My recommendations for every player who is considering participating in SWTOR’s endgame to make sure you are having fun while progressing and enjoying the game’s most challenging content.
If you are a new player or just approaching the level cap, the following might be of use to you. If you are an experienced raider, leave your thoughts and ideas in a comment below to help and expand this guide.
How Class Awareness Affects Your EndGame
Knowing what your own class can do is vital. You should learn your limits and how far you can push yourself and your character within the EndGame content.
Your knowledge of other classes’ capabilities and features is key. Acting and reacting to what your fellow raiders do next to you or to you, is very helpful. How to draw the most benefit from an AoE healing effect, how to avoid a harmful AoE effect without hurting others near you, these are all skills that come with time and repetition.
The best way to gain class awareness is to play more than one character and play them on a level higher than “I love the story of this class, I have 2 of them at lvl 50”.
Farm some more casual content with your alts or even bring them to the next progression run. It’s priceless when you are capable to fill in the gap of another important player who is missing the upcoming raid.
Seeing the encounters from different perspective and role is helping you get better with your own main class as well.
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How to learn the fights’ mechanics and why it’s important
You might think this cannot be said for new content and progression teams doing something for the first time. You would be wrong. This applies to any sort of EndGame SWTOR has to offer. The fact that you haven’t done this boss or that Operation, doesn’t mean you are entering the upcoming fight blind.
In most cases, some objects in the surrounding environment can give you a powerful clue as to what you should expect. Noticing things in advance is often key to winning a fight.
Knowing where you might be able to kite an upcoming wave of adds or where you could hide from the boss’s next big special attack, can save not just your character, but the whole team as well.
When you are a part of a more experienced team, don’t be afraid to admit you are new to this place. In the majority of the situations, everyone else will be friendly and willing to help and teach you. last, but not least – some mechanics of boss fights are predictable, even if they are new.
Looking at a giant Rancor-like monster, for example, would always give the main tank a clue that this one probably has frontal AoE and is most likely recommended that they should turn the monster with its back towards the rest of the raid group.
SWTOR relies heavily on graphical (visual) and audio notifications to let players know something special or important is about to happen. Learn to pay attention to these hints and your EndGame progression will probably become a lot easier and more fun.
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Your PC Hardware and Server Latency Do Matter
Regardless of the fact that SWTOR cannot run smoothly and properly on any PC, you still need at least a 30+ frame rate to be competent to do the hardest content available in the game.
Being able to avoid things quickly and efficiently is key to your survival in Master Mode content (the old school Nightmare Mode, which was renamed after 5.0).
If your game freezes or jumps a frame, you may miss a very important hint for an upcoming attack from ever so cute monster, whose ass you are bashing.
The game still does not allow add-ons and probably never will. the good news is that it wasn’t ever built to require them. Everything is clearly shown on your screen, you just need to learn where, how and what to look for.
Another factor of very high importance is your Server Latency. Some Classes and Disciplines will require you to perform combinations of abilities in a very quick succession – burst healing or burst damage dealing, for example.
Unfortunately, in most cases your latency doesn’t depend on you, and the only possible actions you can take, in an attempt to make it better, is to upgrade your internet connection or… move closer to the server’s physical location, D’OH! In other words – if you have higher latency (above 150-200 ping), pick the class(es) you want to play considering that fact.
How relevant is your character’s gear
I’ve said many times that for good or evil not all of the content in the game is balanced properly. This probably is true for any MMO game out there. Because of that, instances of the same level and tier can seem too easy or too hard, depending on the group’s overall experience and gear level.
If you are new to the content, you’d better follow the recommended minimum requirements. Once you gain enough experience, you will likely realize that things can be done with a less adequately geared-up character.
Don’t be surprised if a middle boss or a bonus boss is tougher than the final one. You will sometimes face unbalanced encounters in the same instance (Flashpoint, Operation, Uprisings, PvP, and even Daily Missions).
These things seem to us like a mistake, but sometimes (not always!) they are intended by the developers. Gearing up today can be done both solo and with a team or a guild (the second option is much faster too).
Should you tolerate other players’ mistakes
Tolerating a mistake is the best thing you can do to help a friend or a guildie of yours get better and progress. Everybody makes mistakes. We all learn from them and that helps us evolve from newbs to pros.
When you notice the same player repeating the same mistakes over and over again, then things get ugly. Your tolerance towards such players should be minimal if you are tackling the higher difficulties of Operations and want to progress through them naturally.
Making a mistake yourself is not the end of the world. If you notice it, fix it. If you don’t, but others point it out to you, don’t take it as an offense. Take the advice and learn from it.
There’s always a good chance that someone more experienced than you exists somewhere and you should look them up and learn from them.
Getting angry with yourself upon a wrong move or raging on your fellow team members after a wipe is never beneficial. It usually ends up creating unwanted tension and discomfort.
