A Good Start to the Season

You may find it hard to believe after my outrage at how gutted the Esseles and the Black Talon feel without cut scenes, but I've actually had a pretty good start to Galactic Season 9 in spite of that. Patch day was a bit rough, with my game crashing to desktop something like seven times, but once I learned that this was caused by hovering over one specific UI element, I was once again too amazed by just how weird MMO bugs can be sometimes to really be mad about that. (Plus, once I knew what was causing it, it was easy to avoid. They then patched the issue a couple days later.)

The flashpoint theme has actually felt surprisingly invigorating. I've long said that I'm a big fan of flashpoints, but I'm not immune to incentives, and the fact that there's literally been nothing to earn for me in flashpoints for a couple of years now has admittedly discouraged me from running them. I would rarely go for the seasons objectives that required you to run two specific flashpoints because they were just too time-consuming and felt inefficient. The dedicated weekly objective for this season only requiring a single quick veteran mode run makes a world of a difference, and I was genuinely surprised that I actually had fun blitzing through Athiss six times this past week.

My favourite run was the one with my husband on our home server, where he actually bothered to go into one of the side alcoves to use his scavenging to repair the broken combat droid there, something I hadn't done in so long that I'd genuinely forgotten that it was even a thing. One of the guildies in our group then kept casting a heal over time on it to keep it alive, to the point that the temporary pet was actually still alive when we got to the last boss. This is where we learned that the living fire debuff can go on non-player characters! The poor droid didn't manage to survive that one, but it was good for a laugh. 

The other weekly objectives for the first two weeks were pretty good too, with some nice softballs that didn't take too much time to complete on multiple servers while also earning me new achievements.

My personal biggest delight last week though was that there was also an objective to run any random master mode flashpoint, which I did on five out of six servers. (Sadly I couldn't get the queue to pop on Shae Vizla even while queueing as a tank.)

Even better, not a single one of them was Hammer Station, even though I had queued for the full selection. I had the expectation that most people would use the new feature that allows you to exclude a few flashpoints without losing your random bonus to primarily veto long or difficult ones, but maybe there are more fellow Spammer Station haters out there than expected who are actually excluding that one instead.

Either way, the random master mode flashpoints I got put into were Assault on Tython (twice), Battle of Rishi, Lost Island and Crisis on Umbara. The latter must have been nerfed a lot since I last did it, as my group completed it successfully without wiping despite feeling pretty mid in terms of skill. I know there's been some gear inflation since 7.0, but the first two bosses barely even seemed to do any damage, and we pulled the bonus boss by accident with a bunch of trash and still killed that successfully too. Not that I'm complaining!

Battle of Rishi had me busting out my Shadow's tank spec on Satele Shan, which I had actually set up some time ago but then never ended up using. I was very pleased with myself for how I guided the rest of the group through the run after someone expressed that it had been a while and they weren't sure they remembered what to do. Trying to model good tank behaviour!

Lost Island was the most memorable one though, as that was what I got on the Leviathan server while queueing on my Sage as a healer. It quickly became obvious that the tank and one of the damage dealers knew basically nothing about the flashpoint, while the other damage dealer gave the vibes of someone who had done it before and generally knew how to play but couldn't fully remember all the tactics properly. It was pretty funny to read the chat and try to make sense of it, as my knowledge of French is very limited. I think I could generally get the vibe/general topic, but not necessarily what exactly people were trying to say.

Unsurprisingly we wiped something like five times on the second boss as everyone but me kept getting knocked off the platform. I tried to use Google Translate to explain where people needed to stand, but either the translation made no sense or they intentionally decided to ignore me because I sounded too weird, as they didn't appear to listen to my advice. Fortunately they eventually seemingly managed to figure it out on their own and we were victorious. The remaining two bosses after that were comparatively easy, but I still felt like I was carrying pretty hard, healing people through some significant amounts of "standing in bad".

I felt properly giddy after we finished, both excited and relieved that we'd succeeded despite our difficulties, but also a bit amused by how ridiculous the whole experience had felt. The dps who'd given me vibes of having some idea of what to do whispered me afterwards to... I don't know, I'm guessing it was something like "we're queueing again" though it might have meant something completely different; I genuinely had no clue. I just logged off because I'd definitely had enough for that evening.

I'm hoping to see that objective pop up more often though.

Master Mode Flashpoint Tips: Infinite Army Prototype

Introduction

It always surprises me when I google something that I think should be fairly well known, just because I want to double-check a specific detail for example, and then it turns out there's actually (next to) no content about that thing out there. In this particular case, said "thing" is the bonus boss of master mode Legacy of the Rakata, a flashpoint that has been in the game for about nine years at the time of writing this. So I thought I'd write a quick guide on how to deal with it myself.

I wouldn't say that this is a particularly hard flashpoint boss, but he's not trivially easy either. It's definitely not the type of fight where you can just wing it and hope for the best - you have to understand the boss's abilities and coordinate with the rest of your group.

The boss in a nutshell

He sits inside a small bunker and you'll want to stay inside said bunker for the entire fight, as leaving it while in combat causes annoying womp rat adds to spawn. However, once a minute he also does a massive channelled AoE called Unstable Barrier that is as big as the bunker and that you can't just stand in.

I think the intended way to deal with this was that you would run out during the AoE and deal with womp rats as needed, however I've never actually seen it done this way as it's actually possible to avoid the AoE damage without leaving the building: by breaking line of sight to the boss and hiding behind the vase highlighted in the screenshot below:

What to do as a tank

Make sure you have your back against one of the bunker walls, as the boss frequently does a knockback in a frontal cone and you don't want to go flying out of the building and cause womp rats to spawn unnecessarily. You'll also want to be facing him away from the rest of the group.

Ideally you'll want to have your back against one of the bunker's side walls, so the rest of your party can stand on the other side, and if someone gets aggro, at least they'll only bounce off the wall there and won't be knocked outside either.

When you see the Unstable Barrier cast, run behind the vase to line of sight the boss, then jump back into the fight once the channel is over.

What to do as a damage dealer

Stand behind the boss so you don't get hit by his knockback. Ideally the tank should position the boss in such a way that you'll still be able to have a wall behind you as well, just in case aggro is unstable and the boss twitches. Note that you'll want to stand directly behind the boss even if you're ranged, as standing at a distance will cause him to constantly yank you back into melee range and interrupt your casts.

When you see the Unstable Barrier cast, run behind the vase to line of sight the boss, then jump back into the fight once it the channel over.

What to do as a healer

Stand directly behind the boss with the rest of the damage dealers to avoid both his knockback and his grapple. Focus on healing the tank as the boss hits quite hard, and everyone else should be nicely grouped up for some splash AoE healing. When you see the Unstable Barrier cast, run behind the vase to line of sight the boss, do some more AoE healing there (the rest of the group should have come with you!), then jump back into the fight once the AoE damage is over.

Note for everyone

Hiding behind the vase and actually breaking line of sight with the boss requires a certain amount of precision. Watch your health bar, and if your health keeps ticking down, you're not in quite the right spot yet.

