Pretty sure there was a thread like this but I was not able to find in in the last 5 pages so I would like to ask again.

 

What is the difficutly progression for HM FP for Rep side?

We are playing in a group of three ppl (shadow tank+ sentinel dps+sage healer) and have just finished slotting our gear with mods from daily quests (+lvl 49 implants/ear/belt/bracers). As I understand that is more than sufficient to start with HM FP.

 

Can anyone pls advise what is the "easiest" one and which one should be avoided for the newbie group?

Oh and we are on mumble and are pretty good at coordinating our interrupts/CC/adds pickup etc (i understand that is pretty vital in some fights).

 

Thank you in advance.

Esseles would be the easiest one. I recommend avoiding directive 7. Everything else is in the between maybe Taral V being a bit easier than the rest.

Because of some boss mobs being a bit buggy, I think the levels are as such:

 

Taral V < Maestrom Prison < False Emperor < Esseles < Directive 7

Thank you for the imput (and hope to get a bit more).

 

P.S. Why is it some put Elessess close to the "hardest" FP? I think i read somewhere that you can have troubles with Ironfist (if you do not interrupt) and end boss and his two sabre throw (again, pretty random).

Yeah, read a lot about esseles being the hardest one.

 

Played it yestarday, and in my opinion, it's probably the easiest one...

Well, guess will try Elessess today and see for ourselves ^__^.

By the way i do not see any imput on Battle for Illum and Falce emperor. How do you ppl rate these two (compared to above)?

From easiest to hardest, IMHO.

 

Taral V : Nothing special needed. Only one boss (the robot) needs interrupting, but it is infrequent enough to not need a rotation. Looks huge but you can skip 2/3 of the trash.

 

Maelstrom: Cyborg boss is kind of brutal and needs a tank who can wrap their head around los kiting, and dps who won't pull aggro during it, especially the first kite. The rest is easy.

 

False Emperor: Mandalorian boss requires almost exploiting the guns and positioning to complete (basically you open with the center cannon to hit the ship, tank him next to the center turret, then everyone hits it as soon as the ship moves up), but with voice chat that shouldn't be too hard. Malgus is less of an issue now, but for some reason my character is bugged out and is unable to pick up grenades, so make sure to discard any unused grenades before you zone out.

 

Battle for Ilum: Cannoneer boss requires an los pull, quick aoe cc and hard aoe dps, and a tank on the ball with interrupting defense screen, and his enrage is rough and quick. Supposedly you can skip him (only drops a tionese belt) but otherwise the rest is easy.

 

Esseles: First "boss" requires fast aoe cc/dps in order to zerg down his adds while meeting his enrage. Mandalorian's enrage is also brutal with melee who can't really even attempt to dps him during his missile salvo. Last boss's targeting circles tend to bug out and strike as soon as the circles appear, and his double saber strike can hit the same person twice, practically guaranteeing a gib.

 

Kaon at Siege: The trash NOT faceroll and often a boss to themselves with all the crazy stuff they do (especially with multiple mercenaries and screamers in the same pack) AND there is a metric ton of it. The bonus boss - if you don't have at least 2 droid CCs, don't bother, and if you do make sure to pull him far from his initial position (although you -can- pull it back to the entrance of the zone since it has no enrage, it seems kind of silly). At least the rest of the bosses are a joke once you understand the basic mechanics.

 

 

Directive 7: First boss bugs out really easily will more often than not spam-clone a player. If it picks that player first you're in for a lot of hurt. Bulwark's punch can't be interrupted anymore, so if melee aren't careful they can get gibbed, and his health+enrage can be painful if you don't have the CC for the droids. Mentor is long, prolonged, and brutal.

Edited February 7, 2012 by JeyKama

Thank you for a nice and detailed description! Guess we will try Taral V today (I actually like that instance) instead of the Elesses and see how it goes. Chaining interrupt is not a problem for us usually, the only thing is that we need 4th member and it seems like we will need a ranged DPS (as we have 2 melee already - tank and dps).

 

Oh and one more question abt the enrage timer: is there some sort of visible counter for it? or just some invisible clock that you have to learn of "the hard way"?

 

Final question: i have seen a vendor on the fleet that sells some equipment for columi / tiones equip (at least i think there were commendation costs). Do you get those commendation from daily quest / FP completion / boss or a combination of all that?

 

Thank you all for the imput!

