Grats Ace & SG! This: is awesome. Especially that she actually kills you first! It also confirms that the dummy dps threads have been doing it wrong: it's not when you kill the dummy that matters, but when you activate the killing blow, which is when the "exit combat" message shows up in the dummy parses. So all this torparse clipping has been for nought.

Not to hijack, but is assassin 4-piece bonus viable for juggernauts? Heard about this a while ago and never bothered to check. There's also the lost dps, which may be the killer, though at least the willpower will still help your force abilities.

Veracity vs Oriconian MK-1: +39 mitigation, -79 willpower, -136 endurance. At some ratio, endurance is worth more than mitigation (even from a total-healing-required-over-the-whole-fight perspective*). Here the ratio endurance:mitigation is 3.5, which is such a high ratio that I'd stick with oriconian on most fights. The extra willpower for threat/dps is gravy. To compare the enhancement choices you're making to this one: Bastion 30 vs Vigilant 31: +10 mitigation, -21 endurance, ratio of 2.1 Immunity 28 vs Bastion 30: +8 mitigation, -21 endurance, ratio of 2.6 Just another perspective. -------- * Some calculations I had in a thread a while ago had the heuristic [at DF/DP HM damage values for most fights] that: #min-between-being-topped-up-with-the-healers-at-ease is (very) approximately the same as #endurance-worth-1-point-of-mitigaion in terms of total healing required over the whole fight. (The idea is to think of endurance as a sort of mitigation in the form of a heal of the amount of increased health in intervals of how often you're topped up while the healers have good resource regen / a break.)

They'd be roughly equivalent, as they're both blue level mods/items. Once you get much past 20, the planetary comm route will be better, as you'll be able to get gear closer to your level. The one exception is earpiece and implants. I'd spend warzone comms on that. You can't get them with planetary comms, and the level 20 ones from the pvp vendor will be the easiest to come by good ears/implants that early in the game.

The key points here are the attitude and the language. Good enough reasons to kick/let die/whatever. But the bit about 23k merc, experienced player? Can very possibly hold his/her own. (Though you usually have enough of some sort of comms for relics by lvl 55, so that is a bit odd.) With new characters I level up I enjoy going in to the HM's with just-barely-recommended (but properly itemized) gear to these things just as I reach 50/55/whatever. However, I'm polite and if I get any comments about my gear, I say that if I'm underperforming, I'll leave, but to give me a shot. Even as tank or healer.

