Now keep in mind, I haven't run my GRD as a tank in a little over a year now. But what about this for a Offensive CD? We already have Daunting Presence which increases the time SR is up from 3 to 5 seconds. Id say move the base time up to 5 sec and have Daunting add 3 seconds to it for a total time of 8 seconds. One, this would make SR a more usable CD for use DPS GRDs and increase the overall damage and AE threat done by a GRD Tank as well. More damage reflected= more damage to boss/mobs/players what have you. Secondly, modify the Jedi Warden talent so that it will re-proc SR. Leave what it does now to appease the PVPers, but give say, GS a 45% chance to proc SR with a 9 sec ICD. There's your damage boost right there. Think of all the mechanics in current content that this would help out with. Force Execute in Raptus, AOE phase on DC just to name two.

Would being centered around Riposte really be that bad of an idea? It would fit with the Form's lore. "Form V combat was characterized by power attacks and defense immediately followed by a counter-strike. " Quoted from Wookiepedia. Riposte itself is a counter-strike so it makes sense to me, just have to get the Dev's to make Riposte activate based on the burns or something. It hits hard, and if it were proccing off burns with say a 5 sec ICD (1.5 GCD+3.5 ICD) it would work. It would just need an absurdly high proc rate in order to compensate for not having MS every 15-20 seconds (you would still have it every 30) so the rotation would be PB, OS, BS, Rip (builders) and every 30 seconds PB, OS, BS, MS, Rip. That would give us a bit of "burst" IF Riposte were to have a second feature for Vigilance that gave us a bit of Armor Pen. Canonically speaking, this isn't that bad of an idea. Form V users would "Create their own openings" in combat to strike. That sounds like Sunder + Riposte to me, almost perfectly. Although, I would like something a bit more "Flashy" for our primary damaging attack, Say the Animation of GS only with a Red flash(ie Burn) rather than blue. Or maybe, just maybe add a new Top Tier ability, Removing PB and attaching a hard hitting burn to Riposte, (Call the talent Searing Wounds or something) Someone mentioned one way back, Warrior slash or something. Have it enabled by using Riposte. Yes, this would change the rotation quite a bit, and more to the complex side. Is that really a bad thing? We have all said we don't want this to be a faceroll spec. We have focus for that. As it has been said, a lot of these changes wont happen, but the spec does pretty much need to have itself re-written from page 1. The talent tree needs to be scraped and rebuilt. That won't happen until 3.0 or later, if ever.

So, Question. Why not take the two points in Master Focus from the defense tree so that MS hits harder? If you are running a 2:2 set bonus set up rather than the straight Vindicator 4 pc, wouldn't it make more sense to have MS hitting as hard as possible? I was taking two of the points from Accuracy but even still I never had an issue running 2.6K DPS in 69s/72s. Also, for focus, I have been considering if the 4PC Vindicator bonus is in fact better due to BS being free, and completely free on CD. Anyone got any parses showing the difference?

JMD, I'm not being mean or trying to troll you when I say that your posts are extremely hard to read. However, you have small pieces of your posts that are written perfectly or very close therein. This makes me believe you are typing this way on purpose, and I must ask you to stop. Simply trying to read one of your posts gives me a headache and makes my eyes go cross and water. Please for the love of God, please check your posts for proper spelling and grammar. I get the feeling you have would have some very good input for our class but I can't decipher it out of your posts. Thanks.