Thank you for a nice and detailed description! Guess we will try Taral V today (I actually like that instance) instead of the Elesses and see how it goes. Chaining interrupt is not a problem for us usually, the only thing is that we need 4th member and it seems like we will need a ranged DPS (as we have 2 melee already - tank and dps).

 

Oh and one more question abt the enrage timer: is there some sort of visible counter for it? or just some invisible clock that you have to learn of "the hard way"?

 

Final question: i have seen a vendor on the fleet that sells some equipment for columi / tiones equip (at least i think there were commendation costs). Do you get those commendation from daily quest / FP completion / boss or a combination of all that?

 

Thank you all for the imput!

 

You get tionese tokens from most of the boses in hard mode, you get columi tokens from only the last bosses of each of the hard modes. Through completion of daily-weekly HM quest and sometimes flashpoint specific quests you gain Tionese and Columi commendations. Also each boss drops Tionese crystals, another token tool for Tionese gear.

You get tionese tokens from most of the boses in hard mode, you get columi tokens from only the last bosses of each of the hard modes. Through completion of daily-weekly HM quest and sometimes flashpoint specific quests you gain Tionese and Columi commendations. Also each boss drops Tionese crystals, another token tool for Tionese gear.

 

Thank you for the explanation. I take it these tokens are in addition to the normal item drops these bosses have? (ithere is a topic abt which boss drops what).

You get tionese tokens from most of the boses in hard mode, you get columi tokens from only the last bosses of each of the hard modes. Through completion of daily-weekly HM quest and sometimes flashpoint specific quests you gain Tionese and Columi commendations. Also each boss drops Tionese crystals, another token tool for Tionese gear.

 

Wrong. You get tionese token from the last boss of each hardmode. Other bosses drop only crystals. Dailies give currently 1 columi and 3 tionese tokens and weeklies 3 and 9. This will be increased in todays patch though.

Thank you for the explanation. I take it these tokens are in addition to the normal item drops these bosses have? (ithere is a topic abt which boss drops what).

 

Yes bosses drop loot as well. Last boss drops columi level gear token, others drop tionese level and usually the easiest ones drop only tionese crystals.

Bosses enrage on a set time, but as for a countdown, no. Usually when your tank explodes is a good indicator to pop all your defensive cooldowns and try to kite or something

Wrong. You get tionese token from the last boss of each hardmode. Other bosses drop only crystals. Dailies give currently 1 columi and 3 tionese tokens and weeklies 3 and 9. This will be increased in todays patch though.

 

No, you are wrong. Final bosses of HM's currently drop Columni Tokens.

From easiest to hardest, IMHO.

 

 

I tend to agree with your list in terms of difficulty, though I'd move false emp a couple spots b/c bonus boss is tough.

 

What about fastest to slowest? I know BT/BP are absurdly fast, but I've only done most of the others 1-2 times and don't have much of a handle on how quickly they can be plowed through (on HM, not normal).

I'd rank Esseles the hardest, over Directive 7, simply because how hard the Ironfist fight is (you have to interrupt perfectly and then still it's a race to beat the enrage if you have entry-level gear), plus the first boss isn't exactly a pushover either. I think Bulwark is generally easier than Ironfist, I had quite less trouble taking him down once you know how to block the droids and position yourselves. Mentor is more of learning the proper tactics for the encounter than difficult in itself - there's simply a lot of stuff you have to pay attention to at once.

You can deal with the bugged adds from the first boss in Directive 7 by pulling the boss out of his room. The legitimate single adds will still run to you, but the bugged adds will get stuck. Also, he only seems to bug out when cloning non-Force using classes, so if your party is all Jedi/Sith he shouldn't bug for you.

Easiest to hardest IMO:

 

Taral V - Skip the bonus boss, he only drops Tionese implants, and you can get Rakata from doing solo dailies. Last boss can be a bit of a pain if you're healer isn't cureing the bombs immediately. CC as many droids as possible durring the fight and pick them off one at a time instead of letting them focus fire your healer. If you know you're close to wiping near the end of the fight, wipe. Don't kill him and let any left over ads take you down or you'll be locked out of the zone with no loot.

 

False Emperor - Only "hard" fight is HK-47 and it's just his enrage timer. He doesn't hit hard initially so your DPS and healer should be pounding on him from the pull and tossing AE heals if/when needed if you're all in lower level gear. Ignore the turrets. He enrages at 5% regardless so save your defensive/heal cooldowns for that phase. Great zone to farm as Malgus basically hands you the BP token after he tickles you for a while. Just be sure to interrupt his unlimited power and it's the easiest fight in the game.

