Do it. I am in general ok with the concept of a tactical flashpoint, but they're really really easy. They can all be done by 2 people in full 168's. What is dissapointing about this, is many of the fights have interesting mechanics (the droid mines/explosions,what's his name's sabre reflect and interrogation probes, the datacron things on tython) that are mostly made irrelivant by how low the enemies damage is, a decently geared healer can simply heal through it, which you can't do much about without nonstandard teams incapable of completing it. The solution, in case nobody else has posted it, would be to make hard mode versions and add them to the hm 55 group finder que. I would be really excited to play assualt on tython and korriban incurssion with difficulty akin to or higher than czerka core. In fact with SM operations being boilstered, i'd and so 162 and 168 gear being much easier to get without using hm 55's as a stepping stone, I'd prefer to see them be tougher than cz and with rewards that reflect the effort it takes (unassembled arkanian stuff, or random 168s or useful mats or something)

dude, they're either already in game or in the next cartel packs. don't remember which.

Am I alive? Is the dps alive? (assuming they didn't do something stupid and die to mechanics) If the answer to both of those is yes, then do whatever so long as those things stay that way. I'll tell you when i can afford to take care of myself for a bit to buy you time to heal other people, and i expect you to tell me if that's what you need because, let's be honest, tanks that aren't vanguards can totally layer self healing with defensive cooldowns to buy several seconds if need be.

Togruta would be cool, they already have the model, wouldn't evenhave to do much. I wouldn't expect anything they'd have to mess with move animations to make work like they would selkath. Zeltron and voss would be cool too.

Nightmare nefra 17k per hit to my guardian in about half 180 and half 168, and nefra hits like a truck to make up for his relatively simple mechanics. So yeah, 37 k hp sounds bout right.

Dude, sin tank in full 180 raid gear. 21% defense, 53% shield, 50% absorb, 40% armor. The expected dr of that is over 85%. 85, not counting the 4% dr proc that they should be maintaining. As it is, endurance is mostly a filler stat to buy healers time so long as you can survive 2 or 3 hits from the boss, and it is arguable a waste if your healers are good at their jobs because you'll never get low enough for the extra end to matter. Threat gen is the real issue, and for the most part unless you're undergeared of screwing up your rotation, it's not really an issue after like the first 45 seconds or so of the fight because after that point taunts give MASSIVE boosts to threat that set you way above the dps. Tank swaps are also nevessayr for many of the fights, so the constant taunt use sets the tanks even further up. I would like to see a slight buff to tank guardian threat gen or damage, but more end is not what any of my tanks need.

I'm going to point out that you're a gunslinger. 45 second dodge, 16 second shied probe, innume to interrupts and some pulls as well, balistic dampeners putting up shields for you, self healing, 2 stunns, a droid cc, a pushback. and 20% ranged defense. Gunslinger can successfully off tank in hm operaitons if the healers are good and things go south, i've been there. Besides, that wouldn't really fix much. Different classes reach different levels of effectiveness at different levels. Snipers and dot sages get really powerful fairly early (25 ish) where maruaders don't really get good untill 45 and pyro commando's get awesome at around 30. If there isn't a tank, someone is going to draw more aggro for some reason or another and be, in effect, the tank. It's usually what happens to my dot sage, they're really powerful from 25-44 and (used to) taper off at 45 because sever force wasn't enough, so between the self healing and the powerful abilities (mind crush and force in balance) my sage is pretty much always the tank unless I'm dealing with actual tanks or people at level 45+, even when i was at level 25. That's just how it works out.

Yeah, intentionally gimping players by not demanding they know how to work within their role and with the other roles, isn't what i would call a good move. Every "tactical" in game can be 2manned by people in 162 gear. Admittedly you do actually have to know what you'e doing to manage it, but 4 people would/do not. The actual problem with the wait times is that there are several times as many dps as tanks and healers combined if my experience is anything to go by, so que times are bound to take a while. EA knows this, hence the sm operations being moved to 16 man groups. There wern't enough tanks to go around. When tanks are in group, people have a nasty habit of blaming every failure on the tank (wven when it was them who wasn't losing th ebosses lazer eyes or killrans snipes or standing in bad like an idiot) so there is less incentive to que in the first place. Want to fix it? Make more tanks or incentivise the tank playstyle somehow. Wrecking the difficulty curve is not the answer

did you buy kingpin chips? That would be a fantastic way to go through a **** ton of money and get like nothing. Buy smugglers chips, win kingpin chips, get the feeling lucky buff (also with smugglers chips) and then spin the kingpin. I got like 50 of the stupid things. I have multiples of items the holo slot machine and pat just to not have the certificates in my inventory

