Hard modes are really putting me off

[MJHoyle]

Well a few people kindly pointed out to me that the advice given to me by my guild leader was bad. He was insistant that I replaced my crit/surge enhancements with power/accuracy ones and replaced my crit mods with power mods. I've followed their advice, spent a load of credits in replacing them back to what they were, and seeing if it makes a difference.

 

As for the gear I got 2x 124, 3x 126, and 1x 136. My rotation which I'm still trying to master tends to follow along these lines:

 

3x GR, HS, FA, 2x GR, HiB

 

With FA used when proc'd and DR when available and weaving in HS if ammo goes below 7.

 

My spec is this one:

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#800McZMIkrRMdokfzZf.1

 

I previously had all aim/power and accuracy/power mods, now I got a bit of a balance of those and aim/crit and crit/surge mods to keep accuracy a little over 100%. The mods in the 124 gear are from Belsavis/Ilum dailies. One of the 126 items has the Belsavis/Ilum daily mods in it too but it counts as 126 as the barrel was bought with the commendations. 2 of the 124 items are augmented.

Edited April 20, 2012 by MJHoyle

[sharkfinsix]

having just started hard modes ourselves a few weeks ago I can tell you this....you just need to learn the fights, once you know the fights the enrages are no longer an issue. The 1st time we did HM Blck Talon a few weeks ago it took us multiple wipes and about 2 hours....this week it took us 25 mins...our gear hasn't changed "that much" but our experience in hard modes has.

 

Don't give up! you will get there.

[Elwacko]

1. Understand and research your class and it's skills.

2. Understand your gear and your stats

3. prepare for an operation, do not go in forgetting health pots and stims.

4. if you want to study a fight, there are videos. if you don't, expect to spend money on repairs, and investing in the time to learn the fights.

5. some people are just outright better players than others, so expect to have bad players if you don't already know who you're going with.

6. understand when you are in a bad guild... they will yell and complain and never teach. if your guild leader can't communicate, you should be in a different guild.

[MJHoyle]

Yep, switching mods was a massive improvement. That's the last time I take gear advice from him. Gonna try maelstrom prison next as this is the place we struggled on the other day. We couldn't down Colonel Daksh before he enraged.

 

Update: Well, we downed him, but I died halfway since I was pulling loads of threat and ended up tanking him for several seconds.

Edited April 20, 2012 by MJHoyle

[FriarChuggs]

It sounds like your guild leader doesn't know what he is talking about, both with regard to itemization and the mythical increase in HM difficulty.

 

My best advice to you is to watch some videos and read some of the excellent guides out there on your class, and find other people who will do the same. You're clearly someone who wants to improve, and you should surround yourself with other people who want the same. Even if you're carrying your weight, if the other three in your group aren't you won't be successful hitting enrage timers and beating HM's (which are far from "easy" unless you're overgeared, but which should be VERY doable even in substandard gear if you have 4 people who are playing well and working together).

[JamesMartinez]

lol the OP is hilarious. HM FPs are not tough at all besides the new one(The lost Island). If your whole group has all their mods/enhancements/armoring from the dailies you should have minimum problems really.

[Distracted]

I can only quote what my guild master said. He's been empathising for 3 days now that all heroic bosses were given a 50% damage buff in 1.2

 

Your guild master is lying in an attempt to hide his gross incompetence. You are a fool for blindly believing what 'some guy' said on the internet & trying to pass it off as fact. Learn from this mistake, leave that guild & find other like-minded players that want to do well.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Distracted

[MJHoyle]

Yeah, I guess with the wrong type of mods it would've made such a difference that the dps wouldn't be enough. We were all racking our brains wondering what was wrong as we were all decently geared enough. It didn't make sense that we were wiping every time and my only thoughts in the end was that 1.2 buffed the bosses too much and put it down to that. I honestly don't know where the guild leader got the 50% damage increase on all heroic bosses from and if I hear him chirping about it in vent again I'll ask him where he found his information.

 

Today cleared 4 hard modes in a different group with just a few wipes due to first-time attempts, I died a lot since I was doing massive amounts of damage which was managing to out-threat the rataki-geared tank. I guess that's a good sign that I got my gear right and the other dps said I was hitting much harder than she was.

 

I wouldn't go as far as leaving the guild unless the guild leader started dictating to everyone how to gear/play their classes during an ops and resulting in needless wiping. We got a lot of decent people in the guild, we're all working hard to start our first ops once we're all ready for it.

Edited April 21, 2012 by MJHoyle

[Distracted]

I wouldn't go as far as leaving the guild unless the guild leader started dictating to everyone how to gear/play their classes during an ops and resulting in needless wiping. We got a lot of decent people in the guild, we're all working hard to start our first ops once we're all ready for it.

 

You can always just get all the like-minded people together to form a new guild. People like your current guild master will always drag the rest down.

