Returning to the game after a long time away. I had stopped playing a while back just because I was fed up with the drop in player standards and endless hammer station missions. Unfortunately, it seems none of that has changed. I ran a few heroics with my sniper, jugg tank and shadow tank to remember my keybind layouts and rotations (after re-arranging my skill bars back to how they used to be). Hammer station, hammer station, hammer station, hammer station. In levelling 3 characters from 75 - 80 I only got 2 runs which were not hammer station. A Foundry run with my sniper, the group was a sorc dps and gunslinger, 4th person quit group as soon as the gf popped. At one point I asked how did we get a gunslinger in an imperial fp. This was because I hadn't botherered looking at the new quest for second class and didnt know rep/imp classes have merged. At the bonus big slug boss the sorc just stood in the spit, I thought "oh, here we go" having remembered from the days of 2.0 when that would 3-hit anyone but a tank. the sorc just stood there and was fine, comp healed through it. Final boss does the big pull the whole group in and aoe thing. I roll out as soon as he pulls, remembering how that used to do a lot of damage, the other 2 just stayed there, and lost barely any health. The other non HS run was mando raiders, 2 people quit as soon as it popped and as I was group leader I requeued us. it was my shadow tank and an op dps. We completed the whole mission without the group finder ever popping 2 replacements, even though it was a tactical so any role could join. At the first boss the op is stood next to me, so I tell him to kite the dogs away. he responds "no need" and it turns out he is correct, enraged dogs can now be healed through by a healer companion. At final boss the op ignores the turrets and we end up being shot at from 3 corners. No problem though, as healer comp can cope with that. What annoys me about the whole thing, is they seem to have made group levelling content so weak that all the old stories of bad players are now just the norm. The bad player became the normal player. I havent yet gone into any of the normal trinity flashpoints for fear of what I will find.

Interesting run on MM hammer station recently with my jugg tank, with a sorc healer, mara and sniper. As mentioned in my previous post, I am not too fond of the people who do unnecessary skips (where the skip takes longer than the pull) or unnecessary LOS. As such, when we get to the large pull that everybody LOS's for no good reason, I just tank it like I used to in the good old days. After a few seconds the group who is stood around the corner seems to notice I am not brining the enemies to them. healer: "move" me: "no ty" The group them comes out from around the corner and we finish the pull. carry on through the mission, eventually getting to the other pull that is often LOS'ed, the group just before the lift that can be sliced. I pull, the sorc and sniper join in, the mara is still around the corner and doesn't join in, we kill the pull. mara: "tank is new" me: "nope" sniper: "I think hes oldschool" me: "yep" mara: "no, he doesn't know how to do this mission" me: "*sniper name* is correct, joined in 2.0" mara: "I been playing since beta" healer: "I prefer it this way, plus its nostalgic" sniper: "plus its nice to have a decent tank in a PUG for once" me: "ty" we do second boss, get to the two turrets at the bridge. It is red by the time we get there, so I decide we will just kill them while we wait. I pull, sniper and sorc join in, mara does nothing. Bridge comes back, mara crosses it and starts fighting the elite at the other end. in the time it takes us to kill both turrets and catch up to the mara he has the elite down to half health, so not much of a time save by skipping them. If he had joined in attacking the turrets it would have been even faster. get to final boss, sniper gets knocked off by boss knock-back, so its just me, healer and mara. The mara completely ignores adds, leaving me and the healer to kill them. We kill and loot. me: "dps, playing since beta, doesn't kill adds" mara: "I prefer to just kill the boss" healer: "I think the tank prefers to do it properly" sniper: "lol"

Coming back after a long time off, played through a few missions with my sniper and jugg tank. After completing the vet and master weekly's on my sniper, and master weekly on my jugg, there seems to be a real inconsistency in groups. with my sniper sometimes I get groups were the tank grabs aggro and groups up enemies, with dd's following kill order and healer cleansing - then I get groups where tank and other dd are tunnel-visioning the toughest enemy while healer runs around like a headless chicken, but never going anywhere near the tank. The weirdest thing - nobody ever says anything, in the groups where everything is perfect, everyone is silent (understandably, there's nothing to discuss). But in the groups where I am constantly trying to peel off a healer who never thinks to drag the enemies towards the tunnel-visioning tank, everybody just carries on in silence, as if everything is hunky-dory. I even make comment sometimes like "Why is tank using overload on CD" or "I haven't played in a while...does kill order still apply to dd's in groups?" I still get no answer. Then my tank runs, First was Kaon with a group where the dd's followed kill order, so I was able to tank properly and everything ran pretty smoothly. I did mention twice in chat that "the mercenaries can be interrupted" but to no avail. Still, we got through just fine so whatever. Next is a mission I have never seen, first boss is a droid, second is 2 jedi, 3rd is a jedi on a big round arena with open edges. I mention I am new when I zone in, nobody says anything. The dd's both tunnel-vision the strongest enemy in the pulls, so my rusty tanking is not enough to keep things under control, but healer heals through all the crap (without ever complaining about the tanking or dd's). We get to first boss, I wait for instruction on mechanics as I did say I was new at the start. After waiting about 20 seconds I just pull and hope for the best. Have to pop my DCD's regularly when some big blue circle obliterates my health every once in a while, but we get through. At second boss I wait again for instruction, but nobody says anything so I just pull, we burn one down then the other. We complete with me and a dd dead on the floor after receiving no healing for some time, while we res and continue healer says "I suppose we were meant to kill them at the same time" to which a dd says "I guess so." It seems the reason I am getting no advice is because everybody else is new too. At 3rd boss we beat it, though the last little bit is hectic. At the end the healer says "phew, that was chaos at the end there" - at which point the dd who has been silent all mission writes out instructions for all 3 bosses, then ends with "for future reference." Then a tython run, one of my favourites. I get the feeling someone is new but didn't say as at the first boss we only get 3 of the reinforcements shields down at a time, then run around frantically trying to take out the 4th. Get to second boss and that is fun as they have changed the droids since I last did it (droids used to all be the same as the first 2 who were with the boss). The lack of a cleanse of the dot when boss comes out of stealth makes things interesting, but nobody dies so who cares. At final boss both dd's die to the first rock fall, it nearly catches me out too as last time I did that mission the boss jumped to the middle of the room before doing that. Me and healer 2-man it while our combat res debuff disappears, eventually get a dd back up and finish the fight. But - the weirdest thing of all - the obsession with shortcut and skips everybody seems to have. To the point where some are slower than pulls. I got so fed up with it on my sniper that at one point, where the other 3 starting trying to jump on some rubble to skip 2 silvers and a standard, I just started shooting, killed the enemies then went and stood in front of the next pull and wrote "if a dd can solo a pull faster than you can skip it, is it really a shortcut?" No answer.

Coming back from a long time away, I think over a year and a half. Things seem to have changed a lot. I have been levelling and gearing up my jugg tank and sniper, who are both now at full 306, but it took a lot of fp's and a lot of frustration. Including: The vast majority of damage players not following kill order, the times I brought it up I never got a response. Most of them just tunnel visioning elites the entire mission. Also it seems ignoring adds in boss fights is common now. Damage players pulling before the tank in order to do pointless LOS pulls, including my jugg tank being told off by a sniper for not LOSing the second pull in hammer station (I have noticed everybody seems to do that for no reason), then vote kicked for not LOSing the third pull. Damage never using interrupt, healers never using cleanse, tanks tunnel-visioning 1 enemy in each pull. Yet every time I mentioned this to people I either get no answer or a "it doesn't matter" (yeah apparently interrupting malgus at the end of FE doesn't matter). Some examples: Jugg tanking on FE, bounty hunter boss, I ask "easy way or quick way?" before I pull, healer says "I want to finish fast" and dps pulls so I start tanking with no intention to use turrets to fend off the ship. Both dps don't interrupt boss flame attack, healer gets overwhelmed and we wipe. I ask healer why he agreed to fast fight if he cant heal through it and he says "you should follow mechanics" I ask him if he knows what I mean by describing the boss mechanics as "fast or easy" and says he doesn't. When I tell the dps to interrupt flame attacks I get told to stop complaining and just tank. Hammer station with my sniper, The tank is not holding aggro, I watch his animations and hes clearly dps spec. I mention it to him and he says he can still tank like that. I tell him he probably cant as his gear is 187 and the other dps, a sorc is 306. He says it makes no difference. Healer starts demanding guard, when I say "healer doesn't need guard" he tell us he will not heal until he gets guard. I tell him "you can either trust I know about tanking or I can waste ages explaining game mechanics to you" to which he tells me that healer needs guard. I give up. We get to the first boss healer refuses to do anything, tank dies at 3-stack of beam and we wipe. Healer quits group, I get healer comp and we pull again, sorc tanks the entire fight as - like I predicted - 187 dps cannot hold aggro off 306 dps. I cant control comp to do beam mechanics properly so we wipe, on run back to third attempt we get a new merc healer in 306. Despite healers best effort the tank dies in the 6-second period that he has aggro from his taunt, doesn't follow cleanse mechanic and we wipe. The tank-dps quits group and we requeue, get a proper tank and complete fp easily. Mando raiders, every time I run this every group seems to kill either consular or smuggler first. After I point out knight should be killed first, everybody generally ignores me except one time a dps answers with "lol why?" me: "he has no aggro table and has a knock-back stun thing, so he can be irritating and should be dealt with first" dps: "lol it doesn't matter who we kill first" on a side note, on every single run of mando raiders every single dps (except me on my sniper) continues to tunnel-vision final boss instead of shooting turrets. Again when I brought it up when tanking it with my jugg I get no answer. Tython, I join with my sniper in a group who are on the last boss. We pull and its clear the tank is not tank specced, both the tank and other dps stand in the circles and, when we wipe, tell the healer to heal them. When healer apologises for being undergeared (280) the tank puts vote kick on them. I point out there was no problem with the healing, but get no answer. We wait around for another healer when I suddenly get a whisper from the healer we just kicked: Them: "good luck with those 2, dw I wanted out of there" me: "what do you mean?" healer: "those 2 think they are doing everything right and kick anybody who disagrees, the guy you replaced was kicked for arguing with tank and I am not the same healer the group started with" me: "but they were ignoring mechanics and tank is not tank spec" healer: "I know but kicking me means I don't get a lockout" me: "so why do they think their right?" healer: "because they are full 306 gear so they must be pro" me: "well ill try once more but this doesn't sound good, thanks for the warning" healer: "lol gl" Another healer joins, we pull, other dps dies in random circles at start, healer combat reses and the dps and fake-tank die in the first round of circles, they are both dead with boss around 70-75%. Me and healer die with boss at 30%. Vote kick on new healer, reason: undergeared. new healer: "what?" fake-tank: "you cant heal well enough for this" me: "try following mechanics, me and him managed to do almost half the fight with just the 2 of us so he cant be that bad" vote kick on me, no reason. both kicks succeed.

