Shintar's Galactic Season 6 Diary, Week 5

I didn't have any particular feelings or expectations going into this week beyond what I'll note down about the individual objectives:

• Earn 200k Conquest points: Yes, naturally.
  
• Earn the seasonal currency: After last week, I was happy to see this objective return as another easy one to complete on all servers.
  
• Visit another player's Nar Shaddaa stronghold: Of course.
  
• Kill four named champion mobs on Nar Shaddaa (2 Republic, 2 Imperial): Like the Quesh objective in week one, not my first choice to complete but an easy filler to round things out if needed.
  
• Complete 8 repeatable or side missions and kill 100 mobs on the Unknown/Wild Space planets Ilum, CZ-198, Iokath and Zakuul: Easy to achieve with dailies, but one to watch out for in terms of not burning myself out with a billion CZ-198 runs.
  
• Kill 100 mobs with a healer companion: Easy to do in combination with something else.
  
• Complete 2 out of 4 selected flashpoints (Battle of Ilum, False Emperor, Legacy of the Rakata, Shrine of Silence): Now, I actually liked this one because two of the featured flashpoints were ones that are also required for the first GS6 story mission, and I'd only completed that on Darth Malgus so far, so I figured this could help with progressing it on the other servers (even if sticking to those two was going to make it particularly repetitive).
  
• Earn 25 medals in Galactic Starfighter: Same as last week, not a fave due to how many matches it takes me to get there.
  
• Play 3-6 GSF matches (wins count double): ... however, combined with this one it certainly seemed like an attractive combo to do on Darth Malgus at the very least.
  
• Kill Nightmare Pilgrim: Since you can get credit for at least the seasons objective without even being in a group nowadays, this actually seemed somewhat viable to do on multiple servers, as you just need to hang out at the boss's spawn point and wait for a group of either faction to show up (and due to the nature of the fight, the groups always take a while to sort out, so you can usually tell some time in advance that it's a work in progress, it's not a quick "blink and you'll miss it" job like on some of the other world bosses)
  
• KotET chapter 2 on veteran mode or higher: Now, I've always rejected the chapter objectives so far because I don't like repeating chapters... however, with this one, I actually had a character on Darth Malgus that was exactly on this step of the story, so I figured I might do it as a two-for-one.
  

Day 1 - Tuesday

What was supposed to be a normal office day turned out to be very sad as it was revealed to us that a (fairly young!) co-worker had surprisingly passed away over the weekend. As everyone was upset and in shock, people were allowed to go home early, and unsurprisingly, I didn't feel like doing much of anything for most of the day.

In the evening I was ready for some distraction though and logged on to do ops with my guildies, followed by a GSF weekly, which progressed me to 4/6 on one objective and to 9/25 medals earned.

On Leviathan, I put myself in the queue for False Emperor and Legacy of the Rakata and instantly got a vet mode pop for the latter. This resulted in a nice triple whammy of seasons progression, credit for the GS6 story mission and credit for the Prelude to Shadow of Revan story mission. I then meant to park myself at Nightmare Pilgrim to hopefully get a kill later, but there was already a group of Imps assembling there so I hung around (I was on a Republic character so couldn't join them). Sadly they wiped on their first attempt. The second one went better, though I myself got mowed down by the Pilgrim's Rapid Fire that time. Funnily enough, since I wasn't actually in the ops group the fight "belonged" to, I could just revive on the spot even as the fight continued.

On Tulak Hord, I did a round of CZ-198 dailies and then parked myself at Nightmare Pilgrim's spawn spot. It being past midnight in Germany, I wasn't surprised that nothing was going on anymore.

On Satele Shan, I decided to just do the Ilum heroic, including the bonus. As I also gained a legacy level while doing so, this was enough to complete the daily objective. Still, I wanted to park myself at Nightmare Pilgrim again before logging out, and once again there were some Imps already there. I waited for a bit, but when nothing seemed to move for more than ten minutes (and there weren't that many of them), I started to wonder whether this was actually a group or just some randoms doing the same thing I was, waiting for someone else to do the actual work. I actually relogged to Imp side just to check whether there were people actually LFM on the fleet but saw nothing. When I returned to my Republic character, there were suddenly a lot more people there and the battle was already in progress, but fortunately I had enough time to join in.

On Star Forge I just did a round of Iokath dailies on my boosted Sith inqusitor, before logging over to Shae Vizla to join a Nightmare Pilgrim group organised by my guild there.

Day 2 - Wednesday

After reset, I briefly logged into Leviathan to visit a Nar Shaddaa stronghold and knock out the named champion mobs for both factions. Some clickies pushed me over the required Conquest point amount for the daily objective.

Later in the evening, I logged into Tulak Hord and once again, there were some Imps at the Nightmare Pilgrim's spawn spot. Why is it always Imps? I once again waited for them to assemble and do their thing, but unfortunately this group just wiped three times and then gave up. Since I was having dinner around that time and was mostly AFK in game anyway, I hung around to wait for the next group to come by (the area had never fully emptied out). Eventually a huge Republic group came by and got me the kill. Then I just did the Ilum heroic plus bonus to complete the Unknown/Wild Space missions objective and the daily.

After that, I returned to my home turf on Darth Malgus for some PvP and GSF. One of the characters I did PvP on was a lowbie on whom I did some quests while waiting in the queue, which got me a good way towards the companion kills objective already. The GSF matches completed one of the related weeklies and brought the other one up to 16/25 medals.

When I visited Star Forge later, my inquisitor (whom I'd also left at the Nightmare Pilgrim's haunt) logged in to sounds of a battle and a group having the boss down to 20% or so already. I quickly ran in to hit him for credit before travelling to Ilum and doing the Imp side heroic there (including the bonus again) to complete the planetary missions objective.

Over on Satele Shan, I put myself in the queue for False Emperor and Legacy of the Rakata just to get an instant pop for the latter on veteran mode. The run was smooth and fast, bringing me one step closer to completing the GS6 stronghold mission on this character. I then also did a round of CZ-198, which ticked over three things at once: the planetary missions, killing things with my companion and the seasonal currency.

On Shae Vizla, I did the same thing with the group finder but without getting an instant pop, so I took care of my GTN listings and started on a round of CZ-198 in the meantime. Just as I was about to get to the final mission in the waste disposal area, I got a pop for veteran mode False Emperor. It was another smooth and fast run, and we even did the bonus boss.

Day 3 - Thursday

The first thing I did in the evening was log into Leviathan and do some quests on my bounty hunter to work towards the "kills with a healer companion" achievement until I'd hit my daily 25k Conquest points. (Reminder: My knight is a healer and doing stuff with double heals is a no-no even for me.)

On Tulak Hord, I queued for False Emperor and Legacy of the Rakata and got into a vet mode run for the latter, which I did not enjoy. We had two healers, which can make things a little slow but isn't usually a big deal... unless both of your damage dealers are really slow and erratic in their participation (one of them spent half of the first boss fight AFK from what I could tell) and the other healer absolutely refuses to press a single damage ability despite the group comp, both of which were the case here. I actually opened up Starparse purely to see whether the other healer was doing anything other than run in circles and spam AoE heals while we were all at 100% health anyway, and the answer was no. Nobody talked either, not even to respond to my greeting at the start, so I was just glad to get out of there (eventually). To cheer myself up, I went and visited a Nar Shaddaa stronghold, which got me to 4/7 weeklies completed.

I then spent the biggest chunk of the evening on Darth Malgus, first getting myself to 4/7 weekly seasons objectives there as well by completing one more GSF weekly mission, then by helping out another ops team by wiping in Dxun master mode for two hours.

After that I logged into Star Forge, where I basically did the same things as on Tulak Hord, only that the Legacy of the Rakata run on this server was smooth and pleasant. This was followed by a similarly smooth False Emperor pug on Satele Shan (bonus boss included again). Finally, I logged into Shae Vizla and just did the heroic on Ilum there, which ticked off three more weeklies there as well.

