It's not like you have much of a choice really. END will be on your tanking gear and there is no diminishing return on END, while there is on everything else you could get (except WILL). Unless you completely overgear content, you'll have to use the END gear. Once you overgear content, then you can start removing END for more WILL, just to make HM runs quicker for example. Also, one thing that was missed, is that pure END (and of course defenses), will give the tank longer to live during enrage phases. Could be one hit, two hits, but that's 3 seconds that can make the difference. END stacking is great in situations where healers simply cannot keep up.

That's like saying a level 50 character shouldn't be able to breeze through everything in a level 10 HC4. SWTOR is an item/level based MMO system so it's entirely logical to have 4 people in perfect top tier gear do what 8 people with low end gear can since, effectively (unless specific boss mechanics require more than 4 people), Rakata gear stat is almost DOUBLE the basic level 49ish/50 blue gear in same slot.

Nicely done and funny little video. Good combination of perfect execution, perfect classes (all with range potential, all with very heavy AE potential) for this and top end gear. Don't see any problem having 4 people in such a setup clearing out EV normal mode, which is meant for people barely in blues and 49ish crafted and is overall easier and more forgiving than most HMs flashpoints. When you see the stat differential between entry level 50 gear and rakata gear, it's like everything's doubled or close to it so now that even the 140 weapons are working, it kinda makes sense that 4 people can do what 8 people with entry level gear can do

Seeing how Bioware handled even a simple thing like sorting guild members by level in a guild panel, how many cunning defense items are still in the game, how some companions simple don't have options for weapons (Qyzen Fess anyone?), I don't think it's a stretch to think that there could be something odd with loot "randomness" in HMs. I played many years of MMOs with "random" drops from a given loot table. Never have I had a problem with it, because overall it made sense and it was down to just luck or bad luck, period. If you take WoW for example, mods allowed the parsing of thousands upon thousand of drops and it was clear that some items where rare, while some were more common. It also showed that there was a logic and that overall, it was just down to pure luck. Here, as said previously, things seem fixed as soon as you set up a group, or close to it, for no apparent reason. If there was a flat 25% chance for each tokens to drop, there is NO WAY so many people would see insane stretches of drops like this. I've run 19 HMs so far (Shadow tank, Shadow DPS, Sage healing and Sentinel DPS), usually with the same people and I have NEVER seen a single willpower token while I've seen 14 smuggler ones (with no smuggler in group) and 5 trooper ones (no trooper either!!). My healing companion is currently nearly full columni (just head and boots missing)...I got 2 pieces, from operations. Now, we simply stopped doing HMs

+1 here. Simple solution: If Master Looter is set, have it so the Master Looter sorts out the loots. If Master Looter is not set, handle loot as usual (and by that I mean via need/greed rolls, NOT auto assigned). Running normal guild runs with people new to raiding and the like only to have drops for people who do not need it, while people who do need it go multiple runs without any luck is a good way to keep people interested. Auto assigned loot in raids is just...an aberration.

Just adding my +1 here. Led an operation with mostly new people (barely geared, new to raiding, no voice chat and the like). We one shotted all encounters but SOA and Pylons, due to bugs. Pylons: - Consoles on the south pylon simply stopped spawning after 3rd lock on our first try. Was fine after reset. Infernal Council: - Our sage got the debuff for no reason whatsoever on our first try. We had no guard up and no AE/buff used. He was also properly linked with the target since once the debuff faded, he could DPS normally (but not fast enough of course). After reset, we cleared it no problem. - A Marauder type mob had the title "Assassin" instead of "Marauder" which led to a nice DPS race for one of our healers since downing 78k (I think, instead of the usual 28k for assassins) HP within time frame is...rough SOA: - Ball still pursuing people after platforms fell. The balls were UNDER us, nowhere to be possibly seen and yet we all got hit as we were bunching up between platforms. Almost wiped. - We wiped once during platforms and the encounter did NOT reset properly. When we came back, 3/4 of the platforms on upper level were missing, making it impossible for a push to phase 2. Forcing a reset on phase 1 put platforms back properly. - Aggro reset on phase 3. This made it almost impossible to position SOA. 2 tanks helped by rotating taunts a bit, but not enough. Couldn't down him because of it. - Multiple times we had our tanks perfectly position SOA under a pillar, only to have SOA reset aggro and move toward someone else for some reason.

