Have run a few 2 man HMs over the past couple of weeks. I play a Shadow Tank with 9 Rakata / 5 Columi and use Nadia as DPS with 7 Rakata / 7 Columi. Friend is similarly geared Smuggler Healer. We can get to the last boss of Battle of Ilum in 10 minutes by skipping 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th bosses and all the trash (can't skip 3rd boss w/o aggroing but you can with the rest). Best we could do was dieing to last boss at 5% due to enrage. I think it would be super easy if i just specced DPS or had DPS Relics because the last boss doesn't hit hard unless you fail on interrupts. I think the only incredibly difficult one to clear with 2 companions would be Directive 7. It'd be hard to keep Bulwark from enraging the the mechanics of the last boss might be too tricky. Oh and 2nd boss with the 3 droids would be hard too... BTW idk if many people know about skipping 2nd boss on Battle of Ilum. I figured it out myself while solo'ing it to the 5th boss and waiting for my friend. You just have to wait for the closest dude to walk a bit further away from the switch and you can actually press the switch from quite far away. Have a go. Looks impossible to skip.

I really like that there's some gear that you need to earn through a different route to raiding. I wish there were a greater number and variety of Daily Missions to do, even if there were say 40 or 50 missions available and BW just capped it to max of 30 Commendation/day. It'd be nice if it were fair game for all the classes as well. I play a Shadow Tank and run through all Belsavis Dailies in 30-34 minutes solo (30mins and 30 secs is my record - challenge laid down for you guys!) and clear all 27 in about an hour. Am i gonna do this on my Sentinel/Sage alts? No chance. It'd take me 3x as long and i'd have the hassle of finding groups. Incredibly unfair IMO. To go back to my first point, if there were more missions to do, non-stealth players could choose to avoid doing Heroics and still earn the max quota for the day without being forced to group up. In 6 weeks you can only gear yourself and 1 Companion unless you've been grinding them on more than one character. Just sayin'.

Entirely irrelevant and presumptuous. If you are a pug, you are assumed to have the same skill as any other pug. If you have lower HP, it is assumed with good reason that your DPS is lower.

People are perfectly right to judge any player's gear from their HP, not just Tanks. All gear comes with a large (and fairly uniform) amount of HP second to your DPS/Healing Stat. If you have low HP, you also MUST be limited in DPS/Healing because of how all gear is set up. If i see a DPS/Healer i judge from their HP because it's pretty accurate as a judgement of their DPS or Healing and i can't be expected to inspect everyone and take notes - it's just so much faster this way. I judge Tanks the same and expect them to have 20-25% more HP than DPS/Healers. I still play with DPS or Healers with 12k HP in HM FPs and never ask anyone to leave. I don't actually care if they are undergeared and need carrying, but my judgement still stands true and accurate from their HP alone; it's obvious, isn't it?

I don't play a Jugg tank, i play it as DPS, but my main is a Shadow Tank. For PvE, it depends entirely on the encounter. Some bosses are easy to hold aggro on, some aren't. For the ones for which you can hold aggro easily, i Guard the Healer, because the DPS isn't gonna take my aggro, but the Healer is more important to the group and gets hit by % harder than the DPS by the boss's AoE attacks. For bosses with a less Tank friendly aggro mechanic, i always guard the most heavily geared DPS because he is the most capable of taking aggro from me, which would otherwise happen too much. For some Raid bosses (depending on the relative gear/skill of your group) e.g. Bonethrasher where you cannot taunt the boss, it's worth Guarding simply the squishiest player since anyone dieing can lead to a certain wipe if you're tight on the enrage timer anyway. I usually Guard the highest geared DPS for trash as well (some trash is harder than bosses so this is no trivial point). While i Guard the DPS, i stay away from the Healer and make sure to use single target taunts and Force Pull (not applicable to Jugg i guess...) to get mobs off the Healer.

The fastest way i believe to gear up for PvE (and what i did and will do again) is as follows: Buy whatever you can to replace any gear <50 required level Blues/Greens. Do as many Dailies as you can every day. Replace the mods in orange gear with the mods from Heroic Dailies in the priority: Legs, Chest, Feet, Head, Mainhand (Due to the difficulty/availiability of respective HM FP Gear slot drops). Only use Daily Commendations for Earpiece and Implants. Don't waste commendations on anything else. You will get more than enough mods from the heroics. Do HM HPs when you can after feeling comfortable with your gear from Dailies (or get carried through them). Roll Need on Biometric Crystal Alloys always. You need 7 minimum. Drop whatever Crew skill you have and pick up Artifice/Synthweaving. Level both of these (can only do one at a time). Make Rakata level Relics , Bracers and Belt from Artifice/Synthweaving. Then level Biochem and make Stim, Adrenal and Medpack. Without Stealth, all 27 Daily Commendations can be achieved in ~2Hrs. HM FPs should be run through skipping all the trash and half the bosses and take ~1Hr. If you play 3 Hrs a day for 14 days and do the above, i'd expect you to have 7 pieces of Rakata Gear and 3-4 pieces of Columi with 3-4 Orange/Purple moddables containing level 50 Epic mods from heroic Dailies.

