Congratulations Ace! Was a fun race to watch for the week it was around, sad I wasn't able to join in on the fun. Good luck on your title runs!

Congratulations guys! Enjoy the kill and the farming for the next 2 months!

Character Name: Reniu Faction: Republic Craftable Implants: 1. Dread Forged Stalker's MK-X Package (Will/Pow/Surge) 2. Dread Forged Field Medic's MK-X Package (Cunning/Pow/Surge) 3. Dread Forged Combat Medic MK-X Package (Aim/Pow/Surge) 4. Dread Forged Vindicator's MK-X Package (Strength/Pow/Surge)

I don't want to clutter this thread of progression tracking for all the 16-man guilds out there, but I just wanted to say good luck to everyone! I won't be in this tier of Nightmare content, but I look forward to watching some awesome kill videos and streams for the coming weeks. Best of luck!

You guys finally doing Entities tonight? If so good luck!

Good luck tonight on the Entities you guys. Wish you the best.

Character Name: Reniu Server: Prophecy of the Five An update for the Operation portion of the thread: http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/OperationUpdateScreen_zpsbe194233.jpg

Well in the end Kell Dragon gear became a simple "for show" set of armor considering the 78s just made it trash in the end. The gear itself was more for bragging rights, and also made the Fortress/Palace progression farm easier as well.

78 gear is already released in the Hard modes, which was the same for 2.0 when 72s became the minimum for the Nightmares to grind Kell Dragon gear (75s).

I was a little bit curious what sort of content SWTOR has in store down the road with new patches coming on the horizon. With the upcoming release of the Digital Expansion, I was curious what sort of goodies we have in store for both the PVE and PVP environments. Obviously the 12v12 space battles is a huge change for the PVP groups, as well as many class changes in the coming month, however I am curious what sort of Operations content for PVE we still have in store for the future. I am wondering what date we can roughly expect for the Nightmare Operations of Dread Fortress/Dread Palace mainly. In addition, I am curious about what other sort of goodies we have in store! Something like a end of the year upcoming announcement would be awesome, even if you couldn't reveal too much. Thanks!

Dread Council: http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/PalaceKill_zpsb3856bc6.jpg No UTC time on this one, but our GM can post that proof if needed. As shown by the date, the kill was before all the others posted here. Fun instance, thanks all.

In all honesty, it depends on what standpoint you are looking at for this fight in comparison to others. From my own personal healing standpoint, I felt that the Dread Guards in their original release (pre-enrage nerf, pre-damage/health nerf) was the toughest fight in all the 2.0 Nightmare content and beyond. That being said however, this fight is hard to heal, and sadly it is not because the fight itself is "challenging," but rather just stupid with all of the RNG elements thrown in. People got stuck in walls and glitched through the world, Dread Touch threw players in random directions, cleansing for the Deathmark fell at just the wrong time when you would be stunned - a lot of elements played into making this fight hard. Still, none of this is to say the fight is easy without these elements, but rather it just isn't that well designed. It is still a very strict DPS check for all the 75 gear we had, and from the video you can clearly see tanking the fight was no walk in the park either. Personally, it comes down to taste.

Screen of Codex: http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/HatefulEntity_zpsc1dfe263.jpg

<Severity Gaming> Pot5 Proof of 16-man Scum & Villainy Timed Run. Video link to follow soon. http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/TimedRun2_zpsa6ae2079.jpg

Sorry for another post so soon, but just wanted to update once again for Operations. Character: Reniu Server: Prophecy of the Five http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/OperationUpdatePhoto_zps52a0ba6b.jpg

An update for the Operation achievement: Character: Reniu Server: Prophecy of the Five http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/OperationScreenshot_zps255ec582.jpg

It feels good to know that Bioware increased the difficulty of bosses in 16-man Nightmare S&V for 2.3.1 thanks to Severity. No more 51% burn phase on Thrasher...

16-man proof: http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag6/Katelyn0303/TimedRun_zps8cf6a0c7.jpg

Boss Update: The boss enrage timer is around 8:10 seconds. We believe there is a phase shift past 50%, as we had all of our DPS up except one and pushed it to around 53%. After which everyone was stunned, had a giant red beam attached to them, and were instantly killed.

