Maybe it's already been said, but the Dark Age of Camelot model was extremely fun. You had a set number of Forts, whoever held the most at that time had access to extra content (i.e. an extra FP or Op or both!) with more epic drops, rare crafting materials that could only be gotten through that instance, you also got a slight buff to your factions xp gain and money gain per kill even in PvE, I believe it was 2% or so? The forts had defenses, you had to break through them to get inside, then there were NPC objectives that you had to 'kill' to gain control of the fort, it's been awhile, but I believe that the NPC difficulty scaled based off of participation/population. It was incredibly fun and challenging, and when your faction gained control of the enough forts, it was a true sense of accomplishment, not just for you, but for your entire faction. Make PvP about more than killing the other player. Been there, done that, it gets old pretty fast and FPS's do it better anyway. Give us objectives, and make those objectives worth something, not just for PvP, but for your entire faction. and as for balancing the imbalance, PvPvE would work well with that type of model. Just my 0.02c

The tanking defensive stats are fine, when you are fully buffed, and traited as a TANK, not as a dps tank, but a straight up tank. I'd have to disagree that survival is only 1/4 better. I have a sage a gunslinger a sentinel and a vanguard tank. By far my vanguard has the highest survival. Sage melts in about 2 seconds under focused fire, GS maybe 2.5 seconds. The sentinel if I'm popping CD's can survive a bit longer, call it 3-4 seconds under focused fire. My vanguard? 15-20 seconds when I pop all my CD's. Usually long enough to keep them from capping an objective until my team shows back up.

All I can say to the OP is, get a team together. Each faction has a mirror class. Huttball is all about teamwork, if you go in on a PUG and are playing against a pre-made of people who play together all the time and are on voice... I don't care if you have all the pull/leap abilities and their full of nothing but operatives/scoundrels, they can still beat you. It's all about team work and balance. Anything you see the other team doing, you can do also.. remember that, and then go find a good guild to pvp with. If you prefer to queue solo, get used to losing.

Or just go get your columi.. which is better stats than champ anyway. I pvp in full columi/rakata and I'm way better off than if I was in champ gear. On the other hand Battlemaster gear is worth it seeing as how it's equivalent to Rakata and looks better for some classes . The only thing I use champion gear for, is my fresh 50's. max wz/merc comms on your way to lvl cap, buy the bags, hope for a piece or two, get you foot in the door for running HM's, wz in between your HM's, save your comms, buy more bags, hope for another token drop.

People doing an HP check on you is basically a very basic gear check. Once you start running HM's and getting the Columi gear, your HP goes up, period, end of story. I don't care what 56 mods you rip out and stack, your HP WILL go up. As a fresh 50 I had about 14k (I spent an abhorrent amount of money on the AH to get it too). As I started playing around with end game, I got into pvp, I went up to 15k, then I found a good guild and got more into pve, I went up to 16k, I started running ops, I went up to 17k, I just started running HM ops and am already up to 17.5k, unbuffed, HP, my willpower is around 1650 or so unbuffed and 1850 or so with buffs/stims, I am a sage. For HM Ops you absolutely have to have a minimum gear check, their just has to be X amount of dmg to beat the enrage timers, your tank has to be able to soak up X amount of dmg and your healer has to be able to heal the entire party FAST. Maybe that will give you some insight as to why people are rejecting you based on HP. Do I agree with them? Nopers, not unless it's HM Ops. For Normal Mode Ops we bring along just about anyone who has been working on their dailies and running HM FP's. You don't have to be super geared, just able to solo one of the council in EV (thats a requirement, nobody can help you or you fail that boss fight).

Other MMO's have addressed that without using an enrage timer, but then again those other MMO's usually use your 'Power' pool as the timer, when your out, no more heals and you die. So I guess it works out the same in the end, I think that they could use forms of soft enrage, i.e. more and more mobs spawn until your overwhelmed, a stacking healing debuff, ect. Like I said earlier, I'm not the most creative person in the world, and I'm sure other people would have more interesting ideas, but then again, I'm not being paid to develop boss fights in a multi-million dollar game

