I second this, especially in NIM if a dps pulls off a few tenchcutters they are good as dead.

It is good to see that you guys are still around.

Out of curiosity, i was wondering how many 16 man guilds are proactively trying to clear NiM EC, and how many 8 man guilds as well, and what is the ratio between them? A rough estimate from The Harbringer would be two 16 man guilds (one that i know have lost a few members since since the start of 1.4), and at least fifteen 8 man guilds. I am not aware that either of the two 16 man guilds are putting in a large amount of pulls (they seem to be more casual if you look at the dates for their TFB clears, compared to other 16 man guilds), while the one guild that has cleared 8 man put in 3 to 4 hours a night with multiple different people to get it down. What i am getting at is the fact that no one has cleared 16 man EC doesnt mean it is harder then 8 man which has been cleared by 12 different guilds. It just means that there is far greater amount of 8 man guilds in the game, and that the success rate within the operation is probably equal for 16 man and 8 man, and furthermore if we had twice the amount of 16 man guilds active we would of seen a full 16 man clear already. Feel free to correct me if i am wrong, and that there is a large amount of 16 man guilds in the game atm that trying to push the new content 4 to 6 nights a week. On a sidenote i agree that the 1st and 3rd fight in EC NIM, is rather weak, the 2nd fight is just a tight dps check... nothing else. Most of Kephess' new mechanics are more or less things preventing guilds from cheesing out the encounter and probably most likely should of been in HM actually...the dps and heal checks are a bit more steep... but it is pretty much a fight that requires 95-99% execution of everyone, which is somewhat rare for swtor.

Dont get me wrong though, some classes are under performing on a regular basis, and by the majority of players, those classes should be looked over a bit, and maybe reworked,

People usually use mox for a raid wide paser, swmonitor for a personal parser, then torparse as a site to really analyze things. Overall most classes should be able to perform at the same level of dps if played/geared right, the thing is some fights may favor certain classes/specs over others, as well as some being a bit harder to play.

For the most part you will have 10 slots to have either surge or accuracy... you will want to split them apart equally for you will have 300 surge, and 300 accuracy if you're using ilvl 63 mods, 285/285 if you're using ilvl 61. Also you will want to get the affection up on your melee dps (at least i think it is the melee dps, either way you want to get all of your companions) companion to be able to complete their story and get an additional 1% accuracy for free.

I have done the 1st 3 bosses in HM EC with 7 people, chances are high they could be done with less.

I dont mean to sound like a dick, but i doubt anyone gives a damn about dreadtooth atm. Feel free to correct me if i am wrong but i been told and seen him be pugged at one and two stacks, and was told at three he just roflwtf stomps everyone in a single shot with no apparent mechanic to prevent it. If i am wrong and there is a way to continue to kill him after 3 stacks, and if the level of difficulty is equal or higher then NiM EC, then it may be worth tracking after people clear NiM EC, as for now it seems like something to kill and mess around with with pugs while doing your dailies.

Out of couristy are you guys stuck to your roles, or have equally geared alts you may be willing to switch to?

There is still time for them to do balance changes, and smash juggs/maras can be shut down if you're playing smartly with other people... but most of the times in normal warzones you dont have that luxury.

Way i see it is that the original dev team bit off far more then they could chew, and promised things and timelines that were far from being actually possible for them to achieve. EA as a company cant come out and say anything that would be seen as bad mouthing any of these developers that put their foot in their mouth, they also cant let the blame fall on themselves either by stating it was due to layoffs that they sanctioned or a switch of payment model which they also sanctioned, since that would just be fuel to the fire where it involves their reputation. EA is doing the only thing that really makes sense, dont say a damn thing about past promises that were made by previous staff members. In good time which it has, the majority of people just let what was said months ago fade to dust... I guess there are always a few people with their own motives that will try to bring it up though.

Imo it is better to have higher static heals through out a fight, then try to burst out some heals... there are very few situations where you will feel the need to burst heals and in those situations you should have an adrenal. The only time i could see the on use being useful is when you would be participating in a burn phase, and even then you would be sacrificing some static healing power, for that extra dps burst. Also there really only one situation in current end game (soa is old and doesnt count), where a healer would be participating in a burn phase and that is the walker in EC (i use to dps on kephess post 60% in HM, but that wont be possible from what i have seen in NIM from him), and currently heals are a bit tight through out the encounter in NIM, so losing some static healing wouldnt be worth it (in a farm situation it may be different though).

