Are you playing sentinel/mara? It's a little old but was done on a level 70 watchman sentinel with ilevel 237 (no augments) and an influence 1 Vette. Basically it's to keep her on that podium and stay within range most times, try to keep the others off her so she can heal you. No hiding needed.

this just in, I remember tanking a GF op last expansion with a skank jugg who signed up as dps. The other dps were nothing too special and since his gear rating was 258 and he seemed to know what he was doing I assumed we'd be all right. But no, so here's what happened: things died really slowly and for all the ****** dps he was doing he kept ripping aggro due to the passive high threat that being in tank spec generates. I had to triple taunt every single thing or he melted because he wasn't wearing tank gear. put 2 and 2 together after a failed check at the minefield after seeing his set bonus and 0 accuracy and booted the guy. 0/10 would not tank beside a skank dps again.

ironically that laptop is better at reliably rendering the bulls on Red than his usual potato

We get it, you don't play sins.

Somebody probably bought all of the listed refined isotopes and re-listed them to turn a larger profit margin. It's not a nice move, but profitable. It happened to the augment mk-10 kits a while back too.

I see loads of players like this. They don't discuss their rotation or raw dps but it's always their gear rating that's the game breaker according to them, never mind actual crit/alacrity balance or accuracy, let alone anything about the current alacrity threshold meta. Or they just run crit and don't care for anything else. A marauder running shield/absorb. Deception Assassins who don't even have Discharge on their bar. 'I don't see Discharge on your bar?' 'Oh I'm not full 248 yet just a couple more pieces' I try to help guildies like this but it's often like banging your head against a brick wall.

Personally I think operative is more difficult requiring an upkeep of HOTs and anticipating incoming damage - sorcs are primarily reactive healers and thus better for people with less experience. Look at the new healing parse leaderboards. Roughly speaking, here's how the classes rank in terms of single target/AOE healing from best to worst - Single target - Op, sorc, merc 4 targets - Op, merc, sorc 8 targets - Op, merc, sorc Single target as an operative during a boss fight however is a little less viable than sorc especially for unscripted spike damage going out. This is because it's unviable to keep probes on every single raid member so one would have to apply probes first before bursting them up. As a sorc healer main, I feel like AOE healing is like pulling teeth with relatively weak AOE abilities - if a whole group takes raidwide damage, I can pick them up... in 1.7 seconds without any Surge buffs, and it's not an instant heal - it's a HoT ability. I've been able to heal best when pre-empting scripted damage and precasting accordingly, like watching boss casts and parse timers - a bit like the Operative but at least it doesn't involve a constant upkeep of kolto probes. Force management is fine as long as one knows where to spend Surge buffs from Innervate on recovering Force (like in a spare moment when everybody's gucci at 100% health) or a reduced cuddle puddle cast. I think merc healing is the easiest. It has very good AOE, although not as OP as operative AOE and is in general, a reactive/burst healer barring kolto shells which last forever. It can burst up a single target faster than a sorc can cast Dark Infusion if the Emergency Scan + Healing Scan insta proc is not on cooldown, but otherwise bringing someone up from near-death with nothing but Rapid Scan and/or Progressive Scan if you're that kind of person is going to take a while. There are also a few utilities specific to certain fights that make it more preferable like Hydraulic Overrides for Revan and reflect for, well, a lot of things.

Do some dummy parsing in both specs and compare your DPS. If you're doing something right, Serenity should parse higher on a 2.5mil dummy. It's very easy to run out of Force real quick on Serenity if you're not careful.

I think since OP is new to ops, gear will definitely be an important factor. It's of course less relevant when one is a skilled raider farming NiM mounts and timed run titles. Things like augments can make a substantial difference with regards to how the bolster works - some extra stats, a slightly larger pool of health, all provide some leeway for errors to someone learning a fight.

It's destroying my new healing parses Also affecting someone else I know.

