Are the adds still a cause to go "Oh my god they are coming to kill me RUNNNN!!!!!" And run around trying to avoid all melee range of them? Or do they hit more like HM? Never got to test PTS so curious... Also, does this still mean Draxus is a douche and might need a five Dps strat to kill still? -.-

Where exactly is the UI stored? Client or server side? And if its client side, where might I find the folder for it... I'm poking around the program files folder and not seeing it (least not a file that is called UI or interface, or something similar).

Real easy solution as I do this every time on wave 9 of Draxus. I stand I between where the guardians spawn and as they are dropping in normally I wait till they impact the ground and that's when I hit my AoE taunt, and Force Speed up to the "Middle of Nowhere" which is where Levram described earlier. There it's simply a matter of walking through the slam (or shrouding but I save that for their Thundering Blasts as those you cannot dodge and healers are busy with a little of everything at this stage). They never look away from me as no one ever gets close enough to be within their jump range, only need to make sure the other tank taunts Draxus off you or you are gonna be one sad panda. Edit correction: Correction; the only people they will jump to is a melee Dps if they have nothing to do before Draxus is live (as in HM) and they want to hit something. Or it is NiM and everything needs to die before you can attack Draxus. Most ranged should not get LoS'ed from you doing that same with healers.

Right idea, and in other situations this would be ideal. but in this situation the NiM mode Hands in the final phase are actually doing a Slam attack (exactly like they do in the 6 finger phase), so pulling the tank would kill their threat on the tentacle and cause a raid-wide slam and a loose orb as well possibly. I personally do not have much experience with the fight (only made it to Clock of Death Phase myself) but I can see the following as what could be causing this; ~Guardian is building Focus on Brontes and/or reducing her armor. ~Guardian is the primary tank on her for most of the phase before clock of death. ~misjudged AoE taunt range? Honestly most of the videos I see of groups making it into that phase, one of their dps is actually attacking Brontes before the prior phase ends. The last one I watched the Sniper Shater-shotted before Brontes even transitioned from her spot in 6-Finger phase, he was shifting his dps to her from his Hand before the other Hand went down. And the moment she became active he was getting lifted and thrown. At that point nether tank seemed to be effected as it went to a different dps and/or healer. If those fail.... Then my knowledge of what could be done is gone.

So the group that kills Brontes gets the title, okay. thanks

Okay... So the question is basically as follows; For those that have groups who swap roles (tank to a dps for Draxus for example like I currently do) and actually have to swap toons. When they clear Brontes, will they get the title on all their toons? Or do you actually have to kill each of the bosses with a single toon to get the title for that toon specifically. Cause I have cleared Nefra/Grob/Zero as tank and will clear Brontes as tank as well. But because my tank has no dps gear and I have very little experience with Sin-dps, I swap to my PT for Draxus. I really want the title on my Sin, getting it on my PT is just bonus but not priority for me. If it is the case that you have to kill each boss on the same toon to get the title, if my guild kills Brontess and then the next week I stay on my Sin and kill Draxus, will I get the title on that or do I need to kill Brontes post-Draxus kill? Thanks ~Zen

Hmm, unlike a Sin tank a PT tank almost needs to taunt in their opening rotation to ensure aggro. Granted I am not that experienced with PT tanking, but my cotank is a PT tank and has been since making his PT. And I know he throws in a taunt into his opening rotation, as for what his opener is I think he goes like so; Explosive Fuel, DFA, Jet Charge, Rocket Punch, Rail Shot. I can only theorize why he does it, but I know the threat gen it creates is less then that of my Sin and the two of us are equally geared.

@kadjunga; So Brontes is like the inverse of Nefra and Draxus? Where you want next to no defense rating but a ton of shield... Interesting, though makes sense when compared to how palace is with the rest of the Masters, mostly shield favored for mitigation.

This past week something was brought to my attention in a rather big way twice; Sin tanks seem to be going much higher in endurance then previous. The first clear of NiM Brontess on my server was done by a Sin tank rocking approx. 48k health. I inspected them, and every mod was replaced with be same mod but the B version. And as recent as this past Tuesday a guildmate Sin tank was rocking almost the same setup, B version of the mods. So after doing NiM DF and seeing some of the incoming damage values of bosses first hand it got me wondering. Is there merit to the actions of these two Sin tanks? Does the sacrifice of 14 or so Absorb/Defense in favor of 26 more endurance become a worthwhile trade at he Dread Forged tier due to the diminishing returns of the ratings?