Relevant abilities: Weaken Mind Mind Crush Disturbance Telekinetic Throw Project At level 20 you just got Telekinetic Wave You don't yet have the "proc" for Telekinetic Throw. Your next two skill points will give you 2/2 in Psychic Projection, which is the proc. So at level 22 you'll have this. What will happen: A little icon that looks like telekinetic throw shows up on your buff bar. I don't have the level 20 numbers on hand to determine which abilities are best. In game if I had a level 20 sage I would read my tooltips and figure it out roughly from that (comments on this below). Here's my best guess: At level 20 even in the middle tree I think Telekinetic Throw is probably still higher dps than disturbance. (To check: Look at the tooltip, not that they're both energy or kinetic damage so they're both equally affected by armor, and then divide their damage by their cast time. Whichever is higher is higher dps. Make sure to modify this with any relevant procs; for example, project, if you took the skill, has a 45% chance to do 50% extra damage. But the 4% extra to disturbance from the Clamoring Force skill is probably already in the tooltip.) How to figure out what to do: 1. List your abilities in terms of damage per second. (Abilities that do internal/elemental damage ignore armor, so a slightly lower number for internal/elemental damage can be more than a slightly higher number for energy/kinetic damage.) This list will show you what abilities are best to use when the fight isn't long enough for you to run low on force. (Force won't be an issue at higher levels in Telekinetic spec, but it probably still is at level 20.) I'd have to check the tooltips on a level 20 sage to really figure this out. 2. List abilities in terms of damage per force. This will show you what abilities are best when force is an issue. 3. Note how long your damage-over-time effects are. Weaken Mind is 18 seconds, Mind Crush is 6 seconds. If the enemy is going to be dead before that time has mostly elapsed, skip it. (For weaken mind, you need it to get your proc, and later at level 45 will need it for turbulence to crit, but at this level, I wouldn't cast it if the enemy will be dead in ~10 seconds). --------- Currently, my guess is your priority list is: Long fights: 1. Make sure weaken mind is active all the time. (Don't cast it again until the previous one is just about to wear off: look at the enemy's debuff bar for the weaken mind symbol, and when it's about to go away, cast weaken mind again.) 2. Cast mind crush whenever it comes off cooldown 3. As a next priority, cast project 4. As a next priority, cast telekinetic throw 5. As a next priority, cast disturbance If you start to run low on force, stop using project. Use Telekinetic Wave whenever there is more than one enemy. Use project whenever you have to move while doing damage. Leveling changes: At level 22, you'll have psychic projection to proc a faster telekinetic throw. For the moment you can ignore this, as I suggest you cast telekinetic throw anyway. At level 25, you'll have the proc for telekinetic wave (disturbance has a chance to make the next cast of TW instant and with no force cost). You'll see the white face picture show up on your buff bar when this happens, and a graphic will play on your character. Then priority will be, I think: 1. Keep weaken mind up 2. Mind crush as soon as available 3. Telekinetic wave with the proc 4. Telekinetic throw with the proc 5. Disturbance, if it's been 10 seconds since your last TW proc and you don't yet have a new one 6. Project 7. Telekinetic throw 8. Disturbance (At this level, force is no longer an issue, and I think project is more dps than tk throw or disturbance for now.) At level 32, disturbance will be more dps than telekinetic throw or project (due to telekinetic momentum). Then your priority will be simpler: 1. Keep weaken mind up 2. Mind crush as soon as available 3. Telekinetic wave with the proc 4. Telekinetic throw with the proc 5. Disturbance This is your priority up until level 45 when you get turbulence: 1. Keep weaken mind up 2. Turbulence (but make sure weaken mind won't fall off during the cast) 3. Mind crush as soon as available 4. Telekinetic wave with the proc 5. Telekinetic throw with the proc 6. Disturbance Still cast project whenever you have to move. -------------------------------------- Short fights / killing adds: Same priority as above, but skip weaken mind unless they have a bunch of health. Also, don't cast mind crush if the enemy is going to die in the next two hits. Do cast project to "finish off" the enemy (do the killing blow): It's instant, so it kills it at the beginning of the 1.5 second gcd, instead of at the end like disturbance. ------------------------------------- Disclaimer: As I said, without checking the tooltips at the relevant level I'm not certain of the priority order at low levels of TK Wave without the proc, Disturbance, Telekinetic Throw without the proc, and Project. The "last few" abilities on each list are just these in order of most dps, ending with disturbance, as it has no cooldown (so there's no need to cast anything worse than it).

It's hard to say in a way. On say Nefra there's a balance between dps and heals to deal with. I'm pretty sure you'd beat the enrage on Nefra 8-man HM with all 4 dps doing under 1200. (A bit over 2 million health, not sure what the enrage is on hard mode but I think* it's 6:00, divide by say 5 for 4 dps + the tanks & heals all together counting as a 5th.) But if you did kill it with each dps doing say 1200, you could say for sure that your healers are better than your dps. The dps killing it earlier makes it easier on the heals (not that it's so challenging, but it's more difficult to heal it than to do 1200 dps). * I remember a pull while 8-manning 16 man where various people died and I think Nefra soft enraged around 6:00 (but it's manageable for a little while as we did down it like 15 seconds later).

Start soloing flashpoints. At level 55 as long as you & your companion have decent gear, the tactical ones can all be soloed as can the heroic level 50 ones. If you've done all that, for a real challenge, make sure you & your companion have some good gear (if you really only solo, this will either come very slowly with commendations or with lots of credits from the GTN) and then work on some bosses from hard mode 55 flashpoints.

I'd say that for the most part going tank, especially with a healer companion, is safer but slower. So in a sense easier in that you can do more challenging fights earlier. But both defense and vigilance are good. I'd just go with whichever style you find more appealing if you're just doing solo stuff.

