Out of all the MM Lost Islands you've queued into, how many have you actually completed? I think for me, it's like 10%. 20% tops. And no, it's not me, I know the mechanics, I know my class(es). I'm decently to excellently geared.

 

First of all, how are we still letting sub-70s queue for this? If you queue in with someone who isn't fully leveled, you're best off either booting him or leaving yourself, because the odds are NOT in your favor.

 

Secondly, there needs to be some kind of gear check/skill check for this. I don't mind explaining the mechanics, but if this is someone's first-ever MM, the odds are not in your favor. Also, if they're in crappy Green/Blue gear and/or their gear isn't augmented, the odds are not in your favor.

 

I've said this time and time again, BW needs to do a better job balancing the difficulties of MM FPs. There's a HUGE difference between MM Hammer Station and MM Lost Island. Either make the easier MM harder, or make the harder ones easier (preferably the former, but realistically the latter). Hell, I'd argue that SM EV and KP are easier, don't have as big of DPS/Heals checks, and have less mechanics that a LOT of the more recent MMs (Lost Island, Blood Hunt, etc.)

 

MM FPs are supposed to be the stepping stones between VM FPs and SM Ops, yet some of the most difficult content seems to be in MM FPs. Yet, for some reason, MM FPs seem to attract some of the worst players in the game. Players who don't know how to gear properly or how to queue properly (I've lost track of the number of DPS in Tank gear that I've come across). Players who seem to think this content is as easy as a Heroic or VM FP. SOMETHING needs to be done to get through to these players, but I don't know what.

All of them. And to be fair, HM LI is easy af these days. I kiled the bonus boss with one hatred sin who didn't bother applying his dots and died at the 1st roof collapse, tank died on the second. Before, the DPS check was pretty tight, but except for mechanics (only if you don't know them or you're spastic) there's nothing complicated in Lost Island.

 

You also mentionned Blood Hunt, but even the 1st boss DPS check is a joke nowadays. You could argue that Shae Vizla hits like a truck, but if you tank her from a distance that's not that much of a problem.

 

If you asked me, I'd argue they need to make HM FP harder; but gate them behind some sort of proving ground. Something you need to complete for each toon and each role before being allowed to queue which test your abilities in said role. That would not be perfect, but that would help a lot in filtering players not ready for HM FP.

I cleared it (with bonus boss) recently on my fully geared tank with a healer in 230 gear, one nearly fully geared dps, and a level 56 dps who had never done it before. I even said to the group that we might fail bonus boss but was willing to give it a shot or two, then we one shot it lol, although I died at the very end to enrage. Although numerous times I've failed in groups on Sav-Rak because the healer can't keep the group up, even healers in near/full 248 gear. So it really depends on skill more than the gear tbh. I think the difficulty is fine as it is.

I remember getting this wayback when leveling my shadow. I was a level 50 shadow tank, did the full run without any issues.

Every Lost Island I've done I've completed. I'm not counting the ones where people leave right at the start and are unable to find a replacement aft yer 10mins of waiting. Lost Island is nothing but easy I've even completed it when Sub 70s.

well you're not going to finish anything if you keep leaving or making others leave with your attitude.

MM LI can be hard but it's more of a skill-check than purely a matter of gear, I had groups with good gear fail because they wouldn't follow mechanics and such. I do agree there is a gap between something like HS and LI, which is why I think there should be a new category for these kind of harder flashpoints, either that or increase the rewards if they haven't done so already. But LI is nowhere near as hard as something like Blood Hunt or Umbara, provided you follow the mechanics your group should be fine.

Ahh, MM LI. I remember how hard that FP used to be, before it got nerfed into the ground. Was like a 4 man op back in the day. And that was back when pugs were smarter, too. I kinda miss the old difficulty.

Ahh, MM LI. I remember how hard that FP used to be, before it got nerfed into the ground. Was like a 4 man op back in the day. And that was back when pugs were smarter, too. I kinda miss the old difficulty.

