Have you experienced any of the development decisions made in this game?

I think Hates You on PoT5 may be attempting it this Thursday, they were pretty close 2 weeks ago on their first try.

I'm excited to see the performance of your exceptional healers. Just for a taste, this is what the fight was like for us. http://www.torparse.com/a/710327/21/0/Heals+Given Note the 5k EHPS. Lolololol.

Boss names in the SS are from DF.

Keep trying, you'll link the right one eventually.

If you're not doing content that rewards ultimate commendations, then chances are you have no need for the gear you buy with ultimate comms in the first place. Rather than spending all that time farming flashpoints for a minimal amount of comms, pug some 16m SM ops. The newest operations, DF and DP, can easily be done in a group with all elite comm gear. Better yet, focus on gearing and playing one of those 10 55s really well, and getting into a HM raid group. You will literally be swimming in ultimate comms, not to mention the oriconian trash drops that you can send to other characters. I cap my vanguard's comms in one 2 hour session, plus pick up oriconian drops. It's a waste of BW resources to develop more FP content when they're struggling to release operations in a timely manner.

I'm pretty sure this is happening because your tanks are pushing the actual boss too far, it popped up in another thread pretty recently. Unfortunately, with the small health pool in 8-man, its easy for the tanks to push too hard, forcing the boss into a hard enrage instead of his regular tantrum. The mechanic was put in place to make sure groups don't just ignore the tentacles and focus fire the boss, but it was tuned around 72-gear. Make sure tanks watch the boss percentage, and if needed, restrict their rotations to use only the abilities needed to maintain defensive buffs. Edit: Here's the link to the previous post of other groups encountering your same problem.

! The prophet of Thor has spoken. Heed his words.

Or tanks could learn a proper tanking rotation, which seems smarter than endangering a dps from the very start of the fight. My group has been clearing 16 hm palace from the first week of this tier's release, and we rarely, if ever, have problems controlling threat on Bestia. Instead of trying to gimmick your way around players who can't fulfill their role properly, treat the underlying problem. Train tanks to use a 3 taunt rotation at the start, and train dps to either hold back initially or use their threat dumps properly. The only enrage in this fight is during the final phase, so if the dps have to sit for a few seconds before attacking, so be it.

Honestly, the simplest fix would be to have the tank who is doing the initial kiting stand at the base of his throne. Hit him with a few ranged attacks before he comes down (saber throw, sticky grenade, hammer shots, project, telekinetic throw) to establish threat. You can even taunt him through that bubble. Having a tank waiting to pick up his target is a lot less detrimental to the group than having a dps pull Cal initially.

This discussion seems to be primarily limited to shadow/sin tanks, so I won't comment on the size of hits individual classes take, but it seems to me the problem isn't that the hits are too big, but that your group isn't tanking him properly to prevent or manage these big hits. I tank 16 HM on my vanguard with Everydayimsmuggln on his guardian, and between he and I our total damage for those abilities seems to be a lot less than what others here are experiencing. For driving thrust, total damage was 32,497 (1 hit of 17,099 to our guardian and 1 hit of 15,398 to my vanguard). Driving thrust only occurs if the tank is too far away and Raptus needs to close the gap. For us, this occurs when a tank is knocked into the air and the other tank is running back from a teleport and has to taunt from range (aka, a rare occurrence). It also occurs intentionally when taunting Raptus back to the middle after Force Execution, which isn't necessary, we do it as a convenience for our melee dps. For the entire fight, 23,200 rising slash damage is taken by our guardian in 4 hits, for an average hit for 5800. My vanguard did not take any rising slash hits at all. As far as rising slash, I'm not sure if the damage difference is because phases can be shorter in 16m (our fight duration was 4 min 37 sec compared to the kill in Visas long of over 6 min). Tanks should be watching the other tank's health via target of target and ready to taunt off if the other tank drops low regardless. I'll watch more closely this week to see the circumstances under which he uses rising slash, and figure out if there really is anything in particular we're doing to prevent that ability from being used. Either way, deaths from these abilities should be nonexistent. If your tanks can't cooperate to swap threat when the other is low, you have bigger problems. And, finally, for anyone who came here for the actual topic of the thread, both of our tanks use high mitigation mods and enhancements, no lettered mods. Tank deaths are rare with our group, though that could just be a testament to our healers.

You're kidding, right?

One thing I forgot to mention, don't be discouraged by the silence in progression raiding videos. A lot of those first kills occur after a dozen pulls of a boss, where everything has already been discussed ad nauseum. When you pull a boss 70 or 80 times (16 NiM Cartel Warlords), every raider had better know that fight to perfection and not need to be told anything any more. If it helps your raid group, have one member with exceptional awareness call out big mechanics like add switches and important AOES (usually healers or tanks are better at this than dps). Warlords is an extreme example, but some fights really just require lots of tries to get down. We were the only guild to get NiM Thrasher for about 3 weeks, killing him in four or five pulls if I remember correctly, and during that time every other 16-man guild still threw themselves at it relentlessly to try and replicate our success, with each group attempting it dozens of times. A tough fight shouldn't be viewed as discouraging, but challenging.

Competitiveness is the most important trait in a progression guild. DPS - compete to do more damage, kill adds faster, avoid more of the avoidable hits (cleaves on Grob'thok, Tyrans, Raptus for example), cleanse yourself faster (Death mark on council, dots or Draxus and Nefra). Get in parsec and compete with each other, try to beat out the parses other people upload here to the forums or to the torparse website. Heals - compete not just to put out more heals, but put out more effective healing (the amount of healing that's actually useful). This means getting to lower people faster and topping them off faster, responding or predicting damage and prestacking slow-release medpacs or prebubbling them to prevent the damage from ever occurring. Any healer can put out tremendous numbers if given the right circumstances (scoundrels can sustain at least 7k HPS, sages probably come in close to that as well). What is really important is putting up numbers that aren't wasted. Tanks - compete to take less damage (if possible, not feasible for many fights simply because mechanics dictate one tank being more active, or phases take longer). One tank taking too much damage may indicate poor raid awareness (looking at Raptus here) or poor gearing choices. "Compete" to put out more threat than your dps so that you never lose aggro, allowing them to push their dps numbers as high as possible. "Compete" to find the best ways to hold onto adds so dps them down faster via AOE abilities. "Compete" to do mechanics better than the other tank (ex. Grobthok, see who is better at getting him into the magnet faster when pipe smash is cast). Finally, your group needs to want to compete with other guilds, if not across the entire player-base, at least on your server or even faction. Don't be afraid to cut dps who can't make the cut, especially if you've given them a fair amount of time to review their rotation and improve. You can't be too friendly if you want to be the best. You need to dislike each other enough that you aren't afraid to call out those individuals holding the group back. Another small thing that helps is being active in the game. People who play more often tend to be better just because they're constantly fresh on their class. They are practicing their rotation every day, not just on raid nights. Having alts is helps too. Playing a different role in a fight forces you to be aware of mechanics you might not have otherwise noticed if you play the same role every week. Get an extra alt run going each week. This has the downside that some people end up with too many alts and end up being no good at any of them. TL;DR - Competition is essential.

You can't use Severity as an example. Most guilds don't have healers with balls of steel.