It doesn't always save you time.

Sometimes, it's a lot more efficient just to fight the mobs because going around actually takes you longer. This is especially true if someone manages to pull accidentally anyway or fails to make a jump and has to reload after death.

This is actually kind of a funny story, I did a quick run (really a quick run) trough Battle of Ilum with three good geared ppl from my own guild, we skipped boss 1 (the ulgy pig dude) boss 2 (the tag team with towers), boss 3 (guy with shield and spawns adds) then we had to kill boss 4 and boss 5. In total I think we killed about fifteen normal mobs and two bosses, during a 15 minutes run on a Hard Mode Flashpoint, sure we are well over geared (campaign/dread guard) but still it is kind of bad.

 

I agree, you should be able to skip pacs of mobs, but to be able to skip three out of five main bosses? Naa that don't sound to good in my ears.

For fast BH comms BoI & T5 are the <15min jackpots.

To the topic at hand, as a tank I'm generally willing to kill bosses with drops to accommodate someone gearing up (on the rare occasion it's requested) but recommend they gear up in a sm op instead.

I am in two minds about this whole thing, I have only "recently" started doing HMs and initially i was suprised and impressed with some of the rather genius routes taken to skip trash. Trash is trash and tbh is a huge time waste. However I get peeved when the mini bosses are skipped. I asked why once and I was told "they dont drop anything good"... ok, but dont they drop comms? Considering im still gearing comms is somthing I would like to pick up.

It can be annoying. You know that boss in Lost Island that sits in a cage? It's the one after the robot. I have never been in a group that would have done. Not once.

 

Prolly there are several others (I probably don't even know about) in other FPs as well. There's the one where you take down a computer core (the one with two huge guns), and at some point you pass a boss, a robot standing in your way and there's a console nearby. I have never been in a group that took down that monster. It's always skipped.

 

Or that big worm boss in the Foundry (when you travel between buildings in the open).

 

One more thing: whoever came up with that freaking robot boss in Lost Island should be shipped to Syberia ASAP. The hardest FP boss ever. The good doctor Lorrik is nothing compared to that freaking robot. Especially for melee, that robot sucks butt. Once you beat it with the PUG you can be 97% sure you'll see loot from Lorrik.

Brings me to my next point, Skipping of bonus bosses. Another one I dont understand, I was told "no point" "nothing good" and it is usually skipped. Which is a shame as the foundry bonus boss (the aformentiond worm), was the only HM bonus boss I have done and the drop from that was somthing I could instantly use on my toon. Was replaced eventually yes, but it helped in the mean time.

Regarding you comment about the Robot on LI, I agree with you on everything except one thing. Syberia would be to good for them >.< That boss is insane! Granted i like the challenge (it dont just roll over and die) but still pushing your luck just a little when your all melee -sighs-

One more thing: whoever came up with that freaking robot boss in Lost Island should be shipped to Syberia ASAP. The hardest FP boss ever. The good doctor Lorrik is nothing compared to that freaking robot. Especially for melee, that robot sucks butt. Once you beat it with the PUG you can be 97% sure you'll see loot from Lorrik.

The robots been nerfed because of the whiners (although I'm glad now because people finally take mdps along) if it's still too hard then either you or someone in your group is not good enough for it.

Done a speedrun with a 19k tank and another mdps earlier, would've been impossible before 1.4.

It's because people were having problems not getting a completion if they were dead (generally from falling) and unable to be revived without leaving the instance.

To expand on this a bit, the reason was because you could be knocked into the pit during the fight since Malgus uses KB. Falling into bottomless pits *immediately* shunts you outside of the instance whether you want to or not (you don't even get the option to not get shunted outside; it just happens), where you can't run back in until the fight is over. As such, if someone got punted off the side by Malgus, either the group suicided and reset or that person just didn't get credit for completion (since completion requires you to be present).

In short, the developers fixed this because you could lose out on completion just because you died in the manner the developers intended for people to be able to die during the fight. People not getting credit just because they died in an intended manner wasn't WAI, so they fixed it.

Since the developers haven't fixed the *very* well known and exploited methods for skipping bosses, there's some logic that suggests that the developers are leaving it be to reward the creativity of their players. It's not hurting people (since those people that *want* to can still kill if they *want* to), and I expect that they figure that many overgeared players would be less inclined to do random GF FPs if they went through and *forced* every trash pack (or even *every boss*, including minibosses) be fought. Skipping bosses doesn't really "hurt" you. It inconveniences some people since they're not getting the gear that *might* have dropped, but it's not hurting them.

The robots been nerfed because of the whiners (although I'm glad now because people finally take mdps along) if it's still too hard then either you or someone in your group is not good enough for it.

 

Done a speedrun with a 19k tank and another mdps earlier, would've been impossible before 1.4.

This is all I could find for changes to LR5 on Hard Mode:

LR-5 Sentinel Droid's Discharge now gives players a 4.5-second warning in Story Mode (and a 3-second warning in Hard Mode) before activating its ground effect. Players can now move the impending effect away from the group or tank. Plasma Arc no longer has an activation time and is executed while moving, and Incinerate is correctly marked as area of effect damage.

It sounds like the Discharge warning has been the major game changer. I gives smart melee dps the ability to place the bubble away from the group, which gives the tank enough time to wait for incinerate before kiting. I know for my part I would often have to decide between kiting and missing the interrupt or holding my ground while the whole group takes damage.

The change to Plasma Arc is also huge now that I think about it:

• it's cast on the move, so the droid will stick to the tank more reliably, and be in range for interrupt
  
• It doesn't have a cast bar, so the tank can't waste his interrupt on it and have it be unavailable for incinerate (this is probably the more significant of the two)
  

So now you can spam your interrupt key every time you see a cast bar (his other cast bar is uninterruptable and your ability is grayed out), which can be considered a "dumbing down," which you might also call a nerf.

Thats why I like running HM FE, Koan(sp), and LI. Alll others I dont even queue for. I hate boss skipping what so ever.

If you don't queue for all options you cant get BH comms.

So do you dump the group when you find out it's the wrong one?

I don't mind skipping single trash pulls, or even a single room of pulls (as is often the case is large, open FPs). I don't even mind skipping particular bosses which end up being far more hassle than they're worth, such as the bonus boss in Kaon.

I think the way people are running FPs such as Battle for Ilum is a bit over-the-top though. I've done it a few different ways, and when we have 1 or 2 stealthers and skip trash by making use of out-of-combat CCs, I enjoy it. I don't enjoy unnecessary box/wall/rail jumping or waiting 30 seconds for a single mob to pat out of the way when it would only take 10 seconds to kill it. When I queue up with friends, I'm all for fast/skip runs. But when I join a PuG, and we have some ***** tank who keeps kicking a DPS if they don't know how to skip all the trash in Ilum, I just get really aggravated with them (the tank). Especially since the majority if the time if someone can't skip trash, it's because they don't know how. Not because they want to sabotage the run, or because they're "horribad".

I've also met a lot of people who simply prefer to gear up in flashpoints. They're more casual, they like dungeons, and don't want to invest in Ops. I'm fine with that, and I think other people should respect that if someone asks to kill a certain boss (within reason, of course).

If memory serves, I've seen the Sith Entity twice in False Emperor. That's a shame because it was a fun fight when everyone was new and we were hitting the enrage timer on this guy.

The times I've tried doing him after that fell on deaf ears, as no one wanted to bother with him. If he dropped BH comms, or was part of a separate weekly to get BH comms, I think that would encourage players to do those kinds of side bosses.