Enrage Timers Need to be Changed or Removed

So after playing quite a few hard modes I would have to say my least favorite feature of this game is Enrage Timers. While I can understand the use of them in making sure you don't run too many healers, their function as a "Gear Check" is total nonsense in my opinion.

People should be encouraged to push their limits, not punished by a ridiculous feature that ensures they must have a set of gear that makes the flashpoint/operation so mindnumblingly easy even a child could do them.

I played this game 2 levels under the content I was doing and ridiculously undergeared from Coruscant to Corellia, and I wouldn't want to play it through any other way.

However when I started doing hardmode flashpoints undergeared I noticed a huge problem. While I was managing to heal my team through the fights (alone I might add) my team was not beating the enrage timers as they were simply undergeared.

Now I have a gear rating of ~127 and have started running with people of similar gear strength. While we can beat the enrage timers most of the bosses are not challenging.

Not challenging = Not fun

My solution is simple. Enrage timers need to work differently. It shouldn't be a set timer after which the boss gets a star, a firepower, and takes Chuck Norris form instantly one shotting the whole team. They should perhaps be a function of healing done vs. damage done meant ONLY to stop teams that replace their DPS with more healers.

If you keep a form of enrage time in order to ensure DPS are still doing their job, then make it so that after a certain point the boss starts getting SLIGHTLY stronger. Or put more adds into boss fights.

Make it more of a skill check and less of a gear check. If I can survive encounters meant for 120+ gear rating at 105, I should be applauded for my skill, not denied my rewards by Chuckzilla.

I agree on enrage timers.
One or two bosses with an enrage is an acceptable mechanic, adding to the urgency of those bosses.
Every boss in the game having an enrage is a clutch, nothing more.

If you can survive long enough but aren't doing enough dps then your heal/dps ratio will be bad and the boss will enrage according to your plan... so nothing will change?

Your way also sounds much more complicated to balance. How can the fight tell undergeared DPS being different from having 2 tanks? a tank will do the same damage as an undergeared dps but won't die nearly as quickly, so all the encounters will just now be 1 heals 2 tanks 1 dps.

or what about a heals who mostly dps's until the boss "soft" enrages as you say and then switches to healing. Since the enrage is slower you can change over for the last part of the fight to keep going, so 2 heals a tank and a dps would be ideal.

The fact is that DPS have NO responsibility in a group at all EXCEPT to DPS... if you can't do enough dps for the fight then you have failed at the responsibility given to you and need to improve.

The solution to a tank being undergeared and killed quickly or not being able to hold aggro is not to make the boss do less damage until it is trivial.

The solution to a healer being undergeared and not being able to keep up is not to make the healer a spam button fest or reduce all damage to being trivial

The solution to a DPS being undergeared and not being able to do as much damage as they should is not to remove enrage timers or come up with all sorts of convoluted systems to make it easier for the dps... just gear up and better learn your class.

If you have a bad tank you will notice this by him losing agro and generally being quite sluggish picking it up.

If you have a bad healer, people will die, including the tank at seemingly random times.

If you have a bad dps, well... you finish the instance a few minutes later. Without enrage timers DPS have an incredibly low skill cap in regards to actually playing their class and not just moving out of fire.

The mechanic itself is a clutch.
There are much better and less immersion breaking methods of killing off a party with low DPS than just "lol i hit u harder nao"

I like soft enrages for this reason.

"OH **** THERE'S FIRE EVERYWHERE! What do we do!?" is much better than. "Oh the boss is red, not enough dps."

They need less "hard" enrages and more soft enrage timers like add spawns or a stacking buff/debuff that makes the boss do more dmg or your tank take more dmg. Putting every boss on an enrage timer is a bit much, but they have their reasons. Hard modes are supposed to be gear checks any way to get you ready for raiding. It's not like every single hard mode flashpoint requires you to have full champion pvp gear or full operation sets, they seem to progress like they did when leveling starting w/ black talon and ending w/ the end game hard modes. I have to agree though, there needs to less enrage timers in the game, but it's not an excuse for being undergeared. An undergeared player will be somewhat of a set back ,depending on how skilled they are with their class, enrage timer or no enrage timer. I'm no gearscore fan, but gear has its place and enrage timers allow you to know whether you are ready as a player and ready in terms of gear for a raid. That's why BW put one of the hardest raid bosses first in eternity vault, the annihilation droid.

I think some form of enrage timer on all bosses is fine...some should be well outside the challenging zone too because they aren't there to be challenging, they are there to stop the boss from being 3 man'd. If the boss mechanic isn't interesting or challenging enough don't blame the enrage timer for not making the fight more exciting, its not what they are there for.

Could do like aion and aoe one shot everyone with bad gear.

I prefer enrage timers, bosses being boring is not due to enrage timers but due to how most bosses are tank and spank.

This.

Also it's called progression for a reason, you don't just hit level 50 and jump right into Nighmare Operations in your quest gear. You follow the progression path and you'll gear up properly. There should absolutely be dps checks in the game, and it involves having geared out properly and knowing your spec/rotation. If you can't meet the dps requirement for hardmodes then you haven't done enough dailies(or bought crafted epics) to get yourself geared out properly. Or you simply just don't know how to build/play your character.

as a player who cleared 10/10 nightmare mode, I %100 aggre, it doesnt add any fun to game, it just checks gear, there are many other ways to make a fight challanging and fun (look to other mmos, ps:not WoW )