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SM Denova difficulty


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The other day, on my tankassin, I was told my gear wasn't good enough for Denova. I thought that was a little strange since I've successfully tanked HM EV, and my gear is all Columi or better (with three Rakata, three BM, and two BH pieces). I was told that SM Denova is "significantly harder" than HM EV. I'm just wondering if that's true, and if so, what gear level do I need?

 

Also, what drops there?

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Rakata drops.there along with Black Hole comms. Some might say its roughly closer the Nightmare EV or KP.

 

Personally, I disagree. It's all about mechanics. If all the.mechanics are carried out correctly the actual dps required and damage taken by the tanks is not very tough, and I would say it is harder than EV hm but not significantly.

 

As for your gear, a bit more detail would be good, but.its doable in full columi, and the rakata and black hole pieces are a bonus. However battlemaster gear isn't as good as.columi overall, so replace them.

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EC is definitely much more demanding mechanically than EV. Story mode, however, is not at all a gear check.

 

What we have here is probably a group of players who lack the skill to clear SM EC and need to outgear it.

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Yes it it. Get rid of your battle master gear first and get some more pve stuff. a few more dailys for rakata and bm comms some bm gear and you are there.

So let's get this straight:

 

1. A Rakata/Battlemaster/Black Hole mix is not sufficient for lolStory EC?

 

2. To rectify this, he should run dailies for fictional Rakata comms and get some BM (Battlemaster?) gear.

 

No.

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As a tank your gear limit depends on the healers gear and your and their ability to use cooldowns.

Fully min/maxed healers and you might just be able to drag a Tionese geared tank through the instance - except that he might not be able to tank Kephess or hold aggro reliably.

 

Anyway ... the Rakata gear dropping in SM Denova is more of a 'fill the gaps in your gear' kind of thing. Just Columi or worse on all 8 people and you'll wipe a lot.

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For storymode EC, 21k hp, 25% def, ~40% shield and ~40 absorb should be fine for a Sith Assassin.

 

This.

 

Possibly less than this if the rest of the group (mainly the healers) are up to par and everyone knows the mechanics of every fight.

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Would agree with everything mentioned above, but would add that although surviving the Mechanics is the defining aspect of EC, you still need dps on Kephess to kill the bombers quickly enough, because if you miss 2 it's a wipe.
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When I first started tanking EC with assassin, I had only columi armor for all armor pieces and the only rakata stuff was implants and earpiece from daily commendations vendor and artifice crafted relics, and no black hole or other higher tier stuff at all, and that was all fine.

 

And yes, EC storymode is harder than EV/KP hardmodes, but not that much more demanding for gear.

 

But I have noticed also that many people demand from random pugs that they don't know to have better gear than what could be the minimum requirement just to be on the safe side because they don't know how good that player is.

 

Now for the real question....

 

Would I have taken the OP in as tank if I had to pug someone from general chat to do Denova?

No, probably not.

But this is mainly because of the fact that he does not know the operation and does not know any tactics (which are at some fights even more demanding for tanks), and I have no way of knowing how good he is, and not so much because of his gear.

 

Now of course if it was mostly a guild run and everyone was on voice chat, we could teach even a new player how to do the fights there, but I would much rather do that with someone whom I have at least seen in action somewhere else first.

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EC is definitely much more demanding mechanically than EV. Story mode, however, is not at all a gear check.

 

What we have here is probably a group of players who lack the skill to clear SM EC and need to outgear it.

 

THIS.

 

Columi-Rakata mix is good enough for Story EC.

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In my opinion EC Story is A LOT harder than both EV MH and KP HM.

 

All fights are mechanical harder than both Ops and I still find Boss 2 and Boss 4 provide good DPS checks.

 

That being said EC Story is definatley doable in Full Columi and better so in my opinion I would view your gear as above minimum for a Guild run. Most guilds are prepared to be patient and come back another day if you get stuck on a boss and don't mind helping people learn fights. Tanks in particular have to be on their toes a lot more than in other Ops.

 

However for a PUG run it would all depend on the rest of my group was made up. If I already knew I had some undergeared people in the group then I would know that I'd need an experienced and very well equipped tank then I'd have to make a judgement call and decide the likelihood of success. Obviously with an Op it may not jsut be about your gear but about the average gear of the whole Op.

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Thanks for all the replies. With buffs and my Rakata stim, w/o Dark Charge up, I'm at 22815 HP, 38.59% DR, 29.15% Defense, 33.49% Shield, and 38.21% Absorb. The BM pieces I have are MH weapon and relics.

 

I suspect some of y'all are right: he just wants to overgear the place in a pug. That's fair, I suppose, but I don't feel like getting to the point where I don't need any of the drops before I actually run it. Another pug I tried to get into told me they wanted someone with experience. Again, understandable, but there's a first time for everyone, right?

