Hey everyone, with alot of players getting to 55 in the next few days, I thought it would be a good time to share my operation guide for Scum and Villainy (S&V) I finished recently. Included are guides for both storymode and hardmode with explanations of the mechanics and videos from a sorc/sage healer perspective.

Storymode can be easily done by players in full Dread Guard or less. For hardmode, you probably want to have a few pieces of the new L55 gear from either storymode S&V or storymode/hardmode TFB (much easier than S&V I find). While none of the mechanics are particularly hard on hardmode, there are some really tight enrage/DPS checks, especially on the last boss.

S&V does take a bit more time to complete than previous operations since it has 7 bosses instead of the usual 4-5 bosses in previous operations.

• Dash'roode
   
  
• Titan 6
   
  
• Thrasher
   
  
• Operations Chief
   
  
• Olok the Shadow
   
  
• Cartel Warlords
   
  
• Dread Master Styrak
  

I also posted a loot list for L55 operations a couple days ago but here it is again for those missed it the first time.

http://dulfy.net/2013/04/08/swtor-patch-2-0-operation-loot-tables/

Enjoy!

Thanks for the fast post and all your hard work!

You are very welcome.

Fixed a couple mistakes and mechanics that didn't carry over from the PTS

Thanks again, Dulfs!

Ugh, I'll need this. Our group couldn't seem to beat The Regional Annhilation Droid At Reasonable Rates.

I think you missed a couple of things in your guides (which are otherwise excellent). In boss order:

• Thrasher - The sniper shields aren't *always* knocked off by the roar. My group puzzled over this one for a while, since there seemed to be no rational explanation for when they would or wouldn't be removed (and yes, we thought of the LoS issue on the roar). Our eventual solution was to just take a shadow tank and a focus sentinel and leave them up on the wall full time to deal with snipers. With the shadow tank pulling 1200-1300 DPS (without the buff, which wears off) and the sentinel pulling 2300-2400 DPS, we had just enough time to kill each pack before the next one spawned.
  
• Oasis - Most of the blue damage can be avoided. Just move behind the adds as soon as they start casting their Shockwave Strike. There's still a fair amount of damage, but it isn't too bad. We found the ideal combination for blue was a tank and a DPS with off-heals and a tech cleanse. We sent the same combination to red. Green was handled by a sentinel DPS (for defensive CDs) and a healer. Gold was handled by a hybrid gunslinger DPS (high burst + interrupts) and a healer.
  
• Oasis - The Green patrol droid can be avoided by positioning on the right side of the platform. There's no need to relegate your ranged DPS to that color.
  
• Cartel Warlords - Horik applies an AoE DoT (similar to agent's Corrosive Grenade in appearance) that is cleansable and hurts a LOT. Cleanse. Do not try to heal through it.
  
• Cartel Warlords - Kill Sunder last if you have two assassin/shadow tanks. Assassin/Shadow tanks have sufficiently short CDs that they can take a combined 6 The End casts before it becomes a problem. Killing Sunder last eliminates the soft enrage and allows your DPS to kill the adds (easing the healing dramatically) before finishing the fight.
  
• Cartel Warlords - Vilas does more damage than Horik and is harder to predict. If you add it up, Vilas's AoE is a lot more dangerous than Horik's, especially if you have ranged/healers who are capable of moving out of the conal. I highly recommend you kill Vilas first, particularly since his grapple mechanic interrupts DPS significantly.
  
• Styrak - A special version of Styrak appears in the first phase and channels "Charge" on the dragon. Kill it FAST. This channel gives the dragon a stacking buff which dramatically increases the damage it does.
  

I think you missed a couple of things in your guides (which are otherwise excellent). In boss order:

Snip

Thanks, I incorporated some of your suggestions. I do feel like the Cartel Warlords fight is really dependent on the raid though. We had alot easier time killing Vilus Garr second as his damage can be easily healed through compared to leaving Horic longer.

On the topic of Sunder vs Tu'Chuk, the adds were barely doing any damage when leaving Tu'Chuk last and there wasn't any noticeable healing demand until Tu'Chuk gained too many stacks. It just seems like a safer and quicker option compared to leaving Sunder last.

Thanks, I incorporated some of your suggestions. I do feel like the Cartel Warlords fight is really dependent on the raid though. We had alot easier time killing Vilus Garr second as his damage can be easily healed through compared to leaving Horic longer.

 

On the topic of Sunder vs Tu'Chuk, the adds were barely doing any damage when leaving Tu'Chuk last and there wasn't any noticeable healing demand until Tu'Chuk gained too many stacks. It just seems like a safer and quicker option compared to leaving Sunder last.

