^ This is all I hear when I find myself in chatty pugs, which I've been doing of late to have some fun on my newly 60 alts and in search of ultimate coms. Yet - I've run HM TFB now with four different pugs and not one has been able to clear past Op9. This last one was actually the best of the four, they seemed reasonably open to advice/suggestions and progress was made. But after 3+ hours of attempts once more Color Deletion proved to be just too difficult a mechanic to handle.

Obviously for folks that have done even a meager amount of HM/NM content the reaction is "bah, lrn2play" - I get it. I've done NM Op9 so many times my first thought is "come on, how hard is it to keep a color straight in your mind?" but - the reality is I don't blame the pugs.

For the last 2+ years the game has incentivized semi-casual players to not bother to deal with mechanics, period. Run 16 man derp SM runs where - literally - you can ignore pretty much all mechanics and you have pretty 180 gear and lots of HP to show off to your friends.

The result? No one can get through a 2 year old HM operation. They can AoE down the monsters in Bestia all day though.

I hope the new content is the new standard in how Operations are rolled out (albeit with better QA?) and the semi-casual player finally has a reason to want to try to learn how to handle mechanics. I've always felt the HM/NM content is so much more fun to begin with, and it'd be nice to see more than a handful of players on each server doing it. Making the SM Operations actually force players to handle mechanics is something this game has lacked for a long, long time and I'm glad to see it finally here.

Fewer mechanics but consequences for failing them is good SM design and one that has a natural progression into HM. Lots of mechanics that are ignorable is not. Bugs aside I think the new operations are just about right - the last boss in each could have been a smidge tougher - the ordering of difficulty seems a little off. Sad that so many players missed out on the enjoyment of the last few tiers of HM/NM content.

^ This is all I hear when I find myself in chatty pugs, which I've been doing of late to have some fun on my newly 60 alts and in search of ultimate coms. Yet - I've run HM TFB now with four different pugs and not one has been able to clear past Op9. This last one was actually the best of the four, they seemed reasonably open to advice/suggestions and progress was made. But after 3+ hours of attempts once more Color Deletion proved to be just too difficult a mechanic to handle.

 

Obviously for folks that have done even a meager amount of HM/NM content the reaction is "bah, lrn2play" - I get it. I've done NM Op9 so many times my first thought is "come on, how hard is it to keep a color straight in your mind?" but - the reality is I don't blame the pugs.

 

For the last 2+ years the game has incentivized semi-casual players to not bother to deal with mechanics, period. Run 16 man derp SM runs where - literally - you can ignore pretty much all mechanics and you have pretty 180 gear and lots of HP to show off to your friends.

 

The result? No one can get through a 2 year old HM operation. They can AoE down the monsters in Bestia all day though.

 

I hope the new content is the new standard in how Operations are rolled out (albeit with better QA?) and the semi-casual player finally has a reason to want to try to learn how to handle mechanics. I've always felt the HM/NM content is so much more fun to begin with, and it'd be nice to see more than a handful of players on each server doing it. Making the SM Operations actually force players to handle mechanics is something this game has lacked for a long, long time and I'm glad to see it finally here.

 

Fewer mechanics but consequences for failing them is good SM design and one that has a natural progression into HM. Lots of mechanics that are ignorable is not. Bugs aside I think the new operations are just about right - the last boss in each could have been a smidge tougher - the ordering of difficulty seems a little off. Sad that so many players missed out on the enjoyment of the last few tiers of HM/NM content.