Okay, there have been a lot of good suggestions both here and the Jugg forums. I've been compiling everything I can get and heres what I have so far. Set Bonus Recommendation: (2) Increase Master Strike Damage by 10% (4) Reduces the channel time of Ravage/Master Strike by 1.5 Vigilance: Utility Addition (New Skill) Guardians Favor-The Guardian Focuses the Force on one target Player,increasing all damage and healing done by 5%, while also reducing all damage taken and threat generated by 5% for both the Guardian and his ally. Range is 20 meters, only one player may have Guardian's Favor on at any given time. This ability can be used even if the Guardian is under the effects of another players Guard. (This way it makes a lot of sense to pair your Guardian DPS with his MDPS counterpart, regardless of what class they are, so in the most common scenario of a Sentinel and Guardian pounding their enemies both players would be able to push their DPS harder. And considering in this scenario both of these players would have Guard (Tank guards JG, JG melds with sent) this virtually guarantees that these DPS will not pull Aggro. However on battles like Op IX where it is more beneficial to give Guard to healers, the tanks don't have to worry as much about swapping guards back to DPS after the phase change.) Current Talent Tree Changes (Names are not set in stone, if something works better namewise-call it what you will. The Effect is the important part.) NOTE:Assumes that all talents have max points allocated to them. If it is unmentioned, then the talent remains as is. Zen Strike 3/3: Overhead Slash, Plasma Brand generate 1 stack of Zen Strike, which reduces the Master Strike Cooldown time by 5 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times to a maximum of a 15 second Master Strike cooldown reduction, the stack is not consumed on activation. Master Strike also has a 30 percent chance to proc Zen Master, which grants 25 percent armor penetration for your next Master Strike. The Zen Master effect can only occur every 20 seconds. (This to me is the best thing they can do for us. Take RNG completely out of it. Vigilance should be a sustained damage class. So let us ramp up and keep going.) Accuracy 3/3: Increase Melee and Force Accuracy by 9%. (3%,9%,6%) [With this, I believe we would effectively get our Surge boost some posters have asked for by being able to put more points of it in our gear.] Sundering Throw 2/2: Reduces the required range for Saber Throw to 0 meters and lowers its cool down by 5 seconds. Additionally, Saber throw has a 100% chance to apply armor reduction to the target Plasma Brand 1/1: CD: 9 seconds. Engulfs your lightsaber in firey plasma, striking the target for (current Weapon) WEAPON(so it hits harder up front) damage and dealing an extra (current weapon) elemental damage over 9 seconds. Shien Form 1/1: Increases all damage dealt by 6 percent as well as supplying a 15 percent passive in combat speed boost Perseverance 2/2: Increases your Strength to (4.5%,9%) Gather Focus: Generates 1 focus when taking area of effect damage. Also, when taking are of effect damage the guardian increases the damage of the next master strike by (3%,6%) while in shien form, stacks twice (Provided Focused Defense is fixed)Commanding Awe 2/2: Reduces damage taken by (2%,4%) at all times and Focused Defense grants (10%,20%) damage reduction and cleanses movement impairing effects. Keening 3/3: Master Strike and your burning damage has a (10%,20%,30%) chance to trigger keening making your next Dispatch free and allowing Dispatch to be used on a target with any HP level within (10,20,30)m, in addition Keening increases the damage dealt by your burning effects by 12 percent (Up from 9) Effulence 1/1: Force Sweep no longer costs focus. Additionally, all friendly targets within the target area will be healed for 10% of the total damage caused by Force Sweep. Unremitting- Acts as normal. Lowers the required range of Force Leap by 10 meters and gives the target a debuff to heals received Force Rush-Overhead Slash and Plasma Brand have a chance to grant Force Rush, which increases Blade Storm Critical Chance by 100 percent and increases Dispatch Critical Chance by 25%. This Buff is not consumed on use. Lasts 15 seconds. Stacks once. Upon just reading this it might seem as the class would be OP if all the changes are implemented, but it would not. Especially considering the buff being given to Sents/slingers in 2.5 vanguards in 2.4 etc etc. This would bring us in line provided the numbers are worked properly. The chief problem with PB is it does "elemental damage" up front, which is not based on our primary attribute as far as I know.

Okay, so I saw this, and I am in the process of compiling everything so far. This is kinda how I was seeing it to begin with but if we wanted to make it stance specific how would we differentiate Vigis Guard with Focus Guard? I have an impressive list thus far and I am doing my best to make sure we stay balanced, not OP and definitely not barney-style easy. Once I have it done, i'll post it here, and if we can reach at least some sort of consensus then I'll do my best to get the Theorycrafters in here to look and get the numbers. Good hunting.

Well here's what you have: Guardian's Favor - The Guardian Focuses the Force on one target Player, increasing all damage and healing be 3%, while also reducing all damage taken and healing received by 3% for both the Guardian and his ally. Range is 30 yards, only one player may have Guardian's Favor on at any given time. Battle Mediation - All party members within the Shadow gain 5% increase to all damage and healing done and reducing threat by a moderate amount at all times. The Shadow using Battle Meditation also receives this ability increase. Lets spin it a different way. My thinking on this is if you give these two classes basically the same utility only one operates much better than the other (As I believe this system would) you still create an area that pushes to exclude one. (In the scenario I see here, the optimal MDPS setup with current mechanics would be a sentinel and a shadow. Sent for massive MDPS and Insp, plus Shadow for a smaller inspiration that is always active. You also get a stealth rez, great on call burst and a emergency tank.) So, lets change it a bit, if that's alright to be more slightly more favoring to the guardian counterpart so that these two buffs become interchangeable. Here's my version: Battle Meld(This talent should be trainable at level 22 when you can unlock Shien Form but only lock this ability out when using Soresu Form, the same way Guard is locked to Soresu Form)- (Thank you previous poster for the name update, I do believe this one works better.)-The Guardian Focuses the Force on one target Player, increasing all damage and healing by 5%, while also reducing all damage taken and threat by 5% for both the Guardian and his ally. Range is 20 yards, only one player may have Guardian's Favor on at any given time.(This way it makes a lot of sense to pair your Guardian DPS with his MDPS counterpart, regardless of what class they are, so in the most common scenario of a Sentinel and Guardian pounding their enemies both players would be able to push their DPS harder. And considering in this scenario both of these players would have Guard from the tanks this virtually guarantees that these DPS will not pull Aggro. However on battles like Op IX where it is more beneficial to give Guard to healers, the tanks don't have to worry as much about swapping guards back to DPS after the phase change.) Battle Mediation - All party members within the Shadow's team gain 3% increase to all damage and healing done. The Shadow using Battle Meditation also receives this ability increase.(Dropping this to 3% in lieu of the fact it affects everyone. You also would not want to have a agro drop mechanic tied to this for the same reason, you don't want anything hampering the threat generation of your tanks. Because of this, I could easily see this as a replacement for the Shadows Shelter talent in the Tanking Tree. This could easily be done by adding a talent at the bottom of the middle tree (Infiltration) similar to Guardians Single Saber Mastery, that way the ability "Phase Walk" does different things based on which stance the shadow is in. Perhaps Double-bladed Saber Mastery?) With the problems Shadow Tanks have had with their current setup and the fixes coming in 2.5 this could easily push them back to tanking kings. I say this to encourage class diversity in raid groups.)

