Don't care to play a dps/tank at all, not even as an alt? Just asking since it is rather rare to find people that can mange to play all 3 roles well anymore, but those people are usually the best at understanding fights.

It has been like that since TFB was on the PTS, flame thrower/ion pulse, orbital strike/ xs flyover both have issues with doing damage to the cores as well. Hopefully if they truly make it hard in NIM they will address this issue, but as it stands majority of the time the bug will just make your parse look worst at end of the fight, but wont cause you to fail a phase.

Most likely the lag caused the tank who was tanking the boss, to loose agro, and for the swarm debuff to fall off of him/her.

The amount of time you have to taunt back is actually closer to a full second or two. When i am tanking i usually get my taunt off well before he actually does deletion, and then you have probably half a second between deletion and the next auto attack. I have noticed a few things doing this fight over the last few months with quite a few different groups, one group was able to eliminate the dps/heals getting a deletion through tank swapping, while in others it always seems to be same people getting it. I would like to say the boss switches to the person second on the hate list for data deletion (much like how the person 2nd on the hate list usually got cannoade on the droid in EV), but in no way have i tested this at all, since currently is very simple for a tank to taunt back when needed, and for healers to keep people topped off. Hopefully if and when we see NiM TFB, we will have to figure out the mechanic completely to avoid dps from being one shotted.

On a side note, the dps/hps requirement on this fight is non existent so you can have someone run away from others and die if need be, even if you dont have a battle rez for them.

What stops people from doing Ilum currently? The lack of rewards (currently there is still valor rewards, and bonuses), what type of rewards would need to be in place to make it worth people's time and energy to go there? Would there need to be a direct transport from the fleet to Ilum's pvp zone? Then how long would it be until people got bored with it, or completely stopped doing WZs?

When it comes to defining what is an exploit and what is not, it really comes down to what BW/EA consider one to be, but probably for the most part you will only receive a ban if your "exploit" causes someone else gaming experience to be hampered (ex. speed hacks in pvp). There was a well known exploit in PvE, that recently got patched, but those that did use it were looked down upon by the raiding community as a punishment, instead of receiving anything from BW directly.

IMO open world pvp died with the invention of BGs years ago. If you give BGs and world pvp the same carrot, people will always choose the most convenient and easiest of the two; BGs. If you give world pvp a large enough carrot for people to do it, people will say it isnt balance enough, and makes BGs obsolete. Either way the two compete for the same players, while trying to offer them something similar in design and reward; therefore more developers should wise up and stop dumping resources into a system that cant achieve success.

Pre 50, a dps jugg should be able to tank everything fine, same with a PT... the only class that is somewhat squishy w/o talents pre 50 is a assassin.

I have found dpsing on my Operative as a healer is far easier, and usually nets a higher amount of damage then when i have tired it on my merc. My Operative has a few talents to increase the damage and the tick rate of corrosive dart, and i am usually able to maintain the dot with ease even in some of the hardest fights. In the easier fights, i end up tossing out orbital strike on CD, as well as shiv and backstab when permitted. It also helps greatly when a good tank dont need much more then the hot rolling on them over half of the time.

You're actually creating a situation where you have more raid wide damage (chain lighting does more damage more targets it hit), and hence making the effectiveness/need for your salvation even higher.

We should be seeing a new raid before we see the expansion, and hence a higher tier of gear then DG. This based on the fact that we wont we see the new expansion for another 4 to 6 months, and hoping that they learned their mistake by not providing new raid content in a timely fashion after 1.2. Also there is a 28 set of gear already datamined from the game.

Not every person will learn the fights, or actually cares to learn them. The best example of such behavior is the study of economics in the world. It is something that is very beneficial for everyone to know and understand for multiple different reasons... there are a lot of people willing and wanting to share insights about the studies of economics, but still the mass population remains clueless when it comes to it. When it comes to economics you have two type of people that know it, those that was born with a mind for it, and those that study it. In a game like this you have people that are naturally good at the game, and will pick up on mechanics extremely quickly and you will never know/realize they may be new to the flashpoint. Then you have the select few that will take the time to read up on the fights, maybe watch a youtube video or something even, and perform just as well. You even have a third type, that will state that they are NEW and need a quick run down. The people that dont fall into either of those three groups will ALWAYS be bad players, and majority of the time they just dont give a ****.

From a single target burst perspective, i have always felt that the sage/sorc was the weakest with the majority of their heals being small quick casts, or channels, while the big heal is rather slow compared to the other two healers. While a merc is able to pump out a large amount of healing in a single period of time through the usage of CDs and quicker casts, even though they screw over their heat doing so. An OP is able to push out rather large heals with decent cast times, or smaller heals with instants, while not having to worry to much about their energy with the ability to quickly regenerate it. When it comes to our kills on NiM Kephess, my guild have used every healer; we have used merc/sorc, merc/op, op/op, sorc/op... we have tired with sorc/sorc but it didnt work to well for us based on the fact that they couldnt keep up with the burst healing on the trandoshian phase and the lack of a strong aoe that a OP and merc both have access to help minimize the length of that phase.

