Star Wars: The Old Republic

I guess it really just comes down to playstyle then.
On my gunslinger, I basicaly just get into cover and use the long recharge snipe and charged shot and throw in the <30% HP shot.
Just rotating those 3 tends to keep me on the edge of my resource pool.
Everything else on him is situational.
(For large, low quaility groups I'll throw in grenades and/or the channeled AOE Hit 3 targets ability)

What level is your Gunslinger? Using Aimed Shot, Charged Burst, and Quickdraw exclusively will suffice at low levels, but you really should be adding more to your rotation than just those.

Marchhhare (what's with the extra h!), my Guardian is tank spec, which probably explains the difference. I use all of the following abilities regularly enough that I don't consider them particularly situational:

Strike
Sundering Strike
Slash (I could possibly use Master Strike here in the 'everything more important is on cooldown' spot instead but Slash is better if I have sufficient focus, which I nearly always do, because it lets me get back to other higher priority things faster, plus riposte and force kick interrupt master strike)
Guardian Slash
Force Sweep
Cyclone Slash
Riposte
Blade Storm
Dispatch
Force Kick (almost everything has something worth interrupting, and I'm used to interrupts being the tank's job)
Hilt Strike (high threat move even when I can't actually stun the target, so this is generally happening on cooldown unless I need it to interrupt)
Force Stasis (generates focus even wheN I can't actually stun the target, and it isn't channeled)

That's before we pile on the situational stuff and movement abilities, and the thing is with JKs, all your situational stuff is useful on every spec, unlike some of the other classes. Every JK will want to use pommel strike or opportune strike sometimes, whereas other classes will only use one or the other of their equivalent abilities because of the range requirements or shared cooldowns or whatever. That means more buttons on more bars.

Compared to what my other high level characters regularly use it's just way more things. My other characters are generally simpler.

Madness sorc: Could easily get away with a 5 ability 'rotation'. Death field, put your 3 dots up and keep them running with the death field debuff on cooldown, spam force lightning the rest of the time.
Healing trooper: Healers are always a little weird to compare, this one could perhaps be considered to come close to the JK in number of buttons used.
Saboteur: I don't feel like sitting down and figuring this guy out right this second, but again you're talking fewer regularly used abilities tops to function effectively. Put your dots up, toss your fire AE, pew pew with the standard shots otherwise.

God I'm a retard. I must have made a typo when I signed up for this forum, but I've never noticed because I login using my email address, not my username.

I count 12 abilities that you use regularly. That's not that far out of the norm compared to other classes. On my Gunslinger, for example, I use these abilities frequently enough that I have a hotkey bound to all of them:

1. Crouch
2. Shrap Bomb
3. Vital Shot
4. Hemo Blast
5. Wounding Shots
6. Speed Shot
7. Aimed Shot
8. XS Freighter Flyby
9. Flurry of Bolts
10. Quickdraw
11. Thermal Grenade
12. Interrupt
13. Threat dump
14. Stun escape
15. Cool Head (energy regen cooldown)
16. Evasion
17. Defense Screen
17. Flourish Shot
18. Scrambling Field

Then I have dps cooldowns like Illegal Mods, my Clicky Relic, and my Adrenal.

So that's at least 21 "abilities" that I use very frequently, but only eight form my main dps rotation.

Really? According to the theorycrafting I've read, neither of those are part of the rotation for a DPS Guardian.

That's because theorycrafting only cares about bosses, and neither of those abilities can be used on things above silver.

On your gunslinger list, you have a lot of things that for the JK I was mentally putting in the 'situational' list. I didn't list any of my defensive cooldowns, for example. If I were to include stuff at that level, the number would go much higher. I was literally just listing 'things I hit monsters with regularly' - stuff that you could consider part of a rotation, and a couple longer cooldown things that get mashed on cooldown.