We found if we focused on Vilus first the conal from Horic became very painful, especially for the melee DPS who either had to wait out the conal and stop DPS or continue to DPS while eating the conal. While on Horic they could simply side step and continue DPS.

We tried leaving Sunder til last but found Tu'Chuk much easier to heal through even up to 16 stacks on SM. Stacking up behind him and using Salvation made the adds pretty irrelevant as well. I was tanking Tu'Chuk on my Guardian and still had Saber Ward, Absorb Adrenal and Enure to use when he went down. Plus my co-tanks CDs after that if we were still going.

With the infiltration, I'm sure most players already know this, but you can actually get really close to the Champions as long as you LOS them. Killing the Champion Droids, aside from taking a long time, can cause other issues as well: we've had them spawn INSIDE the Gold room if one is killed while that pair was killing them.

I've tank + DPSed (without off heals) all 4 teams and by far the easiest were Red and Blue, regardless tanks should be using their CDs liberally for these pulls, they'll be back up once you get to the Ops Chief.

Another handy tip with this one, if you aggro a droid accidentally, have everyone head over to the far door in the Operations Chief area you will drop out of combat and be able to OOC heal up before the fight.

For Olok, we generally found it easiest to buy out all the 1 token droids since that saved us 336k HP instead of 250k and the 2 token droids are really easy to tank. Obviously 3+ 2 Token droids a row made things harder.

With Dash'Roode, I found it easiest to tank him with my back to the light post and have the rest of the raid stack up against the wall so no-one was knocked out of the shield. This also allows the melee to have their back to the wall with the ranged and healers. You can also tank him against the shield generator but his hitbox can make it difficult to click on the generator when picking up and dropping off the shield.

[*] Cartel Warlords - Kill Sunder last if you have two assassin/shadow tanks. Assassin/Shadow tanks have sufficiently short CDs that they can take a combined 6 The End casts before it becomes a problem. Killing Sunder last eliminates the soft enrage and allows your DPS to kill the adds (easing the healing dramatically) before finishing the fight.

I'm curious because our assassin tank was getting one shot for 41.6k+ - would have survived if our sorc healer had timed a bubble properly; tank said he had tried his various cooldowns. These cooldowns seem to be geared to improving the chance the boss will miss, and not mitigate a straight percentage of damage as is the case with some jugg and pt cooldowns. Could it be bad RNG?

I'm not an expert on assassin/shadow tanks, so could you let me know which 3 cooldowns mitigate The End casts?

You don't actually need 3 cooldowns, just two short ones (which we have). In point of fact, I miscounted and two assassin tanks can tank Sunder through his The End mechanic indefinitely. Each The End is handled in the following way (in order):

1. Assassin #1 Force Shroud
   
2. Assassin #2 Force Shroud
   
3. Assassin #1 Overcharge Saber
   
4. Assassin #1 Force Shroud
   
5. Assassin #2 Force Shroud
   
6. Assassin #2 Overcharge Saber
   
7. Assassin #1 Force Shroud
   
8. Assassin #2 Force Shroud
   
9. Assassin #1 Overcharge Saber
   
10. Assassin #1 Force Shroud
    
11. Assassin #2 Force Shroud
    
12. …
    

Sunder does exactly zero damage to a competent tank (particularly an assassin, with their snare-breaker and teleport). His enrage is only a problem during the Overcharge Saber interlude. If he enrages and it's in that awkward middle period, it is recommended that both tanks Force Cloak and sacrifice a DPS, which can then be rezed by either tank (who will be out of combat). This can be done twice before a tank has to be sacrificed. In other words, Sunder can be tanked indefinitely before the hard enrage, and then can be tanked for a minimum of 9 The End casts after the enrage (and a maximum of 11 The Ends, if the timing is fortuitous). We got 5 The Ends before the hard enrage, so let's give it a pessimistic 14 The Ends.

For the record, The End is cast once every 50 seconds. So, 14 The Ends is a staggering 11 minutes, 40 seconds. Even off-tank + healer DPS could kill Sunder in that kind of time (especially since one of the healers would have time to hilariously field respec during this final phase, since the tanks almost never take any damage).

Honestly, I don't think there's any question here: if you have two assassins, kill Sunder last and nuke the adds before you do it. He can be tanked for *far* longer than Tu'chuk can, given his soft enrage mechanic.

Resilience blocks it. But the cd isn't over before the next shot, I've tried our defense cd but either it just missed or doesn't work.

