Hard Mode Flashpoints

[Nebu]

Folks,

I've been starting to run the lower tier hard mode instances lately and the progressing is pretty interesting.  When we started to do the higher tier flashpoints, it seems that they are more easily accomplished with some group builds than others. I was wondering what experiences many of you have had.  

Juggernaut (DPS), Powertech (Tank), Sniper (DPS), and Merc (Healer).  

The biggest problem that we've encountered was that of heat generation in teh Merc being to great for some boss fights for the healer to keep up.  When we swap out a Sorc for the Merc, the fights become much easier.

Second, my sniper spec seems to matter on some encounters.  When bosses have special attacks that count attackers within a range window, marks spec sniper is almost mandatory.  It minimizes the occurrence of special attacks while allowing for burst dps.  This sucks because I pvp most of the time and prefer a lethality spec.  It's almost to the point that I want to respec just for some flashpoints to make them easier.  I hate this.

Any advice or issues that you've encountered?  Let's discuss.    

[01101010]

*crickets* 

[Ingmar]

I am still waiting for people to hit 50!

[Draegan]

If people feel like helping me out, I'm attempting to compile a loot list for each hardmode.  If you don't mind, could you take a screenshot, or just jot down the name of the boss and the loot they drop and either PM here or email me (Draegan@rerollz.com) I would be very grateful!

[eldaec]

How much poopsocking do the last 10 levels entail, levelling seemed to slow up a lot in the 30s, I'm kind of expecting 40-50 to take longer than 20-40?

[Ingmar]

I didn't notice any particular slowdown, but I was grouped basically the whole time.

[Azuredream]

I only did a few of the hard mode flashpoints, looking for groups is such a pain I don't bother. A problem my groups pretty much always ran into was that the DPS was awful or the enrage timers are very unforgiving. I think I'll wait for the inevitable nerf before I go back to do them. They're pretty much like BC heroics difficulty-wise.

[Amaron]

I've tanked a few now and the tuning is still  .    Esseles hard mode rarely even has 2 elites in the same pull.   Basically the whole thing is still 2 man except for the bosses.    Most of the bosses were reasonably difficult.   Then all the sudden the mandalorian captain is nutpunching my full champ gear group out of nowhere.   No combat log  has us looking up what his abilities do and a few more wipes to kill him.    So we finish him and then the second half of the instance is a cake walk in comparison.   Other flashpoints were more of the same.

TLDR:

- No combat log is full on retard.
- Wait for the patch.

[kildorn]

How much poopsocking do the last 10 levels entail, levelling seemed to slow up a lot in the 30s, I'm kind of expecting 40-50 to take longer than 20-40?

Belsavis was a bit convoluted, but worked. Voss felt like a bit of a slog but mostly because I was 2 levels under the quests, so it was a planet I didn't really like the storyline for + harder than normal encounters. Last planet was a breeze.

There's a slowdown from 40-50 compared to say 20-30, but not that much. Questing keeps you leveling at a decent clip and I found the story to break things up enough to make me forget that I was killing 500 fozzles.

[Nebu]

How much poopsocking do the last 10 levels entail, levelling seemed to slow up a lot in the 30s, I'm kind of expecting 40-50 to take longer than 20-40?

One of the things I've enjoyed most about this game was the evenness of the pace after level 30.  I felt that 30-40 took about the same time as 40-50.  Perhaps I was enjoying the story enough to not notice. 

What I didn't like was the excessive amount of running for the non-story quests.  Hub-to-hub-to-hub starts to grate on me after a while.

[eldaec]

When you start managing the quick travel cooldown more closely than any other, you something is not quite right.

[MournelitheCalix]

I am faced with the same problem.  My guild was doing hard mode flashpoint and struggling with me being a merc healer.  Switched to sorcerers and were having no problem now.  I pretty much gave up on my 50 bodyguard and am leveling an assassin.  I am really amazed at how easy it's been to kill things.  Even more amazed at how hard it's been to find a group as a dps.  I find myself really appreciating the wow group building system more every day I watch my flashpoints go from red to yellow to grey and I realize that I won't be doing that one either with my dps character.

