Just got an interesting group on BT SM...

 

First, this guy says matter-of-factly, "spam spacebar to skip movies!" like we don't know. Of course, I don't like to spacebar anyways, so I just kind of ignored him. Then I did the Light Side option to spare the captain and the same guy says something to the effect of "lol you're a noob" and then "you're no Sith!" (the second I understand; the first is beyond me.) Then he drops because he has to go. We get an Inquisitor and proceed. But then the two Inqs we have, whenever we press a terminal for a conversation, always jump or run out right before the fourth person clicks in...and then they click again...and then right before the last person clicks in they would jump or run out. Again. It took like a minute and a half to actually start the conversation because they wouldn't quit doing this! Other than that the group was pretty good; they fought well and no one died despite the lack of healer, but I think they were all pretty much weirdos.

I did the Light Side option to spare the captain

 

Please tell me you won the roll. Nobody ever goes for the LS when I play this, and I loath killing the captain. Not because I'm such a nice guy at heart (which I totally am), but because killing the only competent person (well, living person, let's exclude Kilran's manslaughtering droid) aside from yourself seems a little harsh. Especially since it causes everyone to die.

I was grouped with a doozy last night.

 

he was the BH tank, I was the Op healbot also along for the ride was an assassin and sniper DPS, Mandalorian Raiders, ~lvl26'ish run.

 

apparently a healer firing a single damage shot is blasphemous heresy for this BH.

 

we'd just finished the minor boss (dude with the two nasty dogs), no-one had died the whole run (although there were one or two close calls I'll confess) and he initiates a vote-kick against me.

 

he loses. at least, I think he lost. I abstained and didn't get booted from the game.

 

so, instead of sucking it up and continuing, he just /sit down and refuses to continue.

 

did I mention NO-ONE HAD DIED so far that run.

 

now, I'm still a noob to this healing lark, but as I see things, if no-one dies, you're not doing too badly.

Mando Raiders HM.

 

I met this interesting tank. His gear is proper, but I can tell it's not optimized. I was running it with my lil bro's DPS Guardian and a close friend's DPS Shadow. I was with my Scoundrel Healer. I was like, k, no prob with the tank's gear so long as he knows what he's doing. He's a Vanguard Tank.

 

The trash fights went without trouble, then we got to the first boss with the two dogs. As he tanked away the boss while us nuking the dogs, I noticed he wasn't really good with taunts and aggro-managing attacks. I had the boss chased me a few times until he got it back. I can tell that this guy is nervous in tanking as he takes a long pause before every trash mob fights. Then we get to the second boss, the four Imperial classes.

 

So he knew the deal to nuke down the Warrior 1st, but, as we're going, I ended up tanking. He never bothered to taunt the remaining of the group as the BH, Sorc and Agent nuked me down. I tried my best to survive, aggro dump, heal myself and group... but yeah I was wondering why isn't he using his Sonic Round (AOE taunt) or even aggro generating attacks. Ended up wiping.

 

2nd try, I whispered to my close friend and lil bro to backup taunt if our tank fails to heed my advice on using Sonic Round, Pulse Cannon, Explosive Surge or even Riot Gas. The usual Vanny tanking stuffs. He seemed to rely on that single taunt, Neural Jolt.... So anyways, he seemed to still have some problems managing aggro and that's when my lil bro and close friend decided to tank each of the classes while nuking the Warrior as DPS. We managed to get through.

 

Last boss however, before going in I explained to him the need of maintaining aggro of both turrets and Mavrix on him. He did well as he supports the DPS nuking out the one turret we focused, then the other and finally Mavrix for the next three jumps he does to those turrets platforms.

 

Well.. tanks are already hard to come by, so discouraging and dissing a tank might not be a good idea... Told him he did a good job and parted our ways. Weird tanks can make the healing challenging and fun, but tanks willing to learn and take advice can be rare. Some tanks ignored or even insult me for my advice.

Mando Raiders HM.

 

I met this interesting tank. His gear is proper, but I can tell it's not optimized. I was running it with my lil bro's DPS Guardian and a close friend's DPS Shadow. I was with my Scoundrel Healer. I was like, k, no prob with the tank's gear so long as he knows what he's doing. He's a Vanguard Tank.