Day 4 - Friday

I had made such good progress over the first three days, I felt like a could relax and not fret about seasons too much for a day. I just logged into Darth Malgus in the evening to do a bit of PvP and that was it for my day in SWTOR.

Day 5 - Saturday

Late in the morning/shortly before lunch time, I did a round of all the other servers to get my daily done. On Leviathan, Tulak Hord and Satele Shan I did some story missions on Imp side, plus on the latter I also visited a stronghold since I hadn't done so yet. On Star Forge I queued for False Emperor and got a quick run in, which was okay, though a bit rushy and nobody responded to my saying hello.

Finally, I queued for Legacy of the Rakata on Shae Vizla and got a pop, but one person timed out so it didn't go through. It was getting close to reset time so I started work on getting Conquest points from some other sources to be on the safe side, but I did eventually get another run just in time to finish it before the reset. This one had two guys always pushing ahead while one always lagged behind, and the lagging guy actually apologised for his slowness, bless him. 

I didn't play again until the evening, when I killed Nightmare Pilgrim with my guildies on Darth Malgus and then did a couple of operations with them. After that I did some more PvP, and the questing I did between pops finished my companion kills objective. I finished the evening by doing KotET chapter two on veteran mode on the smuggler who was actually at that point in the story. I died a few times, but that wasn't entirely unexpected. With that, I was on 7/7 on Darth Malgus.

Day 6 - Sunday

On Sunday morning I decided to visit the other servers again. On Leviathan I did a False Emperor run in which someone was chattering away in French for a while until they rage-quit after the second boss. I couldn't entirely make sense of what they were saying so I opened up Google Translate on my second monitor, but it was of limited help in this instance as it didn't know what "tous au cac" meant either, a phrase that was repeated several times. Considering the context in hindsight, I can only guess it meant something like "everybody stack"? But then I'm still not sure why this was important enough to rage-quit over, especially on the second boss in False Emperor. All I did was run to the cannon to make the ship go away... I took some solace from the fact that I understood what someone else in the group said after the rage-quit: "what an angry guy".

Interestingly, I seemed to get the answer to what had upset that French guy on Tulak Hord later, when I did another False Emperor run there too, and someone complained about me using the turret on the Jindo Krey fight there as well. At least they made it clear why: they felt that the absorb shield it puts on him for a few seconds "wastes time". I appreciated being able to have a conversation about it, but to be honest my real (private) response to this was to file it away under "stupid pug strats", because I can't quite fathom why anyone would think it's a good idea to make a fight ten seconds shorter by taking 300% increased damage. Plus as a healer, I always hate the attitude of "let's ignore simple mechanics and let the healer deal with it".

On Star Forge, I just did some clickies for my daily Conquest, while on Satele Shan and Shae Vizla I played alts for a bit. On the latter I cut it so close that I only got the "influencing the galaxy" pop-up two minutes before the daily reset.

I went through all the servers again in the evening, mostly just doing a bit of questing on alts, as I was either already 7/7 everywhere or just missing a few more companion kills or Conquest points towards the 200k objective. On Darth Malgus I played a few PvP matches as well.

Day 7 - Monday 

All that was left to do was to cycle through all the servers and earn some Conquest points for the daily, which I did with a mix of questing and clickies. The only thing worth remarking on is that I finally finished my first class story on Star Forge while doing so! Oddly, it was the smuggler, not the trooper I've had since forever, but the latter is still working her way through some side missions, so the smuggler (on whom I only did the class story) ended up overtaking her on Corellia.

Week 5 Thoughts

After how much of a slog week four was, this week was a pleasant surprise in terms of how quick and easy it was to get to 7/7 everywhere. Also, I can't believe I'm already halfway through the season track on all servers! So much for not pushing myself too much... but it's still been interesting to document my progress.

Finding My Fun

I won't lie: For a while there, I wasn't having the best of times with this whole flashpoint levelling thing. I'm not someone to keep engaging in in-game activities that I don't enjoy, but after my initial enthusiasm had worn off, I only really kept going because of my interest in the project as a whole, with the moment-to-moment experience of being put into Hammer Station over and over again not being the height of fun to me.

This has changed dramatically since I unlocked more flashpoints and decided to take charge of my little Shadow's fate by simply unticking all the ones that I didn't want to deal with anymore.

Korriban Incursion
I levelled: 58-58

While I was pleased to see this flashpoint pop, especially as I also had the Forged Alliances story quest that required me to run it, this was the first run Nautalie completed that didn't level her up even once, and it wasn't a close thing either. I suppose it didn't help that I'd run out of restedness for the first time in a while, but still. I suspect those last 17 levels are going to feel quite long.

Funnily enough the group composition was the exact same one as in the Battle of Ilum from the day before: a Vanguard tank and three Shadows. Why is it that everyone always complains when Mandos/Mercs are even a little bit "flavour of the month" but one of the Jedi or Sith classes filling 75% of all group finder slots barely raises an eyebrow? People are hugely biased in favour of Force users I say.

Anyway, with three stealthers we did a whole bunch of trash skipping again, though Korriban Incursion doesn't really have that much optional trash to begin with. On the bit with the four overseers, I figured that since we were doing well we could split up to get things done faster, but was then surprised to find - after soloing two of them - that the rest of the group had stuck together and only just killed the third one with the three of them. (Gosh, I'm so awesome etc.)

On the last boss I saw Nautalie's first ever shared endgame drop, a tactical item for Vanguard tanks. One of my eyes may have twitched a little when I saw one of the other Shadows roll need on it, but fortunately the Vanguard won the roll anyway.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 58-59

This was my third Battle of Ilum in four runs... could this be the level 50+ version of Hammer Station? Though as commenter Diana pointed out in a comment on my last post in this series, pops can also be driven by Conquest events, and it was Relics of the Gree that week, which included running BoI as one of its objectives.

Our group composition consisted once again of three Jedi damage dealers and a Vanguard tank, though one of the dps was a Sentinel this time. Also, I recognised the Vanguard's name from my last run... yay for same-server group finders!

At the very beginning, one of the dps tried to climb out of the trench instead of taking the speeder and died. I asked if it was their first time and they said no, they'd only confused the flashpoint for False Emperor. I'm not sure how that explained anything...

We did a moderate amount of trash skipping again (though also again, not as much as we could have done with two stealthers) and killed all the bosses. Also, someone put a star marker over my head for some reason.

Completing the flashpoint also completed Nautalie's very first Conquest, what with BoI having been an objective that week.

Red Reaper
I levelled: 59-60

Another one Nautalie hadn't done before! Red Reaper is one of those flashpoints that can be super smooth and fast, especially if you have a stealther, but there is also lots of potential for things to go wrong.

There was no better demonstration of this duality than this all-dps pug, where a clearly experienced level 75 Gunslinger took the lead and tried to coax us past trash we could skip and made sure to round up otherwise annoying pulls in the most efficient manner, while our level 75 Guardian was the very incarnation of a bumbling oaf, stumbling right into every mob the rest of the group had carefully avoided.

To her credit, the Gunslinger didn't have a go at him beyond a single "oh, come on!" in party chat, but at some point she seemed to make the decision to simply not care about our clumsy laggard anymore, so when the Guardian got so confused that he got himself stuck behind some crates she and the third group member, a level 40 Commando, simply moved on.

I felt bad for the guy though, and after he'd died by aggroing yet another bunch of mobs, I revived him and slowly tried to guide him back to the others. I thought we were back in business once we reached the Eradicator droid, but once again the Guardian managed to run off and pull the nearby turrets instead. We ended up fighting them with the two of us while the other two actually killed the boss. At that point the Gunslinger decided that she'd had enough and left.

We queued for a replacement and got another, slightly lower-level Gunslinger with whom we finished the rest of the flashpoint just fine, even if the last boss took a while as several people didn't seem to know the mechanics, meaning that it took some time to get Darth Ikoral to zap his chosen Sith.

Depths of Manaan
I levelled: 60-61

At the start of a new (in-game) week, I re-ticked everything for that random bonus, braced myself for Hammer Station... and got another flashpoint I hadn't done yet, Depths of Manaan - yay! I was grouped with three level 75s, two of them dps, one a tank. All of us were melee Jedi.

