I don't think there really is a tank or healer drought, at least not in master mode flashpoints. I play as a shadow tank and I queue for master mode hammer station only, and a lot of times the role in need is healer rather than tank. Earlier today I queued for MM HS as tank while the role in need was healer, and I waited at least 30 minutes with no pop before I gave up and left the queue. Which tells me that there are times where there are substantially more tanks in queue than healers, rather than there just being slightly more tanks, because if it was only a slight difference I wouldn't have waited 30 minutes with no pop as a tank. This was at 2:00 P.M. PST yesterday (Saturday) on the Satele Shan server, so a lot of people were on..... but not enough of them were queuing as healers for MM FP's. And yesterday at one point DPS (yes, DPS) was the role in need for MM FP's, although yesterday was the first time I saw that and it didn't take too long before the role in need switched back to one of the other roles. I don't play as a healer so I don't know the difference in wait times when queuing as a healer when healer is the role in need vs when tank is the role in need, but I can certainly tell you as a tank that the only time I can get instant or really fast pops is when the role in need is tank. When the role in need is healer, it can take substantially longer to get pops. The whole thing is a bit surprising to me, because a lot of people (most people?) grind master mode hammer station over and over again all throughout the day to gear up because it's the fastest way to grind gear. But admittedly me not getting a pop within 30 minutes while queuing for MM HS as a tank has only happened once so far. And because the FP is so easy and everyone knows the mechanics, I think most people are willing to queue for that particular HM FP as any role -- I don't think the traditional issues that might keep people from wanting to queue as a tank or a healer (e.g. being blamed for something when it's not your fault, DPS not listening, being a tank/healer paired with a healer/tank that doesn't know their class/mechanics, etc.) really apply to MM HS, because issues/wipes are very rare to begin with in hammer station regardless of what role you play because everyone usually knows what to do.

Does gear matter at all on Gods of the Machine (GOTM) story mode? Specifically, I am wondering if the bolster in GOTM story mode works the same way as it does for the older ops in story mode (where you can literally wear ANY random gear with zero problems as long as everyone follows mechanics). Can I wear random greens/blues into this GOTM SM and be perfectly fine like I would be in the other SM ops, or do I need a certain level of gear for this op? If so, what level of gear should I have at a minimum for GOTM SM? I don't know if this makes a difference in the answer, but I will also point out that I am a tank.

What is the best tank combination for NiM (master mode) operations?

Our raid team is encountering a bug on the mission "Temple of Sacrifice" for the boss "Underlurker". The cross appears to be rendering differently for different members of our team, which is preventing us from being able to progress on this boss. For example, even if I am in my portion of the cross correctly, I am times appear to be outside of my cross to other members in the group. Or conversely, sometimes other people in the group appear to be outside of the cross to me, but on their screen they are inside of the cross. Please look into this issue with Underlurker as it is preventing our raid team from being able to defeat this boss and continue with the rest of the operation.

Tanks without healing support aren't all that sturdy, especially PowerTech tanks which have much less survivability than arsenal mercenaries. This is because too much of tank survivability is tied to DCD's rather than tanking stats.

Prior to 5.3 I had been using the standard priority-based rotation for gunnery commando from the Dulfy guide: http://dulfy.net/2017/05/10/swtor-5-2-gunnery-commando-pve-guide-by-damian/ My question is, with all of the DPS nerfs gunnery commando received in 5.3, has anything changed? In particular: 1. Has the optimal opener changed from what is listed in the Dulfy guide? If so, what is the new optimal opener? 2. Has the optimal priority-based rotation changed from what is listed in the Dulfy guide? If so, what is the new optimal priority-based rotation?

The only issue with tanks and healers in PVP is when one team is stacked with tanks and healers, and the other team isn't stacked with healers and tanks. This has been an issue in unranked warzones literally since day one. And it's a major issue with unranked warzones precisely because there is no matchmaking at all. The fix would be implementing a matchmaking system where, say, both teams can have at most 2 tanks and 2 healers, and the difference between the number of tanks and healers on both teams cannot be more than 1. But in order to still maintain fast queue times, we need to have everyone in the same queue, hence my two suggestions in my previous post. None of the healers (or tanks for that matter) individually are overpowered in PVP. In fact, sage/sorc healers are actually quite underpowered in both PVE and PVP because the 5.3 nerfs went way too far. And as for tanks, they have always been in the awkward state of doing much more damage than they should, and also having much less survivability than they should. This is primarily because tank stats (defense, shield, absorb) do not work properly in PVP and need to be revamped for PVP so that pure mitigation based tanks are viable.

Changes Bioware could easily make (if they wanted to): 1. Make all group content in the game cross-faction (warzones, uprising, flashpoints, operations, GSF, etc). Meaning everything would be like Odessen. 2. Merge all of the servers so we have just a few mega servers (one mega server for U.S., one mega server for UK etc). If Bioware would do the above, they could easily implement matchmaking in regular warzones without slowing down queues to a halt. Plus it would finally end the issue of one faction always dominating the other faction in PVP, which has always been one of the largest issues with PVP since the launch of this game.

Our guild Torch (Republic) is looking for tanks and DPS for a new morning HM/NiM progression raiding team. Here are the details: Meeting times: 9:00 A.M. PST – noon PST (server time) Meeting days: TBD based on what works for everyone in the group. This team will meet twice a week at the times listed above, and will raid for a total of six hours every week. This team will start off doing HM Ops, and will move into NiM OPs once everyone on the team is geared up. Previous raiding experience is not required as long as you have a willingness to learn. If you are a tank or DPS that is interested in joining this new raiding team, please get in touch with me either (1) through PM on these forums, (2) by emailing me at volexswtor at gmail dot com, or (3) by contacting me in-game on my main “Volex”, or on one of my alts “Volxer”, “Voltexes”, or “Volxen”.

