You can run normal modes right when you've reached 50. Hard mode shouldn't be much of a problem in champion gear. I'd hold off on nightmare untill you get some pve gear.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=240901 That's pretty much the melee vs range situation right now.

Yeah, i was afraid of that. So far the only challenges we've encountered, were G4 B3 and SOA. SOA was only hard because of the extreme RNG and loads of bugs. G4 was a genuinely good fight though. Even though we got him after 2 hours, it was a really entertaining fight. The main thing that made it hard for us was having only 1 ranged, but hey, if we were all ranged we might have just rolled over that boss too, like all the other ones.

This. ****** this. Have 5 columi bracers so far. We do 8 man with 3 jedi knights. (2 sentinels 1 guardian) i have 4/5 of the set. Most of them barely have 2/5.

You'll be fine with having 1 dps class with def gear. We run a very heavy melee group (2 sentinels, 1 guard dps (me) and a shadow dps). We just cleared HM EV for the first time 2 hours ago, with 2 healers, 1 tank (vanguard) and the rest dps. The only time i'm needed to put on some def gear, is in Karagga's Palace with the G4 B3 robot.

There's no "and". As i said, i don't have a problem with it, i just want to know what i'm playing. I mean, if this game was aimed more at hard-core players, i could whine about how stuff isn't hard enough. But knowing it's aimed primarily at casuals and doesn't intent to cater much for the more hard-core players, i know that would be futile.

that's what i'm afraid of. especially seeing the massive amount of bugs that are still out there.

First, let me start by telling that i haven't personally experienced nightmare mode yet. I've heard that it's only a nightmare because of bugs, but i'll leave that to the people that have actually been there, to decide. My guild has just finished EV and Karagga on normal. I realise normal modes are meant to be puggable, so i'll just leave my comments on those 2 operations. We also did HM EV afterwards. We got 4/5 in an hour or 3. The hardest part of EV HM was actually the 2 pillar-turrets right at the start (we only had 1 ranged dps). After we found out how to not bug the puzzle, everything else was easy. I heard SOA is a challenge, but it better be 10 times as hard as the other bosses.. The thing i'm really worried about, is that we will have cleared NM mode months before the next operations tier. We're not really a really hardcore guild, but we do take operations quite seriously. It's where we find out fun in the game. Working together to down new bosses. But at this alarming pace, we're going to be standing in the fleet next to our mailbox, dancing, having not much to do. Since i started the game, i've been getting the feeling that this game is aimed at casuals. Now don't get me wrong, i find nothing wrong with that idea itself. But where does that leave the more hardore players? Clearing content in a few weeks, then setting on our behinds? Switch game for a few weeks/months, waiting for new content?

Well whoopty********-doo, melee can dps the whole time on a boss. So does any ranged that isn't playing the puzzle. So there's no advantage for melee there either. I'm not talking about nightmare, just the fights in general. A group can be severely gimped when they only have melee dps. In fact, we found out that the hardest part, by far, of EV hard mode, was the 2 turrets before the first boss (not counting SOA). Mainly because we only had 1 ranged dps.

Give us a dps meter for only on target dummies then. I REALLY want dps meters, but only because i want to know what rotation works best for me. What spec gives me the best damage output, etc. PLEASE give us some way of finding out how we can do the most damage.

This worked for us too, in hard-mode.

Take only 1 ranged with you. Seriously, on our server we have an extremely limited amount of people we can recruit from. This has resulted in us having to run operations with 1 ranged dps, 1 guardian dps, 2 sentinel dps and a shadow dps. Even thought all the bosses are pretty faceroll, it does make everything just a bit more complicated. I don't understand why any guild, if given the choice, would take even so much as 1 melee class with you. EV - Annihilation droid Ranged doesn't have to move when he does his cone stun. - Gharj Ranged doesn't have to move when he's doing his pounce. - Puzzle Ranged can just stand at the controls and click when they can. Melee has to run from mobs and back to click. - Council Only "boss" i haven't found any advantages on.. - SOA Much easier to dps the mind traps, much easier to burst on the shield-down phase. Melee only has a charge every 15-20 seconds. KP - Bonethrasher Much easier to avoid swipe. Much easier to see who gets aggro, since you're spread out more than melee. - Sorno and Jarg Ranged can dps both bosses, melee shouldn't be near the ranged mob. - Foreman crusher Much easier to dps the adds as a ranged, especially if they run through the boss or are near the tank. - G4 B3 Much easier to dps down proximity probes, much easier to have 3 dps doing the puzzle since they can so much easier switch to the boss. - Karagga Mouse droids are much easier to handle with ranged. If there's a gravity well on the melee, everybody gets pulled in. Ranged can spread out more. I could honestly not think of a single fight where melee actually has an advantage over ranged. I guess for us, this is a blessing in disguise.. Normal mode and the hard modes we've done so far have been laughably easy. (with the sole exception of G4 B3, awesome fight even though we lacked ranged, making it a bit harder)

It wasn't really a big problem, we still killed him that try. just wondering if we overlooked something.

that might be it, but they dont get hit by a melee swing though. it's really, a complete 1-shot. Never seen the debuff though.. does anybody have a link to what exactly it does/sais?

Yesterday we did Bonetrasher on normal and on 2 occasions, we had people getting 1-shot from 80-90% hp, to 0. - No, the boss wasn't enraged or in a frenzy. - No, they didn't get hit by swipe. It seems like they got hit by the knockback and just instantly died. Before you go like: "oh well they probably did get hit by swipe and lie about it", no, it was streamed on twitch.tv and has now been saved. http://www.twitch.tv/krical/b/306461091 One of the deaths happens at 18:05. (watch Oglan's health) the other time it happens at 19:20 (it's the guy that streams) Truth be told, it was a messy kill. Got hit by swipe way too much. But i can't imagine this not being a bug? Or am i overlooking something?