We have 3 defensive CDs post-2.0: Resilience, Deflection and Battle Readiness (which is one of the best general CDs in the game due to the heal component and short cooldown).

Resilience blocks it. But the cd isn't over before the next shot, I've tried our defense cd but either it just missed or doesn't work.

Resilience and Deflection are mutually exclusive. For any given attack one will work and the other will not. Conversely, Battle Readiness is globally useful. So while you have 3 CDs as a Shadow, only 2 are useful for any given mechanic or ability.

For the record, The End is cast once every 50 seconds. So, 14 The Ends is a staggering 11 minutes, 40 seconds. Even off-tank + healer DPS could kill Sunder in that kind of time (especially since one of the healers would have time to hilariously field respec during this final phase, since the tanks almost never take any damage).

If its only cast every 50 seconds, any combination of Shadows and Guardians should be able to avoid The End mechanic indefinitely providing they swap between casts. Shadows have the benefit of the root breaker on Force Speed which Guardian's lack. If you instead meant that each tank has to face it every 50 seconds and its cast every 25 seconds, Guardian's also last 8 casts of The End counting only Warding Call and Saber Reflect.

I'm fairly confident that stacking Warding Call, Saber Ward and Enure would also survive an enraged The End and if the timing is perfect (and my above interpretation is correct) Guardian's would be able to survive The End mechanic almost indefinitely even post enrage since Saber Ward and Warding Call come off CD right as they are required again.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but by Overcharge Saber interlude post Enrage I assume you mean one of the The End casts were OS is used as the CD and presumably won't save you. I think you're forgetting the CD on Force Shroud, if both tanks drop combat, it won't be available for the next "OS window" and a tank will have to go down, presumably be battle rezed and repeat. This gives 11 post-Enrage The Ends before both tanks go down.

Ultimately though, I'd say its still much easier to just DPS race Tu'chuk unless your DPS is lacking.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but by Overcharge Saber interlude post Enrage I assume you mean one of the The End casts were OS is used as the CD and presumably won't save you. I think you're forgetting the CD on Force Shroud, if both tanks drop combat, it won't be available for the next "OS window" and a tank will have to go down, presumably be battle rezed and repeat. This gives 11 post-Enrage The Ends before both tanks go down.

If both tanks drop combat during the The End cast, a DPS dies (well technically, you *can* time things just perfectly so that Force Shroud comes up in the nick of time because The End is a 5 second cast, but that's unbelievably hard to do). At that point, The End isn't going to be used again for 50 seconds, so it's equivalent to the OS interlude, except that you sacrificed one of your companions instead of taking it like a man. So again assuming 5 The Ends before hard enrage, we have the following:

1. #1 Force Shroud
   
2. #2 Force Shroud
   
3. #1 Overcharge Saber
   
4. #1 Force Shroud
   
5. #2 Force Shroud (hard enrage)
   
6. #1 and #2 Force Cloak, and #2 stealth rez's dead DPS
   
7. #1 Force Shroud
   
8. #2 Force Shroud
   
9. #1 dies (battle rez)
   
10. #1 Force Shroud
    
11. #2 Force Shroud
    

So yeah, I think you're right: 11 The Ends pessimistically, 13 if the hard enrage happens at the beginning of a double-shroud cycle.

Ultimately though, I'd say its still much easier to just DPS race Tu'chuk unless your DPS is lacking.

I originally made that same argument when my group's raid leader proposed killing Sunder last. The final reasoning was as follows.

First, killing Sunder last eliminates his Fixate mechanic as a serious threat. We only have one melee DPS, which exacerbates Fixate since it's always going on the same target. Our melee DPS is our second-highest parser (only narrowly behind our hybrid gunslinger), so it would be a very significant DPS loss if they were forced to be ginger about their range (to give tanks taunt time) during the Sunder burn phase. This DPS loss is eliminated entirely if we burn Tu'chuk before Sunder, since Sunder is kept away from everyone until his final phase (after Fixate is over).

Second, the soft enrage on Tu'chuk becomes unhealable basically once the tank's cooldowns run out. With two shadow tanks, we can get 36 seconds + delay time (how long you can wait before popping your first CD) by rolling Battle Readiness > Deflection > (swap) > Deflection (possibly + Battle Readiness). That's far, far less time than you get even if you can only negate a single The End. By killing Sunder last, we free up DPS to kill the adds, which takes pressure off of the healers in the final phase, while simultaneously increasing our DPS time during the soft enrage *and* improving our DPS uptime throughout the rest of the fight (gaining ground on the hard enrage).