Hey guys, me again. With the creators permission I have edited his idea for Battle Meditation and Guardians favor. I'm still tweaking the wording, along with a brief explanation. Ill post them in the morning, it's very late here, and then get to work on compiling everything we have settled on here. Ill probably post the compilation in a new 'Brainstorming' similar to those I have seen on other class forums. With what I have, I think everyone will be happy. Then maybe we can get the theorycrafters to give us the numbers to support our recommendations, and forward the whole package tithe devs(provided they actually listen). P.S. I am intrigued by their remark about reworking Focused Defense/Enraged Defense. Let us hope the devs listen to our pleas and give us an aggro dump that won't tear our mediocre dps to shreds. I love this class and wish that the dps I put out was consistent and high enough for progression level operations. So give us the aggro dump, next step-a reason to use it.

Agreed on most of your suggestions here, coupled with some of mine. Question though about the raid utility abilities you listed first. Guardians favor has a lower increase to damage and healing done than its shadow counterpart. It also affects fewer people. I would say switch the numbers, and get rid of the decrease to healing received and you're good. Then just a few other little tweaks to buff our damage output with base abilities- PLASMA BRAND...errr yeah...base abilities. Seriously Devs, I get the Plasma Brand is more about the DoT that it applies than being an attack itself but the damage it puts out is horridly low. If the DoT were compressed to 9 secs(while still putting out the same TOTAL damage) it would be much better, but still far from optimal. With everyone's permission, I'd like to compile these suggestions (Removing overlapping ones from appearing multiple times) and then we can discuss everything we have thus far.