Any more besides zorn and toth it does matter if you have 4 melee or not, it does matter if you have 4 range though. Range dps usually have slower interrupts then a melee, and at times may not parse quite as high in a burst situation.

I havent cared to try 16 man raids to much based on the fact that the majority of the people i have come across in this game are not highly discipline as raiders, and the fact that the progression of the fights are making near perfect execution more important. I can mange to do a raid with a couple of people that will most likely make a noticeable mistake 50% of the time on progression, in a 16 man raid i would most likely have 4 to 6 people that are likely to make a mistake half of the time, and hence making the raids harder then what they need to be. I raid to kill ****, i dont mind dying to a hard boss, or even bad RNG (i actually welcome some degree of punishing RNG in a raid fight); I do mind dying when someone in the raid makes a repeated mistake....i usually shrug it off and continue on, but i feel that in a 16 man that it would be far to often the norm. Please know i am not speaking badly about any guilds, 16m or 8m... i am speaking about the general player base of this game compared to the other MMOs that i have played in the last decade. I actually applaud the 16 man guilds that are still out there, that are willing to do the extra recruiting it takes to keep your guild alive, and the on going battle against morale that i am sure you guys/gals face.

The way i see it is that i raid maybe 6 to 10 hours a week; that leaves me with plenty of time to mess around with friends and people that i see as great social friends but not the greatest players. It is sorta like if you played baseball as a hobby; you may play in a league there is competitive, and winning is very important, while also playing in a second league that is more suited to social aspects and where winning isnt important at all. It doesnt make you a dick to play in a league where winning and competition is important. @OP, it really depends on what type of raid force you have, if you guys are more casual, hardcore.... somewhere in the middle. It is important to define where your raid force stands and address issues concerning under-performance accordingly to where you guys stand (ex. casual really doesnt give a damn and will sugarcoat things, while a hardcore will be straightforward).

When i use to run FPs (i no longer do), i wouldnt have an issue with teaching the instance to someone new, i usually offered tips for their role/class as well. I would only get upset when the person wouldnt take my advise, or would even try to argue with me at times. I will admit a fair share of the people that would argue werent completely new to the FP; they have ran it maybe a handful of times and felt like they have mastered every single aspect of it and that there was nothing else that could be taught to them, and hence were Noobs instead of Newbs.

I understand the OP to a point, some people are complete idiots and never will amount to much in the game. The majority of these people will be ****** players in full DG, or if they were in quest greens, doesnt really matter; so the argument that the Op is making things worst off by taking their loot isnt relevant. The big argument should be: is taking their loot any better then yelling at the person and kicking them/rage quitting the group?

I change my heal procing relic to a shield procing relic on kephess nim, then change it back to the heal procing relic after the trandoshian phase. I have noticed it helps out the healers a bit more for that phase but overall probably would be fine if i didnt do it. When it comes to question of mitgation vs HP, i usually work on a balance between the two. I use only letter mods, but will use a mix of high and low endurance enhancements, and will never use end augments. I usually aim to get the most endurance + mitigation stat, over willpower. This leaves with ~29k hp on my darksin, in the worst situation possible (tanking NiM Kephess while having the bleed (the other tank went splat because they a pure hp build)) I was able to survive with minimal stress on my healers (was a Merc and OP healer) without the need of CD's. I feel that if i was full mitigation or full hp build, i wouldnt of been able to survive in such a situation due to the fact that the a large amount of the damage i was receiving was not being mitigated.

It is most likely your healers not healing. They are moving into position and worrying about other things and not focusing on the tank quick enough to get him caught up in heals. Also how long are you guys taking on the transitions between phases, and are the healers and tank in positions where the tank is still being healed? The period after gift of the masters is the far easiest to heal in the whole fight, a single healer in rakata gear should be able to mange to heal it on their own, as long they are mindful of their resources. So the fact that your tank is dying rather quick at the start of this phase points to a healing problem.

Are you sure about this? When we were working on our first kill i timed it at four minutes even and it was still four minutes before i took a break for the holidays. I am wondering if they ninja nerfed the 8 man enrage timer when they nerfed the 16 man.

Those voices are probably cheap, it is the 16 people that do the voices for our characters that probably get paid the most since they have the most recognizable voices. People would be out raged if their character sounded different all of a sudden.

I feel that they were probably forced to some degree to charge for Makeb due to the voice acting. Yes the voice actors are contracted to be available for this game, but they are still paid per recording and not on a annual salary like the majority of their staff. So each time they bring them in for a session they are putting up a decent chunk of change. EA is a company, and companies do not put up money unless they see a profit on their returns; so yes they are most likely creating a profit on this "expansion" but it probably less then 1 to 2 dollars (considering time spent invested from those on salary, and bandwidth to download it).

It really comes down to the healer you bring with you. If they are not the type to cleanse, then you will not make it past the trash imo, if they are decent and on top of things then you should be fine if you execute properly. I believe on one occasion i healed a PT tank that was about 17k hp with some greens still, wasnt the greatest, but still wasnt the worst