After a long time away I had a incident where I thought I was the weird one. I haven't played in over a year so upon logging in I boot up my favourite character (jug tank) and spend ages fiddling around with my UI layout (it had gone back to default and the saved one I had has gone). I then decide to start off easy as I am likely to be rusty so I queue up for the easiest style flashpoints (the ones that don't even need trinity). Its hammer station with 3 dps guys one of them is a sorc, I don't know the other 2 (explain why in a second). By the time I load in the first pull is dead and by the time I get over to the group they are in the middle of pulling the next, the sorc is on the verge of death by the end of the pull. He heals up and I leap into the big pull on the corner, start trying to tank at which point I realise I have ****ed up. When re-doing my settings after my time off I forgot to switch on the cooldown text. This is a big issue for me because I use it to help with my ability usage. As my tank has no alacrity my global CD is 1 second, and the cooldown text is in seconds so I tend to just glance and my quickbars and use the number to mean "do this many abilities before this one" for example if my crushing blow has a 3 over it I know I need to use 3 abilities before I next try a crushing blow. Of course without that switched on I am a fish out of water and start frantically pressing every button just to get my character to do something. I then notice my health, down to 20%.....but because I haven't played in a long time I had completely forgotten my quickbar layout and was frantically searching through to find out what I had bound my DCD's to. I finally find them and pop a couple just as the last enemy goes down. We carry on and I have a habit of setting a quick pace, one which the sorc is very happy with. We kill first boss, someone sensible in the group does cleansing for me (or they removed it from that fight I don't know because I ****ed up the scaling on my debuff bar and couldn't see if the laser beam was stacking that debuff on me) but we got through the fight and I barely lost any health so all happy there. Then me and the sorc set a fast pace and are 2-manning all the way up to the second boss. Its during this I realise another mess-up. The sorc likes to pull ahead of me and I jump in and try to control aggro. This is where the target of target thing comes in handy - I usually put it right above my quickbars so when I glance down to check my CD's I can also spam tab a couple of times and make sure its my name on the t-of-t screen. Of course because it wasn't switched on I instead have to result to another method - run around and see if all the enemies turn to look at me. So there I am in the middle of fast-paced PVE running around like a PVPer. We get to the second boss and wait for the other 2 to catch up, then a smooth run to the end. The sorc even thanks for the fast run while I apologise for the poor tanking The sorc sends me whispers after asking what I mean poor tanking - he reckoned I did ok - and I mentioned my ****-up with the CD display on my quickbar and my t-of-t window but he points out I held aggro well and he rarely ever saw anybody else being shot at so I cant have been too bad. Much to my surprise he then invites me to group and asks to run some more fp's while commenting he reckoned my tanking was the best hes seen in a while. By now I have turned on CD text, t-of-t and increased the scale of my debuff bar so I can keep an eye on the important stuff. hopefully he is wrong, I hate to think the standard of tanking has dropped so far that a rusty player with an incorrectly set UI can keep up with tanks of today. Still at some point I will do some runs with my dps and healers and judge for myself - should be fun.

The first few seconds of the fight the dogs will be on the tank, that's normal. They switch target every few seconds, and as the tank pulls he is the only one on aggro table for the first few seconds of dog aggro. So dogs attacking tank for first few seconds is normal and there is no need to kite them at all, sabre ward, or reactive shield is more than sufficient. After a couple seconds dogs will probably peel off (later on ill explain why I say probably). At this point any melee dps should start kiting away, and of course rdps and healers will be stood at range anyway. Then there is the aggro dump, every once in a while the boss will freeze the tank and aggro someone else. That will always be the healer as dps wont have hit the bloke at all (if they are doing it right). The freeze is 2 or 3 seconds, and if the tank taunts immediately after it wears off the bloke moves about 12m from the tank. I have no idea how big the red circle is but if we assume about 6m radius that means dogs need to be about 18m from bloke. That's basically the entire fight, healers and dps stay inbetween console things, or that general area, and tank stands somewhere on raised platform bit, tank taunts on aggro dump. If you tank the bloke exactly where he starts the fight then his red circle wont even reach over the edge of the raised platform, giving plenty of room for dps and healers to kill dogs. That's just the mechanics, as for making the fight as easy as possible I like to move to the kolto behind and to the left of the bloke so I can sort out my own health in tacticals. Now for the pain in the *** bit. It is possible for dogs to randomly target the tank. Sometimes during the fight a dog will run at the tank and end up in blokes red circle. That's caused by bad RNG and there is f-all anybody can do to stop it, but any decent tank will just pop a dcd and carry on regardless, the dog will soon bugger off back to someone else. It is also possible for the dogs random aggro to prevent it peeling away from the tank at the very start of the fight. I did at one point, after pulling the bloke and dragging him to my kolto, continue tanking the bloke and a dog for a fairly long time, the dog only went away on bosses second freeze. It is also I assume possible (but I have never seen it) for RNG to make both dogs attack the tank later on in the fight, again that's nobody's fault, just bad luck. The tank should just pop a dcd and ignore the dogs (unless its tactical with no healer then they might need to run to another kolto to cover the extra damage). Basically theres no need to kite dogs, no need to move bloke (but its nice to have him in range of a kolto) and at the start of the fight mdps need to pay attention until the dogs are at a safe distance. With any competent group it will probably take 5 seconds to position bloke and dogs correctly and turn it into tank and spank. It sounds from your story that the mdps got aggro from a dog and just stood where they were and expected the tank to move. There are times that I move stuff to suit melee dps, for example the 2 droids on FE HM run I did, the op healer came and stood in blue circle with me, but the mara dps stayed outside and attacked and the sorc dps stood 20 odd meters away. I moved the boss closer to the middle of the blue circle so the mara had no choice but to stand in blue. Of course there was f-all I could do about sorc so just watched him die (and then do the classic moan about "tank not holding aggro" and "healer didn't heal properly." most of the time when people die in fights its nothing to do with "bad tank" or "crap healer" it because they aren't following mechanics.