It's also technically possible to just power through the AoE without hiding at all if your healer is sufficiently overgeared and the group has the right damage reduction cooldowns available. A Gunslinger's Diversion and Scrambling Field are hugely powerful in this fight for example and can negate the majority of an Unstable Barrier's damage to the whole group if deployed at the right time. Various personal damage reduction cooldowns also work. However, I would only advise going with this strategy if the healer is comfortable with it and you have a plan for how to negate Unstable Barrier's damage once every minute for the entirety of the fight.

Master Mode Flashpoint Tips: Syndic Zenta

Introduction

It's been a while since I've written one of these! I did however have a few more bosses on my list that I really wanted to cover, and one of them is Syndic Zenta in master mode Traitor Among the Chiss. I've been told by some people that they haven't had that many issues with her, but to me she's been a right pain in the rear on more than one occasion, which I think makes it worthwhile to share what I have learned, for the benefit of others who might be having the same difficulties.

The boss in a nutshell

She starts on the floor, then jumps up onto the walkways above her, changes position a few times, then jumps down again and covers the floor in lightning periodically. There are also a lot of adds, and during the top phase she throws some targeted circles around that you should avoid placing on other players. That really is the gist of it, but once again I'll happily point you towards Vulkk or the old Dulfy guide for more details on the mechanics.

What to do as a tank

At the start of the fight, round up the adds on the ground as best as you can while damage dealers focus on AoEing them down. Once Zenta goes up, follow her (either by leaping or via using one of the available grappling hooks) and position yourself just around the corner from the ramp that leads up onto the walkways. Feel free to taunt and hit the boss occasionally, but she shouldn't really be your main priority at this point as she doesn't actually hit that hard. It's more important that you focus on rounding up the adds as they appear and do your best to keep them from overwhelming your healer (who should be standing near you.)

Once Zenta goes down again you're basically racing against a soft enrage as more and more adds will be spawning in rapidly. Use everything you've got to get their attention while staying alive (AoE taunt, stuns, damage reduction cooldowns etc.) and hope that the dps can kill her in time before you and the healer both get overwhelmed.

What to do as a damage dealer

Start off by killing the adds on the ground, then dps the boss until she goes up. Follow her and continue to focus your damage on her, but keep an eye on the tank and healer, and jump over to them occasionally to mop up the pile of adds that will accumulate on them. When Zenta goes down again, just nuke her from range if you can.

If you're playing a melee class, make sure to wait a few seconds as she will cast her big lightning floor move almost immediately, and you don't want to jump right into it. Then jump down after it and nuke her with all you've got (while also hitting what damage reduction cooldowns you've got available) before the swarms of unending adds overwhelm your tank and healer.

What to do as a healer

At the start, you can hide behind a nearby crate to the left to avoid getting sniped. Once Zenta goes up, stick close to your tank as you will be getting healing aggro on any and all adds that spawn, and you'll rely on the tank picking them up to stay alive. Keep an eye on dps taking damage as well, though it shouldn't be too bad on them. Once Zenta goes down again, leave the damage dealers to their fate and focus on just keeping yourself and the tank alive as best as you can. If you can survive until Zenta's defeated, all remaining adds vanish automatically.

Master Mode Flashpoint Tips: Umbaran Spider Tank

Introduction

I previously wrote about Commander Mokan, whom I consider one of the hardest flashpoint bosses in the game. The thing that makes Mokan hard is understanding the tactics involved - however, once you've internalised all the steps, the actual execution isn't all that tricky aside from the healer having to be capable of a certain degree of multitasking.

Today I'd like to write about a boss that is also one of the hardest flashpoint bosses in the game, but for completely different reasons: the Umbaran Spider Tank at the end of Crisis on Umbara. This one's no puzzle at all (stay out of the fire and kill adds) but the problem lies in the requirements for perfect execution, which are pretty harsh on master mode. Also, unlike Mokan, killing the Umbaran Spider Tank is not optional, meaning that he's driven many a group to despair, and pugs will often drop out as soon as they see that their queueing for a random master mode has landed them in Umbara, even though it only takes 20-30 minutes to complete if you can one-shot everything. The problem is that most groups won't get that experience; instead they'll just wipe a lot and often end up abandoning the whole thing.

I am not above these problems myself, and have only ever had a single what I would call a "perfect kill" of this boss, where we killed it right where it spawns, it was a one-shot and everyone was still alive by the end of the fight. To this day I'm not entirely sure how we did that; I think our dps must have just been awesome that day. More commonly there've been at least a handful of wipes involved, and by the end we're often just as dead as the Spider Tank, with the only difference being that we're allowed to get up again and loot while the tank does not get that luxury.

That was until I was taught the strategy I describe in this post. It's fair to describe it as "cheesy", as it involves fighting the boss in a way that clearly wasn't exactly what the developers had in mind when they designed the encounter, but as it doesn't actually avoid any of the mechanics I don't consider it exploitative. Just like the best way to beat the Purifier Droids in KotET chapter four on veteran/master mode is to leg it into a different building, this fight can be made a lot more manageable by moving the boss and forcing the add spawns into a funnel that makes them a little easier to control. It's no miracle solution to suddenly making the fight easy, but it does take a significant amount of pressure off the group by giving them more wiggle room to handle the adds before they maul the healer.

The boss in a nutshell

Once again I can recommend what both Vulkk and Dulfy have to say about this fight if you want to know the exact details of every ability the boss does, but the short of it is that on top of damaging the tank it does both a painful knockdown and places fire circles on random group members that make it a constant challenge to stay alive. At certain health percentages a wave of adds spawns in, and once the boss gets low on health an unending stream of adds begins, forcing you to burn it quickly. While dps is important, the main challenge of the encounter is simply staying alive, as a particularly unlucky combo of the same person getting stunned and hit by a fire circle can be absolutely devastating to their health bar, and all this happens while the healer will struggle not to get eaten by the adds.

What to do as a tank

After the little cut scene has played, send the rest of your group back down the hill, just around the bend where a bunch of kolto barrels are lying on the ground. Pull the boss and start running down the hill; it will evade at some point. Then repeat this manoeuvrer - this time the boss won't evade but will instead follow you all the way down to the rest of the group.

Try to position the boss so that it's not straight up against the cliff face, so that there's a bit of room to run around it on all sides. Keep it facing away from the rest of the group as much as you can but run out of fire when you must. When adds come down the hill and run past you, you can also hit them with AoE; hopefully the dps should be able to take care of them for the most part though.

What to do as a damage dealer

After the little cut scene has played, run back down the hill to where a bunch of kolto barrels are lying on the ground. Wait for the tank to bring the boss all the way down to you, then start to dps. Try to stay away from each other to avoid more than one person being hit by any ability, and run out of fire circles as quickly as you can. Also try to retain some awareness of where the healer is hiding, so that you break line of sight as little as possible and don't run out of range.

Whenever adds come down the hill, try to resist the urge to run up and get them as soon as they get close - let them come down. By default they will aggro on the healer, and if the healer breaks line of sight properly the adds should bunch up nicely close to them, at the bottom of the hill. At that point you want to charge in and kill them quickly (but still avoid standing on top of other dps or the healer while doing so).

