If BW were to stop putting a massive emphasis on enrage timers and instead implement core mechanics that didn't require you break your fingers on your keyboard because you need to squeeze every last drop of dps that you could muster, but required you to coordinate your entire raid group, similar to Op IX but on a larger scale, then the latency issues would be largely removed and the class imbalance would also be largely removed. As it stands, if I play a class that I really enjoy ( for me it's a TK sage) then I should welcome in any raid team based on my ability to play the class, not on the class itself.

I really enjoy playing my supposedly underpowered class, but I'm not allowed to play them in a NiM Op because they don't do enough for the team. I summarised for you, and that is one of the most broken ideas that has ever graced a developer. It forces you to play a certain class that can pull it's weight with a certain amount of skill, or play a less powerful class with a skill level that makes open heart surgery look easy. Aurojin raises a very valid point in that there are so many potential disadvantages in this game that even the "Nightmare Operations that are truly a nightmare" should be designed with these disadvantages in mind.

The real question is still: "Did DnT beat the bosses while they were working as intended?". You can claim a world first for killing the Terror when all you have to do is just sit there and wait for some poorly written code to kill the boss for you in phase 3 of the fight (which I can only imagine that when it is working as intended, would actually take some effort to survive) but I really don't think that the folk from DnT will even come close to expecting that they have a world first for getting that boss down just from that fight. It also stands to reason that there might be a few more bugs in the operation since you already have 2 fairly significant bugs (at both ends of the spectrum I might add). So if/when the developers decide to fix everything up, if the bosses in TFB NiM have changed in any fashion, then I would suggest that DnT's kills become less valid and they would have to do them again. If a boss doesn't change in mechanics/numbers (Both stated and ninja as we all know BW's penchant for changing numbers here and there without putting it in the patch notes) then DnT's kills are valid. Maybe each fight could be weighted with a certain number of points with regards to it's difficulty? Beating DG would seem to be a fairly intense task and it still hasn't been completed yet, but every other boss in the operation has, so maybe you could say that DG is the hardest fight in the operation so we will give it 1.5 point multiplier? Just suggestions but long story short is: DnT did a great job in killing the bosses, but if they change, then they should have to kill them again, otherwise World Firsts for errybody.

Video cuts off at 4m 50s when Kel'sara first does force leech on the tank

800 health is not going to improve your tank's mitigation that much, rough numbers 0.06*800 = 4.8hp/force lightning, which is used roughly once every 7.5-9s? which gives 0.5444-0.644 HPS which is kind of negligible. Especially seeing as your problem is not the healing, but the dps. Well if you are a Guardian/VG there is no downside to dropping 800hp for 82 power. Unless if you are dropping down to 800 health regularly in the fight, then having the 800hp is essentially wasted power. May as well go for a useful stat as opposed to a useless stat.

Grall was only suggesting switching endurance for mainstat/power, there is no mitigation loss there and may in fact be a mitigation gain if you are a guardian/jugg tank. Only time you possibly lose mitigation from dropping endurance is if you are a shadow/assassin

EDIT: Please ignore my previous post. In all honesty, it seems like there are a few bugs in NiM TFB at the moment, so skipping bosses is likely to put you up against an enemy that doesn't have it's mechanics working as intended, BUT without guilds progressing that far (either linearly or in a roundabout fashion) those bugs would not be discovered. Everyone knows that the first few weeks of a new operation/difficulty coming out it is pretty much like the PTS. The issue here should not be "Hey look we killed all these bosses first except for one which is really really hard and not sure if it's doable or not" but should now be "There are a couple of bugs in these operations, let's try and get these bugs worked out so then we can have progression through a correctly functioning operation". So instead of slinging faecal matter at each other's beliefs and abilities, how about we start providing information on any encounters that may seem to not be working correctly? Just a thought.