Seems 5.0 has brought a new problem, back seat tanks. Got a pop for HM boarding party with my jugg tank. My jugg still has some old 216/220 gear with 208 augments and some crappy blue or even green 230's from command crates. The group I join has a sorc dps with 9 pieces of 242 gear and 5 pieces of 240 fully augmented with rank 10 purples. The merc dps is similar but has 11 pieces of 242 and 3 of 240. Healer was probably newly 70 because, like me, had old 65 gear. I put guard on the merc, they tell me to put it on healer. I don't bother answering. We clear trash to the first boss and I notice both dps have gold fever, and the sorc keeps pulling before me. This leaves me running around grabbing aggro on the little stuff while I let the dps face-tank the golds. That shouldn't be an issue right? These people are massively overgeared and its their own fault they are tanking golds because they don't follow kill order. Turns out it is an issue to the sorc (who gets the aggro because merc has guard). They keep complaining about being hit and I keep replying with "its easier for me to control aggro if you follow kill order." Get to first boss, sorc rips aggro, I taunt back, merc rips aggro, I aoe taunt back, sorc rips aggro, I taunt back, sorc rips aggro soon after and I have 2 seconds cd left on my taunt. In 2 seconds the sorc went from 100% to 22% (didn't help they ran into lightning). After the fight the sorc complains again about aggro. I tell them to aggro dump. sorc: "I don't have it bound" me: "so you come into a mission for people with 200 gear in full 240, don't bind your aggro dump and pull before the tank, then complain about getting hit?" sorc: "lol look at the weekly" me: "what?" sorc: "you clearly don't run fp's often, they aren't for 200 gear, you need at least 240 to beat them" me: "perhaps you do, that's because you are crap, any half decent player can easily do them with bolster stats" I then set a fast pace to the next boss, sorc complains they keep having to spam force speed to keep up. I love the "ending combat finishes cd on enrage, force charge and sabre throw" ability. That combined with mad dash makes for good tanking, plus the op jugg dcd's mean healer spends most of their time dealing damage, granted they are doing so as a ranged operative but I am beyond caring now, just want this crap over with. The sorc catches up once we get to the bonus boss thing, the commando with 2 droids, but then I set off quick again. Once we get to second boss I ask "ready?" but sorc wants another argument sorc: "why do you have to go so quick?" me: "well you were pulling then throwing tantrums about aggro, so I thought it best to keep ahead of you stop you moaning" sorc: "tantrums? **** you learn to tank" merc: "lol first you complain about him not holding aggro, now you complain because he sets a fast pace without ever losing aggro" sorc: "well he was throwing tantrums about kill order, whatever that is" me: "lol level 70 full 240 dps doesn't know what kill order means" merc: "what is it?" I give an explanation about killing weak enemies first, and then a conversation starts between me and the merc, he says he wants to ask me more questions about dpsing. I start with how kill order helps tanks tocontrol aggro because they don't have the time to worry about every little enemy over at the side of pulls. I then point out what happens when dps have gold fever, with the tank having 2 options: 1) keep aggro on the gold by tunnel-visioning it meaning everything else goes for the healer, or 2) let the dps rip the gold as I grab aggro on everything else to keep them off the healer. I mention abit about spread out pulls and paying attention to what is being attacked. I point out if the tank has not hit an enemy that is the first one you should kill. I then mention kiting towards the tank when you rip aggro as all tanks can generate more threat in melee and they may not want to move from where they are due to bunched up golds and silvers or dps aoe (something I learnt recently tanking and op with my shadow, sabo slingers really don't like me running out of their aoes, for good reason).....and so on and so on. The merc asks question after question, often prompted by the previous answer I spend about 5 minutes typing out what I think about how to play dps alongside a tank. Afterwards: merc: "ty mate, sorry about all the questions, just not often I meet people who explain all this stuff, makes sense though" me: "np, ready?" (as in ready to pull the jedi boss) I get a yes from the op and merc, but the sorc stays where they are and doesn't say anything. We wonder if he is dc'd but soon after he says "was afk, waiting for tank to stop timewasting" merc: "timewasting?" sorc: "as if he knows anything about dps" merc: "he said some useful stuff" sorc: "yeah but its all bs, I played dps since beta" me: "how long you been playing tank?" sorc: "I never tank or heal, I'm pure dps so I know dps better than anyone" me: "strange, most of the stuff I learnt about playing dps came from tanking and healing" sorc: "lol" me: "you know about peeling off healers, dcd's, aggro dumps and when to use them" (after taunt btw) "positioning when you rip aggro?" (the kite towards the tank thing) sorc: "lol noob you do know what dps stands for? damage per second" So its just another of these people who play every single pull and every single fight like a parse dummy, and he want to moan about my tanking. I just pull and kill, this fight with the jedi boss the sorc tunnel-visions the main boss and ignores the 2 healers, but the merc is overgeared enough to take them down himself. We do convo, continue on, do bonus boss, get to final boss and I start tanking, then the sorc rips aggro on the security chief with single-target dps. Clearly he doesn't know kill order. Now with a melee enemy attacking him what do you think he does: 1) run towards me to stack enemies 2) continue attacking the security chief while popping dcd's 3) stop attacking security chief so as to not generate any more aggro so I can control him with taunt 4) type "TANK NOOB" in chat 16 times while stopping all damage. He went with option 4. Perfect contrast of players, one dps who admits hes not perfect and asks questions then asked me to add him to friends incase he has more, another dps who points out they have played pure dps since beta and therefore know everything about dps......except kill order, peeling, dcd's, positioning, aggro dumping and letting the tank pull (not sure if he knows about interrupts because there are none in boarding party, but I would be very surprised if he did). In other words he knows his rotation which, although better than some dps, is hardly grounds to consider yourself a dps master. Still it was a win-win in the end because the sorc put me on their ignore. Thank god I will never get grouped with them again.

met an interesting player yesterday. Got a pop for HM mando with my 69 jugg tank, group was 70 sin dps, 70 sorc healer and 4th guy dropped before I loaded in. I tried to guard the sin but couldn't because he was guarding his comp. I asked him what spec he was and he said he was dps. I asked him why he is guarding people. sin: "lol l2p noob, dps have guard now" me: "do they? didn't know that, can you switch it off so I can guard you" sin: "lol read patch notes for 5.0 you dont know how to play, you should guard the healer" Then the sin chain-pulled some trash and died. After which he complained about aggro, me not tanking properly etc. I use the good old "you pull it you tank it." The sin the put their guard on the healer, still preventing me from guarding him but he did stop pulling and most things were smooth until first boss. I killed bloke before dps and his rank 50 dps comp killed the 2 dogs. I write "please pick up the dps" sin: "lol you could just stop hitting the boss" me: "shouldn't have to, you have better gear than me and a 50 comp which is op, should easily have out-dpsed me" sin: "we couldn't dps properly the sorc was kiting" So apparently a moving target prevents a sin dps doing proper rotations. <sarcasm> I know, all those channels and casts that fill sin rotations, kind of reminds me of mm spec snipers </sarcasm>. We carry on, get a replacement and get to second boss. I guard the new dps and the sin starts telling me to either guard properly or not at all. me: "well I cant guard you until you switch yours off" sin: "you don't need to guard me, guard healer" The sin then starts screaming at us to los. I say "no need" and leap in to stand between the 2 ranged enemies. The sin starts complaining about "tanks with napoleon complexes" then starts attacking the knight. The other dps attacks trooper first. I write "knight first" but he doesn't move. Not that it would be much of an issue, I figure the high geared sin can take out the knight faster than a bolstered lvl 65 sin can take out the trooper. But no, trooper dies, sage dies, scoundrel dies. Knight is the only one still alive, and untankable, I taunt, I aoe taunt, I backfist (which doesn't stun, damn) I taunt then lose aggro. Guess who the knight goes for, the high geared sin. It 2-hits him and he lies dead on the floor complaining about bad tanks and not holding aggro. me: "sorry I didn't explain kill order I assumed everybody knew it as nobody asked, still it was weird a lvl 65 managed to kill 3 bosses before a lvl 70 killed one." sin: "lol I'm not the problem here, l2p noob" Do bonus boss, I tank it in what was the usual place, the spot against the wall between the pillars and the sin keeps taunting the boss and dragging it to the other side of the pillar telling me it must be tanked between the pillar and lift door, talk about napoleon complex. After the third time I don't bother taunting back to save his life, so he dies. He lies dead on the floor writing in all caps about tanking properly. After hes dead the fight is a doddle, nice and smooth and no issues at all. Do final boss, the way I usually do turrets is to sabre reflect as soon as they come up. I have the thing that makes sabre reflect last 2 seconds longer and generate high threat on all enemies currently in combat (its essentially an aoe taunt and dcd in one). That gets aggro on both turrets, then I generate more with the reflected damage and then I hope both dps attack the same turret so I can just tank on that 1 and hold aggro. I have never ever had a healer rip the non-tanked turret off me before we kill the first one. But this time high geared sin decides I am doing it all wrong. He goes and attacks the second turret but I keep aggro, boss moves and I do same again, sin does same again, attacks the other turret so I run back and fourth holding aggro. Get to third spot, same again, high geared sin then taunts the one he is attacking. I think "you taunt it you tank it" (slightly different from the you pull phrase but same concept) and the high geared sin dies. He then complains about aggro and I tell him not to taunt then. His response "your a tank, your supposed to pay attention and control aggro regardless of what others do." No I will not taunt off someone who taunts just because he wants a stick with which to say "you are crap you lost aggro." After the mission I keep getting whispers from the sin telling me how to play. I tell him I understand most stuff but he keeps going on about: -updates in 5.0. He tells me a lot has changed since 4.0 so now tanks are supposed to guard healers in pve. I reckon hes talking bs but he insists I should read patch notes for 5.0 -los is important in second boss mando, he says it stacks enemies up so they can be aoed. My response is what it always is with this claim: "2 of the enemies are ranged and 2 melee, both ranged are stood close together, therefore if entire group stands between ranged enemies, sage and knight run into melee range with us and just like magic the enemies are stacked up just like an los, but without the hassle." And of couse he does what every los noob does when I explain my logic too them, change the subject because they know I am right. -goes on about guard on healer saying dps don't need it because they have aggro dumps. I explain how healer aggro works, why guard should be on highest dps and, seeing as dps now have guard, the lowest dps can guard healer if they want (pointless though). I then get abit petty due to his attitude and point out that he geeked out and read patch notes on release, I learnt about it 30 minutes ago and I understand how to use it better than he does. Of course he insists. -he then complains about aggro management, telling me that in second boss he aggro dumped the knight then came out of stealth, hit boss twice and had aggro again. I explain to him the boss mechanics, the fact that the knight cant be tanked and say "complaining about aggro on the knight is exactly the same as complaining about aggro on the dogs and really demonstrates how little you know." He drones on about having read patch notes, knew about dps guards long before I did (I point out yet again at least I know where to put them) -then complained about healer getting aggro on the first few pulls. I wrote again "you pull it you tank it, not my fault you cant hold any aggro." Now that really touched a nerve, from this point he started typing to me in all-caps. I found it really funny, watching him get gradually more and more upset. I might be turning into a troll he starts droning on and on about reading patch notes, therefore he knows how to play. Ok so we have someone who read patch notes and thinks guard should be on healer in pve, doesn't know fight mechanics on second boss mando, pulls before the tank then moans about aggro and died repeatedly in a flashpoint. These are the types I really hate, the "I read it so I know it" type. It would be like me saying "yeah I completed NiM ops, why don't I have the achievement? well I didn't play it but I watched a video of someone doing it on youtube". or "yeah I did bh in blue 172's, because I watched it on youtube." This guy reads all the updates, but doesn't read his tooltips and thinks he can teach me how to play. Still I asked him if I could add him to friends to get any info about updates if I find something I don't know about. He agrees and I offer to give him advice on gameplay when he gets unstuck. He says he doesn't need it. I suppose its another person whose head is too full of ego to fit any actual knowledge in.

people often do security guy first because they don't bother reading tooltips. A lot of people think the damage reflect given by the security guy applies to the whole group, even though its only captain. The problem is people have been doing security -> med -> captain for ages, that's the way I was taught to do it on my first run years ago. So when some idiot like me turns up and says "tooltip says med guy has no shield so we can kill her first" I usually get a "l2p noob" in reply. I cant remember names on second boss BH but I prefer white person first because they have the long range knockback, the conal which can be annoying with the red guys fire jump thing forcing you to move I have seen loads of people move into the while person conal while avoiding red person jump and I think white person does the 4 circles that follow you mechanic which is a pain if group is dumb.