I don't expect a group to be in voice for an MM flashpoint and as guildies and friends, we only get in for the social aspect. I used to queue for MM flashpoints and do a fair number of them; I don't do them much any more except running Foundry towards my Meatbag title. But with respect to raids: There are approaches a group whose majority of members are in voice will decide to take in voice that won't be written down in a guide. For example, the decision to stack all the DPS on one tentacle in Terror and allocation of colours and roles in Operator IX. Dread Council kill order, and so on. I did an SM Izax back in 5.8 and got in voice with some of the raid; the rest chose not to. I ended up running out of tethers in phase 3 when someone who wasn't in voice had picked up a tether (we weren't making the interrupt/DPS check). We were dead by the time I managed to type in chat 'pass me a tether', at which point I wrote 'Get in voice or don't pick up tethers'. Sorry if I seemed callous, but do you have a reason why you can't get in voice? You don't have to talk, just listen. If your game lags horribly with more than one programme in the background running, I've always run Discord/Teamspeak on a separate platform especially for 16 man raids.

If OP's just looking to get the Facing the Machines of War quest out of the way, OP only needs to knock Tyth out.

Thanks for announcing it. You will be greatly missed indeed. /s

There's no value in the Red Sphere's unique look for me. It looks quite retarded, like the cockroach wings but what can I say, it's a rare drop. I'd flaunt that. I'd show off the cockroach wings too. If I have to kill Xeno HM 100000 times to successfully win a roll for the Red Sphere, I will, and if I kill Xeno HM 100000 times and no Red Sphere drops once, no hard feelings. I'm not going to die just because I don't have a Red Sphere, but I'm not going to whine about it and demand adjustment of the goal posts either.

Xeno HM is hopelessly easy and having done it countless times and not seen it drop at all, I think a low drop rate is more than reasonable.

I'm looking at my first Izax SM parse from 5.8 patch day and we took 1 hour to clear the first 4 bosses, all one shots. It might be on the longer side but it's on par with the time taken to run SNV and TFB.

Well it says in the game description of story mode ops in group finder the word 'challenging' among other choice words. Or did they really intend ops to just *not* be challenging? Then why did they write that word in there? Are you saying they meant the opposite? Not necessarily. Sometimes I'm there just because I want to kill things. Or I want to try a new class/spec in a raid setting. Sometimes I co-op my friends into GF runs and we try something new - have a solo healer. No tanks! Leave Horic last. Push Calphayus first (we ended up having to get crystals or something). Beg raid members to stand in stupid so you can fluff EHPS. Or enter the healing challenge as a tank, slap a guard on the Dying Captive and /cheer at your solo healer. EV/KP HM aren't real HMs - there are literally no additional mechanics apart from the KP puzzle. Any SM raider could run EV/KP HM as easily as they run it on SM. I'd say SM Rav, TOS and maybe even EC are harder as well. You sound like you're still not here for raiding. If that is the case, why are you posting on this thread? I didn't come for raiding either. I came from KOTOR for story and after finishing the expansions, I got into group content. This was only summer last year. I sandbagged my first KP run. (And it was in HM, too.... what was I thinking? But even though my DPS was non-existent I learned how to do the puzzle. My group mates were probably ready to kill themselves by the end of it.) I won't deny that poor direction from the very outset has some part to play in all this, and maybe we could argue in favour of a nerf just for the sheer idiocy and ineptitude of the average fleet pug at following mechanics. As I said I was a story player, and I started out as a horrible DPS, any of the horrible DPS you'd see today who have no idea what a rotation is. Everybody and their dog you find in a pug is a poor to average DPS. Or in fact, everybody and their dog is a DPS. No one wants the larger responsibility of being a tank or a healer. Truth is, it's a different dimension - I rolled a tank because I thought they looked ****** sitting there, taking it from the boss. I rolled a healer because I watched one of Dulfy's videos and liked the whack-a-mole business going on. I think people who purely DPS have never considered how different it is to play a support role and how fun it might be even if it's not directly killing the boss. I am still a pretty bad DPS in comparison to the real deal (but I know my rotation at least) since I can't hold a rotation in an ops environment despite some decent parses; in fact I find it easier responding to mechanics and situations arising in raids as a healer or tank. You're missing the whole point of ops here. If you see SM ops as a means to getting credits and XP then you might as well go run heroics and other daily quests. You don't need to get a group for them, they run fast and easy. I have always been raiding because I found it fun to kill things, figure out mechanics, be a part of a team and get achievements and actual real rewards like WINGS. That's what raids are for. If every fight turns into a tank and spank I'm not going to be less bored, I'm going to be even more bored. Achievements are not achievements and rewards are not rewards if you don't earn them just because you solo'd an op synced to 10 levels below you. That being said, I like the difficulty of Gods where it is right now. It feels satisfying bringing down Izax's shield in phase 2. It feels satisfying cleaving a blue orb with Radiance on Scyva. It doesn't feel bothersome just because it's delaying the completion of my weekly. You can definitely argue that I fall in with the minority of players and therefore the minority of opinion. Gods is not too hard. It has mechanics. People need to have brains to clear it. You write an exam to assess a student's capability, not to make sure they score 100% by dumbing it down.

