There's a pattern that you can follow pretty easily with summoning the droids, following that we did notice them bugging a lot less too. A few pointers: Kill Shoots Lasers and Dangerous Fire Devices asap. Failing that you can be a meatshield for the repairdroid against the Shoots Lasers (like the with the spikes from the Kell Drake in the SaV Styrak fight). Torque destroys the closes unbroken console to him, the console that evades the repair droids the less times is the one on the right bottom (if you face the boss at the start). Turrets are not killing the droid. If a healer uses aoe heals during the repairdroid summoning there's a small chance he will agro the droid instead of the console. So our tactic is tanking Torque in the mid until the first floorvents (and tank switch), then the tanks pull him next to our desired console. He shortly destroys this console. After this a Shoots Lasers spawn, we burn this down asap and pull the boss to the other side. We summon the repairdroid right as the Shoots Lasers die. Then we aoe down the left side (boss, turrets), and when the droid has finished the repair the tanks pull the boss back to the otherside where we clear the turrets again with aoe before the next wookie rage. After the second wookirage we summon the repairdroid immediately, as he Shoots Lasers had been killed recently (due to the spawn timers). On 3rd repair we kill Shoots Lasers first then summon, on 4th we summon right after wookie rage again. You get the pattern I think. Here's a video of last week, ofc we totally messed up (especially me with the HtL, althoughI blame my splitting headache for that ), but you might get the idea:

Well, if your healers can heal through 27k basic attacks, props to them (we only had had 1 assault and 1 artillery droid on the first row so it was normal, yet we had the "package deal effect", according to the log): On Brontes NiM, we were talking about the last phase. Not the just the finger phase. (Oh and as an interesting sidenote. With one dps dead in the whole second phase of the fight, we did see once the enrage in the last phase ) (And before you question my competency: I sport titles like from Beyond, Dragonslayer, Eternal Warrior, Conqueror and Deposer.) Edit: And yeah, I don't share Mero's view of Bioware breaking this on purpose. "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Or he was just mistaken and it really was SM. But I usually give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and that's why I replied like that, instead of a sarcasm about facerolling a role neutral SM FP with 3 dps and a healer

Then technically these weren't top folks you met in group finder. Since you had to enter (through the instance entrance at CZ-198) with your already gathered group, as the group finder will never pop for HM FPs without a tank

Looking at it in retrospect you’re right. It was an exaggeration on my part. Some of the fights in the classic HM FPs have those mechanics that cannot be healed through, ‘cause they lead to basically instant death. However these cases are still doable, if you have at least a dps who knows what needs to be done. So you can heal through much more then the occasional mistake For example you’ve mentioned the Sav-Rak fight. Indeed you cannot heal through falling from the platform, and you cannot heal through probably the bonus boss’ special attack neither. But last time I was there, my group didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with the droid boss, and on Lorrick there was zero positioning to avoid damage, no one dpsed the kolto tanks and the whole floor was literally in flames due to the countless burning rakghouls waltzing all over the place. But yeah, maybe it’s just the two “new” HM Czerka FPs where Bioware couldn’t (didn’t want to) put in any mechanics that are so unforgivable as Ortol’s rockets. The only thing you cannot heal there is if someone decides to picknick in the Vigilant’s ion pulse. Droid in the water? I even had the luxury of time to ask the rpds in the chat to stop running out of the water, so they can dps instead, and the grapple won’t interrupt their casts. Security Officer Zokar? There was a time when the two dps ate all of the red circles that spawned. One of them got three in a row. Blyss’ experiments? Release all of them at the same time, just like on SM. Vigilant’s spinning attack? Don’t bother running away, just dps. Enhanced Vrbolther, not even healing heavy, but it's true if you disregard the mechanic, then you can die of old age there Or the Duneclaw boss with the sandstorm and rampages? I’m feeling warm and fuzzy inside, when I get an undergeared group, so I can see high green numbers like these flying around. (Vaynesh and Zestia are my toons on the hps ranking )

