If you are an assassin your Jolt should be on a 12 sec CD.

HK-47 in the Foundry has some bugs. The easiest way I have found to avoid the bug is DO NOT click more than one switch at a time. Assign one or two DPS for the switches and everyone else ignore them. One should be enough but if they are slow they will miss the 4th switch so having 2 people is ideal. If for some reason he comes out of the core enraged it is not a guaranteed wipe. If the tank picks him up and points him away from the group then only the tank will take the extra damage and it can be healed through. The reason this often causes wipes is because he cast suppressive fire which is a long range cone AOE. So if you keep him facing away from the group you can live through it and continue the fight. Now if he starts sniping instead, he will 1 shot anything that isnt a tank when enraged.

I'm the raid leader for my guild and I can honestly say that Normal mode Ops are easier than HM FP's. I suppose some might disagree, but here is my argument: The margin for error in normal Ops is rather large. If one person is dragging the group down in HM FP's you may not be able to clear, but if someone is undergeared in a normal Ops then they can easily be carried through by stronger/better geared players. Anyone in level 50 blue quality gear(even with some greens) can successfully clear normal mode Ops. Obviously the more gear you have the easier it will be. The other thing to consider is the time it takes to complete a HM FP vs clearing a normal Ops. Normal EV can be cleared rather quickly even by a group of people that havent run them before (with the exception of Soa which is a bit trickier because of the bugs). In one run of Normal Ops you will have 5 chances to receive a columni token from boss drops.(Each boss usually drops 2) I would say that in the same amount of time in HM FP's you will maybe complete 2 FP's and only have a chance at 2 Columni tokens. The "destined loot" that you encounter in normal mode ops can be a drag, but you will still probably get more gear than HM FP's. This isnt taking into consideration all of the Tionese commendations or the substantial amount of Columni commendations that you get once you turn in the weekly raid quest. For those that arent familiar "Destined Loot" automatically assigns loot to raid members and it will only drop items that are usable by raid members. Unfortunately, the system isnt smart enough to assign the loot to people that actually need it so when loot drops it can be assigned to someone that already has that same piece. This is what causes the most frustration with "Destined Loot". Even with the wonky loot system I have yet to see anyone clear a normal mode EV and not walk away with some loot. With all of that said HM FP's are still a great source for gear, but I would not skip running normal Ops to run HM FP's instead. Simply put you have a better chance at gear in Ops. Considering Ops only reset once a week you can always save one or two nights for Ops and do HM FP's the rest of the time. Oh and when you run them, dont forget to pickup the weekly quest first!

Lol this happened to me on my Merc the other day, it was me and a Sniper DPS and we wiped because we DPS'd him too hard. The 2nd time I spaced and got locked out of the room and they downed him without me no problem. I guess I would recommend having 1 DPS sit and twiddle their thumbs for the duration of the fight, lol.

1. Turrets are not CC'able (they used to be) 2. Power Cells transfer their dmg to the turret when they die. (Just killing power cells will not kill the turret, you need to still have ranged DPS the turret, can keep melee on power cells) 3. These towers are trivial on normal mode, but on Hard/NiM it is recommended that you stick a tank on one of them (turret A) and have the rest of the group LOS it behind the other turret (turret B) while your group burns turret B down. Once its down then switch to the other turret, this will lower the dmg the raid takes substantially and LOS'ing will also help group the adds up so they are easier to AOE down. The tank that is tanking turret A will probably need to pop CD's while the group burns the other turret down, unless you stick a healer on him, but then you run into issues with healer aggro on the adds(which can cause issues unless u LOS them to group them up so tank can snap up aggro.) 4. The boss doesnt automatically aggro when he comes down so you can take time to rez any players that died on the turrets and regroup before pulling the boss.

My melee DPS provide much more witty banter on vent, so I bring at least 2 of them everytime we run. All kidding aside, as the other guy said nothing in this game is hard enough to require minmaxing when putting together an Ops group. In addition, I prefer to bring 2 marauders for their bloodthirst group buff. I put all the DPS in the same group and they chain 2 bloodthirsts for 30 secs of the 15% dmg buff. Depending on the situation I will split them so that we can provide the bloodthirst buff to both groups in the Ops. For those that havent discovered yet, the bloodthirst ability from marauders increases all dmg by 15% for the group for 15 secs but it only applies to the 4 person group the marauder is in. I personally try not to take one class over another when choosing Ops makeup, with certain exceptions: 1. 1 Healer must be Sorcerer (Sadly the AOE healing circle they have is OP and any Operation without it is seriously gimping itself) 2. I prefer to have an even split Melee/Ranged DPS (This one is because as a guild leader I like to share the wealth and dont want people to feel left out because they rolled melee. Oh and for the marauder bloodthirst buff, lol) 3. I prefer to bring 1 of each class so that we have all buffs possible. (My current HM Ops group is actually missing an Imperial Agent so we have to miss out on the 5% crit buff, I think our lives would be much easier regarding engrages etc, if we had this buff, thankfully our first sniper just hit 50 yesterday)

