I do not post on these forums because I don't want to add to the constant rants and whining that persist in these threads but I have to say I do have a right to complain a bit as after last night's run ( First time since 1.2 ) in Black Talon HM, that I'm fairly disappointed in a change in this boss. GXR-7 is now unable to be interrupted and to go along with this he puts a buff on the tank, which makes him ignore the tank and lash out at the highest person on the threat list. Top that off his enrage timer is very short just like quite a few other bosses in this game.

Problem I have with this is the fact that the way SWTOR designs their bosses, it requires DPS to go ALL OUT all the time, just to have a chance at beating an enrage timer. Then they make it so that you have to run and hide from a boss to not die, lengthening the fight. This boss I agree before 1.2 needed a bit of a buff because he was a joke, but this is a bit ridiculous. I've seen complaints about this one on other forums as well and even got the response back from SWTOR that it's working as designed. Well yes, it is, it's really upsetting a lot of people. So if that's your goal? You're succeeding very well.

The reason I'm a bit upset about this one is the fact that BT is the starting HM, it's not supposed to be requiring a fully Raid Geared group to bring down a boss in this place. Trust when I say our group was geared far more than was needed to be in BT, we just had not done it in a while and wanted to go in on our Sorcs and we took a Juggernaut and two Sorc DPS and a Sorc Healer. We wiped so many times on this boss because the tank cannot keep aggro because of the buff. When he drops aggro and goes after others, he kills them pretty fast and that's even with bubbles up, standing in healing circles and so on. We tried hiding, but that makes it hard on the healer to keep LoS on members of the group and our tank as well.

My recommendation if you're going to make a boss this hard to deal with, double his enrage timer or remove it all together as this is a taxing enough fight without having an extremely short enrage timer. SWTOR seems to love extremely short Enrage timers in their Flashpoints for 4 man runs. I've been in Operations that wasn't this big a pain and that's just not right. These don't give anything but Tionese level drops, it's not supposed to be that difficult to complete, challenging yes, but not this big a pain.

What you've done is pretty much made it so no one but the extremely well geared ( Which don't need that place to begin with ) skip this boss and never do him, he's a complete waste of time and not worth the hassle. So it's up to you, if you want people to take the challenge of beating GXR-7 more, then I'd take a closer look at what you've done or leave it and I'm sure a lot of us will leave him alone all together.

Now I'm sure some on here are going to flame me for this post, saying we should learn how to play and all that good nonsense but I assure you, our group knows exactly what we're doing in this game and these aren't our mains we went in on, we just wanted to have a bit of fun and ran into this. Sorry if I'm adding to all the whining and such, but after the response I got from SWTOR in game about this complaint I wanted to post this here so that others can chime in if they're having issues with this fight.

Actually hard mode flashpoints are not meant for fresh 50s. Fresh 50s need to gear up before they even attempt Black Talon HM.

I know you are expecting a lot of L2P comments and how hard mode is not hard at all. Not going to give you more of these. As this is a bonus boss that drops a Tionese level earpiece, just skip him and go to the last boss for your columni bracers. You can come back to him after you are better geared.

Is it upsetting for a group of undergeared players? Is the encounter overtuned for the intended audience? Maybe. But given that it is an optional boss (can be skipped entirely without missing out on final reward) I wouldn't complain. We skip bonus content all the time when we feel that the reward/effort is not worth it.

Actually hard mode flashpoints are not meant for fresh 50s. Fresh 50s need to gear up before they even attempt Black Talon HM.

 

I know you are expecting a lot of L2P comments and how hard mode is not hard at all. Not going to give you more of these. As this is a bonus boss that drops a Tionese level earpiece, just skip him and go to the last boss for your columni bracers. You can come back to him after you are better geared.

 

Is it upsetting for a group of undergeared players? Is the encounter overtuned for the intended audience? Maybe. But given that it is an optional boss (can be skipped entirely without missing out on final reward) I wouldn't complain. We skip bonus content all the time when we feel that the reward/effort is not worth it.

I don't have the links handy, but dev comments say otherwise....and that is that HM flashpoints are designed to be completed by fresh 50s. Though even their comments acknowledge gear is important, and the better geared, the better the chance for success.

(Edit to add: Fresh to me doesn't mean a player who skipped Corellia, hasn't done a single daily, hasn't crafted or bought any 49 / 50 artifact gear, or hasn't bought any 50 PVP gear. Obviously the 50 HM flashpoints aren't tuned for someone who is still in level 30 gear that leveled through space missions.)

And not to knock the OP, but unless the group is significantly under-geared, this boss shouldn't be that big of a deal, even with someone playing hide and seek with the boss. Just try to keep movement to a minimum so the rest of the group not running behind objects can keep up damage.

If the whole group is chasing the boss who is chasing the player with agro who is running in a giant circle or all over the room, and no one is keeping up damage, then you might hit the enrage.

We brought in a fresh 50 from our guild, and by fresh I mean he literally just hit 50 a few minutes b4 joining us, we usually skip the boss because we try to do BT as fast as we can, but since he needed gear we did him, and for first time since pre 1.2. He is tougher because you cant interupt him, but we did it with 2 Maras, I was one of them, and the Fresh 50 was a Merc DPS and Ops Healer. No true tank, since everything in there is pretty much face roll, but we got him down pretty fast, just kept changing threat whenever he was dealin out the damage, Force Camo is your friend, you can still blind the boss which helps as well.

It just takes some getting use to, but you will get it as with everything the first time you encounter something or something that has changed, buffed, nerfed etc. It just means learning new tactics, I actually like this boss now, he was a joke b4.

I don't have the links handy, but dev comments say otherwise....and that is that HM flashpoints are designed to be completed by fresh 50s. Though even their comments acknowledge gear is important, and the better geared, the better the chance for success.

 

(Edit to add: Fresh to me doesn't mean a player who skipped Corellia, hasn't done a single daily, hasn't crafted or bought any 49 / 50 artifact gear, or hasn't bought any 50 PVP gear. Obviously the 50 HM flashpoints aren't tuned for someone who is still in level 30 gear that leveled through space missions.)

Ok then let me clarify. My definition of a fresh 50 is someone who has just hit level 50, but not gearing himself/herself to level 50 yet. Which means this person is wearing quest greens around level 45 to 47 or so, with some pieces like earpiece/implants which are lagging behind on the level.

Unless carried by geared players in the group, this fresh 50 will likely hit enrage or not survive the droid boss if this person is the tank.

My suggestion is still the same, if your group has a hard time with it, skip it. He is called bonus boss for a reason. Of course if you want the challenge, you can actually learn how to fight him properly and how to manage his damage, based on your group makeup.

The reason your tanks are losing aggro is b/c you aren't interrupting the droid's channeled melee ability. If he gets this ability off on your tank, it resets the tanks threat level to zero. Before someone posts ”but you can't interrupt him”, yes you can. You can't interrupt Power Blast, the ranged attack but you absolutely can interrupt the channeled melee attack and I highly recommend you do so.

Sounds like a L2P issue to me.