My guild was on our first run through EC HM this evening and ran into problems with the Stormcaller/Firebrand encounter. We set up as most people do with 2 DPS on Stormcaller to soak the DD debuffs. When DD is casting the tank moves to stand behind them and then moves back to his normal tanking position when they have soaked the debuff. The thing was a few seconds later the turret would switch instantly to the 2 DPS fire electrical discharge killing both and then instantly switch back to the tank. The first time we put it down to a extremely badly timed aggro pull by the DPS but it happened repeatedly over a number of tries. Even when the DPS were only using rage builders to keep aggro as low as possible. So my question is. Is this a bug or is there a part of the fight mechanics we were missing?

Also if you are planning on stripping the mods/armoring anyway there is no reason not to buy the Pummeler armor pieces. The head and chest in particular look better options than the Foestopper pieces. Depending on your other mods/enhancements ofc.

yep repeatedly getting drops for classes not in the ops group.

Erm so according to http://mmo-mechanics.com/news.php?article=battlemasterrakata-stats-on-pts the Mara/Sent set has 37 Crit Rating total that can't be right can it?

I've been trying understand expertises effect on damage and healing in PvP and I just can't seem to get my head around the concept. Take a simple example player A is trying to kill player B. A does 10 dps and B heals for 9 hps neither have any expertise. Player A will obviously eventually kill player B. Now lets say they both have 10% expertise buff (roughly the current level for a decently geared PvPer). Player A now gets a extra 10% damage so he's up to 11 dps but player B has 10% mitigation which takes it down to 9.9 dps. Player B also get 10% extra healing so he now heals for 9.9 hps. So essentially it's a stalemate. Now lets try 20% expertise (which I've read is roughly the amount a PvPer in the new 1.2 tier armour will have) Player A does 12 dps reduced by B's mitigation to 9.6 dps and B now heals for 10.8 hps. So the balance between healing and DPS moves more towards the healing side. I just can't see how Bioware are intending to keep a balance between heals and damage long term as every time they add a new tier of PvP gear (with more expertise) they'll need to nerf healers to keep them in balance. Hopefully I've made a mistake in my logic somewhere because otherwise it just seems like a flawed concept.

How is DFA? I've read reports that Mercs were having problems on even closely grouped mobs as the knockback effect was pushing them out of the smaller aoe radius so you were only getting the first tick of damage.

bumping, this needs sorting.

Raised a ticket about this a month ago no movement on it aside from the automatic "we have passed this on to our dev team" one

Actually is some ways this is worse yes the animation on the merc is less obvious but now it puts a graphic on your target as soon as you begin to cast so no more getting the first tracer in before they know you are there. Also the new animation has a handy dandy laser pointer effect so they also know exactly where you are firing from. As much as I hated the originals looks at least it didn't warn people they were about to get hit (assuming they hadn't seen you yet ofc).

Hutts don't have feet!

This. I really want the current reliance on Tracer to set up our DPS burst removed as we can be crippled by anyone with a interrupt and a brain(not to mention the animation is so distinctive you don't even need to look at the cast bar to know what we are casting). The thing is I just have zero faith in BW to not screw it up either in the design or by leaving some stupid bug in the new tree.

/agreed

The reason PvE gear was so dominant in PvP in vanilla WOW was that there wasn't PvP gear available of a equivalent tier to the PvE stuff. The SWTOR equivalent would be that if no PvP sets existed and you could only get at best Tionese from PvP no matter your valor rank and Rakata from PvE giving a clear advantage to people who got their gear from PvE content. SWTOR doesn't have that problem as BM = Rakata. Now if only they could just dump expertise as it's a daft idea and give the two sets identical stats. It might actually get more people into PvP as they could do FP's for a decent set of gear rather than getting facestomped for the first couple of weeks in WZ's while they get a set of expertise gear. Alternatively PvP'ers would be able to run Ops more effectively without have the dead weight (in PvE) of expertise on their gear. Everyone Wins!

/signed

I thought it was 3 Ilum "kills" for every WZ you finished. If this is true, it's yet another facepalm move from BW. They really don't think these things through do they?