When the boss is at around thirty percent health, mop up any adds that may still be around before continuing to dps (just look at the red dots on the mini map). At about twenty percent an infinite stream of adds will start spawning, so just focus on nuking the boss at that point. With the adds taking some time to run down the hill, you should be able to kill the boss before they reach the group and start causing trouble, so that you then only have to deal with getting rid of them after the boss is already dead.

What to do as a healer

After the little cut scene has played, run back down the hill to where a bunch of kolto barrels are lying on the ground. Try to hide behind one of the "tentacle trees" there, or on the other side of the path. (See the spots marked with a healer marker in the above screenshot.) Move when the boss puts a fire circle on you and if you lose line of sight of group members you need to heal, but try to stay behind one of the trees as much as you can, so that the adds will have a long way to run when they come in. Once they start bunching up near you, the dps should quickly AoE them down.

Note for everyone

One of the reasons to fight by the kolto barrels is that you can pop them for some extra healing if it feels like the healer can't keep up with the damage at any point. Keep in mind that they don't respawn though, so if you use them all up and wipe you don't get them back for the next attempt.

Master Mode Flashpoint Tips: Commander Mokan

Introduction

As mentioned previously, I've been running a lot of master mode flashpoints with guildies over the past couple of weeks, and one of the nice things about this has been achieving true mastery of some of the harder boss fights in them. I've said in the past that I generally like challenging fights, but the problem is that spending all night wiping on a boss just to finally be triumphant in the end is an experience with diminishing returns. Wiping again the second and third time you do the boss, because the fight is still hard, is simply not that fun. However, there does come a point when after doing it a few more times you actually achieve true mastery of the mechanics, and then it becomes fun again when you one-shot those very same tough bosses and can revel in just how pro you are now.

I thought it would be nice to share some of the insights I gained about a few of the tougher flashpoint bosses this way, and I wanted to start with Commander Mokan, more commonly known as the bonus boss in master mode Battle of Rishi. I killed him back in the day when he was new, but it was painful and messy, and while I went on to kill him again after that, the fight remained confusing and frustrating to me all the same.

The problem is that while there are some guides out there such as Dulfy's or Vulkk's, I found that they focus more on explaining what the boss does instead of telling you what you need to do. (I do absolutely recommend them if you want to gain a deeper understanding of how everything works.) For me though, it's all nice and well to know that the tank needs to be cleansed, but just when is the best time for that? And yes, I know that I want exactly four stacks of the green debuff, but something always seems to go wrong no matter how we go about getting them, so what's up with that? Fear not, for I'm going to explain to you exactly what you need to do, and you'll probably be surprised by how straightforward it is once you boil it down to the basics.

The boss in a nutshell

He basically alternates between two phases, which I shall simply call "green phase" and "red phase". During red phase, all he does is stand there and channel an AoE that does massive damage to everyone in the room. During green phase, he alternates between doing two things: cast a conal AoE on the tank (he does this three times), and put down a green circle on a non-tank (this he also does three times). No person will get more than one circle on them during each green phase, unless someone has died and been revived, stealthed out, or the tank lost aggro. If that happens, you're probably about to wipe. The fight always starts with a green phase.

What to do as a tank

Congratulations, you've got the easy job! Just point him away from the rest of the group, hold aggro, and try not to die.

As it's really important that you don't lose aggro at any point, I recommend starting with a "taunt fluff", which is to say that you taunt the boss on pull, use your AoE taunt as soon as the taunt debuff runs out, and then use your single target taunt again as soon as it comes off cooldown. This should generally see you through safely even against the most overzealous damage dealers.

Use available damage reduction cooldowns during the red phase to make things easier on the healer, but make sure not to use anything that purges debuffs on you, as that will cause you to lose all your green stacks and result in death.

What to do as a damage dealer

Make sure to stand on the opposite side of the boss from the tank and spread out during green phase, so that when a green circle hits you, nobody else gets hit at the same time. Also try not to pull aggro. During red phase, stack up on the boss to make healing easier, and use any damage reduction cooldowns you have.

The big challenge for dps during green phase is

Circle Management

If you are the first person to get a green circle thrown at you, stand in it until you have two stacks, then move out. Once the second circle lands on someone else, step into that briefly to get your stacks up to four.

If you are the second person to get a green circle thrown at you, stand in it until you have four stacks, then move out.

If the first two circles have landed on other people and you know that the last one will be on you, step into the second circle to get two stacks from it, then step away. When the third circle lands on you, get another two stacks to get up to four. Then stack up for red phase, which will be imminent.

Rinse and repeat when the boss goes back to green phase, and continue until he's dead.

What to do as a healer

As a healer you undoubtedly have the hardest job in this fight, but it's still not quite as bad as it may seem at first. First off, you have to practice circle management as described above, just like the dps, while also healing people.

You will also have to cleanse the tank, but this is actually really straightforward: just cast cleanse on them twice per green phase (when they first get hit by the green cone, and then again whenever your cleanse is off cooldown). I used to fret about when to cleanse and how often but it's really that simple, as the tank always gets six stacks of the debuff on them throughout the duration of a single green phase, and by removing two you leave them at the desired four.

During red phase, make sure to stack up with everyone else and use all your big AoE heals.

I hope that by following these simple steps, you too will soon be able to one-shot this guy, making him just another stepping stone on your journey through Battle of Rishi.

The Tank's Lament

I've been running a lot of master mode flashpoints over the last few weeks, mostly in full guild groups, and with our raid tanks not having much of a taste for doing even more tanking outside of operations, this has led to a resurgence of me tanking on my alts. Trawling through my blog archives, I'd forgotten just how much time I used to spend tanking years ago, but somehow I just let all of that fade away. My most recent post with the tanking tag is more than two and a half years old.

Anyway, I'm back in the saddle with a total of six max-level tanking alts, three of each class per faction. They are all in full 306 gear, even if it's not optimised, and I think I have a decent grip on mechanics. I'm undoubtedly best at playing Vanguard/Powertech (because it's easy) and worst at Shadow/Assassin (because it's complicated), but I can get by in small group content and on the easier operation difficulties on all of them.

It's been interesting to remember all the things I used to enjoy about tanking: being a group's guide and protector, and having the control to line up a pull just so, for example by popping a reflect at just the right moment to maximise my threat, or by getting a group of mobs to line up perfectly for easy AoEing.

Unfortunately, people don't like to wait three seconds to allow me to do this because they want to pull now, so my reflect is useless because all the aggro is on the healer and since my AoE taunt is on cooldown I end up running in circles like a muppet instead, manually hitting every mob in the face just to prevent the healer from getting mauled from five different directions.

A more experienced tank in the guild has been teaching me all kinds of little tricks that I'm always in awe of and that make me feel very clever when I actually remember them and manage to execute them perfectly, whether it involves standing in just the right place to counter a boss mechanic or using a certain Tactical in a specific situation.

