Which HM to start with

[sharkfinsix]

Hey guys, just wonder, imperial side, We are bunch of fairly fresh 50's that just got our armour and weapons all modded purple (lvl 49 epics) want to try our 1st HM.....

 

Which is the easiest or best one to start with. Thanks in advance!

[ADTRr]

Hey guys, just wonder, imperial side, We are bunch of fairly fresh 50's that just got our armour and weapons all modded purple (lvl 49 epics) want to try our 1st HM.....

 

Which is the easiest or best one to start with. Thanks in advance!

 

Are you refering to HM ops or flashpoints? in terms of ops EV -soa, and in terms of flashpoints False emp or Taral V

[Codek]

Black Talon, once you pass the first pull it's a walk in the park.

[sharkfinsix]

sorry i meant Flash points, i assume we need to cut our chops there a bit first before trying Ops.

 

Thanks for the advice!

[davhut]

Black Talon, once you pass the first pull it's a walk in the park.

 

So true, the first pull after all the talking is the worst in the whole place including bosses. All that talking seems to catch people off guard.

[oredith]

like what the others said, BT will be the easiest intro HM FP.

 

keep in mind that you'll most likely hit the enrage timer on these fights if you're low geared. as such, I suggest you pick the lightside choice when deciding to kill the captain.

 

lightside choice gives you 4 mobs to kill instead of 1, but the fight is generally easier, and the big thing is, you can kite the boss around the crate, allowing the dps to kill it while the tank plays cat n mouse around the crate with the enraged boss.

 

just be aware where you can LOS and play with the pathing on the boss, to allow dps time to kill the boss after the enrage.

 

the only difficulty will be the last boss. there's no real way to cheese the enrage, so if your dps is low, you're gonna have problem beating her. the only advice i have for her is to make sure you clump back up after running away from her aoe. this way, when she charges someone, your melee will still be able to hit her.

 

after BT, i'd probably do Kaon.

[sharkfinsix]

Thanks, is there any good hard mode guides you can link me? I prefer text guides over video ones, as I can print them off and put on my desk then.

[oredith]

Thanks, is there any good hard mode guides you can link me? I prefer text guides over video ones, as I can print them off and put on my desk then.

here's what i wrote up for my guild. it worked for us, but, like i said earlier, if you have really new dps gear, you may want to do the lightside choice for the kiteability of the 1st boss.

 

 

There's a lot of guides out there, but I thought I'd pass on some pertinent info to NEW lvl 50's to make the guild's transition as painless as possible. hopefully more than 3 people will read this..

 

Preface – as new 50, H BT is likely the only place you can run without running a marathon dying session. Even BT will likely require some “creative use of game mechanics”.

 

THE GATE KEEPER

I have no idea *** the guy’s name is, but he’s the guy barring your way into the shuttle, and you have no choice but to fight him. Consider him a CC’able boss – because he hits HARD. Especially if you’re new, CC him, kill the 3 adds, and then kill him. If you don’t, you’ll most likely wipe (because he’ll kill the healer first).

 

FIRST DECISION

Doesn’t matter if you’re lightside / darkside, pick darkside (kill the captain). I like to joke about this, but the darkside boss is a lot easier, especially for new 50’s. You can either esc out if the LS guy wins, or, the LS guy can pick DS for the first choice, and LS for the 2nd one, and end up with net 0.

 

At the time of this writing, the darkside choice also has one perk, the hallway is bugged and the trash doesn’t spawn, so you can literally ride straight to the first boss and only kill (2?) adds.

 

FIRST BOSS - GXR-5 Sabotage Droid

Straight burn. As new 50’s, you’re not going to have the dps to beat the enrage, so you really can’t afford to split off your dps to kill the drones that drop. However, your healer is also unlikely to be able to just powerheal through it. So you have to do your own survival things, like using a cooldown to knock back the drone and/or stun it away from you. If the drone drops on the tank, he needs to move (and the boss with him). I think our first few kills had us with 1, maybe 2 people surviving this, so if you manage that, you’re in good company.