 

this.so much this

Dang you guys make me want to go back and play it again for nostalgia

Dang you guys make me want to go back and play it again for nostalgia

 

Yah, 2.xxx and 3.xxx eras were the best times for this game.

So funny how OP makes a valid point about difficulty disparity that needs to be adressed and all he gets is "I had no problems", "Should have seen this in the old days" and tons of "Yeah the old days", but noone picking up the good suggestion he made. No wonder, there's less and less people motivated to actually help improve the game that way.

I finish LI MM like 90% of the time. Honestly, MM flashpoints are kind of a joke in the current version of the game. You can only really fail them if the party straight up doesn't know the mechanics and isn't willing to learn them. None of the fights are complicated and they all come down to just knowing where to stand and where not to stand at specific times.

 

In any case, there's an intentional difference in difficulty between Hammer Station HM and Lost Island HM. Hammer Station HM was designed as the entry level HM flashpoint. It's meant to introduce new players to the higher difficulty where you can basically wipe on any mob if your party is irresponsible. Lost Island HM was deliberately designed to be an end game challenge and BioWare promoted its high difficulty as its main feature. When LI was released, it was to challenge people who had already completed everything. It doesn't have the same target audience as Hammer Station.

Edited October 17, 2018 by HaoZhao

It isn't an gear issue - it's the mechanics. Sav-Rak in particular.

 

Gear might help you get past the droid, but with Sav-Rak no amount of gear will help you if you can't grasp the concept of 'stand right in his character model'. There is no 'close enough', it's do it right or die.

 

This is where every pug group I've tried MM with fails. There is always at least one person who can't survive the smash and then it's game over.

 

What would help is putting Lost Island into the vet mode group-finder. At least if a couple of teammates go flying you can still get past him and continue on. Vet mode is the only way I've been able to finish LI.

 

Lost Island is probably less gear/level dependant than the post KotFE flashpoints.

Agree about Lost Island but I raise you one Nathema Conspiracy. Long, a bit more complex fights and silly end bosses (especially the healing mechanic on Atrius - stupid OP for a PUG). Edited October 19, 2018 by csmnstoica

Agree about Lost Island but I raise you one Nathema Conspiracy. Long, a bit more complex fights and silly end bosses (especially the healing mechanic on Atrius - stupid OP for a PUG).

 

Honestly I found Nathema to be extremely easy, provided you follow the mechanics its a pretty easy run.

So funny how OP makes a valid point about difficulty disparity that needs to be adressed and all he gets is "I had no problems", "Should have seen this in the old days" and tons of "Yeah the old days", but noone picking up the good suggestion he made. No wonder, there's less and less people motivated to actually help improve the game that way.

 

Probably because we accept the fact that there are differences in difficulties for ALL content. HM ToS is considerably more difficult than HM EV. I accept that. I'm ok with it. Some content is more difficult than others. Check. And I don't think the devs should waste their time rebalancing ancient content.

Edited October 19, 2018 by Rion_Starkiller

From my standpoint and experience, this LI thing has more relationship on how often the FP is granted in the queue. For me very very rarely. In a period of time I can do 20 times Hammer Station and just one LI. Even for a tierIV you can forget something about tactics.

So funny how OP makes a valid point about difficulty disparity that needs to be adressed and all he gets is "I had no problems", "Should have seen this in the old days" and tons of "Yeah the old days", but noone picking up the good suggestion he made. No wonder, there's less and less people motivated to actually help improve the game that way.

It doesn't help that the OP's suggestion is for BW to "rebalance" the flashpoints. A lovely, vague request that has a less than 0.00001% chance of being implemented.

 

A better solution would be for Bioware to reintroduce the "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" separation of flashpoints and operations. This is something that existed back in the 1.x days, but was abandoned with patch 2.0.

 

If memory serves, Lost Island, Explosive Conflict and Terror from Beyond were Tier 2, and everything else was Tier 1.

 

The basic idea was to communicate to the player "this stuff is harder". They were separate queues as well. You could queue for Tier 1 flashpoints only, and not have to worry about HM LI popping. Or you could queue for both. Your choice.