But again, people can't wait three seconds for me to position the boss or swap a piece of gear, because... I don't know? So off they go again pulling everything at random, because "it's one of the easy flashpoints anyway" and as long as we don't wipe it doesn't matter, right?

I've always said that there's a special relationship between tanks and healers - and in hindsight I'm clearly biased, considering that I ended up marrying my last pet tank. You don't have to be marriage material as a tank for me to love you when I'm healing though. I'll want to stick close to you anyway, viewing every group as you and me against the world - I mean, we can do without those pesky damage dealers if we really need to, right?

Unsurprisingly, when I'm tanking I tend to project this attitude onto my own healers, assuming that they'll stick close to me and rely on me for their protection as well. When the healer does appear to share this mindset, it's great and makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside (and incidentally also moves that person up in my healing priority list if we're doing operations together).

Unfortunately, a lot of healers don't have the same view of things as me. So I stand there forlornly with only half health after just picking up my loot, as the healer didn't even bother to throw a heal over time on me after the last fight and instead ran off to charge right into the next pull, AoEing everything as if he signed up for the group as a damage dealer. I thought we had something special! You're breaking my heart, man.

/cry

If tank and healer make a really good team, you can even pull off some pretty crazy stunts, such as charging into a huge AoE pull together and not dying.

Or someone else who's not the tank just makes a huge pull without any consideration of the consequences and you wipe.

In fairness, the tank is but one person in a flashpoint group, and who's to say that everything has to be about what they like? Maybe everyone else is just having more fun doing things their way? What makes the tank's sense of fun more important than anyone else's?

Nothing of course. But if you want other people to tank for you, you might want to consider not turning every trash pull into an uphill battle for them. (I sometimes get the impression that a lot of people who don't tank don't even realise what a huge difference it can make for a tank's sense of enjoyment and - maybe more importantly - ability to control a pull to get the initial aggro vs. having all the mobs immediately run off to chase after someone else.) Else you may find yourself waiting on the group finder soon, wondering why your requests for a tank in guild chat were met with nothing but silence.

(I know this post probably sounds a bit emo and it is, but sometimes writing these things down can be really cathartic. It doesn't always get me this down when I'm tanking and people are impatient and uncooperative in their play style, but when I'm in the wrong mood it can be downright depressing - especially when it's guildies, who are supposed to be better than pugs! I've thought of trying to explain some of these things to others before - when they were actually occurring that is - but unsurprisingly, hurrying after impatient players that are about to get themselves in trouble yet again (while also clearly thinking that nothing is wrong) is not exactly conducive to verbalising complex emotions.)

(On a different and more amusing note, as I went through my blog archives about tanking, I found this post about tanking in WoW from more than nine years ago, and I had to laugh at the way past me described pugs as basically having two attitudes to you as a tank: either they think you're their boss or they think you're their bitch. I used to be a lot more patient with the latter group than I am these days. Ain't nobody got time for that.)

Tank Ego

I seem to remember a long defunct WoW blog (Why did you have to delete everything, Tam? Why?) once coining the term "tego" as a contraction of "tank ego" to describe a certain attitude of superiority found in tanks that the writer would run into every now and then.

At least in all the MMOs I've played, there seems to be a natural expectation for the tank to assume the leadership role in any given group. It does make sense to a certain extent, when the tank is the one making the pulls and generally setting the pace of the run. However, we tend to go a bit overboard with our expectations of leadership sometimes, which leads to things like tanks fancying themselves very important and their lives meaningful above the rest of the group (having a big tego), or groups feeling restless and uneasy when they feel that a tank isn't taking charge quite forcefully and quickly enough.

In larger (raid) groups, tanks are also subject to an odd sort of dominance struggle among themselves, as only a minority of fights feature two tanking assignments of equal importance, which leads to one being designated as the main tank and the other the off-tank. Healers don't have that: While we might also have assignments like "you take the left group, I take the right", and sometimes one might be easier than the other, they are always considered equally important. And while damage dealers are always incredibly competitive about doing the highest dps, they generally operate on an even playing field, without anyone being given a rank like primary or secondary dps.

I found myself thinking about this during the past week, during which I had some days off and spent some time tanking social runs for my guild on an Imperial alt of mine. Just assuming the role of tank was already enough to greatly change my perception of each run - I'll admit that as a healer I'm quite prone to things like goofing off or being lazy on trash, but as a tank I felt like I constantly had to pay attention to make sure nobody got themselves into trouble, though I'm sure that was at least in part caused by my relative unfamiliarity with the role. I know that our regular tanks do also allow themselves moments of slacking off and being silly sometimes.

I was also told that I wasn't "dominant enough" - which was meant as a joke and did make me laugh, but at the same time it also gave me food for thought. Quite a few times I experienced damage dealers pulling for me, and while it was all good-natured fun among friends, I have to admit that at the same time there was a part of me that started to feel a bit stressed out as the evening wore on. Like I had to fight the group for pulling rights to show that I'm the tank instead of them just letting me do my job. Because if you're the tank and you're not tanking, what are you? Useless, that's what, and that's just no fun.

On Friday night, things took an amusing turn when I ended up co-tanking an operation with another guild member who - while a lot more used to it than me - also isn't a "regular" tank. Usually he's "just" a damage dealer, and a fairly mellow and reliable one at that, or in other words: He didn't have much of a tego either. This led to a sort of comedy of over-politeness where we would stand in front of a boss and be like: "No, you should main tank this one. Really, I just had the last one." "Oh but I really don't mind, you go ahead and take this one too." "No, I insist..." I think the rest of the group was a bit baffled. Another time we both chilled at the back scavenging some droids while everyone else threw themselves into the next trash pull with no tanks whatsoever. We just sighed and shook our heads.

The conclusion all this made me come to is that a certain degree of tank ego is actually useful to have and probably quite important if you want to actually enjoy the role. While too much of it is annoying and can lead to people acting quite tyrannical, trying to hold the group hostage to their whims, not having enough of it can lead to other group members making your life hard and forcing you to fight them nearly as much as the hostile mobs, which then results in stress and a lack of fun for you.

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.

Dark vs. Light: Nearly There

We're getting close to three months of the Dark vs. Light event being live, and I'm nearly done! While I've "officially" still only completed the first three tiers, in practice I'm very close to completing Legendary level (the final one) by now.

The reason I haven't completed Champion level (the fourth one) yet is that I'm missing Battle of Rishi for the Flashpoint Expert achievement. I kind of figured that if I was going to level six new characters to fifty via a mix of warzones and random tactical flashpoints, I was bound to get all of them automatically after a while. Not so, apparently! I know random numbers are funny things, but I'm starting to wonder about Battle of Rishi at this point because back when I levelled my Mercenary through nothing but flashpoints at the end of last year, she never had Battle of Rishi pop as a random either. Instead I've had what felt like dozens of runs of Hammer Station, Cademimu and False Emperor. As I still have one character to finish off, I suppose that there's still a chance that Battle of Rishi will show up as part of my random flashpoint rotation, but at this point I'm not holding my breath. It might just end up being the last thing stopping me from hitting Legendary, by which point I will of course simply queue for it specifically and get it done that way.