They were quiet except for a brief "hi" at the start of the run, but everything went very smoothly, with people executing tactics correctly, clicking kolto stations when needed and so on. Happy days!

False Emperor
I levelled: 61-62

Not wanting to push my luck, I limited my selection for this evening to only seven of the higher level flashpoints that I actually felt like doing that night. My queue time wasn't affected and I got into a False Emperor run almost immediately.

The group composition was similar to the run I had before that, with three other saber-swinging Jedi, one of whom was a tank and the others dps. One of them was also a female Nautolan Shadow who was only two levels below me, which tickled my fancy.

And it was another beautiful run! The only small stain marring the perfection was that I was the only one who cared about the minor bonus and since I missed a console at the start we failed to complete it. We did do the bonus boss however, and the group was generally rolling along in a highly fun way. Even Jindo Krey with his perpetually bugged turrets posed no challenge to us as we managed to interrupt nearly every one of his casts so that he barely had a chance to do any damage.

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 62-63

Encouraged by my last run, I took False Emperor off the list too so that I was only queuing for the six highest level flashpoints that I hadn't done yet. Again I didn't have to wait long and got into Blood Hunt! I never thought that I'd feel delighted to end up there, but I genuinely was. The rest of the group seemed in surprisingly good spirits as well, with one guy leading with: "Hoping for a nice and quick run!"

For the first time in a while (for me), we even had a healer too. I'd almost forgotten how nice it was to have someone watching your health and not having to worry about dying all the time. Since we didn't have a proper tank, I did my best to taunt things off her whenever she got aggro on anything.

Once again, everything went smoothly, even Jos and Valk (mostly thanks to the healer). After having done this flashpoint a few times since 6.0, I have to say that I'm not sure they're the hardest fight in there anymore - it feels to me like Torch actually hurts more now.

Anyway...

We'll see if it holds up, but I'm definitely getting the impression that with the rewards for queuing for the full random selection being pretty meaningless these days, there's a certain self-selection going on inside the group finder population. There definitely seems to be a number of people who don't necessarily care much for flashpoints and just want to do the easiest ones as quickly and with as little fuss as possible to maximise their gear drops per hour or however these things are measured these days.

However, this doesn't match my own approach to flashpoints at all. Sure, every now and then a quick and easy Hammer Station can feel like a treat, but repeating the same flashpoint multiple times gets boring to me really quickly. I'd rather face more of a challenge, be slowed down and maybe wipe a couple of times for the sake of variety, as well as killing extra mobs for bonuses and such.

Ironically though, queuing with a preference for the longer/harder flashpoints has only resulted in increased enjoyment and smoother runs for me so far, maybe because people with similar preferences are more likely to know their stuff and also queue for the higher-level flashpoints with confidence. It'll be interesting to tally up the numbers for comparison once Nautalie hits 75.

Day 1: Bugs #IntPiPoMo

It's that time of the year again: It's International Picture Posting Month! By now, participating in IntPiPoMo has become a cherished tradition for me, as I go through my 10 themed days of SWTOR screenshots and reflect on some things I did and witnessed in the past year but that weren't necessarily worthy of having whole posts dedicated to them. I know these screenshot-heavy posts don't generate much discussion - and I'll admit that they are very easy to make - but I still like the change of pace they offer.

Day one, is as usual, about bugs. Interestingly, I didn't find many screenshots of bugs among the pictures I took in the past year. Are Bioware actually getting their act together or was I just lucky to not run into that many?

The Jindo Krey encounter in the False Emperor flashpoint has been notoriously buggy for years (ever since they made the side turrets irrelevant I think...) in that the bounty hunter's ship can become invulnerable to attacks when he calls for assistance, which can make the fight quite painful. This was something new to me though, that upon entering the area on my Operative, the ship seemed to virtually have landed inside the space station... it did fly back out when we pulled the boss though.

Another "oldie but goodie" is the "companion holocalls you in their underwear" bug. It's kind of incredible to me that it's 2018 and this still hasn't been fixed, but I guess something that does no more harm than cause a couple of silly cut scenes is probably not high on the "must fix" priority list. I could have done without seeing a Gand in underwear though.

This one requires a bit of context, as to the layperson it may not be apparent what's buggy about me getting an achievement after killing a mob on Ilum. The thing is that the achievement is totally wrong: it credits me for a world boss kill when I just defeated nothing but a couple of random mobs. This happened right after the Conquest revamp, and made the first Gree event in its wake both funny and ridiculously easy to complete, as everyone who killed any mobs at all (it didn't even have to be on Ilum) would instantly get this world boss Conquest achievement completed and gain a whole bunch of points whether they were trying to or not. I thought it was quite amusing, especially watching people's confused reactions throughout the week as each one of them experienced the bug for the first time.

IntPiPoMo count: 3

Pugette Hit 70

After seven months of (near) weekly recording of her adventures with random groups in the group finder, Pugette the Commando has hit level 70! Her actual /played time is pretty short though, only 1(!) day and 9 hours, which once again reinforces my impression that flashpoints are actually a pretty good way to level but also that levelling is just super fast in general nowadays.

I got to finish on a nice round number after exactly 30 episodes. Towards the end I decided to ditch the random queueing in favour of choosing some specific destinations, to make sure that I would go out on a bang instead of by blitzing through yet another randomly assigned Hammer Station, and I think it worked out great, with several of the last few episodes being (in my opinion) among the best ones of the whole run. The only thing that could be considered an issue with them is length (if you don't actually like long videos), as two of them ended up taking close to one and a half hours in the end. Either way, without further ado, here's a list of the final six episodes with links:

Episode 25: Racism in Progress in False Emperor - Even though I always had the option to accept in-progress runs ticked, this was the first and only time I actually got into one, with the group already standing at the second boss in False Emperor. My entrance was kind of overshadowed by one of the pugs greeting Pugette (who, unlike me, has dark skin) with a racist term. That was just so confusing, I had no idea how to react. I let it go and moved on and nothing else offensive was said, but it was certainly a strange experience.

Episode 26: Thinking About The Future in Assault on Tython - After having already bested this flashpoint on master mode in an earlier episode, veteran mode felt very easy, and I mostly used the opportunity to do some speculating about the changes coming to the group finder in patch 5.6. I was wrong about pretty much all of it by the way.

Episode 27: Noobing It Up in Blood Hunt - At last, the flashpoint I had been simultaneously dreading and looking forward to since I started this series. All things considered, it didn't go too badly, though we did have the inevitable wipes on Jos and Valk. I also always find this flashpoint to be a bit of a team-building exercise, and our dps Commando in particular had me in stitches at times, which made for a very fun run.

Episode 28: Going Old School in MM Lost Island - I got this one as a random quite often lately, and every time I was surprised by how smoothly it went. This run was not like that. However, it was still fun because people took the wipes in stride and tried hard to do better. When we finally bested the last boss, it sure felt very satisfying.

Episode 29: Reliving Fond Memories in MM Kaon Under Siege - This one was much easier than Lost Island and I mostly used it as an opportunity to reminisce about all the good times I had in this flashpoint and how it provided all kinds of memorable moments for me in the past.

Episode 30: Pug Interrupted in Traitor Among the Chiss - This is the one in which Pugette finally hit 70, and also the first one in which she encountered a type of obstacle she hadn't run into before (I won't spoil what it is). Just prepare to be exposed to some eardrum-bursting laughter at one point...

What's in store for Pugette and the channel next? Well, as for Pugette, I'm planning to keep her "pure" and out of guild runs, limited to what she can achieve in the pug world, but first on the agenda is probably finishing her class story up to the end of Coruscant at least so that she can finally get her ship and make that damn galaxy map icon stop flashing.