Worst case scenario use your combat drop before you pick up the boss (of course it means you'd need to burn a taunt to take'em, which can cause issues should he drop a grenade quick). I did that a few times, right before picking him up I'd drop combat and taunt him onto me. Of course this was in HM, not NiM. In NiM I would just go at him with a 3 stack FL right away as my first move.

We wiped cause a healer missed his interrupt, not a tank yet. Same idea though, missing 100% accuracy they can fail. - 1st Phase seems to be capped at around 85% or 84%, I think the trigger is 85% and you can still get off some damage as his "disappear" isn't an instance vanish from the field. - My Ops group is getting to this phase in around 2:30 to 3 minute mark, give or take. To be honest I'm not actively paying attention to the timer on Parsec for our pulls, I'm more paying attention to the damage taken and trying to figure out how to handle the waves. - The way we handle Wave 5 is as follows; We have our Healers get first interrupt on each of the Corruptors in the back while a Sniper goes and DPS's both of them (using Entrench the second they get back there) along with the op Healer (he gets into the bulwark and Orbitals and stays in the bubble, I think DPS'ing but idk to be sure). I also head to the back as the Sin tank in a Sin/PT combo, PT grabs the boss. I act as the backup interrupt and a little extra DPS (Wither and Discharge can hit all 3 if I sit on the Bulwark). The Bulwarks to the right and left are killed by our PT and Op DPS, they then jump on the boss. After the adds in the back all die the Sniper's join them on the boss and then I ether jump onto the boss or start weakening down the dispatchers. As we have an issue with the Grenade from Draxus hitting multiple members of our group and if I'm there DPS'ing Draxus... It screws over the spacing they have. We have not actually successfully passed this phase, we did send him up at the VERY start of Wave 6, but it was a wipe with 3 Dispatchers up from Wave 5. We'll probably be adjusting our plan on our next raid night, and keep adjusting till we get through this phase. I think the only way you can successfully clear the wave is to consistently make it to the wave. The more you see it, and the more your exposed to it, the better. It seems like though that Wave 5 is quite possibly the biggest DPS check in the fight aside from Wave 8 (4 corruptors, 1 Despoiler).

So I have one point of feedback, this might be outdated as it was from Tuesday and I forgot to post. Also have not seen the latest version of it, and of course it might just be user error. I set up a test to work with Lethal Takedown, which procs on basically every Cull. Only thing is with how I set it up (with the timers set to 0) it was playing the sound so much later. I was doing dailies in Section X and I would cull, visually see the proc and use it. Then kill the mob and move onto the next pack when the sound played. Is this on parsec's end? My end for setting the timer wrong? My end for having to much crap running while testing?

He does have an enrage timer, I have not personally seen it but a guildie of mine said his Pub side raid group saw it a lot when they learned the fight. The reason they saw it, was they focused on mechanics. As the mechanics in the fight make or break a clear. One thing I do know about his enrage timer is, if your seeing more then four Gravity fields, your going to have a higher chance of seeing enrage. Healers need to keep the tank that is tanking Zero as high a health as possible. Tanks need to be swapping off as much as possible to keep stacks low and damage output low. And Dps need to be burning down adds in the right order and interrupting the gold (ESPECIALLY the melee one, its self targetted AoE stun can cause a wipe if Zero does a gravity field). Plus the mechanics, knowing when to group and when not to group. Overall I would say the Zero fight is a mechanics heavy fight and getting them down means you will be able to clear him with ease.

Had two runs of hammer on my low lowbie Jugg tank... First I left as we got two Dps in a reque, one was a Jugg tank lvl 24! The other a marauder lvl 23. I just left as no xp to be had from those mobs now with a red number lvl in there (seriously why can a 24 que for a FP with lvl 16 mobs?). This was also a run where the healer invited me to his guild, when I declined verbally lashed out at me for low HP (3k at the time but in none orange gear which I fixed after it). He tried to kick me, failed. Then as I was leaving he tried to inv me to his guild... Two more times. Second run went a bit better; Three new players though so I took a moment to explain the fights mechanics to them and some base mechanics of Boss mob situations. Got some upgrades from it and went on my merry way to a good chunk of xp. This weekend will see this thread jump up several pages as it will be double xp... I am looking forward to it.