It’s not that tragic on the Progenitor. At least in the level 55 HM FPs. I haven’t been in an FP that was a fail, or even close to a wipefest for ages. But there is an undeniable decline in quality (and unfortunately the numbers) due to the fact that pugging 16m SM operations is a faster way to earn those pesky ultimate comms. And because the better players don’t need the ultimate comms either. I on the other hand am queuing despite that fact that my weekly is done, and I’m at comm cap. An FP can be a good relax before HM and NiM opses. And since nowadays I’m only queuing with my healer characters, it doesn’t really bugger me, when we get a tank or a dps who doesn’t know what to do. If they listen to instructions great, if not, who cares? We are so over geared at this point, that it doesn’t matter. There is not one single encounter in the HM FPs where you cannot heal through the mechanics. To stay true to the topic name (and demonstrate the truth of the statement above), here a little story from the Progenitor last night: I queued on my Commando healer alt for HM Czerka Labs. During the first pull one of the dps used knockback on the mobs, that were gathered by the tank. Stupid move I give you that, but our tank stopped right there (in the middle of the fight), to type in a very condescending tone, ordering the dps to stop that. Mental note to myself: this tank will probably snap at the next mistake the dps will make. And I don’t like his tone. We were doing quite alright until we gathered the second security code, at this point the tank and I jumped down to the water to skip a few groups of mobs. Maybe one of the dps haven’t seen that, cause right when I wanted to pick up the last code, we were in combat. No biggies, while the mobs came for their slaughter, our tank had the time to write some “nice” words in the chat. Then we had a mutual name calling followed by a vote kick initiated by the tank against the dps. That escalated very quickly I thought to myself Due to our tank being that abhorrent right from the start, I voted not to kick the dps – knowing full well, that this means that the tank has no other choice, than leave the group, if he wants to keep is integrity. After the vote kick failed, he wrote something along the line: if we want to play together with a dps that has an attitude like this, then we have to find another tank (look who’s talking). And he left. I shrugged it off quickly and summoned my commando’s best pal Tanno Vik (full dps gear with a shield generator in tanking stance) and unleashed him on the Droid boss. Should I say that we had no problems from this point? The QQing stopped – yeah, Tanno has his remarks, but he’s always aiming those at the npcs, not at other players. The dps never pulled before my comp, they (or at least the second one who was the example of a perfect dps with a good gear) followed the correct kill order and also killed the adds during the Security officer fight. Yeah during that fight, at the last phase Tanno went down to red circles. Even the dps ate a few of them, but as I told you, it’s easy to heal through these mechanics in our gear so no one was in any real danger. For the last boss we got a tank from GF, and did that with ease to. Releasing all the adds at the same time. Cause you know, why not?