As for the channel... to be honest, I don't know! I was pleasantly surprised by how many subs and views I gained while recording this series, especially considering that the original purpose of the channel was just to have a place to upload boss kill videos for my guild and the like. I do think I would like to record a "season two" of pug adventures and I do already have an idea for it as well, but even if I do go ahead with it I won't actually put my plan into action until early next year. You'll just have to content yourself with reading the blog in the meantime. /wink

Using Kolto Stations in Tactical Flashpoints

The Dark vs. Light event had me running a lot of tactical flashpoints while levelling, and I'm happy to report that on the whole, it's been a pretty smooth experience. When I performed my flashpoint levelling experiment shortly after 4.0, I found that being a healer seemed to help a lot with ensuring any given pug's success, but these past couple of months I've done pretty well even while queuing as tank or dps. That's not to say that there were never any wipes, but those tended to be random screw-ups rather than hard road blocks or any sort of inherent incompetence on part of the player base.

In fact, I got the impression that overall, players have learned to handle tacticals a lot better than they did even a few months ago. Presumably more people have had a chance to get used to how they work and can help their less experienced brethren by making the average run more likely to be successful.

One subject that's been on my mind a lot though is the use of kolto stations on bosses. Again, in most cases there are no issues, but I remember actually getting into an argument with someone in Kuat about how to best utilise them, and since I have a blog (and he presumably doesn't) I get to spread my point of view more widely. Hah!

Basically, there are three core facts to consider about the kolto stations available for boss fights in tacticals:

- Clicking on one casts a big heal on the person doing the clicking and puts an also pretty sizeable heal over time on everyone in the party (assuming they are in the same room, the range is pretty large but not infinite).

- After it's been clicked, the kolto station goes on cooldown for about thirty seconds.

- There is a limited amount of kolto stations available.

From these, three basic consequences arise:

- Since the heal over time gets put on everyone, everyone in the group can use the kolto stations to heal other people.

- However, since the one actually clicking also gets that big heal on top of it, you get the most bang for your buck if the person with the heaviest injuries (which is usually the one with the aggro, whether they are a tank or not) does the clicking.

- Since the kolto stations have a cooldown and there are a limited number of them, it is possible to "mis-use" them by clicking at the wrong time and end up with no option to heal when it's actually needed.

This in turn means that there are basically two things that can go wrong:

From my experience, most deaths and wipes on bosses occur because nobody bothered to click a kolto station at all. Sometimes you'll get people complaining "why didn't you click", but fact of the matter is that nobody is "the healer" (this whole post is working on the assumption that you don't have one, or you wouldn't have to rely on the kolto stations to begin with), so you can't blame any one person for not doing the clicking. If you notice that you have the boss on you and are taking heavy damage, it's best to run for your nearest kolto station at about fifty percent health. For the reasons mentioned above, it's best if you do the clicking yourself.

However, sometimes things can prevent the de facto tank from reaching a station in time, such as when the boss decides to stun or knock them down at a bad moment. If you see that happening and it looks like the injured person won't make it to the console in time, it's OK to click on it even if you're not the one who's the most hurt. Some big bosses also make it really hard to click the kolto stations through their sheer bulk. I remember that on the desert boss in Czerka Core Meltdown I actually had to ask someone else to click for me before, because even though I always had the aggro, the boss's bulk in my face made it impossible for me to actually target the kolto stations even when they were right next to me.

Now, deaths from people being overeager to click are a lot rarer - but they do happen, especially on bosses that have very few kolto stations. Station Guardian One in KDY is a good example, since he's only surrounded by two, which are located on opposite sides of the room. A low-level damage dealer will take quite a lot of damage from him if they have aggro, and personally I found that the only way to survive this was basically to run back and forth between the two kolto stations non-stop. However, this was all ruined if someone else decided to click on one in-between, as the heal over time alone wasn't enough to keep me up until the next cooldown, forcing me to either die or drop aggro and let someone else get killed. It's particularly annoying when I'm almost at the kolto station, nothing is holding me back, and yet someone else clicks on it right in front of me - you're not helping!

Bosses with three kolto stations aren't quite as tricky but can still be close calls depending on how squishy you are - examples where I've had groups struggle include the droid boss in Taral V and HK-47 in False Emperor.

All that said, it's worth reiterating again that your reliance on kolto stations can vary a lot depending on what kind of group you get. If you've got a well-geared max-level character in the group you might find yourself breezing through fights even without a tank or healer and it really doesn't matter who clicks on the kolto stations or when, as they merely serve to get people topped off every now and then. However, if you do find yourself struggling with an encounter for some reason, I've found that making sure that your group optimises their use of the available kolto stations is usually the first step towards success.

Flashpoint Friday: The False Emperor

In this week's installment of Flashpoint Friday we're going to look at the flashpoint that "finished up" the game's story as far as it was released at launch. I'm of course talking about (dun dun dunnn)... False Emperor.

  
General Facts

False Emperor has been in game since launch, serving as the grand finale for the game's non class-specific world storyline, which started with the regular missions on Ilum and continued throughout the flashpoint Battle of Ilum, which I already talked about.

False Emperor was originally designed for levels 48-50 and came with a hardmode at launch in which the last boss dropped a Columi (first raid tier) chest piece, which caused people to farm it like mad back in the day. A solo mode to see the story was added in 4.0. The base version is now tactical (role- and level-neutral), which must really confuse people who end up in there at level 15.

Story (spoilers)

A short reminder of the story so far: While Republic and Empire are fighting over the ice planet Ilum, which provides valuable crystals that can be used for the production of stealth generators, Darth Malgus declares himself the Emperor of a "new" Empire that embraces alien diversity and goes up against both Republic and Empire at once. After stealing one of the stealth ships from his fleet, a strike team boards his cloaked space station to cut off the snake's head.

This is where the flashpoint starts off, with either Cole Cantarus (for Pubs) or General Hesker (for Imps) flying you there. The Emperor's space station is the same one Jedi knight players encounter during their class story, only bigger. After a lot of fairly nondescript fights you have to kill HK-47 again, whom Malgus had apparently rebuilt after that whole thing in the Foundry. He's defending an Anomid scientist called Arkis Wode, who gives you big lip initially but panics as soon as all his guards are taken out. You can show your alignment by either letting him live so he'll turn the station's weapons against Malgus' own fleet, or shooting him in the face, in which case he'll call out a last warning to Malgus before he dies.

Finally, you face down Malgus himself, who quickly activates the station's self-destruct sequence. (Who keeps building self-destructs into everything anyway?) There is no option for reconciliation, even if you kind of agree with his stance on aliens in the Empire at least. Once he's defeated, you take his stuff and flee the station as it's breaking apart at the seams.

Fights

Malgus' space station is filled with lots of droids and some aliens, similar to the trenches of Ilum in Battle of Ilum. Like in that flashpoint, there are a lot of voice-overs going on about the strengths of this "new Empire", even as you go around killing everyone. It's also worth mentioning that while there are still a lot of enemies to fight, there used to be a lot more of them until the flashpoint was "thinned out" somewhat in later patches. The main possible exception to this is the very first pull, which is still huge and has sent many a pugger to their death over the years.

About half the boss fights are nothing to write home about: There's the Trandoshan with the red circle around him, the two droids who become temporarily immune to damage one at a time and the mini-boss that does a spin attack. However, there are also some more interesting encounters:

Bounty hunter Jindo Krey is a bit of a Boba Fett lookalike - that alone would be enough to make him cool, but he also calls on his ship during the fight to shoot you, which you in turn have to repel by using some conveniently located nearby cannons. In its original incarnation, the ship could also move sideways so that you actually had to make sure you used the right one of the three cannons to shoot it down, but apparently this was considered too challenging for puggers...

HK isn't really that interesting except for being HK and liking to brutally knock down people who charge him with a leap, a mechanic that just seems pointlessly cruel.

The Sith Entity bonus boss which consists of three different  targets that periodically vanish and reappear is also moderatlely interesting and used to have a reputation for having an unforgivingly harsh enrage timer on hardmode back in the day.

