At the moment the Vigilance/Vengeance DPS is on average a little behind most other DPS specs for PvE (in truth, you might as well stick to smash bomber rage/focus spec, since the damage output is about the same). The term "on average" is important here, though. Vigi/Veng relies heavily on a low-percentage proc to reset the cooldown on master strike/ravage. If it does proc, then get ready to use your threat drop. If it doesn't, you're stuck using a lot of low-damage filler moves. The two abilities that proc it are on medium length cooldowns themselves, so if the RNG gods don't favor you, you're kind of screwed.

The reduction in the armor buff I'm not sure about. While I'd like for the tanks to be balanced, I tend to think KBNs relentless focus on average mitigation and dtps is flawed, and spikiness plays a larger part than he gives credit for. When I'm healing, the challenge is not putting out an average of 2500hps (or whatever) over a fight - that's easy. The challenge is when the tank takes 40k damage in a 4 second window. If they're taking away our self heals, why not give shadows as smooth a damage profile as vanguards? The other nerf - reducing the time that harnessed shadows stays up - I definitely do not agree with. Hell, they just fixed merciless and juyo on sentinels, and now they want to make the same mistake with shadows. There are lots of fights where there will be windows where the buff cannot be readily maintained: in S&V alone you've got moving through the desert on Dashroode, the massive grenade/rock phase on Titan 6, chasing adds on Thrasher and kiting sunder on the Cartel Warlords. The 12-second refresh window essentially assumes close to 100% up time on your rotation, which is just not feasible on many fights.

I suspect that would be way too much, given that with conveyance + healing trance you tend to build resplendence quite quickly. I would prefer a simpler solution: - Benevolence is now an instant cast with a 15-second cooldown. (Force cost remains the same). That gives you a force-expensive heal you can cast in an emergency or on the move but which cannot be spammed. It'd definitely give you a reason to have Benevolence on your bar. The strongest additional use for Resplendence I feel is to take Noble Sacrifice off the GCD.

I actually think the level of difficulty is pretty good right now. Without question, though, some of the DF/DP HM bosses could use some dialling in when it comes to difficulty: some elements are super easy, some are over-hard. For example, the DPS check on Nefra is comically easy, but the heal check can be difficult (and can be quite dependent on the group composition). It's similar for Corrupter Zero, Brontes, Tyrans and the Dread Council. Meanwhile, Bestia is a DPS check and Draxus is a co-ordination check, but relatively easy to heal if the dps and tanks do their jobs well. Overall, I'd say these operations are by and large a healer check, and groups without very good healers might struggle. (As an aside, I do think that the ops favor scoundrel/operative healers by a considerable margin, while sages and especially troopers can often struggle with energy management given the sustained healing requirements and the common need for spread group formations). Ultimately, though, it comes down to the perennial problem with hard and nightmare mode raids: you need to be able to find eight good players. The law of averages says that any given group of eight is likely to contain one or more below-par players. So what does Bioware do? Take this into account and make HM raids completable by groups of mostly good players but where not all members are carrying their weight? That will make the hard modes faceroll easy for groups who aren't carrying weaker players and cause them to lose interest in the game. Or do you ensure that only groups full of good players can complete the content, thus causing HM raids to be nigh-impossible for pugs and "everybody gets a turn" social guilds? I actually don't know. My general preference is for the latter, but I'm fortunate enough to be part of a solid raid group. Maybe a tier between story and hard mode would work, but I can't see BioWare implementing that anytime soon.

Many of the fights in DF and DP are badly tuned, with one aspect of the fight very hard, while other aspects are ridiculously easy. Tyrans (like Nefra, Corrupter Zero and the Dread Council) is definitely a healer check, with the tanks taking massive amounts of spiky damage while the raid-wide slam and a very high dps DoT takes down the rest of the group. The strat we use depends on the healer composition. As always scoundrel/operative healers are the best for this fight (and by far the best healers in general right now), and any combination of scoundrel/operative and commando/merc means that the group can spread out to better manage simplification and inferno. The DoT can be mitigated with fast-casting HoTs and DPS who use their defensive cooldowns when they get the DoT. With a sage/sorc, we actually found the best method was to have everyone stack in on the same square as the tanks (staying behind the boss to avoid thundering blast, of course). Salvation/Revivication on cooldown pretty much negates raid damage while also keeping the tanks up. The challenge with this method is simplification and inferno, and it requires good coordination from the group to deal with those mechanics properly.