If someone was serious about gearing up for raid content as a new player, i would advise them to farm credits as much as possible and buy stabilizers in bulk and get 61's crafted while farming BH comms. Honestly i have sold a stack of 10 stabilizers as cheap as 1.3 million (can be easily farmed in a single day), that would net them a little over a bh piece a day and they wouldnt have to worry about wasted parts. I would like to see them add maybe a nightmare setting to flashpoints that is set around the gear level of columi/rakata compared to quest greens and have that maybe drop rakata... will it happen no...

Can someone post their log from 16 man showing how much damage they take from defensive systems? There is alot of visual lag at times in the game, and lag with the hot bar and if you're taking damage from multiple sources it is hard to tell what is hitting you for what without looking through a log.

Got to give him some credit for keeping the dogs from enraging though right?

When it comes to annihilation, you only use rupture if the bleed effect from it has worn off. I also would like to mentioned that full buffed you only need about 32-34% crit...power really becomes king if you're good at abusing your rage generation and fury building to get berserk as often as possible. It may net less dps though in a fight where you end up holding berserk for a burn phase compared to using it as soon as possible.

I dont think none of the attacks are ramped up to the point of being twice the amount of 8 man... tanks would be getting insta-gibe if that was the case, since in hm ec kephess' rupture attack hits for about 11k in 8 man...

You forgot the key mechanic of this fight on NIM, the second double destruction. If you getting the second double destruction (and you will on 8 man, unless you have uneven dps on the tanks) you will need to have people switch tanks mid fight, much like the tanks do, and loose out on dps from having to switch. On 16 man you can assign 2 dps to take the 1st DD, and then 2 others to take the second with out needing anyone to stop their flow of dps at all.

one can argue that you loose time to dps from running. Let say you loose 8 secs per shield phase, 4 shield phases, so a total of 32 seconds total in the fight... depending on how much dps people are pushing out walking of flying can mean the difference between death to an enrage or a kill. With that said though people shouldnt be killing themselves to dps; meaning if for what ever reason you're sitting at 50% life and DD on you, you should be poping a CD and running.

15:04:12.094 Stormcaller Blast Tank's Defensive Systems hits Kemenotic for 843 kinetic damage, causing 843 threat. That is on 8 man, i doubt it would be hitting for over 2k on 16 man, so it is still very little amount of damage as long as you're topped off and fly back into a shield and not in the middle of no where. You can find the complete log here.

Also on a side note if someone gonna get data deletion and there is no one that can protect them have them run and die away from the raid. The enrage timer/ healing require for the fight is rather weak.

Was seeing that yesterday and it seemed like it would go off once per cycle, and only hit my marauder for a lil more then 4k. I think it is just a mechanic to make sure you're healing everyone up after the trandoshians which are a pita now

TBH if you're going to raid i would say roll a pub they seem to have a larger raiding community then the imps atm, if you're not going to raid it doesnt matter imo.

Clear it to the point where you need you 3 people, then seek out 2 more people finish up the last 3 minutes of the quest.

The thing is the fights are not radically different, and the new mechanics are not OMGWTF hard but do require every single member of the raid to be on point, and for the overall raid be clean with the kill. I will admit from a mathematical/statistical point of view that you're more likely to get someone messing something up when you increase the number of people in the raid, but does it really make the content harder, does it mean there need to be special awards and such for people doing 16 man? They already have lower the dps check on the fights on 16 man, to allow people to loose a bit of their uptime to adjust to more movement in the fights, what else do you want them to do? On a sidenote, i dont mean to offend anyone with my posts, but every new raid we get these same damn threads about 16 man being so much harder then 8 man, and how they should be given special treatment because of it. Also if you want to look at how many 8 man guilds that are attempting NIM EC to 16 man guilds, i am sure you will find the success rate to be about right (based on the logic that more people doing something, more likely someone will do it right). Most 8 man guilds dont have 16 "A" players, and dont want to go through the trouble of finding them in this game where it is hard enough to find 8 decent players to fill out a raid. To be honest i almost joined a 16 man guild a few weeks ago, but i decided not to, because i would've ended up switching roles, and i didnt like the idea of me having to trust the ability of 15 other players in a game that is very casual.