Completing KotFE for the umpteenth time was as expected the most chore-like requirement for me, though I did get it done in the end. I covered the first nine chapters in about three days, and then the rest in small bits and pieces here and there, as they are a bit easier to break up into small chunks. I did enjoy KotFE's story and even replaying it a couple of times, just not... that much. I have no idea how someone like xLetalis can happily play through each new chapter sixteen times on release to present his viewers with a playthrough of all eight classes of both sexes.

As it turned out, I had to ask my pet tank for a boost to get the Eternal Championship achievements. I thought that I should get through it easily enough after having completed it on a couple of classes already, but I actually already struggled on the very first boss (!), being a healing Scoundrel in mediocre gear with a companion of influence level five. After that I was kind of genuinely surprised that I managed to kill the next couple of bosses at all, but by the time I reached Lanos it became clear that I just didn't have enough dps. I had no interest in working on better gear and a higher influence level just then, so I simply asked my pet tank for help so we could do the team version. That one doesn't give credit for any quests or regular achievements, but for the DvL event it doesn't matter if you go in in a group so it was definitely the preferable option.

I "finished off" all the characters I introduced in my last event post, getting them to fifty and maxing out their crew skills, plus another one that wasn't even "born" yet at the time, my super cute Mirialan Guardian Starberry.

I was wondering whether I should make her a Sentinel since that's another advanced class I don't actually have at max level, but I do have an alt that's about halfway there and I know from my Marauder that I don't enjoy the playstyle very much so... eh. I like Guardians though, and I'd never given tanking on one a serious try before. While I have a level 65 Juggernaut tank, I actually didn't do that much group content with that one (she was levelled in tandem with my pet tank), so I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. All those cooldowns! So much utility! Even arenas become fun when you're not the first focus target for once and can in fact charge in first without too much fear for your own health.

Incidentally, Starberry is also my first DvL character that actually used armour that I got as an event reward - I got the Resolute Guardian upper body armour out of one of my reward boxes, which is the snazzy armour set that appears on the character creation screen for Jedi knights. I'd quite like it if I got the rest of the set out of one of boxes that are still to come, but for levelling the chest piece and gloves alone were enough to make her look presentable.

Anyway, what's left? Four hardmode flashpoints which I'm hoping to polish off this weekend, levelling my event Sith warrior to fifty, and the aforementioned Battle of Rishi run. I should be able to provide my personal event wrap-up very soon!

500 Posts!

Can you believe that this is my 500th post on this blog? I can! I never quite get when people say that they have nothing to post about - if I can write 500 posts about Star Wars: The Old Republic alone, there is always something to say.

Traditionally I like to use these milestones as an excuse to look at the search terms through which people found this blog and see if there's anything funny in there. Here are the links to the previous posts in that vein:

100 Posts! (August 2012)
200 Posts! (May 2013)
300 Posts! (April 2014)
400 Posts! (March 2015)

Now, let's dive into what Google Analytics showed me this time:

why you should not be a soldier swtor - I'm guessing this was a German speaker, because troopers are called Soldaten (soldiers) in the German version. Anyway, there is no reason not to be a trooper! They are awesome! (Though I'll concede that their class story isn't the best.)

blakhol jnawa - There are no jawas in the Black Hole. If that is what you were asking about...

darth revan face swtor german - After thinking about it for a bit, I'm guessing this person was looking for the cut scene at the end of Yavin IV in German or something? The idea of people finding something particularly German about Revan's face amuses me though.

dirty-flirty swtor - /blinks in confusion

everyday i'm tanking - I don't know what this person was really looking for, but my first thought was that they were searching for an MMO parody version of LFMAO's Party Rock Anthem. Searching YouTube for "Everyday I'm tanking" just led me to this bizarre clip of part of the music video overlaid with the intro music to Thomas the Tank Engine. If the title isn't that important though and you would just enjoy a parody song about tanking, you might enjoy this song... or this one.

find me the meaning progenitor - Does playing on the Progenitor really need to provide special meaning? If you've ever wondered where the server got its name, click here.

glaciers in lack saperen lowlands - I put this one into Google myself and what do you know, my The Art of Achieving Map Completion post is the first result. What the heck? This is why spelling is important, kids! Best I can tell this was actually meant to be about this area in Wisconsin.

how do i get into the counselor phase next to the cantina in tython in swtor - Time to get out this image again:

To actually answer the question though, if I recall correctly you get to go there at the end of chapter one. Why not just play through the whole story and find out?

i want you to be a sith inquisitor - But I don't wanna!

lurfg - This search term invokes the mental image of someone trying to say "LFG" and then throwing up halfway through because the thought of having to pug makes them sick.

makeb kill it with fire - Aw, come on, Makeb's not that bad! Of course then I remembered that there's this achievement: Kill It With Fire. I haven't got it myself, but I seem to remember that it's either bugged or kind of awkward to get in that the kill won't count if your companion gets the killing blow, the fire doesn't actually cause the killing blow, or something like that.

new different golu decoration - My Sage is intrigued.

sith individualism - Yes. It's definitely a thing.

swtor jedi knight major hardon - I want to believe that this person thought that there's a character called Major Hardon in the Jedi knight story. The alternative is too awful and confusing to contemplate.

swtor whats a gf - While general chat requests like "need more for DP in GF" might give you the wrong idea if you have a dirty mind, it generally stands for "group finder".

tell me the meaning of foot commando. - What is it with people looking for meaning today? Surely feet are useful to have either way?!

warp speed from the earth to the moon in 4 minutes - warp speed - Sorry, wrong franchise. Though I do like Star Trek too.

From the good old "I don't know why Google thought I'm writing about that game" pile:

eq2 keeps crashing to deskop like i wasn't even playing
fallout 4 max companion affection
ff14 3.02
mwo keeps crashing why?

If I'm being honest though, the most fascinating part of going through the search terms for me aren't even the funny ones anymore, but simply the oddly specific searches some people go for. It actually makes me want to write a couple of guides - not about generic stuff like how to execute the perfect dps rotation (not that I know anything about that anyway), but... well... to answer oddly specific questions like these:

old republic dromund kaas entire map - Dromund Kaas is one planet I didn't mention in my Art to Achieving Map Completion guide, but I bet I still know which bit of the map this person was missing, because it's the same one I always forget about. You know that body of water located between Lord Grathan's Estate and The Unfinished Colossus? The Dromund Kaas world boss spawns in it, which is why it has its own name and needs to be uncovered separately even though it's a very small area.

swtor 4.0 heroic 2+ false history - I know it doesn't say so, but I'm pretty sure what they actually want to know is whether you can still solo this. I remember having to look this up pre-4.0 myself because I was struggling at the time. I just tried it again and it still works fine. I even recorded it, just for you you, anonymous Googler!