The undisputed crown jewel of the instance is however the encounter with Darth Malgus, which is a fantastic example of how you can give a fight a cinematic quality while also keeping it engaging for the players. Aside from a massive knockback that you need to avoid by tanking him near the stairs or else you'll go flying down the nearest chasm, Malgus doesn't have that many regular interesting abilities, however he cycles through all the group members (if given enough time) to "fill their minds with doubt" until he forces them to face him alone while the rest of the group is stunned. This isn't that interesting these days, but at launch he hit hard enough that dps players in particular had to kite him during that phase, usually while the rest of their stunned group cheered them on. A couple of times he also tries to cast an insta-wipe mechanic called "Unlimited Power", which absolutely needs to be interrupted (or needed to be... not actually sure how deadly it is these days as I haven't seen it go off in a while).

The memorable finale of the fight however used to be the fact that Malgus became invulnerable once he reached a certain percentage of health and had to be knocked down the aforementioned chasm to be killed, Darth Vader vs. Palapatine style. This required multiple knockbacks to be timed just right, which could be quite challenging for most groups. Nonetheless I was still very sad when this mechanic was removed as part of a round of nerfs. These days Malgus just falls over dead at the end like any other boss, which I still think is sad. That knockback mechanic could have been made more manageable without removing it entirely.

Conclusion

False Emperor was certainly a memorable end to the story of Darth Malgus. Even though it was a shame that he was killed off so early in the game, he at least got a suitably epic send-off initially - plus the fact that you didn't actually see his body left an avenue for a potential future return, though I think it's safe to consider that particular door closed by now.

That said, the flashpoint as a whole wasn't exactly an unmitigated success. The interior of the space station isn't particularly exciting except for the view of the final throne room. People hated how long and filled with trash it was. And from a story point of view it honestly kind of sucked having to kill off Malgus as an Empire player even if you agreed with many of his points. I already mentioned in my Battle of Ilum post that he's basically not a very convincing betrayer in the sense that players might not necessarily disagree with him enough to want to kill him. Plus there's the whole "what is this I don't even" factor if you don't do the planetary quest line and the flashpoints in the right order.

That said, I'm still very fond of False Emperor almost for the Malgus fight alone, because it really is (was) that good. Also, as Calphy pointed out in his post about flashpoint favourites, considering its brief life, Malgus' new Empire was actually very influential in terms of the overall storyline, as the Makeb arc sees the Empire softening its stance on aliens in the aftermath of Ilum, which always struck me as a little odd. Not that I'm complaining really, but I would have thought that the last thing you do after eliminating someone as a betrayer and heretic would be to adopt some of his policies.

Flashpoint Levelling: Battle of Ilum Makes Me Mad

While I've been away from the internet for a week, I still have an update about my Mercenary's flashpoint levelling progress simply because it's been a whole two weeks since I posted the last one. These runs all took place before the start of the current double XP event.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 53-54

This was another of those rare flashpoints that started with a tank, though he didn't seem particularly competent and eventually suffered a mysterious DC, which seems to be a common issue with tanks for some reason... We also had a level 43 dps who randomly ported back to Hoth after a few pulls and left the group without a word.

The thing that really ticked me off about this run was that we had started off killing extra trash for both bonuses and then randomly started skipping things once we were at five out of six laser batteries destroyed. Argh! I have a long history of getting annoyed with people not wanting to do the bonus in Battle of Ilum, but I do understand their reasons for doing so... what ticked me off in this case was that it was such a random bait and switch, especially with just one more pull needed to at least complete one of the bonuses...

On a positive note, people were very good at clicking the healing consoles on the last boss and pretty much saved my life when I got stunned by him while on very low health. After this run I was also high enough level to pick up the Forged Alliances story arc.

You can tell it's Life Day season when two minutes on the fleet are enough to get you doused in snowflakes.

False Emperor
I levelled: 54-54

This was another group of super lowbies, three dps of level 15, 19 and 26 respectively. Just before the first boss the level 15 (by now 16) disconnected and was replaced by a 65 who instantly quit as well. The next replacement asked if this was the boss that's bugged and I replied that I didn't know anything about any bugs. Of course then Jindo Krey's ship had to act funny just to make a point, but we got the boss down just fine anyway.

As it turned out it was the second boss encounter, the two prototype droids, who were truly bugged, as they kept one-shotting us with 75k hits. (For reference, bolstered players usually have a bit above 50k health.) Two people left immediately while me and one other guy gave it another try with companions out, but the results were the same. People on the forums say that it's fine if everyone stands in the blue circle, including the tank, but this has never been a requirement before and even if it was supposed to be, a one-shot if you take one wrong step strikes me as excessive. Bugged, basically. Group disband.

Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 54-55

This group reminded me that at three years old, my PC is apparently quite dated already by gamer standards, as they had killed the first pull before I'd even loaded in. They were a very rushy group, but I couldn't really complain as they all seemed to be pretty competent and our dps was actually relatively high for a change. One guy was max level already and both of the lowbies in the group had the legendary tag. I know that by itself, legendary status doesn't really guarantee competence since it's theoretically possible to play through all the class stories without ever talking to another person, but it seems to me that on average, people who have bothered to do so also know their group content. On a side note, this was also the first run in which I noticed another character having bioanalysis and competing with me for harvesting the hounds' bodies.

After this run I went to pick up the Czerka storyline and was stoked to find that it "remembered" that I'd already done Corporate Labs back at level 35 and immediately updated to the step where you have to complete Core Meltdown. I really wish they made all the flashpoint quests smart enough to recognise if you've already done any of the required flashpoints. Sadly the only other story of which I know that it currently does this is the Rise of the Rakghouls storyline (Kaon Under Siege/Lost Island).

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 55-56 (this included completion of my first tactical flashpoint weekly and earned my Merc her first glowing and radiant crystals)

Battle of Ilum again. After how annoyed I got last time, I decided to ask straight away whether people were up for doing the bonus so that I could manage my expectations. Result? People said yes and then skipped everything. Arrrgh! The two higher-level players weaved around a lot of the trash to progress as quickly as possible, while the lowest character, a level 28, got left behind immediately. He didn't seem to know where to go, pulled something, died, and then left the group. I felt bad for him and like I should have stayed closer to him. If he was a new player, he must have felt completely lost.

One of the other guys summoned a companion and just kept going. After a few pulls I asked why we weren't requeuing for a replacement and was told that companions are better than people. I moaned a bit about XP and social points and eventually the group leader did requeue us for a fourth.

Battle of Ilum
I levelled: 56-57 (this included the random flashpoint weekly)

I felt a little cursed at this point. Why do you keep putting me into this flashpoint where you know people's behaviour will upset me, Bioware? I decided to ask about the bonus at the start again and got an evasive reply that it takes too long but we could do it, whatever. Of course we didn't.

On the last encounter I decided to keep a close eye on the boss for once and interrupted his Force Explosion myself, which made me realise that the reason he'd done so much damage during my previous runs was that people obviously hadn't interrupted it consistently.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 57-58

Another run with a group of lowbie dps, this time two level 20s and one 26. As was to be expected, things were slow and we suffered quite a few deaths, but we progressed relatively smoothly anyway. For example we suffered three deaths on the first boss (one guy died once, ran all the way back in and then died again almost immediately) but we did get him down on the first attempt. Master Liam already got bored of his droid summoning when he was still at 60 percent health.

On the plus side, this group was chattier than most of my pugs, everyone said hello and we talked a bit about this and that. Hilariously, one of the guys who died on the first boss made a snarky comment about how I clearly hadn't perfected my healing yet (my first "blame the healer" moment, yay), to which I replied that it was fine as long as people didn't stand in giant orbital strikes - somewhat to my surprise he actually apologised after that.

At level 58 I also got Progressive Scan, which finally completed my arsenal of healing abilities.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 58-58

This was my first full run that didn't even cause me to level up once, which made me very sad. The instance itself was smooth enough, though after two Tythons in a row I was starting to wonder whether they made some sort of change to the way the artillery works as I kept having to dodge strikes throughout trash pulls all the way to the first boss, while I'm pretty sure that they only used to bother you in the wide open area in the middle... but maybe I'm misremembering.

We had a level 20 Juggernaught who was officially queued as dps but switched to tanking stance early on - I couldn't help but wonder whether he was a "real" tank or had just decided to play one for the duration of this run.