I will be vague to avoid spoliers just incase. Got to a bit where I go to the temple thing and talk to vette, then a load of enemies arrive, kill them all and I have to talk to vette again. Every time I try to start the conversation I get a short black screen then everything reappears with no UI, as usual when I do cutscenes. However I got bored of waiting after 4 minutes so opened up a game of minesweeper while I wait for cutscene to load. That was over an hour ago. I have never had an hour long loading time before so decided it might be a bug.

tactical Legacy of rakata with the slowest speed runners I have ever seen. its my 66 sent, a 67 sage dps, 70 shadow dps and 69 mando healer. sage writes "I want a quick run" fine by me, first group, the manka cats I see the sage run around the back of the rock going to skip them. This is just a quick rant I want to make about "fast runs" and skipping pulls. This pull is 4 standard enemies, a dps can kill an standard in 3 gcd's (3 seconds) with 3 dps in the group that's 3 of the cats dead in 3 seconds and the last will aggro on healer due to not being hit. As long as the healer is smart and stands near melee dps and within los and range of rdps that cat will die in 4th gcd. That's 4 seconds to clear that pull if you do it properly. Our sage is stood around the other side of the large rock and asking the shadow to come and stealth cc something. Shadow is asking which one, sage marks it while me and mando run around the rock, it gets cc'd and we skip the pull. Probably about 20-30 seconds. I pull on next few fights and set a nice quick pace, stopping to heal myself between each one but thanks to healer its only 1 or 2 ticks of introspect to get back to full. Get to the pull by the waterfall and stop. I wait for the shadow to go and cc the dog on the right so we can skip. Instead they run up and pull and we fight them. Fight the manka cat ambush, skip through jungle bit, fight the village ambush then start first boss. When bloke comes down I attack bloke. Sage tells me to "attack rancor" me: "I would rather do it properly" sage: "its faster to kill rancor" shadow: "I will tank it" Fight goes on and either I am a pro at watchman spec sent (hint: I am not, I am **** at it and all dot specs) or the other 2 dps are crap or the bloke has lower hp or damage reduction than rancor because even with shadow and sage on rancor the whole fight, along with the healer adding some off-dps to it I get the bloke down to 4% by the time the 3 of them kill the rancor. me: "the bloke has less health so you should kill him first because then you don't need to kite fire and it turns rancor into tank and spank" (I didn't bother mentioning that in HM the only way to beat that boss is bloke first) sage: "lol everybody kills rancor first" me: "that's only when someone doesn't want to take responsibility for tanking the rancor, if you have a tank, or even and off-tank who is willing to do it then bloke is quicker" sage: "tanks have nothing to do with fast dps you dumb noob" me: "the reason non-tank groups kill rancor first is because his knockbacks are a pain when dpsing bloke, if you have someone willing to turn rancor away that's not an issue so bloke is faster and removes flame mechanics which makes rancor faster later on." sage: "whatever" I take this to mean "oh sounds like you are right but I am too perfect to ever be wrong so I will end it here" Skip next pull, kill some more and get to the 4 crates. The sage goes to the right and the other 2 follow. I consider this strange as I thought this was supposed to be a quick run and yet sage is going the slow way again. Still we do all 4 crates, in a weird order which ends up taking longer than the normal route and get to second boss. Sage stands behind a pillar and says "do adds here" and the other 2 join him. He then pulls, I jump in and start killing adds. sage: "come here to stack them up." me: "or just stack them here" sage: "this is better for group healing" me: "I have dcd's and kolto's I'm fine" We kill all adds and do some damage on the boss, then second group of adds spawn in their usual spot. The other 3 go and stand by their los pillar while I force leap at one of the adds. I kill 2 and get a third down to 50% by the time they have run over to the other by their pillar. Do some more boss damage and then fight another wave of adds, this time I only get 2 kills before they reach the los point. Kill boss and I decide to ask about those tactics. me: "how was that any faster than just killing them where they spawn" sage: "lol you are so stupid you don't even deserve an answer" me: "lol ok, but indulge me" sage: "they are spread out when they spawn." me: "lol so your saying because they are stood 4ish meters apart we should make them run all the way across the entire boss arena because that's faster?" sage: "yes it is" me: "I managed to kill 2 before they even got to you, with 3 dps in the group that's 6, theres 12 adds per group, that means that my way we kill half the group in the time it takes your way to even start attacking them" sage: "you need los to make them bunch up omg are you really this dumb?" me: "you need los to make melee enemies bunch up? omg are you really that dumb" sage: "whats melee got to do with it?" me: "los is not required to move melee enemies, if the 4 of us stand close then enemies will bunch up" sage: "exactly so you should stand with us in the los spot" me: "so you really think standing 50m away and waiting for the enemies to come to you is faster than standing where they spawn and doing single target dps on one of them while you wait for them to move the 8m to get close enough for aoe?" Sage quit group. Not that I even give a **** about cutting every last second possible, I just didn't like the sage's attitude of "my way is best and if you disagree your an idiot" even though it was perfectly obvious he was wrong (me soloing 96% damage to the bloke while 3 other people kill 1 rancor, or me killing 2 adds in the time it takes to los them when los isn't even needed).

Possibly the best run I ever had (and that is weird, usually things are a nightmare). I queue for all tfp's and hm fp's with my 65 jugg tank. Get a pop for HM D7 with a 70 sin dps, 59 sorc healer and 62 sorc dps. Start first pull and I begin to melt, throw some cd's but die, group wipes. There wasn't a single heal the entire pull. healer: "not a good start" me: "are you going to do any heals?" healer: "I'm lightning spec" me - perhaps not as polite as I should have been: "so you queued as a healer for a hm fp while in dps spec?" healer: "does it matter?" me: "isn't it lovely playing with such high-calibur people?" healer quits group, sorc dps asks our companion influence ranks, and surprisingly my jaesa is best at 34. I pull out jaesa and switch her to healer then we clear stuff. Get to the bit where you knock a tower over by blowing up a thing, new person joins group, 69 sorc but doesn't do anything or run to us, then it turns out he dc'ed. We wait a while then kick him because it wont let my use jaesa even if the 4th member is all the way back at the start of the mission. Get all the way to the constructor droid thing, cant remember its actual name but the one that scans a player then makes a weak af add of that persons base class to distract from the dull grind if hitting on that 1 big droid by having you spend 1 or 2 seconds killing some weak little add every once in a while (you can tell I like this boss). We get it down to 10% or so when a new player joins group, a 61 op. We kill boss, do console, head off to the next one. Me and sin jump on mounts and skip past every skippable pull and are soon stood face to face with the droid who calls out 2 repair adds every once in a while. Group gets to us, sorc checks the op is actually a healer, which he is and I pull. All mechanics are done beautifully, the stun-knockback-aggro dump thing the boss does every now and again is interrupted and the channel after often is. Repair adds are hit hard and only 1 of them ever gets more than a couple of meters from it spawn point. Then re do repair droid boss, aggro is out of control because sin pulled, got hit hard and healer was spam healing him, ripping aggro, all while me and sorc were skipping it. Interesting bit: the pull after that boss, 1 strong 4 standards with laser beam guns. I leap at the strong, do sabre reflect then hold aggro with some aoe's while the sin beats on the strong. My sabre reflect and aoe is enough to kill the 4 standards (reflected damage is op) and the sin's dps takes the strong down around the same time as the 4 standards. The op and sorc were still running to join us. op: "is this hard mode?" me: "yes" op: "you just burnt 5 enemies in seconds" me: "5 gcd's to be precise" op: "lol so much for hard mode" Then we got to mentor fight started well but at one point both dps ignored a core, so I went for it. This was at the same time as the 2 large strong turrets were up. Both dps attacked one while the other beat on the healer as I was busy slowing killing 2 standards by the core with my tank-level damage output. The healer died, I went and sorted out aggro and we killed the turrets, I started tanking the elite and both dps ignored the core again. I went off to do core and told the sorc dps to c-res healer. They didn't, my dcd's ran out and we wiped. On the way back I wrote "dps take cores" and the second fight went quite smoothly. There was a slight hitch when both dps ignored the second core and came to attack the elite, so it had time to repair, but once it went blue again I write "get core" and the sorc goes and deals with it. We beat mentor, say our goodbyes and leave. So whats so good about the story? the fact that the second dps ignored cores and tank tried to do it himself we wiped, then when mechanics were followed we got through. This is what I love about new expansions, everybody is still in old 65 gear (or lower) but running lvl 70 missions so we all rely on bolster. This means everybody has to do mechanics properly. Back in 4.0 when playing as a tank I could decide "**** it I will ignore aggro management and just go and do mechanic X which is usually a dps mechanic" and that wouldn't wipe the group. Now it does, the game is finally back to normal..... until some idiot comes of forums to say "mentor too strong, nerf now now now!!!11111!!!" and ruins my fun all over again, making every mission back into one or 2 people in group doing mechanics regardless of their roles because hell, it doesn't matter who presses a console or who clicks a button because the healer is strong enough to face-tank it all.