Good points being made here. But I have a question to ask.... Where else would you spend the points besides energize? There really isnt anything useful in the Darkness tree that you dont already get with the standard 31/0/10 build. I would say that at the very least situationally Energize would be more worth taking than the alternatives.

I love mine, Viridiana Deadly or Viridiana - The Deadly Legacy Sounds pretty ****** to me, lol.

Dont get discouraged, this boss is probably creating issues for more than just your group. My guild wiped on this for a night the first week we attempted it. Then we came in the following week cleaned up our strat and allowed our clickers to practice before we pulled and managed to down him without too much trouble. Recommendations: 1. We used 2 DPS on switches, both Mercs. We had a Sorc Healer up top and a Merc healer down below with the melee. The healer that was up top would stand on the ledge so he could heal everyone down below. He wasnt clicking the switches. He was there in case one of the Mercs got themselves in trouble and needed healing. 2. Only use the right and middle burners. This makes it much easier on the melee because they can ignore the stun droids on the left burner. (For Normal Mode Only) 3. Once you burn the boss and he gets the debuff one of the DPS Mercs attacked the boss the other would continue with the switches. 4. Knockbacks are your friend. Any/All of the droids that spawn can be knocked back out of the way to make room for people to move around. Mercs work great for this because they have their AOE knockback and it basically clears all the droids that are in their way. 5. Igniting the boss also does damage to him so the more times you can solve the puzzle and burn the boss the better. 6. This is a DPS intensive fight, however burning the boss more frequently should still be the higher priority. You should get at least 5-6 burns on the boss during the encounter. Probably more. 7. Use all DPS CD's on the first burn and then use them when they come back off CD, if you are struggling with DPS then dont forget to stimpack before the fight and use adrenals with your DPS CD's. When they come off CD wait until the next burn to use them again. I hope some of this helps. Good luck, dont get discouraged. Once you're clickers are fast enough with the puzzle the fight really becomes trivial because you can practically keep him debuffed the entire fight. And on the bright side, once you down him Karagga(the last boss) will feel like a loot pinata because he is much easier.

I find that when people try to explain it in step by step instructions as you listed it causes more confusion than anything. It adds the element of worrying about missing a step or something. It will work much better if the clickers just understands the mechanics of the puzzle and practice it without any kind of chart or cheat sheet. You can google "Towers of Hanoi" and find numerous flash games etc. to get your button clickers primed for the encounter. When I did this with my button clicking DPS they were able to catch on really quick. Another thing I found helpful is to start the encounter and practice using the switches without hitting the button to trigger the burns. The boss timer doesnt start until the first burn so your raid can sit there and practice their live rotation until they get into a groove. And finally, I always made sure to tell them that the smallest piece needs to go wherever you plan on making the next tower. (when unstacking the tower for the next burn) If they keep that in mind it pretty much explains itself the rest of the way. (this paragraph is confusing and I apologize but its the best way I can explain at the moment) And what worked best for my Ops group on normal is to use the right burner and the middle burner then rinse and repeat, just ignore left side burner entirely. My DPS got so good at doing the puzzle we were able to get an almost 100% uptime on the bosses fire debuff. At one point I had to actually make some of my melee attack the stun droids instead of the boss even though he had the debuff. This is for normal mode only, hard mode has a different strat because the encounter changes on hard mode.

I currently run this game maxed with the following hardware: Intel Core i5 2500k (at factory clock speeds for now) Asus p8z68v Gen3 mobo (not the pro, only thing the pro had was better Raid and more 6gb Sata ports) 6gb Corsair Ram (carried over from my old rig) EVGA GTX 580 Superclocked by EVGA with 3GB Ram Running Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) w/SP1 In most areas the game runs flawlessly. This includes every planet for questing/leveling as well as flashpoints and even warzones. On the fleet ship I occasionally see some video lag due to the volume of people on the fleet. I dont spend much time in Ilum so I cant really say much about performance out there, but I suppose with over 100 people in Ilum it could have some video lag there too, just like the fleet ship. Before I upgraded to the i5 I was using an intel core2 quad Q9350 2.8ghz. The game still had some hiccups even though I was running my uber beefy gtx580 video card. It was totally playable but I still got a good amount of lag in warzones. Once I upgraded my CPU/Mobo it really smoothed it out. If you have a decent video card then I would recommend upgrading the CPU/Mobo first because it seems to me that more people have a bottleneck at the CPU and not necessarily the video card.