Next time: Double XP arrives!

I Have The Power (to carry these pugs)

My Merc's journey to the level cap continues and she's getting quite close by now. However, XP gains have also dropped to "only" about one level per flashpoint. I'm wondering how much better one might do if one were to make full use of all available XP boosts (which I didn't) by joining a guild, waiting for full restedness, buying all the increased flashpoint XP perks and using XP-boosting consumables.

Cademimu
I levelled: 45-46

As I mentioned in my last Flashpoint Friday post, my Cademimu hat-trick from last time was immediately followed up by a fourth pop of this instance. The most notable thing about this run was that it contained the most "gogogo"-like player I've encountered yet, a level 65 Juggernaught who took off like a bat straight out of hell the moment we zoned in and kept pulling as fast as he could, even if it led to bad things such as us getting two groups at once (which meant even more heal-tanking for me). In hindsight it's a mircale that I only died once, on the first boss. At the same time, even this rushing was still positively sedate compared to the sort of behaviour I experienced in WoW a couple of years ago.

After this flashpoint I fully upgraded my gear again even though it didn't seem to make much of a difference, purely because I was getting close to the cap for how many common data crystals you can have. Sadly the mods from the vendors are so cheap now that even buying a whole new kit barely made a dent in my crystal pile. I also picked up the story quest for Directive 7, just in case it comes up again, as I was now high enough level to do so.

Blood Hunt
I levelled: 46-46

Oh hey, another failed Blood Hunt pug! Same story as always: Everything was fine until Jos and Valk, then the group disbanded after two wipes (even though they had been pretty good tries and we'd made it to the second phase each time).

Korriban Incursion
I levelled: 46-47

Another rare group with a tank, though he seemed unfamiliar with the flashpoint and didn't know that we needed to kill the four commanders to get access to the first boss, so the rest of the group had to gently herd him into the right direction first. After the first boss he DCed and was replaced by a level 45 dps. Even with three dps our damage seemed very low, and I couldn't help but wonder whether the dps Juggernaught wasn't actually secretly a tank as well. (He had zoned in in Soresu form, though he did switch when I pointed that out.) On the last fight my heals were once again enough to out-aggro all the dps and I was effectively tanking most of the time. The dps also didn't know that they were supposed to kill the probes - thank Bioware that they die on their own after a while or we would have been in trouble.

It was after this flashpoint that I noticed that all my Republic characters, even the really low-level ones, have access to a quest called [Daily] Group Finder Tactical Flashpoint! I wonder why the Imps don't get that one? Looking at the TORCommunity database, it looks like it might be some sort of flagging error, as it lists the same quest twice, but both are tagged as only accessible to Republic classes. That would have been another nice source of XP to speed up the process.

The Foundry
I levelled: 47-49

This late-night run was easily the most fun pug I've had in a while, as it contained a tank and dps that were in the same guild, very laid back, and happy to banter. The tank died on the first boss and just laughed about her silliness when I pointed out that even tanks had to move out of melee whenever he does his fire attack. We also did both bonuses, which is probably why I gained two levels in this one.

At the end I had to laugh when the last boss exploded into a box - another 4.0 change that Bioware made is that they got rid of all those security chests that used to spawn on bosses that don't leave a body behind or that leave multiple bodies. They were always a bit of a pain in places like ops, as they could only be looted by one person at a time and you had to form an orderly queue so everyone could get their commendations. This new system is much better, it's just kind of humorous when the body's supposed to mysteriously disappear and instead a glowy box appears out of thin air.

False Emperor
I levelled: 49-50

We meet again, False Emperor! In this run I was joined by three melee dps of levels 41, 47 and 49 respectively. Any attempts of mine to use crowd control were foiled instantly, but at least they seemed to be aware that I was getting all the aggro and tried to reduce the impact that had. (I fully expect to do a lot of tanking when there is no proper tank, but you can tell the difference between groups that notice and try to help you and those that are completely oblivious... usually the latter are busy piling on a single gold mob while I get shot by five weak enemies for the entire fight.) I also worked on improving my heal-tanking by doing the line-of-sight dance around various corners and pillars.

On the two prototype droids, my three "pets" were sadly completely focused on trying to kill the one that was immune to damage and needed some prompting to start attacking the right one. Still, I was growing oddly fond of them. At exactly eight o'clock, one of them suddenly went "oops, I have to leave" and I couldn't help but picture him as a little kid who had reached his bedtime.

Having hit level 50 in this flashpoint, I did some running around to pick up more quests, such as the storyline for Kaon Under Siege and Lost Island. I was kind of shocked by how Darth Nurin casually dropped a massive spoiler for the end of my class story in that conversation... I was like: "I haven't even been to Dromund Kaas, woman!" In all seriousness though, I had been under the impression that they had markers for some of these lines so they wouldn't come up if you hadn't already completed that content. It was a bit jarring.

I was now also able to pick up the weekly mission to do five tactical flashpoints, which should add another chunk of experience to my remaining runs. When I opened up the group finder, it had now selected operations and hardmode flashpoints by default, which I had to uncheck, as I don't think that I would have a very good time in there right now.

Assault on Tython
I levelled: 50-52 (this included the random flashpoint weekly)

For this flashpoint I was joined by three dps, two of whom were only level 23 and 24 respectively, so I expected things to be slow. It wasn't that noticeable on the first boss, but by the time we got to Master Liam I was a bit worried that we might run into trouble with our group being unable to kill each set of droid adds before the next one spawned. Fortunately that wasn't the case, though we got very little dps time on the boss himself. We were lucky in so far as he seemed to get bored after a while and stopped bothering to vanish and summon adds.

We also wiped on Master Oric, which was simply an amazing experience for me because I don't think I'd ever had it happen to me before. I mean, I'd always known that it would be bad to let him draw power from those holocrons, but since no group of mine actually ever let him get away with it, I'd never seen what it actually does. The answer is that it increases his damage output, and after two or three stacks I simply wasn't able to keep up with it anymore, not to mention that we'd already lost another group member to his "purple circle phase". Fortunately everyone listened to me when I explained what had gone wrong, and on the next attempt they executed the mechanics nearly perfectly, even if our dps was still low.

After this flashpoint I was pleased to find my combat res and Electro Net on the trainer - now I've got pretty much everything except for whatever Successive Treatment is called for Mercenaries.

I also had too many crystals again and was pleased to discover (after some running around on the fleet) that you don't actually have to wait until Odessen to be able to buy companion gifts with them - you can already get rank 5 gifts on the fleet, which should help prevent any more crystal overflow in the future.

Mandalorian Raiders
I levelled: 52-53

This run was a bit of an emotional roller-coaster ride. I got teamed up with three dps of level 20, 21 and 27, so I knew that things were going to be even slower than in Assault on Tython the day before. But I didn't mind at first - I was kind of looking at myself as the benevolent high-level player carrying them through the experience. I asked them if they knew each other, since they were close in level and none of them were in a guild, but they never responded. They also did not pay much attention to me getting mauled by mobs and never bothered to regenerate any health themselves in-between fights.

In hindsight I really wish that I'd thought of recording the first boss fight because it was pretty comical. I was healing everyone and kite-tanking the boss around the room, only getting the occasional break whenever he did his aggro drop and jumped on somebody else for few seconds. I was really grateful for Hydraulic Overrides there, because getting caught in his slowing aura was not nice. Meanwhile the dps took absolutely forever to kill his pets. After that I thought that surely the worst was over now, just to have that fight be followed up by that big pull with a bunch of hounds. They did not get frozen by the exploding barrel and I barely clung on to life tanking all the dogs while hitting every single cooldown that I had.

Slowly my attitude started to shift. When I sliced the lift and called people over, they ignored me in favour of going the long way round. When I marked a focus target on the Republic boarding party, they ignored that as well. I was getting rather annoyed with them all and their seeming lack of interest in what was going on. I pictured them zoning into their next flashpoint, without a healer, and dying on every single pull.

