Given that this FP is part of the Dark versus Light Event, I have been running through this FP a bit. There is always the challenge of people not understanding the LOS issues in two of the boss fights. But I have had the experience in the last couple of days on the last boss that I was hoping to learn if others saw. More than 50% of the time, the boss does not start with the front 2 mobs. I would call it 75% of the time, but that is just a guess. In the bad cases, he starts at his first retreat position. I have seen him either move forward some or stay at that 2nd position. If he remains stationary in cover then he can not be damaged. I don't get any fly text at all with immune. Just no damage reports. He can still attack, just not be hit. At some point, he will break cover and start moving (which I thought he never did). Once that happens, you can damage him. However, he then seems to somewhat ignore Line of Sight Rules. Added together, it means that most starts of the boss fight end in wipes that could not be won. Anybody else experiencing this?

1 - They are weeklies. They USED to be dailies. 2 - The overall mission is still around but it is either broken or deprecated and you can't hand it in. In the old days, it used to be a weekly.

One other thing about guard. DPS classes have aggro dumps. Tank Classes acting as DPS'ers do not with the exception of Sins. So if you have a Jugg or a PT in your group dpsing they have no aggro dump. If you are on a trash pull and a dps is pulling aggro they also have the option of clicking their aggro dump.

So, I have spent significant time in pvp with my sniper post 4.0.3 in all 3 specs. They all have their purpose and I still do pretty well. MM - Head Hunting for Healers. Still has the best burst of any of the specs. Has the downside of being the most LOS unfriendly. Virulence - Best pressure spec. If you want to top the dps meters this is probably the way to go. Downside is weakest burst. Engineering - Somewhere in the middle. EMP discharge gives you a shot at healer kills (with the stun component). More mobile than MM. I think the best comparison for snipers should be marauders. I think that the challenge that MM snipers had (from a Bioware standpoint) is that they had the burst of a Fury Mara (their best comparison). Fury Mara is the lowest dps spec in the game from a pve standpoint. So, I suspect the patch was to align things more along the lines of: Annihilation - Virulence: Best PvE spec. Passable PvP spec Marksmanship - Fury: Burst Spec - not viable in PvE (except for overmatched content) Carnage - Engineering: Because their has to be 3 specs...a middle ground.

I did it on my Fury Mara in full exemplar with mastery augs with Lana at about 9 and no buffs. I got the one and only achievement without even trying. I died a couple of times trying to understand the fight mechanics, but other than that it is not a problem.

So, you want to be in Shien form and be a tank? Or you want to be specced in Vengeance and want to be in Soretsu form? I am assuming this is about pvp, because it makes essentially no sense for pve. The problem in pvp is that damage is yellow damage not white. The Darkness folks in damage pvp gear are (in my humble opinion) are kidding themselves about how much damage they do. They do it because being a real tank in pvp means that you are not going to kill very much. But as your jobs are: Damage Prevention, Healer Saving and Crowd Control; your absolute damage matters a whole lot less than your hit points (since yellow damage can not be shielded against).

The tips here were good, but I want to give you a mental picture of your job. As a tank you are not going to be doing a lot of dps. So, your job is Damage Absorption and Damage Prevention. You want to be a nice big fat juicy target so that you can get the other team to attack you instead of your healers and dps. Most of the time they will figure that out and you will move down on the kill list. So you move to Prevention. This includes the use of Guard, Taunt and various stuns. Your primary target to protect is a healer, but a high end dps if there is not a healer around. You can be extremely valuable because a Jugg/Guard tank with her or her cooldowns takes a lot to kill. Just standing near a node in a wz may cause a team to send a bunch of people to kill you. This gives your teammates time and opportunity to take other nodes. So, think about it in terms of - how can I prevent damage and how can I absorb damage meant for others and you will do well. A lot of wz's I end up with as much or more prevented damage as I do dps. Now, if your team is doing well - sure go attack the other team's healers or top dps. But first and foremost, your job is to prevent the other team from killing yours.

I have started one of these and I have found I can do the Ilum, Makeb, and Oricon storylines. Wondered if I can go back and do the Class ones as well?

I spent the last week making a Rage Jugg and have thought a lot about this in comparison to my Fury Mara. Both are in full ranked gear. Jugg: ED is a Monster, if it is up you have to kill me twice. But beyond that, I really don't have a lot of defensive cooldowns. I also feel like I need to use my direct Rage generators more often. There is a mobility trade-off between the 2 classes, but I feel slower as a Rage Jugg and a bit harder to stay on healers. I hit HARD and I loaded up on Crit Augments. I feel more survivable and I love Force Push...find Retaliation clumsy. Mara I feel like I am a glass cannon, for killing healers with Crippling Slash I find Mara's superior. I am more fragile even though I have to use my Defensive cooldowns very aggressively. I have to say that I see many poorly played Maras who never use Pred or Force Camo and just get slaughtered. If a Jugg has ED up they kill Maras easily. Without it, much more of an even contest. I don't have a lot of Crit Augments yet (I built her before the new math was posted) and I am working on that. All in all, I wish my Jugg had Dual Saber Throw and Force Camo. I wish my Mara had ED and Intercede. I like the easy ghetto tanking that my Jugg brings. I like the group buffing my Mara can do. So, better/worse...I am a more experienced Mara at the moment. I do a bit better right now on my Jugg. If you visit the Bastion, you can find me on my Jugg (Exwife) or my Mara (Khristal).