all interactions with juda (hutta) swtor - I don't have a list of all interactions with her, but I thought this one was interesting to highlight since you get the option to talk to her a couple of times even when it isn't highlighted by a quest icon, you just have to be curious enough to click on her without prompting. Republic has a similar thing going on with the planetary quest line on Belsavis, where you can spare a Sith Lord from death and work with him for a bit, and you can talk to him afterwards even though it's not required for or even pointed out by the quest.

can the revan quest line be continued without completing the torch flashpoint - Nope! It has a solo mode though, so you can just do it solo any time.

flashpoint kaon under siege solo swtor - I'm afraid they haven't given this one a solo mode yet. It's also not in the group finder as a tactical, but you can always queue for hardmode. Or you can try to solo the normal version at 65 - it hasn't been scaled up, so all the mobs are still level 50.

heroic moment abilities not in legacy since patch 4.0 - Don't worry, they are not gone, but they show up on a temporary quickbar instead whenever you activate your heroic moment.

i can't get out of kuat drive yard - Never fear! The "exit area" button above your mini map shall come to your rescue.

swtor what happend to the side quest? - I'm afraid they didn't make any for KotFE; it makes me sad too. If you are wondering about the old ones, those are (mostly) still there but hidden by default. To see the quest markers, you have to open your map and toggle the "show exploration missions" option in the top right corner.

what is a monsoon baffle - I was really surprised how often this one came up! Google defines a baffle as "a device used to restrain the flow of a fluid, gas, etc." so I guess the monsoon baffles on Rishi are supposed to protect Raider's Cove from the rain. Though I'm guessing what you really wanted to ask was: "Where the hell do I find those things?" Here's a screenshot of what they look like. There's a whole bunch on ground level right under the market near where you land.

which flashpoints have solo mode - So many questions about solo modes! Bioware actually posted the full list back in September last year, but I understand that this can be a bit hard to find nowadays.

To the next 500 posts!

Trooper, Take Two

Last week I finally finished the trooper story for a second time. It may come as a surprise to some that it took me nearly four years to level an alt of the very first class I ever rolled, especially since I levelled two of most other classes during that time. I'm just fickle when it comes to playing alts and my whims can be quite random.

This particular character, a Vanguard, was actually created in late 2013 - I found a screenshot of her on Ord Mantell that I posted in November of that year. (Fun fact: In that post I complained about finding too many freebies in my mailbox on every newly created character: fourteen items! By now, I'm up to forty for every new alt.) Since then my interest in her has been an on-and-off-again affair. For the first couple of months I thought she might even end up being my 10th character to the level cap, but then that didn't happen. Later I went through long periods of disinterest, interspersed with the occasional GSF match or late-night questing session. 4.0 actually invigorated my interest in the character in so far as I knew that with the changes to levelling the rest of my class story alone would probably be enough to carry me close to the level cap. I just had to round it off with the Ilum story arc and the Belsavis bonus series to actually hit 65.

Also, four years later and companion colour matching still doesn't work in cut scenes...

What did I think of the trooper story the second time around, especially compared to my initial thoughts from back when I hadn't played any of the other class stories? Well, I have to admit that it's probably one of the weaker class stories overall, now that I have actual points of comparison... you just lack a feeling of agency, being bossed around by General Garza all the time, though at least chapter one gives you a strong personal motivation for your actions as well. At the same time, it actually feels weird just how much you do get away with - I'm no military woman, but I'm pretty sure that the military cares about methods as well as results. This wasn't as noticeable in my first playthrough where I was mostly light side, but this time I veered more towards neutral, repeatedly disobeying orders... and every time the mission ended with Garza giving me a stern-talking to at first and then suddenly switching to: "... but oh well, I guess you got things done. Good job!"

My initial thoughts post was however spot on about how Havoc Squad feels like a natural unit. Even after playing through all the other class stories, none of the other companion crews have quite the same natural feeling of belonging together, so that is still a point in the trooper's favour. I was going to focus on levelling with Elara this time, since I had hardly used her on Shintar (healer + healer companion was not a good combination) but eventually ended swapping her out for M1-4X anyway, just like I had done with Aric the first time... 4X is just too much fun, and with every companion being able to fill every role, his former tankiness wasn't an obstacle anymore.

What was most interesting for me to re-play was the last class mission on Corellia. Without going into spoilers about the actual story, gameplay-wise you are being asked to choose one of three attack vectors while NPCs will cover the other two. They are described as pitting you either against infantry, walker droids or "automated systems". On Shintar I ended up facing off against the droids because they were described as the hardest and I was very gung-ho about proving that Havoc Squad can take on anything. This time I decided to listen to what advice the NPCs had to give and ended up fighting the automated systems instead.

I was kind of hoping that there would be puzzles but... well, the first corridor looked like it might have had a puzzle in it, but if there was one I didn't figure out what I was supposed to do and just ended up getting the whole floor covered in ooze that didn't seem to do anything. The rest was mostly turrets and weaker droids though, which wasn't that exciting. What I did love was that there was a bonus mission to blow up barrels! Best bonus ever! Plus I got to hijack an anti-aircraft gun and shoot down an Imperial shuttle; I don't remember getting to do that last time either (though I'm not entirely sure about that, it's been four years after all).

So... once again I'm in the position of having a tanking alt at the level cap. Last time that happened, when my Shadow hit 55, I got quite excited about the prospect of tanking casual ops runs for alts, but then that never happened, so I'm not getting my hopes up this time. But it will be nice to have the option.

The Great Companion Debate

If you've been playing any PvE content in SWTOR since patch 4.0 at all, you must have noticed that your companions have become significantly more powerful than they used to be. To some extent, that was to be expected, since their gear ceased to matter and back when it did, few of us kept our companions' gear up to date at all times, so they were pretty much always weaker than they could have been. Also, we were told in advance that affection/influence was going to affect companion performance in combat come KotFE time - considering that it didn't used to before, that was going to be another buff.

However, what's been going on in practice has been crazy town. Healing companions spam massive heals non-stop, to the point where your health never even moves even while you fight multiple mobs at once. Tank companions can solo seemingly everything, as they shield themselves from damage and have a small, constant self-heal going on. And as far as dps goes, someone on the forums let his max level companion parse on a dummy for five minutes and came out with about 5600 dps. The current top dps player on the worldwide leaderboard sits at 7200, so at least in that area companions have not completely taken over yet... but they are still outperforming the average damage dealer by a considerable margin.

The official forums are on fire with people discussing the issue. One side wants to see companions nerfed, the other enjoys being powerful and wants to hear none of it. Just tuck your companion away if you don't want it, they say, but leave mine alone! (Here's the currently biggest forum thread on the issue that I could find.)

Personally, I am somewhat concerned. I get that people enjoy being powerful, and I don't mind if someone wants to sit back and AFK while their companion does all the work (though personally I'd find it boring). And as someone who plays a lot of healers, I certainly appreciate my dps companions actually packing a bit of a punch now when I'm out questing. What worries me is the effect that overpowered companions are going to have on small group content.