Man speaks sense, that was actually my opinion when i found out about the sm ops boilster, and it's a huge and obvious thing if you spend much time in kuat (at least for me) pyro's in str gear and tank stance is way more common that you might expect/it should be. That crap doesn't fly anywhere that isn't kuat/pvp and while the sm boilster isn't quite so extreme because knowing mechanics is necessary, it's not terribly important for most flashpoints so knowing the basics of you class and how to gear is all you need. Oricon gives out 156's, which suck but they'll get you through any hard mode FP that isn't czerka, even if your whole group is full 156's, and bosses drop purple 162 gear that will be good enough t o get you into story mode 55 raids provided it isn't dread anything. Oricon and cz dailies give basic coms, hard mode 55's give elite and the group finder daily gives ultimate. Given a week of dedication you can have a workable gear set for any and every flashpoint and story mode raid so you can get to learning mechanics/how to work with your raid group. It was easy enough as is. I'm not really happy about boilster in sm raids for the reasons that have already been mentioned, given 1 or 2 weeks you should be prefectly capable of putting together a set that would have gotten you through any of the sm anyways, but putting it in flashpoints would be over the top. Not having any pressure to actually learn your class untill hard mode raids isn't what I would call a healthy environment for newer players.

No, the soulution would be to crank up the difficult some so that a dedicated tank is required and fake tanks won't succeed. The game is easy enough, making it easier doesn't fix anything.

Only true to an extent. I just got the rancor like 2 hours ago and spend a grand total of 1.8 mil. It's blind luck, but stastically average (if dulfy has their calcualtions right) 2.3 mil or so is the average cost of getting the rancor, which means you should probably have everything else by then and I have absolutely no reason to go back now that I do. I got., Every item in the event in like 2 days, most of which wasn't spent doing the event.

It is/was a good idea. I really like the idea, but it's 2 months long, and i have literallly every item short of the rancor after about 6 hours. I had some ideas to keep it fresh. 1. Leave the casino/gambling in after the event. At the events end, remove the certificate vendors (and put them back if and when you do another event. 2. Cycle the rewards. If you can only win them in jackpot drops, you can cycle what drops from the jackpots and at what rates. That would both serve to keep people coming there and keep them excited to do so. New vanity items are always on the top of people's wishlists (it would also continue to drain credits from the in game econimy, which is a goal you have expressed) As an alternate suggestion, because it's so easy to get everything in a relatively short amount of time fairly cheaply (6 bind on legacy weapons, 2 mouns, 1 heal item, 1 pet and a bind on legacy armor set for 1.6 mil is a steal and it only takes 15 ish runs of oricon to get that much, assuming you do no other dailies and don't craft and only have 1 55, that's 2 weeks, I have 4 55's so it's like 3 days) would be to cycle the rewards during any subsequent event week/months in the future, if you don't already intend to and don't like the idea of keeping it in fairly permanently, to keep people motivated to come back each week and get new stuff. I'm not going to lie, once i have the rancor (if the rng gods are kind that will be within the week) I won't have any reason to go back and do any more of the 2 month long event, which is kinda sad.

Dude was provably wrong. Yoda hurls a hover platform the senators use at palpatine, Jedi frequently use force throws against both droids and people in the movies, it's actual cannon that jedi can see into the future to boost reaction times, and when it's used in sabre duels it's most certainly being used to attack, the sabre throw is also using the force to attack and is present in the movies. It's a philosophical thing, not a litteral thing. How did that guy get to be a rep? fire him, he hasn't done his research, so i don't really trust him to make suggestions that determine the fate of my sage.

1 word. mitigation. They don't heal as fast as ops or mercs no, but the bubble absorbing damage and also increasing my guardian tanks armor by 10% means i'd much rather have a sorc healer than anything else in pvp, especially as they can do it to eveyone and not just me.

yes. you didn't actually address the point. have you seen how fast ops or sins go down if they don't get to open with their stealth crap and combat stealth is on cooldown? They might do a bunch of damage before they go out, but pretty much everybody should be able to handle 1 in that type of situation, especially if it's a sin (op dps is nuts atm.) That's how stealthers always work, in everything. They murder dps and healers because dps and healers don't have the passive damage resistance to handle the super high initial burst, they have problems with tanks or anyone good at breaking their stealth with a scan or aoes because it kills that burst and now their dps suffers horrendously (seriously, not getting to open with a 15k 100% armor pen shoot first is a huge loss for that op)

Your're a tank. Your job isn't to put up numbers on the scoreboard. Protection only counts guards and taunts, not stuns, not your aoe accuracy debuff, not that you pulled (literrally) someone of the healer or dps who were in trouble. In my experience as a vanguard tank in pvp, 2-400k damage is around normal assuming you don't just get stuck alone at a node all game, and protection should usually be a good 200-300k as well if you use your taunts on cd and switch your guard to whoever they're focusing at the time, but the numbers really only tell half the story. I've seen people with 700k damage at teh end of the match and like 3 kills because they just spammed at the cammando with 2 healers on him the whole match.