The Terror should revert to 20% no matter what you did with the tentacles. 32% makes me think that a NiM mechanic has snuck in and is making life hell for errybody

Two options that seemed to have worked for me: Turn your ability activation queue to 0s and spam your keys as much as you want. -- OR -- Hit your keys once as the GCD is about to end, spamming keys is the biggest culprit for False GCD's

I'll just jump in here with a quick tip: You want to be activating PS as close to the end of the current GCD as possible so you get 4.5s of it being up as opposed to 3.5s if you activate it straight after your last ability. If you are a clicker, then you should at the very least keybind PS onto an easy to reach key, something like R or F. If you activate PS too early, you can shave the best part of 1.3s off the 100% Armor Pen. which will leave you with 2 attacks (or 3 if Zen) that hit hard. Also with the "False GCD's" where you see the GCD activate but nothing happens, one of two solutions will work: Turn your ability activation queue time to 0.25 or 0 and spam your keys to your heart's content -- OR -- Dont spam your abilities while the GCD is in effect, you hit them once as the GCD ends. Hopefully this helps out

What if the procs were guaranteed? Getting a proc that is similar to conveyance where it can be consumed via abilities to create a more optimum mitigation for a particular scenario? But the proc will be consumed and utilised through any viable ability sequence. Please tell if I am flogging a dead horse, as I don't want to waste time considering ideas that won't actually positively effect shadows.

Quick, everyone back onto Dalborra!

In all honesty, the example I gave was meant to be ridiculously over complicated and not actually a realistic model of what I expected to be implemented, but it was meant to highlight the fact that if we are "skill tanks" to require us to have "skill" that involves more than a bit of proc watching combined with resource watching. Placing a choice in the players hands that will directly influence their mitigation there and then (or at least in the near future) that requires some sort of a set up appeals to my notion of "skill". The whole spikiness of shadows is one thing, but if the solution implemented makes us boring to play, then it just seems to detract from the whole "skill tank" aspect. And by that I don't mean "look ma, I chose to use resilience on that attack" in terms of skill, more of a "I know this guy will hit me harder than usual in about 4-5 GCD's I am going to proactively do something about significantly reducing that damage without having to pop a cool down". This is off topic slightly I know, but I think that a kind of "high risk, high return" implementation upon shadow tanks ability to actively control their mitigation would be nice as opposed to what we have now. And kitru, I have no idea about numbers and how to calculate them, I am more arguing the ideas rather than values, but I am fairly certain that you picked up on that. Except for one thing, the increased DR on harnessed shadows stacks, why not look at it as an added bonus? When you get a stack you get some added mitigation thrown in there, you still use your tkt, but scale the DR numbers so its less appealing to hang onto the stacks? Again arguing ideas not numbers EDIT: Prepares for destruction

Just tacking onto my last post, another thought occurred to me. What if refreshing kinetic ward while you had the accelerated project buff up made the next 2 attacks deal 50% damage but the kinetic ward only had 5 stacks or so due to the other 10 being used to decrease the damage done? Something like that where you choose which is more applicable? Using the procs that you get combined with other abilities consumes those procs in a similar fashion to conveyance on sages.