Our guild Torch (Republic) is looking for tanks and DPS for a new morning HM/NiM progression raiding team. Here are the details: Meeting times: 9:00 A.M. PST – noon PST (server time) Meeting days: TBD based on what works for everyone in the group. This team will meet twice a week at the times listed above, and will raid for a total of six hours every week. This team will start off doing HM Ops, and will move into NiM OPs once everyone on the team is geared up. Previous raiding experience is not required as long as you have a willingness to learn. If you are a tank or DPS that is interested in joining this new raiding team, please get in touch with me either (1) through PM on these forums, (2) by emailing me at volexswtor at gmail dot com, or (3) by contacting me in-game on my main “Volex”, or on one of my alts “Volxer”, “Voltexes”, or “Volxen”.

There are plenty of PVPers (myself included) that are adamantly opposed to the sage/sorc healing nerfs that are coming. As a progression raider and a PVPer, I think these nerfs will be absolutely devastating to both aspects of the game. I think the nerfs will lead to a shortage of healers in both the PVE/raiding and PVP communities. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in the PVP community that think they should be able to kill everyone instantly, which is why they are celebrating these nerfs. The PVP community has always been very divided on this issue. There are those that believe that only DPS, burst, and focus fire should matter in warzones. And there are those that believe that each role in the trinity (tank, healer, and DPS) should be equally viable in warzones. Unfortunately the former group got what they wanted with the 5.3 nerfs.

These are all excellent points, but I do think giving melee sustained 10% more DPS than ranged burst is too much of a discrepancy between the DPS specs. Giving melee sustained 5% more DPS than ranged burst seems fair, but 10% is too much.

I agree that PT tanks need better DCD's, but that's not only because of PVP, but also because of PVE/raids as well (even in PVE/raids PT tanks do not perform as well as the other tanks for this reason). But I completely disagree that tank survivability should only come down to DCD's. That's like saying a DPS's DPS should all come down to offensive cooldowns, and DPS stats on gear should make absolutely no difference in the damage that you output.

You can't balance tanks around DCD's; mitigation stats need to play a pivotal role in tank survivability. This is also why powertech tanks are so far behind juggernaut tanks and assassin tanks in the survivability department -- because they lack the very powerful set of DCD's that those two classes have. Powertech tanks are designed such that they have the highest passive mitigation of the three tanks, but they also have the least number of DCD's (and energy shield is really the only good DCD PT tanks have for PVP, the others are quite lackluster). And since mitigation stats are essentially meaningless in PVP, this is exactly why powertech tank survivability is a joke in PVP. I agree that you should have to use DCD's to maximize your effectiveness, regardless of what role you are playing. But mitigation stats need to play a significant role in tank survivability, just as DPS stats play a significant role in the damage that you are able to output as a DPS spec. And I definitely disagree that these changes would make tanks "almost impossible" to kill. Harder to kill, yes, but certainly possible. After all, you can only get your defense, shield, and absorb so high. In fact the 30%/50%/50% that I used as an example in my original post is close to a realistic amount of defense/shield/absorb that you can have, depending on how exactly you allocate your stats. And it's also important to keep in mind that "pure" tanks in full mitigation gear hit like a wet noodle, so it would be balanced around the idea that tanks should have very high survivability and very low damage output. In other words, tanks would actually be tanks.

The way I see it, and what my changes attempt to address, is that the issues with "tanking" in PVP are really two-sided. On the one hand, a tank that goes full-mitigation gear does not really have any more survivability than a tank in DPS gear. That's not a minor problem, it's a huge glaring issue, because it doesn't allow tanks to actually be tanks (i.e. very high survivability, very low damage output). This is because with the way things currently work, in PVP the only two stats that consistently help you to survive are damage resistance (DR) and endurance. So for example, a lone tank that isn't being healed and is being focused by 3-4 DPS will last maybe, at most, a couple GCD's longer than a lone DPS being focused in the same situation would. That shouldn't be the case, but it is, because mitigation stats don't work properly at all in PVP. And even if you max out on endurance, you only have roughly about 15k more health than most DPS do. So in short, there is no way to make a true tank that can take a beating and absorb lots of damage in PVP in this game. And this leads to the other issue with tanking in PVP. Because it's not actually possible to play a real tank in PVP, what people do instead is spec tank and then wear DPS gear. Some max out on endurance and then put everything else into DPS stats, and some just go full out on DPS stats and don't even prioritize endurance. The survivability of "DPS tanks" or skank tanks in and of itself isn't the problem. The problem is that they are able to do almost as much damage as a DPS spec, and they are simultaneously just as effective at keeping a guarded healer alive, because again they have just as much survivability as a "pure" tank with mitigation stats. In fact they probably actually have a greater chance of surviving compared to a "pure" tank, because a skank tank can potentially dish out enough DPS to kill their "regular" DPS opponent. The problem really with skank tanks is that they have access to the exact same 30% damage redirection on taunt, the exact same 50% damage redirection on guard, they do almost as much damage as a DPS, and they have a bit more survivability than a DPS because of the boosts to damage resistance (DR) that you get just for choosing the tank discipline. And since mitigation stats give basically 0 benefit in PVP, this is the mess we have had for years. TLDR: The issues with tanking in PVP are 1) tank survivability is much lower than it should be (due to mitigation stats not working properly) and 2) tank damage is much higher than it should be (due to wearing DPS gear). The suggestions I made in my original post attempt to fix both issues simultaneously.