+1

I am disappointed that the hardest boss of them all though is Sword Squadron Commanders. Makes pugging ToS pretty much impossible

i agree with you.

just thinking about EV nim compared to EC nim, and in general, in TFB SNV and in a minor way DF DP you have a huge difference between SM and HM, passing from zero mechanics to be followed to 2-3.

now gear checks are good, but i prefere always to have something new to do, a cyrcle or a debuff, which wasn't at all in SM.

it's disappointing to see people disregarding mechanics that will kill your party in HM or cause a free damage spike, i'm thinking about subteroths during draxus or ignoring pillars during kephess in TFB.

in the last months we got tacticals, it could be that, but i meet horrible dps and embarassing tanks all the time, unable to pop a DCD, interupting or facing a tank swap.

i'm happy too that new ops have a bit of thinking in SM. i hope we don't get the nerf, and here i'm thinking specifically at council deathmarks:p

prior to 2.0 pugs would wipe on fabricator in kp and pylons and soa in ev. Post 2.0 many many many people could not even handle HM EC, don't even think about NM EC. These are mechanic based fights and show an obvious pattern.

People are pretty terrible sometimes it's intangible things like desire to improve etc there's no teaching that. This is why God created achievements so you can make people link them before invite😃

I just hope they don't nerf any of it

People are pretty terrible sometimes it's intangible things like desire to improve etc there's no teaching that. This is why God created achievements so you can make people link them before invite😃

I can understand people wanting to link achievements for HM’s and NiM’s but the idea of having to have people to link achievements for SM seems a little excessive especially for these op’s that have only been out for about 2 weeks. Just today I saw a 16m SM Ravagers where they wanted you to link them all Ravagers Boss achievements, be in full 186 gear, have all your gear augmented and be in TS or else you wouldn’t even get a look in (excessive for SM Ravagers much?). These are new op’s and people are still learning and the best way to learn is to attempt it, fail and go back and do it again. If you've finished the new op's and have your achievements that's great but how about now instead of only wanting to op with people who can also showcase these still relatively new achievements (remember they've only been out less than 3 weeks) now help some newcomers or those having difficulties with them?

To me the issue is not that these are too hard (it's good fun to go and learn new mechanics) the issue is that players both new and old do not have the patience to learn or the patience to understand that for these first few weeks and even first month or two that new people are going to be coming in with no first-hand experience and so this is not going to be a super-fast wipe free no death run. The amount of times I have seen people quit after wiping once at a boss in these new op's is astounding, does no one want to learn any more and have fun with something that's not tank-and-spank but involves everyone actually working together to achieve something?

I can understand people wanting to link achievements for HM’s and NiM’s but the idea of having to have people to link achievements for SM seems a little excessive especially for these op’s that have only been out for about 2 weeks. Just today I saw a 16m SM Ravagers where they wanted you to link them all Ravagers Boss achievements, be in full 186 gear, have all your gear augmented and be in TS or else you wouldn’t even get a look in (excessive for SM Ravagers much?). These are new op’s and people are still learning and the best way to learn is to attempt it, fail and go back and do it again. If you've finished the new op's and have your achievements that's great but how about now instead of only wanting to op with people who can also showcase these still relatively new achievements (remember they've only been out less than 3 weeks) now help some newcomers or those having difficulties with them?

 

To me the issue is not that these are too hard (it's good fun to go and learn new mechanics) the issue is that players both new and old do not have the patience to learn or the patience to understand that for these first few weeks and even first month or two that new people are going to be coming in with no first-hand experience and so this is not going to be a super-fast wipe free no death run. The amount of times I have seen people quit after wiping once at a boss in these new op's is astounding, does no one want to learn any more and have fun with something that's not tank-and-spank but involves everyone actually working together to achieve something?

I agree, I am in a small group of 8 players attempting these ops (a bunch of GL) and only 2 of the 8 made it with their own guild we attempt it every second day or so they are new mechanics I am a very old player since launch of this game I seen a lot of mechanic changes and I do mean a lot, what the problem is everyone has this god complex syndrome going on well not everyone but a few do, so when they step into these new Flashes and Ops well see the result people quit the group or it is too overwhelming for them to complete the rest of it.

My advice to this thread is take small steps at a time, get to 60 then basic gear 186 run some weeklies for elites and 60 HM flashes augment your gear to the new mk-10 stuff and then attempt a HM Op here or the new Op, the saying goes "Rome wasn't built in a day", either is your character we all have to go through the same process, was the same in patches 1.0, and 2.0 even now in 3.0.