[MJHoyle]

Well, I'm not planning on a mutiny yet.

[MJHoyle]

Well, since focusing what I was told by others were the more important stats I've been able to clear hard modes with little to no trouble at all.

 

When my guild leader mentioned the 50% damage increase on all heroic bosses again I asked him where he got his information from and he said it was on the developer forums, but I haven't see anything about that in the dev tracker.

 

He also said that BW has said there are no caps on skills, yet other sites say for gunnery commando that it's advisable to aim for 108% accuracy, 30% crit chance, and some sites say 80-85% surge while others say 70% surge. Again I haven't found anything posted by BW that says there's no caps on skills, unless I'm missing something?

[skotish]

Well, since focusing what I was told by others were the more important stats I've been able to clear hard modes with little to no trouble at all.

 

When my guild leader mentioned the 50% damage increase on all heroic bosses again I asked him where he got his information from and he said it was on the developer forums, but I haven't see anything about that in the dev tracker.

 

He also said that BW has said there are no caps on skills, yet other sites say for gunnery commando that it's advisable to aim for 108% accuracy, 30% crit chance, and some sites say 80-85% surge while others say 70% surge. Again I haven't found anything posted by BW that says there's no caps on skills, unless I'm missing something?

 

Big respect for taking the criticism and applying it not many ppl are willing these days to listen to others

[AichaHalcyon]

You can always just get all the like-minded people together to form a new guild. People like your current guild master will always drag the rest down.

 

Nothing like a good old-fashioned coup d'état to get the blood going, right?

 

Today cleared 4 hard modes in a different group with just a few wipes due to first-time attempts, I died a lot since I was doing massive amounts of damage which was managing to out-threat the rataki-geared tank. I guess that's a good sign that I got my gear right and the other dps said I was hitting much harder than she was.

 

First off, you have a threat dump. Use it, early and often if you are having that much of an issue with threat. If you are doing that and your rakata geared tank still can't hold threat off you, it's because he sucks, not necessarily that you're THAT good.

 

He also said that BW has said there are no caps on skills, yet other sites say for gunnery commando that it's advisable to aim for 108% accuracy, 30% crit chance, and some sites say 80-85% surge while others say 70% surge. Again I haven't found anything posted by BW that says there's no caps on skills, unless I'm missing something?

 

Most stats don't have a hard cap, but most suffer from varying degrees of diminishing returns. Go to this site for more detailed info about that stuff. Here's the link to the Trooper forums: http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Forum-Bounty-Hunter-and-Trooper

 

Sorry, I'm in a crappy mood, hope that helps.

Edited April 25, 2012 by AichaHalcyon

[Krepid]

If your tank was rakata geared and you were getting aggro.. your tank sucked OR you were hitting mobs which you shouldn't have been focussing on. Edited April 25, 2012 by Krepid

[MJHoyle]

First off, you have a threat dump. Use it, early and often if you are having that much of an issue with threat. If you are doing that and your rakata geared tank still can't hold threat off you, it's because he sucks, not necessarily that you're THAT good.

 

Ah yes, the threat dump ability. I forgot I had that. I'll bind it to a more accessible key and practice using it. Thank you.

 

Most stats don't have a hard cap, but most suffer from varying degrees of diminishing returns. Go to this site for more detailed info about that stuff. Here's the link to the Trooper forums: http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/Forum-Bounty-Hunter-and-Trooper

 

Sorry, I'm in a crappy mood, hope that helps.

 

Thank you so much, I'll go make a cup of tea and read it up.

(Edit) Wow awesome guide! I'll post that up on my guilds' forum. Plenty to read there, and didn't know that grenades were worth using in a rotation. Something else I'm gonna have to practice using.

Edited April 25, 2012 by MJHoyle

[MJHoyle]

If your tank was rakata geared and you were getting aggro.. your tank sucked OR you were hitting mobs which you shouldn't have been focussing on.

 

What I was pointed out last night during one fp was that I wasn't giving the tank enough time to get aggro at the start and opening up with aoe abilities which was pulling all mobs towards me. I'm now doing single-target damage for a few seconds at the start of a pack fight before I do any aoe to give the tank a fighting chance of getting aggro. It's very easy at the start of a fight to think "oh look, mobs!" and immediately hit motar volley to take out as many as possible, and then panic as 4-5 strong and elite mobs rush at you with their eyes blazing and claws drawn. It takes a bit of discipline and self-restraint to know when it's safe to use aoe at the start and when the tank needs time for mass-aggro before using aoe.

Edited April 25, 2012 by MJHoyle

[Ancaglon]

The gearing model for SWTOR seems all wrong. It's far quicker and probably easier to get geared up by doing story mode Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace than by grinding hard modes, which gives you tionese tokens, and columi and xenotech drops. Once you have gotten to full Columi, there's not much point in doing hard modes except for rare loot like the speeders, and possibly for the crafting materials (which also drop in EV/KP).