A few ideas: - Make each stack of harnessed shadows increase DR by 2% - When accelerated project hits something, next attack is guaranteed to be shielded or could add a 6 sec boost to shield chance (10 - 20%)? - every time an attack is defended, DR is increased by 1%, max of 5%. - Procced shadow strike reduces damage of next incoming attack by 25% It seems like making shadows less spiky involves a simple change of: increase DR by 10 -20% or increase absorb by a similar amount, or the complex methods of interweaving buffs and procs in the style that a skilled shadow tank will be able to utilise these buffs to provide a higher mitigation on select attacks. An example could be: When an accelerated project inflicts damage on a target affected by slow time and force breach it has a 30% chance to create an outer ring of kinetic ward that further increases shield chance for 20% over the next 6 attacks and provides the same kinetic bulwark effect of 1% increased absorb per shielded attack until the 6 charges are consumed. Can only be used while enemy is taunted. The above example is not very good, and I think that stems from the fact that shadows have no short term debuffs to place on an enemy that can be utilised in order to allow a skilled player to maximise mitigation at their discretion. At the moment it's "an attack is coming that will cause my health pool grief if I don't shield or defend against it, pop deflection" whereas it should be "I see what you are doing there you sneaky boss person you, that attack is going to suck so I will perform this chain of abilities to make me take considerably less damage". But we don't actually have any debuffs that run out before they come off CD so any debuff related procs are just going off RNG as opposed to highly skilled playing. Maybe change force breach to a 6s debuff and create something like a Procced shadow strike on a force breach effected target gives an increase in some mitigation stat, or further decreases the enemies accuracy by a certain amount. As you can probably tell, I am making all of this up as I go, so I'm not even sure if it is coherent. The ideas might be useful though

What about if harnessed shadows had an increase to DR attached to it? So 1 stack gives 2%, 2 stacks gives 4% and 3 stacks gives 6%? They are fairly large increases in DR but you would average them out to be roughly a 4% increase in DR I think, just using some awful napkin math attached to some awfuler assumptions.

The whole point of this thread is to recognise progression through the hardest content in the game from guilds that are able to clear it. If you don't want to be part of it, for whatever reasons, that's your prerogative, and yours alone. That said, if you don't want to be part of the thread, then why are you commenting on it? There is a lot of unnecessary chatter on this thread, but all the results are in the first post on the front page so if you really wanted to know who was who in the zoo, it's displayed for the world to see, everything else in this thread may as well be general chat on fleet and has very little impact on the progression of guilds. Long story short, if you have no invested interest in this thread, then please don't introduce your opinions upon it. Those of us that are active users of the thread are relatively big boys and girls, and we are able to conceive our own opinions of this thread.

Just because one spec has to place points in talents that you don't particularly want to put points into, has no bearing on another spec that has to place points in talents that you don't particularly want to put points into. What happens if assault suddenly only gets 2 wasted skill points (as opposed to the situation now) in their tree, do you then just accept that you have 2 wasted points just because another spec has to waste 3? Or do you want those 2 skill points to go somewhere nice and keep campaigning for it? I don't care about Assault when I spec medic. Just like I don't care about medic when I spec gunnery. I care about the spec that I am in, in that particular point in time, because it actually matters.

But we are playing combat medics not Assault spec so your point is a bit moot . In PVP, it's useless still, because it ticks for such a small amount, that if I needed to heal myself for say 1000 health, then I can wait and throw a Kolto Bomb on a few people including myself and get the heal that way, or if things are very dire and I have someone hunting me down and I am kiting like a boss, it's very hard to effectively hammer shot someone to heal yourself whilst strafing ( should not be backpedalling). The only time it begins to approach decency is when it ticks because someone hits you, and you hammer shot the person in the same GCD and they both crit and you get roughly the same amount of healing as Kolto bomb in one GCD. Otherwise completely useless and you should not talent probe medic at all, spend your points elsewhere.

Do you ever get that feeling of realisation that you have an absolute derp? Because I have that right now . the only way I could get away with saying the 4% DR is better is because you have to spend a GCD to use concussion charge that could be better spent on another ability, but CC has the magical ability of healing others and generally you won't be taking 100k damage in a boss fight. Don't put that build in your guide, I am ashamed of it haha. Maybe take reduced cost of CC and CG and put that point into steady hands? I just really don't like pushback, too much time pvping and throwing a Hail Mary heal in PVE only to find that some wimpy little add hit me for 100dmg and it knocked my heal back by .3 of a second and my tank died . One other thing you could mention (just a little nuance) is that when you drop Kolto bomb, try to drop it not only on people, but on where people are going to run through in the next 4 seconds, especially when SCC is up because it applies all buffs attached to KB when people run through the green mist.