I actually don't think the new Ops are that much harder than the old stuff. It's just that nobody is geared yet. Operator IX (and most of EC) may be an exception but just about every other boss gets way easier once you're over-geared.

Nah, People is geared for it.

But people is not SUPEROVER*****GEARED for it.

PuGs system to get the ops done is wearing 5 levels more of the required gear.

When they face an ops that requires similar gear they are doom.

This sm can be done perfectly with old oriconian gear (180 not optimized)

Nah, People is geared for it.

But people is not SUPEROVER*****GEARED for it.

PuGs system to get the ops done is wearing 5 levels more of the required gear.

When they face an ops that requires similar gear they are doom.

This sm can be done perfectly with old oriconian gear (180 not optimized)

Truth. What I mean is that once everyone is rolling in 192's and 198's, the level 55 Ops will be just as easy as EV and KP HM (with a few rare exceptions).

I don't have an issue with having difficult content for SM (although 16 man SM does need some scaling rebalanced), the issue I have is more with the attitude of players on my server be it guild run or random pug nobody seems to understand what progression means and they have a fit if they cant one shot an new op.

I remember raiding when most of the groups gave the ops at least the time of a stim to finish regardless of how many wipes or repair bills, now days the group wipes once and all of a sudden the tank says he's tired and the group disbands...

I'm actually looking for a guild with a bit more patience than that, anyone know one on the red eclipse?

A couple of random thoughts...

First, level 55 bosses should not drop Elite or Ultimate commendations. The only bosses to drops these commendations should those in level 60 content, with 60 HMs and 60 SM Ops bosses providing Elites and 60 HM bosses providing Ultimates.

This would force the majority of the player base to focus on the new operations, and to improve play such that they can beat the content by following the mechanics while close to the designed gear level, or forgo upgrading their gear beyond Basic gear and slowly obtained Elite gear.

The second boss of each new operation should be reviewed and balanced such that it is no more difficult than the last boss, and / or the later bosses difficulty increased.

An operation should have linear progression, with each boss a bit more difficult than the one before - not with the second boss harder than every other boss, including the end boss.

No operation should be nerfed to appease the 'too hard' crowd if the only thing being complained out is failing a simple mechanic like colors.

The only thing I would support as far as making fights easier would be to change GF Operations to it's own difficulty mode, with a corresponding reduction in rewards such that it would be a place for players to go see the story in a group setting without risk of failure, but not a place for people to farm high level commendations on a dozen alts by abusing last boss lock outs.

+1

 

I am disappointed that the hardest boss of them all though is Sword Squadron Commanders. Makes pugging ToS pretty much impossible

Agreed, our guild runs take them down pretty easy now, but that's only because we are all in voicecomms and we all roll with the same peeps every time. We have said on numerous occasions how terrible this fight would be to pug. I really don't understand why they force them to be downed AT THE EXACT SAME TIME in an SM... seems more like a HM mechanic to me...

I can understand people wanting to link achievements for HM’s and NiM’s but the idea of having to have people to link achievements for SM seems a little excessive especially for these op’s that have only been out for about 2 weeks. Just today I saw a 16m SM Ravagers where they wanted you to link them all Ravagers Boss achievements, be in full 186 gear, have all your gear augmented and be in TS or else you wouldn’t even get a look in (excessive for SM Ravagers much?).

 

To me the issue is not that these are too hard (it's good fun to go and learn new mechanics) the issue is that players both new and old do not have the patience to learn or the patience to understand that for these first few weeks and even first month or two that new people are going to be coming in with no first-hand experience and so this is not going to be a super-fast wipe free no death run. The amount of times I have seen people quit after wiping once at a boss in these new op's is astounding, does no one want to learn any more and have fun with something that's not tank-and-spank but involves everyone actually working together to achieve something?