A few days ago (before 2.5 hit us) I had a fun HM Czerka Coremeltdown flashpoint. We had two Knight dpses, one of them was a sentinel, and I haven’t checked the other’s AC, but he had an overkill gear and he was from a good raiding guild. I was on my scoundrel sawbones in a fully augmented 69-78 gear. All is good I thought, until I’ve seen the tank. He was a shadow with 31,5k health, buffed. I’m one of the sane healers who prefer mitigation tanks instead of health based ones, but this low health for a shadow was a bit suspicious, even for me. After I checked his gear it became obvious he had mostly conqueror pvp gear, which is more than enough for HM FPs, but after a closer inspection I realized half of it was sage healer gear, even one of his relic (“Healing an ally…"). I thought, hmm... let’s check how many times have he done this FP. Just as expected, he has done the SM version, but not the HM one. Challange accepted So while I’ve kicked off Parsec, I thought to myself that I will mention none of this to our group mates. Selfish move on my part I know, but hey, the tank wasn’t asking for pointers, he never even stated that this was his first time. With the two competent dps we easily made our way towards the first bosses, and I was getting into the proper mental state, preparing for the train wreck that was bound to happen at Sandclaw. Oh boy, and a train wreck it was. As I suspected the tank had no idea, that he should take the boss to the generators. One of the knights either ripped agro, or taunted (if he was a guardian) and tried to take the boss to the green lit generator. He didn’t make it there before our tank taunted back ofc I was adamant on one thing only, to keep the two dps and myself alive, I was trying to heal the tank too, but since he wasn’t a priority, he passed away when the boss had 30-40% health, he ressed immediately, as all pvp players tend to, and thusly locked out of the fight by the closed door. But to be honest, I wouldn’t bothered with combat ressing him, so no loss there I’m really not sure if we even managed to destroy that single generator that was near to us. I was too busy healing through the constant sandstorms, the rampages and the boss’ hits to whoever was tanking it at the time. It only became hairy when I ripped agro. Guess, finishing at 4188 ehps might do that, even if only half of it counts as threat The Jungle boss was much smoother compared to this, the only hard part of it was to let our tank die. Cause he could taunt the boss away from the mushrooms, but couldn’t hold agro long enough to die from the boss’ hits. Due to this I had a hard time to manage my strongest (aoe) heals not to hit him, but hit the dps and me. Luckily, he went down at some point and we made it with ease afterwards. After this, my sentinel friend thought that this is the right time to start tanking. I’ve warned him to use his defensive cooldowns on one of the nastiest pulls in all HMs. I’m referring to the group standing to the left console that you have to click on before the final boss. He didn’t, and he went down in less then 1 GCD. Despite the fact that I pre-casted more hots on him. Sorry I cannot heal that, but I’m striving to learn it one day though. On the final boss our tank died for the third, and final time. I’ve noticed too late that he decided not to move out of the aoe electricity. A burst heal could’ve saved him. Probably. All in all, it was one of the most fun HMFP for me. And let me state it again (before haters gonna hate ) I would’ve explained all fights to the tank, if he would’ve at least asked for it. A pvp player should know best that communication is key.

You were lucky then. I've just done an SM Athiss with two guildies yesterday. Group composition: Shadow Shadow Slinger. The last drop was an orange trooper helmet Also I've soloed SM Esseles a few times on my lvl 11-12 Sentinel for XP and got only one usable drop

If you're an undergeared tank there you can use some tools to ease your healer's job. Shadow - Force speed Vanguard - Hold the line Guardian - ask the healer (and rdps*) to stand behind the rails at the edge of the elevator, this way he won't get sucked in, and you can guardian leap to them. *rdps shouldn't really move around cause they can go down with the elevator in some cases. 'slingers with thei cover mechanic are usually going down, but this is a good source of some chuckle

I think the op refers to the story mode flashpoints. Those are indeed dropping random gear. On the other hand, hardmode FPs and Ops are dropping gear based on group composition.

Scratch that, if bolster works as the poster above said it, then I have no idea what's what.

First off, noone said anything "out of force/ammo/energy/health"[*], but I won't start to brag about credits, coins and anonym promises like you. I've said you're pulling while others are regenerating resources. Which is implied by this statement: Maybe I'm the exception, but I haven't seen a single group that looted after members have regenerated their resources. And if you don't think your groupmates are slow, then why are you rushing off dropping the fight and using rocketboots to initiate the next without them? Hmm? On that same note, it's probaly news for you, but if someone engages the next mobs, the others will be in combat too. That means that they are indeed slow, and cannot use those rocket boots, even if they have them. * Since you've clearly failed to take your own advice, that you so eagerly give to others, please don't bother replying. I sure won't.

Then why don't you just play alone and save everyone the trouble. You don't have to put up with the slow derps and looting healers, and they don't have to deal with catching up to you in combat speed without regenerated resources? Hmm

True enough, but lets mention the excpetion: before the last round when you're team has the lead, and the opponent needs two cap or one cap plus denying your cap, than in that case not dividing your forces can lose the match for you. I was in the reciving end of this after a nice comeback, when someone called out: "Now everyone go to our pylon and defend". But the opponent came with 6-7 to "our" pylon and we just couldn't cap it, while they capped "theirs". We tried to switch and take their node, but they reacted accordigly. Desperate try from them, but they were out of options, so I think we should've anticipated it.

