Starting All Over Again

I hung around Taris on the Old Man, just north of Dynamet Hospital, practicing some healing.  While I don't typically heal these days, I know that when I run a toon that has that capability, you never know when you'll be pressed into service.

Like this day.

My oldest and I had grouped up, and I was waiting for her to arrive on her Sentinel.*  I knew that while she'd been playing MMOs for a while, she was still unfamiliar with certain aspects of the game.  This was going to be her first group quest, I figured that if nothing else, this should prove to be an interesting experience.

She appeared with Kira in tow.  "Ready to do Fallen Stars?" I asked in group chat.

"Sure!"

"Okay.  I'll be healing, since nobody else has that spec.  Once we buff up we can go."

"What's a buff?  That thing you wear on your head in Survivor?"

Hmm.  I hadn't expected that.  Okay, I guess I'll have to back up and get more basic than what I'd expected.  "Buffing is a stats boost," I began.  "In some MMOs you can drink or eat and get a buff, and in TOR each class has its own unique buff.  Mine is Lucky Shots, and yours is Force something-or-other.  When in a group, you can select that buff and everyone will get that buff; it's considered polite to buff up everyone else when grouping up."

Force Might suddenly appeared next to Lucky Shots.

"Good.  Okay, let's go."

We moved into the heroic area for Fallen Stars and quickly came upon our first mob.  "Look at the boss there," she typed.

"In a heroic you'll see a lot of elites like that.  You'll know a real boss when you see it."  I scanned the group: one healer, one elite, and one strong melee.  "Okay, I'm going to send in Corso to tank, and once he gets going you can attack.  We need to get rid of the healer first, and then we can work on the rest."

"Okay."

"Ready?"

"Yep."

Corso flew in on his jet pack, and the fight began.

We quickly dispatched the enemy medic, and my oldest moved in on the elite.  I would have tried to DPS down the strong melee enemy, but I wasn't going to quibble.  I dropped a few medpacks down, but for the most part we DPSed down the mob quickly enough that I didn't need to worry about it.  It's saying something about your ability to down a mob when Corso doesn't reach even half health.**

Now that she had the basic method down, we DPSed our way through the area and eventually found ourselves before the ship at the end.  "I'm pretty sure that once we touch this the boss will fly in," I typed.  "It's been a while since I've done Falling Stars."

"Okay," she replied.

"Here's the thing.  This boss will take a while to kill, and bosses have immunity from a lot of CC's."

"CC's?"

"CC = Crowd Control.  Stuns, interrupts, that sort of thing."

"Oh, that stuff."

"Yeah.  Don't bother wasting Focus on those, since they won't work."

"okay"

"Alright, here we go."  I went over and triggered the boss, who flew in for the attack.

Now this was a fight.  I was healing so much that Corso lost aggro to me, and since he had no way of getting it back --his abilities were on CD for a while-- I had to grin and bear it.  Rule #1 of healing says that you can't heal when you're dead, so I spent a lot of energy healing myself while the boss wailed on me.  Good thing that I'd worked with my oldest on using mods and enhancements in gear, because otherwise we'd have wiped.

The boss finally bit it when Corso finally got his aggro abilities back off of CD and I was finally able to get that boss off my back.

"Wooo!" my oldest typed as we entered the final cutscene.

"Yep, that's it."

"Are there any more around?"

"There are some 2+ heroics in the bonus area, but others are 4-man."

"When do you think I'll be ready for a 4-man?"

"We'll see, kid.  We'll see."




*She was upstairs on the laptop.  From what she informed me later, her brother and sister were watching too, so I really felt on display.

**If you've ever played a smuggler, you know what I'm talking about.  Corso is famous for losing most of his health on decently sized mobs, which makes me wonder just how well equipped of a tank he is.