 

The trash fights went without trouble, then we got to the first boss with the two dogs. As he tanked away the boss while us nuking the dogs, I noticed he wasn't really good with taunts and aggro-managing attacks. I had the boss chased me a few times until he got it back. I can tell that this guy is nervous in tanking as he takes a long pause before every trash mob fights. Then we get to the second boss, the four Imperial classes.

 

So he knew the deal to nuke down the Warrior 1st, but, as we're going, I ended up tanking. He never bothered to taunt the remaining of the group as the BH, Sorc and Agent nuked me down. I tried my best to survive, aggro dump, heal myself and group... but yeah I was wondering why isn't he using his Sonic Round (AOE taunt) or even aggro generating attacks. Ended up wiping.

 

2nd try, I whispered to my close friend and lil bro to backup taunt if our tank fails to heed my advice on using Sonic Round, Pulse Cannon, Explosive Surge or even Riot Gas. The usual Vanny tanking stuffs. He seemed to rely on that single taunt, Neural Jolt.... So anyways, he seemed to still have some problems managing aggro and that's when my lil bro and close friend decided to tank each of the classes while nuking the Warrior as DPS. We managed to get through.

 

Last boss however, before going in I explained to him the need of maintaining aggro of both turrets and Mavrix on him. He did well as he supports the DPS nuking out the one turret we focused, then the other and finally Mavrix for the next three jumps he does to those turrets platforms.

 

Well.. tanks are already hard to come by, so discouraging and dissing a tank might not be a good idea... Told him he did a good job and parted our ways. Weird tanks can make the healing challenging and fun, but tanks willing to learn and take advice can be rare. Some tanks ignored or even insult me for my advice.

 

My advice for a vanguard/PT tank:

 

1. free hands.

2. place face on keyboard.

3. roll face around left to right (not right to left)

 

congrats you are now a vanguard/PT tank.

Has anybody ever grouped with someone without an advanced class? I once had a trooper with me in a 50 storymode flashpoint. He was DPS, and of course his damage output was terrible. I asked him why he hadn't chose an advanced class yet and he said he "couldn't decide which one so [he] just stayed trooper".

Part of me wonders if that playing without an advanced class could be viable, but with missing at least half of your abilities, I doubt it.

Has anybody ever grouped with someone without an advanced class? I once had a trooper with me in a 50 storymode flashpoint. He was DPS, and of course his damage output was terrible. I asked him why he hadn't chose an advanced class yet and he said he "couldn't decide which one so [he] just stayed trooper".

Part of me wonders if that playing without an advanced class could be viable, but with missing at least half of your abilities, I doubt it.

 

Okay, "I couldn't decide" is an even dumber reason than "I am hardcore" that I've heard. The idea being not having your advanced class makes the game more challenging. So you are just a majorly awesome player cause you're so hardcore.

 

Me personally the only time I ever saw a character level 50 knight without an advanced class he "logged in" right next to me down in The Works on Coruscant and I was like about to be like how the... when he sent me a tell and he was the GM there to fix a maaaajor issue I had (there was an issue where smugglers were not being granted the class quest to go to Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine, so the GMs had to catch you online to run the code to manually add the quests to your quest log so you could continue beta testing LOL). This was during beta, which is why he showed up in person and just sent a tell rather than using the ticket chat system, cause it didn't exist yet.

Edited October 22, 2013 by AbsolutGrndZero

Had a gunslinger in Hammer Station who simply kept pulling ahead of the tank (me on a VG). The first time we wiped and I told him to knock it off, but unfortunately some people aren't too bright. I told everyone else to basically stand there and laugh if he pulled that stunt again (and we did )

 

Some guildies of mine apparently ended up in a Coli where only two guys were on the turrets in the first phase. How do people fail that again?

 

EDIT: Oh, oh! How about the Sin tank who insisted on dropping a sin's shelter on himself during the Prophet fight in Athiss? Made it $%#@ing impossible to see the purple dots - I think only one guy stayed standing for the entire fight that time.

