Buffs are always worth it. I always try to buff people when I can, having all 4 buffs from the legacy system makes quite a difference. Those people saying that buffs aren't 'needed' and so on are only hurting themselves really. Wearing bracers/belt isn't really 'needed' either but most people would think you were stupid for missing around 10% of your stats. The game isn't exactly challenging while levelling but that's no reason to intentionally make it harder on yourself or others. I'd bet that a lot of the people who dont buff others are either new to this type of game or ignorant/lazy. Not buffing while in a group, even when asked is more than enough reason to kick people IMO.

Other snipers are saying the same as I am though: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=423297 http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=413185 So it's not just me at least.

Before 1.2 my sniper used to be able to cast for example snipe and explosive probe and explosive probe would detonate from the snipe. After 1.2 it doesn't explode instantly anymore. You have to attack again for it to go off. It might be just lag or they might have changed it to be like your sabotage charge.

There is a debuff applied to the tank when they get knocked back just before he casts breath of the masters. I'm not sure if it's just there on Hard mode or not. Maybe that's when he's hitting you so hard? From a hardmode guide: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=418184 - He will gain a buff called Gift of the Masters, which gives him Breath of the Masters. When he is casting this spell on the tank, the other tank should immediately taunt. Be ready. If the tank affected by the Breath gets hit by the boss even once, it is almost always an instant death for that tank. - Whoever got the Breath needs to run on the outside edge dropping the purple circles on the ground. 5 of these will drop from one Breath. - When the other tank gets the Breath, the main tank should grab back as fast as possible. Repeat until boss is dead. Sniper shields are very useful here. Breath of the Masters Note: Cshouston: "Touch of the Masters. When Kephess performs his knockback on the current tank, it applies that debuff. Taking a single point of damage is essentially an insta-kill. He knocks back, applies Touch, then shortly after begins to channel Breath. Unfortunately, whether this is by design or a bug, he can get a swing off inbetween the two and one-shot the tank. We handled this by having our offtank taunt immediately after the transition, take the debuff, then pop force speed and run away until the channel for Breath began. At that point, I would taunt it off of him and just tank him in place, providing maximum DPS up-time for our melee. Once Touch wears off on the 2nd tank, he will be very close to applying it again to the current MT, so the cycle repeats. We found this to be optimal because there is very little kiting involved, and the tank with Breath can just run along the wall dropping the purple circles far out of anyone's path."

As the poster above said, 2 tanks make things a bit easier. What he does after the large purple AOE is: - Knocks the tank back - Casts breath of the masters on the tank. This puts a debuff on the tank which makes them drop the small purple circles. - Changes target after the cast, probably to the second on threat So have your second tank taunt right after the cast he does (i think it's his only cast) and random DPS wont get 1-shot. In most videos i've seen he will do this 4-6 times. You should be able to have a cooldown for most tank switches if needed. Whoever gets the debuff from breath of the masters should drop the aoes away from the raid. The two tank method means that kephess will be stationary for most of the phase, giving higher DPS and less chance of people running out of range etc. Once the AOEs are dropped, the tank should run back and be ready to taunt. It can be done with one tank but most of the videos i've seen with one tank are chaotic at best, this way is easier on the DPS/Healers.

I've tried it a bit in PvE and it works ok if you arent getting hit constanly. As others have said, the 1 rage cost every time you are hit really needs to go. They could also take the threat drop every time you're hit off it for all I care, the initial moderate threat drop is fine. The heal could be kept to justify it's initial 4 rage cost compared to other classes free threat reduction cooldowns. Most of the time you wont even get the full heal anyway unless you are being focused on.

It was changed in the 1.2 patch because if you killed the last boss and died, you could not run back into the instance to loot. On some bosses this could be a problem, especially Boarding Party since you could kill the commander to complete the quest but be killed by the bosses adds. Then you would have 'finished' the instance but not get the loot. Now the flashpoints close when you hand in the quest. •Lockouts have been removed from Hard Mode Flashpoints. •You will no longer lose access to a Flashpoint phase immediately after defeating the final boss in Hard Mode. Access is removed upon completing the [FLASHPOINT] mission. I'm guessing this is what you're seeing.

They are seperate lockouts. Open your quest log and look at the lockouts tab.

