i play operative dps spec and i'm able to pretty much spam lacerate on this boss if i keep my poison dart up on the mob the whole time. So yeah I do lose the huge burst and crits from the backstab but I have a huge sustained dps on the boss the whole time. You can also vanish during this fight without losing your connection to your mob so you can hidden strike backstab the mob again if you're quick. I usually finish my mob in about 20-30sec on nightmare difficulty. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#4010cZGhModkrffzZhMoz.1 This is the spec I use for raids and it works just fine on the infernal council.

haha did you not read my post on the previous page?!? I was healing in half dps gear.

look at the item levels though, it is itemized properly. Champion gear is ilvl 136 and Battlemaster is only item level 140 so there shouldn't be that huge of a jump in gear as compared to centurion gear which is ilvl 126, that's why there's such a big jump from centurion to champion. It's the exact same system as tionese(126), columi(136) and rakata(140). Both PVP and PVE gear share the same mods and enchancements. Exactly the same, the difference is in the locked armoring slot. For PVP gear you sacrafice your main stats for expertiese, which totally makes sense. Gear is itemized a lot better than most people think, it's what you do with it that makes the difference. What I mean by that is moving mods and enchancements around to better itemize your class to improve your skills twoards your playstyle.

woah lol, didn't know i'd start such a rage fest. Well let me clear up a few things about gear for this group. First of all I'm main spec DPS my offspec is heals. As far as saying the whole group was full rakata this is partially true. I was wearing 2 pc medic for the reduced energy cost on my aoe heal and 2 pc champion healing set for the 15% healing increase on my aoe heal. The only other healing pieces I was wearing was my rakata weapon columi off-hand and battlemaster implants and earpiece. Other than that I was wearing my DPS rakata stuff. I also had orange belt and bracers with ilvl 58 armor and mods (better itemized than rakata) for my dps spec. Our dps and tank had mostly rakata stuff, yet our merc DPS in the video just hit 50 last week and got lukcy in a hard mode run, but his gear was not top notch. That being said yeah gear was a big facor and by no means were we gimped at all. At the same time we did not have full bis fully optimized gear, we had gear that was easily obtainable through hard modes and 4 man flashpoints. What I'm trying to say is that it's not all about gear, sure it helps but if you really look at the item level difference between columi and rakata is only a 4 item level difference. columi being 136 and rakata being 140. Any group of 4 people can do this. All you have to do is spend some time in 4 man flashpoints to get your ilvl 136 gear and a well cordinated group can clear all the content in the game. This game is not hard, but it's also the first teir of content, what gives me hope is that there is a nice jump in difficulty from EV to KP. It's not a huge jump but it's enough to give me hope that the new content coming in March will be more challenging. This game teaches you that you need to be cordinated and work well with other people to kill bosses. That's not saying you can't be succsful without it, a group with gear can totally destroy content, but the most successful guilds and groups are going to be those that can work really well with each other.

I know i forgot to hit my fraps button

So with content as easy as it is our guild decided to try something new. We were able to complete all of the eternity vault the first operation/raid dungeon in the game with only 4 peple (half the amount usually required for the instance). check out the video here.

For those of you interested Midnight Reveries just posted our kill video of Karagga 16 man Nightmare Mode on our youtube page. Check it out here.

Midnight Reveries raid videos can be found on our YouTube channel here http://www.youtube.com/user/MidnightReveriesTOR?feature=watch a lot of our videos are multi pov to show more aspects of the fight. We will have videos up for all nightmare content soon as they finished getting edited. Enjoy

I play an operative and I actually agree with most of the nerf's incoming. The damage is really high and sustainable if you keep up your poisons to the point where it effects Tanks in PvE having a very hard time holding threat off the class. I don't know how many times I have to smash countermeasures in NM content just so the tank can stay above me on threat because of the high crits all the time. The only nerf I don't agree with is the Acid Blade nerf because of how this ability will be effected from a PvE point of view and how the class is going to have to gear for more accuracy to make up for this. The knockdown and hidden strike are very fair nerfs and will help control our threat management as well, but screwing with our armor pen is going to hurt our sustainable dps in both pvp and pve.

QFT! Quote for truth!

Doesn't work if you're naked though, 15% of 0 is still 0

I don't see a problem with this mechanic because it allows your tank to establish aggro without you pulling from your huge burst damage. With my current gear I'm opening with like 5-6K crits on all boss mobs in EV atm. There have been moments where I've been able to get close enough to do my stealth opening as the tank pulls and I almost always pull aggro off the tank from the huge burst. So even though I take much longer to get in combat I don't really lose any dps from the huge burst capability my class has. We also have talents which greatly increase our speed while stealthed which really helps getting into combat faster from running up from the back of the room.

Yes you do, this is why you have to stand farther back before combat in stealth, you have to be aprox. 15m away from your group if your group is 15m from the boss. If you do see the target for whatever reason you are too close so pop out of stealth, you won't aggro, run back farther and restealth and you should be fine.

I totally understand the concerns you guys bring up, I play a dps operative for my guild, but this issue really isn't that bad. You have to make your group aware your class has a huge burst dps opening if you can start from stealth. The way we do this is I stand stealth in the back of the room well out of the range of the bosses ability to see through stealth which is about 30m from what I've noticed. Our tank then engages the boss first and then I run in, I am still stealthed and out of combat at this point where I can run safely behind the boss and start my dps rotation. Also if you see that big target on you while you're stealthed you have about 5 seconds to pop out of stealth and nothing will aggro as long as you break stealth. The key is getting a good hang on the range each boss can see you from and staying out of that range until the tank pulls or you start the encounter. I have completed all the raid content in the game with my guild so far and have had no issues starting on any of the bosses from stealth, including fights like the infernal council or ancient pylons in the eternity vault. So it can be done, you just can't be in position before the fight starts, this does two things though, allows the tank to establish aggro and for you to pop your relics at the start and get a huge burst damage at the start of a fight which makes up for the time lost running up to the boss.