Edited October 22, 2013 by RoninJr

(/Me still waits for the shaking to stop...)

 

So I've started doing heals more on one of my Mercs (full BG spec')...and I had a baaaaaaaad Battle for Ilum [HARD] mode experience last night.

 

For one thing, I freely admit that I'm probably a bit under-geared (taking care of that now), and I'm also still quite new to healing in general, but people, people, people!

 

People?

 

If you're a Sith Sorcerer (DPS), then don't run ahead and pull first on almost every encounter after saying "I kill everything!" You're definitely too squishy for me to heal you through the beating, and oh, guess what:

 

You're not a tank. That's your base class's other AC.

 

If the actual tank hasn't pulled, and I start trying to heal you --I know I probably should have just let him die, but the combined nice-guy/Stubborn-Polish Jew in me refused to even consider it--then I will draw aggro, and hey, whaddaya know:

 

I'm not a tank either. That's my base class's other AC. Healers tend to die quickly if they get full aggro.

 

Stay together. (I almost automatically /facepalm now everythime I see someone activating those stupid cash-shop rockewt-boot things --unless it's the tank!)

 

Let the tank pull and hold first, that's his job.

 

Then I can do my job of healing the tank whilst he holds aggro off the rest of us, so we don't all die.

 

We got through it eventually --B4I is not that hard, even if it's [HARD]-- but 38k creds repair bill later, well there's a certain Lightning Sorc. who just got added to my ignore list.

 

If you are DPS, then:

 

DON'T

 

***********

 

PULL

 

FIRST.

 

I really don't get what's so hard about this?

Because some people are genuinely stupid?

 

I usually let the clueless, run off by themselves type die horribly and take care of everyone doing their job properly.

Edited October 22, 2013 by RoninJr

It's a lot more tempting to pull if you're a dps class with buffs to manage. You tend to want to hang onto things like focus, centering, upper hand, and other things like that, so you start the fight hoping that the rest of the group is ready.

 

Of course, if I ever do this, and the group tells me to knock it off, I knock it off, and I only do this if I have a cooldown ready to ensure I can take the heat if the tank wasn't ready.

Yeah, I can see your point. I only get really narked if it's clear the guy pulling ahead of the tank or is otherwise going off on his own has absolutely no idea what he's doing.

Huh. Trying to come up with a list, it seems like every dps class has some sort of buff that would make them pull 'sooner' rather than 'later'. Biggest offenders I can see, though, would be knight/warrior classes (due to their very resource mechanic), scoundrel/operatives (due to UH/TA being difficult to maintain, unless you've gotten it from the healing tree), and infiltration/deception shadows/assassins, due to the discharge mechanic being pretty slow and RNG driven to build up.

Has anybody ever grouped with someone without an advanced class?

This weekend on...I think it was saturday morning.

I was hanging around on Alderaan with my 55 jugger tank and waiting for another level 55 character to log in for the weekly bounty quest. A L55 Bounty Hunter shows up in /who and promptly whispers a good morning to me. As my luck would have it, he was on the same quest, so we group up and he starts travelling to the quest area.

While he's underway, I wonder if I need another coffee, or if he's actually running around in his base class and tell him as much (I had heard of the BH challenge before, so was just wondering if I'm reading things correctly).

He is and I ask if his Mako (heal companion) is decently geared, or we'd have trouble surviving the fight long enough to capture the bounty alive. Well, she was, we survived, got our bounty and parted ways.

 

/edit:

About deception assassins and pulling - I rarely play my DecSin in group quests but find the stacks build up fast enough that racing ahead of the group is unnecessary.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Leiryat

Please tell me you won the roll. Nobody ever goes for the LS when I play this, and I loath killing the captain. Not because I'm such a nice guy at heart (which I totally am), but because killing the only competent person (well, living person, let's exclude Kilran's manslaughtering droid) aside from yourself seems a little harsh. Especially since it causes everyone to die.

 

Yes, I won the roll.