He channels a spell a few seconds before he leaps to a new target. I'm not sure what it does but we had the tanks swap right after he cast it and he never leaped to anyone. It looked like he dropped threat on the tank right after that spell and leaped to the highest threat DPS. Swapping tanks/taunting at that point seemed to be the way to go. Edit: The spell he casts is called Breath of the Masters and puts a debuff on his current target. This debuff makes them drop the 4 purple circles on the ground. After the cast he then changes target, probably to the second on threat. The way I would handle it is with two tanks. When one tank gets breathed on, he runs away and the other tank taunts. This would mean that kephess gets moved around less and melee dont get screwed over because you're tanking Kephess in purple stuff. After dropping the 4 purple circles, the first tank runs back, waits for the next breath then taunts and tanks him while the other tank drops his circles.. and so on. You can see the cast and debuff on the troopercommando guide video, although they only use 1 tank. http://troopercommando.com/2012/04/12/encounter-warlord-kephess/

You can watch the guild summit here: between 6-8 minutes is the part about hard/nightmare and story modes. It doesn't say that storymode EC would be easier than EV/KP. It says that they expect you to gear up through EV/KP but the gearing 'curve' would not be so steep compared to hard/nighmare modes. They also said that they were going to focus more on mechanics etc. rather than just requiring more stats to beat the fights. When groups get used to the new mechanics for EC I dont think it will seem as difficult as people are making out now. Since there is a lot more movement and so on required for the fights compared to EV/KP, DPS/healing will suffer until players get used to it. When people adjust to what is required then the DPS will improve.

On the imperial fleet you access the guild bank in the Galactic trade section. It's on the outside part of the ring, middle section of the galactic trade tier. The guild banks show up as purple icons on the map. It's probably similar for republic. I bought mine from one of those access points and could access it from there as well. If you aren't getting anything show up when you click them then I would open a ticket in-game. 600K should buy you 1 tab, which shows up at the top left of the Guild bank window. I'd try to access it today if you havent already since there were some issues on thursday/friday with the 1.2 features they added. You can set the visibilty of each tab for every rank, which ranks can deposit, which can withdraw items and how many credits can be withdrawn or spent on repairs/respecs. The settings are in the guild bank window.

You can watch the guild summit here: between 6-8 minutes is the part about hard/nightmare and story modes. It doesn't say that storymode EC would be easier than EV/KP. It says that they expect you to gear up through EV/KP but the gearing 'curve' would not be so steep compared to hard/nighmare modes. They also said that they were going to focus more on mechanics etc. rather than just requiring more stats to beat the fights. When groups get used to the new mechanics for EC I dont think it will seem as difficult as people are making out now. Since there is a lot more movement and so on required for the fights compared to EV/KP, DPS/healing will suffer until players get used to it. When people adjust to what is required then the DPS will improve.

My guild has done Soa nightmare with two Merc healers. Have everyone who can heal help out during the platform phases and it shouldn't be a problem. DPS sorcerors/mercs/operatives throwing a few heals really helps out and there is plenty of time to regenerate resources if you arent wasting force/heat/energy on the pylons. You only need 1-2 DPS killing the pylons on the way down. If you have people with a charge they can avoid all damage by charging to them, so have your chargers killing them. Using intercede on someone on a lower platform also prevents damage and i'd assume the sorceror's force pull would work as well.

As others have said, it looks like more of a tank problem than anything you're doing. This game can be annoying on some pulls, where the tank has to take agro on several mobs and others join as soon as you pull. Some mobs also stun/knockback when you pull so that doesn't really help. It's not really a tank-friendly game but it can be worked around. The tanks should be tanking any strongs and elites most of the time. Weak mobs should be the priority for DPS classes and when I tank, I usually put 1-2 hits on weak mobs to keep them off the healer and they should be dead before you get enough healing agro to pull them. Some DPS seem to focus on elites and strongs before weak mobs and this makes it a lot more difficult on the tank, who then has 2-3 elites/strongs and several weak mobs to control (which can usually be killed in a few hits by any DPS). Telling DPS to kill weak mobs first makes things a lot easier on everyone, since they usually do the same damage as an elite but with significantly less health. It also gives the tank a few seconds to get more threat on the elites, which means DPS can then go all-out on them.

Yeah probably something like that. I tried with some armor removed and got the tooltip saying 1363 damage, I got 4 ticks of 328 damage which works out as 1312, 3.7% lower than the tooltip.