Not sure why they would,link the 15% to the normal autocrit skill. I think the whole point is to improve the value of Furious Strike.

I switched from Fury to Carnage in 4.0. I was Fury all the way in 3.0, but found Carnage better for me at the moment (note I started as fulled ranked pvp gear and can't compare outside of that).

You guys have clearly never healed yourself as a DPS Sage/Sorc. Healing as a DPS sage sucks if you have to cast heals. The only rational healing is self healing. That comes in 2 forms. There is a Heroic Utility to allow both bubbles to heal and Balance/Madness Sage/Sorcs heal themselves in the way Balance/Madness Sins do. The instant heal of a Sage is not as good (and better in other ways) than Overcharge Saber (which is a larger instant cast heal btw).

Force Barrier requires you to stand still and channel it. It removes all negative effects. That is why Sages stand there. They are channeling it.

It is also a comparison thing. My Commando pumps out tons of DPS. More than my Sage. The thing is that my Sage is harder to kill. So the Commando gets instantly focused as the opponents know we are an easier kill. Heck even I do that when I see a Commando/Mercenary on the other team.

You do know Force Barrier is a CC breaker right? It is in fact off the GCD. Sages therefore have 2 CC breakers (as do sorcs) and that is without talents that allow it to heal them (which I have on my Sage and its quite handy).

I would argue that the problem is highly theoretical and not as big a deal in reality as posted. I play Assault and have since the game opened - living with patches in which Assault was "bad". There are several reasons that the result is not as bad as the theory: - Try tossing grenades first for DoT spreading. Most targets in active PvP don't notice grenades and by the time they vanish the grenades are exploding and bringing them back anyway. - Stuns/Attacks etc. mean that there is regen downtime. - Death does the same. People learn pretty quickly that an unmolested Assault PvP is way too dangerous to leave alone.

Hunh....when the interrupt....I refresh my dots and do other things. Snipers are not a problem for me. Not like the burst melee characters. Retreating from Snipers is BAD. They have longer range than you do. LOS yes but a pure retreat is a very bad idea. In fact, I prefer to CLOSE with snipers.

As to Crit...didn't the Devs recently say that they are unhappy about where it is today and it is likely to change?

Its funny...as a Balance Sage 1 v 1....I have been face tanking every Sniper I run into without a problem. Just stand there and nuke them to death. My self healing on my DoTs and gear make up for any DPS differential. The worst I have come out is a double kill...he gets me but my DoTs get him.

It was not directly an ability it was a spec option.

I am basically asking you the question...Who cares about using the lightsaber? I don't...it has been this way since the open and if it was going to change then it would have. I put in a comparison to what our ranged counterparts have. The ONLY thing they have is a 0 cost attack that can be used on the move. An instant that causes direct damage. For a commando, this procs something in both assault and combat medic. Other than that, I think this thread is a waste of time.

Truthfully, I don't care about a lightsaber attack per se. What I do care about is the fact that our baseline spam attack (i.e. the one that requires 0 resources) is useless to Sages. Sure....our goal is to close to melee range to use that attack. The other ranged classes have a 0 resource attack that works at range. Why are they useful? Node interrupts. Now Hammer Shot (Commando) does have its uses for healers and assault.

Are you thinking about something like the way Shockstrike was implemented for Gunnery Commandos - where it does a root? I do think we need to use Commandos/Mercs as comparisons because they are similar in structure. They have a similar issue but have value out of Hammer Shot. For Assault, it procs Plasma Cell. It does healing for a Combat Suppport. Shockstrike does its thing for Gunnery.

So, from a PvP standpoint Balance/Madness were intended to be the PvP trees originally (as I play a Sage I will use Sage terms from here on out). The self-healing is one of the big things from DoT crits and Force in Balance. These are quite effective against non-burst DPS. The challenge is really burst DPS. Now is "Smash Spec" just OP and would we all be better off with a nerf there?

So, I think the first thing we need to get our head around is whether improved defense is either baseline or skill tree specific. I think that there are also differences between pvp and pve on this - for example does escapability mean much to pve? I think in general probably not. Since folks probably would like enhancements for both, then I suspect that damage mitigation/removal is more likely than escapability. So, should we focus our discussion around Baseline upgrades to damage mitigation/removal (and by removal I mean dot/effect removal)? Potentially, the easiest (maybe not the best) solutions to this lie on the other side of the Advanced Class - they have skills that are melee/force damage reduction.