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.

Two scoundrels with their procs all lined up and timed right can take down two snipers. Pop your sneak, get in around them before they can blow cover pulse and shoot you out of stealth, and by level 40 or so, you've got Shoot First, Back Blast, Dirty Kick, Leg Shot, Blaster Whip, and as a Dirty Fighting Scoundrel, that's a good chunk of damage right there. And for most of it, you've got a surprised, then stunned sniper. Now, if you're talking about going up against Marauders, that's something entirely different. Scoundrels are ideal against ranged classes with little melee mitigation. Sages/sorcs will be difficult, depending on their spec, but not impossible to beat.

Okay, so, most of the time, taking either Marksmanship or Lethality with Engineering perks seems to be working the best for most, yeah? I kind of say hybrid when I put more than three or so points into other trees (for example, I'd point my Sorc as being non hybridized as she's full Madness with all of two points in Lightning and two (since the last patch)? I think, in Corruption for one of the minor boosts there). And part of that phrasing may have been because I've got eleven points in Engineering and five in Marksmanship right now, which, for all intents and purposes at that level, may well be a hybrid build. Basically, my idea was to see if I could use the bare minimum points in Engineering, tagging the high damage/explosive things that also serve as partial cc/slows, and gaining some of the defensive benefits of Marksmanship. I didn't want to push my leveling dividing points, since I know if it's not done right, it leads to decreased DPS and way less efficiency (coughs at the hybridized mess of Lightning/Madness/Corruption I'd tried before). Figured I'd ask the community with more sniper experience than I as far as feasibility and capabilities.

I've got a mid 20s level Sniper that I'm currently trying to eke out skill points on. Originally, I was going to put her into Engineering all the way, mostly because of dots and explosives (dots are things I enjoy, having a fully Madness specced Sorc and an up and coming dot heavy Sentinel), but there are things in the Marksmanship tree I kind of like too. Is it at all feasible to hybridize the two trees so I get the low level advantages of Marksmanship (cover screen, lower leg shot cd, ambush bonuses) and still manage to reach the top of the Engineering tree? I've found through leveling several alts through to mid to near endgame (still working on them) that if a spec is fairly viable for pvp, it's also pretty viable for pve content, given that it's meant to keep enemies either away, or to burst them down quickly. Since I pvp for fun/xp boost when underleveled, it also means I need my pve spec to be viable to be useful in whatever team I get thrown into. I'm not worried about how hard a rotation will be, nor energy management, as that I can figure out, bit by bit as abilities hit the quickbars.

Ah, SM Maelstrom Prison, where do I even begin... I'd rolled onto my heal-sage for a bit (I'd neglected her for too long, so it took a bit to get back into the swing of things, but). Queue up for experience before heading to the next planet, figure it can't hurt. Queue pops, Shadow DPS, Shadow Tank, 'Slinger DPS. One of the Shadows takes a while to zone in, but she'd warned us, so I wasn't too upset about that. I get guard; tank's habit, apparently. My Maelstrom luck has been inordinately bad, so I don't click it off, intending to see how the first pulls go. First few packs of trash go okay-- I can't help but to notice the tank's using her 'bangout' cloak rather than regular stealth, which as a healer, pisses me off no end. I like to bubble and HoT tanks right before a pull for the armor increase, and the periodic heals going to waste (even if they do when they're at full too) is amazingly irritating. She's not holding aggro on the majority of the mobs, and neither DPS are managing to pull all the mobs' aggro, so that means I have to resort to smashing standard enemies with rocks to the head, or in the case with the gold Marauder pull, kiting one of them around the room until the tank finally taunts off (or she may have just hit him hard enough, I was just trying to stay alive with instant heals so it wasn't a trash wipe). Second thing I notice-- DPS Shadow is in tank stance. I say nothing, considering the DPS Shadow's been yanking aggro off the tank only if the tank is managing to eat more damage than I can bubble and heal out. We hit mobs with silvers and golds, still basic Maelstrom trash pulls, and what do you know-- Slinger yanks aggro. Again, and again. Finally, before the cybernetic boss, I tell the DPS Shadow to slap guard on the Slinger since she was still in tanking stance. Tank instead slaps guard on Slinger (thank the Force no one griped about the whole 'healer needs guard' stuff). Hey, I figure the Slinger's guarded, she doesn't have to facetank the trash mobs. Noope. Tank Shadow can't hold aggro on the first boss. DPS Shadow bangs out at about four percent health while I was busy keeping the tank Shadow up. Glad she did, since the boss decides to whack me a good one while I'm channeling, and down I go. Tank Shadow goes next, DPS flies back in, fully healed, and between her and the Slinger (who dies with literally 300 left on the boss), he goes down. Rezzes all around, and we continue. Even with a guard, the Slinger is yanking aggro like nobodies business, which tells me that neither tanks are rotating properly for their level. Ah well, bubble, HoT, big heal. Rinse, repeat. Trash mobs again, not much problem, just slow, since I think we got two tanks for the price of one at that point. They're tanking and off tanking, and once I get the hang of when one decides to taunt off, we don't wipe again until Kilran, and even then, we wipe in a wave, so the fight never resets. Not a bad group, just... nerve-wracking. Nobody earned a ignore list spot, so I'd say it was a-- less than typical run but better than disastrous.