Thats interesting because I noticed my server seems to be growing in population. I play on The Maw- West Coast PVP and over the last few weeks I have noticed our server pop was standard all the time. I was playing over the weekend and our server pop was heavy at peak hours in the evening between 8PM and 11PM. Seems to me that just because your server doesnt have high populations doesnt mean the game is losing subs or going belly up. I usually log in at around 6:30 PM PST and it shows standard population but if I get DC'd and have to relog any time after 8PM its got a heavy population until at least 11PM at night. Maybe what you think are peak hours are not really peak hours? It seems to me that the majority of people log in between 7PM and 8PM at least on my west coast server.

First of all, great post. I completely agree that all situations are different and that some tanks may be better suited for certain bosses etc.. I was just trying to point out the fact that Assassin tanks are not subpar to the other tank classes as a whole. That seems to be the impression that the forums leave on people and it simply isnt true. Also, assassin self healing got a rather large buff when they made Wither also apply a stack of Harnessed Darkness in addition to the stacks from Shock. So the self healing is much more frequent and rather predictable after the buff. For example, on the first fight in EV when XRR3 begins his missle salvo, my self heals are usually sufficient to keep my health up during this phase while my healers top the raid off. This self healing could be the difference between life and death at times. While you may want to discount the Dark Ward buff for AOE pulls because it will probably get used up rather quickly, you cannot discount the effectiveness on boss fights at end game. Dark Ward should always have 100% uptime on bosses. Bosses simply don't attack fast enough to burn through all the charges before it can be re-applied. So Dark Ward should always be calculated when discussing tanking endgame bosses.

Except when someone actually crunched the numbers properly it actually shows we are on par if not better than the other tanks when geared appropriately. See the link posted in the post above this one. Pay close attention to the graph with everything taken into consideration and notice that the line for SA tanks actually edges out even PT tanks.

Lol you guys crack me up. You choose Friday of all nights to compare server pops from week to week. I mean taking polls on Tues/Wed/Thurs sure I can completely understand. But with the amount of variables on a Friday night there is just no comparing. Of course people go out on Friday nights after a long work week. Just because someone goes out tonight doesnt mean they went out last Friday or vice versa. If you are gonna take these polls then do it on a day that has relevance like Tuesday after resets. Not to mention this is the weekend before Valentines Day so I'm sure there are plenty of couples that will celebrate sometime this weekend rather than during the week. With that said, I'm usually on for a while on Friday nights, but tonight Im goin boozin!

We cleared him on 8man hard on Wednesday, didnt have this issue. Perhaps it doesnt happen everytime? Not sure what to say dude.

Cleared him for the first time earlier this week with my guild. We originally were trying to use the left and right chutes for the burns. This was not working out well for us so I had my switch clickers use right and middle instead. Our group comp: Me - Sin MT PT Offtank 2 Marauder DPS 2 Merc DPS 1 Sorc Heals 1 Merc Heals I had both of my Merc DPS on the switches and my marauders killing stun droids and DPS'ing the boss with the tanks. After each burn we had 1 DPS Merc stay on switches and the other one DPS the boss. Once the dmg debuff ran out he would go back to hitting switches. Our Merc DPS was able to complete the puzzle so fast that there were times that the debuff had just fallen off the boss and we were ready to burn again. This made for an interesting fight because I actually had to have my melee DPS ignore the boss at one point even though he had the debuff because we needed to clear stun droids, lol. I cant reiterate enough how fast my RDPS was able to complete the puzzle with just using the right and middle burners. As for healing we had our Merc heals stay down below with the melee and our Sorc stay up on the platform so he could heal both the melee/tanks and the Merc DPS that was clicking the switches. Merc DPS is nice for hitting the switches because their Jet Boost can knock the proximity mines away to a safe distance. In addition if they are specced for it they can rocket punch them to knockback as well. Someone mentioned this before, but I'll repeat it because its great info. You can activate the switches before engaging the boss and allow people to practice their routine on the switches. The timer for the encounter doesnt actually begin until the first burn goes off. Once we used this method it was a cakewalk. Hope this helps those of you that are struggling. We also struggled for a night before modifying our strat.