He sounds like a pvper (given the expertise, plus they often tank in dps gear in pvp), and their gear is certainly fine for SM Czerka. Edit: Oops, missed the 162 and 168 stuff. I guess he had dps pve gear on. Anyway, role doesn't really matter for SM Czerka. Are you certain he was taunting, or were you just losing threat to him, which would easily happen if he has dps gear on but is in tank stance, as he'd be out-threating you with the same tank multiplier + extra power from gear. Also, what does 1k less health have to do with anything? ---------- Often in these tactical flashpoints people have tank or healer listed but don't actually tank or heal (I have a post in this thread complaining about this earlier), I've discovered. I've decided this is normal and even started doing this myself: If you put dps + tank as your possible roles it always marks you as tank (similarly if you put dps + healer it always marks you as a healer). While leveling a tank recently, I'd be in dps spec but with tank gear to swap to + field respec, and would queue for KDY and the more normal flashpoints at the same time. I'd list dps and tank as I could do either. If KDY popped, I'd stay in dps gear & stance to make the run faster, but group finder would always list my role as tank.

All the crystals except for Brontes's lock the boss to the player who grabbed it. Those ones aren't truly necessary, but they can be helpful. For Brontes's crystal, you can get it at any point, but most do it right at the start (one player runs over there while the rest heal up in the middle during the lightning and the portal should spawn just as you get there; this minimizes down time).

Yeah let's leave this. As to the story, I guess one further possibility is that the tank called out in voice chat "I'm stuck" and the dps stopped doing anything. Anyway, I don't really know, but it's not necessary for the story!

It was a while ago so I don't recall exactly what happened, but I definitely had threat for a while. I'm not sure exactly why. If the Vrblther didn't have the spores on him, my hps, even undergeared, could've been more than double their dps (you do very little dps if the spores miss, but I forget the multiplier). I don't actually remember the spores missing though. Maybe they did decide to troll me and just lied about it afterwards. It's also possible he switched to a dps at some point in there after being on me, before the tank took him back. I do recall having to heal up the dps too, but I'm not sure if that was just from aoe or if one of them had aggro at some point. Anyway, whether I misremember part or not the short version is: Tank didn't have aggro, I healed all out and thought he was trolling me, turns out he was just stuck on the geometry. [On another topic, when there's just one mob so the healer's threat isn't split, spamming a free attack shouldn't quite be enough to take it off the healer if there is enough damage taken so the heals are all effective. The healer could easliy be doing twice the free attack damage in heals.]

I have a funny story about the Vrblther fight too. I queued up for a HM flashpoint on my somewhat undergeared merc healer (now that I'm leveling up alts and doing them for the nth time I like to do it a bit undergeared as a challenge, but that's not the point of the story, just some necessary background). Anyway, I zone in, and three guys from the same guild are standing there, not moving. They're right at the start still (I never found out what happened to the previous healer and am slightly worried). I type in chat "is anyone there"? They're all decently geared, and in 72 or better. Apparently they had been talking in guild chat / on voice and eventually the tank says "I'm not sure you can keep me up." I tell them I've done this a bunch of times and think I'm up for it and to give it a go. They say okay provisionally and off we go. We get to the first boss shortly after, Vrblther first. The tank headed toward the Duneclaw, but turned around at the suggestion of a guildie I assume (this factors into my suspicions in the paragraph below). Tank pulls and here's what happens: They have some funny business of starting up on these rocks. Then the tank pulls and I start healing. Then all of a sudden, the boss is on me and the tank isn't doing anything. I heal my *** off for what feels like forever but was probably more like 10-15 seconds. During this time I've concluded that they're trolling me and have decided to foist the boss on me, wipe me, and are then going to kick me. (My thinking included, beyond what's here: The tank is a shadow and could theoretically stealth out, they decided to do this boss first at the last moment, maybe they kicked the 1st healer and had had enough of dealing with undergeared folks and were teaching me a lesson, etc etc.) Dropping threat doesn't help. I blow everything (relic, insta-cast, free-cast, supercharged, vent heat, medpac, kolto overload, the works) and am barely alive and finally the tank takes him back. I'm a bit behind for the rest of the fight, but somehow we manage. I'm surprised by this recovery and ask what was going on in the beginning. Turns out the tank just got stuck in the rocks and couldn't do anything! The dps were knocked back or something and didn't get much on the boss in the beginning (or maybe the click thing didn't hit the vrblther), which is why they didn't have threat I suppose. Turns out they are in fact nice guys and we have a swell time the rest of the flashpoint.