I do now roll Need for my companion. I play a Shadow Tank and use Nadia as my main companion. HM FPs can't give me an upgrade anymore. They can, however, upgrade a few slots on Nadia and therefore build up my DPS gear-set as well should i want to switch to DPS. Is this not fair? What if i wanted to change to DPS? If i was playing DPS in stead of Tank, would that make it fair? What's the difference? I still only roll Need for Consular gear if there are no other Consulars in the group, but at the same time, it is for my companion really. I also wear some bad armor on the slot that i know drops in the FP, before my pugs inspect me. That way they think i'm rolling for myself so they don't get mad. They're not mad. They couldn't use it for themselves anyway. I'm happy. Nadia's happy. I build my DPS set. Everyone's happy!

As we all know, there is an incredibly frustrating issue with Flashpoints at the moment; respawning outside the Instance. The biggest problem that the current system creates is the possiblity of not being able to obtain your well-earned loot. However, this isn't the only reason the system needs a change. To put it bluntly; everybody hates loading screens! Why should we be given far more than necessary when we do Flashpoints? If players were able to respawn inside the instance, it would create a far less frustrating gaming experience overall, and we could spare 2 seconds to think about how fun the flashpoint is, in stead of gradually getting more aggravated with loading screens, climaxing with...NO LOOT! What i'm suggesting isn't even a completely new system. It wouldn't take half as long as you might think to integrate. Why? Because, it's already in the game! Warzones. Warzones already have a respawn system that allows players to respawn within the same area and not be able to re-engage in combat without waiting however long Bioware decides they should wait in order to create an enjoyable balance. I'm suggesting that BW introduce this system to Flashpoints. This way we could be rid of ghastly loading screens, be certain of obtaining all our loot, and not be at risk of ruining the difficulty of Flashpoints by rushing straight back in to finish the boss. I'm sure this has been discussed before. But i felt this is the absolute best way to move forward. I mean, isn't it?

If you are more interested in PvP, then PvP gear is what you should be trying to obtain since it is slightly better than the equivalent PvE gear versus other players. The only way to get this is to complete PvP Dailies, Weeklies and earn Warzone Commendations. You really shouldn't be struggling so much without any expertise that you cannot enjoy or perform well in Warzones. Just keep playing them and you will quickly have tonnes of Champion gear. If you play Republic, none of the Daily Commendation missions are bugged at all, at least certainly not such that they can't be completed easily. The H2+ on Ilum is very doable with two fresh 50s. Just make sure you do not pull any surrounding groups of mobs with the knockbacks from the Elite, and focus one Sith Adept at a time since they heal each other. CC'ing the Elite as soon as the door bursts is recommended. There are guidelines for where and how to activate all the Daily missions within this thread. If you have stealth, all the Heroics on Belsavis can be cleared solo and extremely quickly as a fresh 50. Otherwise, many players opt to die and use their respawn stealth to complete the missions. You will not lose out on credits this way since the completion of the missions will pay for your repairs and give you mods which sell for 30-35k on the GTN, should you not need them. Other than that, try and find some friends or guild members who'd be willing to help you through HM Flashpoints. GL.

These are all really good videos and do a good job of explaining simply what you have to do. I like how they're not over-polished runs of the FPs, as they show what can go wrong - in stead of "well don't do this because you'll die - but of course we didn't because we are pro."

Did it on the 3rd try on HM last night and only 1 of out group had done the FP at all before. Our issue the first time was just killing the repair droids in time before we took too much damage, which we corrected by CC'ing both the first 2 droids for 60 seconds, killing the second 2 droids and CC'ing the third 2 droids. I was the tank with about 23k HP and didn't look in danger from any particular ability knocking even half my health off - the problem (why we wiped the second time) was that when he knocked me back and stunned me for a moment, he used this small window to cleave the other 3 member of the group behind him dealing significat damage to all of them, eventually leading to a wipe. We simply arranged ourselves in a diamond formation around him for the final try so that cleaves during my CC would only damage the guarded DPS. The final try was a piece of cake and now we have a strategy, i'm sure we will one-shot him tomorrow. GL to you.

I have this problem with all the crafting skills. EVEN WEIRDER:- Yesterday i dropped Artifice and picked up Biochem. Even as much as 15 minutes after doing this, my Biochem Trainer was only able to teach me Artifice Recipes Fortunately Logging out/in worked fine. Just thought it was odd.

Just gonna confirm the first reply; Yes they can crit. I crit one yesterday. GL.

Yeah they'll still work. Over the last 2 days i dropped my 400 Biochem which already had Rakata medpack, stim and adrenal; picked up Synth and power leveled it to make Rakata bracers and belt; dropped Synth and power leveled Artifice to make Rakata relics. They all work. Now i just have to level back up to 400 Bio today. The amount of time it takes you level from 1-400 is incredibly short. It takes about 4-6 hours and 100k Credits depending on the popularity of the skill and the available mats. The limiting factor time-wise for maxing your gear with Augment slots or even just filling up on rakata gear is just the Biometric Crystal Alloy. If you have enough for your goal, feel free to drop your 400 crafting skill and utilise another. You'll be back in business in a day or two with more pieces of Rakata gear.

Does anyone know of any hooded robes that are fully moddable, level 50, and look similar to Noble Consular's Vestments? Link I've really be wanting a black or at least very dark grey, simplistic, understated robe since i started playing. The Noble Conular's Vestment's is almost perfect, but so low level that i don't want to gimp myself that much.