 

SECOND BOSS - Commander Ghulil

This guy is a loot bag. You’ll hit his enrage timer, but don’t worry. Just tank him like a tank n spank, interrupt his fire bomb things, and move him if he does get it placed. Once he enrages, just have the tank run in big circles around the room, he’ll keep stopping to drop his probes, making it impossible to catch the tank (unless your tank is retardo). DPS can just chase and nuke.

 

BONUS BOSS - GXR-7 Command Droid

This guy is loot bag #2, and should not be passed up. once again, you’ll definitely hit his enrage timer, but the tank can play cat n mouse with him around the control console (there’s 2 on either side of his spawn point, very obvious once you’re there). Healer / ranged dps can just stand on top of the console and heal/dps, while the tank / melee dps run circles around the box. It’s very entertaining.

 

FINAL BOSS – Yadira Ban

She’s gonna be a real challenge for new 50’s. The problem is that you’re very unlikely to beat her enrage timer. The way to maximize the dmg, is to clump up on her at all times except when she pulls you in to do her AOE attack (at which point, you run, obviously). By clumping, she’ll still randomly jump and attack a party member, but even jumping, she’ll be in melee range of the tank / melee dps, so you won’t lose anything there.

 

Healers, depending on your comfort level, you may want to dps part of this fight too. She doesn’t do a lot of damage, so help out on dps when you can, but make sure you have enough mana (energy, force, heat, whatever) to heal the jumped on target after the run-out.

 

When she enrages, it’s mostly luck. If she nukes the healer first, you might be able to blitz her down. If you lose the tank, you may still be able to do it, but if she kills a dps first, it’s probably a wipe.. there’s no use kiting her, or pole humping, we tried all of that, and it didn’t work.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2012 by oredith

[Flain]

I play on the republic side so I don't know much about the empire flashpoints but rather than go from easiest to hardest I think they can be split into two groups easier and harder. And in those two groups there is usually going to be at least one boss that could be harder than the rest.

 

So this in my opinion are the two groups with bosses that might cause problems:

 

Easier

 

Esseles - Ironfist can be a problem if you don't have people who are on the money interrupting his "Headshot" ability.

 

False Emperor - HK47 can be tough here since there are a lot of mechanics to watch out for (circles, turrets, assassination ability and his spray of bullets). The optional bonus boss can also be very tough if you don't have high enough DPS.

 

Taral V- The optional bonus boss can be tough as he hits hard especially if you don't LoS him.

 

Maelstrom Prison - X-37 Oppressor Droid hits very hard and can be tough without a good healer.

 

Harder

 

Battle of Illum - The boss Khel Thak is pretty over-tuned at the moment since he and his adds hit very hard. Even experienced healers might have trouble keeping you up in this fight.

 

Directive 7 - The final boss "Mentor" can be a hard fight since there are so many mechanics. Also a few people have trouble with Bulwark but he is pretty simple if you follow the basic tactics.

 

Kaon Under Siege - The optional bonus boss can be very tough since he has a lot of splash damage as well as the adds. The mobs here are tough too if you don't know how to deal with them.

[oredith]

Kaon Under Siege - The optional bonus boss can be very tough since he has a lot of splash damage as well as the adds. The mobs here are tough too if you don't know how to deal with them.[/color]

the bonus boss was worth it the first couple weeks, when he dropped helm token too, but with the item nerf, it's really not worth the time. Kaon without the bonus boss is probably on par with BT, maybe a little harder?

[oredith]

here's one i wrote for False Emperor. obviously written a while ago. they've since fixed it so that you can actually kill HK's turrets after the fight, and provided knockback bombs, but the idea's the same.

 

 

Unlike the H BT cheatsheet, this instance should only be attempted by group members that are at least a few runs into H BT, and (not or) at least having done a bunch of the daily heroics to get the epic quality enhancement / armor / mod from Ilum and Belsavis. You should at least do the daily pvp on ilum (don’t worry, there’s no pvp, there’s only dancing) and hope for a champion token out of the champion bag. Even though the champion gear all has expertise, it’ll still be better than the quest blue/green you may still be sporting. Also, if you get a champion armor, you can and should spend the 54k cr to pull the lvl 56 armor and mod out, and put it in your orange gear.

