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.

Operative "DPS". We eventually replaced this person and someone else who dropped and cleared Xeno with no trouble (that nicely bugged 16m HM, never even saw the rancor, it was smooth). Sometimes you can carry a couple of people... but sometimes they seem to make it worse than it would be if they weren't there at all.

Please send help.

I had such a smooth HM GF Cademimu tonight that I was stumped for a good 15 minutes afterwards. Near insta-pop, everyone from different guilds, all 65s, I believe. My Deception Sin, an Operative DPS handily using CCs and group stealth, an impeccable Sorc healer and a Jugg who guarded me the instant I zoned in and was on point throughout. Mechanics never needed to be mentioned (line of sighting without a word, the coordination was almost uncanny), and we even joked about typical PUG behavior/attitude: Healer, on Guard: "Sure, let the healer grab all the aggro...!" Ortol fight: "So, stand in the corner with the fire, right?" It was not entirely seamless and we wiped once on Ortol (Operative died to shackle that wasn't even in fire, shame on you BW), but it was absolutely evident that we everyone knew what they were doing and had good raid awareness. Recovery from stuff like failing to stealth past mobs was super good, and Cademimu tends to be an awful disaster on trash if that happens. Competence really shouldn't be a surprise in HM FPs, but it is, and it was a delight to be part of that group.

For that matter, I was dumb enough to join an GF TfB run by the same people. I'm a glutton for punishment. I was the only DPS who knew the op, the tanks (the same tanks from that EC) had broken English (understandable, I'm ESL too, but you should have some fluency in the server's language if you are leading a pugged raid) and explained super poorly--and I quote: "the first phase [of the Terror from Beyond fight] is simple, no need to explain"--then berated the DPS for failing to perform to their ridiculous, unspoken expectations. ("He was outside... I don't know why... stupid." "DPS1, why are you not on the tentacle?!! DPS2, don't stand there! Adds! Adds! ADDS!!!") After one of the DPS died outside of the Heirad/Ciphas/Kel'sara pull due to not even being told to stand inside the room pre-pull, he got an impressive lambasting from one of the tanks during and after that wipe (he was junk at calling stages timely, but boy did he save time for yelling at the dead guy who had said he was new), I decided to be a little more proactive; a couple of pulls before Operator IX, I offered to explain the fight, as my English was better than theirs and there's lots of mechanics that people need to take part in. One of them pointedly emoted "No" at me, then said "brb 3 minutes while you [i.e. me] explain" when we got to the consoles. Make up your mind already. I explained the fight because the deeps didn't deserve whatever messed-up explanation of Tron Wars: The Old Republic would eventually come forth, and we go in. I was DPSing a core, its shield came back up, and I snapped at the console DPS to keep channeling, because SURELY it couldn't be our ~super competent~ and ~knowledgeable~ tanks who were failing at their job, right? Nah, of course not. Never. Jamais. The console DPS was getting interrupted by adds who were attacking him. The DPS was literally doing NOTHING to the adds, just following the mechanic. A single attack from a tank would have been enough to peel the incoming adds before they got to the channeler. We wipe due to failed stages, and I call the tanks out; they need to protect channelers from adds. So I get threatened with a kick (by the group leader, their guildie, one of the healers). How dare I call them out on not doing their job--which they supposedly knew so well since they had "done this many times". I'm "really asking to leave". I told him to go right ahead, I don't take kindly to threats nor to raid leaders not doing their job. Silence. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The tanks' response was that one tank was on an add, another was on two, dropping other adds was understandable and not unexpected. Sure, accidents happen, I'm well aware I'm not perfect and I don't expect others to be either (much~) . BUT. Those two had been crowing about knowing the op and bashing the two DPS with least experience, to the point the deeps whispered me they had considered leaving. If you can't grab anything else, grab any mobs bee-lining for the guy handling the fight stage. But you know, blaming the DPS for being slow on (SHIELDED) cores was easier than admitting they don't know how to tank. Of course they were guarding healers at start. Again. Of course they were opening with taunt. Of course I lost Guard after Operator IX--presumably for being lippy, because the DPS who got it instead, while competent, was not ripping aggro before or after. Unguarded TK Sage with the highest DPS in the raid because I've finally learned a proper rotation? Oh man, what will I ever do~ (\o/) On that subject, their aggro management was so abysmal that pre-Operator IX, with Guard on me, post Cloud Mind, I ripped group aggro on a trash pull, popped Force Barrier when neither tank taunted after several seconds of agonized tiny Consular sounds, and all that aggro went straight to a healer. Yes, the other DPS could've done a better job. However: my threat couldn't possibly get any lower before I hit that sweet invincibility bubble, and the tanks were physically in the middle of the group that focused me/the healer, so I don't know what they were doing, just that it was not "attacking mobs less than 5 meters from them". I shudder to think what an Infiltration Shadow would do to their "tanking". After a wipe on the Terror, they decided to casually insult the raid in Spanish. Don't worry, just chatting in Spanish among ourselves, them dum-dum English speakers surely don't understand a word that is being spoken--otherwise they would understand the garbled fight summaries, jajaja. If there's something that run showed, it's that with a couple of rough explanations from me, the other DPS were competent and entirely capable of clearing SM content, no matter how much the tanks were trying to sabotage them and make them feel bad. Got out of that with the three DPS on my friends list and the three Spanish guildies on ignore. I'm done punishing myself with that guild.