I agree that with many of the posters that arenas are horrible for sage healers right now. I don't even bother to PvP on my sage anymore, because if an arena pops then I'm a total liability. The problem is that the experience of sage healers in arenas generally goes something like this: Round one: Pre-emptively cast force armor on entire team - all enemy DPS see a soft target and attack you - stunned - stunned - stunned - <nearly dead> - Force Barrier - <enemies leave you alone until it runs out> - cast one heal before they can switch back to you - dead. Round two: Pre-emptively cast force armor on entire team - all enemy DPS see a soft target and attack you - stunned - stunned - stunned - <nearly dead> - < Force Barrier is on cooldown> - dead. Now you can delay death if you have a tank who can guard you, and if you're lucky enough to be able to Egress away from melee and maybe line of sight the enemy. You're still not healing, however, just delaying the inevitable, and the team would have been better off with a dps who could at least put out some damage before they kicked it. There are a variety of possible solutions, such as: - Adding a damage reduction cooldown to help survive that initial "monster the healer/chain stun" burst phase. - Changing force barrier. My suggestion would be to really amp up the self-healing it provides in the Seer tree. I'm talking 5% or even 10% per second. Make it so that burning Force Barrier really gets your health back up and when you drop out of it the enemy DPS just can't smack you with a finishing move that made it mostly pointless to use. After all, if you weren't in force barrier, you could heal for much more than that amount.

I was going to suggest something very similar. The new hardmode and nightmare mode content often requires long periods of sustained high-intensity healing. That's why scoundrels are doing very well in it, while sages and troopers often struggle - scoundrels have a more forgiving energy mechanism for sustained healing. While I have no problem with the recovery method of sages, the need to burn GCDs on it (not just for Noble Sacrifice, but to recover the health lost by noble sacrifice, unless you're fortunate enough to be able to stand in your own salvation) creates a window where tanks may be receiving no heals and may be vulnerable to alpha strikes. As NoFishing said, it's not really about force, health or even rotational difficulty, but about time. The obvious solution is to take Noble Sacrifice off the GCD. Since you probably can't have an infinitely spammable no-GCD ability, clearly there would have to be a trade-off. Perhaps a short cooldown on Noble Sacrifice would work, which would also force less experienced sages to learn how to use it properly (ie. as part of the rotation, rather than something you spam when you get low). Or as suggested above, you could tie it to Resplendence (my suggestion would be to add an ability to Resplendence that makes Noble Sacrifice activate with a 0.5 second cooldown). Alternatively, you could make Noble Sacrifice "bigger." For example, whenever my self-heal comes up, I nearly always use two NSs, followed by the self heal - which works well, but is a few precious seconds when I'm not healing the tank. If Noble Sacrifice took more health and provided more force in a single GCD, then less time would be lost.

As others have said, the enrage timer on this boss is extremely generous. You can get it down easily with just 3 dps. In fact, you should be able to get it down no problem with 2 dps - this fight is quite easy to 6-man (it may even be a little easier than doing it 8-man, since there are less cleanses to worry about). The upshot is that you can get any commando/merc, sage/sorc or scoundrel/operative dps players to respec to heals for the fight. Or you can bring an extra healer just for the fight. As an aside, the fight does seem a little easier for scoundrel/operative healers, since they have the ability to heal on the run better than the other two specs and have energy mechanics that are a little more forgiving for sustained high-intensity heals. Sages can do well if they ensure salvation hits tanks as well as dps, and if they make sure that they cast it immediately after the droid explodes. Commandos and mercs will probably struggle the most with this fight. It can help if you get a ranged dps to shoot the droid as it comes out to try and get it to explode away from the rest of the raid, but the aggro mechanics on the droid are weird and that doesn't always work.

Yep. Pugging 16-man on HM (and SM) is quite easy, since there are enough people to deal with all the interrupts, DoTs and other mechanics. It doesn't matter if a few dps get the kill/interrupt order wrong, you should still be ok. In 8-man, however, it's really, really rough. Even with voice chat, players aren't going to remember a pre-fight briefing that details a strat involving 9 phases. Hell, Operator 9 has effectively only 5 phases (four colors + boss) and getting pugs to remember that is like herding cats. That said, as the operation gets older and a "one true way" of doing the fight is established, it might get easier. In particular, the interrupting of the corruptors, dealing with the dismantler's strong swipe mechanic and cleansing Draxus' DoT are usually the sticking points in pugs. Once people get used to those, it should get easier.