As Hak stated, this list has a few issues that don't synergise well the Commando's role and playstyle along with just not providing the highest effective HPS. Read Hak's guide and it explains the issues with the priority list above. Great guide Hak , I especially like your how your Kithide healing style is named after yourself, very rock starrish . Only one or two small things I noticed, firstly, any reason why you don't show this build as a "Tank healing build" or something like that. The reason why I like this build is because it takes a situational heal (Concussion charge which heals for a static amount + costs ammo) and turns it into a DR buff for yourself (Permanently reduces incoming damage by a percentage + Free) along with an extra 35% protection against pushback, which is quite valuable in situations where you are taking raid wide damage such as the Lots of Missiles phase in Titan 6, or Black Obtuse Channel in Operator IX, but again, these talent points are situational. In fights where you can stack up for healing, the concussion charge heal will provide you with a nice quick heal. Food for thought and all that The best thing you can do is change your build to a pvp build, something like this. It is also important to realise that as a commando, you will get focused, even though you have actually become a formidable enemy even in heal spec in 2.0. So plan accordingly, wherever you stand and start casting your heals should have 2 points of exit where you can employ some LoS and/or run to your team and hopefully your team will take pity on you and kill the people following you. If you have a tank guarding you, TP goes on the tank, provided the tank is actively guarding you, not just putting a guard on you and wandering around, tapping people on the nose and leaping to anything that moves halfway across the map. If you dont have a tank guarding you, then TP goes on yourself. TP procs off any damage, including dots and can be lovely to kite people with, when your TP ticks harder than their dots. Over the space of about 5-7s, a commando is the king of mobile burst healing if your cooldowns are up. You have Bacta Infusion, Kolto Bomb, Concussion Charge (Save this for an opportune moment, dont waste just for a heal) and Tech Override + Medical Probe, which will quite happily heal you for the best part of about 12k (before crits) all while you are running around. So those are your heals that you can use to heal yourself while kiting your attackers. Your AMP is also ~1.3s cast time, so employing LoS might give you enough time to cast one of them. Moving onwards to actually surviving (which is what you are after). Starting with the melee classes, sentinels/guardians are the easiest to counter purely because of Electro Net. You can cast it on them as soon as you see them looking at you, and then move to safety. One thing to mention with this, you must move out of 10m range, because blade storm/force scream & dispatch/vicious throw(?) have a 10m range and do quite a bit of damage. If you have been leapt upon, its still not too bad, because of the powerful single target heals that you have. If one leaper leaps, you just take him with you, dont fire off concussion charge just yet, move him over to your teammates and keep healing. You can heal yourself and a few of your team mates for quite a while with only one dps attacking you even if they are a watchman/annihilation spec with the low cd interrupt and 0m leap. Just don't blow cooldowns until people are about to, or are in severe danger of dying. Your teammates will be your best chance of survival, so keep them alive. If you get beset upon by a leaper in the middle of nowhere and you are by yourself, then you have a plethora of choices to slow/stun the target, you can plasma grenade for a slow, concussion charge for a knockback + slow, kolto bomb for a slow, cryo grenade for a stun, concussive round for a longer stun. Preference is to use slows first, kolto bomb being the number one preference. As they leap and catch up, cleanse yourself, all leapers will apply physical effects to you, whether they are slows or dots and they can be cleansed, so do it. One leaper should not be able to hurt you enough that you are unable to heal yourself through their damage. If they do get the better of you, hold the line and leg it, once they leap again, stun, keep legging it. 2 leapers or more. Whether it be 2 leapers or 10 leapers, this is dire straits for you, mainly because they have 2 interrupts and 2 stuns, locking you for a total of 8 seconds if your cc breaker isnt up as well as interrupting every 2nd casted heal. Reactive shield straight up, this is a proactive defensive cooldown, it won't save you at 