Time to break this down and help ya out! From one Sin-tank to another; 1. One glaringly glaringly big issue to me is in your skill tree, which does not seem to be mentioned by the above posters (granted I skimmed them a bit). You need to respec to this; http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#200MIroddfdGbRZcMZbM.3 The main difference between the spec linked above and yours, mine has no thrashing blades and instead takes Conspirator's Cloak. The 2 point perk is amazing, it gives you 4 stacks of Dark Protection when you exit stealth plus it gives you a chance to use Maul face to face with your opponent. Maul also helps with proccing Energize. Which means you'll be able to start boss fights from stealth, with 4% more Damage reduction. 2. Getting past roughly 44k HP as a Sin-tank is bad. As it means you are forfeiting mitigation stats for extra endurance, so a tank with 50k HP has a big health pool but if its a Sin-tank it can cause problems. Some tank classes can get away with it Powertech comes to mind since in full 78s it has like 52% base Damage Reduction. Assassin's cap out at 40.45% Damage Reduction, which gets bumped to 44.45% with 4 stacks of Dark Protection, Sin-tanks relay a lot on their other mitigation stats to survive fights as their base DR does not cut it. Personally I'd rather have the mitigation stats and lower health, as personally I feel it will make my damage curve slightly more stable. The site that most use is called Ask Mr Robot, and it is not necessary to set one up but lord does it help. Only downside is you need to manually update it yourself, but it is nice to look at it without having to get into the game to see your stats. 3. Companion use? Meh. I used Talos while leveling as Assassin's get 3 different AoE type abilities. Now while doing dailies I use whoever I feel like using. I will use Talos when I'm solo'ing Heroics and such, but if I'm just running around Black Hole smashing things? Ashara or Andron get used just to help me plow through it faster. At some point you get to a state where you don't care about companions at all because you are geared enough to kill everything on your own. 4. As for your gear, based on the alacrity rating in the Force tab... You have alacrity. And you have sub percentage of accuracy, which means you have accuracy rating. When it comes to being a tank, you want only Shield Rating, Absorb Rating, and Defense Rating. You'll get a total of 4% total accuracy from skill tree (3%) and from one of the companions I think melee dps (1%). Once you replace the accuracy and alacrity you will see an improvement of your survivability. After that it comes down to getting your set bonus gear (Arkanian, Underworld, Kell Dragon, Dread Forged gear). The 2 piece setbonus gives 5% more free shield rating when you have Dark Ward on and the 4 piece setbous gives 2% more Damage Reduction. Both extremely useful and important for Sin-tanks. And as you see your overall tier of gear improve, you'll see your overall survivability improve.

So.... On m PT dps I am really enjoying keeping 100% accuracy and I am curious in Dread Forged armor how exactly can I manage keeping it... Because right now I am using 2 of the 72 Accuracy/Power enhancements along with 3 enhancements of 78 level so I end up with 440 Accuracy Rating in my gear because of those 2 lower end enhancements (which also give me a good deal of power compared to the 78 comm ones which they replaced. So keeping the 440 Accuracy Rating is what I want to do when I get into full Dread Forged gear... What exactly are some of the combos (if there are multiple combos) of doing this? As I really do enjoy playing DPS PT and want to keep the toon reliable enough going forward into the new content coming down the pipe...

So.... On m PT dps I am really enjoying keeping 100% accuracy and I am curious in Dread Forged armor how exactly can I manage keeping it... Because right now I am using 2 of the 72 Accuracy/Power enhancements along with 3 enhancements of 78 level so I end up with 440 Accuracy Rating in my gear because of those 2 lower end enhancements (which also give me a good deal of power compared to the 78 comm ones which they replaced. So keeping the 440 Accuracy Rating is what I want to do when I get into full Dread Forged gear... What exactly are some of the combos (if there are multiple combos) of doing this? As I really do enjoy playing DPS PT and want to keep the toon reliable enough going forward into the new content coming down the pipe...