You said don't say it, but the far left tree is freaking balls in pvp. it takes you 24 seconds of uninterrupted combat to build to full effectiveness, and then if you can't get off an annahilate within 9 seconds you lose all your stacks and have to start over, and annahilate does less dps than carnage even when it's at peak effectiveness. I can't tell you how to pvp on a mara in general, i don't do it much on my mara, but seriously, be carnage or smash for pvp.

I already have. I've seen it as high as 1900 per tick but only sub 55 while boilstered.

Every time i see anyone ***** about gankers, it's dps classes. guess, what? the sole function of gankers is to murder dps and healers. They are going to kill you in like 2 or 3 hits, if they didn't, they'd be completely useless because they have crap for survivability, even as far as dps goes. It's called type order loss. When my vanguard or guardian tank gets ganked (assuming it's a 1v1) know what happens? I laugh at them, pop defensive cooldowns and then kill them in a battle of attrition where i have a serious advantage by way of an 85% damage reduction all told (45-50 from armor, 20 from defense and 20 from shield/absorb, before my defensive cooldowns are taken into account mind you)

it's not heal to full though, it's actually less than half their hp, and unless people are tagging them with weak crap (like dots) they should be going through a lot more hp than focused defense heals (roughly 1600 per trigger at 55.) Powerful, yes, buy by no means invincibility, sorcs and commando's and vanguards are all capable of replicating the effects with auto crit and instant cast heals, and vauguards can just use adrenalin rush and reactive shield for like 9 seconds of outright refusal to die, even against multiple targets

Oh dear god there is so much misinformation in this thread it's absurd. even when not talking about balance. k, for 1, they cannot guard outside soresu, and not being in shien like they're supposed to be nerfs their dps because it kills major abilities. Their dps hasn't changed since 2.4 or earlier, and it's lower than more than half of the advanced specs. they are pretty much the lowest, just above the sorc, before suckland which is populated by dot sins and power pyros. Focused defense restores x hp per stack, there are 10 stacks.on my 38 k guardian it's about 1600 per stack, 16000 is les than half my hp, powerful to be sure. what people are missing is that they use enure at the same time, which to use the focused defense regen to offset the health loss they're taking in 10 seconds, and probably also using warding call to reduce the damage they take so the healing is more potent. commando's and sorcs can pull the same type of thing by stunning or puching people back/losing and then casting heals, in place, and dps versions of both are quite capable of pulllng 6 or 700k dps in a war zone while also having greater than 100k healing. The problem there is that there isn't a limit on the nuber of times per second this can happen (so dot's almost immediately trigger all 10) and that they last 30 seconds. They're already being brought down to 10 in 2.8, so stunning/kiting them to wait it out will work, though i wouldn't be opposed to the old 1 per second limit. There is also the hilariously overlooked matter of sabre reflect (combined with stupid people). I don't know the reflected damage cap, but it's high enough (over 5k) that attacking into it is very bad. People seem to miss my sabre reflect on my guardian tank all the time, so all those super powerful attacks, especially if they're multi hit like series of shots and cull and full auto, but also things like shoot first and backblast, that have a tendancy to deal 10k+ damage over the duration go thorugh 1/3rd or better of my opponents health for me. The correct responses to sabre reflect damage wise are aoe's, melee and dots, which it doesn't reflect (though it will slap you with the initial attack damage if the dot has one) or stunning them, it only lasts the 5 seconds so 1 nutkick or mind snap pretty much wastes it.

You can't guard outside soresu, and vigilance dps is crap in soresu, neither can you both guard and be guarded at the same time. Either you're not paying attention or din't know what you're doing/talking about. As far as i can find, they haven't even been buffed recently, they just nerfed the smash maruaders that were hilariouly op in warzones so suddenly people see that vigilance doesn't suck, and hasn't fo a bit. They were prettty much the same as far back as 2.4 that i can find evidence of. (ie parces.)

I have a cull sniper. corrosive dart, the weaker dot, hits for a 36% crit chance and a 25 % chance to tick twice, and with 0 expertise hits for 650 per tick on the warzone dummy, unbolterd, except, 61% of the time it ticks for 900 or 1200 damage.There is a second dot, that ticks for more and is stronger, with the same chances. They have a 39% chance to regen 1khp, a 36% chance to regen 600hp, and a 25% chance to regen 300 hp, not counting the possibility for the multiple tick hits to crit and damage over the healing, and it ignores armor. If they're lucky, they'll get half the healing, and even the full amount is less than half hp.. And there is mathmatical, stastical proof of the general inferority of vengance dps. Good yes, but not great. it's in the lower half of the damage advanced specs can do. if it's lowered, it's useless, both in pve and pvp.

Immediately eaten up, and didn't actually heal you, because the dots (of sorcs, and shadows, and snipers, and ops) all deal more damage per tic than that Not actually here for a complex balance debate, just pointing out that they're not op, their dps isnt great and they're no more survivable than snipers sins or ops, 2 of which deal as much or more damage. I have a guardian, people spam their crap into sabre reflect and kill themselves. And then *****, when they culled or master striked through 30%+ of their own hp.