1%. Chances are they will stun you, because they know that when you have your shield up, you have 0 pushback and are uninterruptible, so they will have to burst through your health + heals + 25% DR, which is just far too much effort, so the first stun will be Awe (Not sure of Warrior counterpart) which lasts for 8 seconds and breaks on damage. Dont use your cc break on this, let the stun run out, they can't damage you without messing up their stuns, the next stun will be force stasis/choke, and that will run out the duration of your shield. This is where you pop your cc break as soon as your resolve bar hits full. CC break and Hold the line away from them, they will most likely both leap to you at once, so concussion charge once they leap and leg it. Should be able to get far enough away/LoS. If you dont have those abilities ready for use, then adrenaline rush in advance and hopefully it doesn't have to trigger. adrenaline rush combined with your heals will be plenty to deal with the incoming damage, but leaves you fairly exposed when it runs out so call out for help/run to team mates when you have enough health/ Bacta Infusion or Kolto Bomb is off CD. Single assassin is the same as a single leaper. Most will run deception (Infiltration for a shadow) and will open with a couple of fairly big hits, followed by weaker set ups, (using shadow terminology here, the attack line will be roughly: force potency, shadow strike, shadow strike, project, clairvoyant strike (blackout), clairvoyant strike, project, sub 30% execute). What to take from that list is that every attack except project is white damage, this mitigated by your armour, which you have plenty of. The key issue here is that they need to be behind you to get Maul off. They will always get the first one off because they will pop out of stealth behind you, but after that, it comes down to how you react as to whether or not they get another maul off or they have to go shock. It takes a fairly ballsy assassin to go after a commando healer by themselves, so always check out the surroundings before you commit to just playing with this guy. Again, all situational but my preferred tactic is to concussion charge them in one direction, and you hold the line in another direction, leaving a kolto bomb behind you to snare them. if they catch up with force speed, then break out the stun. If they are still following you, then electro net them. If that's on CD, then just stand still and heal yourself while calling for help. Assassins just don't have the firepower to take you down by themselves. They have 2 stuns, one is a 4 second stun, the other is a 2 second stun. Do not cc break on the 2 second stun ever. just ride it out. The 2 second stun is their positioning stun, so they are able to get behind you. when you see it happen, get ready to turn around to face them, you have 2 seconds to watch where they are going, so use them well. their interrupt is on a 10s cooldown, so essentially they will get one out of every 4 casted abilities or so. Nothing to worry about, just drag him over to your team. 2 assassins are able to burst you down. Same deal as 2 leapers, reactive shield straight up, but chances are they wont cast whirlwind (Their version of awe, but casted) just because it can be interrupted. So you will get stunned firstly for 4 seconds, all while they are bursting you, then again for 4 seconds, obviously on the second stun you cc break and then concussion charge + kolto bomb + hold the line and just leg it. If you see them pop up when you are on anything less than 80%, pop adrenaline rush pre-emptively. Then just call out for help or drag them to your team. One thing about assassins, when they glow, do not touch your stun. Not much you can do about that for 3s other than try to heal yourself. Stuns are good for melee dps, but concussion charge + kolto bomb + hold the line is better because they are all abilities on very low cooldowns, are cheap and heal you all at the same time. Long post, I'm tired, any questions feel free to PM me

It was great for me, for once Ryan was meant to have threat on stuff

Hide yo' kids, hide yo' sheep, cause Vesia rapin' errybody out here tonight.

From what I understand, the 4pc bonus gained from shadow tank armorings are BiS for Defense Guardians at the moment, when incoming damage is above ~500dps after mitigation, which is any operation boss that has a significant enough damage output to warrant needing any 4pc bonus. I will try to find the thread for you ******* EDIT *********** Found it.

TEHEE's Legit Team 2 has downed TFB HM & 3/7 SnV HM, Will post screenshot for Styrak kill when we get there The Terror: http://i.imgur.com/L6q7WDt.jpg Grats to Excession