Sorry to let you down, I had my 3rd degree blackbelt grading 2 weeks ago (which required abit of extra training to prepare for) and a match the end of last week which kept me busy in between then an instructor training thing over the weekend. I have only played one mission since the update. My 65 sent, a 66 guardian tank, 70 vang dps and 65 mando dps. Korriban incursion tact. Tank is a tunnel-visioner but at least he tunnel-visions the strongest enemy so that's a plus. but his comment before the first boss was a real surprise to me, I have seen loads of tunnel-visioning tanks before but never one as self-aware as this guy, he wrote "you lot can do the adds, that's your job." I wrote "or you could just grab aggro on them" as he was pulling. And of course when the first pair of adds come out the tank ignores them completely, even though I grab aggro on both and kite them next to him. He literally just needs to aoe taunt then throw in some sweeping slash and smash into his tanking and all would be fine. But he didn't. I pick up adds, stack them onto the tank like a good well behaved dps and continue to facetank them to death. The worst part though, what really annoyed me was that the tunnel-visioning tank who ignores all adds constantly lost aggro to the mando dps. So after that shambles of a first fight, me stacking adds on a tank who never peeled them whilst he struggled to regain aggro from a boss who was beating on a mando dps who spent his time running koltos, we got to the second boss. Now its the vangs turn the go weird. During laser thing he comes and stands on me, I run around trying to get behind the boss and get shot by laser. Every single time the vang gets laser he stacks ontop of another person. It doesn't annoy the other 2 because they weren't even trying to get behind boss, but I go so annoyed I asked him in chat to spread out on laser. He then died from aoe's because he was busy typing instructions to me that "the laser does set damage and it splits between the people it hits, if it hits 4 people each one gets 25% of its damage rather than 1 person getting 100%. I have a feeling this is bs, I had never heard it before but was too busy avoiding aoe stuff to type so just left it at that. We do final boss, the boss is attacking the mando the entire fight while the guardian tries ineffectually to grab aggro - if only tank classes had taunts, wouldn't that be nice?

I remember, back before 4.0 a member of the rep guild I was in spent most of his time ganking (I was on ToFN back then). I always got into arguments with him over it because I remember back when I was levelling my first character, my sniper, and every single quest objective in dune sea had at least 3 level 65 rep players camping on them. Plus there was a roaming band of 8 level 65 reps in dune sea. I was constantly logging on, getting killed 3 or 4 times, then logging off for about a week solid - as a side note that's what lead me to creating alts, I figured if that character was stuck on dune sea I would play some others. I eventually got past dune sea by logging on at a high-activity time and after being killed for the second time I opened map and noticed instance 3 had just appeared. I moved there and did my quests then got off tatt. Anyway, back to the rep guy. I kept telling him how annoyed I got when I was being ganked and how it ruined the game for me. His response was always "I know what its like, gankers ruined the game for me too, that's why I do it" So this guy, because his game was ruined by gankers, decided to ruin the game for other new players. His argument was always "getting revenge on the ganks." Of course that's ridiculous because the players he was killing were not gankers, if they were they would have switched to their pvp geared 65's and owned his ***. Its this attitude of "I hate it when people do X, so I am going to do X," its basically what happens when ******* get hold of computers and mmo's.

Playing my lvl 41 sage healer, get a pop for tact BH, group is a 38 guardian tank, 65 guardian dps, 60 sent dps. Do first boss, the 65 guardian dps has aggro pretty much the whole fight, even when he peels off boss to attack adds. After fight tank puts guard on me, I switch it off, we do a challenge, 65 dps guardian face-tanks it then tank realises my guard is gone, guards me, I switch it off. Do second challenge, dps guardian face-tanks it, tank guards me after the fight. I switch it off and say "use it properly or not at all" No response, no guard, nothing. We do third challenge, dps face-tanks it. Then we start Jos and Valk. All 3 of them stand in fire during jos, when valk is down the conal is pointed towards the group and the 3 of them don't bother splitting up for the big red circles. I am having to use kolto's to heal through easily avoidable mechanics, then spend my time healing the dps who has aggro. We get to the final phase, fighting both bosses at once. Jos leaps in the air (the sign that he has just done fire) then valk puts big red circle on everyone. None of them move. I only have time to bubble one person (the one I was targeting at the time, the dps guardian because he was face-tanking so required most healing) before the red circles explode and, due to the damage from fire and overlapped red circles the sent and tank both die. Tank immediately dc's, the timing is far too perfect to have been a proper dc, I reckon it was a ragequit. We carry on fighting the bosses, get one of them nearly dead when the sent gets thrown over the edge by valk and it ends up a wipe. We get rid of the cry-baby who quit after 1 death and get a replacement really quick. When he joins us it turns out he is a lvl 20 guardian tank. He guards me, I tell him to guard the dps guardian as they do loads of aggro and guard is immediately switched. The level 20 pulls. He holds aggro off the level 65 guardian and lvl 60 sent, but my heals aren't up to keeping a level 20 alive in BH so he starts running kolto's too. He follows all fight mechanics (unlike the 2 dps) and we survive until jos and valk, then the sent gets thrown over the edge, tank dies, wipe. We pull again, level 20 tank holds aggro off 2 level 60+ dps while running koltos, while following all mechanics. The 2 dps don't follow mechanics and I already have lots of healing to do so they both end up dead, we wipe Next pull I get caught out by valk and knocked off the edge, everybody else dies within 12 seconds of me. sent: "we will never do it with 2 noobs in the group" guardian dps: "yeah, kick them or leave?" The sent quits group me: "strange how you lot died within seconds of my death, suggests my healing is actually making a difference" Then the guardian tank writes "sorry, I'm too weak for this I will get out of the way" and quits guardian dps "well that's 1 noob gone, just wait for you to quit and I can set up a proper group" me: "but you might not find a healer willing to try healing through mechancis" then I quit group And I am bloody pissed off, not at the guardian dps, not at the sent, but at the tank. He was perfect. He held aggro on players 40+ levels above him, he followed all mechanics while running koltos, he was amazing. Yet he let some idiot who ignored all mechanics tell him he was crap then apologised for it. So I sent the tank whispers pointing out to him that I tank for a progression ops group that he was better at holding aggro than I am, better at running koltos than I am and better at following mechanics than I am. I pointed out the problem in that group was both dps not him. From his replies I think I rather cheered him up, then when I requeued I happened to get a pop with him, hammer station with a 65 sin tank and 22 mando healer. Between them the 65 sin tank and 20 guardian discussed who was going to tank what, and the 20 asked if he could tank as he "needs the practice." He then proceeds to hold aggro on the first boss despite the sin tank doing proper rotation (slow time on cd, project on cd, cascading debris at 3-stack, force breach on cd and so on). Possibly the best tank I have ever seen in the game and hes only level 20, and yet if it was left to the dumb dps in the bh group he would think hes useless.