 

Malestrom Prison - Cyborg is a pain if your tank gets seen he'll wipe the party, but if you position correctly he's a pushover. First boss is also a heal check, so bring a good one if you dont have over 11-12K hp on each party memeber.

 

Esseles - can be buggy, and Ironfist can be a major PITA. LOS pull him up top (back of the room) to avoid getting his ads.

 

Battle of Ilum - Only ran this once so far, but it seems only the middle boss is a bit over-tuned. (Can't remember his name)

 

Directive 7 - Not too hard if you get the mechanics down, and don't get bugged on a couple bosses, but the Mentor fight is very long, and easily failed if your whole team isn't paying attention to the mechanics. I'd run this on regular once or twice to get a sense of the fight before attempting the hard mode if you haven't done so.

 

Kaion under siege - The bosses in this zone are almost free loot, but the trash can be pretty insane. There are some really "fun" pulls in this zone. CC whatever you can and take out anything strong or above one at a time paying attention to their individual mechanics. there's seriously too much trash in this zone.

Just want to pop in and convey my gratitude as well for this thread. My group has always been the same 4 people and we plowed through all the FPs in normal mode without much trouble (though as a melee tank, my hatred for Kuon is endless) and then we hit HM Esseles and got utterly smeared by the bosses. Repeat attempts always ended in abject failure. We considered trying a different HM but our logic was if we were too fail to handle the "first" FP then we should definitely stay out of the "harder" ones. Now we know the HMs don't follow the same difficulty scale that their normal counterparts do.

 

Then again, the last time we did HMs our 2 dps hadn't yet finished Corellia much less done the Ilum/Belsavis stuff (which has since been rectified) so maybe we wouldn't have so much trouble now.

 

What I liked most about this thread is it was pure help and no troll/flame/game too easy/l2p garbage.

This is my experience with hardmodes

 

Kaon is the easiest and best to farm imo. There is not a difficult boss in this FP. Honestly the trash is the hardest part about it but if you have some good cc you will be fine. Learn the trash and the flashpoint is by far the easiest.

 

 

I personally think Maelstrom is the next best one to do. The cyborg boss is difficult but not really. If you have a skilled tank that knows what he is doing the fight is not that bad. Only mechanic he really has is the implant phase and if tank does his thing its a cake walk. Rest of the place is pretty simple really.

 

 

False emperor was not too bad but my group seemed to hit enrage timers on HK-47 and last boss. HK-47 requires some quick thinking on aoe abilities but other than that this flashpoint was not too bad. The last boss has to be pushed off in a special way though that usually requires a guardian.

 

Taral V is easy until you get to the last boss. Interupts need to be cycled through well and it is a pretty strong dps race. Good cc and coordiantion with adds and solid dps is what this fight needs.

 

I havn't done Ilum or essless but I have heard they are the roughest of the HM FPs.

After reading all the imput you ppl posted here (again, thank you) we tried our first HM run in Taral V.

The very first combat was ... an eye opener. After slaying quite a big groups on illum (those heroic2+ can have fun pulls of 5-6 silver + 2 golds) we were pretty confident we can make our way through trash mobs with ease. The first two golds ... showed us our error... the hard way . It was quite a surprise to all of us when we actually ...wiped on the very first mobs in the instance *ashamed*. We totally forgot abt the appearing hoard of trash mobs and that small delay was all they needed to gang on the healer, cause some confustion and ... kill us. Was quite surprising that golds were hitting me for 4500+ O_o (med armour, top armour plates you get form dailies... that was not pleasant). Restarted and went in again, this time allowing the tank to actually ..well ..tank. This time we were surprised again ... but only by the fact that while they did hit really hard on us ... they died pretty fast as well. So after that first wipe things went quite well.

Then there was the first boss with two adds. Due to (again) some confusion on our side and the fact that those critters really liked our healer we kinda wiped again (boss had 400 HP left .. what a shame!). Restart and slaughter the poor guy. After that it was a very clean sailing with no deaths at boss fights (though we forgot abt the fact that robots can push you .. off the bridge ... hehe).