^This all day forever. This content has only been out for a few weeks & the L33T raiding guilds on the server (POT5) are already starting to become gate-keepers for the rest of the population. I haven't tried ToS yet, but I have ran 8man Ravagers SM once & got to the last boss -- challenging, but fun. Mostly a Guild run though.....

However, I tried it with a 16man run the other day only to have it blow up on the second boss. I ran into all kinds of shenanigans: people refusing to go unless everyone got in coms, people refusing to do 16man, people refusing to take people who hadn't ran the raid before, & etc. My biggest fear is that this is going to scare away the "casual raider" & ultimately kill pug raiding in general. I think SM should be somewhat easy...it's the gateway to progression raiding...I'm just not sure this new set is doable in it's current form. One thing I can say for sure...is that for now...the idea of a GF raid on POT5 is dead.

It can be done, but the L33T crowd won't hang around to teach the pugs....I think some kind of nurf is going to have to come down the pipeline for SM.

I really don't understand why they force them to be downed AT THE EXACT SAME TIME in an SM... seems more like a HM mechanic to me...

When I downed it I was the lone survivor with 69hp.

When I downed it I was the lone survivor with 69hp.

I bet that was insanely satisfying. I remember when TfB first came out, and when Kephess started his burn phase it was just a total race, and when my team beat it we had maybe 1 or 2 left standing with almost no life left. So satisfying. To be on that tip of the knife roller coaster is what these new ops have somewhat recaptured in whatever way, and for that I'm insanely grateful

So part of this discussion has already started in another thread. Anyways, here's my thoughts on the matter.

I love difficult content and challenging myself. I remember pre 2.0, I was part of the first group to get the timed run for Nightmare EC on my server (Ebon Hawk). We don't have quite the same level of raiders in my guild now that we did then, but we still push progression every tier when possible. So doing the new story mode ops for me isn't an issue at all.

HOWEVER, I have a very wide scope of friends who play this game, including some who I know could never do progression type things. I like to be able to bring them on story mode runs knowing we can carry them a bit if needed, and let them see the content.

These new story modes.... they are not conducive to pugs, at all. The scaling is completely out of whack, mostly on the 2nd/3rd bosses of ToS and 2nd boss of Ravagers. And there is no satisfaction given to me for making the story modes this difficult... that's what hard mode is for.

Making the entry level to the new ops have this high of a difficulty is NOT going to produce better raiders. The fact is, most bads simply do not get good, no matter what you do. Its going to have the opposite effect, less people are going to do the raids. And if less people do your raids, less people are playing your game, which is bad for everyone.

So yes, please keep up the challenge on hard mode and nightmare, some of us love that stuff. But for story mode, there IS something in between "ignore all mechanics and faceroll", and "perform mechanics perfectly or wipe". Example, instead of red circles hitting for 20k+ on story walkers, how about 10k? Instead of having to kill them at the same time by seconds, why not within 15 seconds? Little changes like these don't necessarily turn story modes into complete facerolls, but they at least help bring it to a level where a far greater amount of the community can do them.

That's just my opinion on the matter. From someone who has the luxury of being in a progression raiding guild that can easily down these ops now, they are definitely overtuned for being a story mode.

Also,

I bet that was insanely satisfying. I remember when TfB first came out, and when Kephess started his burn phase it was just a total race, and when my team beat it we had maybe 1 or 2 left standing with almost no life left. So satisfying. To be on that tip of the knife roller coaster is what these new ops have somewhat recaptured in whatever way, and for that I'm insanely grateful

Posts like these are great, but.... I get that feeling doing things like that on hard/nightmare modes. I'm not going to be too upset if I can't get that feeling from a story mode.

So part of this discussion has already started in another thread. Anyways, here's my thoughts on the matter.

 

I love difficult content and challenging myself. I remember pre 2.0, I was part of the first group to get the timed run for Nightmare EC on my server (Ebon Hawk). We don't have quite the same level of raiders in my guild now that we did then, but we still push progression every tier when possible. So doing the new story mode ops for me isn't an issue at all.

