Just had a group that made me think of this thread... for context, I'm playing on my level 75 shadow and get a pop for Spammer Station. There's a level 68 vanguard, a level 75 commando, and some jedi that jumped ship after the first big pull. After the roaming gold droid and the two silvers by the doorway, I pull the first big group of droids. All but one of the golds go down because I didn't pop my DCDs in time - the commando did finish off all but one of the droids though. This is when the other person dropped ship, so I pulled out Nadia. Everyone rezzed and I went to finish off the last gold droid, but then noticed that the troopers weren't following. Turns out the vanguard went AFK, according to the commando - this is when I noticed they were from the same guild, which by the looks of it was a roleplay oriented guild or something. The vanguard came back within a few minutes, and while making our way to the first boss I noticed the commando was spamming Medical Probe a LOT - trying to be helpful, I suppose, but he was draining a lot of his energy as Gunnery. When it came time to repair the drill, it was first thought nobody had scavenging UNTIL the commando went around and pulled the other mob group in the "normal path," and the vanguard thought it would be a good time to show that he could, in fact, repair the drill. It took another minute to clear yet another mob group pulled by the commando to take the shortcut up to the first boss, which went down without issue aside from the vanguard dying once and being battle rezzed. For that part right after where you have to go around the two Advose in the middle of the hallway, somebody misstepped and pulled that group. No big deal, that happens quite often. However, when I try to mez *that* melee mob to bypass the next group at the end of the tunnel, somebody pulls the Advose dudes - no problem, they're a quick clear anyway. No slice for the elevator, so we make our way up the ramp, clearing Advose and droids as we go. Then I notice something interesting when pulling the group at the top of the ramp, where there's that door where the three silver droids come out of. I down all three droids relatively quickly with the help of the commando and Nadia, (who was set to heal) and two of the standard Advose enemies, but then I notice that the other silver Advose who jumped onto the vanguard still isn't dead - in fact, he has half of his health left. Nothing that a Shadow Strike or two can't fix, but I found that low DPS odd. We start fighting the second boss. I noticed a silver Advose run into the boss room while we were fighting and thought we had missed one from the earlier groups of four; no, it turns out somebody pulled the champion turret outside. After finishing off Vorgan I go outside to clean up the turret with Nadia in tow; the troopers follow as well (note that the commando is still spamming med probe in between and during the trash pulls, although not during the boss fight.) I'm fast enough to switch tacticals after the conversation and put to sleep the two snipers flanking the doorway, and fortunately, nobody pulls that trash group. It's when we get to the two turrets by the bridge that I notice only Nadia is meleeing the turrets with me... I look back while still fighting and see the vanguard spamming Hammer Shot (basic attack) on the turret, standing next to the commando, followed by an Ion Storm that didn't hit anything and yet more Hammer Shot spam, all while standing more than 10m away from the turrets. "Vanguard is meant to be a melee class," I say in chat after we finish off the turrets (and Nadia nearly dying because I set her to damage.) No response from the vanguard, who has been silent this whole FP. The commando did say some stuff earlier, but nothing after or in response to this either. The vanguard continues to spam Hammer Shot and the occasional Ion Storm on the final trash groups while the commando actually does hit the right abilities, albeit spamming Med Probe liberally. And then there's Mr. Your Weakness Is In Your Blood... no wipes there, but the vanguard did mix his Hammer Shot recipe up with some Shoulder Cannon. No AoEs besides Ion Storm, just spam. Commando actually does stuff without spamming Med Probe (but ran to the koltos several times when we had a lot of health.) Battleford Kreshan goes down quickly, having failed the Supreme Warmaster for the 11785th time, and I kept tabs on Nadia throughout the fight to make sure she didn't stand in a grenade pile while healing. Left that strange group after that... was very odd.

