Recently in the game (yes I know people may think this has been forever, but I'd like to think there was some time this was not the case), I have noticed a terrible overload of free-agent dps who spam on fleet for the gf op with not enough reasonable healers or tanks to carry them through operations. Now if these dps were adaptable, experienced players who were nice enough to get on my friends list, I wouldn't mind, but a number of them are the complete opposite of that. This post is to educate you about your position on the TOR food chain and what you can do to fix that.

1. Watch your clocks.

Odds are if you're the only role around looking for an op (esp SnV), no matter if you have 1 dps or 4 you're in for a long wait for your other 4 or more open slots. If you have a day with *anything* else to do down the road (unlike me with enough time to write this while waiting to run SnV with a group later), think about how long an op will take to build a group, let alone run and do NOT enter with your group knowing you won't have the time and just hope to hoard as much loot as you can, that will get you ignore-blacklisted immediately, while we may be able to easily replace you, that is just selfish. And if you've been spamming for 30 minutes and haven't gotten roles other than dps, if your day is like I mentioned above, just give up and do something shorter with less people to tick off.

2. Be versatile

If it will make your search shorter, ALWAYS swap to the rarer role (tank or heal) if you have another toon or can gear your current toon for that role. Whenever I have a VG/PT, Sage/Sorc, Sco/Op, etc., I try to practice every discipline they have, and work on having two sets of gear: one dps, and one tank/heal. 4 marauders whose alts consist of more marauders is not a good profile-builder or an optimal dps squad, switch it up.

3. Study

Both your role and the op you're begging to join. Some specializations (watchman/annihilation) you should level your toon to 65 practicing with while others (infiltration/deception) are easy to swap to late in the game and get the hang of. And do NOT think your role is "press attack button as fast as you can" learn the rotation by level 50 or even story mode EV will have a lot of enrages. As for the op studying, this is EA's/Bio's fault for making the game so inaccessible with no in-game tutorials for boss fights, but do not go in blind, read online for strategies on this forum or search Dulfy online and any op you want to run will be listed, operations are like math tests; study.

4. Be an alert pug

If a Tank is advertising for an op run, the dps slots will likely go quick; you need to be ready to whisper those people that you're interested as fast as possible. Don't get butthurt if you wanted to dps and don't have another role to bring to the table (see #2)

5. Make friends

If you had a pug run with friendly tanks or heals who liked you and were patient enough to guide you through the op, add them to your friends list, or if they have a guild that does op runs commonly, look them up and see about applying to their guild. The guildies that are chill enough to do pug ops are few and far between, so take advantage of them (nicely).

On a final note, if you're wondering why ops are so rare for you to get to do on TOR, it is because the game has been so convolutedly built that the difficulty of operations requires a mental dexterity, commitment, and computer specs that only a small percentage of casual gamers have. Your role is no longer easy in this game, so get ready for work.