The problem is, those adds will tunnelvision on whoever's generating aggro on them as they spawn. Which, usually is the healer, given that the heals are mass-mob threat generation, even at half. Which means if the healer is paying attention, a good kite through the flames should toast them. Should. Although, if you've a sniper/slinger in your group, they're also likely to yank the aggro and get themselves mobbed.

Okay, note to self: no more KDY on my scoundrel. Just isn't worth facetanking every last boss. Both groups today were decent, but the class with tank capabilities basically just let the class that isn't tank worthy whatsoever take all the aggro. But, hey, they were quick on the kolto stations so no one died. Well, no one but the Guardian who didn't seem to know his health regen and charged into battles with a tiny fraction of health left. Queued for the two SM Czerka missions because I can't quite solo them yet for the weekly. Manage to yank aggro from two Maras and a Jugger a couple of times, on a Madness Sorc, no less. Thankfully, the Jugger seemed on top of things even as a DPS, and would taunt the boss right back off of me, at which point the threat dump was a very shiny button for me. Today's bout of flashpoints went amazingly smooth, all in all.

Hm. The bosses were actually really easy to kick around. First guy was as jumpy as a Geonosian leaf-hopper, but he didn't deal very much damage (or my sister kept the heals on us fast enough that I didn't notice anyone drop below three quarters). Boss number two got beat to shreds by a few kicks here and there while we were making sure he didn't get his beam charged up. Boss number three was just too much running-- hiding behind his lackeys isn't very Sithly. Leaping across the chasm to finish him off is too satisfying, though. On an unrelated note, just to bring you a dose of good strangeness, and even though it's not flashpoint-y: 4v4 warzone. We get the typical trinity; myself as tank, sister heals, and two random dps. Our enemy team comprises of a merc, two higher level maras, and a sorc. We wipe horribly on the first round (this is due to my shielding my sister and underestimating the amount of damage they poured on her). Second round, I slap my guard on the operative, knowing my sister's going to die before doing a single thing because of the sheer dps they focus on her. 'Course, after the healer's down, they stop coordinating. Second round, our dps sorc sacrifices himself first, letting the operative and myself flank them. We wipe out the merc, sister goes down, we wipe out a marauder and a half, I go down, operative proceeds to shiv the daylights out of the last mara. I lost track of the last sorc; he must have vaporized sometime during that. The next round goes similarly, except only my sister fell and our enemies just got more disorganized. Our dps sorc was even able to off-heal me from two or three percent to about full while I'm swatting around the remaining two maras with the help of the operative. It was a pvp match I really wasn't expecting. It was amazing, actually, pulling that kind of victory out of such a dismal start.

Is there something buggy about the first two pulls in Red Reaper imp-side? I wasn't able to spot any of the first two pulls, leaving the tank to rely on target of target to find any of them. Meanwhile, we have a healsorc who'd queued for dps toss out a comment along the lines of 'taunt, you dimwit'. Let me just waste my aoe taunt without knowing what I'm going to catch, let alone if I'm catching anything, why don't I? We wipe on those pulls, naturally, but the healing dps ditches (whispering my sister, who was healing and had queued for heals with a 'taking the nope train, have fun') afterwards and we get a replacement just before the first boss. Now, our replacement was a Jugger who was most definitely specced into tanking (I could hear him using bash and I had to swap guard from the 'sin to him), but we didn't wipe at all. I'm really not sure what it is with those first two pulls, though-- Ah! Also, kudos to the sin for not only putting up with all that crap, but being an amazing stealthstunner and general 'pain-in-our-enemy's-backside'.

Something tells me that jinxed it. Nah, probably just the Hawk's Pubs. Needed to kick my scoundrel up a level or two before dragging her through Quesh, so naturally, I queue up for KDY for a good chunk of XP. First round goes great, with the higher level tank consistently wiping (he may have been in a damage tree with tank gear and tank stance-- didn't feel like asking), but he was dropping like a fly in mobs. The 'Slinger would pull groups randomly, and somehow, we made it through Lord Modo without a group wipe... just the poor Guardian dying about three times to finish off the Sith. Second round... not so well. We get Modo again for the end boss, and one of the DPS squalls into the chat 'Healer heal!'. Muttering to myself, I ignore his yammerings and the tank pulls. Surprise surprise, we make it through without anyone dying that second round, even though the second dps was probably cursing to himself about the DPS SCOUNDREL not healing. Personally, I think a lot of the issues are with lowbies never learning to play their classes/specs, but when people like that make it to endgame and they're too stubborn to listen to help, they pretty much deserve whatever repair bills they accrue, and whatever ignores they end up on.

I've noticed that lately with KDY. Sometimes people throw a fit, othertimes they ditch after a single wipe, or even if one person dies. Force forbid if the tank (assuming one phased in and you're not commando-tanking or scoundrel-tanking) died because of all the aggro focused on them while dps is burning adds from someone's fumbled knockback. But it's, for the most part, just KDY. I dunno-- maybe some people are just tired of dealing with the oddballs running it?