After an interesting weekend in the Lost Island Hard Mode, I am reading all of these posts and finding two things: One, people who had an absolute hell of a time; Two, people lambasting those people for being noobs and claiming the content is fine. The question I have is why is there such a discrepancy?

 

We completed Hard Mode Lost Island in about 3.5 hours on Saturday. We had a Jugg tank, Marauder DPS, Bounty Hunter DPS, and Sorceror Healer. We had to kite the first boss because of a melee DPSer, which seems to be necessary by having anyone melee but the tank. But, there were other problems, like the boss casting a Plasma Ball, then going into his focus attack, so that by the time he was done with that, he was engulfed in the plasma ball, and then following this up with incinerate, which could not be interrupted because he was in the middle of his plasma ball! These mechanics should not overlap in this fashion. Incinerate is almost necessary to interrupt, then is uninterruptable!

 

Other issues included the fact that sometimes reticles appeared on the ground, other times they did not. Sometimes he would get his plamsa ball cast off and nothing would happen. People talk about the plasma ball only casting ever 15 seconds, for us it was every 3-5 seconds, the only period he didn't cast that fast was when he focused someone with his gun ability.

 

After 20%, this might be part of the fight, but all plasma balls hit and are immediately full size, instead of growing like the rest of the size. If part of the fight, a little strange, and annoying. Also, the fire coming up from below during that 20% is everywhere, instead of patchy. We made it through all of this, but the amount of coverage makes it nearly impossible to stand anywhere.

 

My problem with the fight, is that luck seems to account for more than skill or anything else. Sometimes we got lucky and things seemed very easy. The last boss was much of the same. Sometimes reticles appeared for the poison, sometimes not. Then the poison would disappear, and still be doing damage to people. The flurry of blades attack I could only interrupt every other time, since he cast it so fast. He was flinging poison so quickly it was fairly absurd, too. I also took tremendous damage when he jumped away and shot missiles, while we went after the tanks. This could be because of the stacking of a debuff, which I saw no debuff on me, that other people have talked about, when he mentions having a trick up his sleeve. But, do I run around to avoid it and then let it possibly hit the rest of the group? On top of it, a couple of times during the flaming ghoul phase, where he jumps onto someone and hits them a lot, we were all thrown to the ground and stunned, no one able to move and all taking damage, with no flaming ghouls even near us. Don't tell me that isn't a bug!

 

The mechanics and overlap of the mechanics reminded us all of SOA. You get whirlwinded, then dropped on a lightnight ball, or even two, when they were double-spawning, meaning instant-death, nothing you could do about it. You have one rez, so if more than one person dies to poor overlapping of mechanics, raid wipes. So, again, it's all about luck. Hell, even the second boss in Lost Island, on one occasion, randomly, did double damage to us with every ability.

 

Before people start calling me and my friends horrible noobs, we are all seasoned-MMO verterans, geared with 4/5 or 5/5 Rakata, red/black weapons, best gear in game, and all work on maximizing everything we can. I am a tank with over 23k hit points buffed. So, why exactly, after learning how the mechanics work, do we have such a hard time on HARD MODE, and other people supposedly breeze through it? Something is wrong here.

 

Oh, and after all the hard work, we get one-piece of gear, maybe, that is a MILD improvement over what we have, if at all. So, there is a lot of time investment for no reward.

 

But, in the end, why is there is a discrepancy? Why would we have such trouble with this instance, which we are geared, skilled, and prepared for, and other people supposedly are PUGing it in hard mode?

I have to agree the fight itself is pretty ridiculous on hard. If you have a single melee DPS it's difficulty goes up for stupid ridiculous levels, all because the tank can't stand still for fear of being murdered by the plasma arcs targeting that melee.

 

The biggest issue just seems to stem from the fact that there's so much going on making it a chaotic fight, ON TOP of everything doing a lot of damage. Our tank had 18k health and was getting burned through pretty fast, along with the rest of us, and of course healing nerf to top it all off our healer couldn't try and keep us all up. And if you miss interrupting just a single incinerate that alone could pretty well wipe you all.

In my opinion it's definetly the hardest flashpoint in this game, but that doesn't make it the least bit 'annoying' or 'rediculously overtuned' as many claim.

 

My Groups (I've went twice)

 

Assassin Tank

Marauder

Merc

Sorcerer Healer

 

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Assassin Tank

Marauder

Marauder

Sorcerer Healer

 

Both groups took roughly an hour and a half to finish it on HM.

 

 

 

When you say that your tank had 18k life and was getting burned quickly, keep in mind that you absolutely cannot miss an interrupt on incinerate; it cannot be aloud to cast. As a comparison of gear though, our tank (me) has 25k health but I also felt like I didn't take that much damage.

Likewise, if Incinerate does land, the healer can (and should!) quickly cleanse the DOT effect.

 

The only thing that makes the droid outrageously hard is insufficient interrupts, not any DPS composition. You can kite slowly enough that melees keep close to 100% time on target, and with 2-3 coordinated interrupts, you can lock down every Incinerate and the bulk of the Plasma Arcs.

I have 19.5k hp as a merc dps, if a tank only has 18k hp I don't think they are geared for any of the new content.

I have 19.5k hp as a merc dps, if a tank only has 18k hp I don't think they are geared for any of the new content.

 

Are you in full Rakata? Keep in mind that this FP drops columi and one piece of rakata. So it's meant for people with a mix of tionese/columi gear. I think it's a bit overtuned for people in that sort of gear.