Dread Guards Nightmare overtuned

You're still missing my point. There shouldn't be an optimal group. As long as you have the generally accepted raid group of 2x Tanks, 2x Healers, 2x Melee DPS & 2x Ranged DPS, it should not matter what spec/class those players are. Regardless of the level of the content.

It's only a poor reason for content to be nerfed because the option exists to balance the relative efficacy of classes.

That being said, your general attitude is a little disturbing. There should only be one reason for an inability to clear Nightmare mode with properly geared toons: a lack of player skill or raid coordination. We shouldn't be blithely accepting of class disparity as it stands. We all agree that MMOs are never perfectly balanced in practice, but I've played much more complex competitive games with better balance than this. However, if Bioware isn't willing to address class balance more pro-actively then content needs to be adjusted, because it is unfair and patently wrong that the world's best SWTOR player might well be unwanted because he's playing an Infil Shadow.

I guess if mercs get nerfed in the next major patch you'll be one of the leading mercenaries in story mode raiding.

I can't agree with this enough. Progressive soft enrages >>>>>>>>>>>> hard enrages.

I would like to point out that one of the healers in the 1 group that has downed DG was a merc healer and he was amazing. Not to knock on the sorc but it looked like that merc healer was dominating there. If I had to venture a guess that merc healer was probably accountable for about 65% hell maybe even 70% of all the healing. The sorc heals looked like he had plenty of time to assist with dps and raid heals. In fact the one group that cleared this fight had a composition that isnt considered ideal and was lacking BIS UW gear at the time.

Well, if enrage was removed... you can literally take your time throughout every fight and it would put no pressure on anyone to rush. It would make any content trivial...

NiM Kephess? A joke.

NiM Tanks? A joke.

NiM anything? A joke.

Edit: Mostly because resources are pretty much infinite if managed properly. We don't have to worry about running out of mana or anything.

you didn't listen to my complete statement. Replace the enrage with a mechanic that acts as your enrage instead of making the boss actually enrage. Fill the room with poison, slap down red circles at twice the speed to fill room, have parts of the floor fall away the longer you fight...have the ceiling cave in occassionally until the entire thing falls in crushing the raid...stuff like that. It doesnt always have to be a boss growing twice its size or glowing red and suddenly 1 shotting people. Make mechanics that cause wipes not timers.

If they added mechanics like that, there would still be an 'enrage timer' that people would just slap a time on. Unless the mechanic was completely random and not on any sort of timer, you could pretty much estimate how much time it would take for a room to fill up (such as Putricide). That would be no different than how it is now. Right now we have a fixed time for a boss to one shot people.

A room filling up would have a fixed time to one shot people.

Dilih did down down that boss because they had the "ideal" group composition. They downed it because they are great players, they put in the time and effort, and they figured out how to do it. They pushed through and accomplished something.

While I agree 100% that Bioware has made a mistake, what that mistake was is up for debate. For my ops group, the number one thing that would have solved all this griping is if Nightmare was on a separate lockout. That way none of us would have any alternative but to work on it till we get it down.

they could always heal through the poison pop cds try to sruvive through it. Also mechanics like celing and floor could be done with adds running out to break stuff or tents smashing walls if they arent killed fast enough etc. Can change it up

Aerro, so basically you are saying that is more important the class that the skill of the players.
Because for many a skill player is the one that pick a class they enjoy, even if is not as good that the FoTM, and still can clear all contend,
Because picking a FoTM class and clear contend for me doesnt mean that this player has skill, on the contrary, is the class that those the job, not the player
So this mean that every time BW "balance" the classes and creates a new FoTM and puts out a new op we all have to reroll to have a shot to clear it.
sincerely, if no one had clear it for months,( but still doable) you all that defende that the fight should stay the same, possibly were the same in this forum crying for a "nerf" like many already did.
And you guys that kill the boss, are going to wipe 100 times more until you kill the DG again?Just because you kill it once, doesnt mean from now on you can 1shot this guys, and for what!! a relic that gives you 2 more dps(can always skip it, but defeats the purpose of progression)
And you think BW just puts out a op that just 1 guild or 2 can clear it?
i realy want harder fights, but i dont want to be force to leave my class to reroll the next FoTM that i dont enjoy just because i want a challenge

Is it really that difficult to understand that it's possible to design mechanics with progressively higher requirements (whether it be healing output, tank interactions, raid coordination, burst dps, etc) that can replace hard enrages?

I'm particularly disinclined towards hard enrages as a healer, because once they happen my skill level basically ceases to matter. Even simple stacking raid damage mechanisms are better, because they can let the group with 99th percentile healers and 95th percentile DPS have a fair shot along with the 95th percentile healer and 99th percentile DPS group.