I was convinced that the last boss would go horribly wrong, but tried to give instructions before the fight anyway. On the first jump we were left with both turrets still up and alive, but at least they then seemed to get it and started dpsing them down before continuing to chase the boss. In the end that fight wasn't nearly as bad as everything that had come before, but I still felt a bit burnt out on my role as the "carrier" of clueless pugs after that run.

Flashpoint Levelling: Up to 29

I wasn't planning to make my next post about my flashpoint levelling experiment quite so soon, but I'm progressing so quickly that I feel like I need to write it all down right now or I won't be able to keep up. In my last post I mentioned being level 17 after doing the Black Talon and completing associated quests. Four flashpoints later I'm already 29! Those levels are sure flying by, and I feel like I've already learned a lot.

By the way, you'll never guess which flashpoint I got as my first random after the Black Talon. I was so full of anticipation, maybe slightly worried that I'd get something that was originally tuned for level 60 and which might turn out to be really hard... and then I got: Hammer Station, the original 15-21 flashpoint. Woot?

Hammer Station
I levelled: 17-20 (and then dinged 21 from handing in the "do one random flashpoint" weekly, which once again gave way more XP than is reasonable at this level)

I had barely set foot into this flashpoint when I realised that something was off with my bars. I'd copied my keybinds over from my main and had tried to arrange my abilities in the same way, but while doing so I had been sloppy in terms of identifying which Mercenary "scan" corresponded to which Commando "probe". Once I'd sorted that out, I realised to my horror that I didn't have my free heal yet (Kolto Shot)! As a result all our pulls consisted of me frantically spamming expensive heals on people until I overheated, then Vent Heat and pray that everything would be dead before I was full on heat again. Fortunately I was able to train Kolto Shot after that run - apparently it unlocks at level 18 now.

Despite of me being woefully underequipped in the healing department, we did reasonably well. The other group members were three damage dealers of level 28, 50 and 65 respectively, and they seemed to have a healthy amount of interest in their survival (they clicked kolto stations, and the Sorcerer would bubble people and add some heals of his own if things got hairy). At a higher level I might have felt a little insulted by their efforts and their lack of faith in my ability to heal, but to be honest in that run I really wasn't very reliable. Still, in the end we only had one painful incident with multiple deaths, and that was on "that" pull at the start, which everyone knows is a pain. I was the only one who survived, because after everyone else had gone down I ran for it like a little girl until the rest of the group caught back up again and returned to finish off the rest of the pull.

Even though we did OK on them, some of the bosses also seemed to hit quite hard. The tunneler droid's debuff on whoever had aggro seemed to inflict almost hardmode levels of pain (and I had no dispel yet /cry), and Battlelord Kreshan's AoE similarly seemed to slice anyone's health to bits who just happened to stand in it.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I picked up scavenging as one of my crew skills, so I had a grand old time with that, though I noticed that scavengable corpses seem to disappear more quickly now if you don't grab them right away... I'm pretty sure it's not just my imagination. It's also worth noting that since all the 15-65 flashpoints officially scale you up to 65 now, any mats you gather in there will be rank eight. So running flashpoints for specific mats, like Red Reaper for Electrum back in the day, is definitely a thing of the past.

What I didn't mention was that I picked up slicing as my third crew skill! I have no expectation to level it at this point, but I was curious whether just having it, even at level 1, would allow me to access various slicing contraptions in flashpoints. The answer is yes! I found the elevator that commenter Joseph Brown mentioned in my Flashpoint Friday post about Hammer Station and greatly impressed my party by being able to unlock not just one but two shortcuts for us.

Queen of the unlockable shortcuts

When we did the little light/dark side choice about halfway through the flashpoint, one of the dps instantly instructed us to "spam that space bar", which gave me a bit of a nervous twitch, but since it was just that one really short cut scene with no dialogue, I wasn't too bothered. I just wonder why they were!

Overall, it was a pretty nice run though. I also realised that I really like the sound of Nico's Blasters (which I gave to my Merc to wield - not like I've had much other use for them so far).

After the flashpoint I was surprised to find that I actually had the debriefing quest to talk to Darth Malgus again at the holoterminal. I noted in my Flashpoint Friday about Red Reaper that these seemed to be gone with 4.0, but apparently that's just a Red Reaper bug or something, because Hammer Station apparently still has it, and so does Athiss which I did later (spoiler?).

Red Reaper
I levelled: 21-24

Speaking of the Red Reaper and its missing debriefing mission, that one came up next in my random queue. And yes, it still had no chat with Darth Malgus at the end to wrap it all up.

This was another run with three dps (of levels 47, 60 and 65 respectively) and went very smoothly, even though one guy said that he'd never done it before. If anything, I was the noob - I got myself knocked off that bridge near the end, and on my first attempt at running back I managed to aggro some turrets that we had skipped so I had to /stuck as I couldn't use the elevator while in combat.

Still not having a cleanse was annoying on Darth Ikoral, though not problematic. I was still glad to see Cure available on my trainer after that run.

Also, I got to slice another lift! Those crew skills are really paying off.

False Emperor
I levelled: 24-27

This was probably my worst run so far, though it was still far from terrible. This time my three dps (of levels 29, 50 and 60 respectively) just didn't seem particularly competent and flailed around a lot: standing in red circles with no regard for their health but hitting kolto stations when people were fine, breaking CC and generally showing little survival instinct. There were a fair few deaths but we muddled through. I just couldn't help but think that these guys would have been pretty screwed without a healer.

At the start someone also managed to start and space-bar through the entire intro conversation before I'd even zoned in properly.

After the second boss the level 50 left with a "sorry gtg". I pulled out Mako for the next pull and was rather amused to see her tiny little figure act as a tank. Then we got a level 17 dps as replacement.

HK-47 was seriously hard! And not just because of my fellow group members' flailiness; he just hit like a freaking truck every time he focused anyone. Sometimes I couldn't even keep people up with my single target heals and the kolto stations combined, though I managed to stay alive and kept at least one dps up for long enough for the other two that died to come running back. I can only imagine what a right nightmare that boss must be without a healer.

Finally, there was some minor random loot drama where people got annoyed with one guy for needing on a pair of boots. He apologised and said that it had been a misclick, offering them to anybody else who wanted them as they were BoE. The level 17 then declared that it was pointless now since they were already bound to the guy who had hit need. I commented to say that I thought she was mixing up WoW and SWTOR, as I can't remember Bioware ever implementing anything like that (but vaguely recall it being a thing in WoW a long time ago).

Towards the end of this flashpoint I got my first AoE heal, which was very gratifying.

Athiss
I levelled: 27-29

Adding some dps 'cause my party's awesome.

Another relative softball, this flashpoint started off with a level 56 tank and two level 65 dps. I felt quite excited to run with my first tank! Of course he then had to "reboot" and dropped group after the first pull, just to be replaced by a level 16 dps. One of the level 65 damage dealers also left soon after, but was replaced by another dps of the same level.

Regardless, this run was super smooth and an interesting contrast to the False Emperor run that came before, because it felt like I was just along for the ride and these guys would have been completely fine without me. I even saw someone use crowd control once! Mostly it seemed to be the power of the high levels though, as the 65s were able to tank whole pulls without too much trouble, even though they should have been quite squishy.

It also felt like I was getting a lot less XP though (I only barely managed to hit 29, having gained less than two full levels that run), which makes me wonder whether the wonders of flashpoint XP don't work quite similar to the grouping bonuses for missions after all. Those are based on how much XP each party member is earning, which means that anyone at max level who doesn't actually earn experience themselves anymore also contributes little to nothing to the rest of the group's bonus XP. At least that theory would explain why this run seemed to net me so much less than the previous runs that all had either only one or no max-level characters in them. Something to keep an eye on in future runs.

But hey, at least I got to level my bioanalysis.

Random Revelations

My random PvE pursuits continue.