I agree. Really, I don't know why the spikiness problem wasn't just tackled head on, instead of completely re-designing the class over a single issue. Essentially, the problem for shadow tanks is that unmitigated alpha strikes in NiM content can lead to insta-kills because the baseline armor mitigation for shadow tanks is so weak. Mean mitigation is already fine for shadows - better than fine, really. So why not just create a skill that deals with this specific problem? For example, you could make a skill that procs whenever the shadow takes damage from a single attack equalling 40% or more of their max HP. This maybe procs something like a 15% instant increase in armor defense (which has to apply to the attack that procced it), or an instant self heal (done before the "is dead?" check obviously), or maybe a guaranteed 100% shield chance (though there would have to be a limit on the frequency of this). Before the number crunchers leap in, obviously these specific figures are only an example, but it's the kind of solution I'd like to see implemented rather than this heavy-handed approach.

Obviously they would have to balance the numbers properly (the 5% figure was just thrown out there as an example). They could also reduce the efficacy of kinetic ward, for example, while buffing armor defense, which takes away the RNG factor in nightmare content while maintaining mean mitigation. The point is they could have worked with the numbers, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater! Ultimately, I don't doubt that the changes will increase shadow survivability in nightmare operations, but for me it means that shadows will be less fun, and fun is the reason I have stuck with my shadow as my main tank rather than use my guardian, even in HM and NiM ops. It will certainly be less fun for solo content as I mentioned

Not a fan of the loss of self healing. Hate it really, enough to stop me playing my shadow and assassin. It takes away what makes the Shadow/Assassin unique. A better solution would have to get rid of the combat technique self heals and add an extra 5% (or so) armor mitigation, while keeping the harnessed shadow heal. Problem solved, without destroying what makes the shadow unique and fun. I'm especially concerned about how this affects solo play. One of the things I really like about my shadow and assassin tanks is that they are about the only non-healer class where using a non-healer companion is viable and even optimal. The self healing mechanism allows you to run with Nadia, Ashara or another DPS companion without having to stop and use out-of-combat heals after every fight. It allows you to clear solo PvE content at a rate comparable to a dps character, while doing the same on my guardian or powertech tank is an absolute grind that I tend to avoid if I can help it. I know these things aren't really up for a vote, but this seems like the very worst solution they could have come up with. Instead of working with the numbers, looking at how they are building nightmare content (with its current heavy reliance on "alpha strike" mechanics), or coming up with creative solutions to the problem, instead BioWare has gone the "lets just make them like guardians and vanguards" solution. They could have adjusted self heals based on damage taken (maybe big hits proc self heals), made it scale with gear (the better gear you have, the bigger your self heals) or looked at other solutions, but instead they copped out.

Voice chat isn't really about calling out telegraphs and red circles, though. It's used for co-ordination. It's so everyone is on the same page when it comes to the strategy, and so that it can be adjusted on the fly if necessary. For the OP, as others have said, yes, you need to have these programs installed and be willing to run them in order to participate in most HM ops (barring maybe EV and KP). They may not strictly be necessary, but when I'm raid leading I'm not all that inclined to spend ten minutes typing out the Operator 9 strategy every time I run, or dealing with unnecessary wipes just because someone couldn't be bothered installing a free program.

No, that is NOT what people are complaining about. People understand lag. There are two issues, probably related: - An ability is pressed, and the GCD fires, but nothing actually happens. You don't lose the ability, and can use it again once the GCD finishes, but you've effectively wasted a GCD. If you're doing NiM content, that really, really hurts. - A channeled ability (master strike, series of shots etc.) is pressed, and the animation triggers but no damage is actually being done. Again, you lose the GCD, although the ability itself does not go on cooldown. Effectively you're getting an "empty" animation. This is perhaps even more annoying, since you may not immediately realize that it has happened - the animation is going and you think all is good in the world, until you see that the ability is not doing damage or has not gone on cooldown. I would guess that Marb above is right - that it has something to do with client-server communications, where your client thinks you have activated the ability and thus triggers the GCD/animation, while the server does not recognize it happening. It may have to do with hitting an ability in the lag window between when your client thinks the last GCD finished and when the server thinks it did. It does seem to get worse with higher lag; I didn't experience it much on Dalborra at 15ms lag, but I get it a lot on Harbinger at 250ms. Whether or not they can fix the network code is another matter. They may no longer have the expertise in house to do that, and it may actually be there as a tool against cheaters using modified clients. That said, it would be good if they could invest some resources into looking into it. It's maddening to lose dps in NiM content when enrage timers are already so tight.

Of course we'd prefer new raids to revamped old raids. But there's no equivalence here. A new raid takes an entire team of people weeks or months to develop. Rejigging the older raids should take a developer a few days to re-adjust the numbers. That's why people suggest updating the old raids - it gives us more stuff to do with minimal effort from BioWare.