 

This wouldn't prevent unprepared idiots from purposefully queuing for Tier 2 flashpoints, but I believe it would help.

 

/2cr

Edited October 24, 2018 by Khevar

They kind of already have re-introduced that concept, by requiring people who queue for MM Crisis on Umbara to have rating 242 gear. Did they extend that requirement to Copero and Nathema?

Regardless, no amount of gear will help if you don’t stand right under the boss during Sav-Rak Smash. But, higher gear will help a little if you stand in stupid a little too long during the droid, or linger in one spot too long during the falling icicles of the bonus boss, or take too long to kill the cryo tanks of the assistants.

 

Im not opposed to some sort of visual indicator that MM flashpoint “X” is higher than average difficulty, or even a gear threshold like for Umbara.

 

But I certainly don’t want or expect that every MM fp has the same degree of difficulty of, say, Hammer Station.

It doesn't help that the OP's suggestion is for BW to "rebalance" the flashpoints. A lovely, vague request that has a less than 0.00001% chance of being implemented.

 

A better solution would be for Bioware to reintroduce the "Tier 1" and "Tier 2" separation of flashpoints and operations. This is something that existed back in the 1.x days, but was abandoned with patch 2.0.

 

If memory serves, Lost Island, Explosive Conflict and Terror from Beyond were Tier 2, and everything else was Tier 1.

 

The basic idea was to communicate to the player "this stuff is harder". They were separate queues as well. You could queue for Tier 1 flashpoints only, and not have to worry about HM LI popping. Or you could queue for both. Your choice.

 

This wouldn't prevent unprepared idiots from purposefully queuing for Tier 2 flashpoints, but I believe it would help.

 

/2cr

 

I think Kaon Under Siege was also a Tier 2 FP, but it's been a long time, so I may be mistaken.

I think Kaon Under Siege was also a Tier 2 FP, but it's been a long time, so I may be mistaken.

You got me wondering, so I tracked this down:

http://www.swtor.com/blog/guide-group-finder-part-2

 

Only Lost Island was in Tier 2.

 

Incidentally, this quote out of the article is the perfect explanation of why I think Tier 1/2 should be brought back:

What is the difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 Flashpoints? Difficulty! Tier 2 Flashpoints are more difficult than Tier 1, and we felt that it wouldn’t be a good experience to place under-geared players into groups where they couldn’t meaningfully perform their assigned role. To support this, Tier 2 Flashpoints are disabled by default and must be actively enabled through the Group Finder filters.

how would you decide which ones are hard enough to be tier 2 ?

how would you decide which ones are hard enough to be tier 2 ?

 

One possibility is to decide based on where in the expansion’s life cycle they came out. Those are generally designed with considerations of gear and class balance changes that evolved during that expansion cycle.

 

For example, Kaon/Lost Island came out at the end of the 1.0 cycle, they weren’t part of the launch flashpoints.

Korriban/Tython/Manaan/Rakata Prime all came out at the end of the 2.0 cycle. They are also harder than the two Czerka flashpoints which occurred during the middle part of 2.0 and were the first tactical fp’s.

Umbara/Copero/Nathema all came out after much of 5.0 had been live for quite some time and, at least for Umbara, had a gear rating requirement for MM.

That won’t necessarily account for things like the bonus bosses in an individual fp, which may be much harder than the rest of the fp (I’m looking at you, Commander Mokan), or individual expansion launch fp that may have been slightly overturned (e.g., Blood Hunt), but it’s a good way to make an initial sort.

how would you decide which ones are hard enough to be tier 2 ?

If the devs were to reimplement this feature, they'd have metrics about what flashpoints players are having trouble with.

 

It's mostly going to be fights with heavy mechanics / coordination.

 

Or fights when a low-level bolstered tank (still missing key defensive abilities) just won't be able to survive without a God-tier healer on tap.

Edited October 25, 2018 by Khevar