I play Sharpshooter regularly on my Slinger, but I also know the Dirty-Fighting spec and swap between them. Part of it is I get bored with Sharpshooter or DF, so I swap to the other and play it for a few fights. The other part of it is some specs are just superior in some boss fights. I do believe that Lethality is parsing higher in fact look at the last post on this thread; http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=685275&page=164 made by one Greg_TH. His DPS? 3767 as DF (which is lethality) and 3634 as SS (which is MM), both roughly 4 minute 30 second parses plus minus 5 seconds. Less then 100 DPS difference between the specs, but each spec has a strength and a weakness. Look at it this way; Marksmen requires 0 build up time, you can immediately from start to finish put out all the damage you want. No DoTs need to go out, so take Draxus for example. It is a swap heavy fight, you do not get to burn the boss for long. So playing a spec that requires next to nothing in terms of build up helps. You can swap from Corruptor to Corruptor to Dispatcher, etc without having to toss out your 2 DoTs then using a Cull. Instead you can just Snipe Snipe Followthrough, Ambush, Followthrough, SoS, etc. Your entire rotation can be done on any target and you can swap mid-rotation to any other target. Lethality requires a 2 DoT build up, you need the Corrosive Grenade and Corrosive Dart on a target plus the Weakening Shots before you can then lay down a Cull for the brunt of your damage as it ticks 3 timse per damage tick (the 2 DoTs and the Cull damage and those DoT ticks will consume the Weakening Shots debuff). So it takes 3 GCDs before you can really start putting out your damage. So in a boss fight like Nefra where all your doing is single target DPS without any swapping. But if you are swapping, and its important that the target dies extremely fast (EG: HM Brontes when she does the Lightning Beam phase, and you need to kill that first droid or it'll instant wipe the raid), you need to wait at least 2 GCDs before using your big damage attack? Those 2 GCDs can be the difference between a wipe and a kill. Engineer I never really tried my hand at it. I think when it comes down to AoE fights where lots of things need to die fast as possible, it probably excels past MM and Leth. I personally think the Hybrid spec is going to die soon, so I never really tried my hand at it ether. Its like the PT hybrid, it topped the charts in DPS and look what happened to hybrid PT they killed it. Somehow, someway they are going to make hybrid Sniper die... Not sure how, probably move stuff around in the tree as I have heard they plan to make Engineer the AoE spec for Snipers... So stuff will get shifted and changed and buffed in the tree, expect in the process of that the Hybrid to die off. Just my two cents; ~Zen

For tanks.... Eh it can be hard to say it and harder to tell. I have a Sin tank, so when it comes to looking at other Sin Tanks and saying "Well gear wise you can survive X, Y, and Z but Z might be a little rough". Same with our Jugg tanks, I have a rough idea of the gear they should have but another raid leader in my guild mains as a Jugg tank and I defer to him on calls and he defers to me on Sin calls (or the second Sin Tank player we have, both of us are on level playing fields in knowledge I think). But when it comes to me mechanics of a fight, they will only learn via doing. Like in Council, it can take a few tries to learn where to move, when to move, when to really put out Dps... All the while being the Raptus kiter. It is not an easy job but someone in the raid has to do it, and they may need to learn exactly how in a few pulls. Same with tanks, as some swaps have to occur during a cast while others before it or after it. Plus then it comes down to knowing what Cooldowns will work, like a Jugg I ran with hit his Reflect when Raptus started spinning on a guess and then laughed as all of the spin damage was reflected. He did not know beforehand but learned. Tanking in this game is an Art in my opinion, it is most assuredly not something that everyone can pick up and be amazing at. I cannot speak to healing, as my guild hardly ever has me heal something lol... Might be a sign that I suck as a healer actually.

I still run HM FPs as a tank & my healer. My healer mostly because I want experience healing the various tanks and such as I do intend to possibly augment my healer and work into setting up my Healer as a healer for Ops groups in my guild if they ever don't need me on my tank or my DPS. My tank, for the hell of it really. My tank is in a situation where I ONLY need Dread Forged gear or some select MK-2 gear to upgrade. So I just run 3 a week on her normally. The other reason I'm doing FPs? I want the achievements for killing X boss Y times lol.

The circles, a lot of movement... It can interrupt flow of movement for DPS classes and such. Same with Dreadful.