levelling my lvl 38 sage healer, get a pop for tactical mannan, group is me, 65 guardian dps, 65 guardian tank (who is actually a tank) and 22 sent dps. We start, during the first pull aggro is mostly on me as tank tanks 1 enemy at a time until its dead. I consider giving him my "hit everything in the pull" instruction which usually makes a huge difference on bad tanks but cant be bothered as its only tactical. The guardian dps also has a lot of aggro because they keep ripping off the tank. So we have a tunnel-visioning tank that loses aggro to a dps, and where does he choose to put guard? on my healer. Genius. I switch it off and ask him to "use your guard properly please", he just runs off to the next pull without a word. get to first boss and the tank pulls with both dps outside the screen. We agree to just let them kill us and start again. Beat it second time around but my hatred for low level sage healers resource management is growing. Get to second boss, kill it, third boss, kill it then say our goodbyes and the tank says "I had heard this was a difficult one, but it seemed easy" guardian dps: "second boss is a heal check" after a bit of conversation about what heal check means I get a thanks from the tank and he congratulates me on my healing. __________________________________ By now I am level 40, nearly 41 and I get a pop for tact cad. Group is 2 65 sage dps's, one is LP and a 44 LP shadow dps. We get started, first pull the shadow runs in and stealth cc's a silver while I force lift the champ droid. Both sages open with and spam force quake breaking both cc's, they continue to spam quake even when there is only the one champ droid left. The most telling thing is the fact that the droid is aggroed on the shadow. I am pretty sure if I was playing a level 65 and spamming the same ability over and over, then a 44 ripped aggro off me I might want to check my "rotation" as I have yet to see a rotation that does actually consist of spamming one ability. However this never occurs to either of the 2 sages. Second pull the shadow stealth cc's a dog then both sages open with quake, then they both start quaking the champ droid at the top of the lift, shadow tries to knock it down but misjudges it so I send it over the edge with my force wave (and that is the correct use of force wave, its not supposed to be for splitting enemies a tank has spent some time bunching up). We skip what we can after the lift, cant open shortcut so have to do that 2 standard, 2 silver and 2 champ pull. The shadow goes and cc's a silver, I force lift a champ droid and both sages spam force quake and break all cc's. The entire fight is me spam healing the 4 of us while shadow does kill order and 2 useless sages spam force quake. Its a close fight, I run out of resource as the remaining droid is at 12% and the shadow its aggroed on has 44% so I run in and do basic -> heal -> basic -> heal etc until fight is over. We carry on to the first boss and a conversation ensues non-lp sage: "kill droid" me: "no needs its tact" lp sage: "how about you start healing seeing as you queued as healer" me: "whats wrong with my healing? who has died?" lp sage: "just heal" me: "who has died?" lp sage: "shut the **** up" shadow pulls, we start the fight, lp sage spams force quake while the other one does single target dps (possibly rotation, or might just be random abilities in a random order) on the droid. Droid activates, freezes the non-lp sage, then comes for me. I imprison it then help kill the bloke, in the meantime the frozen guy gets killed by some dot or whatever kills you in the frozen bit. non-lp sage: "see I just died how about you start healing?" me: "I don't heal through stupid" me: "I wont heal if you ignore mechanics" non-lp sage: "I couldn't move and couldn't heal myself" me: "and why couldn't you move? because you ignored mechanics" LP sage puts a vote kick on me, they then jump on the taxi along with the shadow, while I am fixing the shortcut taxi. Me and the other sage jump on the shortcut one. We then spend ages of me arguing with the LP sage about us coming to them. I have already jumped down from shortcut place so cant get back to taxi. I am telling the non-lp sage to jump down from the taxi platform so we can clear trash backwards to the other 2 the non-lp sage is telling me to climb back up to the taxi (which if there is a way I don't know how) the lp sage is telling me to go back to taxi and take the one to where they are. the shadow is already on the taxi going back from their one to the shortcut one. Shadow gets to where me and other sage are, the lp sage is still telling us to come to him. We decide to fight our way back to him when suddenly it pops up that the vote kick on me failed. lp sage: "well I'm off, gl you 2 carrying him (meaning me) through" then quits group. We fight thorough to second boss, kill it with the dps sage dead on the floor from not following mechanics - I specifically told them to tunnel-vision the wookie and my heals would mean I have aggro on adds and I can deal with them (I intended to stand close to the boss spam healing through the adds as I have done dozens of times before). Instead the dps sage puts his comp on healer so some of the adds go for it, then spams force quake under all the adds to rip aggro off his comp, then runs around like a headless chicken (away from the boss so we can just let him kill them) spamming "HEAL" in chat. We run through stuff to the lift, run through stuff at the bottom, do convo, get to final boss and I see the sage dps has gone left after going through the door and is stood where the first fire jet starts. the shadow tells them to bring comp in (its stuck on the door), I explain how (dismiss and resummons) and tell them to switch it to damage for the billionth time. sage dps: "I will leave it heal just in case" shadow: "good, don't want to trust <my name> to cope with this one" me: "do you 2 know what to do?" sage and shadow: "yes" I pull, we start fighting, sage goes down to 40% hp within a couple of seconds because he is stood in fire. He writes "HEAL NOOB", I don't heal, he is being kept alive by his comp (just) but is not happy with me, starts flaming on me about how bad I am at healing. Of course his comp is spam healing him so only heals the shadow gets are from me, and guess what? shadow is constantly topped off and I have time to do some damage. Flames move me and shadow move but sage stays in them and carries on telling me to l2p etc. I get fed up of his **** so I extricate (or whatever its called, the pull ally thing) him from the flames and let his comp heal him up while I look after shadow and attack boss. Flames move again and sage doesn't, he is stood in flames again and about to die, and is still telling me to l2p. He has spent most of this fight doing no damage at all as he is too busy typing in chat to me. shadow: "why are you stood in fire?" me: "I did ask if you know what to do before we pulled" sage: "heal me noob, its your job" I let him die, me and shadow finish the fight, res him then say "so <shadows name> do you think I coped with this one?" sage: "good riddance noob, l2p if you ever want to group with me again. I then switch character to my shadow tank because.....and heres the big reveal, I am in the progression ops group of the guild he is in. I have a nice conversation with him about fight mechanics, listening to people who know what to do and asking the group for mechanics if you don't know the fights. He replies along the lines of calling me elitist and a noob healer (I have healed ops for this guild too) then when the guild chat starts agreeing with me he quits guild.

levelling up my sage healer, get a pop for tactical taral V Group is my 28 sage healer, 42 guardian dps, 33 shadow tank and 29 vang dps. Seeing as we are all sub 65 I ask if we clear trash in forest or skip (if we have 65's in group I skip where possible because they don't need the exp, but if group is sub 65 I am willing to do trash for exp if others want to). As I am writing that the guardian gets on mount and moves to start the route that allows us to skip everything. Vang stands doing nothing and the shadow runs straight into the first pull. We all move over there and kill it, then start clearing trash. Everything is a shambles, I start looking for clues that any of these 3 know how to play, the guardian has LP, so at least they know classes (sort of, for all I know they put a comp on heals and spammed basic through every single story) and the vang has living legend. Now that's a good sign, means the vang is at least competent. Do afew more pulls and its a shambles still, so I start watching the group on the next one: Shadow tank: is infiltration spec, queued as tank and doesn't use correct rotation vang dps: stands at range and spams rifle shot with mortar volley on cd with ion cell guardian dps: leaps into the pull, kills whichever enemy they leapt at with decent rotation, but then proceeds to stand and do literally nothing while waiting for all other enemies to be killed. me: I stop healing, figured if nobody else is going to do things properly why should I carry them, I start putting out what little damage I can with a heal spec. We skip the champ with the creatures and I blow up one of the research stations. Then I notice the shadow is dead, spin the camera only to find the 2 elite creatures and the champ running towards us. The 3 of us kill the boss - by which I mean the guardian kills 1 elite creature then stands there doing nothing, the vang stands at range spamming rifle shot and I hold aggro by spam healing myself and doing a little bit of dps. After the longest fight I have ever had on that boss it dies, I go to res the shadow but he goes to med centre right at the start of the forest. Not too much of a problem as we cleared all the trash.....or so I thought. The shadow dies on the way back. He goes back to med centre, he dies a second time, he goes back, dies a third time, goes back, dies a fourth time, goes back to med centre, then makes it all the way through to us. 4 deaths while trying to travel down a path which has been cleared of enemies (apart from the odd elite here or there out of range of the path). We get to the first boss, vang and shadow attack bloke, guardian attacks creature. I decide to join in on the bloke because the guardian out-dpses the vang and the shadow. We beat it then carry on. The other 3 are picking up objectives for the bonus boss. I am dreading this, that boss is a knob with a competent group, imagine what it will be like with this shambles. We skip trash between first boss and the bridge, clear the bridge and enter the base, get 10 terminal things and go the bonus boss. Before I run over to join them I write "all know it?" vang: "no" me: "when he pulls you in move out as fast as you can and he randomly hits someone for 80%, use kolto" we pull, shadow gets hit for 80%, stands there doing nothing about it, I start healing him, boss pulls us in, I force speed out, guardian and vang escape too, shadow stays in and dies. vang gets 1-shot by the random aggro strong attack (he was already injured by being too slow after being pulled in and I had been busy healing guardian as they had aggro and were hit too. guardian start being stupid, clicks every single kolto one after the other, I then get hit by strong attack and down to 12%, all kolto's are on cd so I bubble myself and spam heal, but its not enough and I die to the next one, then boss kills guardian and we wipe. We med centre at first boss, me, guardian and vang skip trash and get to bridge then suddenly enter combat. The shadow dies to trash we had skipped. He med centres, dies to trash, med centres, dies to trash etc until he has died 6 times at which point we get bored of waiting and the 3 of us fight our way back from bridge to first boss to clear a way for him. We then head off towards bonus boss again, I reckon if people actually listened to my instructions we would have had it especially if vang had done proper dps rather than playing ranged (boss was at 12% when we wiped). Suddenly the shadow dies, turns out he fell off the bridge. he med centres and guess what, the game decides he is closer to starting ship than first boss and is sent right the way back. us 3 are stood just inside the second base waiting for him when we suddenly enter combat and shadow dies. I quit group __________________________ get a pop for tact hammer station with my now 30 sage healer, group is a 65 vang tank, 65 sent and 60 mando dps. get to the difficult pull on the corner, its already apparent the sent is one of those that pulls before the tank, however the tank seems competent as he guarded a dps and not me. Get to the difficult pull, sent starts casting slice droid, I can tell by the direction his character is facing he has targeted the one on the right so I target the one on the left with force lift. His slice droid hits the right elite, my lift hits the left elite. Then the sent leaps at the cc'd left elite, because kill order is not something pugs have ever heard of. the vang then harpoons the right elite, breaking that cc and the sent is already half dead having pulled first and have every enemy in the pull shooting him (except the harpooned elite ofc). I start healing the sent, while the mando kills one of the standard strength enemies. This results in me getting aggro from all but the 2 elites. I spam heal myself, the mando off heals me and the fight becomes a case of me and the mando spam healing each other through the damage from all but one of the standards and strongs in the pull while the tank tunnel-visions 1 elite and the sent tunnel-visions the other. I of course have to do a bit of healing on the sent because apparently expecting a level 65 to beat an elite in a tactical fp is too much to ask. But I am too busy healing myself and the mando (firstly because I don't want a repair bill and secondly if I am dead I cant heal anyone so I prioritise myself) so the sent dies and targets me. I finally stop being a noob and los the enemies, giving me time to heal up to a reasonable level and the mando time to stop off-healing me and put out some dps. Or perhaps not some dps, more like tonnes of perfect dps. His rotation is spot on, in the time it takes the droids to move from their starting spots to a point where they can shoot me (I am only behind the jutting wall on the inside corner) he kills 2 standards and a strong, then kills the remaining 2 strongs in a matter of seconds. He then turns on the remaining elite and I spam my resource builder thing as I am all out. We finish the fight, I res the mara and whisper the mando a thank you. He replies with "looks like this will be interesting, we may have to carry them 2." During first boss I do the cleanses and tank still dies, from standing in stupid. The adds running around all over the place, well 4 of them blow up under the tank who made no effort at all to move and he dies instantly. The sent is similarly killed by 3 adds exploding simultaneously near him. Me and mando complete the fight and after I write "if you don't know the fights feel free to ask" vang: "lol why would we ask a noob like you, you cant even heal a tfp" mando whispers me a "lol" We carry on, I face tank every single bit of trash in the entire run, turns out this tank is really incompetent, tunnel-vision on every pull. Get to final boss, sent is killed by tank facing boss towards group, tank is killed by knockback and me and the mando 2-man it. At the end the vang writes "hopefully next time we wont have some level 30 noob needs carrying." mando replies with "I think you got that *** backwards mate," by which time I have walked out the instance so don't get to see how that ends.