Running my Op Healer on SM Boarding Party. Found myself with this Juggernaut Tank who refused to wait for anyone before engaging any mobs. He'd literally throw himself into a group of mobs while we're fighting a previous mob, or attacking a new mob without healing himself between fights, and I'd have no energy because I'm busy spamming Kolto Injection to keep him alive. He also had this thing where he'd tank the mob, but if he lost aggro he wouldn't bother chasing them back, often meaning I'd have carry the brunt of the battles. The worst part was when he engaged one of the bosses at half health and with only 3-men since our other DPS DC'ed. Debated votekicking him, but decided against as I found out he'd grouped with the DPS. Managed to pull through, mostly cause of my ability to heal, DPS rogue mobs and basically tank the FP as a HEALER (not trying to brag, but true).

Running my Op Healer on SM Boarding Party. Found myself with this Juggernaut Tank who refused to wait for anyone before engaging any mobs. He'd literally throw himself into a group of mobs while we're fighting a previous mob, or attacking a new mob without healing himself between fights, and I'd have no energy because I'm busy spamming Kolto Injection to keep him alive. He also had this thing where he'd tank the mob, but if he lost aggro he wouldn't bother chasing them back, often meaning I'd have carry the brunt of the battles. The worst part was when he engaged one of the bosses at half health and with only 3-men since our other DPS DC'ed. Debated votekicking him, but decided against as I found out he'd grouped with the DPS. Managed to pull through, mostly cause of my ability to heal, DPS rogue mobs and basically tank the FP as a HEALER (not trying to brag, but true).

 

OH man, I have a merc healer myself, so I hear you... we can tank a bit better than a sorcerer but we shouldn't have to. Kudos to you for sticking it out, I'd have tried the vote kick, and if it failed I'd quit. LOL

Colicoid War Game, leveling my Op Healer.

 

I join a group, happy to find out one of my friends from Imperialooc was there. I hurry on to the turrets, without checking the stances/cylinders of the other DPS and tank. What I do notice is that the tank does not speak English very well. It's not a huge issue, just a slight language barrier we work through. We get through the turrets fine. However, when we get to the droids, I almost die instantly, the tank won't taunt any of them, he can't even hold the aggro of the one he's attacking. We manage to kill those mobs, and I inspect the tank.

 

He's using a DPS charge and yelling at me for not healing his butt.

 

Anyway, we tell him to put on the tank charge, had he does, barely getting us to the traps. At this point, we give up, kicking the tank-- he won't taunt, and I'm wasting resources keeping myself alive. He then whispers me this:

 

"Fuc u bich I kno te map better tan u I didn't as 2 be tunk u suck bich"

Yesterday TFB run. 8 guildies ready, we decided to do 16-man though, for "moar commz", so we pugged that other 8. And well, "greed isn't good" We of course asked if everyone done that before, just so we know if we have to explain tactics to the new guys. Noone replied.

 

First boss went easy, then we walk to the 2nd. On mob packs, we CC one champion, I'm ready tot ank the other, but pugs break CC, and offtank (also a pug) does nothing, so I'm holding two champions. Okay, happens... even if it happened on every other pack.

 

Then we come to the trio, we explain tactics, how to swap tanks and such, and I pull Kel'sara to the right. 5 stacks, I say to swap. Nothing. 3 more stacks, nothing, even if I spam /ops with "swap"... 12 stacks, it's getting hotter, so guildie jugg dps pull Kel of me, and I can get Ceph guy. He got 5 stacks, so I take Kel back, but the offtank aint taking Ceph from me, and I end up tanking two of bossess.

 

Luckily with 16-man story, the dps is high enough, to kill Ceph fast enough, and I was swapping Kel's aggro with jugg dps.

 

Since it was late, and it's one more boss to go, we decided not to kick the offtank. We proceed to the cores area and that part where you corner pull adds from two cores. So I start the fight, pull the adds in the corner, use AoE taunt, to hold tchem, while DPSers rush to cores....

 

Yeah, "Practice screws theory"... as soon as I grabbed the aggro, offtank suddenly realise he has area taunt, uses it, pulls all the droids and runs into the room with cores, while my aoe taunt still on long CD.

