If I'm sage healing CZ Labs Droid and the tank or DPS won't move out of the pool, I'll pull them. DPS are fine dropping threat. The tank knows how to taunt to regain aggro if they lose it (if they don't, we have bigger problems anyway). And I want people out of the pool, where they will be taking avoidable damage AND ignoring the droids that are probably chewing on me every other electro field phase. I'm not healing through droids plus pool damage if I can help it. Smart players get out of bad. Dumb players get pulled. Dumber players are left to die if they keep doing it. I don't just yank tanks away from the boss they are tanking, but tanks being there during that stage is pretty much pointless. Get out and go help with the droids, they're probably chewing up the healer, and without the healer, you won't be sitting in the electric pool for long either.

You poor soul. I just gave that link to my husband with the comment "this guy decided to record Station Guardian One in KDY during DvL". The moment the Sage walks in and starts enthusiastically whacking at SGO with his saber, I got an indignant "what is that Sage DOING?!" in response. SGO is annoying on the best of days, that fight leaves me dizzy as a dps (and I'm the idiot who ran it once as Ruffian, never again). What the three of you had to slog through... no.

This Guard thing reminds me of a few months ago, running tactical Assault on Tython. Two DPS (a guildie and I), a tank, a healer. A trinity! I trust the other DPS not to be an idiot! This will go well, right? Ahahahaha that's adorable. First off, the healer says that they are used to PvP mostly, but that they are an amazing healer and oh by the way they are used to being blamed if/when things go wrong but seriously they are one of the best PvP healers on the server you guys no they are the BEST LOOK AT ME. Whatever, cupcake. It's a tactical, we know what we're doing, we don't particularly care about your super leet skills at this game. Things go relatively well until the consoles before the second boss. My guildie is constantly ripping aggro off the tank, so while waiting for people to catch up before a console, we ask for a guard on him. Tank refuses. Why? Tank: "You're a DPS, if I guard you you'll redirect too much damage to me. I'll guard the healer. I main a healer and when I heal I expect the tank to guard me." (Oh, you're one of those snowflakes.) DPS: "Uhm... that's not how guard works. The damage redirection is just for PvP, read the tooltip." Healer: "You don't need to guard me, I'll be fine." Tank: "I'm reading it RIGHT NOW and I mostly PvE and I know how it works!" Group: "No... it really doesn't work like that, damage won't be redirected to you." Tank: "Fine." *drops group* Group: "..." Well then. We bring in another guildie on a DPS. This is when the game decides to be weird. We had cleared the Flesh Raider ambush at the top of the pass, but it decided to trigger again for guildie2. There's a lot of pained yelping over TS, we run to the rescue, clear it, start heading back to consoles. This is when the healer goes into full Behold The Length of My Lightsaber!* mode. There's a lot of talking and touting their own horn and stopping, either between groups or mid-combat, to flaunt their abilities. It's not like they were any sort of spectacular healer, this wasn't occasional typing during a channel or a cast, they would actively stop what they were doing to tell us how good they are at healing. (Fun fact: guildie and guildie2 are regular PvPers and had never heard of this person before. "You can now say you have played with one of the best PvP healers on server" indeed.) We get to the second boss (finally!), and... the healer is gone. They're back on Coruscant. Group: "Where are you?" Healer: "The flashpoint is over." Group: "...no. No it's not." I don't quite recall if they came back or if we just decided that it wasn't worth the effort and the prattle and ran the rest with a companion. Either way, I have to wonder what was in the water that night. An illiterate tank and an egomaniac healer, in one flashpoint? And people say that deeps players are the weird ones... _______ * I did not actually mean the length of their lightsaber, let's be real here.

Let me just introduce you to this thread about weird people and weird behaviors that may result in losing aggro to a random dps or healer. Also, good luck to that level 40 Guardian gathering high threat on a group of mobs before I grab everyone's attention with Forcequake + TK Wave on my Sage in her raiding gear. You are assuming everyone 1) reads guides 2) has all their level 65 abilities before they join a flashpoint 3) has proper gear in all slots. Guard helps, especially if there is a disparity in gear, levels, and skill with your class. Accuracy won't do all the work for you. Guard gives tanks a buffer before they have to taunt in their rotation, and keeps some pressure off the party's HP. It's free damage reduction! I've met amazing tanks that don't need to guard people because they are awesome at what they are doing, but if you're forcing me to facetank on my squishy Sage when there's a perfectly good Defense Guardian in Soresu, with my aggro drop on cooldown (and Blockout hurriedly selected in-between pulls because nope not melting while the tank does nothing), I'm going to ask you to do us all a favor and guard me. I follow kill order, but TK Wave is going to make that gold dislike me more than a little and I'd really like to make the healer's job easier, mate.

