish for getting worked up over this-- especially since I normally don't mind healing dps tanks, but this guy wasn't exactly being the paragon of maturity either since he'd essentially just cut in line to get into the flashpoint in the first place, and then tried to take an item that he shouldn't have been using. At this point the two dps and I are jumping down the ledge to the second boss, and he speeds off and pulls the wookie with us still back there. Of course we run after him and get into position, he's still at close to full health since the adds haven't spawned. I've been playing/maining a healer since six months after launch, and I've never not tried to keep a tank up (except for a few revenge shots at guildmates ), but at this point I'm feeling kind of childish and petty, so I stand back and dps my heart out. Like I said, I have no problem running with dps tanks, and I already knew that I could heal this guy through a stupid flashpoint if I wanted to, but really saw no reason why I should carry someone who didn't want to play by the rules, and work as a team. Plus I had queued as a dps as well as a healer and suddenly decided that I wanted to dps. Needless to say the tank went down, and it was stupid satisfying. As soon as he died, I started healing again (no point in punishing the dps), and the wookie was defeated no problem. Afterwards I told him that if he didn't feel like he should have work as a team and play his role, I didn't feel like playing my role either. I really didn't care if the tank was kicked or not, and had already made up my mind to not heal him for the rest of the flashpoint, but one of the dps had initiated a votekick anyhow, so I agreed and he ended up being booted. Treek did a marvelous job for the rest of the rest of the run. :-) tl:dr - I purposely refused to heal a tank in a fp for the first time, and it was way more satisfying than it should have been.

Wait. You're arguing that the SI is about "brute strength" because of the fight with Palledius? I think that you put a little too much weight on the precieved advantage of testosterone. Palledius wasn't exactly in his prime, he'd really let himself go, and I'm pretty sure a physically trained woman wouldn't be disadvantaged against a man like that. I mean that's just insulting. Not to mention I don't think the inquisitor was designed to be a brute regardless of gender, so your need for them to be a huge warrior is somewhat silly. They were supposed to be more conniving and intelligent, scholars over warriors, and as former slaves I doubt neither the male nor female inquisitor would have had great nutrition or training growing up.

As a straight female I can say that I find Lana's character to be the more interesting of the two. It's not that I dislike Theron, but It's just nice to have a sith character who isn't a psychopathic villain. I think people find Lana interesting for similar reasons as two why they find Marr so engaging. ^^

Why on earth would I que as a healer if I wanted to DPS? DPSing in heal spec is absolutely terrible. You don't have any sort of real rotation and no real way to manage your energy. If I wanted to DPS I'd come in specced as a DPS, if I'm specced as a healer I want to heal the fun way and not just clicking the stations. Otherwise what's the point? Heal people up between trash packs? Why would anyone que up to do that? If there is another healer in the group I'll respec (since it wouldn't be much fun healing anyhow), but if I'm healing I want to actually heal. Not to say I won't DPS at all (I throw in attacks during ops and regular flash points as well), but it's not my priority, and I would prefer if everyone just ignored the kolto tanks. It's a tactical. You won't hit an enrage, so there is no sense in worrying about it.

Had a silly one the other night in SM Boarding Party. Jugg tank, Sorc healer, and Mara (me) and PT DPS. Tank puts guard on me (I was 5 levels higher than her). We clear out the first room and sometime during the healer types "Guard Please" in chat. I don't know if the tank was going to guard swap or not but the healer ends up dcing at the end of the first room. We wait around for 5 minutes or so but the heals doesn't reconnect. She is still visible on the map, and there is no red bar through her portrait or anything so we wonder if she didn't alt+f4 or something. Either way we wait around in que for a bit before we decide to try it without a healer. Trash is slow due to regenning in between packs, but are no problem, first boss no problem (the tank waits to taunt after the droid changes topic to split damage which was clever), we attempt the boss with the two droid pets but end up dieing horrendously. After we respawn the tank then realizes how not very bright we've been and reminds everyone that there are only three of us and we all have healing companions. XD Rest of the flashpoint goes without a hitch, and we even got a real healer for the bonus/final boss.^^

These are from the warrior story line on Dromund Kaas. After speaking with Baras' other apprentice, he reveals that he found out Lord Grathan has a son. Warrior: Maybe in another you you can find out his shoe size. /s Apprentice: He wears boots, not shoes smart mouth! The response was so unexpected it had me cracking up xD After flirting with Grathan's wife Vette: Any shuttle-port in the storm, is that the kind of guy you are? Warrior: Yeah. That is exactly the kind of guy I am.

Thank you for the advice everyone. Some of this I've tried, some I haven't but it'll be worth giving it a shot.