I see alot of people bashing on anyone saying they don't like enrage timers. But most of the bashing is things like L2P noob, your group sucks get a better one. Get more mods and L2P, get better dps if your not beating the enrage timer, ect ect ect. I don't care for the enrage timers on EVERY. SINGLE. BOSS. BTW, I haven't hit an enrage timer in a LONG time. I run heals, full Columi/Rakata, I have little to no issues healing through just about any content unless we make a bonehead mistake, so my saying I don't care for enrage timers has nothing to do with me not being able to complete content. I know how to play my class/role, and the people I group with understand their class role. The reason I am saying that the enrage timers could be replaced with a better mechanic, is that they are BORING. When every boss has pretty much the same thing the fights just start to blur. If you REPLACED it, not get rid of, REPLACE, as in swap for something novel and innovative, you would still have a timer, the difficulty of the fight would still scale up at X amount of time, so there is no "negating dps" by changing the mechanics. All your doing is replacing X with Y and Z. Your adding depth to the fight, making it more interesting. Some of my favorite fights are Mentor, Soa, The Fabricator, yes they all have an enrage timer, but their are quite a few *other* considerations you have to keep in mind while fighting. If you go back and actually read the thread, there are a very few people who are QQ'ing about the enrage timers. The majority of the posts are just saying that the enrage is boring, and want it replaced with something fun, not easier, more fun.

But it doesn't have to be a hard boss enrage to test your dps, that's what the post is about. You can use other mechanics as a dps check, Boss pops a shield and regens health until the dps burn down the generator, wave of adds after x amount of time. Or, to even make things more interesting, have a boss drop aggro completely give him a debuff to dmg, force a dps into an off tank role and add in a couple of adds that hit like trucks that your tank has to gather up and your second dps has to down, once their down the bosses *channeled* mob call or whatever you want to call it, ends, aggro resets and tank has to pick him back up, after a certain amount of time even more adds spawn, until if your dps is lacking you are overwhelmed. I'm sure that more people have better ideas than I do, I'm not the most creative person in the world, just putting forward one idea I have as an example of something different than a hard enrage. Just spice up the variety a bit to entice people into different play styles/mechanics. The same ole same ole gets boring after the 100th run. Really? That's the entirety of your post? And to answer your totally facetious question, HM's are not hard. That's the problem with them, all they are is a straight gear check. You should have to have decent gear to complete them, but the enrage timers should not be a universal boss mechanic. Use more interesting techniques.

This. I am in full Columi gear, plus a bit of Rakata. I only run FP's to help out guildies now, I see no reason to run them, they are not all that interesting. There are a couple that I still enjoy running, but for the most part I log in, check if anyone needs some help, then log over to an alt to experience another story line. I wonder whats going to happen when I run out of story lines...... Operations on Normal are pretty much a joke, which is fine for normal, you shouldn't have to be a "leet" raiding guild to complete normal modes (except for The Fabricator, who is getting nerfed because he was harder on normal than on HM... oops!). I run them weekly because it's fun to interact with my guild. On HM the fights are exactly the same.... except more HP, shorter enrage timers, maybe, just maybe they might have added to an existing mechanic, but I've yet to see a *NEW* mechanic on HM's. I really like the suggestion posted earlier about following LoTRO's example and adding a timer, if you beat the FP in X amount of time you get the HM drop, if it takes longer than X you get the normal drop, I used to farm the Grand Stairs regularly and it was a blast. Every. Single. Boss. having an enrage timer just seems... well to quote others, lazy. There are more interesting ways to make the content harder, require the good gear and have good team coordination. HM's should be hard, not just a gear check, they should force the players to utilize their classes and bring some utility to a fight, not "spam grav round and go to sleep". So far to me all gear proves is that you have been willing to spend the time to grind it out, there was nothing particularly challenging about getting it except time. edit: was sounding a bit like a kill joy in that post so I had to add, some of the FP's are def still fun, KUS, collicoid, D7, they have some good examples of 'fun' boss mechanics

