First off, if youre a troll or not level 50 exit this thread IMMEDIATELY.

First off class issues with Powertech

1. 2 Taunts, 1 of which has a 45 second timer. Now it hasnt been in issue but in hard mode there are waves of mobs in many many areas that come at maybe 20 second intervals. So that aoe taunt is pointless. Making highest dps or anyone aoe'ing main tank and negating any sort of purpose a main tank has other than some added dps. The taunts in this game are poorly thought out and not taken into mind in hard mode.

2. Im easily the best geared person on my server. Every piece of gear is +def and +shield with between 116-136 armor rating on everything and normal modes are a breeze with no deaths. Get into hard mode and some bosses will literally flash my entire hp off doing no casting effect just some invisible aoe and Im dead. Or they throw a bomb and it does 8-10k hp? Seriously? The amount of damage done by things in hard mode is literally shocking. The turrets spawned in Battle of Ilum on the boss with the inq and the sniper and as soon as they popped i shot my one pointless single target taunt into one and in the time it took for that dart to leave me and hit the turret my healer went from 80% hp to 0 hp.

3. I have 3 and 8 tionese coms and crystals and ive killed 6 or 8 bosses over 3 unbeatable hard mode flashpoints.

4. We die litterally untill we realize the flashpoint isnt beatable and move to another. Its just a flashpoint. Do you understand that? ITS....JUST....A....FLASHPOINT. This isnt some ultra exclusive last boss in the game nonsense no...its just....a flashpoint. Why do we have to die 40 times and quit on a hard mode while the normal modes we die none and the gear is redundant.

5. The only way to beat bosses is exploiting. You have to drag around a boss untill he gets glitched in a corner and cant shoot anymore or he drops into a small tear in the ground and cant line of sight you but you can line of sight him. You guys made a game that is so hard people who want to play and enjoy the game literally have to cheat to play.

6. The gear is redundant EXTREMELY quickly on medium mode flashpoints. I mean by the time you finish ilum all the mediums that drop Correllia coms are worthless and a waste of time.

7. You F'd us big time on light pop servers with the new pvp level cap. There are only 20 level 50's in our entire server 5 or 6 of us pvp'd. The republic has 10 or 15 level 50's of which 3 or 4 pvp. So you literally ended our pvp.

So now what? We can do medium flashpoints for nothing. We cant pvp. We cant do hard flashpoints....For a game thats more or less been out for 3 years...Im shocked. I feel the same way I did in Rift when i got to 50. I get on the forums to ask ok what now. You need 300 pvp commendations of which you get a couple a day for 1 item and you need 300 pve commendations of which you get one a day and no one raids in that. One person said reroll, one said craft, two trolls called me an idiot and I cancelled the sub.

So is SWTOR another one month and quit mmo? What now? This is a serious post. I need to know where to go.

Edit: If anyone is curious I have 2 level 50's. Object who was the first to 50 on my server a marauder and Darkforces a 50 powertech. This post is getting too long already if anyone is interested in talking specifics in specific flashpoints just say so.

Powertech/Vanguard complaining about aoe threat and damage taken?

Can't tell if troll.

Dailies is the best way to get gear early on. The mods help alot. Other then that use Black Talon and Boarding Party to get some quick gear. It should help you. Issue is probably jumping to the harder FP early on. Directive 7, Battle for Illum, and Foundary are probably the roughest (minus the new one). They take some work. Also make sure you guys are interrupting what you're supposed to be interrupting on mobs.

Practice, learn, and apply. Others have cleared the content you are currently doing and beyond. It is possible. It is not broken, you just need to tweak some things with yourself or your group and make sure you are using all your classes abilities.

This game isn't that hard until you get into HM or Nightmare Operations. You just can't expect to tank and heal thru everything. This is not WOTLK and with any luck it never will be.

PS: No boss hits for 8-10k unless its an interruptable ability the team just missed. The only boss that comes close is the one in Battle for Illum when he spawns the 4 adds. But they are NORMAL mobs, and susceptible to stuns and knockdowns. The just hit like trucks. And dont hit the boss when his shield is up. If you'd read the buffs on him you'd realize when shield is up it REFLECTS dmg back at you. Since the 1.1 patch the nerfed him, because people were so QQ so you should have less issues with him.