 

For last boss, we just didn't bother, since same amount of DPS is needed on cores on 16 and 8-man, we just let the pugs do what they want, of course we explained tactics, and some of tchem knew the ropes, so some of tchem run like headless chickens around, doing weird stuff, those with bit more brains helped dps boss, adds and cores, and we got Operator IX down.

 

Never again 16-man pugs. I rather have 8 comms but do stuff properly, than micromanage the bunch of clowns.

Do you:

 

1. Switch to Soresu.

2. Put a shield in your offhand.

3. Use taunts.

 

If not, you're NOT being a tank.

 

If the answer is NO to all or most then that's just stupid and you should stop doing it....

I had just hit 50 on my sorc healer. I actually have a lvl55 sorc healer already (yes yes crazy I know ) and been raiding and pvping with that for 1,5 year as a main toon so I can safely say I'm very well connected to how to play a sorc heals.

So ok little sorc hits 50 and I wanna do FP. I get BoI HM from gf. I don't really have much gear, I have about 14k HP and custom gear with lvl ~45 mods and a handful of mods you get from doing dailies.

We have a PT tank in the team, equal amount of HP than me, then 2 x assassin dps. First boss didn't really give any sign of stuff maybe taking a wrong turn. Then at second boss (the one that has the adds, when the adds are up you can't touch the boss).

I get hit all time and have to run LoS. That tank was hard to heal anyways in there but I do know my class and can go quite far with poor gear too. I die cos of getting hit all the time even tho I'm quite far away. I get a comment from the tank saying my gear is not for lvl50 HM FPs... ok might be the case but dying cos getting aggro is not a gear issue.

 

I look at the tanks debuffs, and verify from a guildie that the cylinder he is using is not a tanking cylinder. (I don't know anything about PTs ). I tell him if he could be so kind as to change it to tanking one. I told him he is a bit hard to heal but I can manage. He says "I can leave if you want" I say "nah let's just do this". He says "well stop ************ then" ... -.- I told him off at that point and we continued without talking to the end. He did put a guard on me after switching cylinders.

So not a biggy but just got annoyed.

Me personally the only time I ever saw a character level 50 knight without an advanced class he "logged in" right next to me down in The Works on Coruscant and I was like about to be like how the... when he sent me a tell and he was the GM there to fix a maaaajor issue I had (there was an issue where smugglers were not being granted the class quest to go to Nar Shaddaa and Tatooine, so the GMs had to catch you online to run the code to manually add the quests to your quest log so you could continue beta testing LOL). This was during beta, which is why he showed up in person and just sent a tell rather than using the ticket chat system, cause it didn't exist yet.

 

That's pretty cool! I wish they still did that. When i played CoX, the gm's would show up as little hover police bots. They would either point out why you were stuck or they would lend assistance with pulling an enemy out of a wall (which was a BIG issue with CoX for awhile). The good ole days.

Some "nice" ones today...

 

DF SM 16-man

 

Decided to go with my tank ... Thank goodness this is an easy one even if there's lots of mistakes going around. While inspecting others I realized the other tank had never done it before further than the first boss, but when asked if everyone knows the tactics he didn't say anything. I wasn't the raid leader, so I just notified he clearly hasn't done the other bosses. The four first bosses went fine since you don't really need two tanks on them. We get to Brontes and ask again if everyone knows tactics but nobody asks for explanations. Off we go. First wipe is because the other tank doesn't tank the other tentacle properly and it keeps hitting the raid. I tell the tanks what he should do and it seems fine. Second wipe because people wiped on the beams popping from ground. Third wipe because people weren't killing the right mobs during Bronte's beam, instead everyone killing different mobs. One healer decides that's enough and leaves. Fine, it can be done with three healers no problem so I decide to stick for one more but ask again who doesn't know the tactics and to just fess up so they can be explaind. Few ppl tell they haven't done it before and don't really know what's going on. I explain. I whisper the other tank for a recap what he should be doing on each phase. I pull, mistakes still happening, but nothing fatal although the other tank is acting more like a DPS. Last phase and the other tank doesn't pick up Brontes when needed and I have to ask for him to do it in chat, think he taunted it once. We do manage to kill it however and I'm just happy it's over.

