Hey everyone! I recently got my commando healer to 50 and after running some dailies, I finally had enough gear to tackle some Republic hardmode flashpoints to finish my coverage of hardmode flashpoints. Here is the first of a series of 3 guides for Republic specific hardmode flashpoints: Taral V, Maelstrom Prison, and The Esseles.

With 1.2, hardmode flashpoints no longer have a daily lockout and people running them are most likely going for the Columi drops at the last boss. Therefore, I will show you what bosses can be skipped and cover the strategies for the bosses that can't be skipped.

Taral V is the Republic Equivalent of Boarding Party. It is much easier than Boarding Party and a ton of bosses/trashes can be skipped along the way, making this flashpoint a fairly quick one.

Skipping Bosses & Trashes

Boss Skipping: The bosses that can be skipped in this flashpoint are

• Handler Gattan - 1st mini boss of the instance, drops Tionese crystals only
• Doctor Zharan - mini boss before Lord Hasper (bonus boss)
• Lord Hasper (bonus boss)
• PD-44 - this one is tricky to skip but can be done if everyone is careful. You can skip him if you follow the wall to the right side of PD-44 very carefully. Nonethless, I will be covering him just in case someone in your group aggros him.

Trash skipping

Taral V (T5) is designed in a way that allows one to skip quite a lot of trash in the beginning if you hug the left wall of of the little road that leads from the shuttle.

Once you arrived at the lake, you will need to go across following the burning pipe and keep hugging the left wall. You may need to kill a few beasts that pop from the ground but the majority of the trash, including the first mini boss Handler Gattan, can be skipped this way.

Before reaching the compound, you will need to switch to hugging the right wall and go up the hill, this will lead you to the first actual boss you have to kill - Captain Shivanek.

Captain Shivanek

This is the first actual boss you have to kill in this flashpoint. He drops a relic (usually tanking relic). He is a very easy boss that comes with a champion add but has no additional mechanics.

Immediately when you engage Shivanek, Ripper, a champion add (Ripper) will pop from the left.

The overall idea of this fight is to kill both the boss and at the add at the same time as killing one before the other will cause the remaining one to "enrage" for the next 20 seconds. However, the enrage (extra 300% damage) doesn't really hurt that much and you can easily tank the enraged mob without much difficulty.

The recommend route is to DPS one mob down to a low %, then DPS the other mob to the same low % and finally finish both off at around the same time.

However, you can easily kill Ripper off first (has low defense) and then finish Shivanek off. Shivanek does have a small AoE he launches to random party members and a conal so don't stand in front of him and don't stack too close to each other or you will risk splash damage.

Essentially a tank and spank fight with an add, couldn't get any easier!

PD-44

PD-44 is a droid that stands in front of a gate guarding your path to the final boss. He can be skipped if you hug the right wall very closely but someone tend to always aggro him so you may need to fight him if that happens (he drops Energized Boots).

PD-44 has the following abilities:

• Focus Fire - Can be interrupted, does quite a bit of damage on the tank if not interrupted.
• Missile Blast - Hits everyone in the group but the tank with missiles for around 3k damage, unavoidable and has splash damage so everyone needs to be spread out. His missile blast phase is triggered by the message in your chat box - Target appears to be non-sentient.
• Powerful Blast - Needs to be interrupted, deals a moderate AoE if not interrupted. His cannons glow red when he is preparing to cast this ability and he also put out this message in chatbox - Secondary weapons charged, Deploying.

• Bombardment - This is a red circle that is placed on the ground during the fight, you cannot avoid the first hit (hits for around 5.6k ) but you can avoid the rest of hits by moving away from the red circle. This attack seem to occur around 75%, 50% and 25%.

At around 21%, PD-44 will gain a buff called Very Damaged. I did not notice anything different during this phase but it is best to kill him ASAP!

Compared to Captain Shivanek, PD-44 is a bit more heal intensive due to the Bombardment and Missile blast but nothing too difficult to handle.

General Edikar

General Edikar is the last boss and the toughest boss in the flashpoint. However, there is a simple LOS trick that will make this fight much easier.

He comes with 4 Experimental Defense Turrets, 2 on each side. If you did the bonus boss, you can disable 2 of the turrets. With the strategy used here, you wont have to worry about the turrets!

The trick with this fight is to have everyone stand behind this pillar thingie near the entrance of the room and then have the tank pull Edikar. This will LoS Edikar and cause him to run to you; this way, the turrets won't be bothering you.

However, doing it this way in such an enclosed space carries its risks - tank must turn him away from the group and DPS must try not to pull aggro or risk the entire group to eat his nasty conal.

Edikar has the following abilities

• Full Auto: Hurts - interrupt it. Directed at the tank/highest threat.
• Hail of Bolts: Conal channeled AoE, hits for 1.5k per tick (5 ticks) to everyone in front of him. Interrupt it and make sure he never faces the rest of the group when he does this ability.
• Thermal Grenade: Directly randomly at one group member, has no splash damage but this one hurts! Ticks for 1.9k per tick for about 4 ticks.
• Summon droid adds: At around 75% and 25%, Edikar will summon 4 Outpost Experimental Droids - they are strongs with 12k health and does about 300-400 damage. DPS should burn them down with AoEs. These adds are ranged but if you stay behind the pillar they will run to you.

Hail of Bolts + Thermal Grenade can quickly kill someone unless the healer react fast enough. Just make sure that the tank turns him and the DPS don't pull aggro - this will make this fight go much easier!

After you kill the boss, you can then go and finish off the 4 turrets!