Hey folks.

 

So, I run a small guild of about a dozen players. Not all of us are on every night and it's rare that we have 8 players on at once these days.

 

So, 5 of us recently started doing HM FP's. Really, there are 4 of us who do most of them.

 

 

I keep seeing that 8 man NM Ops are the way to go for gear, and can be easier than HM FP's in some cases. So, I want to try to rally my troops and give it a go.

 

What I really need to know is what our 8 players should look like in terms of class make-up.

 

 

- Do we need 2 healers?

 

- Do we need 2 tanks? (We have one PT tank who is quite geared / lot's of Columi grade)

 

- What kind of DPS classes seem to be favored in NM Ops?

 

- Are 8 players an absolute requirement, or can some of the content be done with less than 8?

 

 

I want to try to get the guys "into" Operations, but I need to present them with some kind of strategy.

 

Thanks in advance to you generous folks who reply.

Edited January 30, 2012 by daveytech

Be careful with your notation of NM Operations - Normal Mode and Nightmare Mode look the same when abreviated! Anyhow, you really only have 2 choices, Eternity Vault and Karagga's Palace, and both are on the same level of difficulty. They can be done with pretty much any group of competent lvl 50 players in moderate gear. Full lvl 50 blues is actually enough, any hardmode flashpoint gear and artifact craftables is a bonus. Most people recommend only 1 tank and a 'tank capable' dps class for these operations, although I would just take 2 tanks for new group. 2 heals ought to be sufficient, and is sometimes overkill if they are well geared. DPS can be anything really, although you want a decent balance of classes so as not to overlap too much on drops and to have access to every available class buff.

First time we did EV normal mode, most of us had orange gear with Illum and Belsavis daily Mods in them. So [51] armoring/mods/enhancement. And we cleared EV-8Normal just fine with that.

 

Main tank had around 16K HP with the 5% buff from BH. I was one healer (Sorcerer). Other healer was a Merc.

 

We 1 tanked 2 healed everything with a DPS Jugg tanking the puzzle boss.

You need 1 tank and 2 healers for all of 8man EV across every difficulty setting. (Except normal might require only 1 healer)

 

You need 1 tank and 2 healers for all of 8man KP for normal mode, and you need 2 tanks and 2 healers for a couple of the hard modes and nightmare modes.

 

You can certainly underman 8mans on normal modes.

 

Also, as far as gear goes, 8man hardmode will give you more and better gear per player than every other setting in the game right now, that includes nightmare and 16man nightmare.

 

Edit: Don't worry about stacking certain classes, ranged, or melee.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Acri

Awesome info. Very appreciated!

 

I was referring to Normal Mode because totally forgot about Nightmare having the same acronym.

 

 

It sounds like 2 healers is the way to go, which will be problematic for us because I'm the only full time healer. I can always ask someone to respec though.

 

Our PT tank has about 18500 HP while buffed. Sounds like he can handle a normal Op?

 

 

 

 

Let me run a Normal Mode Operation scenario by you folks. We will definitely start with Normal Mode.

 

 

Say we have a group of 6 players. 1 healer, 1 tank, 4 DPS. We all mostly have daily comm level gear or better (in the tanks case).

 

Is that doable? I'm sure it would be hard, but we are fairly well over the lvl 49 blue mark in terms of our gear.

 

I bet I'd have to be near perfect on healing to make it remotely possible?

 

Thanks again folks. Great feedback.

With 1 healer, puzzle boss will be impossible - since you have to split up into 2 grps. Each grps needs it's own healer.

 

If you are a really good healer (preferably Sorc), you can 1 heal everything else in EV -- assuming your folks know not to stand in stupid.

 

SoA will be tricky - you will have to have a Sorc healer to top people off after the platforming if you are one healing it.

 

Also, if your healer gets mind trapped, tank will need to use CDs and pots to stay alive till healer is freed.

 

Also, I dont think you can beat SoA with 4 DPS only.

You won't have any problems with that kind of gear. If you're 6manning it, then you might want to worry about pylons with only 1 healer. With 8 people, you take such a small amount of damage from that fight and the adds die so quickly that it might not even be required to have a healer on each side.

 

If you don't know about pylons, it's basically a fight there you need to split your group in half, but tanks aren't necessarily required for the 8man version.

 

Edit: And what the above poster said about Soa is all true.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Acri

What is Soa? Is it the end boss?

 

Would it be worth running EV 6 man if we can't kill Soa? I'm sure we'd get a kick out of it if nothing else.

 

 

I am a Sorc healer, and healed my way from 11 to 50. So, I've got a good grip on healing, but I don't have any Columi grade gear yet. Just 50/51 purple stuff. As far as my capabilities go, I have a ton of trouble on the Kaon HM bonus droid boss. I can't keep the group up long after the first wave of adds are killed. It just gets to be too much when the DPS classes take all that dmg while the adds are up.

 

I'm wondering if our other Madness sorc can toss some heals at a group just to keep them going during this phase?

 

Does that phase end?

 

If 4 DPS aren't capable (does the boss have an enrage timer?) then maybe we should plan on skipping him. That goes back to the above questions of if it's worth running / can we not finish it without taking soa down.

 

 

Thanks for your help folks!

Edited January 30, 2012 by daveytech

It's worth running because you'll get upgrades from anything you can down and the operations are going to reset tomorrow anyway.

 

As far as the extra boss on Kaon HM goes, normal mode 8 man ops are generally easier than HM Flashpoints.

 

And Soa is the last boss, yes.

Edited January 30, 2012 by Acri

On seconds thoughts, you dont need to worry about Soa.

 

Don't think you can beat "Duel of Fates" encounter without a full raid. You need 8 people to duel 8 mini-bosses to beat the encounter.

 

Why can't you PuG two people?

I suppose we could PuG some folks, but I'll definitely be trying to get more than 6 of us to attend.

 

Really, I'm just trying to understand the bare minimum requirements for playing around in the Ops so I can explain it to my guys in those terms.

 

I need an Operation guide or how-to for 8 man Normal Mode EV and Palace? I don't mind re-inventing the wheel, but it would make me feel a lot more comfortable knowing the encounters to some degree.

 

You folks know where I can find something like that? I'll poke around on the forums a bit.