While I don't think it's non-viable to kill Tu'chuk last with two shadow tanks, it just seems like it isn't optimal (especially if you have a melee DPS). All four of our DPS are ranking on the HM S&V bosses (two of them are consistently in the top 15), so I'm pretty confident in our ability to kill Tu'chuk last if we wanted to. It's just that killing Sunder last just gives us a much wider margin and a lot more control over the variables in the situation (e.g. adds, mistakes leading to DPS loss earlier in the fight, etc).

If both tanks drop combat during the The End cast, a DPS dies (well technically, you *can* time things just perfectly so that Force Shroud comes up in the nick of time because The End is a 5 second cast, but that's unbelievably hard to do). At that point, The End isn't going to be used again for 50 seconds, so it's equivalent to the OS interlude, except that you sacrificed one of your companions instead of taking it like a man. So again assuming 5 The Ends before hard enrage, we have the following:

 

1. #1 Force Shroud
   
2. #2 Force Shroud
   
3. #1 Overcharge Saber
   
4. #1 Force Shroud
   
5. #2 Force Shroud (hard enrage)
   
6. #1 and #2 Force Cloak, and #2 stealth rez's dead DPS
   
7. #1 Force Shroud
   
8. #2 Force Shroud
   
9. #1 dies (battle rez)
   
10. #1 Force Shroud
    
11. #2 Force Shroud
    

 

So yeah, I think you're right: 11 The Ends pessimistically, 13 if the hard enrage happens at the beginning of a double-shroud cycle.

 

 

 

I originally made that same argument when my group's raid leader proposed killing Sunder last. The final reasoning was as follows.

 

First, killing Sunder last eliminates his Fixate mechanic as a serious threat. We only have one melee DPS, which exacerbates Fixate since it's always going on the same target. Our melee DPS is our second-highest parser (only narrowly behind our hybrid gunslinger), so it would be a very significant DPS loss if they were forced to be ginger about their range (to give tanks taunt time) during the Sunder burn phase. This DPS loss is eliminated entirely if we burn Tu'chuk before Sunder, since Sunder is kept away from everyone until his final phase (after Fixate is over).

 

Second, the soft enrage on Tu'chuk becomes unhealable basically once the tank's cooldowns run out. With two shadow tanks, we can get 36 seconds + delay time (how long you can wait before popping your first CD) by rolling Battle Readiness > Deflection > (swap) > Deflection (possibly + Battle Readiness). That's far, far less time than you get even if you can only negate a single The End. By killing Sunder last, we free up DPS to kill the adds, which takes pressure off of the healers in the final phase, while simultaneously increasing our DPS time during the soft enrage *and* improving our DPS uptime throughout the rest of the fight (gaining ground on the hard enrage).

 

While I don't think it's non-viable to kill Tu'chuk last with two shadow tanks, it just seems like it isn't optimal (especially if you have a melee DPS). All four of our DPS are ranking on the HM S&V bosses (two of them are consistently in the top 15), so I'm pretty confident in our ability to kill Tu'chuk last if we wanted to. It's just that killing Sunder last just gives us a much wider margin and a lot more control over the variables in the situation (e.g. adds, mistakes leading to DPS loss earlier in the fight, etc).

I'll admit here, I'm still confused about this 50 second The End timing you mention. I assume you mean its actually every 25 seconds and as such each tank has to take one every 50 seconds with the swapping. If it is only every 50 seconds, the tanks can just alternate Resilience or Saber Reflect since it would be 100 seconds before they had to face another.

Assuming you have a Guardian or a Shadow tank and 30 seconds of lead time before you need to pop CDs, you need about 2500 DPS per DPS to get Tu'chuk down before the CDs run out. Given its a stand and deliver tank and spank (from a DPS perspective) with a dynamic start (ie, no windup on Merciless stacks). Add in DPS CDs and I don't see that being an issue.

Yes, if Tu'chuk enrages you're probably screwed whereas Sunder gives leeway for that and Tu'chuck is bounded pretty quickly by his damage output whereas Sunder is kiteable by a DPS if/when the tanks go down. I guess it really boils down to if you want to:

a) put the pressure on the tanks so the DPS and heals can slack off.

b) put the pressure on the DPS so the tanks don't have to worry about a 1 shot mechanic.

I'll admit here, I'm still confused about this 50 second The End timing you mention. I assume you mean its actually every 25 seconds and as such each tank has to take one every 50 seconds with the swapping. If it is only every 50 seconds, the tanks can just alternate Resilience or Saber Reflect since it would be 100 seconds before they had to face another.