This is one long thread, 1000 pages of replies now! Yesterday morning, I joined a PuG for Dread Palace GF. As far as PuGs go, this was one of the smoother ones, but still chaotic regardless. The group leader, a healer, disconnected in the middle of Bestia. The other healer was left to solo heal the rest of the fight and Tyrans as well. Between that time and the group leader reconnecting on the second go against Calphy, these things happened: We wiped on trash because someone pulled the groups on Calphy's and Raptus's doors early. On the first Calphy run, a sorc pulled the tank into the wrong portal when it was time to split by frames. Since this was the left frame that the tank was pulled from and the healer was still MIA, that left me and another DPS on the left portal. That, and the other guy forgot about the crystals. Calphy wiped the floor with us. Second try we managed to do it, with no inexplicable sorc pulls in the middle of the fight. Now, there's a newer dps in this group who did run DP previously, but stated that the previous group didn't complete it. So mid-fight on Raptus, I noticed he had taken a purple crystal: Me: "<New guy>, take the red crystal." Him: "IM[sic] COLORBLIND" Someone else: "The one on the right." Due to the crystal confusion and one of the healers taking the wrong crystal as well, Raptus got buffed twice on the first set of challenges. Everything went smoothly the next time around, fortunately, and Raptus didn't bug out like he usually does. I explained the fight for Dread Council, and aside from losing aggro on Calphy twice (Dread Font pools went everywhere,) we got it in one try.

Figured I'd add more of my weird experiences here. I was the weird one in a particular SM Explosive Conflict - one that was particularly explosive, for me at least. Someone pulled that group of adds off to the side in the trench area for no good reason. I saw this as an opportunity to unleash my AoE on them LoSed around the corner... but this proved to be a fatal mistake, as I didn't realize the tank was still busy with the others. Fried commando, anyone? I'm not sure why I thought climbing out of the trench was a good idea, but that also caused my character to be sent sky-high. Getting my mouse button stuck on the minefield boss didn't help, either... tripped more than one of them. Formed a PuG group for Eyeless yesterday; after waiting a while for a tank, one of the DPS got fed up and decided to switch toons to one. Unfortunately, Eyeless doesn't have any bolster, and the tank, in iRating 193 gear, proved to be squishier than squishy. A lot of credit goes to the healers, who somehow both managed to stay alive through the whole thing in this cycle: Tank dies. I, as DwT, taunt the boss away from one of the other DPS. A DPS is picked off, starting at around 40% HP when the adds begin to stack up due to lack of DPS. I exhaust all my DCDs dragging it around the room while the others try their best to DPS it. I die, but by that time the tank is rezzed and does pretty much the same thing before dying and I'm rezzed back up. Rinse and repeat, until the part when another DwT manages to keep the boss on the move and my shadow chases its tail, healers scrambling to keep us both up. Needless to say, that was a disaster.

A few more stories: MM Lost Island. All level 75s: me (commando healer), commando dps, shadow tank, and sentinel dps. Trouble started at the first boss. I think I was the weird one here at first, because I forgot I was using my blaster rifle instead of my cannon, so Propulsion Round wasn't available. The generator droid boss places the electric circle on me, I spam the keybind for the backwards leap and nothing happens because that ability isn't useable with a rifle. It was quite shocking as to what happened next, but we cleared it on the second try. Sav-Rak also resulted in a wipe the first time because the DPS were new to the fp and didn't understand that all three pipes had to be continuously channeled simultaneously, so I walked them through the mechanics. Last boss went down first try after a lengthy explanation, although the burn phase was pretty close. All in all, took almost an hour to clear the whole dungeon. MM Depths of Manaan. When I joined as dps on commando, the first boss was already defeated (apparently somebody left.) Now, let me just say that I absolutely despise Ortuno on MM, but decided to roll with it anyway. Come Ortuno's fight, and the healer goes splat after the first Flow and set of adds, followed by the rest of the group not long after. Second try results in the same thing, so at that point I give the healer's gear a look (level 71 scoundrel): Rating 180-something, a mix of greens and blues with one purple from who knows where. The scoundrel was profusely apologizing and volunteered to leave, but the vanguard tank suggested we give it one more try. While I did queue as DPS, I respecced to healer to see if that would solve anything while the scoundrel changed to dps: apparently not, as the third attempt entailed, being another wipe. At that point, the scoundrel left, and we decided to try it again with the tank's Elara as a dps. Predictably, she died in the first Flow, but we managed to pull through with the three of us (sage dps was the other.) Near the end of the fight, someone else joined, but we then spent the next five minutes trying to figure out how to get them to us, including asking them zoning in and out of the instance - turns out the entryway to Ortuno's room doesn't reopen once he's defeated, likely a bug. In the end, that other person had to leave. After a while, we got another dps who was able to finish the rest of the fp with us, no other problems on the final boss. All in all, I believe at least six different people were in that instance at one point or another as part of the group, maybe more if someone left before the first boss.