 

Basically, you NEED to have substantial upgrades before doing False Emperor. I consider me, squall, nike, and sul to be in the above category, and we still wipe A LOT in this instance. The armor repair cost for this run is typically 50k+, and I’d consider that a standard run at this point.

 

GENERAL NOTE

CC is paramount here. The instance is strewn with mob packs that only have 3-4 mobs visible, but once you engage, up to 4 adds jetpack / run in. It’s much better to have too much CC and stand around staring at a pack of CC’d mobs, than to find yourself facing 10 mobs.

 

Knock-back/off – there’s lots of ledges in this instance, and the general rule of thumb is that you can knock stuff off the ledge to kill them before the 2nd mini-boss. After that, you need to really evaluate if the fall on the other side will actually kill them, or if they will fall on a ledge/platform.

 

Rule of thumb CC order – Battledroids > commandos > marauders

 

FIRST MINIBOSS

I don’t think he enrages? Or a pretty lenient one, so slow and steady wins the race. He’s got 3 adds, two of which are non-elite and should just be nuked, 3rd is a strong mob that should be knocked off the ledge if possible, but if the tank misses on knocking him off, you should just kill it rather than wasting time bouncing him around.

 

Note, the boss does a knockback, and yes, the tank CAN get knocked off the bridge, try to warn your tank to not pull a Squall.

 

Our preference is to pull him back off the bridge to the side you engage him from. You have more room to move. The ranged should stay fairly far apart, because he’ll jump to someone and stun them, and generally follow up with a whirlwind that’ll kill you if you’re not full HP and not running out.

 

Note to healer, keep yourself and the ranged dps at/near full as much as the situation will allow, at the cost of asking your tank to pop a cooldown if necessary, because if you’re at 80% HP, the mini-boss’ jump/WW will most likely kill you.

 

Other than that, the boss is pretty much tank n spank.

 

Kiting – there’s no benefit to kiting this boss to vael’s room.

 

SECOND MINIBOSS

This guy still wipes us, a lot, so be prepared. He also enrages, but via spamming, you can heal through it, just not for very long, so you can’t afford to slow-roll him.

 

Having said that, the first ~15-20 seconds of the fight is hectic, with overlapping duties. The tank and melee dps will have to interrupt something (I can’t remember what it’s called, but interrupt his casts), while the healer / ranged needs to go shoot down the bounty hunter ship that’s launching rockets at you.

 

The tricky part is that the boss appears to be smart. He grapples the person trying to shoot the ship and /or jumps to stun him. So you need a backup plan. For the first sequence, the ranged dps should be the one to try to hit the switch to launch the cannon barrage, but if he gets grappled/stunned, the healer needs to jump in and trigger it, because the continued missiles from the ship will be more than any healing you do anyways. Once the initial trigger is done, the healer should be able to do all subsequent cannon fires as you can see when the ship is coming back, and trigger it in time. This also allows the ranged dps to maximize their dps time.

 

It’d be nice if the tank/melee can call out flame sweep, I don’t think it’s interruptable, but I do know that it does heavy damage. Thanks to bioware’s lackluster UI, the lack of Target-of-Target makes it impossible for the healers to tell when he’s about to cast it, so be ready to run if he’s anywhere near you (healers).

 

Kiting – If you have made it far enough in the encounter that the bounty hunter ship has been destroyed, it actually IS possible to graveyard zerg the boss, if the surviving member(s) can kite him back. He’ll be doing more damage from enrage, but as mentioned earlier, healable. Kite him and meet up with your revived members to beat him up. Don’t try this if the ship is still alive though, the missiles will fire through walls and kill you.

 

If you have beat this boss, congratulations, you have beat the instance, the rest of the loot is just a matter of time.