Dont kite him. Use a defensive CD everytime he uses frenzy, if you are out of CD's then you need to have your offtank pick him up and use a CD on the next frenzy, then you should be able to get him back because you will have another CD ready to go for the next frenzy. This is how my guild completes this fight. We have 1 shotted him everytime we have attempted it.

I wanted to point that out to acknowledge a small issue, in reality you wont even have issues with trash AOE pulls in operations, so while this issue does exist it is a minor issue at best. At least we can hold aggro on multiple mobs, which is something that I have been told Sith Warriors struggle with. And I say that other folks are wrong because they say Assassin mitigation is worse across the board, which it is not. If you check out the math/charts from the other thread you will see that with proper gear Assassins are superior to Sith Warriors and at the very least on par with PT tanks, but if you see the graphs you will see that our mitigation can actually surpass that of a PT with the proper gear. Its just frustrating because there has been a long standing misconception that Assassins mitigation is worst because we wear light armor etc etc. Without the number crunching it has been hard to disprove these false theories, but now that someone actually crunched the numbers the proof is there plain as day.

Just popped in here from the Sith Assassin forums. Just to say No, you dont need a force pull, you have a charge and an intervene. While you are at it why dont we just throw in a slow and a snare and a stun like the operatives. If you are jealous for Force pull then roll Assassin/Shadow or a Powetech/Vanguard.

I'm sure you CAN do this with any spec, but no matter what spec you run you are still nerfing the crap out of yourself.

I think something is bugged for you. I believe Xalek became a regular companion for me after our first conversation on my ship. However, even as a guest he can go out on companion missions, just click someone else to bring up the mission window and then pick Xalek from the dropdown at the bottom and send him out on a mission.

I would recommend that you check out the information in this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=288619 While this doesnt show/explain the different playstyle it will show you that out of all 3 tanks the Sith Warrior is in fact the tank with the worst mitigation at endgame. I am really tired of people claiming that Sith Assassin tanks are squishier than the other tanks in the game. It is simply not true. I currently play as SA Main Tank, and I'm familiar with at least one SA that has cleared 16man NMM Ops as the main tank. While that may not seem like much there are probably on a handful of guilds that are 16/16 Nightmare mode Ops. The exception I suppose is on large AOE pulls when mobs burn through your Dark Ward buff we can become a bit squishy if that buff is used up and on CD, but that only occurs on the large AOE trash pulls and is still extremely manageable. As for playstyle for Sith Assassin: It is a very busy tanking class. You constantly need to be managing your self buffs and the debuffs you apply to your tanking targets. I personally love the class, having so many things to keep track of keeps me busy and suits my playstyle perfectly. Since the recent buff to Harnessed Darkness we have some pretty powerful self heals approximately every 10-15 secs, most other tanks have 1 debuffs to help with mitigation and the Sith Assassin has 2. I believe we have the strongest threat/dmg of all tanking classes as well, but this has not been proven yet because this game doesnt provide the necessary data since there are no combat logs. In conlusion, the impression many people have regarding Sith Assassin tanks is just wrong. They are just as durable as the other tanks during endgame content, and frankly any content before endgame shouldnt matter. In addition, they are really fun to play. Just some of their cool abilities are Stealth, Force Speed(short duration speed boost), Force Shroud(removes dots and prevents tech/force dmg for 5 secs) and Force Pull(pulls your target to your location) these are just a few of the most useful abilities.

You my friend, are my hero. Finally some evidence that SA tanks are not subpar to BH tanks when properly geared. THANK YOU! This thread should be Sticky'd

Sin MT here. I have almost as much gear as you do and I also on occasion will have my Merc DPS pull off me, but this is usually at the beginning of fights. Once I have had some time to beat on the boss and use a Harnessed Darkness Force Lightning there is no pulling off me. The exception obviously is aggro resets, which it seems are pretty common in the boss fights in the current Operations. For example, after you get punted back by XRR3 in EV aggro resets and you must taunt to get boss back. Also on Foreman Crusher(not sure if thats the right name) from KP he resets aggro after each frenzy or whatever its called. Oh and of course Soa is bugged to **** so his aggro likes to reset even though it isnt supposed to. However from what I see people talking about on the forums Juggs might have more threat issues than Sins.