Oh Force, KDY as a scoundrel is a nightmare. Either that, or my luck on a ~40 scoundrel is dismal. Every group-- even those with tanks or dps that should be out-dpsing me in sustains, I facetank. Worse than my sniper (whom the facetanking on I understand). And as a scoundrel, facetanking means I can't burst damage very well. I'd understand if I were running with a couple of below 20s, but honestly, I should not rip aggro off a high level commando, off a mid-40s tank guardian (and his buffs were right for tanking, too), or off late/post chapter 2 Sents of all things. So it's led to a habit of using cover as a scoundrel, but only in KDY. I prefer being able to kick and shoot things in the back anyway, but covering tends to keep my hide intact.

Kaon Under Siege, HM. Now, I've never done this FP before, amazingly enough. Queue pops pretty fast because I'm dragging my sisters' corruption sorc along with me. We've got a tank, didn't get a chance to look him over, because he dropped group as soon as we zoned in. That leaves myself, my sister, and our PUGged lightning sorc. After a moment's deliberation, we set off to face tank everything. I've got HK next to me, because none of my tank comps are geared and neither were any of my sister's; and lightning guy doesn't say a peep. We're actually pulling at a decent clip, and stuff's melting pretty nicely, heals landing on me once in a while with my own bubble and self preservation picking up the slack, so we've got three barrages of lightning on just about everything. Not too long before we get to the actual rakghoul part of the fp, we get a PT tank who asks what happened, and when filled in, says something along the lines of 1 mil per character, extra for guard. Since I'm doing all the speaking in chat, I flat out tell him no, at which point he said he was joking and some groups have fallen for it before. When the PT catches up, he slaps guard on heals and we proceed to melt the rest of the stuff. He's a competent tank, though I did pull aggro off him a couple times thanks to the wrath procced lightning strike and the generic shock I use as kiting filler. I'm glad he said he was kidding about the payment part, because I was about set to kick and ignore him and queue again; we had the firepower to three-man Kaon, even if it was going to hurt like a truck in the process.

Landed a Directive 7 HM fp last night. Got an amazingly competent Jug whose first act was to guard me of all people, which, I'm not complaining; I've started tearing aggro when the snipers/maras aren't around. Overload happy Madness 'sin, which, not much problem since he either overloaded too far away to hit anything, or next to bosses that aren't affected by knockbacks. Our operative healer was the bounciest body 4 I've ever seen in game. Anyway, things are going great, we're melting everything, nailing bonuses, y'know, smooth as anything. The first set of bosses, the three sniper droids, apparently we killed them in the wrong order??? so we were stuck smashing on the last one for a good five minutes, my Wrath wasn't proccing, death field wasn't leaving a mark, etc. We beat him up (fiNALLY) and move on. Boss #2 melts. About halfway to boss #3, [Tank's name] has left the group. And the three of us literally have a *** moment. He'd said nothing, no one had died (except the sin, but that was right after he left), no one was pulling ahead, etc. After about a moment of wondering what his deal was, our operative pulls a Kaliyo, and other than Kaliyo's stubborn insistence on not pulling after she'd been given the attack command, it's smooth as anything. The Battle for Illum was pretty good too. Completely different group; Jug tank who didn't guard anyone, Sorc heals, myself, and one whom I can't recall right now. Our sorc was pulling trash left and right, but we were mowing them down so fast that our tank was spinning in circles looking for something to hit. Bosses, though, we let him pull, and proceeded to melt them too. I dunno, I guess my bad/strange occurrences seem to have gone away at endgame and are isolated to lowbie flashpoints, whereas 55HMs have been the chainpulling types that can hold their own and cause some chaos while we catch up.

Hit a KDY last night for a bit of XP; sister's trying to cross that last level, so I grab my sniper and off we go. We get a 'Sin tank and a Merc DPS. Well, as luck would have it, even after double XP is over, neither is the best. The Merc's melting stuff, but in pulls when he takes a handful of hits, he flies behind some stuff, dumps aggro, and rapidscan spams himself. This, of course, makes my sister mad, as she's running a sorc healer and had just been about to pop a heavy one on him when he LoSed her. The Sin's queued as tank, but switches between DPS and tanking stances freely (I think he was DPS specced, as I didn't spot the Dark Ward popping up anytime). When the 'Sin starts spamming overload in the prisoner scenario, my sister's had enough. She flies at the gold droid at the top of one of the pulls, and bounces him off, pulling the entire room. We've pulled this stunt before, usually when we're grouped with bads who scatter mobs out of our respective AOEs. Goldie there pulls the entire room, and she just bubbles everyone and I start sniping. The Merc goes down, ostensibly because of his 'hide and spamheal himself'' habit. We lost the Sin once, but that's mostly because he was badly positioned behind a knockback droid and went flying off the edge without enough health to survive the hit. I know it makes us a bit of jerks, but when you're running KDY and can trust at least one of your teammates, it's a good way to not only liven up the run, but hopefully let bads know that a) chainpulling is bad, and b) knockbacks out of AOEs are bad. Because that Sin spammed overload whenever it was off cooldown.