From experience: Scoundrel healing is laughable (2 stack of HoT on everyone, use your instas, and you don't even have to stop to cast, so just run around like a headless chiken), Sage is a bit tricier, but doable too. I've done it just yesterday night on my 'mando healer alt. I'd give advice on what abilities to use, but I cannot really remember*. I had to make a 12-min-long phonecall (mobile between the neck and shoulders to make it more interesting ) after the droid boss and by the time I was done, we've just finished the whole FP (and yes, it was HM,). Avoiding red circles and watching out who had eaten them is pretty much on autopilot at this point. Dunno if it helps, but I'm usually jumping out of the circles too. It all boils down to practice, if you're game is too laggy for you to avoid them (I'm running between 80-300ms), then simply never stop running, only stop and cast a heal, when you see the red circle at someone else's feet. If you're the healer it can hardly go wrong. Enrage is not that tight, in case the dps decides to eat 3 circles in a row (which is hard to heal through, unless you're a scoundrel), then just finish it with the tank. However a few days ago when I was on my shadow tank, unfortunately the other three bit the dust from the circles. At that point Zokar tries to get you with cryo grenade and red circle too. Finished him from 7-10%, never eating a single circle. So my advice: practice, parctice, parctice and never give up, cheers * Thinking about it a little: throw kolto bomb to hit everyone for the healing buff, use all other heals when this buff is up on others, use your 360° knockback for aoe heals, keep up the healing stacks on the tank always, use your no cast time and free cast ability, don't save the insta heal for emergencies, use it on CD, go super healer mode after 30 stacks only when it is required. And when something goes really amiss (tank fails to turn boss, adds are not gunned down fast, too much damage going on), don't try to save you energy on the brink of crappy regen, just go all out and pop your energy back ability. Hope this helps. (Sorry for the lack of ability names, my 'mando is really not my main, and you would need the Merc ability names anyway.)

You guys know that Valor Rank is not PvP rating right? Edit: you get Valor from all pvp matches and that's steadily growing, like and XP number, and you can see it on your character sheet. While PvP rating is calculated from your ranked(!) matches according to your results, and you can see it on the detailed PvP tab. Hope this helps.

Almost 2/10. But not quite there yet.

I'd adivse to check http://theprogenitor.com/ for up to date informations. We had a ranked solo event on the 25th, and yesterday night too. Cheers

Yup, as others have already stated, you can get to the boss with 2 (and able to kill it, cause 2 interrupts are enough for his heals), and finish the mission with 3. Tip: the shield only prevents the grenade throwing cast, but once the cast started the 'nade can go through the shield; so spam that rightclick as fast as you can I also step in the line and will say, that Bioware would do us a huge favor by scaling down the mechanics to a H2+ level. Cause no matter how amusing is to see a single group looking for almost an hour (or a bit less; ~weekly solo run duration) for a grenade thrower, this should be changed. There are just not that many peeps out there anymore.

I concur, this is a good idea. Yesterday I tried to queue for the Esseles as a dps. It goes without saying I ended up soloing it, fortunately having a hefty bonus of 350 on my presence, Treek just one shotted her way through the whole FP at lvl11, while I followed her around, making jests at the bosses, like a good sidekick would do The only downside of this could be, that FPs are not role neutral by accident. They require a team of tank, heal and 2xdps, so we can learn how to preform our chosen roles. Yeah, at lvl10 there’s not much of a difference, but it still helps to start to learn early. Too many times I’ve seen healers that never heal (except themselves on a rare occasion), tanks that couldn’t tank a group of mobs for the life of theirs, and dps “as clueless as a football player on a Star Wars convention”. Supposedly(!) at lvl55, players know how to play their role effectively in a group, hence the role neutral FPs for the Czerka weekly. Which I think was a good move on Bioware’s part. You’re still required to put in some effort to finish the weekly, but it’s not as tedious as “LF2M button-pushers for Long Shots[H4]”.