It is. I'm not sure if it's just the stat sheet that's broken during bolster or if it's the actual DR under bolster that is broken, but see here for my analysis of this. Basically, what happens is that it uses the level you're at to compute the DR coming from armor, but it plugs in the bolstered armor value. This gives you insanely high armor DR at low levels.

I definitely agree there needs to be a galaxy-wide version of fleet chat. But for it to work, it needs to be the general chat on fleet --- and then functionality to join it wherever you are as a channel or something. Inertia will prevent people from joining a global LFG channel. People will just keep spamming on fleet out of habit.

It's listed as a level 1 skill because there's no level requirement for it. Instead you spend skill points to get it. The same is true for all skills that come from skill points. That said, practically speaking, it's impossible to get this skill before level 45, which is when you'd get it if you put all your skill points in the balance tree.

All very good advice from TaCeMossie. My response above was just a quick bare-bones response. Here's a response I wrote earlier to another tank asking about gearing up, with more details (much of the same advice as Tace, but with a different focus). Also, the player in question had saved up tons of basic comms, so I hewed toward how to use them in that response, but much of the advice is good generally.

Yes 63 (or 61) with set bonus is better than 66 without. The enhancements in the 63 may also be better than the ones you get from Oricon, as those tend to be poorly itemized. I wouldn't necessarily go out of your way to get the 63 set, though, as you'll soon replace it with a 69 set (and you can't mix 61/63 set pieces with 69+ set pieces).

For which stats: Augment with power or willpower Generally prefer power over crit Healers: A mix of surge and alacrity Damage: A mix of accuracy and surge (get force accuracy just above 110 for PVE, and just above 105 for PVP), maybe with an alacrity piece

PVP: Don't use your Battlemaster gear. There is now a bolster system for warzones that upgraded your gear to something reasonable no matter what it is, as long as it doesn't have expertise already on it. So grab any old PVE gear (even low level junk) and put it on for going into warzones. At level 55, you can buy actual PVP gear with warzone commendations. PVE: Your Battlemaster gear is fine for level 50 hard modes, or at least it was back in the day (people can be snobs now that better gear is easily obtainable). It would not cut it in 55 hard modes. Obtaining better gear: You may have lots of planetary commendations (all the old planet specific ones were converted to one commendation). You can spend these at the Makeb commendation vendor (in the supplies area of fleet) for rating 140 item modifications. (This is the same rating as the top end pve gear back at launch.) Beyond that, get to 55 and do the quest series on Oricon and you'll get the 5 main armor pieces of a 156 set. You can fill this out by spending the various commendations you'll get along the way (check the supplies area of fleet for the gear) and/or by buying level 53+ gear on the GTN. At this point you'll be more than ready for hard mode 55 flashpoints and level 55 story mode operations.

Getting groups to down the elite defender before clicking the terminal in the hanger scenario takes some doing. I just had a group where we *almost* did it. The play-by-play: 1. We're heading up the ramp and I say "let's do the bonus before the bosses" 2. Some start to head down the ramp back to the middle level to do the bonus, but someone forges ahead and starts the boss pull at the top. 3. We head in and down the bosses. I say "don't click the terminal let's do the bonus first" 4. Someone starts channeling the terminal and then breaks it off just before the end. "Okay," he says. 5. Then he types "Actually, nothing happens if I click it. It just blows up." And he channels again before I can type noooo! I explained why you don't click it afterward, and he was apologetic, but it was frustrating to get this close!