Spawning the Hateful Entity: As shown by <Severity Gaming>'s stream as of recent and in the above post, in order to spawn the boss a raid team must simply take all the adds at the top of the stairs and get them down below 20% without killing them in the cave on 16-man NiM (in this case with a cleared instance). Once one add reaches 20% it will stop attacking and begin to be consumed by the Devour Essence debuff. The debuff lasts for 30 seconds, in which time all the adds must obtain this debuff before any of them are killed. After this, the adds will all die and the Hateful Essence will spawn. Simply click the orb on the boss at this point to begin the fight. The person with the orb will be stunned for a brief period before you will all exit combat and the boss officially spawns. 10 million HP - The moves are very similar to the Dreadful Entity, however the gate back to Titan 6 and Thrasher are locked once the fight begins. If you wipe and do not return to the medical center, the entire raid will be randomly ported around the instance (including outside of the Oasis City entrance elevator). Once the boss is spawned it does not remove itself from the instance. The orb will stay refreshed so long as you only click the boss at this point in order to pull it again. There are some new moves as well which include a pull into the lightning pools, and another move called Deathmark which places 4 random sets of timed DoTs on the raid. These DoTs can be cleansed. If they are not, each one will instantly kill that person in the raid. The time on each of the DoTs is as follows: 1. Skull Debuff ~ 3 seconds 2. Full Body Icon Debuff ~ 12 seconds 3. Face Icon Debuff ~ 8-10 seconds 4. Cylindrical Object Debuff ~ 5 seconds They spawn in random sets (unsure how many each round) on random raid members, however they do not spawn more than 2 of each buff, if any at all. This is all we know at the moment. Thanks for watching our streams and we wish you all the best!

The dead Kell Dragon bones (lore object) right before the cave to the final boss. Quite literally a "bridge" boss. That is all.

Don't give up! Olok and Cartel Warlords will be a small bump in the road for some guilds, so there is always a chance. Good job to everyone so far though and keep it up!

Congrats guys! Good to see guilds still moving forward on this. Sucks for the "bug fix" styled nerf, but hey take what you get right? Keep it up!

Fair enough on the Thrasher points, though to me I still feel it is a nerf. On another note, I still believe the Dread Guards should not be nerfed. Downing this fight as a Healer in 16-man Nightmare was literally one of the greatest accomplishments I felt in this game since its launch all the way back in 2011. Jarg and Sorno 16-man Nightmare was also an insane healing fight (I am sure we all remember), and Nightmare EC Kephess on 8-man right when he dropped down from the walker was also some of the most intense heals and perfection needed in the game. This fight though, the Dread Guards, just surpasses that in every way. I am sure any 8-man Healer or the like will agree that this fight changes you as a raider, a point to this day I still strongly believe. I am glad I got to experience this fight on both 8 and 16-man before the first nerf. That being said, I wasn't too offended when they nerfed the enrage timer. The fights damage was still there, and it required a lot of focus and a lot of attention to details. Tanks had to swap perfectly, pop defensive CDs perfectly, and coordinate movement in Phase 3 down to a tee. DPS checks in 8-man and 16-man were insane. I remember 8-man videos and seeing the DPS check that those guilds put out. Again, congratulations to them. In 16-man I remember Heirad in Phase 1 hitting like a truck, Ciphas and Kel'sara in Phase 2 eating away at our Tanks, and Phase 3 making melee DPS look like professionals. Now all of it is simply taken away. To nerf a small bug is fine, to nerf an enrage timer in the tiniest bit is fine, but to quite literally take the fight and shove a big "easy" button right into the middle of it when it took so much coordination as a guild to down this for both 8 and 16-man guilds, I feel defeated. I feel ashamed that Bioware would do something like this, and it does sadden me. Instead of nerfing it, I would have kept it the same and allowed guilds to come back after the new Operations are released with some 75 on their belt and down the fight then, but to give up now and nerf this fight the way it is being nerfed seems unreal. This is my opinion I guess, yet I am sure many guilds feel the same way about this.

Not having damage go up to the groups on the snipers post 50% will make that phase so much easier. To me, I feel that is a nerf, though who knows it could still be hard.