I doubt it would be successful considering how much coordination is required on HM fights. I don't have anything against it and if it would be there, i hope it would be successful but i wouldn't use it. If anything they should give us a tool to allow to join pre-made groups that struggling to find last spot for their ops. Something like WoW is doing with WoD expansion

When the instance just came out, this was very very hard fight on 8 man even for decent group like ours. We were not the world best but we were ok. 16man fight was a cakewalk compared to 8 man. Back then we had me as ranged on Adds, one more range on boss and (THIS IS IMPORTANT) he would drop his AoE every time it was of CD as well as help me kill the other add while boss was immune to damage and channeling. He was doing nothing during this time anyway Two melee were just nuking boss and helping to bring down Isotope-5 canister to low level for Tank to get defensive buff. At the start of the video you can see our positioning. Which current gear you should get one of your healers to be on off tank + two ranged DPS and then just dot adds when he got nothing to do. With current gear level any healer should be able to keep people topped off easily and have time to DPS on that fight. Another thing to note is that (as other mentioned) tank takes one add and interrupts its channel. Range DPS interrupts as soon as add starts to cast its spell. If you look at my Interrupt skill (bound to 0) i used is as soon as adds land and i can select it (adds will start with channeling as soon as they become active) and then start channeling 12 seconds after so in my case i knew that as soon as my interrupt is of CD add will start casting/channeling. Any range is good for adds, but AoE heavy classes are better then single target ones. As throwing AoE skill help bring other add down. Here is the link to our first kill with not so good gear (we did wipe on this boss a lot prior to this kill - one missed interrupt back then was a tank death):

looking at his guide there is no much difference really. Both are good guides. One here is more in detail about fights and has different opener. He also advises that we can use aimed shot over roll even delaying wounding shot up to a second. those are the main two differences. Core are the same, dot application, wounding shot then we have 6 seconds to use QD+SS+ whatever you fancy. Explosive Charge+Illigam Mods, Charged Burst with Smugglers Luck. if none of the two are up you either roll or use Aimed shot (according to Yolo). I would call both of them good guides, and whichever gives you better results should be used.

you might want to try this dulfy guide. Bit better to what i have posted few minutes ago http://dulfy.net/2014/01/12/swtor-gunslinger-dps-class-guide/#3

There are few things you need to consider: - you are gunslinger and have offhand, It makes it harder for us to get "lucky" parse with high crit levels on main hand atacks then it is for snipers. Snipers do not have off hand hits so when their Wounding Shot (Cull) is critting 45% of times this means 45% of their big hits are crits. For us Gunslingers getting same 45% of crits means you could get 10% of those crits on your off hand hits which are so pathetic low that it will really screw your DPS. Main hand crit of Wounding Shot will do 1600-1800 damage (or there abouts) while off hand crit will do some silly damage but will count as one of your CRITS: 09:00:51.096 Wanchope's Wounding Shots critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 1674* energy damage, causing 1674 threat! 09:00:51.096 Wanchope's Wounding Shots critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 105* energy damage, causing 105 threat! this is calculated in your total crit chance so more offhand cirts means less main hand crits. Sniper dosn't have this issue - if he crits then he crits big: 23:29:29.963 Zah'ik's Cull critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 1555* internal damage, causing 1555 threat! 23:29:29.963 Zah'ik gains 2 energy. 23:29:29.963 Zah'ik's Cull critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 1555* internal damage, causing 1555 threat! 23:29:29.964 Zah'ik's Cull critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 1567* energy damage, causing 1567 threat! 23:29:30.862 Zah'ik's Poisoned (Tech) hits Operations Training Dummy for 816 internal damage, causing 816 threat. 23:29:30.962 Zah'ik gains 2 energy. 23:29:30.962 Zah'ik's Cull critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 1555* internal damage, causing 1555 threat! 23:29:30.963 Zah'ik's Cull hits Operations Training Dummy for 895 internal damage, causing 895 threat. 23:29:30.964 Zah'ik's Cull critically hits Operations Training Dummy for 1608* energy damage, causing 1608 threat! So straight away you should see huge difference here. This goes for all our skills, Speed Shot Charged Burst and Aimed Shot. However In Hybrid Charged Burst should only be used when you have Lucky Shots buff so your RNG is removed from this skill. While Snipers main hand does lower damage they have less issues with RNG. As a Gunslinger you not only have to deal with Crit Chance RNG but also offhand RNG. In order to get >3.5k prases you would have to do a lot of them and get: a) 45%+ crit on most of your skills b) most of your crits need to be on Main Hand hits Now to your parses: I would use Vital Shot last in your "dot application" part of rotation. This always gave me best up-time on dots on the target. Also Illegal Mods Should be use exclusively after Sabo Charge (best to use macro for this). If your IM comes of cool down i would delay it until next Sabo Charge - helps a ton with energy management. In the opening rotation after first wounding shots you used SC (good) then Speed Shoot (good) then Charged Burst. This delays your next wounding shot by around a second (lad and stuff). I usually just do SC (IM) +SS, then wait for almost a second and just use WS as soon as i can. Then reapply Sharp Bomb and Shock Charge, use Charged Burst here and then Vital Shot. After global cooldown from VS comes off your Wounding Shots are ready to be used. This way you are not delaying your WS (which is a massing DPS lose) and your APM will go up. Between first and second Wounding shot you should always use SS+something (SC, or CB+LS or AS). You could use SC+CB(LS)+AS but not sure is this a DPS loss. if Anything I always delay CB with LS till dot application. Hope this helps