Tonight my guild tried NiM Raptus for the first time. While we didn't fail the healing challenge every time, it was pretty darn close. :-/ I was wondering if anyone has some advice for what I should be doing or changes I can make. I play a scoundrel, and my co healer is a sage. As we enter the challenge I pop my adrenal, click power relic, and pugnacity. Once we enter I cleanse the sage, and then pop dodge. At this time my cohealer cleanses the captive and uses an instant cast salvation. We got quite a few pulls in, and I tried different combinations of just UWM and EMP; UWM, EMP and KP; as well as throwing in koto cloud (which seemed to work the best). Admittedly I never tried applying SRMP. It seemed like it would take too much time with the lost gcd due to the cleanse, though I remember it helping those first few tries in HM. Any Scoundrels or Operatives out there able to offer some advice?

I don't know how far you've leveled any of them, but operatives have (IMO) the easiest resource management out of all the healers. Hot tracking can be a bit of a pain in the ***, particularly when you have another operative healing with you, but with one of the tablets it becomes cheap enough that if you do waste a gcd refreshing one that didn't need it, it's not going to burn you out. If you die and need to be rezzed too, it's normally not as awful getting your energy back up as with a sage for instance. Operatives are also very mobile which is great in pvp environments and certain boss fights. They are also very reactionary, and you don't find yourself waiting on many cooldowns which I find makes them a lot more flexible than the commando, or sage. That said if you want to DPS any you'll probably have to be in melee range and behind the target if possible. Furthermore, while they can be great aoe/raid healers, it does require quite a bit of setup which means that fight knowledge helps a lot, and it can be hard to pull off if a lot of spike damage is going oh at the same time. Sorcs are great and their aoe abilities require a lot less set up compared to an operative. That said running two sages might be challenging in certain situations. Bubbles can't stack for one, and you have to wait for the debuff to fall off to use it again on the same target. This is one of the only things you can do on the go. I agree. The energy management is really fun. ^^ Some fights where you might be taking an unusual amount of damage it can be very challenging to get it back up though, and I find with a so you are much more dependent on everyone else in the group doing their job for you to be able to do your job. The commando is great a ton of fun. I really appreciate the group wide armor and healing buff that you can provide with this one, and in a fight with a ton of aoe/movement, trauma probe is king. I've even seen commandos pull agro in the first few moments of a fight due to trauma probe. xD I don't have much first hand knowledge of this, but I have been told that running two commandos can have them sync up their abilities due to a fairly rigid rotation. I don't know if this has changed much though. I main scoundrel, and they are by far my favorite healing class so I'm a little biased towards them. I have a commando as well, which I use mainly for pvp, and the occasional story mode or guild run hard mode. I'm least experience with the sorc, although I'm normally paired with one for progression. Almost all of my experience with them comes from either other players, PVP or flashpoints. I think all of the classes have a lot of good points and negative points. Some boss fights will favor one class over another but they're all capable of contributing to and completing content.

This would be for tanks who I don't generally run with since both our guild tanks are pretty freaking awesome (provided our shadow has a shield a not a focus equipped. ). Flashpoints The big one here is pace. I really don't mind if one takes a little longer due to random wipes, or people messing up fights or the accidental pulling of a few groups, but it can be really frustrating when the thing is doubled because there is a ready check and cc marks before every pull. Which brings me to ccs. CCs are great if it's been proven that they're needed, but when every single pull is started by stunning the majority of enemies, it is really boring for me. If I'm doing a flashpoint I want to heal things, and it's really hard to do that when there is only one active enemy at a time. If you don't think you can handle all of them that's fine, but you won't get any better without practice, and while I know I don't speak for everyone, personally, I don't mind getting attacked or having to heal the DPS if it means that I can have fun, and don't have the urge to respec to scrapper. This also means that you don't need to cheese or LoS every single pull. It just make things longer than they have to be. Know whee your group is. xD Sometimes extra pulls happen. When they do it's best not to go running ahead and starting another fight while everyone else is a room behind dealing with the last one. It's a flashpoint. Your gear does not have to be stellar or even good, but some basic mitigation stats are nice. If you misqued as a tank, or just didn't want to wait in line forever and thought that you could respec and use DPS gear that's cool. Just PLEASE let me know ahead of time so I know to focus on you, and not have a panic attack when your health bar is obliterated. In this case I will reserve all right to whipe my hands clean of at least some of the wipes. I'll normally laugh if you put the guard on me, unless it's clear that the DPS won't pull off of you and you&re just putting it on someone to have it out there. Most fights don't require a healer guard (Though some ops bosses will), if you're unsure just pick the best geared DPS unless proven otherwise. Don't be a diva. Tanks are rare, and can take a long time to replace but that doesn't mean that it's your group. Be polite. TLDR: See what your healer feels comfortable with and have faith in them. Operations Honestly I'm at a complete loss as to what tanks to the majority of the time. I'm off healing and they're doing something magical that keeps people from dying. If you don't know what you're doing, that's fine but be open to advice from those that know (it probably won't be from me since I have huge gaps in operations knowledge), but if someone is willing/able to teach be open to learn. That goes for everyone. For the defensive cooldown discussion, I think our raid tanks normally save them for when they either took an surprising amount of damage and a rightfully worried that we might let them die, for scripted parts of a fight, and (I could be wrong), for when it seems like the healers are falling behind on raid damage and need a few seconds to get caught up and regen resources. Our shadow normally calls out when he uses one anyhow so we know we can take a breath. Overall I don't have much preference to class or anything like that. I don't have nearly as much experience healing guardians, but all three classes seem to be fairly comparable. :-\