I usually just try to forget the bad experiences, and remember only the good ones However in this last week I switched sides from Rep to Imp to level my Op healer and PT tank. Well… it was a quite surreal experience. There are some bads on the Rep side of my server, that’s true, but on the dark side it’s like 75% of the time, there’s at least one terribad/weirdo/clueless player. I got into a False Emperor FP with my tank. As a reflex I’ve put my guard on the highest mainstat melee dps, an assassin in this case. Suddenly he tells me to put it on the healer. When I say nope, it’s fine where it is atm, he still insisted to put it on the healer. I’ve just told him: well, be my guest and tank, if you know better. His reply was, and I quote: “No, I am no tank, I’m dps. Pls put the guard on the healer or I leave.” At that point I started to get fed up, since I was after a very tiring day and it was 4 o’clock in the morning. Despite of my better sense, somehow I still tried to reason with him by asking, “do you know anything about how agro management in swtor?” Now also the healer chimed in, telling her point of view: “well, you should put it on the most threat generating dps, maybe the sniper” (her guildie btw ). Still, the assassin couldn’t be reasoned with so after a final cry for justice on his part (basically repeating to put it on the healer or he leaves), I’ve simply answered: “Don’t let the door hit you on the arse. Btw if you’re outta here, please look up how tanking works in the game. cya. The healer lol’d, the assa left The replacement was a little bit clueless (at least that’s how I put it, ‘cause the healer used the words f***ing and idiot), pulling before me, or pulling when three of us were avoiding, trying to ninja on a drop, but passing on the other. Another time, now at lvl55 with my healer, I got into Athiss. One of the players, a sniper, opened on the wrong group of mobs. Unfortunately I haven’t seen it before too late and we wiped. The tank immediately called for a vote kick on the sniper. I myself voted not to kick and told the tank, that I wouldn’t kick the dps for one mistake. Reply was: he’s alwys doing that. And with that the tank left, even before the dps could‘ve said: who are you? Unfortunately we got no queue pop for a tank replacement, so I just switch to my PT and queued to get In the same group with a new healer. Rest of the FP went smooth. Except, when the same sniper agroed a sorc (maybe got pushed into it), next to the guardian that I was holding. Ofc with two mobs only we never came close to a wipe, and at least we had an excuse to make a few jokes But there are countless little weird moments in PUG FPs. Like the guardian tank, which I had to heal through a HM Cademimu in his Black Hole dps gear (I’ve asked him, to skip the bonus boss, and now I cannot help but wonder if I could’ve healed through that too). Or the vanguard tank in his half dps gear (he said 1/3, which only proves he cannot count either), from whom we asked if he knows the tactics of the first boss of Mando Raiders (that question was not out of accident btw…). He said “yes I’ve done it before”, then he promptly started to tank one of the beasts, and when asked why didn’t he took the boss away, his reply was that “I couldn’t heal him if his far away”. Again on the dark side, there was this lvl50 player, who apparently had no idea how to get into the Battle of Ilum FP. VIA GROUP FINDER! We tolerated him killing mobs on Ilum for about 10 mins, then when he said,” I’m going ” and by going he meant going to the fleet, he got booted. Also in this same FP we had a sorc with 3k+ endurance and 2,2k+ willpower. My guildie asked what had he done for a dps gear? The reply was: Hehe, I’m always getting that question.” Well, in this case I think it stands to reason, why doesn’t he do a thing about it then Or the quite funny moment when you realize that you have a level51 tank with 12k hp (!) in your PUG Xeno 8m SM group and not kicking him on sight. He was on the boss the whole time, never caring about anything, just tickling it with his lightsaber. The only thing saving him from getting the boot is that we’ve managed the fight at first try (as usual, since SM is really easy mode, at least for the decently geared players). These are only the most recent moments that I remember, but I’m pretty sure there’ll be more weirdness when I log in today. Plus the triple of that on Tuesday in the new hardmode FPs xD

Well, there is a general consesus of how things should normally go. If you would like to do it different, then at least you could ask the others if they're on board with you and your playstyle. And if they're not, it shouldn't be their problem. But you're making it theirs by kicking them out. Also don't forget that there's another very easy and fast sollution for your speedruns (besides bringing guildies, that has already been pointed out). Use the general chat on the fleet to ask if there are any takers. Just like other folks, who do this with Esseles/Black Talon social runs. I'm pretty sure there will be numerous takers of your offer of free gear and comms in 15 mins.

