yeah you are right

try it on a dummy; but to explain further, the aoe outer edges are at 30m, so for 8m FiB distance from sage to center of target is 22m (30 - 8); but at 5m dist of sage to center of target is 30 -5 =25; therefore additional 3m QED

Just looking through my FP achievements and I cant find anything on LI normal mode, was this taken out of game? I have almost max achieves on HM but nthg on normal. I know the quest has the option for what I can only assume is the old FP style playthrough, serious dffficulty imagining this on a tact setup. And while we are on the subject, collicoid war games, am guessing this one doesnt exist anymore? kinda liked the mechanics for it . though somehow am at 100% achieves for it. Is the only solution to form a walk-in group to complete these FPs on normal mode?

Now if we can just nerf those damned skank tanks (yes, you bloody juggs I mean you esp), PVP might become interesting again

This might come as a surprise, but am actually glad the radius got reduced, as this (given my play style) actually increases the range of our single target DPS. I like to double click FiB/DF while attacking a single target, this means that if the target is more than 22M away I have to get closer to do this, but given our reduced radius, this shaves off 3M and makes it possible to cast at a 25M range.

this is unfortunately very true, takes forever (in most cases literally ) to get and successfully complete a HM FP. Harb has like 3x our population at most times and they actually wanna do stuff. however in defense of BC, it was originally an RP server and hence not much of a surprise that most players just hang out in the cantina (especially on pub side) and dont bother queuing for anything more than tacticals and sometimes pvp.

@Lodinn: First off let me say I will like to learn the rotation/class you use to pull 7k single target dps, am always seeking to improve and that looks like some real valuable intel . Moving on to other things, what I find interesting in your post was that you could mention specific instances when dps fails becomes an issue and yes I completely agree with you. But when it comes to tanks and healers you were more general in your assessment, if nothing else this seems to suggest that aside from a few HM FPs (especially BH and LI) and ignoring bonus bosses, hitting the enrage timer isn't that common? At any rate, I believe people are more encouraged to seek help if the situation doesn't seems completely hopeless. If for example we fail to kill a bonus boss, but moved on to finish the FP, odds are I would be more encouraged to figure out how to better improve my dps as opposed to we all called it quits at the bonus boss because someone typed "l2p" and quit the group. I stated at some point that its safer to think 'Naruto' than 'Sasuke'; to further clarify the analogy Naruto is kinda slow and learns only by getting his *** repeatedly handed to him, in swtor terms that means he wont read any guides, jumps in without thinking and more often than not requires bailing out, but goes on to become a force to be reckoned with in the shinobi world. A few hints could drastically alter how a person plays, even mentioning what a proc looks like and how hard it can crit might be enuf to send the fellow to dulfy. I remember specifically a sage healer at lvl 65 fully specced with 216 gear who didnt know he had a "roaming mend". I had to let him test it on a few avoidable trash mobs just so he can get a feel for it.

Guess the simplest response is to say that am addressing the over 700 pages on this thread:http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=633655 I think that is significant enough to warrant some sort of solution.

@Feldraeth, Not sure if u have tried these SM FPs with the jezus droid, but they are as far from Tacticals as tacticals are from NiM ops, set your companion to heal and dying should seriously unlock a legacy wide achievement (yes, it is that difficult). If any of these posts have shown anything it is that a lot of new players dont know a lot about their skills and rotation or even boss mechanics. Frankly I would have moved to have that healer removed a while back (dont really need the heals for a tactical), but your post kinda supports what am trying to point out, the elites need to be in the pivotal roles. If you were tanking that, odds are the newbs dps would have learnt a thing or two from your actions, the arrogance/ignorance demonstrated by the healer is the reason for this thread. In cademimu, its no surprise that the rest of the team followed the healer rather than your dps.

Learning a lot of times is about an enabling environment, all am proposing is that we help create that environment as much as possible. There will of course be the occasional *** wipe, and the really smart ones; but to put every noob in either category seems like a great injustice to the average player. If it has gotten to the point that a noob now asks if we are going to kick, then clearly a highly negative image has already been formed. To balance the scale will require some measure of sacrifice, and yes it might cost u a few repair bills. Let me further buttress this point by recounting a tactical FP with 2 noobs and another level 65; the first whisper I got was from the fellow level 65 who wanted us to kick the noobs because they don't know the fight. That unfortunately wasn't an isolated case, and herein lies the problem.