Even 4 melee is possible, Phases 1 and 3, where having more melee is slightly annoying, have no dps check really, so if you're a bit slower on it with melee, that's fine. Some basic setups for phase 1: Method A. 1. One raptus kiter 2 & 3. Two who get on Calphayus at the start, then switch to Tyrans (Phase 3: one on Bestia & one on Tyrans) 4. One pivot who stays on Bestia until Tyrans comes down, then switches to Tyrans, then switches to Raptus when others get on Tyrans (Phase 3: starts out helping on Raptus) Method B. 1. One raptus kiter 2. One on Calphayus (will switch to Bestia in phase 3 soon after the start) 3. One who gets on Tyrans when he gets down 4. One pivot (Bestia to Tyrans to Raptus phase 1, start on Raptus phase 3) Pivot: It's nice for this player to be ranged, but with a melee it will also be fine, you just might have to have some dps stop or switch if their boss is getting low. (This player isn't even truly necessary phases 1 & 3 if you're willing to wait for a while.) The hardest part for a melee here will be getting damage on Raptus. Just run out when the red circle is coming. Raptus kiter: The key point here is not to lose threat to the pivot (or the healers I suppose) in phase 1. So preferably a class that can do decent damage at range on the move or at least within 10 meters on the move. The next alternative would be to use someone with a taunt. Failing all that, you may have to have your pivot slow down (or the pivot be ready to commence kiting). Watch a video for this. If you time it right, a little bit after the red circle you can stop and he'll run up to you and then stand doing nothing for a moment before beginning his cast for the knockback. Even a melee can do reasonable dps by standing there and dpsing then, and then running out a little before the cast ends. Other two: Melee is no problem. Recommendation: If one of your melee is a lethality op, pyro powertech, or madness assassin, I'd try that player kiting. Otherwise, I'd try the ranged kiting.

Kuat drive yards has some strange people. I'm on a level 15 juggernaut, and queue for KDY with tank and dps selected. It puts me as tank (I've since realized it seems to always put you as heals/tank if you check them along with dps) and we get 2 dps and a healer. Great, a real flashpoint run, I think! If only. The "healer" is a merc who doesn't heal and has no cylinder selected. I die on the load lifter with 0 heals, and ask anyone to throw an occasional heal, and ask the "healer" merc to put on a cylinder. He puts on combat support cell (healing), but still only does dps, including never using rapid shots on a player in the entire run. The other two dps are mercs, and on the scenario boss and the next bonus boss the three of them still throw zero heals my way and I've now died three times in the first scenario and a half. I respec to dps and stop initiating fights. The "healer" merc does actually heal now --- himself if he gets low from taking aggro. The group proceeds to pull an entire room, and we wipe. I get blamed for not tanking (would not have mattered in the slightest). I tell them I'll tank if I get some heals from anyone. The two dps mercs are unwilling: one of them says he can throw his kolto bomb --- he's unwilling to use his casted heals --- but that he saves it for the healer, not the tank. (None of them were getting low at all on these bosses where I was dying, but oh well.) The "healer" finally pipes up and says he'll heal, I respec back to tank, and we down some elites while I finally get a few heals. All goes well until the final boss, when the "healer" again forgets this discussion and throws at most one heal every 30 seconds while dps'ing [and overheating] constantly. I stay up for quite a long while tanking and clicking the heal terminals (it's the jedi with the blue circles), but eventually die during his soft enrage. The group does down it, with the healer and one dps up at the end, healer again finally healing --- himself. The third merc, the one not already mentioned here, was funny. She would make some self-depricating comment (or really something against all three of the mercs) whenever I would complain about not getting any heals, like "mercs, can't live with 'em and can't live with 'em." At the end, she piped up that I probably would've lived if any of them weren't just dps'ing. Of course, she didn't throw any heals either, but it did add some levity to the situation. ---------- Admittedly I shouldn't complain about a lack of heals in a flashpoint that doesn't require them, but it seemed silly for me to be tanking everything and dying when just one heal from any of them would've saved me on most of these mini-bosses (my health would slowly but steadily decline (though much slower during my 1 cooldown) and then I would die right at the end usually). Bursting them down with 4 dps has been sufficient in all my runs since then, though I do wonder if even that would've had problems with that particular group of mercs... I've since stopped checking tank when I queue for KDY. Being dps makes it go faster anyway, and if it seems relevant I'll offer to respec tank on the final boss.