Well, I don't know what to tell you then. I've played Gunslinger extensively, I played a Rogue in WoW for years, and I now have a level 46 Guardian. Compared to those other two classes, I don't find the Guardian has more buttons to press at all.

ehm ecks has a tank spec Guardian and a tank spec Vanguard. Perhaps he can chime in and let us know if one uses significantly more abilities than the other.

At 42, my Guardian is actually less complex than it was at 33, mostly because Slash now only exists to dump focus when I have an abundance. I guess Dispatch will bring it back up in a level or two.

I'm with theorycrafting here: I don't care enough about optimizing my single target damage against silvers and below to even bother learning the "can only use on stunned targets" skills, nevermind putting them on a bar. Either I'm with Kira, in which case she's going to kill the target quickly regardless of whether or not I eeke out an extra 200 damage in one GCD, or I'm with players. If I'm with competent players, that damage really won't matter. If I'm not, I have other things to worry about, like the fact all the other players (including the supposed healer) are attacking different golds and all the cc has been broken and are you fucking kidding me why do I play this game.

YMMV, obviously, but I find they improve my daily-doing speed noticeably. Maybe they really are only useful in a tank spec, though, where a DPSer would just blow through stuff regardless.

Missed this. Anyway, I already retracted my earlier statement that Guardian isn't super buttony, so I'll hold off on repeating the claim until I've hit cap and have run a couple skip mode flashpoints or baby's first op a few times.

At present, the way I'm playing? Absolutely not more involved than my Vanguard. Partly that's playstyle (unlike Ingmar and Jerid I don't care about the incapacitated target thing, for example), partly that's build (I don't have and won't get Guardian Slash or Hilt Strike), partly that's nonstandard definitions of regular.

Taking push as an example, Jerid notes that as something that's part of his regular mix. I regard it as a PvP skill which in PvE is primarily useful for trolling melee dps (not that you've experienced that, of course) or knocking things off ledges. It does have some edge case uses; you lost a mob that's on your healer, your taunt and leap are down, might as well use push on whatever you're fighting to refresh your leap and jump on the lose mob. Or you're in a tough class quest fight and need a couple seconds breathing room and/or an emergency interrupt.

Further, our regular pull speed is such that it can't be part of the regular mix since we'll typically be on the second or third pull before it cools down.

Yeah between the 2 leaps, 2 taunts, and saber throw (or alternately your interrupt and 1-2 other stuns) the utility of force push when you're tanking is not particularly high... but it still goes on a button somewhere. Someone has to knock Darth Malgus off the bridge when everyone fails at using their grenades, after all!

In full-throated defense of healer dps, we're only able to down Nightmare Kephess and Nightmare Firebrand & Stormcaller because our healers contribute significant damage over the course of those fights, even though Kephess in particular is hilariously healing intensive.

What I'm saying is that Marchhhare needs to do more dps so our healers can do less.

Commandos have a minor reason to attack as well, since hammer shot stacks up Combat Support Cell charges after you supercharge and the puny amount of damage it does is probably sometimes better to have than the even punier amount of healing it does. You stack charges with Healing Probe as well but sometimes you can't just spam that away for ammo reasons or whatever.

Challenge accepted!

Next time we kill Nightmare Kephess I'll try to have a 30% dps lead over the #2 person on the meter instead of only 25% then.

How are you doing meters, an external parser?

We haven't done any raiding at all due to not enough people/interest, it might be worth kicking around the idea of getting something together on Ebon Hawk with the various scattered people you/we know.

A guild called Memories of Xendor (Xendar? Whatever) put together a real time parser once combat logs were enabled. If everyone puts in the same key you get real time damage and healing meters. If you want to know stuff after the fact, TORparse and Ask Mr Robot both do the job.

