Chances at loot does not equate to getting said loot.

It is a guaranteed drop. If it's not for your class, that's a shame, but the same happens in ops, so I'm not sure why you insist on "chance" for flashpoints.

I didn't think it was that bad. The only bosses my group had issues with enrage timers were the giant robot in directive 7, final boss of boarding party, and the guy that stuns-->summons adds in battle for illum. Even then, we were only falling about 5-6% short on enrage timers in barely-50 gear.

Now that we're relatively geared its no problem. There's a few buggy bosses which are annoying, but I still think the enrage timers are fine for everything else.

Buggy bosses include final foundry boss. He's doable......sorta. His lightning towards the end will one shot anyone, it seems to be possible to kick it before the first tick goes off, but you'll have to kick it IMMEDIATELY. I'm talking like .01 second immediately. I wouldn't attempt this without sorc to battle res. My group hasn't been able to do it, but there was an attempt where we would have won if we had a battle rez. Either way this is by far the hardest fight and I suggest just avoiding it.

Robot assassin boss in foundry. His unlocking of the statis chamber doesn't register if the last 2 buttons are pressed at same time. Just have 1 person do all the buttons.

Final boss of False emperor...still pretty easy but being stuck in the throw back animation is annoying. If nothing else, zerging him down is stupidly easy with the rez point being right in his room.

Final boss of Directive 7, occasionally glitches out after wipes causing laser to go off throughout entire fight..nearly impossible to beat if this happens.

I think these are the only bosses worth mentioning. Again I feel like tuning is fine, just the bugs need to be fixed. Enrage timers were tight, but very much doable. My group was assassin tank/sniper/marauder/bounty hunter healer for reference.

As an example we took two raid geared sages, who do insane dps, a commando and a guardian. We hit the enrage timer on the second to last boss of TFE at 3% and killed him. Commando and guardian about as geared as everyone else, a little less than the sages (me and a friend)

Before we replaced the gunslinger who with some pvp purples and mostly blues/greens with that raid geared sage, we'd only get to about 20% before hitting the enrage, 12% at best.

He would also stealth and stun a random player (which itself is fine), but that player was usually the person who was doing the most dps I found, and if you were stunned, you were hit from 16000~ hp to zero in two hits, far faster than possible to heal.

As an example we took two raid geared sages, who do insane dps, a commando and a guardian. We hit the enrage timer on the second to last boss of TFE at 3% and killed him.

 

Before we replaced the gunslinger who with some pvp purples and mostly blues/greens with that raid geared sage, we'd only get to about 20% before hitting the enrage, 12% at best.

My group hasn't even touched raids yet and we hit enrage at about 5%. Only hit it because of the stun-forever bug with his knockback. If that bug wasn't there we would have been able to kill him without hitting the enrage.

My group hasn't even touched raids yet and we hit enrage at about 5%. Only hit it because of the stun-forever bug with his knockback. If that bug wasn't there we would have been able to kill him without hitting the enrage.

Same, nobody in my group had any raid gear (and it was the first hard mode run for 3 of us) and we killed him with him enraging at 1-2%.

As an example we took two raid geared sages, who do insane dps, a commando and a guardian. We hit the enrage timer on the second to last boss of TFE at 3% and killed him. Commando and guardian about as geared as everyone else, a little less than the sages (me and a friend)

 

Before we replaced the gunslinger who with some pvp purples and mostly blues/greens with that raid geared sage, we'd only get to about 20% before hitting the enrage, 12% at best.

 

He would also stealth and stun a random player (which itself is fine), but that player was usually the person who was doing the most dps I found, and if you were stunned, you were hit from 16000~ hp to zero in two hits, far faster than possible to heal.

First paragraph: Define "do insane damage." There's no damage meters and nothing other than your word to say what quality of player they are. If they are having difficulty with the enrages of hardmode flashpoint bosses and their gear is at least level 45+, I have a hard time believing they are anything above "sub-par" damage. This opinion seems to be backed up by much of the replies, as they are reporting no difficulties with enrages.

Second paragraph: This gunslinger was worse than one of your sages. Which fgiven the quality of your sages, makes me hurt deeply inside.

Third paragraph: he stealths and stuns a player, then one-shots them. When he stealths, he is still physically there. Spamming aoes (which virtually every class has) or having DoTs on him (which your sages would have by default) will break him out of stealth. He cannot use his one-shot ability when he is out of stealth, so you simply focus on knocking him out of stealth. Your failure to grasp this mechanic does not mean it is overtuned.

And for the record, our group of casual players figured out this mechanic with no outside help. Here's what happened:

We died, we went "***." Our trooper said "Try knocking him out of stealth."

Next attempt, our trooper hit his little ionize aoe thingy that all troopers have, which knocked the boss out of stealth. The boss then did not one-shot anyone, and we realized that knocking him out of stealth was indeed a working solution.

In otherwords, instead of assuming mechanics, we experienced it, thought about it, and tried a new strategy. We are not always successful on our second strategy, but this is how we overcame each boss until we reached the point of farming nearly every hardmode flashpoint daily.