So last night I'm in a HM raid. I see a columi recipe for my craft drop, but it's a commando recipe, I already have two tionese commando recipes as a sage, they are all BoP after being crafted. So since we have 4 commando's in the Op I decide to just roll greed since it's probably a BoP crafted item and hopefully one of the commando's will get it. AFTER the roll, one of the other sages won the item and is very very excited. So in my innocence I ask, "Oh Snuffy, why are you so excited about crafting a BoP item for Commando's?" He replies, "Oh you poor uniformed soul you. The Columi items are BoE after crafting and these sell for almost 400k each!" How on earth does this make any sense? The Tionese recipes are BoP and the Columi are BoE? Why not have both BoE? It's not like those Tionese recipes drop off of tree's, I run two to three raids a week, have been for a month, and have seen less than 5 total Tionese recipes for my craft drop and this is the first Columi recipe I've seen drop. AND you have to farm raids to even get the crafting materials for the columi! And farm HM's to get the mats for Tionese! It's not like the market is going to exactly get flooded with them! The ONLY place to get Columi implants currently is in EV (and apparently the market now). You can get a Tionese implant off of multiple HM flashpoints. The crafting system seems to be a bit backwards from how the rest of the gear progression system looks.... The Tionese gear isn't exactly the best either, I would personally rather run Champion gear than Tionese, as it seems to have better stats, it wasn't until I got full Columi that I put the pvp gear back in the bag. Tionese gear is for fresh level 50's to get their foot in the door for Hard Mode Flashpoints, but the recipes are BoP when crafted, Columi gear is for people who have been running for awhile to be able to get into Ops groups and run Operations/HM Operations, yet the recipes are BoE when crafted. TL;DR - Make Tionese recipes BoE after crafting. It doesn't make any sense to have them BoP when Columi recipes are BoE.

To level the first thing you need to get is the +12% to fruity pebble throw, then go into extra force, cost reduction and then start working on more dmg, it's all about how you prefer to play it.

0/13/28 is fully sustainable in HM's. Not sure why people are having such a hard time maintaining force with it. Start off with weaken mind, fruity pebble throw until you get an instant proc, Force in Balance, Mind Crush, fruity pebble throw till you get an instant, weaken mind, FiB, mind crush, fruity pebbles till you proc instant.... you never, ever, run low. If Mind Crush isn't up, you simple slap them with either Force Wave or Disturbance. If at anytime you notice that your at or around 30% force, simply keep weaken mind on them, proc Mind Crush and spam fruity pebbles. It will regen enough force, while doing viable dmg, to keep you in the fight and allow you to go back to throwing around FiB and TK wave. Resource management in this game is pretty easy stuff, I might lose a tinsy bit of dps on the initial because I am pacing it, but in the long run who does more? The guy standing there with no force or the guy spamming fruity pebbles? A big reason the 0/13/28 is so popular is because all of the procs sync very nicely, you get bonus dmg to ALL of your DoT's. Your DoT's give you a buff to Fruity Pebble Throw. Fruity Pebble throw gives you instant cast AND some force back, your instant casts (read disturbance, TK wave) have bonus dmg. Everything is pretty much instant. I think I'm going to find a full blown TK sage and ask them to go with me to Ilum or somewhere, I want to have a 3rd sage healing and keeping time, find an elite mob, no companions, no help, just straight dps, see how long each build takes to drop it. It's just about the only viable comparison that I can come up with right now, if anyone else knows a better way to test it out please let me know!!!! But in all of that, the most important factor was not mentioned...... which build do YOU enjoy more? Thats the main thing

My responses are in yellow :-)

I'd say I fall into the casual gamer category, I work 60 hours a week, have a four year old kiddo and a nag.. *cough* ..I mean wife . I get a couple hours a night to run and the majority of my guild is the same way. We manage every single HM, sometimes we have a couple of wipes, and sometimes it feels like easy mode. We run EV normal mode and it feels pretty easy... We're currently running KP, not quite as easy but we're learning the mechanics :-) waaayyy more enjoyable, but then again we have also made sure to help each other out in running the FP's we need to get our sets of columi. Unfortunately this is your standard MMO, the first boss in both Raids is a gear check for the group, if you don't have the gear you won't make it. As for HM's... my only advice is find someone to carry you for a couple, get your two piece set bonus and then go back and start helping your guildies do the same. You don't have to be a "Hardcore" raider to raid or do HM's in this game. Some people will want to maximize their groups and run the content as fast as possible, and others will want to take their time and just be social, everybody has their own play style. Like I said, we're casual gamers just having fun. We've been on KP for two nights now, just a couple hours a night learning the mechanics, nobody getting upset about timers or wipes, we're just there to chat with each other and have a good time :-) If any casual or hardcore Rep players need a healer on The Harbinger send Ruwe a tell and I'll come give you a hand as long as your there to have fun and I'm not currently in the middle of a run

We've gotten to the construction droid in the KP op on normal mode. So far we've seen T2 belt/bracers drop, the final boss is supposed to drop MH, a couple of our guild members have verified that from their other runs. Here is a pretty handy link. Hoping Dulfy will see a bunch of extra hits and keep his list updated! http://dulfyforce.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/operation-loot-list/