Edited by Sinemetu
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From my experience, tanks take significantly more damage in story mode EC than in HM EV/KP. I don't know that that's unmanageable by a raid in full columi, but it is what it is. Thus, it is accurate to say that SM EC is harder than HM EV/KP, but it may be inaccurate to say you weren't in good enough gear. Doing SM EC to gear up to the rakata level is silly though, considering there are more and easier drops of the same level elsewhere. BH comms are really the only reason to do SM EC, and if you're just in it for those, you'll want to faceroll the place.
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Thanks for all the replies. With buffs and my Rakata stim, w/o Dark Charge up, I'm at 22815 HP, 38.59% DR, 29.15% Defense, 33.49% Shield, and 38.21% Absorb. The BM pieces I have are MH weapon and relics.

 

I suspect some of y'all are right: he just wants to overgear the place in a pug. That's fair, I suppose, but I don't feel like getting to the point where I don't need any of the drops before I actually run it.

 

Don't forget that the main point of running EC Story is the 30 BH comms that drop for a successful raid and the BH piece that drops off the last boss.

 

I assume the rest drop Rakata in order to plug any holes in peoples gear.

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Op difficulties to me are like this...8man only since I doubt you'd pug for 16 often. From easiest to hardest.

 

EV SM - snore, can clear in recruit gear

.

KP SM - snore, few tionese and good to go

EV HM - snore, tionese and some 51 mods is all it takes

.

KP HM - slight challenge at lower gear levels, can be done relatively easy in tionese/columi mix

.

EV NMM - still easy for tanks and healers, dps should be in about half rakata for this to beat enrages

EC SM - as with EV NMM, it's more of a gear check for dps than tanks or healers, geared tank helps at keph

KP NMM - Not super hard, but KP in general can be a huge pain if you have a group that doesn't know what they are doing. You can get by this in a columi/rakata mix though

.

.

.

EC HM - be geared in at least rakata, BH helps.

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I always get the impression that new people think these are easier than they really are because people can drag their asses through anything in tionese gear. We can only do that because we've been farming these things for months and know every little trick. Throw 8 new 50s with no experience into SM EC and let me know how that goes.
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The other day, on my tankassin, I was told my gear wasn't good enough for Denova. I thought that was a little strange since I've successfully tanked HM EV, and my gear is all Columi or better (with three Rakata, three BM, and two BH pieces). I was told that SM Denova is "significantly harder" than HM EV. I'm just wondering if that's true, and if so, what gear level do I need?

 

Also, what drops there?

 

as far as gear checks go... I went though it for the first time and NEVER hit an enrage timer except once when half the DPS died on kephess, and we were so far ahead of the timer it still didn't kick in until 8%. the gear check is light, and for a tankassin the gear check is near non-existent.

 

you can immunity through the incinerate armor debuff, so the only check for you is can you survive kephess' cleave and BOTM.

 

nailing down mechanics can smooth out the fight perfectly-

1) fast tank swaps on T&Z

2) either tank swap or cheese through Inc. Armor on FB&SC

3) clear the minesweeper in 4 disarms

4) nail down the mechanic cluster F that is kephess

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I'm going to say again.

 

While I don't know their reasons were, if it was up to me, these things are not just about gear.

 

If I had to pug a random stranger to do Denova, I would not take a tank who has not done it before.

 

That's certainly the raid leader's prerogative, but I think it's a poor choice. Tanks are hard enough to come by already--by only taking tanks who already know the fights you're locking new tanks out of the system. If you know that a number of your pugs are new to the place and you don't want more than two or three newbies, I can understand that. I don't think telling tanks they need to roll an alt, level to 50, gear up, and learn the fights as a healer or dps is a very good strategy long-term if you plan to pug.

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as far as gear checks go... I went though it for the first time and NEVER hit an enrage timer except once when half the DPS died on kephess, and we were so far ahead of the timer it still didn't kick in until 8%. the gear check is light, and for a tankassin the gear check is near non-existent.

 

you can immunity through the incinerate armor debuff, so the only check for you is can you survive kephess' cleave and BOTM.

 

nailing down mechanics can smooth out the fight perfectly-

1) fast tank swaps on T&Z

2) either tank swap or cheese through Inc. Armor on FB&SC

3) clear the minesweeper in 4 disarms

4) nail down the mechanic cluster F that is kephess

 

In the future I may just lie and say I've done it before and watch the videos or something.

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My guild decided to try SM EC only watching videos and reading strats. We were mostly Rakata/Columi with the occasional BH piece. 3 weekends later with lots of frustrations and expensive repair bills, we had yet to finish Toth and Zorn.

 

The 4th weekend we ran it (mostly same group, same gear) with ONE different person who had run it all the way to the end and knew more than just theory, and we made it to Kephess in 2 hours, and beat him the next day. This was 7 people who only knew the theory and 1 person with experience.

 

So as long as you have mumble/ventrilo/similar, and someone who not only knows the fights but is good at explaining them, and a group of people willing to listen, and who otherwise know their own classes well, you can pull it off without super gear.

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