Khenali (Pub) and Auslan (Imp) can craft: Skill Barrel 34 Keen Mod 34 Agile Mod 34 Might Armoring 34 Resolve Armoring 34 Commando Armoring 34 Adept Enhancement 34 Volition Enhancement 34 Savant Enhancement 34 Everything is free with your mats

I don't really know what a better alternative would be. It would be weird if they knew you and kept referring to you as a she, but behind the computer screen you are what your avatar says you are. It seems kind of rude to default the entire player base to male otherwise. xD First time I ran with my GM I thought that she was the other healer the whole time since it was the only other female avatar. It blew my mind when I figured out that she was playing the male sent. That was a pretty dumb moment for my part. Haha.

Right now I always tell people that my favorite wz is Voidstar because for the most part I can play the role that I want to play and heal without worrying too much about objectives. Teams tend to switch doors too, and it seems like the likelyhood of the guard on the other door seeing some action is lot higher than the node guard in a civil war, or hypergate. I'm not a huge fan of the guard mechanic, and I hate having to camp out at a node for 15 minutes while the rest of the team gets to have all the fun, and I think that looking forward a wz that steps away from this would be very welcome. Huttball can be immensely entertaining if you're on a well balanced team, but I feel like the map disproportionately awards certain classes and team compositions compared to other wz (Their ease of movement anyhow) which can be incredibly frustrating. Some of my favorite ideas from this thread are the one that suggested having a team with a set number of lives and the first one out looses. A time limit would need to be added though in case you end up with all tanks and healers. xD This could be super fun though since tanks could tank, healers could heal, and dps could kill all the things. The other one I like is capture the flag. Like a wz based on the last minute or so in a tied game of hutball. There could be consoles or something that would give or remove a temporary defense buff on the flag bearer . Or parts of the map could become active giving the flag bearer a debut that would encourage the team to move.

For respecting you'll need to purchase the field respec or go to the location on fleet (I think it's in the combat training area). The field respec will cost a couple hundred thousand credits, but I don't remember the exact cost. It's under the legacy perks section. If you're a subscriber respeccing is free. If not it should start free and get progressively more expensive with each respec. It can get pretty pricy if you do it a lot, but the cost will reset every week. Learning the fights for flashpoint and operations as a DPS does make sense. I've been healing these things regularly for the past year and still have huge gaps in my knowledge of mechanics due to never really being affected by a good chunk of them. Healing is great but it does mean a lot of time spent staring at an ops frame, and you might loose out on the bigger picture.

If you decide to go with sawbones don't put all of your points in the healing tree (as far as I know, none of the classes/specs are optimal filling out one tree). You'll want to have kolto cloud at the top of the tree for sure, but some of the the talents are fairly useless for a healer. I think this is what I use but you could probably modify it a bit. Scramble isn't as great in pve but is pretty sweet for pvp for instance. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#701MffbzGRRdfsZ0cZG.3 killing things as a scoundrel healer can kind of suck. It's not too bad for leveling, especially since you can stealth past most mobs, but the main thing is that you won't have the energy to do any real sustained damage. Normally I run with a well geared dps companion which gets things done faster but it means that it's a lot harder to use backblast, xD occasionally I'll switch over to scrapper. I have no idea what I'm doing in that spec but things die a lot faster. That said , my scoundrel healer is by far my favourite toon to play, and you never really have to wait long to get into groups for things. You might as well get field respec and try out all three specs. If I remember correctly, healing didn't start feel right until emergency medpack though so make sure you give the trees a proper chance. If you're just leveling or pvping some sort of hybrid might also work out decently. I wouldn't recommend that for end game content though.

I really wouldn't worry about that as long as you're staying up. I find if a tank is well geared, and not really tanking any damage I can pretty much keep him topped off with EMP and the occasional UWM. I might put a SRMP on ya if it's a pull that people have problems with but otherwise there isn't much of a need. If the is lower geared or just not very good I'll heal properly (though in the case of an unskilled tank the majority of healing will probably end up being sent towards the DPS), but honestly as long as nobody is dieing I don't think it's much of an issue.

I dunno. My inquisitor was Light Side V and she was named Imperious. I remember being really disappointed because I wanted Occlus, though I prefer Imperious now.

Khenali can do Skill Barrel 31. Naturally free with mats.