 

 

DF HM 8-man

 

Fleet ad for DF HM 8-man from second boss. Joined with my merc. Should've been suspicious about them asking for a healer for second boss. I phase in, it's a guild run so good, but when asking for voice chat I would have needed to understand Russian for that apparently. I check their achis and another red flag when I see none of them has done it before. Decide to give it a go anyway, maybe they're awesome. First wipe because other healer doesn't cleanse people when needed. I ask the DPS capable of healing themselves to do so. Second wipe because of dismantlers. I go through what they should do with them just to be sure they know. Third wipe because a mass affliction got through. I'm ready to call it, but decide to give it one more go. Everything goes fine until boss enrages around 25%. I check the DPS's gear and notice only one of them has proper accuracy, two of the worst offenders had 105% and 106%. I tell them their DPS can't possibly be good enough for the fight and they need to fix their gear before going in again, apologize and leave the group... now back at my baby Powertech.

I once did a run on my Vanguard tank, not well geared but i was good enough playing it to manage.

But had one DPS just keep pulling mobs. After first few packs as I asked polity can he stop pulling as I am the tank and i would like to make choices where to throw my AoE then switch over to single target, pull with harpoon etc.

 

He just laugh and said something alongside the lines: its just a flashpoint

 

So when he did it again, i just stood there watching him die. I did get some abuse from him and he even tried to vote me out, but he failed. I am not sure how it ended but he either left the group or did let me pull each group.

 

The thing is, you might be best DPS out there, but if you let other classes play the way it should be, everything will just go smoother.

Had a funny run today. I have a level 52 Operative healer and I accidentally queued not only for the level 50 HMs but also the higher tier regular FPs. Got a quick tick for False Emperor and figured I might just as well give it a go for the Classic comms and I am still not in full Black Hole, so giving the group a boost seemed like the appropriate thing to do instead of quitting and leaving the folks wait for a new healer.

 

The rest of the group consisted of level 48s. Powertech tank, Mercenary DPS and Juggernaut DPS. Our tank told right off the bat that he had never done the FP before and would prefer to do the bonus as well as watch all the cutscenes. The Juggernaut was not too happy about it, but agreed eventually after some persuasion. The first mob (which is one of the hardest pulls in the FP), the Juggernaut promptly broke both of my CCs and proceeded to pummel a bunch of enemies. In the mean time, the Powertech tunnelvisioned on just one enemy and naturally I was taking a lot of heat from the mobs.

 

Soon I realised the Juggernaut was ripping aggro real quick. The reason was obvious, he was in Soresu stance and tank gear, but queued as DPS. I asked him about it and the response was "Never changed out of Soresu lol". When I asked about his spec, he told he was a tank. After the next boss (the cleave fellow on the bridge) he finally agreed to change his stance, which made healing a bit easier although the PT was still tunneling all the pulls...

 

Once we got to the part in the bonus quest, where we had to slice some consoles, I just asked the people to wait as I roflroll to the console and then use Cloaking Screen to leave. The first two times the Juggernaut and PT just attacked the droid, thus resulting in me wasting the Cloaking Screen and so on. At this point the Juggernaut started badmouthing me, telling I did not know my class and that I sucked at stealthing. I tried to explain that they'd just have to wait and let me do my thing, after all I had done the same trick numerous times on my Scrapper and Assassin. The third time the Mercenary spoke for the first time, just telling them to wait and let me show, because he knew I could stealth it. After I did, the Juggernaut just told it was all good luck... Oh well.

 

I started whispering the Merc and we agreed we'd have to take care of interrupting Malgus and so on. No deaths in the end and the Powertech actually approached me and asked for some tanking advice. Well, I have a PT tank, so I helped and he happily thanked with his broken English. I hope to see him again! The Juggernaut is now on my ignore list, because not only did he constantly badmouth me but he also called Need on every single roll, including DPS Juggernaut gear (fair enough, I guess), Aim gear as well as snatching the delicious Black Hole healer implant I wanted...