We did those things though? We understand the mechanics, though the stun should be followed by massive damage, not a 1 shot. He also does this thing where he has to be broken twice out of stealth, otherwise he'll go right back in

The main dot a TK sage would use, Weaken Mind is something I personally always have applied though it ticks slowly, the other one is Mind Crush though that takes time (too much time in most cases)

Pure tks don't have a rotation but generally a priority order of weaken mind -> turb -> disturb until you get a TK Wave proc or TK throw proc which then you use those. Other abilities are situational or don't work on bosses.

So no don't tell me I'm not playing my class wrong.

My only problems with H flashpoints are:

1.) Tionese Crystal acquisition rate is far ahead of Commendation acquisition rate, meaning you have an abundance of crystals with no commendations to actually buy anything. This system needs to just be combined. Ditch one of the currencies. I like the Tionese Crystal acquisition better.

2.) A FEW bosses are overtuned or just seem buggy. HK-47 in The False Emperor is definitely one of them.

3.) Tokens drop even if you don't have that particular class in your group. I thought we learned this lesson in WoW? Why would Smuggler tokens be dropping in a group with a Guardian, Commando, and 2 Sages? You can't even use them on your companions (as far as I know), so it's literally just a wasted lockout for the day. Most of the non-token drops are pointless since Champion PvP gear is better and easier to obtain.

Here's the following problems with HM flashpoints:

 

1. Hard modes should be completable in normal mode gear or level 50s crafted gear/mods from dailies/etc

1a. Hard modes are NOT completable (for the most part) with that kind of gear. Some bosses and trash are doable, others have such a tight enrage timer (enrage timers on 5 mans? the hell?) that even people in raid gear (136+) have trouble meeting those kinds of requirements.

Yea, they are. We have hit enrage timers now and then but have beaten them. Only gotten easier since completing hard modes and getting better gear from them. You have bad players, not bad gear. There are a few exceptions, I'll admit, Bulwark in particular has a nastily short timer which left us blowing all cooldowns at 20%.

-> For example in TFE one boss does a stun, then immediately whirlwinds. It's basically an instant kill and it's random. You don't always have enough time to run away resulting in a death of everyone who isn't the tank. Change this to have a 2+ second wind up time after the jump or something to give the person ample time to get away

I have never seen anyone die to this. Your group has bad reactions or something. Put guard on the healer and learn to g t f o immediately.

-> Or the bonus boss in TFE enrages after the second set of adds, when it takes time to focus fire, target the same mob, as a group. If you make the strong adds weaker then you can keep the enrage timer and just aoe down the mobs, though I'd increase the enrage timer by 45 seconds.

After the second set? You have bad players or bad specs, again, not bad gear. You most definitely should not be enraged that soon. When we first did it he enraged at about 10% left, he doesn't even hit that hard with it, just tank blowing cooldowns was fine to survive it np, and lately we haven't even had him enrage. Have the tank stand on the corner where the healing add spawns, aggro the melee one to bring it over and either grapple/pull/interrupt the lighting caster to bring it over as well. AE the **** out of them, interrupt the healer's healing. Not a problem.

-> Or the second to last boss in TFE clearly is defeated by tanking him and dpsing him down hard, then dropping the ion cannons on the turrets to destroy the shields, then switching to the turrets to destroy them, then switching back to the boss. The boss later goes invis and you have to aoe twice in order to break it, where he will will drop stealth and stun and basically OHKO a person. Currently, you can ignore the turrets and just heal through it (though we were overgeared), however the stun cannot be trinketed out of, meaning if you **** up the aoe even a little you lose someone resulting in a wipe because you will not have the dps to beat the enrage timer. We replaced a lower geared dps with a raid geared dps with like 1700+ willpower (I have like 1638 stimmed w/ a rakata stim) and still hit the enrage timer (beating him though) at 3% with no deaths. This isn't really acceptable.

AE'ing doesn't do anything and neither does stealth detection. Just gather up and the absolute instant he pops out of stealth everyone hits him with the hardest instant abilities they can. Turrets die fast.

My group (same tank, healer, and one dps all the time, 2nd dps we rotate through about 4 players) has done every hard mode except Foundry (which is flat out bugged atm) now and usually without incident. Not a single one of us raids at all, only one person does pvp. Everything else we wear we've gotten from 4-person hardmodes. I haven't even done ilum, emp, or d7 on normal mode. First instance I did was hardmode Ilum while wearing mid 40's blue gear. It ain't the gear and it ain't the flashpoints that's causing problems.

AoEing absolutely does something, it breaks him from stealth. I know because force wave breaks him, forcequake does too and watched it happen. Breaking him from stealth means he doesn't stun and doesn't one shot you.

As for the whirlwind guy, He jumped to me, did about 5000 damage, and in about one gcd or less I was able to get about three paces away and he whirlwhinded me down to zilch. Come on.

Also going "dur hur just run back in if you die" is not a good excuse. You should never have to do that.