Last night, a Dread Palace group finder PuG. It took nearly an hour to assemble the group, which consisted of my commando, two guildies (one of who was a vanguard tank), another commando and sage (both dps), and some other randoms. Early on, there were already some signs of tension while the group was forming - the other commando and another sage dps apparently got into a fight in their whispers. I didn't catch the whole argument, of course, but I glimpsed a few misplaced messages. On the other hand, the tank I recruited didn't know a lick of Dread Palace and was undergeared, but since it was SM, we decided to roll anyway. The first three bosses went down fine, with the sage and commando continuing to argue mid-fight, this time out in the ops chat about someone's mother. Then at Raptus, the chaos started. The tank failed the first challenge and didn't even go through the challenge portal (our shadow DwT was the one who Raptus chased around and who did most of the "tanking." Raptus proceeds to Force Execute one of our healers out of the arena, while simultaneously wiping the floor with both the tank and two other DPS. Fortunately, we were able to push through and down the boss before a wipe occurred. Sage then proceeded to complain that nobody rezzed them while we were regrouping. Well, I tried, but ended up falling off the map myself while trying to get line of sight. It was at this point that the tank dropped group without another word and went to do something on fleet. Simultaneously, the sage then starts complaining about not having had a chance to get the loot, to which someone else points out that they can just go back in the portal to get it. After a while of clearing trash to the Dread Council, we get a guardian tank who we finish the op with. Of course, somebody complains about the low frequency of ops-exclusive set bonuses at the end... a position that I could actually agree with, for once.

New one today, not so much weird but there is one fp that stood out. A few months ago, I joined a VM Rakata group that was me (level 70 commando) and a trio of guys ranging from 16 to 29. Pulled them through Rhekta and Rand, but ultimately they couldn't get to koltos fast enough on Darok and Arkous, and after three tries of me trying to facetank the fight for five minutes straight with the occasional teammate up, we had to call it quits. Two Depths of Manann this weekend and the last. Both times I got called out for "unnecessarily kicking* the kolto cans, even though we had already finished the trash in that area. Side note: Attempted to set up a pug for Gods (big mistake.) Got past Tyth and A&E. latter with only 3 people left towards the end, but wiped four times on Nahut because nobody really got the mechanics, even though I outlined pretty much the whole fight after two explanations. Tank left in a rage because nobody was reading my explanations, and the group fell apart after that.

