Sorc may be the easiest to not suck completely with but Merc is imho the easiest to make the jump from HC to Nim raiding. Operative is just the hardest healer all around. Merc has such a fantastic toolkit for PvE, I strongly recommend it

Me and a couple friends had the idea recently to play around with a dps sorc with the endless offensive set + storm succor tactical. Replace your fillers with volt rushes and get decent burst heals for a minor dps loss (at least, that's our theory). That's the closest thing to a "skank healer" possible. We haven't really tested it yet, but the idea was to use it instead of a true healer in MM FPs (not Tython lol) or in OPs for stuff like HM Revan which really does not require 2 full healers. But it's basically a meme and wouldn't help you clear content that you couldn't do otherwise

I'd say the general rule for NiM raiding is that most groups have 2 melee and 2 range in their standard setup but at least one of the melees should be able to log onto a range because several bosses are easier with 3 range especially for Nim beginners If you want to play melee dps I'd recommend either PT or Marauder (or pub side equivalent). PT is the strongest dps but kinda glass cannon, while Marauder has a lot of surviveability and utility for the group. Assasin and Operative are also fine, but I'd avoid Jug For ranged Sorc is generally strong and Sniper has a lot of DCDs that help your group

Isn't there a cutscene before the final boss? In general if you zone out and then zone in while the cutscene is running (obviously group doesn't spacebar while doing that) it should port you right into the cutscene (hence where the cutscene takes place) rather than the beginning of the instance (that also works when speedrunning talon with only 1 stealth or for kaon if the npc is invisible for you)

Remember, when you group up you owe your group to contribute as much as possible. By running a "build" that does 50% damage but generates 150% threat (approximately) you are screwing your group. Your "build" is pure ignorance. It basically says "carry me because I'm too egoistic to play a proper build". There's also no reason to build for extra survivability as a dps. In fact I'd prefer the tank to be in mostly or all dps gear while tanking because as a healer I fall asleep when healing a full tank outside of NiM Ops. If you die as a dps it has nothing to do with you needing more survivability. 90% of the time you are taking avoidable damage and just need to learn to avoid it. And 10% of the time the healer/tank is horrible

You form a group of eight, then 1 (usually a tank or heal) leaves and you queue the remaining seven while the person who left queues alone When you match up with the right person (sometimes multiple groups do it at the same time and you might get matched up with their solo queuer) and the right operation you confirm, otherwise just leave queue and requeue

I'm a jerk, I leave if HS pops and log onto another alt to queue again I don't feel bad about it, the people who abuse group finder as Hammer Station finder and destroy random queue for the rest of us deserve that. Build your farm groups on fleet chat and leave random queue for people who actually want random.

I checked the all the old 8man NiM bosses on parsely..out of 31 NiM bosses Merc tops the leaderboards 23 times and Op 8 times. Merc wasn't balanced and it wasn't "a little better on some ops bosses". It was broken. It was op aoe + sorc single target burst + 0 energy issues + superb dcds + offdps Right now, post merc nerf merc and op are balanced and sorc is still a little behind in aoe heavy fights like dread council, but for mostly single target fights all healers are decent

There was a response though..IO got the 10% crit back in their passives

Keep in mind that capped content damage scaling is currently broken so white damage scales worse than yellow damage. That's why Lightning Sorcs are top ranged dps in capped because they are yellow damage..that's not a "Sorc OP" issue but a "yellow damage OP in capped" issue (or white damage UP - whichever way you want). Outside of that scaling issue I'd say dps classes are pretty well balanced overall, PT is somewhat OP and some individual specs underperform (Carnage, Arsenal) but overall balancing is good in 75 content. Merc healer is pretty OP and will still be somewhat OP imho after the coming nerfs, Op is decent all around, Sorc is decent except for healing burn phases like Dread council or Master/Blaster where you really notice how weak Revivification is compared to Kolto Waves/Kolto Missile from Op/Merc Tank balancing was improved since Jug/Pt tanks are much closer to Sin than they were in 5.x Biggest balancing issue is imho weapon damage vs force/tech damage scaling in 70 content. Fix that and the balancing is better than it has been in a long time

No they should not. You shouldn't have to assemble 8 people just to not fall asleep in the game. Again, there's difficulty tiers for a reason and lower tiers are for casuals. It's just the expectation to 100% the game without learning the necessary skills that deprives better players of truely fun and challenging content I don't even want special loot gated behind the highest difficulty. Casuals can get best in slot gear from farming Vet Hammer Station, I don't mind. I just want to be able to play challenging content outside of our raid nights.