I actually got all the datacrons except the two Makeb ones on my main now. Yes, even the Green Matrix Shard on Belsavis. I got lucky in so far as it "only" took me about an hour to find the four Rakata Energy Cubes I needed. Pet Tank advised me that I should make the most of my work by parking some alts at the datacron location to see if I could quickly relog to get the Matrix Shard on all of them while the datacron was still active and without having to collect more cubes. Despite of Belsavis' long loading screen, I managed to click on it with a total of three characters, and I probably could have squeezed a fourth one in if I had been optimistic enough to bring a fourth one along in the first place.

Oddly enough, the endurance datacron on Quesh was probably the next hardest one. You used to be able to access it on your own (the SWTOR Spy guide hasn't been updated since those days), but I already knew that wasn't possible anymore. However, until fairly recently, Pet Tank and I were always able to get it with the two of us when we were levelling on Quesh, with one person clicking the outside panel and the other activating the two inside the cave in quick succession. Except the last time we got there, we found that the latter was suddenly impossible to do, even with a speed boost. I got lucky in that when I went to get it on Shin, there was already another guy there looking to group up for it, so I just had to coax Pet Tank into logging in to be our third.

All in all, it wasn't too bad an exercise as I had already made significant progress before this latest hunting session, but I don't think I could run another alt through all of it again right away. I look at the status of the datacron codex category on some of my alts, see things like "2 out of 69" and it just makes me want to weep.

On Imperial side, I've continued running flashpoints on my Operative and my Marauder. In this post-automated-group-finder world, most groups are fairly quiet, but I've noticed that everyone still says hello at the start and goodbye/thank you at the end. People also remain fairly easygoing for the most part. I was surprised to find that not all pugs hate listening to cut scenes or doing bonus bosses, even at endgame. One time I zoned into False Emperor HM and the tank dropped group the instant he saw which instance it was. We ended up three-manning it with Kaliyo tanking and never got a replacement tank despite of having requeued.

My favourite pug was probably the Core Meltdown hardmode run where upon zoning in I noticed that our tank had only about 23k health. I wondered whether I should say anything, but decided to see how things went first and leave it up to the healer to complain if he wanted to. Surprisingly, the healer managed to keep our paper tank upright throughout the whole thing, except on the sandstorm boss, where the other Marauder (who was way overgeared) simply dps-tanked the rest of the fight. It was just a little comical.

In other news, my guild has run EC NiM a lot in the past few weeks, to get tanks for people and to finish up achievements. I still don't have a tank, but at least EC is now the third operation for which I have 100% achievement completion. Every time we loot a chest with Molecular Stabilizers in there, someone makes a joke about how they are so excited about the loot, to mock its supposed worthlessness now compared to how much we all used to crave those "stabs" back before 2.0. Imagine my surprise then, when I checked the GTN to see whether anyone was still buying them, just to find that they were actually selling for more than Exotic Element Equalizers, the current blue crafting materials. I always knew that there was a segment of the population that lingered at 50 - basically anyone who hasn't bought Rise of the Hutt Cartel or subscribed for at least a month since they made it a free addition to the sub. But to see people actually care enough to craft old endgame level gear, to buy old crafting materials at higher prices than current crafting materials... that just boggles the mind.

Last night we undermanned an EV story mode on Imperial alts, and meant to take a guildie with us who was only level 48. He bounced off the door with an error message about needing to be level 50 to enter operations. We all scratched our heads in confusion, since we could distinctly remember taking sub-50 players into ops with us before. I asked on the forums and someone pointed out to me that this was a change made in patch 2.1 - over a year ago. I felt like such a noob... also a bit sad though. Did it really hurt anyone to be able to take along people who were a couple of levels lower?

Level 50 Flashpoint Nerfs

Another thing I spent a lot of time on during the last couple of double experience weekends was running level fifty flashpoints, mostly on hard mode, but some of them on story mode as well. It got me thinking about how some of them have already been nerfed over time, even though the game is only one and a half years old.

As a general rule, I'm not completely against gradual nerfing of content, as long as it's not done as a kneejerk reaction to people struggling on day one, when everyone is undergeared and has no clue what to do, and as long as it's done in a thoughtful manner, by reducing requirements only where it's most needed instead of applying blanket hitpoint and damage reductions.

The flashpoints where I found the nerfs the most noticeable myself are:

The Esseles (hard)

I cannot swear for sure whether Ironfirst's head shot has been nerfed, but I recall wiping a lot to him whenever we failed to interrupt it during our earliest visits. However, this is something that we simply might have outgeared over time.

One boss that has definitely been changed however is Vokk and his lightning storm. It used to be that it hit so quickly after the warning circle appeared on the ground that it was basically impossible to accelerate out of it in time if you happened to be standing still at the moment it appeared, especially since more than one tick from the lightning meant that you were dead. Due to this, the only way to avoid it reliably used to be to basically keep moving throughout the entire fight and only stop every so often right after he had just cast lightning storm (since you were then safe in the knowledge that he wouldn't immediately cast it again).

This has been changed to give people time to actually move out of the purple circle before damage starts ticking, even if they are stationary at the moment when it appears. It still hurts a lot though. This is actually a nerf that I approve of. The mechanic hasn't been trivialised, but it feels less twitchy now, and classes that can't operate as well on the move aren't at as much of a disadvantage as they used to be.

Maelstrom Prison (hard)

This flashpoint contains one of my least favourite nerfs in the game, and that's the one applied to Colonel Daksh and his optical implants. It used to be that you absolutely had to avoid his eye lasers, as more than one hit from them meant that you were dead. A tank could maybe survive two, but that was it. Kiting him around the boxes off to the side wasn't massively challenging by itself, but while the tank was on the run he was at risk of losing aggro and having the boss suddenly turn and nuke someone else. Line of sight issues for the rest of the group were also a consideration. I had many a wipe on this guy back in the day.

Now, I can understand why this encounter was nerfed, but I really don't like the manner in which it was done, which was basically to reduce the eye laser damage by such a high amount that it's become completely trivial. Any class can pretty much just stand there and tank the boss throughout the entire thing now, as long as they continue to receive heals. Pointless! I think there would have been other ways to make this fight easier, for example by increasing the boss's cast times, without making his unique mechanic completely irrelevant.

False Emperor (either)

The first thing that always strikes me when I do this flashpoint is how much of the trash has been removed since launch. To be fair, there was a lot of it, probably more than in most other flashpoints, and it's not as if any of it was particularly challenging... but it's still a bit strange how empty the place is now, especially when you spend long stretches of the instance running through abandoned corridors on what's supposed to be a space station bustling with activity.

The thing that really makes me sad every time I run this flashpoint though is what they have done to Malgus himself; I think it was only done in 2.0. Considering that he's a key NPC, his fight was designed to be one of the more epic small group encounters in the game. Most notably he became invulnerable towards the end of the fight, and the only way to finish him off was to make him fall to his doom down a nearby chasm via use of knockbacks, in a moment that's very reminiscent of the Emperor's death in Return of the Jedi. For classes that didn't have a knockback ability, grenades with a similar effect were available at the door.

Now, this could be another tricky encounter, and again it's one where I had a fair number of wipes in the day. Malgus becomes very hard to move once he gets low on health due to his chain-casting of uninterruptable force lightning. All the while there is also the risk of him casting his "unlimited power" insta-wipe ability which needs interrupting, or him using a knockback on someone who's poorly positioned and sending them to their doom. To successfully knock him off, you also needed to apply two knockbacks in a row, as he resisted if you only used a single one. This obviously required some coordination.

Again, I can kind of see why Bioware decided to nerf this encounter, especially considering that level fifty flashpoints aren't endgame anymore. There were just too many things that could go wrong and cause a wipe. However, I was still sad to see that the way they decided to go about it was to completely remove the need to knock Malgus off the bridge. He simply never goes invulnerable, so you just continue shooting or stabbing him until he falls over. The grenades are still there, but completely redundant. It feels extremely anticlimactic, considering how big a part he plays in the story beforehand and that the rest of the fight isn't really that challenging. Again, I can't help but feel that there would have been different ways to make the fight more accessible without completely draining all the flavour from it, for example by making Malgus easier to move and only requiring a single knockback.

Which nerfs have other people noticed?