It's 25 seconds. That was a somewhat forgetful computation on my part. I was going off of the cooldown on *my* Resilience, forgetting of course that my co-tank had also used his. Sorry for the misinformation.

Thus, 11 The Ends is 275 seconds. Still a heck of a lot longer than you can tank Tu'chuk, hard enrage or otherwise.

Assuming you have a Guardian or a Shadow tank and 30 seconds of lead time before you need to pop CDs, you need about 2500 DPS per DPS to get Tu'chuk down before the CDs run out. Given its a stand and deliver tank and spank (from a DPS perspective) with a dynamic start (ie, no windup on Merciless stacks). Add in DPS CDs and I don't see that being an issue.

Did you factor in tank DPS into that as well? A shadow who is being hit frequently enough to exhaust 15 stacks of KW (which Tu'chuk does) can easily pull 1200 DPS. Even without being hit, 1100 is pretty common.

I'm not sure that 30 seconds of lead time is realistic. I haven't timed it out precisely, but it seems that Rising Fury stacks up once every 5 seconds or so (maybe faster). At 25% per stack, 30 seconds into the final phase is a 150% damage buff, which is nearly as bad as a straight-up hard enrage. Especially since the DPS can't concentrate on the adds, and thus the healers aren't able to straight-up mana dump on the tank, it seems that healing alone might require cooldowns popped around the 20 second mark (100% buff), which is a 56 second burn time.

I'm guessing that Rising Fury stacks more slowly than I'm remembering, because that would require each DPS to pull 3.1k for the full 56 seconds (in addition to the tanks pulling 1.1k a piece). Those kinds of numbers would make the boss almost unbeatable.

a) put the pressure on the tanks so the DPS and heals can slack off.

b) put the pressure on the DPS so the tanks don't have to worry about a 1 shot mechanic.

Yep, that's basically it. I'm still of the opinion that the pressure applied in option a) is significantly less than the pressure applied in option b), assuming exactly even player skill across the raid group, but that's an opinion.

If you fail to beat the Tu'chuk "soft enrage", you are never going to beat Dread Master Styrak.

No need to complicate anything.

It's 25 seconds. That was a somewhat forgetful computation on my part. I was going off of the cooldown on *my* Resilience, forgetting of course that my co-tank had also used his. Sorry for the misinformation.

 

Thus, 11 The Ends is 275 seconds. Still a heck of a lot longer than you can tank Tu'chuk, hard enrage or otherwise.

 

Did you factor in tank DPS into that as well? A shadow who is being hit frequently enough to exhaust 15 stacks of KW (which Tu'chuk does) can easily pull 1200 DPS. Even without being hit, 1100 is pretty common.

 

I'm not sure that 30 seconds of lead time is realistic. I haven't timed it out precisely, but it seems that Rising Fury stacks up once every 5 seconds or so (maybe faster). At 25% per stack, 30 seconds into the final phase is a 150% damage buff, which is nearly as bad as a straight-up hard enrage. Especially since the DPS can't concentrate on the adds, and thus the healers aren't able to straight-up mana dump on the tank, it seems that healing alone might require cooldowns popped around the 20 second mark (100% buff), which is a 56 second burn time.

 

I'm guessing that Rising Fury stacks more slowly than I'm remembering, because that would require each DPS to pull 3.1k for the full 56 seconds (in addition to the tanks pulling 1.1k a piece). Those kinds of numbers would make the boss almost unbeatable.

 

Yep, that's basically it. I'm still of the opinion that the pressure applied in option a) is significantly less than the pressure applied in option b), assuming exactly even player skill across the raid group, but that's an opinion.

Using a 5 way split on DPS requirement it was ~2350 per. I upped the DPS contribution a bit since 1 of the tanks isn't getting hit so their DPS is much lower and the healers can't really contribute too much as the stacks get higher.

I also haven't timed the stacks for Tu'chuk but I was assuming 3 (worst case) and I'd put the top end at about 5 seconds. I also wasn't factoring in "real" CDs until 30s but you could easily bridge the gap to that point if needed with a relic/adrenal.

It's also worth noting (for both) that they aren't likely to be fully healed unless they've taken too much damage. On SM, I'm seeing that happen about 80-85% HP, about the time Vilus goes down so he's getting a good 10% damage lead from the tank alone.

a) vs b): a) remains constant regardless of gear while b) gets easier as you get more gear.