Where does it say in 'complex. challenging' and 'requires greater player skill and coordination' that SM is for everyone? Gods as evidenced by its 242 loot drops and mechanics checks was created to form a bridge from SM to HM (barring EV/KP). If you want to pug and run it as fast as an EV/KP SM then you'd better look elsewhere. It's entirely possible that with time more and more casual raiders (eg conquest) will grasp the mechanics and be able to pass them, and establish a sort of 'pug approach' that everyone follows as evidenced by how there are 'pug approaches' to the older SM raids, e.g. the kill order of Garr, Horic, Sunder, Tu'chuk or some variant thereof in Warlords, or bringing unit 1 to 10%, killing unit 2 and then finishing unit 1 on TOS walkers. Of course the fact that SM ops have been nerfed into oblivion has caused a decline in the capability of the average pug and the general public aversion to Gods will probably mean that there will never be an established, homogenised way to complete the op, especially with the IZAX fight.

I'm not asking for challenge, I gave you the game description of operations from the group finder. It said it's meant to be challenging - and if that description is on group finder, it's describing story mode operations. I like to think of the devs meaning it as this: operations, even on story mode, are not to be trifled with. If everyone can coordinate with others, listen to instructions, think for themselves and have group awareness - a very, very basic level of requirement - then yes, they can clear Gods SM. They can do everything. Wouldn't that be nice.

Game description of operations from activity finder: 'Operations are complex, challenging missions that require 8 players to complete. Operations require greater player skill and coordination for success.' God forbid there being any sort of mechanic that can't be ignored, healed through or brute forced. SM Gods is very easily passable if every person in the raid can think for themselves. Shouldn't be too much trouble right? But the thing is, tunnel vision and poor raid awareness is widespread in a lot of purely SM raiders since many SM raids can be cleared with very little knowledge of mechanics. The very fact that Gods SM drops 242 gear should probably hint that it is, at least, a little harder than story mode.

Sins are middle of the pack DPS but if you play it well enough you won't be denied a spot. I personally enjoy Hatred because Lacerate spreads dots with no cooldown. Sins are also good in a pinch if both of your tanks happen to be dead; they can take a boss and shroud a potentially big hit like Arcing Assault.

A tank who, upon entering the Lair of the Eyeless, proceeded to pull every single add with no regard for their health or the fact that the only other person in the instance was me, one healer. And then pulled the boss without a ready check. Now I have tunnel-healed a tank holding double monsters on NiM Bestia but 30 rakghoul mobs on story mode was way too much. Should have made them pay my repair bill...

That's because phasing phantasm doesn't 'unroot' you it's egress you're looking for

Not sure what the others above are going on about, but I'd go with more shield (I run 1800 shield and 1300 absorb). More shield means taking more damage, sure, but less spikes. But yes, you get passive 110% accuracy so don't run any of that. Tank stats hit really low diminishing-return areas especially defence so you might want to trade in the token unlettered mods and enhancements for higher endurance ones that sacrifice tertiary stats with little to no effect on your mitigation overall, particularly lethal B mods, whatever the enhancements with more endurance are called. The higher endurance gives your healers a little extra breathing space for failed mechanics and the minuscule drop in mitigation can be very much made up through proper use of your over 9000 cooldowns.

Perhaps not as some players with the Izax chievo haven't emptied out the whole instance and instead had in on lockouts. Maybe there should be a separate one for that, but just speculating.