Now, they have always been able to fill the role of an extra player in most heroic missions and flashpoints. They were not as good at the job, but you could manage in a pinch. And that was partially what they were there for! However, in my opinion they should never be preferable to having another player around, and that's exactly what I'm already seeing right now, especially with healers. A guildie of mine was in a flashpoint the other evening, they lost their healer, and when the group finder gave them a replacement he expressed disappointment because they had been doing so well with a companion healer. I've also been in a similar situation myself, when my group of one tank and three dps kept wiping on Colonel Daksh in tactical Maelstrom Prison (even with me kiting him around the boxes like a pro, all old-school hardmode style). When two people quit, me and the remaining dps whipped out our companions instead and things only got easier from there. Did I mention that they even know how to use CC properly now (unlike a lot of players)? It's not hard to imagine players getting kicked from groups in favour of someone's companion healer. This should never happen!

Under the old system, companions were good at dividing small trickle heals among multiple group members, but there was a hard cap on their burst healing, because using their biggest heal would place a debuff on the person who got healed and for several seconds they couldn't be affected by the same big heal again. (This also prevented healer stacking.) I'm not saying we need that exact same system back again, but there does need to be some kind of cap on companion performance in my opionion.

Even if we assume that people won't go to such extremes as kicking people to replace them with companions, new players will simply get a completely warped view of the way the game works. I've always liked how the companion system allowed newbies to get at least a vague idea of how trinity gameplay works and that it made it viable to level as a tank or a healer, even if you played "solo" (that is to say just with your companion) most of the time. However, the kind of output we currently see from companions will just set completely unrealistic expectations for newcomers. The first time they meet a real healer, they'll think: "Wow, they sure suck!" Because unlike their companion, a real healer has resources and cooldowns to consider and can't just spam huge heals non-stop. And why can't that tank just keep himself healed up...?

I hope that Bioware will address this in some manner. I'm willing to give it some time because I know from experience that something that looks like a problem after a big patch may sometimes sort itself out after a while, and not all bad predictions necessarily come to pass. Personally I do suspect though that companions will require at least a little bit of tweaking if they aren't supposed to replace real players in group content in the future.

NOTE: Patch 4.0.2, released on the 17th of November, did indeed nerf companions' damage and healing output. Musco explained their reasoning here.

My 10th Level 55

Back in March I wrote a post called "Levelling My 10th Alt", in which I mused on how to keep the levelling process fresh when you've already done it more than a couple of times, and wondered which of my alts was going to be the next one to hit the level cap. As happens to me quite frequently in this game, I got distracted by max-level activities soon afterwards, and for the next six months, none of my alts really went anywhere. I think my Vanguard still hasn't finished her class story on Balmorra.

My Shadow actually hit 50 back in April but my pet tank and I felt little drive to continue levelling our consular duo for some reason and only got back to it very sporadically. This weekend however, we finally got there: while we're only at the end of Voss in terms of story progression, we went to Corellia to do some heroics for this week's conquest event, and those provided us with the last bit of XP we needed to hit 55.

I'm oddly happy to have reached the nice, round milestone of having ten characters at the level cap, and specifically to finally have a tank on Republic side. (Not to mention that Shadow/Assassin was the only advanced class I hadn't played to the cap in either of its incarnations yet.) While I levelled my Powertech in tanking spec last year, we don't run endgame content in our Imperial alt guild that often these days. I think I tanked Dread Fortress on story mode twice, Scum and Villainy once and that was it.

Based on my experiences back in WoW and in general, tanking isn't exactly my calling, but I can do a decent enough job at it with a bit of practice, and especially when it comes to alt runs tanks are often something that we're short on.

I'm also a very lazy raider to be honest, in so far as I tend to only really pay attention to the parts of each fight that are actually relevant to my role. Seeing how I'm playing a healer the vast majority of the time, with a healer main and two healer alts at 55, this means that I don't have much of  a clue about a lot of important fight mechanics. I vividly remember the first time I came along to Terror from Beyond as dps and just how much of a surprise I was in for during the second phase of the Terror fight. You mean I have to do something other than stand on a single platform most of the time and cast the occasional heal?!

While I've had a chance to do pretty much all operations as dps at least on the easier difficulties by now, tanking is still a great unknown to me when it comes to endgame. I think I'll quite enjoy getting a chance to finally unravel those old familiar fights from the one point of view from which I haven't seen them before.

(While my Guardian is one of my oldest alts, I've just never felt like speccing her for tanking. I'm not sure why; it just doesn't feel right for her.)

Twitchy Sentinel Syndrome

I realised the other day that I'm up to four tanking alts - only one of them is actually max level, but still... you'd think that I was really fond of tanking or something. I do find it a reasonably fun role to play, if nothing else because I prefer playing support roles over just doing dps, but it doesn't really come naturally to me in the same way as healing because it requires you to take point and be willing to take the lead in groups, neither of which I'm very good at. It doesn't help that impatient group members can make your job a real pain by running ahead and pulling for you, and if you prefer a slightly slower pace of play the way I do, then that's even more likely to happen.

Pet tank and I were musing about this the other day and how it always seems to be the Sentinels/Marauders who insist on jumping in first.

Exhibit A: in the centre of this screenshot we've got myself, tanking Hammer Station on my baby Juggernaut and about to charge into the next pull... except that one of the two Marauders in the group has already leapt in, and the other one is in the process of somersaulting over my head. I suppose it's something about the way the class is designed - Force Leap is fun, I won't deny that, and the way the class maintains buffs, they tend to last just long enough to encourage charging from one pull to the next to keep those buffs rolling.

Most other classes on the other hand have at least some reason to not go in before the tank. Range dps tends to simply lag a little behind due to the nature of their job, and stealth classes that want to start the pull from stealth have to spend some time manoeuvring into position, which doesn't lend itself to quick ninja pulls in quite the same way. Dps Vanguards and Guardians, while theoretically in a good position to start the pull (well-armoured melee, tempting ranged attacks, Force Leap) are probably less likely to do so because they have to prove extra hard that they are dedicated to playing dps - not tanks! - seeing how their classes have tanking specs too and they've probably been exposed to at least a little bit of peer pressure to take up tanking at some point.

Then again, maybe I'm trying to over-rationalise this and there's just something about double lightsabers that attracts hyper players with extremely short attention spans. If I had a credit for every Sentinel I've seen who bounces up and down like a loony even between trash pulls or during boss fights, I'd have a nice little sum.

A Bounty Hunter's Tale

It's finally happened: I've completed all the class stories! The bounty hunter was the last one I was missing... until today that is. I have to say that it didn't turn out to be one of my favourites, though I'm not sure how much of that was due to the story itself and how much of it was due to the on-again-off-again nature in which I played through it. I mean, I originally made my first bounty hunter back in early 2012, played her very little (I believe I only got her to Nar Shaddaa), and then made another one earlier this year. Her journey from creation to the level cap to completing her class story took me something like five months in total, and there were a lot of breaks and distractions. Maybe that's why I didn't feel a strong sense of urgency to push onwards and find out what happens next a lot of the time.