 

BONUS BOSS

Don’t bother, we have decent gear now, and we were nowhere NEAR beating his enrage – so basically, don’t bother clearing to mission consoles.

 

MISC MINI BOSSES

I think there are 2 other minibosses enroute to Malgus, but they’re pretty easy, no enrage timers, no fancy mechanics, so, just don’t be bad.

 

HK REVISITED

This is actually a really simple fight, once you get used to the dance.

 

He targets someone with a missile, that person moves out, waits for the missile to lock onto that spot, and the person runs back in.

 

He also targets a person with explosive dart, that can be dispelled. If not, it does ~8000 dmg.. not a huge deal to heal through, but nice if you can avoid having to heal it. He emotes “prepare to die now” before targeting someone, and he’ll put a mark on the person just like an agent’s snipe shot. Don’t dispel early, it only works once the debuff’s on the target. You have about a 3 second window to dispel.

 

At about 50%, the 2 turrets on the sides pop up. they can’t be killed, don’t bother. They’ll be targeting the healer, so, be prepared for that. It’s low damage, but annoying regardless.

 

This is also when he starts doing his disappearing trick. I forget the emote, but it’ll be obvious, when he disappears, everyone needs to clump up and AOE on yourself. This will knock him out of stealth, and stop him from poisoning a party member from stealth. If he manages to poison you, you have less than 2 seconds to react to that and dispel the poison. Don’t bother trying to heal it, you won’t make it, dispel.

 

If you can master the clump/aoe, the fight is over.

 

after the fight's over, the turrets will continue to shoot you. we haven't figure out how to kill them, so run back to the elevator so that you're out of LOS. have the tank port out of the instance, and that usually resets them. if not, the healer may need to too. once reset, come back in and finish Malgus.

 

MALGUS

Lootbag.. it’s awesome, because he drops the tier chestpiece!

 

He does a massive (and I do mean MASSIVE) knockback, so position him thus:

 

]………top of stairs……………..[

]ranged………...(M1)(M2)(T)[ m1 = melee, m2 = malgus, T = tank

]………bottom of stairs……….[

 

Melee / tank will have to interrupt his aoe lightning storm thing, otherwise, it’s a straight tank n spank til ~10% hp.

 

Throughout the fight, he’s gonna pick a person randomly to “solo”. In hardmode, you really don’t want to solo him unless you’re the tank, so what we do is run up his stairs, then double back on the upper arm, wait for him to almost catch up, then jump off, making him have to run back to the stairs to chase you, by the time he gets to you, the ability will be over and the tank can pick him up again.

 

At 10% comes the tricky part. The tank needs to drag him to an edge BEFORE HE GETS TO 10%, but be careful to be parallel to the edge, least the tank pulls another squall. Once he hits 10%, he’ll start channeling lightning, at which point, he becomes vulnerable to knockback, and more importantly, STOPS MOVING. This is why it’s critical you move him to an open sided ledge, or else you won’t be able to kill him. Once he starts channeling, use your knockbacks to knock him off the side.. collect phat lewts, and /getdown.

 

[sharkfinsix]

wow thanks for all the help guys, I look forward to using this knowledge with my guildies this week.

[sharkfinsix]

Just to give you all some feedback, we have completed Black Talon, False Emperor and Boarding party with your advice. Thanks!

[Foenixz]

Actually you will find the OPs (normal mode EV) to be easier. I am sure if you can't get 8 there are many dps willing to do it for the weekly quest.

[DeltaEkotte]

Id say Black Talon then Boarding Party. I'm a fresh 50 as well and thats taht advice my guild gave to me.

[sharkfinsix]

Actually you will find the OPs (normal mode EV) to be easier. I am sure if you can't get 8 there are many dps willing to do it for the weekly quest.

 

Our guild is just getting to 8 lvl 50 toons right now and then the challenge of getting all 8 online at one time. Some people are going to have to respec DPS tho! only 2 DPS so far! lots of healers and a few tanks are 50 now or the verge of being 50. We definetly looking froward to trying OPS asap, but we are awaiting our fellow guildies 1st. Thanks for the tip tho