Dailies is the best way to get gear early on. The mods help alot. Other then that use Black Talon and Boarding Party to get some quick gear. It should help you. Issue is probably jumping to the harder FP early on. Directive 7, Battle for Illum, and Foundary are probably the roughest (minus the new one). They take some work. Also make sure you guys are interrupting what you're supposed to be interrupting on mobs.

 

Practice, learn, and apply. Others have cleared the content you are currently doing and beyond. It is possible. It is not broken, you just need to tweak some things with yourself or your group and make sure you are using all your classes abilities.

Thats what I needed to know Raynn. We jumped into battle for Ilum and one of the new one...cant even remember the name. Rakghoul one very left 4 dead like. We beat Black Talon I got some bracers off the last boss. I gotta get my undergeared guild into some purples and out of the greens and blues too. Thanks.

1. 2 Taunts, 1 of which has a 45 second timer. Now it hasnt been in issue but in hard mode there are waves of mobs in many many areas that come at maybe 20 second intervals. So that aoe taunt is pointless. Making highest dps or anyone aoe'ing main tank and negating any sort of purpose a main tank has other than some added dps. The taunts in this game are poorly thought out and not taken into mind in hard mode.

You don't have to tank every mob, concentrate on Gold and all the Silvers you can pick up, slow down the rest (even a couple of seconds help).

I have no troubles so far on a Juggernaut Tank, and they aren't exactly legendary in the AOE Threat department...

You're bad dude... and if you're the most geared person on your server... you must be the only one on it.

Try changing your attitude and find someone willing to help you learn to play, instead of having the "it's unbeatable" attitude.

I beat just about every hardmode flashpoint before the game went live on the 20th, in early release. It's sometimes tough before you're geared, but not impossible.

none of the fp are impossible, most of the so called "hard" bosses are only dps races, like the BoI boss who spawns the adds, everyone has a knockback or aoe stun, to control the adds when they spawn.

aoe taunt shouldnt be used on every pull, its for when you lose agro and need it back fast, a quick aoe will get most mobs back unless some dps is going to town on them (and if they are, it means they will die soon anyway), compared to other games where aoe taunt has a 3min+ CD, a 45sec CD is already nice enough.

basically the most important tip i can give is to learn the tactics, i dont mean browse youtube for them or ask on the forums, just watch the bosses buffs, debuffs, adds etc, theres always a (simple) solution, and if not, its just a dps race to the enrage timer.

oh and if you are getting hit for 10k, its either a boss mechanic (such as the laser eye guy in taral V you have to LoS), a skill you need to interrupt, or when they hit enrage, all of which you can avoid with teamwork and good dps.

sup, lvl 50 sentinel on The Shadowlands here (same char name as my online name, republic) gotta say man...you couldnt be more wrong. The hard mode flashpoints are not intended to be done right after hitting 50, they are designed to actually BE HARD. you have to be well geared to handle them, and even after being geared, its still possible to get your *** kicked. I run with a vanguard tank every day, and with proper CC, we steamroll over most boss fights (only one that ever has really given us difficulties is ironfist in hard mode esseles when one of us gets stunned and we miss a headshot interrupt)

The point is guy, all you really need to do is gear up some, do your dailys, swap out your installed mods with the epic stuff you get from ilum and belsavis.

1. 2 Taunts, 1 of which has a 45 second timer. Now it hasnt been in issue but in hard mode there are waves of mobs in many many areas that come at maybe 20 second intervals. So that aoe taunt is pointless. Making highest dps or anyone aoe'ing main tank and negating any sort of purpose a main tank has other than some added dps. The taunts in this game are poorly thought out and not taken into mind in hard mode.

Are you talking about Kaon only, or what? The only time this is really an issue there is the mini-event, for which the gun emplacement exists. Yea, it's definitely a more AE-intensive fight, but you also don't NEED to pick up all the weak-level mobs. My job as a tank has always been to ensure that the strong-elite-champion level mobs are on me - the dps eliminate weak targets first because if they pull aggro on those, they don't get hurt much.

What does any of this have to do with powertechs specifically though?