we are not even close to top guild, probably not even close to mid progress guilds but we have two teams progressing DF NIM 4/5. We have a lot of mature players which can't raid as much as they would like to and with summer holidays we are lucky if we get 2 hours of raid time a week. In the summer months its normal for any game to have lower numbers of players due to what i already mentioned. Younger population is away from collage/uni. Older population goes on vacation with Families. I have 10 people in our main group and currently there seems to always be like 7 available. I am hoping for our guild to become more competitive in 3.0 with other progression guilds. I can see a lot of improvement in our team and once summer holidays time is over we should be back to 4 night (2 hours a night) raiding and getting ready for better progression push .

I think i might have to unsub as reading this thread i realized how bad our group is .... We only have 3/5 DF, working on Zero now and its my fault as raid leader not to have enough great players playing past 22.00 at night to join our ranks. I FAIL. For guilds that cleared DF NIM numerous times removal of NIM buff made it easier as their gear improved which helped their DPS on all fights. For guilds not as good that are still progressing (for whatever reason). Fights are still tough: Draxus - harder for average group now then it was with NIM buff. Interrupting every cast from adds is easy, Killing 3 guardians instead of 2 in phase 7 (if you didn't notice Guardian's health was increased by 50%) is what is now making this fight difficult. If you have gear from DF then DPS should no longer be an issue. Gob'throk - we have no problem getting ugly face to do max one pipe smash, but adds last much longer and we have to bring those adds to boss to nuke them. With NIM buff on, adds died from fire debuff within few seconds of removing their shield and DPS was just focusing on the boss. Have not done him on NIM but it seemed like it was not as hard. Zero - not sure what could be different on NIM as we are progressing him but not get to him with buff on - probably outgoing damage from boss and adds. Which seems to affect tanks and healers more then anything. Removal of NIM buff only helped tanks and healers but did nothing for DPS. It made some mechanics less challenging for sure but it didn't make the fight easy like HM. At least not for our group. Back on to subject: switch NIM debuff on - YES - so those that had no chance to clear it in time for different reasons can do it purely for the mechanics and skill check (interrupts, moving out from bad stuff that can insta kill etc). Bolster down ? - NO - this means you would try to clear the instance in HM (180) gear only and i doubt you would get far with no upgrades from each boss (as bolster would tone it down every time) unless you have exceptional players Title - NO - this is and should only be given to those that have time, commitment and skill to do it in time specified. There is something special about title you know only few will get.

by the way, failing healing check makes the fight easier. We always fail it on purpose and transition from challenges to normal phase goes much more smoothly

Nefra, Who Bars the Way (Nightmare) Golfik - Hybrid Gunslinger - Polish Galactic Legion - 3495 - http://www.torparse.com/a/684502/4/0/Damage+Dealt

I would start with reading Dulfy guieds as those are like a bible to most of us here. Once you know the mechanics i would advise to find videos for each fight on youtube from a perspective of your class. As you are Sentinel i would look for something like: Nefra HM 8 man sentinel pov then you can see how people did each fight. you should be able to notice when they used CDs (offensive or defensive) and could try to adopt that. Good luck and have fun. Once you know the fights you should be fine and i am sure you will enjoy it.

One thing to also make sure you are not doing wrong: Debuff that he puts out (big red circle). This debuff hits HARD. The way we delt with it (and recently i did the same for our 16man run) is to stack healers behind the boss and only have one or two range DPS at range. This means: a) you never have people affected by red circle (as long as they all stack close to boss - melee range) b) you know who will be affected and those players can use their defensive CDs to help mitigate damage If your setup is wrong, there is possibility that that debuff hits few people including healers, they all trying to get out of it not healing and you getting hit hard makes them panic. I would keep your defensive CDs for when there is a debuff out, so one healer can keep up person with debuff up and second healer can heal tank that is taking hits. You can see our kill video here from some time back: since then we only have 3 people at range (in the video you can see once our scoundrel getting debuff as he is furthest away from me). But even with 4 people in range only one person gets hit with debuff which helps your healers a ton good luck ps. in the last phase when you go to pickup crystals, don't damage Calphays as he relfects damage to tank and it makes it harder to keep him up. We now have one tank go and two healers stay with tank tanking calphayus. Once he is knocked down, we have other tank to go and pick up second crystal.