A few stories to tell, from Friday to today. Went into a DvL boss group at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. We spent 30 minutes looking for a tank, and when we finally got one and were about to initiate summons for the rest of the group, someone right-clicked the boss and fired. A quick refresher on DvL bosses: They don't respawn after you kill them, at least not within the same duration as normal world bosses. Luckily, we were able to find another in the Black Sun area and downed it easily. After that, did a Czerka Core Meltdown on VM. Duneclaw was irritating, wiped on it five or six times because the other DPS were undergeared and underleveled despite bolster. Following that, burned through a Nathema Conspiracy as healer (I can spec between heal and DPS on my commando main) and wiped twice on Gemini 16 before wiping the floor with Atrius on the third try. MM Taral V as healer the next day, nothing special. Built up a 24-man WB group for Ossus, went after droid first. R8-X8 decided to reset at 40% because some dps were standing too close to the door. Switched instances, did it again without complications (except for me dying three times in a row when coming back due to INCINERATE.) Bug went off without a hitch. Then Dread Palace LBLO on my shadow tank, and despite being horrendous at tanking, the nature of the encounter made it easy. This morning, jumped in for an EV. Here's where it gets interesting. After the first boss, there was a bit of a debate whether to skip or to run through, since we didn't have a stealther, A vanguard-commando tank-healer combo made it through to get the speeder up. Gharj was pulled while the offtank (the vanguard) was back at spawn due to falling into the lava in the preceding cave. He eventually made it when the boss was half down. Walked into a gold acklay in the jungle area, and died promptly because I was a healer. Nobody rezzed me and proceeded to burn through the pylon boss - or at least attempted to. North group died and yelled at each other. Someone in the south group interjected in, and an argument about gearing and NiM EV back in the day broke out. Eventually they cleared the pylon boss... and I only got revived because the lootbox teleported the entire group to the vault entrance. A Sage didn't know how the Infernal Council worked, and after finishing off his enemy, decided to hit everything in sight with Overload and other attacks. Second try, someone somehow pulled aggro on two bosses and we had to reset. Third try, a tank was somewhat slow on finishing his off, so we stood around and fired off single attacks every minute while waiting for him to finish. Someone fell on the ledge leading into Soa's room and had to speeder back. Maintank guardian died by not being patient for heals and jumping during the first platform phase, or he may have just fallen. Another guardian dps also met the same fate, and the other commando healer died because the maintank was down and he somehow drew aggro. The maintank was rezzed, but died again due to ball lightning (I rezzed him early on, but he didn't accept it for about a minute and the time I noticed him, he was on the other side of the room), and the other healer was already dead. From there on, the offtank vanguard helped the remaining five of us through the second platform phase and final phases. The whole EV run this morning took less than an hour, but it was still quite interesting.

Wiped 6 times on Cartel Warlords yesterday. Oh, it was fun. Everyone was following proper kill order, but we weren't dealing out enough DPS to catch T'Chuk before his hard enrage set in. Finally, after one of the commando healers decided to do some more DPS on the side, we managed to pull it off.

Two this time around. No, three. This was a week or two ago. Crisis on Umbara MM, jumped in to find a group at the last boss. Wiped once, but then crushed it. Turns out they had been at the spider walker for 90 minutes wiping constantly. Lost Island MM, from the beginning. First boss went down without trouble and as did Lokin, but Project Sav-Rak... well, let's break it down. Wipe 1 was due to Sav Rak Smash knocking everyone away because we didn't realize we were supposed to be inside his hitbox (sans me for Hold the Line.) Wipe 2 same thing. Wipe 3 we decided to let tank take him at edge and move to middle for Sav Rak Smash, but that didn't work out. Wipe 4 we lost one at a 3rd Smash and came within 50k of beating him. Wipe 5 same as 1 and 2. It took six tries to finish him off. Hammer Station VM. Came across a guy with nothing in his gear... no mods, no nothing. He had no head slot, and no bracers slot. And he was level 44. A Guardian, with the starter lightsaber. Turns out he didn't know how to use outfit designer and used that gear because he thought it looked cool and couldn't decide which to wear - luckily, he had some story gear with stats. Another group member took him to fleet afterward to show him the adaptive gear vendor and mod vendors.