Because they were talking about tactical, not solo (and four years ago, at that). The damage on solo mode is pathetically low.

Aww, that's adorable.

I just want to quote this to have a personal reminder of how full of yourself you sound when corrected on something you were dead wrong on. This guide? I quoted it on TS to my guildies before anyone even chipped in here, and had fun pointing out how wrong it was. In the meantime, thanks for your guide, Sion. I love running TK/Lightning and the detail your guide goes to has been super useful in learning the spec.

____ Oh right, it's you again. I should have known. Try and actually learn to play. I play Madness in PvE and I'm doing just fine. Yes, the Death Field radius was reduced and it made all Madness/Hatred players sad. It's still a reliable ability and the nerf was fine. Play an Operative DPS and you'll learn what it actually feels like to have lousy DOT-spread. Play any class other than sorc, and you'll know what it feels like to have to manage your resources intelligently. Or then again don't, because you'd complain even louder about things not being to your liking.

That's funny, because giving Legendary status to players who got Level 60 tokens is a bug, and BW is/was supposedly working to correct that. You should only have Legendary if you have actually played through all eight class stories. Now who's the noob?

Hey guys, I have a question! A tank is someone who starts every pull, attacks at range, and then lets the sorc and sin get all the aggro without taunting back, right?

As many people in this thread can tell you: many will listen, and we are often happy to explain something, especially if we are familiar with the class. Many others, however, deliberately choose NOT to listen. Example from today: Level 51 Assassin, in Lightning Charge, assuming Hatred because I didn't see Deception procs. Didn't know what Mind Trap was, didn't bother stealthing to enemies, was using Force Lightning on cooldown. When I succinctly asked them to not use Force Lightning but instead to get in there and melee the enemies (no matter the spec, you hit enough things with your saber as a Sin and something is bound to proc), their response was "I'll use whatever I like". Force Lightning should never be used by DPS Assassins. It doesn't proc any of your abilities and has miserable damage. It should only be used by Madness Sorcerers (and it breaks my heart whenever I see a Lightning Sorc use it on cooldown, too, because Lightning Bolt is far better when you can sit still for the cast). And yet, I have yet to meet an Assassin who uses Force Lightning who heeds that advice and stops using it. It just doesn't sink in. (I believe part of the problem is the animation looking pretty awesome. Shadows are more willing to drop TK Throw than Assassins are about Force Lightning.) I main a Deception Sin. I specifically asked a fellow Hatred player if there is any reason ever for someone to use Force Lightning as Hatred. There is none. And yet, they're everywhere, crippling their DPS because "they'll use whatever they like, thank you". So... forgive us if we aren't always patient or willing to walk someone through baby steps on flashpoints or operations. The guides are out there. Some are outdated. But through careful reading of your own abilities, you hardly need a third-party site to tell you what to use or not on your advanced class and specialization. You may not be playing optimally, but that segment you quoted from the first post in this thread? Almost all of that could be solved if the player had bothered to read their abilities and learn their class.

Your problem starts here. Operation tokens/Operation enhancement drops have high power and high tertiary stats (crit/alacrity/accuracy). Why/How would you sacrifice power to get higher tertiary stats when the best gear in the game has them both high is beyond me.

I've facetanked just about anything on tacticals with the exception of Blood Hunt, and I don't stack defense. I run a Deception Sin and a TK Sage, both with light armor. Next!

If you're a DPS/healer in PvE content and you have defense... you're crippling the entire group. Those DPS checks you're not making? Your 10% defense won't save you when bosses enrage due to you not having enough DPS. Good DPS know when to use defensive cooldowns and when to kite stuff back to tank to be taunted off. You don't need defense to not get chewed up by standards and silvers, you just need to know your class and what you can handle. My TK Sage would never ever stack defense. And she's a little machine of chewing down adds who can also pull some decent numbers; I've facetanked my share of stuff (Ortuno, CZ bosses, all those adds the tanks won't taunt off me...). Force Armor, Force Mend, Cloud Mind, Rejuvenate are staples in anything I run, because I know I'm going to take damage... but that's no excuse to take the Serenity road and chew them down sloooowly. No thank you. Burst needs to BURST and use DCDs where necessary.

Props for the Talos reference, but well-geared Mercs/Commandos can easily skank tank most tacticals. Pop your defensive cooldowns when you rip aggro and/or there's no tank in the group. It does help to be in rating 208+ gear, obviously, which means you'll do a lot better once you ding that final level. My Gunnery Commando (Arsenal Merc) has done her fair share of tanking tactical pugs. CCs, stuns, knockbacks, knockdowns, defensive cooldowns--learn them, use them, love them, because if you run flashpoints, you're going to be facetanking with that merc quite a bit. And if you value your life, be careful where you aim that Death From Above... have fun pulling an entire group of silvers and golds intent on murdering YOU in particular.