Yeah, but everything goes on a button (except explosive shot, because seriously? Who would ever use that? Ever?)! I mean, Full Auto is useless on a Vanguard 99% of the time (if you take any damage it does one fewer tick of damage, meaning it's a waste of ammo if you, the tank, are going to be taking damage. And if you're not a tank you have better things to attack with), but there a couple raid encounters where it's marginally useful, so on the bar it stays. Even though no one would notice the difference if I just spammed hammer shot instead of pressing full auto. Oh well.

Keep us updated if and when this happens. I'd love to hear horror stories tales of glorious victory from HMEC and HMTFB

Tell me which kind of healer people want me to be, and I shall play it, although I would prefer not to be the sage, because holy fuck is healing as one of those boring. As a smuggler I can at least HoT juggle to keep myself entertained, and my trooper has a cute butt. My sage has nothing going for her!

So you're saying this would be a bad time to mention that during our last Kephess kill our Sage did as much healing with Salvation as our Scoundrel did with all his skills combined?

Zile'we'ntali is 50 and a pyro merc. Yeah I know.. but I am good at not standing in things. Other than that I suck terribly. I will throw off heals if its the difference between making or breaking.
(That's ebon hawk)
I just got the baby's first purple gear set. Throw me on friends lists if you want. I am erratic and a flake. You are warned.

For an 8-player raid, the optimal healer setup is one Sage and one non-Sage. Really, though, you should just play whatever you like the best. Any boss can be defeated using any combination of classes so long as you stick to the 2x tank, 2x healer, 4x dps setup.

I think for most of us (well for my group anyway) the presumably raid-ready characters are mostly/all Republic side.

Edit:

Our people and what they have at 50:

Me: jk tank, gunslinger, trooper healer. Mr crazy pants sorc is not 50 quite yet (on Voss).

Sjofn: pretty much everything

Our buddy Gerik: DPS sent, some kind of consular he hates, healing smuggler

Our other buddy Fordel who sort of hates raiding but we can guilt in to doing it: tank trooper, some kind of sage, some kind of IA (pretty sure it is an Op)

None of our other people are active and also high level atm but it might be possible to talk some back into the game if shit was happening - Kildorn ?

You can say it, I still fucking hate sage healing. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

My "raid ready" characters are my healing sage (UGH), my healing trooper (<3) and my tank JK. If I pull the mods from the tionese (or whatever) suit I get this patch, my scoundrel is pretty much set too, I guess?

Empire side I have a level 50 tank assassin and a level 50 healing operative who both had assy gear but I guess with this patch they'll be adequate.

As ugly as that stuff is for most classes you might want to wear it while raiding anyway, for set bonuses. You can't move those around on the bottom 3 tiers that they made before they figured out how to do that on later gear.

Kiss my ass, I am not wearing something ugly for some questionable set bonus!

So, it seems a pretty reasonable compromise to wear an old chestpiece with the other 4 pieces of Tionese, you don't come out looking like a buffoon that way for most of the armor sets.

In general, how is raiding in SWTOR? Is it pretty much dyed-in-the-wool RPG Trinity or is it a bit looser?

Nothing 50 yet Pub side, prolly get a trooper pyro type up there soon. Most the folk I went to ebon with forever ago landed empire side thus why I got a 50 there.
That said I have a smattering of alts of flavors across 2 accounts pub and empire, are you guys in the /ooc channel?
Again this is all Ebon Hawk.

...........
The game is trinity you have a tank, a healer (or two) and dps to fill. The looser part is when you are doing things in duo's and trio's with one companion(or two) thus giving folk some other options for getting flashpoints done. Once you hit the end you gata have dedicated people to the old trinity roles.

The current tier of raids has no flexibility in the structure. You will take two tanks, two healers, and four dps or you will die horribly. The initial raiding tier...the offtank was a fifth wheel in most fights, but you brought one along because there were a couple fights in KP where it was necessary. You didn't actually need a second tank in EV, ever (a melee dps with taunt would do). Still pure trinity, of course.