3.) Tokens drop even if you don't have that particular class in your group. I thought we learned this lesson in WoW? Why would Smuggler tokens be dropping in a group with a Guardian, Commando, and 2 Sages? You can't even use them on your companions (as far as I know), so it's literally just a wasted lockout for the day.

Just a note, you can totally use them for your companions. Both my Zenith and my Tharan use gear from turning in smuggler Columi tokens.

Also going "dur hur just run back in if you die" is not a good excuse. You should never have to do that.

I have to agree with this. Nothing should require it.

As for HK, we break the turrets out their shields, but we just heal through their firing until the boss dies. They hit for tickles. We kill them after the boss is dead. Our healer forbids us from attacking them before the boss is dead, because they are so easy for him to heal through. (He's a trooper)

AoEing absolutely does something, it breaks him from stealth. I know because force wave breaks him, forcequake does too and watched it happen. Breaking him from stealth means he doesn't stun and doesn't one shot you.

 

As for the whirlwind guy, He jumped to me, did about 5000 damage, and in about one gcd or less I was able to get about three paces away and he whirlwhinded me down to zilch. Come on.

 

Also going "dur hur just run back in if you die" is not a good excuse. You should never have to do that.

Gonna simply disagree. Never seen AE'ing him do anything. All it requires is that you deal a threshold amount of damage from the time he pops out to the time he starts stab. We one shot him every time without enrage now, so take that as you will.

Still haven't seen anyone die to the Trandoshan's whirlwind. It's blatantly obvious when it starts and I've never seen him cast it immediately after leaping, always been a second or five delay. Learn to anticipate, not to react, dps should be moving out beforehand. Tank can survive it a few seconds and so can a guarded healer. There's no enrage so even with two dead dps you can finish it just fine.

And no, running back in after death to continue the fight should not be an option or advice. I think it's dumb we even get zoned out (and have to load long-loading-time zones like Ilum, in my case). Release should be disabled until all players and npcs are out of combat, and releasing should then bring you within-the-instance to whatever the last zone-in checkpoint is.

Gonna simply disagree. Never seen AE'ing him do anything. All it requires is that you deal a threshold amount of damage from the time he pops out to the time he starts stab. We one shot him every time without enrage now, so take that as you will.

 

Still haven't seen anyone die to the Trandoshan's whirlwind. It's blatantly obvious when it starts and I've never seen him cast it immediately after leaping, always been a second or five delay. Learn to anticipate, not to react. Tank can survive it a few seconds and so can a guarded healer. There's no enrage so even with two dead dps you can finish it just fine.

 

And no, running back in after death to continue the fight should not be an option or advice. I think it's dumb we even get zoned out (and have to load long-loading-time zones like Ilum, in my case). Release should be disabled until all players and npcs are out of combat, and releasing should then bring you within-the-instance to whatever the last zone-in checkpoint is.

Seen people die to the whirlwind the first time. I haven't seen it be an issue.

I have to disagree on HK. Yours might be bugged, but AoEing definitely knocks him out of stealth every time for us, which prevents his ability from being used.

This is part of what I was talking about, these bugs tend to auto inflate the difficulty of the encounters.

We shouldn't be having these bugs period. However it's quite obvious, especially in nightmare mode and hard ops that they are hilariously untested.

Basically this reminds me of the complaints about Scholomance way back in wow vanilla. It's absolutely all doable and without gimmicky stuff like running back in after respawns. Only real exception being revan. Without being snarky about it, there isn't much more to add except a "L2P" and a /shrug.

Vokk for republic can be impossible if you get bad RNG on the saberthrows, but that's about it. If they make it so the two strikes hit two different people every time (they USUALLY do, but not always) it would be balanced.

It's not consistent ****overs, but it can happen a number of times in a row if your luck is bad.

This is part of what I was talking about, these bugs tend to auto inflate the difficulty of the encounters.

 

We shouldn't be having these bugs period. However it's quite obvious, especially in nightmare mode and hard ops that they are hilariously untested.

I agree wholeheartedly that they are buggy. But "overtuned" does not belong anywhere in this discussion. None of them are overtuned. Some are bugged.

This whole thread sounds like we need damage meters.

We're getting a combat log. That's honestly all we need.

I agree wholeheartedly that they are buggy. But "overtuned" does not belong anywhere in this discussion. None of them are overtuned. Some are bugged.

That's what I'm saying, because of the bugs you need tier 2 gear to complete them safely. Every single one I've gotten has bugged out in some fashion, or has a hilariously short timer for the gear they expect users to be using.

Yes some players are ****/dont understand how to properly play their class, etc

but since I run with friends who know what they're doing, do just fine in operations, talk on mumble we have a lot of leverage over the random pug and can overcome obstacles they cant.

Seems pretty wrong.

The only one not doable, really, is Foundry because of Revan. Everything else was fine. Sometimes its buggy, (Ala last-boss on boarding party not giving me the chest), But I haven't seen anything not doable with some intelligence.

So. I disagree.