 

HOWEVER, I have a very wide scope of friends who play this game, including some who I know could never do progression type things. I like to be able to bring them on story mode runs knowing we can carry them a bit if needed, and let them see the content.

 

These new story modes.... they are not conducive to pugs, at all. The scaling is completely out of whack, mostly on the 2nd/3rd bosses of ToS and 2nd boss of Ravagers. And there is no satisfaction given to me for making the story modes this difficult... that's what hard mode is for.

 

Making the entry level to the new ops have this high of a difficulty is NOT going to produce better raiders. The fact is, most bads simply do not get good, no matter what you do. Its going to have the opposite effect, less people are going to do the raids. And if less people do your raids, less people are playing your game, which is bad for everyone.

 

So yes, please keep up the challenge on hard mode and nightmare, some of us love that stuff. But for story mode, there IS something in between "ignore all mechanics and faceroll", and "perform mechanics perfectly or wipe". Example, instead of red circles hitting for 20k+ on story walkers, how about 10k? Instead of having to kill them at the same time by seconds, why not within 15 seconds? Little changes like these don't necessarily turn story modes into complete facerolls, but they at least help bring it to a level where a far greater amount of the community can do them.

 

That's just my opinion on the matter. From someone who has the luxury of being in a progression raiding guild that can easily down these ops now, they are definitely overtuned for being a story mode.

 

Also,

 

 

 

Posts like these are great, but.... I get that feeling doing things like that on hard/nightmare modes. I'm not going to be too upset if I can't get that feeling from a story mode.

QFT - and interestingly enough, looking through videos from the PTS it appears a lot of damage abilities in story mode were significant increased, sometimes doubled, on the live version.

One has to wonder if this was intentional, or part of the damage scaling bugs that seem to exist with everything from leveling content to level 55 operations post 3.0.

If it isn't a bug, then it shows how tuning and balancing new content (especially SM and GF content) based on the feedback or performance of top players invited to participate in closed testing using min / maxed better than required gear versus tuning for the average player wearing the crap from the Basic Comms vendor is a pretty dumb idea.

Make HM Operations really hard, NiM even more so, but content designed for group finder with players all wearing basic gear should be reasonably beatable by the average player - even if that means it is super easy for those of us who run HM / NiM operations.

My $0.02:

Some observations from a not-so-elite player who came in to 3.0 in a mix of 180's and above:

- I have only faced bosses 2 and 3 of the Ravagers so far in SM mode. It is much more manageable to learn in 8M mode vice 16M. But of course, GF does not allow 8M. This is a shame. IMHO, 8M mode really allows you to see the battlefield more clearly and play your role.

- The mechanics take some learning. We wiped about 6 times on second boss before downing him. Progression was pretty steady as each class figured out the pitfalls. We came very close to beating the 3rd boss, and if the night were younger, probably would have within a couple of more tries.

- My experience, which may not be universal, is that 16M has too much lag and a lot of folks are dying too quickly because of it, in part at least. Sadly, everyone wants the comms associated with 16M, and there is no way to queue for 8M through GF.

-The situation will probably get better as more and more people get used to the new ops mechanics.

- As far as 55 HM goes, I have only spent a little time on these but the droid in the Korriban FP seems REALLY overtuned.

As a top tier raider, I have done some of the new ops in pugs, and here are some of my observations:

The new operations are not that difficult in SM, but are much more difficult than previous SM ops were. In terms of the 2nd or 3rd bosses being harder than some of the last bosses, that seems fine and in line with previous content. If no one remembers how Draxus SM was when DF first came out at level 55, pugs wiped on that boss constantly. And most of the time, the reason players wiped to this boss was lack of DPS or not interrupting (literally, one main mechanic that pugs failed at which most groups blamed on healers lol). Corruptor Zero was the same thing. Or if even Firebrand and Stormcaller rings a bell back at lvl 50 in SM EC, that was no different.