 

As far as I can tell, doing the dailies and buying the mods from the mission support vendors on Ilum, Belsavis and Corellia help, but it isn't the optimal way to get ready for hard modes. If you have a decent guild, try and get them to do a 16-man Eternity Vault Story-mode run -- with the Master Looter now working on Story mode, it'll be pretty easy to allocate the gear to the people that most need them, and there is a LOT of loot.

[Padkhar]

The gearing model for SWTOR seems all wrong. It's far quicker and probably easier to get geared up by doing story mode Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace than by grinding hard modes, which gives you tionese tokens, and columi and xenotech drops. Once you have gotten to full Columi, there's not much point in doing hard modes except for rare loot like the speeders, and possibly for the crafting materials (which also drop in EV/KP).

 

As far as I can tell, doing the dailies and buying the mods from the mission support vendors on Ilum, Belsavis and Corellia help, but it isn't the optimal way to get ready for hard modes. If you have a decent guild, try and get them to do a 16-man Eternity Vault Story-mode run -- with the Master Looter now working on Story mode, it'll be pretty easy to allocate the gear to the people that most need them, and there is a LOT of loot.

 

This is my biggest problem with the game. It is, for the average gamer, much harder to line your schedule up with 7 others of the right classes than with 3. Yet most players are either not geared up enough to do the hard modes, or they are over-geared for them because of OPS, and now they have no incentive to run them.

 

We need some daily, PVE repeatable group content that feels challenging, varied and dynamic, and provides steady but slow loot progression. That is why many people who normally do not PVP are doing it in this game--there is nothing else, and they otherwise like the game's setting and mechanics. But it feels too isolating because we frequently have level 50's with no where to group up and play together that provides that ongoing sense of progression. It's either run an instance where nothing drops that anyone needs (except for fluff, maybe) or realize you don't have enough people (or enough geared people) to run the next tier of content. There is a big gap in the middle.

[Damishi]

with the Master Looter now working on Story mode...

 

I haven't heard this or read this in patch notes, this true?

Edited April 25, 2012 by Damishi

[XavinNydek]

What I was pointed out last night during one fp was that I wasn't giving the tank enough time to get aggro at the start and opening up with aoe abilities which was pulling all mobs towards me. I'm now doing single-target damage for a few seconds at the start of a pack fight before I do any aoe to give the tank a fighting chance of getting aggro. It's very easy at the start of a fight to think "oh look, mobs!" and immediately hit motar volley to take out as many as possible, and then panic as 4-5 strong and elite mobs rush at you with their eyes blazing and claws drawn. It takes a bit of discipline and self-restraint to know when it's safe to use aoe at the start and when the tank needs time for mass-aggro before using aoe.

In general, you don't want to be doing any AoE in endgame content unless you can handle the mobs attacking you. When you are doing difficult content, something should usually be getting CCed (so AoE would break that), and everyone should be focusing on the tank's current target. As you gear up that can loosen up some, but if you pull threat and die, go back to single target. Tanks in SWTOR can't hold multiple target threat very well for a variety of reasons, so don't expect them to.

 

If you haven't already, turn on your target of target indicator in the UI, so you can tell immediately when you pull threat. Next time, slow your DPS or blow your threat dump a little earlier.

[Kindara]

IT IS modded. Anybody else having trouble reading?

 

Have you been buying any of the Tionese gear? HMs aren't supposed to be completable without updating your gear beyond just the daily mods from the planets. I know since my friend and I started getting more Tionese gear after updating all our mods its made it easier to beat other HMs that are relatively harder. BT was ridiculous hard but we finally beat that and beat it a few more times to get the columi peice. We've been bouncing back and forth on Foundry / Boarding Party. Boarding party was far harder than Foundry but then we've upgraded our gear even more so Foundry is pratically a cake walk.

 

If your updating your gear with Tionese / Columi you shouldn't be having a ridiculously hard time except on ones you've not done before. If you dont know the HM mechanics or have forgotten all the Normal ones as well the bosses are rough and unforgiving. Course some HMs are just way over tuned or under tuned.

[KyoMamoru]

I haven't heard this or read this in patch notes, this true?

 

It was part of the 1.2 patch.

[Fetoff]

for me i totally skipped the HM´s there drops are **** and gear you can get through dailies (mostly armoring) + mods and enhancements in purple for lvl 49( which you craft on your own or let them craft or buy them) are better than the tionese gear, so get nice modable gear for the start

 

and forget about the HM´s there drops suck, just do taral v for the weekly where you have to do 3HM´s to get your columni comms

best ways to gear are ops (normal mode ops are mostly easier than HM fp´s, you just have to get the tactics for the bosses and drop WAY better) and PVP i got my BM set and went straight into rakata from that ^^