2. Im easily the best geared person on my server. Every piece of gear is +def and +shield with between 116-136 armor rating on everything and normal modes are a breeze with no deaths. Get into hard mode and some bosses will literally flash my entire hp off doing no casting effect just some invisible aoe and Im dead. Or they throw a bomb and it does 8-10k hp? Seriously? The amount of damage done by things in hard mode is literally shocking. The turrets spawned in Battle of Ilum on the boss with the inq and the sniper and as soon as they popped i shot my one pointless single target taunt into one and in the time it took for that dart to leave me and hit the turret my healer went from 80% hp to 0 hp.

You know things have enrage timers, right? Are you sure you are not confusing this with that? Are you sure your healer just didn't have a wtfderp moment? Yeah, incoming damage can hurt and it can stack up quick. I died in a HM D7 run the other day on trash, just got overconfident or maybe my healer buddy zonked out for a bit, it happens. I've been tanking hardmodes since I was in blue quest leveling gear and it was a helluva lot rougher then compared to now.

3. I have 3 and 8 tionese coms and crystals and ive killed 6 or 8 bosses over 3 unbeatable hard mode flashpoints.

The only unbeatable (technically, I suppose it could be beaten, so let's say just plain broken) flashpoint was Foundry, which is now supposedly (haven't done it yet) fixed. So what flashpoint are YOU talking about here and in 4? I've personally beaten all the others and rarely do we die anymore.

4. Why do we have to die 40 times and quit on a hard mode while the normal modes we die none and the gear is redundant.

Maybe you should examine why you are dying instead of blaming the instance.

5. The only way to beat bosses is exploiting. You have to drag around a boss untill he gets glitched in a corner and cant shoot anymore or he drops into a small tear in the ground and cant line of sight you but you can line of sight him. You guys made a game that is so hard people who want to play and enjoy the game literally have to cheat to play.

This is either trolling or just plain bull****. I have never exploited any of the hardmode bosses in any fashion even remotely approaching what you just said.

6. The gear is redundant EXTREMELY quickly on medium mode flashpoints. I mean by the time you finish ilum all the mediums that drop Correllia coms are worthless and a waste of time.

I can actually agree here. The entire Tion/Energized itemset is basically pointless and redundant, especially if you pvp and get champion gear, which beats out both. Bosses drop crystals, tier 1, and tier 2? Two types of currency for a single tier? None of it really makes any sense. The only worthwhile thing in each instance is basically the last boss.

7. You F'd us big time on light pop servers with the new pvp level cap. There are only 20 level 50's in our entire server 5 or 6 of us pvp'd. The republic has 10 or 15 level 50's of which 3 or 4 pvp. So you literally ended our pvp.

Also sort of agree. I think they should have created an "expanding" system where if there aren't enough 50's in the queue, the game would start looking for level 49's to put in the match, then 48's, etc... until a game can start.

So is SWTOR another one month and quit mmo? What now? This is a serious post. I need to know where to go.

I really don't know. I would feel a lot better about the game if devs actually had some serious communication. Blog posts full of PR bull**** that don't really explain what the hell they are doing to clean up this disaster just doesn't relieve my concerns. I've gone from a 6-mo plan to seriously considering just not subbing at all - I'll give them a 1mo sub though and see if they can really shape things up. But it's looking grim.

Still, don't agree with much of the rest of your post.

This post is getting too long already if anyone is interested in talking specifics in specific flashpoints just say so.

So, which ones? There are plenty of non-exploitive strats for all the hardmodes. I spent time wiping 5-6 times learning/just trying to power through some of the tougher ones (like Ilum pig-guy with the adds) but we've gotten loads better.

I'll throw in my favorite powertech tip for Battle of Ilum - on the 2nd Gamorrean boss, he has 2 strong-level mobs near him - Have your group stand at the doorway to the room you came from, use grapple on the add standing furthest from the boss, and immediately, WITHOUT ATTACKING, run back towards your group and around the corner to LOS pull them. You can do this without aggroing the boss AS LONG AS YOU AND EVERYBODY ELSE DOES NOT SHOOT THEM until they are far away from the boss. Saves you an iffy fight or a wipe from needing to dps both those guys as well during the fight.