Some of that may have been due to spoilers. I got spoiled big time for the ending of the bounty hunter class story very early on, without even realising at the time that it was the very ending of the story that had been revealed to me. So I happily played on until about halfway through chapter two, at which point I realised that the only way for the event that I had read about to still fit into the story would be at the very end. Knowing exactly what lay ahead admittedly took some of the wind out of my sails.

Other than that... I'm not really sure where I can accuse the story of going wrong. I felt that at the start there were some parallels to the trooper story (which I quite liked), in terms of trying to add a personal angle to a profession that is kind of cold and businesslike (soldier/mercenary). However, where the trooper story takes its time to build things up until the end of the prologue, the bounty hunter story tries to tug at your heartstrings as early as something like three quests in, where you've barely had enough time to develop an attachment to anything or anyone, so that fell a bit flat for me. I did however enjoy the way this puts you into the position of it being "you and your first companion as the underdogs vs. the world". The entirety of chapter one with its story of fighting your way to the top was quite satisfying.

After that things started to flounder a bit though. It kind of felt like my character was wasting her time playing silly games, and I didn't particularly care for any of it. Things got better again in chapter three, though again I felt like I was supposed to care about characters to whom I honestly didn't have that much of a connection (yet). I did quite like the interlude where I got to go out and rescue my male love interest from peril - that felt funny in a subversive way. But well, other than that... like I said above, I knew exactly where it was going and wasn't massively excited about it.

The companions were also a bit of an odd bunch. In another parallel to the trooper story, I quite liked the first four and found the last one to be annoying as hell. Also, while I quite liked the second companion once I had him, I have to say that he had a very annoying "acquisition story" that made little sense and felt heavily railroaded. I bet he was another one of those that got killed a lot in beta before they removed the ability to kill companions...

In terms of gameplay, playing a Powertech hasn't been too bad considering that neither melee nor tanking truly feel like my calling. I had however been told in advance that Vanguard/Powertech was probably the easiest tank class to play, and it certainly seemed that way. At least I never felt completely lost when I picked the character back up after not playing her for a while (unlike on my Marauder for example) and always got back into the swing of things quickly. The tanking "rotation" (as far as there is one) felt very fluid and natural.

Nonetheless I think that tanking will remain something that I enjoy only in very limited doses. Charging in ahead of everyone else just doesn't come easily to me, and I don't particularly like that feeling of constantly having to reassert myself as the leader all the time.

The Tiniest Tank

The Powertech/Operative duo has hit a bit of a snag. We're level 51 and just finished Belsavis, but Pet Tank has been moaning at me about how tedious it was all the way home. It's only been about two months since we did this content on our inquisitors, and as enthused as we both are about levelling together, there is a limit to how often and how quickly we can repeat content without getting bored.

To mix things up, we decided to roll up some new Republic alts, as it's been about half a year since we really did anything on that side of the fence. Consulars this time, and I'm tanking again... because clearly that's been going so well...? Actually, the truth is that I simply wanted to have a Shadow because it's the one advanced class that I've never played in either of its incarnations and I really wanted to see what it's like.

She's also a Cathar, because I wanted one, and because the idea of a tiny kitty (she's the smallest body type) throwing herself at the enemy face-first amuses me greatly. I can heartily recommend rolling up a cat person for the sheer comedy value, even if my healer's constant urges to love, hug and pet the kitty (he hasn't tried to call me George yet) undermine my authority as a tank to some extent.

Gameplay-wise I'm surprised by how quickly the Shadow has been growing on me. At first I thought that some of their combat animations looked a little odd, but I got used to them very fast and now I actually think that they look very nice. There is also just something very cool about being a tank with stealth. It reminds me of the good times I had tanking on my druid in WoW - especially since I'm also a cat again.

To mix things up we've also been breaking up the questing with the occasional round of lowbie PvP. I remember trying PvP tanking as a Powertech once or twice and not being massively enthused by it, but as a Shadow it's actually oodles of fun! I enjoy bursting out of the shadows to attack unsuspecting assailants who thought that this particular healer was on his own, and cackle with mad glee when I get three people to focus on me instead of preventing a turret cap right next to them. Yes, keep attacking the tank, you fools! And don't mind the healer at the back either! Mwahahaha!

Ahem. There we go with the tanking-induced insanity again...

More tanking lessons

Our role-reversed tank/healer duo is progressing through the levels nicely, even if we're waaay ahead of (or is that behind?) the levelling curve once again, still bimbling around on Alderaan at level 37.

I feel like my little Powertech has really come into her own in the last couple of levels, as she gained more abilities to control the battle and talents that create nice synergies between my main aggro generators. I have my harpoon to pull mobs towards me, and hydraulic overrides prevent me from getting knocked back too often. Jet charge allows me to quickly get into a mob's face and punch it (whee), and free flame sweeps and flame throwers make getting AoE aggro a breeze. Fun!

The only downside is that I'm starting to see why most tanks are... well, a little crazy.

Some fight mechanics are just extraordinarily cruel to tanks. There was a [Heroic 4] we did on Tatooine where every other pull went something like this:

Me: [charges in]
Mobs: [do a knockdown]
Mobs: [stun me with a cryo-grenade]
Mobs: [stun me with a cryo-grenade again]
Mobs: [decide that since all I seem to be doing is standing there stunned, I'm not threatening enough and they should go after someone else]
Me: For fuck's sake, how many stuns do these guys have?
Pet tank healer: Language, Shin.
Me: Fine, "oh sugar". But seriously, how many stuns?

Tank rage in the face of being powerless!

The funny thing is, in hindsight I can't actually say that I feel that it's a bad thing that those mobs have all those stuns. It makes the fights more challenging and encourages crowd control. We were kind of silly for AoE tanking the whole lot every time I suppose. But still...

Back in WoW it was a commonly repeated mantra that tanking wasn't so much about fighting the mobs as it was about fighting your party (for aggro and control). Supposedly that's why so many tanks were complete jerks, because they automatically expected the worst of every pug they met. In SWTOR I haven't found things to be too bad so far, maybe because the tank isn't actually expected to handle the whole pull. (It's generally the dps's role to kill the weak mobs on their own.) Even so, it's still way too easy for even a bit of carelessness to completely ruin the tank's well-intentioned plans.

I mean, there's me in a flashpoint, looking at the pull ahead for a few seconds as I figure out that it's probably best to shoot an explosive dart at the one in the middle, charge the one on the right and pull the one on the left over... and then a fraction before I can actually pull, the dps Marauder charges in, causes two mobs to leap towards the healer and it all goes to pot. Arrrgh!

I have to admit that when we later got to a pull with some gun turrets that had a knockback, I cackled a little with glee every time they sent that same Marauder flying on his behind. Tanking makes mean.

Finally, sometimes tanks seem to be prone to outbursts of what can't really be called anything but random insanity. I have been affected by this as well. On Tatooine, I saw this group of strong banthas that were all quite close together... so of course I had to charge in and round them all up until I could see nothing but banthas on my screen and kept getting knocked down by their headbutts. My healer just rolled his eyes in bemusement and healed me as I got buried under a pile of fur while spamming AoE. I had to, because I could!

Whatever crazy adventures will tanking get me into next?

Banthaaas!