Snipers in LI are nothing to do with tanking. They are always silvers and 2 dps can easily kill a silver within 4 seconds.....ooh what a coincidence, the interrupt ability stops the enemy using it for 4 seconds. Could it be that the dps should just tunnel-vision the sniper, with an interrupt too. On the pulls with more than one sniper, the terminate skill has a 4 or 5 seconds cast, while cc is 2 seconds and all healer classes have cc. Ofc if its scoundrel healer just stealth cc it. With more than 1 sniper the healer casts cc on 1 of them (after tank has pulled to avoid aggro issues, they can get away with that because cc casts faster than terminate) both dps obliterate the other sniper then either mop up in standard fashion or break cc to take out other sniper. and as an aside, the infected mercenaries in kaon can be dealt with in the same way, except it may be necessary to pre-cast the cc and tank leaps in during its cast. - I cant stand tanks who see someone casting cc so they wait until its complete before attacking, if you see a cc cast leap in while its casting so you still get to pull first. Of course, having written all that there will still be people who just say "LI trash is too strong" and "nerf infected mercs in kaon they are invincible."

I agree fp's are easier as a tank, though my personal preference is jugg rather than pt, just because the jugg dcd's are so op that I can survive most things even without heals. I find the benefit of tanking is that most mechanics in most fights are done by the tank. Moving big red in kaon to the barrels - tanks job keeping bloke away from dogs in first boss mando - tanks job moving sandstorm boss where it needs to be - tanks job The list goes on, but I cannot say how many times I have gone into a HM fp with a dps (usually my sniper) and watch the tank pull only to realise he has no idea what he is doing, then working frantically to rip aggro so I can position boss properly, only to have the tank taunt back instantly (why is it pug tanks never taunt when they need control, but taunt instantly when I need control?) So yes tanking is easier because if **** hits the fan you can sort it out yourself (except, for example, missed cleanse mechanics on the final boss of atheiss, I have never seen any pug healer doing that properly), and jugg tanking is easiest because if the healer cant keep up dcd's will do just as well as a bad healer.

This is pretty much my take on the issue. These things are called "hard mode" after all. If a fight can be cleared while randomly using abilities (rather than in proper rotation with procs etc) and ignoring mechanics then its not really "hard" is it? And to add my 2 cents to the whole "just read tool-tips bit" I pretty much concur. Another anecdote. I levelled my sorc as a healer back in 2.x. After 4.0 came out I decided to change it to dps (I merged 2 servers and decided 3 tanks, 3 healers, 1 mdps and 1 rdps on each faction was skewed so changed some classes so I had 2 tanks 2 healers 2 mdps and 2 rdps on each faction). However I don't use my sorc often, if I need to play imp rdps I use my sniper because its better geared and was my very first character (we all feel special about our first character don't we?) As such my sorc got a run for the first time in 4 and a half months a couple of days ago. I had completely forgotten lightning rotation so I opened my discipline tree, read every single proc and ability I had and figured out a rotation in my head. I then ran a couple heroics to polish it out, make some adjustments then queued for HM fp's. Granted I could have just joined group finder, ticked healer with my lightning sorc for a faster pop then spam force storm the entire mission. But seeing as it only takes 15-20 minutes to re-learn the class, and considering how much easier that makes things for the 3 poor souls who have to queue with my rusty old sorc. Infact which is quicker, writing a post on forums about nerfs and tough enemies or this: 1. read an entire discipline tree 2. move around quickbars so rotation buttons are bunched up in a natural order (my sniper is 3, f, 2, 2, ,f ,ctrl+e, ctrl+r, 4, f, 3, f, e, 3, f, 6.....etc) 3. run a couple heroics to polish it out a bit 4. listen to the guy in the group who writes "I main the spec you use, you should do x before y because of proc z"

Perhaps theres a reason people are becoming elitist. I certainly am considering it. Every time I see someone doing something wrong and suggest differently they tell me to ****, stop being bossy and let them play their own way. An example would be a run of BoI I was doing, we were at last boss and I was interrupting the bit your supposed to interrupt, which meant mine was on CD when the boss did his really powerful attack (the one that has the same animation as chain lightning but is single target). After it knocks 70% hp off a slinger in the group, then kills him, then knocks 60-ish% off the guardian then proceeds to kill him and the 2 of them lie dead on the floor asking what happened. I offer an explaination, that the boss has a hard hitting attack but it can be interrupted if necessary, but I cant do it as I am busy doing an interrupt mechanic. And what response do I get? "don't patronise me," "stop telling me what to do," etc. When 2 players are lying dead on the floor, asking what happened and I say "its a hard hitter but it can be interrupted" I get accused of being an arse (ofc I never interrupt it myself because I am doing the interrupt mechanics which means if the boss targets me with that attack I have my interrupt on cd and resort to a DCD). Or a recent run of HM foundry I did with my sniper, there was a guardian tank and sorc healer, the other dps was kicked while I was zoning in and I zoned in to find the tank had put a vote kick on me straight away (and I mean straight away, the tank had tried to kick both dps before even starting the first convo). Lucky for them the kick on me failed, I say lucky for them because it turns out neither of them knew the fights. First boss the tank stands too close and dies to the glowing orange thingy. Healer c-resses them and they die to the next orange bit. I face tank the entire thing and due to dcd's and a bloody good healer never drop below 80% (and the fact that apart from the orange thing first boss of foundry is a joke). Of course I say "mention if your new, I can explain stuff and save you repair bills". And the reply I get? "mention if your a ****, so I can stick you on ignore right at the start, noob." We get to HK and I write fight instructions which, when we pull, its apparent the tank didn't read, they die to the grey thing in the middle falling on them, are c-ressed and die to the exact same thing the second time, then I facetank and we complete. Bonus boss I mention spit, tank dies to spit, c-res, with me whispering the mechanics to them but when I try it pops up in chat saying "<player name> is ignoring you", dies to spit, I facetank. Revan, tank gets thrown over the edge, I facetank. At the end the tank whispers "just wanted to say, its none of your business how I play" and when I try to reply it says they are ignoring me. After **** like that its no wonder people are becoming elitist, now-a-days when I see people doing **** wrong I have an attitude of "I'll just do the mechanics myself" (like when I facetanked a whole run of HM kaon with my sniper because the person who queued as tank was actually dps, I never mentioned it the entire run because my gear was good enough for me to hold aggro) "let some other poor sod try teach this person how to play."

You seem to be saying "because some people cant complete the content, that means the content is too hard" Which is not correct. It could be that the people who cant complete the content are not playing their class correctly (an op dps I met recently springs to mind, sitting in cover and spamming snipe and when I mentioned they are a melee class they respond "I will play how I like"). Well if players are going to ignore mechanics, play melee classes in range or ranged classes as melee then I don't think they have a leg to stand on when commenting about difficulty. I really couldn't care less if a melee sorc cannot complete BoR, or a ranged op cant complete BH, because they aren't supposed to. Just because some people cant complete some missions doesn't necessarily mean the mission is the problem. But I suppose its easier for those people's ego to say "the mission is impossible" rather than "what am I doing wrong?". Though I do agree with you on one thing. The balance between HM fp's and SM ops is buggered. SM ops drops better stuff yet SM KP and EV are easier than most HM fp's, TFB is rather simple and SnV hardly has any challenge any more. However I disagree on your solution, you want the hardest fp's nerfed, I want SM ops buffed. Things like the 4th boss in tfb, who for the first 50% of his health has no mechanics at all, and that's not an exaggeration it is a literal tank and spank. I think HM fp's are fine as they are and SM ops should have their mechanics put back in.