It was the Kaon event that really grinded my gears. We kept trying it and trying it and getting further but the event would never end. It got to the point where we were like ok theres something huge were missing or this is just impossible. The guy on the gun was doing great and we would last awhile but...itd come to a screeching halt when he got knocked off and we got overwhelmed.

The other problem I think is we have a really really low geared dps juggernaut whose not helping much and I dont think has a knock back that wouldve been usefull on the BoI boss that spawns adds every few seconds. I can grab aggro with the flame aoe but someone breaks it pretty quick.

We're learning. And like Raynne I think his name is said those are the harder hard flashpoints. Black Talon wasnt very hard. Were gonna do all more of those type hards. I appreciate peoples input I did read all your responses and some were pretty helpful.

It was the Kaon event that really grinded my gears. We kept trying it and trying it and getting further but the event would never end. It got to the point where we were like ok theres something huge were missing or this is just impossible. The guy on the gun was doing great and we would last awhile but...itd come to a screeching halt when he got knocked off and we got overwhelmed.

 

The other problem I think is we have a really really low geared dps juggernaut whose not helping much and I dont think has a knock back that wouldve been usefull on the BoI boss that spawns adds every few seconds. I can grab aggro with the flame aoe but someone breaks it pretty quick.

 

We're learning. And like Raynne I think his name is said those are the harder hard flashpoints. Black Talon wasnt very hard. Were gonna do all more of those type hards. I appreciate peoples input I did read all your responses and some were pretty helpful.

You cant get knocked off the kaon gun unless you die. If he's clicking he's doing it wrong, clicking dismounts you . Got to turn with the a+d keys and the gun shoots automatically when its facing enemies.

First off, if youre a troll or not level 50 exit this thread IMMEDIATELY.

 

I'm not 50, but I can definately spot a douche when I see one.

1. Making highest dps or anyone aoe'ing main tank and negating any sort of purpose a main tank has other than some added dps. The taunts in this game are poorly thought out and not taken into mind in hard mode.

As a DPS, I think the taunts are fine. If I throw out massives AOEs I'll pull aggro and die. DPS need to understand when to use AOE abilities and went to single target.

2. Get into hard mode and some bosses will literally flash my entire hp off doing no casting effect just some invisible aoe and Im dead. Or they throw a bomb and it does 8-10k hp? Seriously? The amount of damage done by things in hard mode is literally shocking.

Trash mobs do a lot of damage and need to be killed quickly. Most bosses that have a high damage attack can be interrupted, or if they can't hardly do any damage outside of that one attack.

3. I have 3 and 8 tionese coms and crystals and ive killed 6 or 8 bosses over 3 unbeatable hard mode flashpoints.

Crystals/Commendations are mean to supplement drops in the case that you can't seem to get a boss to drop what they need. What would be the point if you could get everyone in a group and entire set to epic armor in a night?

5. The only way to beat bosses is exploiting. You have to drag around a boss untill he gets glitched in a corner and cant shoot anymore or he drops into a small tear in the ground and cant line of sight you but you can line of sight him. You guys made a game that is so hard people who want to play and enjoy the game literally have to cheat to play.

I don't believe I have ever done any type of glitching in order to kill a boss on hard mode. Everything I have ran into has been do-able as it seems the designers intended.

6. The gear is redundant EXTREMELY quickly on medium mode flashpoints. I mean by the time you finish ilum all the mediums that drop Correllia coms are worthless and a waste of time.

Once you have some purple daily armor/mod/enhancements yes, the normal mode stuff is worthless. I do think there should be some more worthwhile drops from non-final bosses in hard modes though. Maybe just a different type of enhancement that could allow people to improve their current orange gear or customize the sets that they have. (for my class, 3/5 columi pieces have power/accuracy on them so if I could find a crit/surge or something to throw on there, that would be nice....my options now are to kill a final boss, buy a different set and rip the enhancement out).

I went straight from corellia (didn't even finish everything there, just class stuff) to tanking Hardmodes at 50.

The flashpoint isn't the problem, and there are some things that will straight up 1 or 2 shot you if you don't know what you're doing.