Well I got two stories both from Mando Raiders; First; PT tank, PT Dps, sniper Dps and myself on my Op healer. The tank and sniper were in the same guild so in most cases many would not say stuff... But this was the day after my kill of HM Council, so yeah I will admit I was full of myself (who would not be after killing them for the first time though it is not easy). So I died in the first pull with the quad dogs, we LoSed it and was not very effective. I died and after I died the Sniper began casting and dropped orbital on the non dog mobs in the pull which were the ones to kill me along with a dog. So of course I made the comment about Dps needing to do their job, I did not who e for the guard like other healers do just for the Dps to do their damn jobs and kill the weaker stuff. To which the Sniper replied "I orbital we them, you just suck" or some such I forget it all but he did say he Orbitaled them. Note the Orbital was after I died, so I explained how aggro works but this guy was having none of it. I fully expected a kick (tank and sniper same guild remember?) but the tank was silent and we progressed. Before we pulled the first boss I whispered the PT Dps and thanked him for listening, as he was running back and flame bursting stuff if it decided to attack me. The sniper was just not having it. So when the tank died in the boarding party and myself died, after the last two (who btw were suppose to be dps'ed down evenly the TANK said so) were not even enough. Sniper made the comment "so was that the Dps fault too?". My response? "Yup, the tank and your guildie said evenly dead on one and 30% is not evenly". Oh lord I thought a kick was coming but nope... Turns out when I whispered the tank later before Gil that he did not care and was just head down tanking the FP ignoring the drama... Was I wrong for being such a jerk? Possibly. Did I enjoy it? Hell yeah. Did that Sniper deserve it? In my opinion hell yeah. Second; Sin tank (myself), two sniper Dps, and Sorc healer I think... I am actually not 00% sure what class the healer was ether sorc or Op. anywho one of the snipers goes and pulls the second group, the one with the elite droid and few small soldier type adds. After they did I say "Do not so that again, I will vote kick you". Yes I am a partly stuck up tank, but I am the tank. I am tanking everything in the FP or I will leave (have before when a marauder decided to chain pull three packs in a 55HM FP). I am not completely stuck up though, I just firmly believe if your going to have a tank in a group then the tank should open pulls on thrash and boss alike. I have learned a bit in the HM FP que from PuGs so I enjoy it. We go through the rest of the FP with little trouble, at this point I can tank these original four 55HM FPs in my sleep. Only other noteworthy thing occurred in the last fight. It was the first time I truly noticed the lack of self heals... Normally I can position myself so that wither and discharge are targeting on the Boss and hit both turrets and that is enough to hold aggro with the heal aggro (been a while since I tanked mando raiders on a Sin). Yeahhhh not anymore, gotta work for the aggro on the other turret I am not actively single targeting down with the Dps. I missed the self heals for the first time since the change right there.... ~Zen

He happen to have posted a torparse log of it? Or anything happen to know of a torparse log for a tank? I might go digging through torparse later to see if I can dig up one but most of them will be dps I feel. edit: nvm found a kill log of it by a Sin-Tank ^.^

Going to predicated statements with this; I am by no means an expert Sin tank, I am still learning. I have also not full clear DF HM but have full cleared DP HM. Your HP seems a bit high, higher then mine at least by a tad less then 4k which can add to the feeling of taking more damage. Yes high HP can be a good thing (looking at you Raptus), but at the same time your giving up mitigation stats for the HP. So instead of having an extra percent chance to shield, you will instead take the full blow which over the course of an entire Op and even some boss fights can add up to be one noticeable. Your defense chance seems low for a Stimmed sin tank, but then again I feel mine is kind of high but it works. Also our shield and absorb are different, my shield is higher and my absorb is less. So this might play into why I may see differences then you, but in the end it is around a 1 maybe 2 percent difference. By the by; Biochem is a Sin tank's best friend. The Rakata Absorb Adrenals are amazing for Sins as one of them gives nearly as much DR as Overcharge does. As for during the actual fights... Well for that it comes down to CD management. For example, take Nefra. I cleanse the first DoT and then on the second I pop Overcharge Saber. Why? Well for one the healer assigned to cleanse me might be busy Mid cast with a heal or on a GCD or out of range due to droid. So I pop a CD to keep my normal damage intake low while he is busy cleansing himself, me, and a Dps. So it's just a matter of rotating CDs for that fight. There are two really good sources on CD use; First we have; http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=716842 Very useful resource put together by KBN and others have commented as well adding their feedback. Heck I learned about delaying Bestia's stacks in her single fight by shrouding from that thread which lead to an easier time as it delays her damage ramping up. Second we have; Your healers. I have begun to do this now, asking one or both of my healers after the Op how it felt in healing and if there were moments where they felt overtaxed. One good example in my group is our Op healer, if he is throwing out Dps during the boss? That's a good sign for me cause it means he is bored which means he does not need to heal as much. Also keep in mind during some boss fights it is good to cloak out. Like I medpac and cloak out after the challenge phase of Raptus each time. The cloak resets your medpac, not the CD on it but the one use per fight restriction, which means I am able to regain some of the HP I lose from the challenge and save Overcharge, Shroud and my Adrenal. Sure I do not have the medpac for actually tanking of the boss, but the moments right after challenges end is some of the more troublesome moments as a healer can be teleported or might not be in range of me. So being closer to 100% for that first Driving thrust is big (since my experience is more issues with driving thrust killing me or nearly killing me, then anything else in that fight).

Ah so it's more of a mechanic fight for the tank... Keeping the boss in specific locations for specific amounts of time at specific times. Along with having the gear and skill to not go splat instantly... Interesting, still a tad far off from attempting him but at the moment I kind of see Hateful as the "be all end all" boss for the game as only like 8 to 10 groups/guilds have killed him to date... Aside from thinmintz is there any other tank with a PoV kill vid? I think I saw one other but it was a Jugg, I would love to see an Assassin PoV kill on it as I begin to put hateful into my sights of "to kill".