Sadly, as we were trying to finish this asap we did not do any bonus objectives ... and totaly forgot abt hacking the terminals to disable two turrets in the final boss fight. CC 3 turrets was easy enough but it was a delay nevertheless. Sady we wiped on the final boss but only after that we realised that ...we completely forgot to interrupt his attacks >_< It was weird as we did well with the rest of the bosses... maybe it was some sort of mindtrick O_o but bot once in several wipes (i think 3) we tried to interrupt his abilities. Due to the fact we had some RL matters to take care of we did not made attempt #4 but I feel pretty confident we can do it now.

 

All in all I am quite happy with HM variant of the FP. Finally, we need the tank to ..well .. tank. Interrupt now a MUST and that certainly adds to teamwork and general "group" feel. Will complete the FP tomorrow and then try the rest of them! Hope this thread will be of use to other ppl starting the Hard modes

I've healed all the HM Flashpoints as a Sage Seer. From a Healing perspective, easiest to hardest:

 

1)Kaon Under Siege: AOE heals ftw.

2)False Emperor: Nothing too terrible here, just gotta use Force Armor properly w/ HK-47.

3)Taral V: Last boss can be a pain if people dont position themselves right. Bonus is a PAIN.

4)Battle for Illum: Lots of heavy pulls here. CC a must.

5)Esseles: The bosses hit HARD. Period. If tank loses aggro, someone is probably dead.

6)Directive 7: Only because it's VERY tactics heavy. Mentor fight is constant movement and almost all Sage healing is channeled/cast. Having an off-healer is VERY helpful.

 

I feel like I am forgetting one? Eh. It's late.

 

Edit: Forgot Maelstrom Prison. I'd put that one about in the middle. Not easy, but not too hard. Cyborg is the only hard part, and if you have a good tank it's a world of difference.

Edited February 9, 2012 by TheJediCouncil

I was in the eselrs 3 times and It was allways buged. First run the fist boss didn´t call his adds. N0 he was direct ANRAGE. The secent run. Ironfist didn´t stop call his adds so we got no time for damage hin. The 3 run Irinfist´s skill Hadshoot was interumtet und our tank got the full Damage of the skill. So it was 3 times imposebel to do F the fp. Talv worked fine acsapt of the bonus boss. I hope Bioware fix the Buges sune. Else the Level 50 contnt is only dalyquest, PvP und the Operations. And I can´t see the *********** dalymissions anymor. The Newst Pash fix the Counter on illum for PvP. Bioware shod fix the Bugs in the FPs first. If Blizzard or Sonyonline programed that way. WOW and EQ2 where go long a go but both games are still fine and the players like to explor the addons. For SWTOR I DIDn´t see mash FUTURE if thay only count on PVP and Storylines. It´s a pitty to see how the BIG POTENCIAL of the game is Wasted becouse of Bugs.

We did complete our run in Taral V(HM) yesterday evening! The flashpoint, incl all the pre-end bosses was a breee now (after we have refreshed our memories) so it was a relaxing run. THat is untill we reached last boss (again). Despite our best efforts we just could not deal with the adds effectively enough. Oh and for some reason, even though all his attacks were interrupted he still managed to cone attack ppl behind him O_o. Was weird. Oh and as it turned out sage can not dispell his grenade dot.

 

But after some tries we have found an epic easy way to kill it. Just pulled him allll the way back into the room before (the one with the second floor where two gold sith mobs were guarding a chest). When his adds spawned - they had a loong way to run to us. So by the time they arrived, boss was already at 50% (and reloading again, hehe). So we aoed adds in that narrow corridor. The second wave was killed together with boss (yaaayy!!!). And after we finished rolling for loot, discussed a bit, had a cup of tea with cake... the third wave of adds arrived On the one hand it was kinda sad that we have failed to finish the boss in a manner designed by the devs. On the other hand we were happy to complete our first HM run! Yay!

Will repeat it again today and then try some other

 

 

P.S. Oh and I made a mistake by not rolling need for columi gloves when I say sith warrior/jedi knight on them. I though that they were heavey armour only and kinda skipped T_T. Oh well Still happy!

I've healed all the HM Flashpoints as a Sage Seer. From a Healing perspective, easiest to hardest:

 

1)Kaon Under Siege: AOE heals ftw.

 

You must be kidding me.

 

I mean yeah, the base run is pretty trivial, but the bonus boss is an absolute healer's nightmare, he's the hardest HM boss I've ever had to heal. Finished that fight at 7% health and 6% mana from doing Noble Sacrifice without Resplendence.