I dont have any statistics to back this up but am fairly certain most noobs will be more comfortable trying out new stuff as dps, I cant recall how many times I have read in group chat that the tank should try the FP as a dps first b4 attempting to tank it. Tanks generally have somewhat more complicated roles to understand than dps. Even considering the FP you mentioned, the tank still has to avoid all those aoes as well as keep boss and those adds taunted. Also, when looking for mission objectives, most of us will blindly follow a tank than a dps. I can keep going but I think these will suffice as to why the tank and/or heals should be the experienced/elite player.

First off we are basing this discussion on people who are noobs, in basic, that means they dont know mechanics, dont know what they are supposed to do, the friends you speak of do not exist for most players. I think in my original post I stated that the 'go learn how to play' approach isnt working. Kinda easy to figure out, where are they supposed to learn? Fact is tacticals are the training ground for group content, if you want a clean fast run, feel free to group up with those friends and give the noob a fighting chance. Of course am not proposing allowing for repeated stupid mistakes, sometimes pushing mobs together allows for easier aggro control, sometimes you might end up aggroing 2 diff groups. Let it happen if its an understandable mistake, and like I said, you cannot realistically expect too much from a noob who is still testing the waters. which by the way is the rather large group that this thread is trying to help.

more often than not if I am healing I would suggest than the tank respec to dps (works better if one of the noobs have some sort of tanky toon) if not then the tank/dps can always single taunt and I will try to over heal. If however the healer sucks then I think you might have to give everyone cookies for effort and call it a day.

Ok I will use myself as an example, I basically started playing a few months b4 the companion nerf. Let me state here that I never bothered with any guide during my leveling, and I learnt basically by changing mods after getting my *** handed to me and reading the item description on my skills and the mods.(this is ofc pre god-healer companions). After visiting the trainer and finding some new skill, I always wanted to try it out, cant remember how many times I have pushed mobs off on KDY to get even more of them and very often my group pissed since we would wipe at that point. Or using grp taunt as a dps shadow cause I wanted to see how it works or trying to mind maze droids . . . that list is endless. The point is most people learn from experience (esp bad ones), and that has been denied the new god-healer generation. Getting to level 65 in one week doesnt give you much chance to die and learn from it; you can stand in stupid and be fine, spam basic attacks and kill silver mobs, . . etc. There is little or no reason why I will bother reading a guide if am apparently fine without it. Rotations and gearing guides become an issue only in group content, and this is the void am asking the 'elite community' to fill. If you consider this pointless then we might as well stick to single player story mode only because an average noob player has zero motivation to bother with anything but button spam during his leveling experience. Think Naruto, not Sasuke

Given the current skill level of new players these days, I believe its up to the elites to step up and fill a very gaping void. everyone has some sob story of noobs making you wanna punch something. However I think we need a different approach instead of the "go learn how to play" response. Am making this post partly bcos a lvl 65 just assured me that the HM FP (red reaper) we just ran was the first ever he had completed since he started playing and I kinda felt sorry for him. Let me state here that I am strongly against kicking players who dont understand a fight since it ultimately doesnt solve anything, either they find end game content too hard and quit playing or get angry and stick to only the story (I wont be surprised if all those against raiders are players that have been kicked once too often from group contents; I once met a real pitiful case during a tact FP, a lowbie was asking if we want to kick him). To put it simply, elites have to bear the burden, by this I mean get on your tank or healer and let ur dps toon gather dust for awhile. most group content can be controlled to an extent by these 2 roles and its very rare that if these 2 roles are properly played the HM FP would fail. Its getting tiring having to explain to tanks that they are in the wrong stance, or to healers that they dont need or can even use shield and absorb mods or worse that off heals wont cut it, more often than not, even a badly geared dps can be carried somewhat even if you have to skip the bonus boss. (as a tank u might be forced to switch some tanky gear for dps just to help the group) These roles are considered somewhat authoritative (especially the tank; i.e. 'war leader') and playing them i believe very strongly would lead to more frequent pops as well as smoother runs on HM FPs as well as preparing noobs for HM/NiM ops. Thanks PS: I play only on the BC server and if this doesnt apply to your server then I sincerely apologize for wasting your time.