The tanks were both new to the op and guildies to the Sent; when the experienced people convinced them not to guard the healers, they decided to guard the Sentinel instead... and got told not to, given that disaster of behavior and equipment combo.

Sadly, "being new to ops, pulling every mob in the area, laughing instead of paying attention to instructions and being so bad at being a Sentinel that they don't even merit a Guard" were the operative words in this case. The only time I saw him with aggro was when he solo'd trash.

Explosive Conflict SM GF. Presented without further comment: Sentinel Gear

Tactical Korriban Incursion. Shadow specced Infiltration, in Combat Technique, using Telekinetic Throw at range, and popping his defensive cooldowns while the mobs were merrily beating on the very competent tank. Never used stealth, obviously--we didn't even bother asking for CCs for shortcut, it would have taken us longer just to explain it. Thankfully the tank and healer knew what they were doing, because that was an impressive carry.

I had a fantastic first op (outside one-boss ops like Eyeless/Xeno) last night. GF Ravagers, Begeren Colony, advertised on Fleet, with three people from the same guild, including the op leader. The op leader explained every boss in detail, the trash was LOSed, the tanks didn't lose aggro, the healers were on point. We one-shot everything except Master and Blaster, because most of the raid was unaware of the cleave bug. They were quick to explain it and we proceeded without issue. After the Cora fight, when one of the tanks had DC'd, and the guildies were quick to put down the one rather derpy DPS who "had done the op before" (and yet kept failing well-explained mechanics) who wanted to rush to Ruugar without waiting, because "ops shouldn't take two hours". Maybe they wouldn't if you followed instructions, buddy... I got praised by the op leader for my performance when we finished. They already knew it was my first Rav run, but then I told them that it was also my first op, and that my guild doesn't run them, so I don't get a chance to do this kind of content--at which they invited me to join the three of them on raids. All in all, it was a really good experience, with competent, patient people, who did a great job in leaving me wanting more.

I like to add competent people I've met through GF to my friends list and then poke them for future flashpoints. The other day, during Rakghoul week, something slightly different happened--one of them (DPS Guardian) was asking in gen chat for one more to do the Rakghoul heroic, so I joined him on my TK Sage. As someone who has facetanked far too many things with a squishy class that relies heavily on channels/casting, it was a delight to have a fellow DPS who was aware of his utilities and taunted stuff off me. When I thanked him for it, he said "yeah, I'm not a tank, but it didn't seem like you should be the one getting hit". Group-aware people are the best. <3 Also, new people who say they are new (altogether or just to a specific FP), ask for directions and then follow them? They are also the best.