I still don't even have decent gear in all my slots from running daily hardmodes (I'm cursed to make only warrior gear drop while I'm on my powertech).

I don't see what the problem is. As one of the top 2 tanks on my server as you claim to be, the HM FP are extremely easy. I'm a 50 guardian and the imp/rep ratio is 5:1 on my server and yet we can still pvp, not as much as we would like to now because there are far less people to play with, yet we can still pvp and there is Ilum to pvp in now. If you were actually the top tank then you would at least have partial gear as I already have full pvp gear which makes FP easy as hell. My guild has run the new FP on HM right away and we don't have any problems except that dumb robot boss. Stop qqing and learn how to play your class.

Did you manage to kill the bonus robot on hardmode, if so, I really want to know how. We kept dying and finally decided to move on to the last fight because I had an early morning today.

Which seemed to have bugged on us, but we managed eventually.

Vanguard tank here, let me just reiterate some of the things said here already.

1. Don't tank every single mob. The regular mobs are usually harmless and easy to kill for your DPS. They SHOULD go after these mobs first. Your job is to tank the silver and gold mobs.

2. If there are too many mobs or they are too spread out, use CC's! Learn which class have which type of CCs and assign accordingly.

3. Hard mode are suppose to be hard. Almost every boss has an enrage timer. As a tank you should shoot for somewhere around 18k health to start

4. Despite what our gear says, you should be stacking Defense first. Shoot for around 250-300 Defense, 150 Shield, 150 Absorption rating first. This is because shield cannot proc from certain damage, thus Defense is always better for gearing, and you should shoot for a 2:1:1 ration.

5. If you are having threat issues then swap out a few pieces of tanking gear for threat gear. For example, I always carry both Triumph and Comet Strike and switches them when my threat is a concern and my health is not a problem.

6. Almost every HM boss is beatable at this point. None of them have gaming breaking bugs. I have done every single HM on the republic side but the new one and Battle of Illum. They get easier as the group gets better gear.

7. The main difference from Heroic Instances in WoW and this game is that one person can not carry the entire team! You really need the entire team to work together. Get on vent, discuss strategies, and group with people you trust!

I started tanking hard modes the day I hit 50 on my assassin with no problems at all... I got 1 piece of Champion gear from saved marks, and had crafted blue ear/implants with aug slots and level 49 purple augs. Then I did my ilum quests and got a new hilt for my saber as well as 3 level 51 armorings, filled out my gear with correllia commendations, and slowly replaced those with belsavis/ilum daily ones.

You CAN get the gear needed to tank HM solo. All it takes is some work. That said the same applies for DPS. Do all your belsavis and ilum dailies together for a week and you will have better than tionese gear just from marks. Then its just a matter of farming the harder HMs for columni and by the time the rest of your server catches up, you'll be able to run ops.

Did you manage to kill the bonus robot on hardmode, if so, I really want to know how. We kept dying and finally decided to move on to the last fight because I had an early morning today.

 

Which seemed to have bugged on us, but we managed eventually.

Nope. We killed the last boss (which is incredibly easy in comparison) and tried him one more time but it would not let us back in after we died. We figured out that the spawns are on a timer and that you should spread them out if you can. Have the tank hold 2 of them while everyone else dps's the other and so on. Its pretty much a dps battle but we couldn't handle it with everyone geared to the max. We got him to about 33% when the second spawn came but our healer was out of focus. Someone who can cc robots and range dps would really help in this fight.

How are you possibly the best geared person on your server yet you can't get past flashpoints? Either you are lying or your entire server is horrible. The only Hardmode boss I have yet to beat is the last boss of Boarding Party.

The Battle of Ilum fight you talk about, I have never wiped to that. I have died as the healer yes, but never has the group wiped on it. I think either you or your group just need to learn their classes better so you can beat enrage timers most likely. The enrage timers are fairly strict so far in the game. If your dps is lacking you will fail and unfortunately with no way to see who is slacking all you can do is try again without knowing who or what the problem really is.

Tioniese or whatever it is is completely worthless because you can do dailies to get better stuff.

Tioniese is not worthless as they can be used to set bonuses. In fact in that case they are extremely useful.