Daily content (including group content) doesn't necessitate the trinity. There's no reason to bring a tank to anything ever*. A healer can make things smoother, but you can do fine without of those either.

*Except the Belsavis H4, maybe? If you were crazy and wanted to fight the boss instead of just leaving the instance.

It's pretty much an exact clone of WoW raiding in almost every respect. Groups are 8 players consisting of two tanks, two healers, and four DPS. Sometimes the tanks and healers will need to contribute to the dps to help beat enrage timers, but players mostly stick exclusively to their trinity role.

Each raid has three difficulty levels: story, hard, and nightmare. These are roughly equivalent to LFR, normal, and hard modes in WoW. There are also 16 player modes for each difficulty level, but hardly anyone plays those. On our server, there are only one or two active 16-player guilds compared to ~20 8-player guilds. Loot is identical for both raid sizes, but more items drop in 16-player mode.

One nice difference is that most of the loot isn't random. The bosses are guaranteed to drop a token (e.g. pants or gloves) that can be used by every class, so there's no chance of getting screwed by the RNG week after week.

Some of the bosses in the first few raids had "F U Melee DPS" mechanics, but those issues have disappeared in the most recent two raids. Class balance and raid composition is done pretty well; SWTOR has mostly achieved what Blizzard is trying to do with "bring the player, not the class." I don't think any classes are a liability, but it's probably best to bring a diverse class mix. Within each class, some talent trees are objectively better than others, though. I hope the devs make some class balance changes to allow everyone to play the build they enjoy the most rather than being forced to play the more effective spec.

This is only true of HMEC and higher. KP/EV and SM TFB/EC drop class-specific tokens.

Not entirely. The assassin droids would be really exciting with only one ranged dps, for example. Kephess is of course a million times more obnoxious if you have to follow him as he ping pongs around the map after the tanks. Those anomalies that suck people into Cthulhu's maw are likewise easier for ranged, as are the adds.

But yes, their raid design has come a long way.

I would like to take this opportunity to complain about the "differentiation" of Vanguard tanks. "Hey guys, I know how to make Vanguard tanking feel unique; we can put a delay on their taunt! While Guardian and Shadow taunts take effect after .01 seconds, let's make it so that Vanguard taunts can take effect up to 1.5 seconds after being used. Also, let's design encounters featuring a five second window in which to taunt a boss off the initial tank before the initial tank get instagibbed. It'll be great!"

That's some high quality trolling by the designers.

I think a tank is awfully helpful for the Black Hole H4, but maybe not strictly required.

Do what you're comfortable with, of course, but I've had nothing but smooth sailing with three dps and a healer (including a companion healer) or four dps in that H4. I always respec from tank to dps for dailies.

Well presumably you're doing it in hardmode op gear or better? The difference between that and what-you-can-get-with-daily-comms is pretty significant.

A JK tank in solo-available stuff is only going to have about 17.5k hp with buffs up for example, and raid geared DPS are wandering around with 22-23k from what I can see.

If people are putting together a team of Dangerous People for screwing-around purposes, I have the following level 50 characters on Ebon Hawk:

Imp: Sith Sorcerer, DPS (Lightning)

Pub: Jedi Guardian, Tank

Unfortunately I am not subscribed at the moment so I think I am completely unable to advance my gear through raiding (as in, I can roll maybe three times a week and can't equip anything I win anyway). Still, it'd be fun to at least play a little. I think I got to do one raid, once, on my Sith - saved the day, won a car, promptly quit the game for unrelated reasons and never returned.

You can purchase a one-time unlock that allows F2P characters the ability to wear purple gear. You can also buy weekly access passes to raids. IIRC, someone once did the math and calculated that if you only want to raid and aren't interested in PvP, flashpoints, daily quests, space combat, etc., it's actually cheaper to not subscribe and buy weekly passes instead.

That said we are an unreliable bunch and I would not recommend anyone spend their pennies just on the off chance that we might be able to actually get our shit together.