I am starting to get sick and tired of this. Every time BW tries to bring in something to get players to learn they all flock to forums shouting "nerf nerf NERF". Back when I started playing, in 2.something there was Oricon. Due to the fact Oricon gave out (I think) 162 gear and the best gear given out by solo content before Oricon was 156 it was clearly designed to be done with 156 (not that I ever did, I always enjoyed fp's etc more than solo so didn't start oricon till I was mixed 162/168). And even while overgeared I had to follow mechanics. The whole point of Oricon was learning things as needed for ops. The boss at the bottom of the map was tuned such that any player who wasn't overgeared MUST use stuns to beat it. The boss at the top of the map, if you weren't overgeared, could not be beaten without interrupts. The guy at the top of the tower required use of dcd's and correct use of interrupt (he had 3 channels, one did a tonne load more damage than the other 2 so that was the one you must interrupt). And what did players do? join in 3 or 4 man groups to complete Oricon. I was the only person I ever saw running around by themselves, everyone else was joining together, and chat was full of "lfg oricon dailies." Now with DvL players are expected to do HM fp's. Some of them require knowledge of your class (rishi, BH, LI spring to mind) and guess what? option 1: learn option 2: cry for nerf Who would have guessed the players would choose option 2. I'm fed up of this crap. I am the sort of player who struggles to do HM ops yet even I can do the HM fp's. Theres nothing too difficult about them as long as the tanks use dcd's, the dps do more than just treat the fight like a dummy parse and the healer doesn't just spam the same heal while standing still.

It seems to be pretty much covered but I would add there are even times in proper fp's that I leave an enemy untanked - for lack of a better term. An example would be one of the pulls near the start of false emperor (might be the second one) where there are 2 silver ranged mobs to the right, one silver ranged front right and 1 gold sith. And tucked miles away from the others, in a little back corner far away is a standard strength healer. The way I figure any semi-decent dps are going to take that standard out in 2-3 gcd's. Any decent dps will know kill order and automatically target the standard. Any decent dps will know they are a healer (their name is "new imperial medic") and any decent dps will notice they are on the edge of a pull. There are 3 reasons to attack that enemy first: kill order, they are healer and they are on the edge of the pull. As such I never bother tanking that enemy. ^^Having said that in all the runs of fe I have ever tanked (more than 25 tactical and 16 hard according to my achievements) I have only ever seen that healer taken out once. Problem is most dps think "ooh tank is going right and bunching up a load of enemies, lets aoe". Another example is just after the shortcut in cad. Theres those 2 dogs, 2 or 3 silver blokes and some standards dotted around, plus the patrolling champ that likes to get involved. Then there are 2 standards that spawn in after the pull on the left hand side, between 28 and 34m away depending on which of the ranged silvers you are hitting at the time (always leap to ranged enemies when tanking, because melee will move towards you while ranged will stand still). I never ever bother going and grabbing the 2 standards on the left. Yet again any self-respecting dps will take them out in seconds, what with kill order, the fact they will be shooting the healer and the fact they are at the edge of the pull. Yet again however I have never met any dps who are smart enough to see this, every single time I do that pull I end up having to taunt 1 of them, sabre throw the other and hope people notice. They never do and soon the taunt wears off and the healer out-aggro's my sabre throw and I have to run all over the place controlling **** that should have been dead long before. Another that springs to mind is the bottom of the lift in mando raiders after second boss. 2 on the left 1 on the right, leap to one on the left, run to the second and backfist him, while turning camera to taunt the enemy on the right, then continue to fight the 2 on the left. 6 seconds before my taunt wears off, should be plenty of time for 2 dps to kill a silver, right? No, because no dps ever shoot the guy on the left, so my taunt wears off, it starts shooting the healer and I have to do this crap all over again. So in general yes you should hold all aggro, but sometimes the pull layout makes that difficult and its actually easier to just let 1 or 2 enemies slip and let the dps mop them up (of course never let golds slip, if theres a gold at the edge of a pull that's a cc situation not a "wont bother tanking that one" situation). If only some of these dps had half a clue how tanking is done rather than completely ignoring the 1 single enemy I have ignored then have the healer moaning and calling for guard. Sometimes I wonder why I bother.

horrible run of group finder tfb. Some guild members were arguing over not doing enough ops so I said "lets do some now" A couple of people joined up, the 2 who were complaining we don't do enough ops both said they cant they are busy (complain about not doing ops then refuse groups forming right there and then). I end up MT, off tank is guild member, and 2dd. 2dd and 2h are pugs. We get started, I jump into first pull and realise the guild dd is ripping aggro from me. After pull I click on him to put guard on but he is in dark charge. I ask him what role he is and he says "tank." I mention I thought he was dd but we carry on as 3t 3dd and 2h. Do first boss, I write roll [link the token piece] and nobody rolls. I write again "roll [link token]" and nobody does. One of the pug dd's, a sniper, says I should keep all tokens and hand them out at the end to stop people dropping out. We get to second boss, 1 of the healers drops out along the way and is replaced by guild healer and the extra tank respecs to dps. We get to second boss and its a shambles. I assumed, based on the fact everybody said they had done it before, that everybody had done it before. We end up wiping due to ciphas's channel. Second pull we wipe to it again. guild dd: "<off-tanks name> take kel away from the other 2" me: "that is usually how its done, but that's not the cause of the wipe" guild sorc dd: "yes it is" me: "no, its the channel between ciphas and heira, dd usually sort that out" guild sorc dd: "its a tanking problem" me: "when I used to do this with guild on ToFN dps would switch to ciphas during channel" We get back to the boss, pull again and wipe again, every pull I start on ciphas but switch to kel at 10 stacks (healers were struggling to keep up with 20) and all the time I am on ciphas the guild sorc dd is shouting at the other tank to move kel away. I decide I cant be bothered with this ****, type "<offtank name> take ciphas," taunt kel, blade blitz away from the group and tank the bugger in the corner nice and far away. Now the sorc has **** all to complain about and can start doing something useful (i.e damage on ciphas to stop the thing that is causing the wipes). But its to no avail, I kite kel in the "correct" place and still we wipe. Sorc is nice and quiet this time, we try again and I switch to kel before ciphas's shield is down (10 stacks doesn't take very long). The group is wiping again, everyones hp is dropping and I really cant be bothered with another repair bill. Now before when I did this fight as dps, I would just wail on calph then his channel would end. This time I decided to leap in on calph and see his shield is down but he is still channeling, so I press my interrupt. BAM, problem solved, mechanic completed, fight continues. I am sat there, tucked away in my little corner, happily tanking kel and wondering how the ****, out of 4 dps and 1 tank on calph, it came down to the guy tanking kel to use one ability that every single one of those players has. We complete the pull with 2 people dead on the floor, 3 had died but one was c-ressed, all the deaths were from doom (and the room was covered in green circles, it probably actually hard work NOT running into them there were that many). I type "roll [link token]" and the pug healer rolls, I wait a fair while, no one else rolls. I type out a countdown from 3, at the end I give token to the healer. The sniper now flips his ****. telling me I should not hand out tokens until the end, that handing them out along the way will mean people will leave group once they have theirs, etc. I tell him to shut up, that the healer is still here and theres nothing to complain about. The sniper starts having a go at the healer, telling them they should either trade the token back to ops lead or they are a ninja looter. The healer refuses and the sniper says "either they go or I go" me: "bye" sniper: "you should get rid of her or I'm gone" me: "goodbye then" sniper: "are you going to kick her or what?" me: "you just said you wanted stuff handed out at the end because you are worried people will quit early, now you want to kick the person who just got the token even though they have expressed no wish to quit?" sniper: "lol never run an ops again you noob, you should hand out tokens at the end, either take hers off her or I am leaving" me: "bye" The sniper quits group, I requeue and we carry on. Get to operator 9 and by now more people are complaining. The episode with the sniper has started an argument over whether tokens should be given out at each boss or kept until the end. This means by the time we get to op 9 I give an ultimatium me: "I will be having people roll on tokens after each boss, if you don't like it that way either put up and shut up or bugger off" 1h and 2dd's quit group. healer and 1dd are from guild. The remaining guild dps offers to switch to his healer, the healer who has already won a token stays but gf is somehow stuffed up and we need to exit and requeue. I get people to roll for token from first boss before we leave (cant trade it once I am out of instance), then quit, invite new people and go back in. All tanks, 1h and 1dd are from guild, 3dd and 1h are pugs (the healer is the one that the sniper said would quit after they got their token). We start op 9 and it becomes clear all 3 pugs don't know the fight, despite the explaination I gave then asked "all understand?" before doing a ready check. We only destroy 2 cores but it hardly matters, finish the fight and I ask "you guys want me to do loot now or at the end?" 2 pugs say at the end and the third says "do it now or I am leaving." We get to the 4th boss, just before the boss door the guy says again "roll for headpiece now or I am leaving" while 3 people from guild and other 2 pugs tell me to leave it until the end. Just then the other tank says he has to go for dinner and quits group. The pug again says "roll now or I leave" me: "bye" He buggers off and we kill the 4th boss with 1t 3dd 2h and get token implant. I now have the headgear and implant from previous 2 bosses. By now 3 and a half hours have passed, I am fed up (I was expected an, at most, 90 minute romp though a nice easy op and instead get this waste of time run. We get to final boss and a pug dd drops out. I explain to the rest of the group I had been hoping for a quick run, I really am not in the mood any more and I cant be bothered, I get them to roll on the 2 token and then quit group. Throughout the whole thing I kept asking what loot etiquette is on TRE. Every single run I have done on ToFN, every single one, absolutely all of them, have rolled loot after killing each boss. Now on TRE I have people throwing tantrums when I roll loot after killing the boss, quitting groups over it, then being told by the majority of the group to keep all tokens until the end, at which point someone else throws an tantrum and ragequits because he wants to roll after each kill. What is the *********** system on TRE? Having said that, considering the attitude of pugs in ops (this is the first one I ran) I think it might just be easier to tell people what rules I am using and if they don't like it they can piss off. I cant be bothered putting up with that **** every time I do an op.