[Azuredream]

I did a couple more HM flashpoints on my sorceress today, Directive 7 and False Emperor. I think the only two HMs I take issue with are Boarding Party and Battle of Ilum for being so schizophrenic in their boss difficulty. I hope they smooth out the difficulty as more people start hitting 50 and venturing into the HMs. They also need to be more careful about making their fights melee friendly.

[Zetor]

What's with every single HM boss having a timed hard enrage? All this does is punish the group (and especially the healer) for underperforming DPS.

[Ironwood]

I think they put that in to punish the group for low dps.

[Zetor]

I think I get that part  I just think it's lazy design *especially for 4-man dungeons* (I'd be kinda-sorta-maybe OK with each operation boss having a hard enrage) and makes pugging HMs particularly notfun -- if you get sub-par dps in your group, you may as well give up and spend another 1 hour spamming lfg.

[caladein]

It's not so much lazy as the only way to make a damage dealer-dependent check in a game with infinite healers.  The other ways you can mix them up, like with "Must kill this new add in 25 seconds or it blows up." stuff, bring their own problems.

You can argue the merits of overall throughput "Do not pass Go.  Do not collect $200."-style mechanics (I'm weakly in support of them) or having radically different healer resource mechanics (which I think they cocked up in a rather predictably manner), but I think we're stuck with them.

[01101010]

These are the times when I harken back to the days spent in FFXI where fights would take literally hours, but it was the boss and no trash along the road. I may be broken, but I miss those times. Now it is one big frantic "GO GO GO!" mentality and MOAR DoTs! than anything. Feels lazy to simply put in a timer which is what your group actually ends up battling rather than the mob. Meh.

[amiable]

It's not so much lazy as the only way to make a damage dealer-dependent check in a game with infinite healers.  The other ways you can mix them up, like with "Must kill this new add in 25 seconds or it blows up." stuff, bring their own problems.

It's also problematic that they set up 2 of the 3 healing classes to be able to heal moderately indefinitely and burst heal for 10 seconds every 2 minutes and then set up practically every fight to be 2 minutes of pure burst healing.   If one thing goes wrong and my energy falls below 60 I have 2 options:

1.  Do 5-10 seconds of weak healing  with my terrible energy regen heal and hope for free heals or
2.  Pop my 2 minute cool down to fill back up.

On the flip side if the incoming damage is light or moderate I can heal literally to the end of time.  I haven't hit hardmode flashpoints yet and at level 46 my wife and I have just started encountering 4 man heroics that we have had some difficulty soloing so I don't really know how it will shake out, my only experience is form leveling dungeons.   having said that our guilds sorceror healer seems to be having a much better time of it!

[Fabricated]

Do any gear stats actually affect heat/ammo regeneration?

[Fordel]

Do any gear stats actually affect heat/ammo regeneration?

Not directly, there is no MP5 or Spirit equivalent or whatever.


There are talents that cause things to regen ammo, like my tanking trooper will regen ammo on a shield block. There is a cooldown for that regen though.

[Fabricated]

Then what's the point of alacrity rating for trooper healing gear again? Doesn't that mean you maybe can land clutch heals a bit easier, but you're still pretty much limited by your heat/ammo?

I can't think of a decent fix...if you made alacrity or some stat increase heat/ammo regeneration, then mudflation will render them broken as hell even faster than it would a regular "MP" style healer.

[Fordel]

There isn't much point. It's the same with +defense on trooper tanking gear.

While not entirely useless, the benefit from shield/absorb is much greater, thanks to our talents and stuff.

[Mrbloodworth]

Slight derail.

What the hell is "alacrity"? And why is it in my skill tree, but i cant find any such stat in my paperdoll?

[Fordel]

Haste, under 'Activation Speed' in the Tech/Force category on your doll, you may need to use a dropdown menu if you are on ranged/melee tab.

[Nebu]

So... some serious design flaws in these 4 mans. 

1) There are 3 healers in game: Empire side: Merc, Operative, and Sorc, Rep side: Scoundrel, Commando, Sage

- Only Sorc/Sage can heal well for the encounter duration.  Also too little AE healing available to heal other party members when the encounters do their specials.  You really need to use gimicks to beat many of the encounters in the second tier hard modes.