Mando Raiders SM with my Shadow tank. Now, I know I'm not the best at Shadow tanking, being that it's spiky as anything and I forget half my defensives most of the time, but I do know how to keep aggro, or yank it back. Anyway, GF pops, and it's a Guardian, Sentinel, and Commando as my squadmates. This should be easy, yes, with Commandos being one of the best classes for single target burst heals. I was wrong. Commando wasn't healspecced (I had my suspicions when I didn't see the Kolto cloud buff that my Merc has at the same level), and when I asked, he was Gunnery. Oh boy. Now, I wouldn't have a problem if he used more than just Hammer Shot and Kolto Bomb. My own Gunnery 'mando is a capable off-healer when the situation calls for it, and at that level, a Gunnery 'mando should've been able to keep us alive, if only just. Nope. Gunnery Commando does his damndest to keep us up (not really), but we wipe twice on the four-man boss. He actually leaves to respec, and we make it, barely, and only because his being in healspecc that last fight boosts healing. He's still not using his big heals, even though I told him those would help. So between the Commando dying nearly first thing and not healing properly, it cost all of us some nasty repair bills. On the other hand, the Guardian and the Sentinel were good ones. Guardian was in Shien and by the way stuff was melting under him, properly specced. Neither pulled first, and neither had an issue with a Shadow tank. Sighs. I expect to see much more of those shenanigans coming from the KDY School of Window-Licking.

She may be stacking up on her DS/LS points or credits. If you drop group or leave the flashpoint right before the end, you can reset the phase and queue right back up for it. The points, I know at least, stack up if you run the same FP multiple times without finishing it, so when you do turn it in, instead of a 100 jump (say you ran it three times), you get 300 points of alignment for everything. I don't think it's efficient that way, as if you turn it in three times, you get triple the credits as well as the alignment boosts.

You'd be amazed how fast a decently geared scoundrel can yank off of 'tanks'. Granted, if I actually manage to get into a proper flashpoint as a Dirty Fighting scoundrel, there's very little to no chance of me actually pulling off the tank, and when I do, he/she's usually on top of it and steals aggro right back. But running with subpar tanks, in anything? Bam, scoundrel has aggro, and scoundrel can do very little effectively when facetanking. I agree, though, that healer was doing amazingly well, considering scoundrels aren't meant to facetank worth anything, and he was healtanking.

Popped a KDY on my commando. Got a group of Jedi who literally went at it breakneck. The Shadow didn't use his class regen most of the time, and he'd engage first. He'd queued as DPS, and I could tell by the way he literally melted by pulling first that he wasn't at all tanky. As a commando, I could've capably facetanked everything and kept going, but he pulled so fast that I was lucky to get there before he banged out (which he did every other fight, due to melt and speed). Neither sage would offheal, so when I could get a chance to stand still, I'd slap heals out. The only time they said anything in chat was right before Modo, and again, Shadow facetanked, and banged out, leaving one of the telekinetics sages to facetank instead. I saw her kick into healing mode when she started facetanking, but that was it. That one run of KDY was enough for my nerves for today.

@cefert That's exactly how it works. Lowbie flashpoints, before the healer gets the skills in their tree that drops heal aggro even further (and before the dps are doing damage consistently enough that the aggro stays off the heals), they're yanking aggro like nothing else (I've been on both ends of that mess; not pretty, believe me), so they get guard. Around late level 30 or so, you start to prioritize. If you have a Mara or a Sniper, don't pick a target to guard until after the first few pulls. If the Mara consistently rips aggro, guard him/her. Same with the sniper. By level 40 and 50/55, you should almost never have to guard the healer. It's very rare that someone will be ripping aggro off the tank and the healer without taunts in lowbie flashpoints.