It should be quite obvious that by "highest" I meant the highest difficulty tier (as in master mode). Of course there is master mode FPs. Casuals shouldn't feel entitled to breeze through the highest difficulty tier, whether that's solo content, 4man content or 8man content. I'm well aware that solo content can't be as difficult as 4man and 4man can't be as difficult as 8man, but currently anything outside of OPs is just too easy even in the highest tier. And who decided that "FPs aren't meant to be difficult"? That's just your opinion, man, and I fully disagree with it. While they were never as difficult as MM Ops they were more difficult than the faceroll they are currently. MM FPs are just horribly underscaled as they are. The highest difficulty tier of any type of content (whether solo, 4man, 8man) shouldn't be braindead, but it is

MM FPs are a joke currently, even the ones that were a little bit difficult at Lvl 70 are now complete faceroll Either remove stacks in Master mode or add a T4 without stacks. Also unnerf nerfed mechanics (like the boss in Lost Island now punts much slower) The highest tier in group content shouldn't be "accessible", it shouldn't be easily doable for everybody. That's what the lower tiers are there for. Highest tier should be hard even for very good players. Unfortunately outside of NiM operations there's no hard content in the game. Nerfing the flashpoints into the ground was completely unnecessary. Please give us challenging Flashpoints again, I almost fell asleep in Umbara MM last week

But what else would you do then? Keep Merc heals OP in PvE because PvP? That can't be a serious suggestion..

Not just "too ez"..too easy AND too strong.. Merc basically has no weakness. The best single target healing, close 2nd AoE, great DCDs, energy management is a joke, and good offdps on top Argueably, for healing classes to be somewhat balanced any combination of different 2 classes should almost always be stronger than stacking the same class twice (fringe cases where a single utility is extremely powerful aside). Currently Merc/Op is the strongest combination, but after that you could make a good case for Merc/Merc over Merc/Sorc or Op/Sorc which speaks to the OPness of Merc. You wouldn't run 2 Op and definitely not 2 Sorc

Why not instead of removing the 10% crit change the set to provide 10% crit for damage abilities only? That would still nerf the heal Merc which is overperforming in PvE..

As long there is one only one type of gear PvP gearing should take as long as PvE gearing. If you hand the best gear for free to PvPer you're pushing PvEers into PvP which will cause many to quit the game Now if there still was Expertise gear and 258 PvP gear had equivalent stats to let's say 242 PvE gear (plus expertise on top of it) then we could talk about a faster gearing process as that gear would be far from the best in PvE However, PvP should never become a fast track to top tier PvE gear As long as there is only 1 type of gear gearing should go from fastest to slowest 1) NiM Ops 2) HC Ops, MM FPs, Ranked PvP 3) SM Ops, Vet FPs, unranked PvP 4) Solo stuff

I think the Surgical Probe Tactical should be changed to: Increases Surgical Probe Critical Chance by the amount of health the target is missing So at 60% target health you'd get +40% crit chance, at 30% health +70% crit chance and so on

What I'd love is if the Devs could run a tracker in the background that logs class participation in NiM Ops (one list for the most current Op and another general one for all NiM Ops) and then filter out everyone who is parsing below 80 or 90% of the average (to get rid of people who buy achievements) And then basically buff/nerf under-/overperforming specs based on that data rather than on fixed lists

As someone who hasn't got them I'd love to be able to get them However I also realize that they were a sub reward and should be given out lightly Maybe give out HK for 6 months, Nico for 12 months and Shae for 24 months of continuous sub (with a grace period of a day or 2 for those who use gametime cards) EDIT: regardless of when that sub period happens or happened (including the future). It would require a longer sub time thus preserve some value of getting them back in the day but make them available permanently

Maybe, just Maybe, run something interesting like Nathema or Rishi rather than Athiss/Hammer Station/Talon

Being a hardcore raider myself I joined SWTOR 3 weeks ago because some people in my raid group (in a different game) are playing it. I subbed, used the Lvl 65 token to create a character, fast leveled to 70, skipped to Ossus and started playing flashpoints and ops with my guildies. Except for the Ossus and Dantooine dailies (which we do in a group as well) I literally did almost exclusively group content. You state - correctly - that all of the group content is optional. You fail to state that all of the solo content is optional as well. You can play only flashpoints, operations and uprisings and even level that way. The only solo content that isn't avoidable (except through the store) is the first 2 planets My experience is that most solo players are fine people. However, there is a vocal minority of entitled whiners among the soloers who basicly want all the best gear handed to them just for logging in and playing the story. Gear in MMOs has for ages scaled with skill and dedication involved in beating content and it has worked that way. Whenever MMOs start handing out gear for free they failed (because it kills motivation to play etc.). That's why so many people are waiting for Vanilla WOW because getting good gear required skill. I'm not opposed to solo challenges awarding gear equivalent to NiM raid gear, as long as those challenges are equally difficult to NiM raiding (measured in % of the playerbase able to complete them successfully, so we are talking about something maybe 0,5% of the players would even be skilled enough to do). What I'm against is free handouts (and some solo players seem to be very prone to asking for them)