2) With the length of the fights and the mobility required, Snipers/Gunslingers need Marksman dps, but can't go down the tree because they need to move so much.  Some encounters require the 35 meter range for maximum effectiveness, but demand 30m skills to complete.  It's very odd.

3) Bugs bugs and more broken bugs.  Even when you do an encounter perfectly, the bosses can still bug.  I won't go into details due to spoilers.

Seems you need the right group build, good gear, AND the encounter to not bug mid fight.  It's a mess and completely stupid in a game that takes so little time to get to the endgame.

[Zetor]

I guess crit is sort of a "mana regen stat" in that it gives you bigger heals so you don't need to cast as much - ditto with force / tech power. This is kinda "duh" though.

Sages/inqs also get a talent that allows them to use their lifetap (health->force) skill for free and without the force regeneration penalty... when they get a crit on their 3-second channeled-heal-that-has-a-shortish-cooldown. Of course there's another talent that increases the crit chance of that channel by 25% if they cast the HOT first (which makes a crit very likely as you are getting 4 ticks of the heal during the channel), but there ya go.  

[Nebu]

Speaking of sages/sorcs, I've been leveling one the last few days and Oh My God... Why don't all classes have power regeneration rates like these two?  I can spam spells for 5 mins straight without running out of power.  My scout uses a full power bar in 6 abilities. 

Serious balance issues.

[Zetor]

It's pretty crazy. My sage is only level 36, but I already have almost all of the tools I need to do well: reliable mana* regen on a short cooldown (see above), a strong absorb shield, a HOT, a very efficient channeled heal, and the obligatory small heal / big heal combo. Only thing I'm missing is my AOE heal, which is going to be the 31 point tree ability so yeah. I've actually been able to DPS most of the time during leveling flashpoints (including the crazy expensive forcequake AOE to wipe out groups of weak mobs) and only using my shield/HOT/channel with the occasional big heal... only had serious mana issues during bosses with heavy AE damage.

Of course I haven't played a healing commando or scoundrel type yet (my level 13 operative doesn't count) so no idea how their regen stacks up. From the abilities / trees it looks like the operative/scoundrels at least need to be using some damage abilities in order to get decent energy regen? That sounds like it can get annoying.

* yeah yeah force whatever.  

[Nebu]

At level 15, my sorc is putting up over 150k damage and 60k heals in the warfronts.  At best, my champion geared sniper can do about 300k and has to manage power and a HELL of a lot more abilities.

[Draegan]

The Sorc/Sage has been OP since very early beta.  I didn't want to play one because I knew everyone else was going to play one.

I started a BH to heal, got him to 41 and realized that his healing tools were absolutely terrible.  When I can't keep a full geared tank companion alive from two silver mobs, there is an issue.

I'm rolling an Operative right now, level 30.  I have no experience in how he plays yet healing, but we'll see.

[Ingmar]

I think I get that part  I just think it's lazy design *especially for 4-man dungeons* (I'd be kinda-sorta-maybe OK with each operation boss having a hard enrage) and makes pugging HMs particularly notfun -- if you get sub-par dps in your group, you may as well give up and spend another 1 hour spamming lfg.

Just like if you get a bad tank or healer. Everyone should have to contribute, I don't think that's bad design at all.

[Mrbloodworth]

Haste, under 'Activation Speed' in the Tech/Force category on your doll, you may need to use a dropdown menu if you are on ranged/melee tab.

Thanks.
So its not listed as "alacrity"?. It does what exactly?

[01101010]

Haste, under 'Activation Speed' in the Tech/Force category on your doll, you may need to use a dropdown menu if you are on ranged/melee tab.

Thanks.
So its not listed as "alacrity"?. It does what exactly?

Reduces cast time and speeds up channeling. I was trying to stack alacrity earlier in the game with mods from the comm vendor. I can't recall the exact number I had, but it reduced my spell times by .2 of a second - and can be seen on the cast bar. Bene was casting @ 1.3 whereas now it is back at 1.5 with stacking power and surge. I am going back to alacrity for my lvl 49 stuff and see what happens. It also does in fact speed up your channeling. My channeled DoT (Project?) sped up by two-tenths of a second so slightly fast dps.

[Mrbloodworth]

Would be better if that was explained somewhere in game. Thanks though. Not much use for my Operative I guess.