Double shadow tanks with very heavy surge ratings and willpower/power focus. - Hard to kill - Nice Cooldowns (short CD 100% tech/force resist, 50% defense boost CD, Improved Battle readiness, boosted crits for bursts via potency) - 4 taunts and 2 guards depending on who is attacked, excellent to prevent burst combos. nearly spammable Accuracy and damage debuffs. - 1 interrupt each, 2 stuns each, 2 AE slows, 2 pushbacks, 2 8sec CCs, Stealth long duration CC (comboed via a double vanish to put out of combat once the trinket anti CC has been used). - Massive burst possibility via the double projects with relics/implants/potency combo with 75%ish surge rating, repeatable very easily. These are perfect finishers, followed by quick heavy htiter spinning strike. - Self heals via proc from combat technique, little but steady, improved battle readiness and improved augmented telekinetic throws. - Two vanishes on 2min CDs if you need to get out of combat and rest up a bit. VERY handy, even for a few ticks.

- By default, make all HM class tokens (columni drops) universal (while keeping the gear slot of course) - When at least one person rolls need, the winner will get a class token for HIS class. - If nobody rolls need, the winner will get a random class token (for companions).

+1 on this. Out of the recent 12 HMs, 9 had 100% cunning drops while nobody in there was a smuggler based class. 2 had trooper aim gear, with no aim people either! We had 1 or 2 relics dropping as well. Running a HM with nobody getting any loot but the tionese crap is a waste of time and very frustrating. That's 1 or 2 hours of utterly waste time. Make the tokens UNIVERSAL! That way everyone rolling need and winning will get THEIR class token and if everyone rolls greed, then it's a 100% random class token for the winner (for companions, etc). That way, there will NEVER be any token that isn't useful, unless people want to gear up their companions because they all already have that set piece.

True, 1% net gain. However, streaks of bad numbers appear to be a wee bit worst now, though of couse, it's just stats. My max double strike without proc before was 11 and that was REALLY the one bad luck, usually it could go for 6. Today, had a 19 double strike without proc on a champion. It's just stats, it's just a feeling, it's just bad luck, I KNOW. Just saying Love the change on spinning and whirling though.

Kolto is a rejuvenative liquid used widely at the time (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kolto). For hammer shot, it's quite simple to believe that it's an encased Kolto concentrate, held together by a particle beam, which dispers es on impact, providing a small healing factor. You can easily switch between this and regular impact ammos (for enemies) by a switch near the trigger, as long as you're using the proper cell. Or whatever

Don't attack them then? As a Shadow, unless there's nothing else, I never ever touch anything with heavy armor and above ~14k HP. For mercs, I just try to disrupt them while DPSing something else. There are many ways to do this: 2 stuns, interupt, KB and you can also just lure your current target out of the healer's LOS. And in worst case, just bail

An instant AE (with only a very slight delay from animation and 5m range, granted) is a wee bit harder to avoid than a long cast with a huge ground marker and beams everywhere. Plus, any jugg/guardian with experience will do this after a root leap/choke/freeze combo (for snare) and your stuns CDs are not gonna last the 15 seconds and are mostly very visible. As a Shadow tank, I usually save my speed burst for when I see it coming and that helps, but most classes don't have that and are stuck with the snare/root effects. If you trinket out of it, they just push/leap again and you're done for just the same. Properly played, a Smash/Sweep is one of the most damaging ability in the game currently, almost unavoidable, instant, AE with a 5 player hit cap, and always crit (which means shielding won't help either no matter what btw since 100% crit pushes shielding off the table completely). It's also on a 15sec CD and the 2 abilities boosting it are on a 21s and 1m CD, but while they help, they're not needed per se to already do a lot of damage. Means during a 1 minute fight, you can do 3 crit boosted sweeps. In all videos you see about this setup, no matter how well or badly the character is played, this ability is what defines them, and that's it. A vigilance spec is way more interesting to watch (and play) any day of the week.

That might work yes. Always getting kill counts (not killing blow of course) as soon as you heal someone that then kills someone is needed as well. That way healers would always get some decent kill score if they heal people who kill other people

The thing is, it's very, very easy to cheese healing all alone if you want and if they add more medals, it could push people to do this more and more. Already you can see thread about how to get the 5k heals and people actually advise to FAKELY take damage, wait for a specific time at the end and heal up or something. Or threads about people just going into fire, then just healing themselves for medals. DPS, you can't really fake it. While there is more important DPS than others, all DPS while be in some way useful. That said, there should be exactly the same number of medals and steps as healing. Tanking, you can't really fake it either and in many ways, it's even more important than healing (ok not more but on par). A proper tank will take 50% of ALL the damage done to the one he protects AND reduce the damage he takes (taunts) all the while doing damage. And when you think about it, there's only 3 or 4 tanking medals anyway. One major thing needs fixing however, it's objective based medals. In Huttball, it's so silly it's not even funny. In voidstar, it doesn't even seem to matter and in Civil War, it's just a push to AFK camp a spot.