Once you go down the Rakghoul Overlord achievement path, forever will it dominate your destiny.

I am changing my vote to this. Several of us had to dig out the floor blocking boat mounts from KP/EV to ensure that the encounter had its maximum effectiveness.

Like the title says. Still broken, I presume. How does the workaround go again? Take off all gear outside instance, zone in, put gear back on?

Top 5: 1.)SOA is still, after all this time, the best and most epic fight in the game. 2.)Grobthok is an awesome boss fight with a great boss design. 3.)Cartel Warlords: great fight. 4.)Titan 6: awesome. Boss actually has personality. Somehow. "Titan 6 needs no allies; Titan 6 stands alone": proceeds to summon waves of allies constantly. 5.)Tile Boss in Dread Palace. Awesome. **If the middle phase of the Styrak fight was just a little bit shorter, it would probably number two, or maybe even number one. On that note, the Terror fight is 30-50% too long. ****The only "puzzle bosses" done right in this game, IMHO, are the Pylons and the minefield. The rest of them are tedious exercises in patience with obnoxious and typically dull wipe components.

Powertech is the easiest tank to get a handle on and manage as it trades numerous abilities for more baseline mitigation. Asstank and Juggernauts have a lot more abilities to juggle, procs to keep track of, and are just plain more complicated. Powertechs also have tremendous quality of life advantages in having a ranged aoe taunt and aoe attacks along with a gap closer AND a pull. These really make a noob tank's life easier in terms of positioning. If someone wanted to tank and this was their first mmorpg or first time tanking, I'd tell them to strongly consider Powertech/Vanguard.

You want to know "How are Merc/Operative healing in PVP?" Well, they do it using abilities granted the class. Mercs use things like Healing Scan and Rapid Scan, along with Kolto whatever. Operatives do it with a minor, resource generating tool in diagnostic scan, than they have a bunch of other healing abilitiese as well. Surgical Probe, recuperative nanotech ... I can't remember all the times but stuff like that. Oh, and both classes can heal themselves using med packs.

There is a far larger dynamic at play here. This game appears intentionally designed to not prepare players, as they level, for end game content difficulty. Basically, the game presents a serious "cliff" of difficulty for which there is no meaningful learning curve. This appears to be a deliberate choice, and I don't necessarily disagree. If difficulty ramped up throughout the game, it would make the core storylines unclearable by a meaningful percentage of the player base. The very, very few challenging leveling fights in the game and they amount of qq they provoke clearly demonstrates this. The leveling content in this game, the leveling flashpoints and the level 50 flashpoints with the exception of Lost Island and I guess maybe Directive 7 do absolutely nothing to prepare you for end game raiding or level 55 flashpoints (which are, themselves, much easier than HM/NiM raiding). EV and KP, with the exception maybe of Fabricator, do nothing to prepare you for the mechanics required by all other raids, including EC. When players hit EC, they basically saw mechanics that if no way shape or form had ever been introduced in a gentler fashion at any earlier point. This trend has continued with each subsequent raid.

Tanking (and healing) is far more work. They take far more abuse. They get the same (typically ******) reward as derp derp classes that, in my experience, are disproportionately whiny and obnoxious to queue with. Why bother? If I feel like, I have no problem hand picking folks to run an FP with. The people who queue as tanks should get a couple ultimate comms per flashpoint. That would fix the problem immediately.

Awesome. Before it became standard, it was pretty awesome when it happened with Malgus. The "gold standard" for dps'ing shenanigans, imho, is to bring 16 uber dps to EV SM. Soa will not stop his speech on the first platform regardless of damage. With a random raid group we had him sub 40% before he finished his speech prior to 2.4. I think if you bring 16 dps, you might be able to down him on the first platform. I assume at that point the server will crash.

I will look for that, thank you.

Is the Conqueror Relic of Reactive Warding arguably superior to the Obroan, and maybe Dread Forged, versions? That one has +21 absorb on it as opposed to +21 power. I'm not sure if it's bugged, or if all other versions are bugged. So you get something like a 1000 point shield plus 21 absorb, versus a 1300 point shield with no absorb.

Is the Conqueror Relic of Reactive Warding arguably superior to the Obroan, and maybe Dread Forged, versions? That one has +21 absorb on it as opposed to +21 power. I'm not sure if it's bugged, or if all other versions are bugged.

A friendly, but spirited, discussion about the relative difficult of the following operations (with an eye towards completing all bosses) was had last night. I would like ya'all to weigh in. Please rank these in difficulty from a tanking perspective (assume equally/sufficiently competent dps and healers): EC NiM SV SM TFB SM Your input appreciated.

Wut. [MESSAGE TOO SHORT]

The game does need this. Badly. However, I think it will result in MORE healers to a far greater extent than tanks for the simple reason that it will not solve the problem of needing a separate dps and tanking gear set. This is a larger barrier to entry than skill. Nobody in their right mind is going to build up a dps and tanking set between levels 50-54, that would be utterly tedious. So what's the quick fix for this problem? Hand out a "recruit" type tanking set that's equivalent to campaign, with no set bonus, to anyone who reaches level 55? Ugh. Not so sure that's a good idea.