Not sure if troll, but I'll bite. First and foremost: Get over yourself. Btw under 55 pvp (both tiers) depends on bolster and the lack of skills that you acquire later. It just doesn't really matter where you're standing on the board. Level to 55, then come back for suggestions, if you still feel you're lacking.

QFT High endurance doesn't mean you can tank as a dps. Hell, usually a 40k+ health tank is harder to heal then a 35k one, ‘cause almost always he just sacrificed mitigation for endurance, which is stupid. And don't come with that high horse talking that in 69+ gear a dps won't require much healing when he's tanking. That's only your perception, and one which is totally wrong at that. You're not tanking, you're just going in, take an initial big spike of damage, then all mobs and even their mother – with the exception of the one you're pummeling on – will turn their attention to the healer, or other members of the group if they could manage to hit them. You can really stress out a low geared healer this way, when damage is all over the place. Not talking about the tank, who just doesn’t know now where to start to gather back agro an all those mobs. Btw, the overlevelling part is true. If everyone is almost in Black Market, then the current HM55FPs are a faceroll – which doesn’t mean they should be tweaked harder, rather the overgeared players need to go to OPSes –, and I even prefer some frak ups (trigger happy dps, tunnel visioned tank…). At least that way there are a tiny bit of excitement and challenge.

I’m sure a lots of people have already said this, but here are my two cents as a casual PVP and PVE player: When you say that this is a two way street then you’re looking at this in the wrong way. You want to compare PVP and PVE just on one simple fact that they are both gear progression driven. Well, there are at least one other thing you should consider. PVE is really an even leveled playfield. If you go SM, you get SM level mobs, if you go HM, you get HM level mobs and so on. If you know your gear and skill level, then you can go on and progress without banging your head on a wall. The same cannot be said of Warzones. There are no categories for no pvp gear, semi-pvp gear and full pvp gear WZs. So you’ll be in games where peeps are on different gear level. Without bolster (or recruitment PVP gear), you’d only get your behind handed to you on a silver plate (based only on gear, not skill of the player), if you’re not wearing PVP armor. If you compare that to PVE, it's like if you’d go into a SM FP or OPS, but some of the mobs are HM or NiM level. You cannot kill them ofc, and you’ll just die several times before the game says: here are your comms for trying, better luck next time. Just like it’s the same, when it comes to the well equipped players. Doing a HM55FP in 69 gear is a faceroll and boring the same way as killing a 0-expertise bloke, when you’re in full Conqueror. I can only see a few solutions here. (And none of them is break PVE, just because PVP got broken.) One is the recruitment PVP gear, but it seems that wasn’t good enough. Second option is no expertise, no gear lvl difference between PVP and PVE. Which apparently didn’t turned out to be the solution either. Third is no gear difference in PVP matches what so ever. Which I would hate on so many levels, but it certainly makes an even leveled playfield. Just without the carrot. The forth is the bolster system. Which is in fact an enforced recruitment PVP gear. Problem here was the implementation. What I would do now with this system, is that I’d still implement recruitment PVP gear for all classes and all of their roles, just like pre-2.0, but only in stats. So when you enter a WZ and you have an item that you don’t have expertise on, that gear’s stats would be changed to the closest one of your advanced class recruitment gear. PVP gear would be still better, but you won’t be facerolled only based solely on your gear. (Good PVPers would still farm you if you suck, but that’s the nature of the beast).