Yours is majorly into Lethality, though, and if it's anything like the Scoundrel's Dirty Fighting, it's likely not going to be quite as viable to my own playing style. It does, however, look like quite the nasty spec to go against, given the decreased cooldowns on specific abilities.

I respecced into Marksmanship, popped a quick KDY to press against a longer fight --namely, the last boss in the flashpoint. Master Khoris has got to be the most infuriating thing for a 'sit and cast' type that Marksmanship seems to settle into. I didn't have much energy management issues, and that may be due to having to run around to keep from being hung in the air. I got lucky to get a full ambush off sometimes. Don't get me wrong, it's a fun spec, and I did whack an elite down while my teammates were flailing around the standards. I'll work with Marksmanship for a bit longer, then I'll try out Engineering, see if that's more suited to my preference of parking it and staying put to dish damage without being too hampered if I have to evacuate the area in a hurry without dropping too much DPS.

Speaking of Shadow/Sin tanking... It's a Sentinel thing to leap in front of the tank if the tank isn't a leaper/ranged of some kind, isn't it. I've a Guardian Tank without this issue, and I haven't noticed this crap when a Vanguard or PT is tanking. But if a Shadow is tanking, and the Shadow's pulling from stealth, the Sent in question dives headfirst in right before I pull, yanking apart every single move I had lined up to pull aggro. I know Maras and Sents are prone to this kind of leapery, as well as DPS Juggs, but really, what is it with leapers and their issues with Shadows? It kind of wants me to skip flashpointing on my Shadow until I get my pull. In which case, the Sent really can't mess up my opening rotation ( very much ) anymore unless he really gets ahead.

Jugg tanking is one where you have to have good spatial awareness. On that hand, most of the time, I try to drag my tanking away from the healer to a point where if someone stronger than a standard slips away from my threat puddle, I can fling my saber at 'em and likely yank aggro right back. In addition, if you're tanking a melee mob, tabbing through them to deliver a few blows before returning to your elite definitely helps keep the threat. Between that and dropping a good smash, once the mob/s are collected, it's fairly simple to hold aggro until all's done. If the tank can't hold aggro with all the abilities at their fingertips, though, that does stink of something else going on-- a Jugger in Soresu and fully up the Immortal tree has a fair easy time stealing aggro away from everyone (unless it's Red Reaper and bugged to boot, in which case, luck of the draw and hold on tight).

Okay. I'll experiment a bit with the specs for the next few levels (seeing as all I'm going to end up doing is PvP or flashpoints to get to 29 or so), find one that I can settle comfortably into until endgame. Ideally, I want to have something available aside from my basic attack, so there's always something coming off cooldown as I trigger another cooldown. Ideally, I get that if your rotation is down pat, that's going to happen, closely enough.

Don't worry too much about length. I asked about specs, and you certainly answered. I definitely wouldn't switch specs after settling into one for about forty five levels, though, tried that once and got myself killed way too fast in PvE due to looking for the wrong rotations on the wrong abilities. So, if I go full on one tree with perks from other trees, I'm sticking to it. Sitting on my Sniper now, actually, and looking over the trees, I'm pretty torn between Marksmanship and Engineering. Lethality actually doesn't draw my eye nearly as much, and I wonder if it's more an Operative spec (like Madness is Sorc/Sin but more Sorc). I like the idea of Calculated Pursuit, as well as the minor elemental damage boosts with Electrified Railgun and the Cluster Bombs, but at the same time there's Zeroing Shots, which is really nice as I tend to open with Ambush, Leg Shot, Snipe, Snipe, Explosive Probe, Ambush (if the sucker isn't dead by then). I'm not worried about Sector Ranger for the extra cover pulse distance-- if they're close enough to hit me, they're close enough for me to stab and then blow cover pulse (at which point I would use the Stroke of Genius to get a snap shot at them before they break stun/stun wears off). Entrench has already been pretty useful in PvE (forget to trigger it in PvP and get battered around), usually when I'm facetanking a boss with a pull so the bonuses in Marksmanship would help with that. It's a tossup, in the end, I believe. Explosives and burst damage vs high initial burst and decent sustained (am I reading the skills right, anyway?) damage. Each does have an advantage to it. What I don't want is an easy route through until when rotation really begins to count. Especially when rotation can mean a big difference between survival and destruction in PvE, whether flashpoint, strong mobs, or operation.