optimised drop means getting best enhancements and set tokens for set armorings. If you are having hard time at TC 16 man HM, then you might struggle with other ops as they are more "technical". But if you try and prepare then you might get better at it and i hope you and your group will keep trying. IF you have 180 gear I would start from DF HM 16. You should have enough fire power and healing power to get thru most mobs. Its probably mechanics that you will struggle with most. Firstly I would get everyone to install Parsec, this is a log parsing tool that will show your group's dps and healing output. This will be very good indication where as a group you need to work. Use it to to let guys that are not performing that they need to learn a bit about their class and improve. Dread Fortress is much more easy DPS wise (apart from last boss) so there is not a problem with having some people not performing well. Once you get to Dread Palace first boss will be BIG challenge for you. I wish you good luck and hope you guys will enjoy doing operations as there is not better feeling then beating hard encounter. ps. as to TC, with your gear and if people know how to play their class all you need is 3 good range DPS sitting in one specific place and nuking adds down. As long as they interrupt adds cast (VERY IMPORTANT) then its an easy fight. Look at this video how i do it (or how i used to do it when we did TC). Put three RDP there then tank on the other add so he interrupts far add. Once one add is down rDPS nukes other add with tank. this way 7 DPS nukes boss and just repeat it until boss gets below 20%. This fight used to be ****** on 8man but with current gear is more about people running away from laser then gear check.

180 mods from comms are as good as dropped from HM, i believe same goes for Armoring (just checked "ask my robot" and any 180 armorings with same stats you can get from both Dread Forged and Oriconian gear) just no set bonus obviously. Only difference between token gear and comms gear is enchancment. Yes - difference is quite big but as long as you can grind out comms and don't need (or don't want to) to min max you gear then you can just run SM16 ops and get really decent gear. You will struggle with accuracy to start with to be competitive with most good DPS players but then when you only happy to grind SM16 for comms, i am sure you not worried about being competitive. Another big difference between oriconian gear and Dread Forged are implants, ear pieces and relics. This is main difference between well geared people and not so well geared people. And i am very happy for this to be the case. However by enabling use of PvP relics outside of PvP arenas, this makes it not so important to run HM DP for relics for example. When it comes to bolstering, I would be fine with it as long as SM bosses would not give top tier commendations. I like the idea of bolstering players to certain level for SM runs so everyone can experience it. Operations are great.It should be introduction to what raiding is about. It should be easy enough (and it is most of the time) for anyone to step in, and do their part. Enjoy the occasion and then if they like it and want so more, start getting gear to run HM (join a raiding guild to join their HM team). Give commendations for completing the whole ops and not for every boss. This way it would take much longer to get decent gear thru easy content but would help people that want to do it, gear up for HM. And i remember when i stepped into HM with full min/max 72s and it was hard for our decent group to progress. so for average Joe they will need to get some help with gear but giving full 180s for easy content I am not that happy with. Also i would like to see crafted 180s only after another tier comes out. Not NIM for current content. It kills feeling of achiving something quickly. My group was the only group in our guild to kill Dead Councils on HM but now every one have 180 main hand and they are ready for anything ..... i think i digress from main subject a bit so apologies

this is very hard to answer as it will depend on what is your other team doing. We had well undergeared player with us this week during DF HM run. He had 69 mian hand, mix of 72/78 comms gear and he was doing on average 1k dps less then rest of us (8man group). if you want to see how well he did and how it looked on Parsec for each fight: http://www.twitch.tv/kretocienias/b/516269024 But just so you can know how much he did compared to rest of the group: Nefra: Three of us geared and experienced: 3.1, 3.0, 2.85 undegeared: 1850 ( he had to dispel himself and myself ever other time so his dps was bit lower) average: 2.7 Gate Commander: Three of us : 2.6, 2.2, 2.2 undegeared: 1450 average: 2.11 Gobthrok (really slacking by my part as I was showing new tank how to position boss to make it easy for him): Three of us : 3.1, 2.7, 2.55 undegeared: 2100 average: 2.61 Corruptor Zero: Three of us : 2.7, 2.6, 2.4 undegeared: 1700 average: 2.35 As you can see as long as other members know what to do you can have one not as good or well geared players and on Brontes starts to pose a threat but still more of a mechanics check then dps/gear. All four fights were beaten comfortably so if you add each dps and divide by 4 you will know what you would expect to have from each DPS for each fight to make it easy sail. If you have less as a group its still doable but takes longer. Brontes might be the only issue as "clock" phase is a DPS check really.

been using your app for a long time now. Love it, and timers makes it even better. no longer I have a need for TorAssistant thanks to this addition. After last update proc notification started to play up, before last one it was working like a charm, since update (mid raid) I had long delays but reading your post above i will check my system clock. Once again, love your app and I hope you will keep up great work.