The only real difficult boss I feel for pugs is Underlurker, which is a fairly tight DPS check for most pug groups. But this really boils down to most players not really knowing how to play their class/spec, and knowing when to use certain abilities/offensive CDs since the instance is new.

In the few pugs I have been in for the new ops for 2nd boss of ToS, and I can say that 99% of the time that people do not pass this boss is because of players standing in red circles and healers not being able to keep up with the amount of people standing in them. Same goes for 2nd and 3rd bosses of Ravagers, its either players standing in blue or fire, and not moving, or getting cleaved by standing in front of the boss. These are simple "raiding 101" concepts.

TFB, SV, DF and DP story modes had almost zero mechanics to the bosses (well there were mechanics, but they were all practically ignorable save for Operator IX, which still wipes groups) and pugs could literally roll their face on their keyboard and clear them. And with these new operations, that is what players are expecting, which is not the case in the new ops.

I feel that the operations are fine where they are currently. They have only been out for less than a month. Give it some time, and pugs will learn. I am glad they made these bosses more than just a simple "tank and spank" in story modes.

Agreed, our guild runs take them down pretty easy now, but that's only because we are all in voicecomms and we all roll with the same peeps every time. We have said on numerous occasions how terrible this fight would be to pug. I really don't understand why they force them to be downed AT THE EXACT SAME TIME in an SM... seems more like a HM mechanic to me...

What guild and what server is this? Can I join?

If no one remembers how Draxus SM was when DF first came out at level 55

Corruptor Zero was the same thing.

Or if even Firebrand and Stormcaller rings a bell back at lvl 50 in SM EC, that was no different.

Same goes for 2nd and 3rd bosses of Ravagers, its either players standing in blue or fire

I am glad they made these bosses more than just a simple "tank and spank" in story modes.

An advice to Bioware, next time you have a close-beta for new Operations, invite someone else than just Dulfy and her NiM raidier friends to give feedback on difficulty

As a top tier raider, I have done some of the new ops in pugs, and here are some of my

 

 

Why exactly are you glad they overtuned SMs if you're "top raider" and don't del with SMs/PUGs in general and instead fo voice-HM/NiM runs?

Lol Drmeth a top raider.

^This all day forever. This content has only been out for a few weeks & the L33T raiding guilds on the server (POT5) are already starting to become gate-keepers for the rest of the population. I haven't tried ToS yet, but I have ran 8man Ravagers SM once & got to the last boss -- challenging, but fun. Mostly a Guild run though.....

 

However, I tried it with a 16man run the other day only to have it blow up on the second boss. I ran into all kinds of shenanigans: people refusing to go unless everyone got in coms, people refusing to do 16man, people refusing to take people who hadn't ran the raid before, & etc. My biggest fear is that this is going to scare away the "casual raider" & ultimately kill pug raiding in general. I think SM should be somewhat easy...it's the gateway to progression raiding...I'm just not sure this new set is doable in it's current form. One thing I can say for sure...is that for now...the idea of a GF raid on POT5 is dead.

 

It can be done, but the L33T crowd won't hang around to teach the pugs....I think some kind of nurf is going to have to come down the pipeline for SM.

I agree am not complaining about the difficulty am more concerned for the general population, I am a casual raider myself only within the last few weeks that I have done the HM content as well as the new Ops and they are fun def me and the team am running even cleared S&V HM first time ever did it I ran TFB HM long ago when that came out never got the chance for S&V HM until now.

However I do think this will hurt the community for sure it is separating the "casual player" or "Free to Play" player with Op passes only to be refused and discarded and also forced to do these that seem like only HM content.

Now don't get me wrong I like a challenge now and again, to see how far my character can progress through, but like I mention earlier now and again, I really don't like tacking hard mode content all the time reasons why I work, have a family and only have a limited time around 4-6 hours of play.