I just remembered this run. "The Eternity Vault That Took An Eternity" (more like three hours.) GF SM Eternity Vault. There was nothing unpleasant about the group, it just was an interesting run. Slip-up number one: I forget about the turrets outside the entrance and charge up the hill, and die within moments because I didn't understand who was shooting at me. That got a "lol" from someone on the group. During the Annhilator droid boss, when it says "I have been armed with 26 distinct weapons systems", someone said "I have been taught 32 distinct saber strikes" (presumably a sent.) That got me snickering. The shadow who was assigned to stealth to bring up the speeder had done just so a long time ago and had forgotten how to do it, so after he died a few times, we decided to clear. However, before that, someone stepped too close to those champion probe droids in the central bridge area and we ended up wiping. After finally managing to down groups of trash in the prison area, we got to the the lava caves. Tank says "knock dogs off ledge." So we did... but it was the wrong ledge. Apparently, most of us thought the ledge referred to the ledge in the lava cave instead of the ledge , and there were more dogs down there... so we ended up aggroing an entire pack of platinum pooches. Somehow, we managed to kite the dogs out of the cave in groups of one and two at a time, and I stayed outside with a Guardian to knock the 101 Dalmatians off the prison ledge. Afterwards, while we were waiting for the shadow to finish stealthing through, I /e fell off the cliff, which got a laugh. I also happened to be fooling around near the edge, and guess what happened? Gharj went down without any trouble. Then we got to the jungle cats, and ended up having to clear them because a sage couldn't make the ledge jump. Getting to pillar puzzle boss: "Does anyone know puzzle?" "I do" (north pillar) *south pillar bracket is quiet* Eventually, 15 minutes later, someone finishes researching it and gets the solution. Rest of the puzzle goes smoothly. Infernal Council: First time we have to reset because the mando healer (not me, I'm dps) was new and didn't know that Successive Treatment (big channeled healing ability) healed other players in range. The second time, I accidentally hit the button for Mortar Volley on someone else's boss, and the Sorceror ended up chasing me all the way out into the jungle until it finally reset Third time: Same healer somehow died. Swap bosses. Fourth time we finally succeeded. By this time, it was more than 2 1/2 hours in, and there was a wait in Soa's room because someone went AFK. I missed the jump on one of the falling platforms in the first phase and had to be rezzed. It's always the first phase... All in all, quite an entertaining run. I was quite pleased with everyone's patience to deal with the rest of the group over a run that should have taken less than half the time it really did to complete.

Now that you mention it, I do remember having an EC group a while back where someone couldn't communicate with the rest of the group in the /ops channel, but it worked in the ops officers channel. It may have been a misunderstanding on my part, but that sentinel should have been told otherwise to not attack the nexus during last phase (nobody seemed to stop him, but the rest of the group seemed to know what they were doing.)

The Story of the Silent Operation Group Joined an in-progress Group Finder Gods from the Machine run earlier today after someone was asking around in fleet for a DPS because their other one DC'd right as they got to Tyth. I jump into the op, and say hello. Nobody says a thing, not even the guy who invited me (who was talking earlier.) I proceed to the boss room where everyone is waiting, and someone initiates a ready check. One healer doesn't respond. There isn't so much as a poke emote as the ready check is initiated several times over by different people, while the giant droid with anger issues stares at us, perhaps boiling over inside. Eventually, the healer returns, and Tyth goes down without a hitch. In between, through clearing trash, I realize that I don't have the op mission, and ask for someone to share it after we've reached the next boss room, which is Aviela/Esne. No response. Someone accidentally fires at one of the setpieces when there are still players on their way to the room, and the tanks promptly jump off the cliff, presumably to restart the fight. Everyone else either does the same or /stuck. Either way, nobody says even a yip as we respawn in the starting area and head back to the room. I politely ask for class buffs once we have all regrouped, and get neither a response nor a buff in turn, and another request for the operation mission is met with silence. We start the fight anyway, and we wipe in the last phase because someone focused and destroyed the nexus early, giving the bosses their overdrive buff. There was no sort of communication between the group that I could see, even when group members went down there was no "don't/do attack this/that." This is how the last phase went: Me: "Don't attack nexus, bosses will get buffed" One sentinel with 230 rating: *continues to attack nexus* Rest of group: *silence through everyone wiping until I'm the only one left and jump off* After the wipe, we tried again. This time, we wipe again despite the nexus not being targeted this time around. No communication. I decided to leave the group and explained to them my reason for leaving. I don't know whether they were in voice chat in discord or elsewhere, as everyone was from a different guild.