Am not a hardcore player so NiM in my league is def out of the question still I can manage HM Ops. From time to time.

I think Bioware limited our causal play so I look at these 186 pieces of crap am like wow if I only had a 2 hour session to run some flash points group-finder is like a ghosted out never pops only tacticals so wasting time there,

and all the other stuff is converted into basics what am I going to do with those.

They really limited my play for progression, until I have a day/time that I can run a HM.

My point in creating this thread was not to suggest SM content needs to be difficult per se, but rather that I feel real, consequential mechanics - just fewer of them than HM/NM - belong in SM content.

Until this new tier of content, it has been nearly two years since SM operations - which netted a ludicrous amount of commendations - really had mechanics you had to actually account for.

As a result, the "casual" raider who wants to take a shot at a pug HM has absolutely no chance of being successful as the very concept of consequential mechanics is alien.

To me SM operations ought to be a place the newbie can get their feet wet and learn the fundamentals of operational play. Should they choose to limit their play to that mode - fine. But I think it's safe to say there are plenty of folks that would do more HM Ops if the opportunity was available to them, but the last few iterations of SM content has actually trained players to derp content rather than learn it. They try HM, and it's like they're now playing a different game.

Are the newer operations really tuned properly? I don't know, my team found them pretty simple but we've killed NM Brontes so I'm probably not the right person to ask. My point is only that they have put actual mechanics - tank swaps, offtank threat checks, tight positioning checks, telegraphs you actually have to get out of, one (!) minor DPS check etc. - into these fights which should hopefully teach people who enjoy running operations how to do them properly.

My point in creating this thread was not to suggest SM content needs to be difficult per se, but rather that I feel real, consequential mechanics - just fewer of them than HM/NM - belong in SM content.

 

Until this new tier of content, it has been nearly two years since SM operations - which netted a ludicrous amount of commendations - really had mechanics you had to actually account for.

 

As a result, the "casual" raider who wants to take a shot at a pug HM has absolutely no chance of being successful as the very concept of consequential mechanics is alien.

 

To me SM operations ought to be a place the newbie can get their feet wet and learn the fundamentals of operational play. Should they choose to limit their play to that mode - fine. But I think it's safe to say there are plenty of folks that would do more HM Ops if the opportunity was available to them, but the last few iterations of SM content has actually trained players to derp content rather than learn it. They try HM, and it's like they're now playing a different game.

 

Are the newer operations really tuned properly? I don't know, my team found them pretty simple but we've killed NM Brontes so I'm probably not the right person to ask. My point is only that they have put actual mechanics - tank swaps, offtank threat checks, tight positioning checks, telegraphs you actually have to get out of, one (!) minor DPS check etc. - into these fights which should hopefully teach people who enjoy running operations how to do them properly.

I think 8 man is tuned resonably well, 16m on the other hand is a major pain in the *** (well, you hv twice amount of baddies too)

Couple days ago I had a group for ToS and 5 of the 8 people are sub 186 gear, I was a healer and had a chat with the other healer who decided to quit before the 1st boss because group is undergeared. then a dps 'step up' and respec to healer and we tried to 7 man it

Come on, that dps is already undergeared and now he is healing in dps gear (he has 700 odd acc from 172/186 mods) with a tank (!?) implant

I honestly don't understand what people are thinking.

Then last night I was stuck on Torque, 8m. I told tanks they need to tank swap but noooooo first 2 pulls they never did so we wiped, then PT tank finally realise this and start kiting the boss when he had the debuff. The other tank (jugg) realised this at some point but was very slow at swapping, usually the PT need to kite for 6-10 seconds before the jugg taunted. Tank swap isn't even something new and people still have no idea what to do, we are even on Team Speak but they never communicate.......

When tanks finally figure out what to do boss enrage at 100k hp everytime, yeah sorry dps is undergeared......

I think I need to gear check everyone next time because there's no way a PUG can carry undergeared people at this stage