I usually don't speak much on the Forums, I'm more of an In-game guy, however I have seen some of my suggestions roaming around on here with other people. I do think that it is pretty safe to say that those of us who are primarily DPS Guards/Jugs have become a closer knit community than most classes in that we all have a common goal: Let this iconic figure from the SW universe become comparable to the other DPS classes in that we aren't always near the bottom. I have read a few good ideas in this thread, most notably was the addition of Raid-wide utility of combat focus to add alacrity. Seeing the examples provided and knowing that in my personal raid team, I could swap back to my Guardian and shift a few people back to the spots they really excel in, I love that idea. Kudos to the third degree. Below are some more ideas I would like passed onto the Theorycrafters and Devs. I have composed the ideas of myself and a few other guardians on Ebon Hawk. NOTE: all this assumes the Maximum amount of skill points put into each ability and If it is not mentioned, then it remains the same in the tree as is. 1. RNG buff for Zen Strike talent, Hands down. This is one of the chief reasons that Vig/Veng can't really be "consistent" in parses or Ops. The variant of DPS output is too great from one encounter to the next. Perseverance 2/2: Increases your Strength to 9% Shien Deflect (Replaces Gather Strength) 2/2: Focused Defense no longer costs any focus. Combat Focus now gives 6 focus, and gives 2 more over 2 seconds. (Focused defense is changed so that instead of being healed every time you are attacked it becomes a passive heal over time. (This is a big one. Vig/Veng are penalized way too much for pulling agro, moreover than any other class in the game. Period. We need a threat drop that wont tear our DPS to shreds.) Shien Form 1/1: Increases all damage dealt by 6 percent as well as supplying a 15 percent passive in combat speed boost. (Again, give us the same as every other melee DPS class. Pre 2.0 we had the speed boost, and they took it from us [if I remember correctly.]) Unremitting 2/2: Force Leap and Guardian Leap grant one stack of unremitting,and is consumed when Master Strike is active, making the Guardian immune to stuns, slows, pushes, and other physics or other related attacks for the duration of the Master Strike. Stacks two times. (This change to Unremitting I believe is nice in setting JGs/jugs apart, and give us that little edge. Force Rush 2/2: Overhead Slash and Plasma Brand have a 50% chance to grant Force Rush, which increases Blade Storm Critical Chance by X percent. This Buff is not consumed on use. Lasts 15 seconds. Stacks twice. (This is one of the changes that I suggested from Rydarus's "Superbuff" guide. This one is tricky, as it can make the class OP. The Crit chance should be higher than 50% but not as high as 100%. I'd probably say 60% like it was in pre2.0-that way we still need some crit and without proper gearing this wont become the FOTM peoples complaint to make the spec OP.) Commanding Awe 2/2: AOE damage reduction by 20 percent and Direct Damage Reduction by 4 percent. Force Leap gives the target a debuff to heals received. (Debuffs tend to be one of the Guard/Juggs best utilities. Let us be a little better at it, although this would effect would be primarily for PVP with a bit of use in PVE.) Keening 3/3: Increases the Damage dealt by your burning effects by 12 percent (Up from 9). Dispatch critical chance is increased by 25 percent Sundering Throw 2/2: Reduces the required range for Saber Throw to 0 meters and lowers its cool down by 5 seconds. Additionally, Saber throw has a 100% chance to apply armor reduction to the target. Plasma Brand 1/1: same as before, burns for 9 seconds instead and has a 9 second cool down. Make damage for burn same as 12 seconds but condensed, or make it do more per burn. It is IMPERATIVE that the dots remain the same damage and there are the same amount, but they tick faster. (This one is almost common sense. The Devs jacked up our priority list in 2.0 to compensate the giant "buff" we received.) Advancement (Replaces Preparation)2/2: Your connection to the force gives you the strength to push onward, making Master Strike hit any target in melee range, and Master Strike can continue casting unless the target moves past 30 meters. After Master Strike, you are granted Advancement, which grants the guardian a 30 percent speed boost for 5 seconds to allow them to close the gap. (This is a fun utility talent that would help Vig out considerably with MS problems. Vig is also one of the most range constricted specs in game atm.) Now for the big one. My compatriots and I are concerned that this pushes past the OP level, which is why we are asking for help. This would be a fantastic addition to the JG rotation and would bring the class up quite a bit by itself. It also reduces the need to buff the RNG for the class as well. Zen Strike 3/3: Overhead Slash, Plasma Brand generate 1 stack of Zen Strike, which reduces the Master Strike Cooldown time by 5 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times to a maximum of a 15 second Master Strike cooldown reduction. Master Strike also has a 30 percent chance to proc Zen Master, which grants 25 percent armor penetration for your next Master Strike. The Zen Master effect can only occur every 20 seconds. Master Strike is the bread and butter of Vigilance (And really all DPS knights/SWs) but in reality all the other specs could get by just fine if MS was gone. Watchman has their burns that auto crit with Zen, Combat has the auto crit-Arpen BS, Focus has its sweeps. So these talents will put MS up to the priority it should be for the spec. And one last change I would suggest to the Devs. Change the set bonus on the Vindicator gear. Make the boost to MS from the weaponmaster set a static 2 pc bonus for ALL knight DPS gear. Then let the 4 pc bonuses remain the same for the classes respectively. Before 2.0 the Guardian bonus for Saber throw was nice due to the fact it gave us another focus builder and some range. In the 2.0 patch Sents gained TST with a built-in range of 0 meters, as well as hitting EVERY target between(and past) the sent and its target for 30 meters. To me this is broken. They took a guardian ability, made it better and gave it to sentinels. So, in my opinion, let the JG ST have the armor debuff attached to it, but it only hits one target. Sentinels TST remains the same, allowing them to have a higher DPS count due to striking more targets.

I have a few things to add to this conversation if you ladies and gents will permit me. First off, I can simply only say "wow" at some of the comments disregarding the great dps potential of the guardian class and I hope that here I can lay some of the worries at ease. I run a dps guardian as my main on EH, and just last night in demo a story mode I had a bit of a surprise. Keep in mind that I leveled this character as a tank and later respec'd to vigilance. While pushing through Zorn and Toth, as well as firebrand and stormcaller, I was pushing out just nigh of 1400 dps. This is, actually, just shy of a sentinel friend of mine who is better geared. In the same OP was a sentinel who is geared quite a bit better than I am and my damage output exceeded his. I will provide TORparse links later as I am currently on my mobile. It's very simple people. Dps is dps is dps. What is going to make the difference is gear, play style, experience and practice with your priority list, experience in mmo's and experience with each fight. Seeing dps guardians is becoming more and more common. The survivability of a well geared dps guardian is extremely high. Our defensive cool downs are not meant to drop much aggro but are more meant to keep us alive. It's also nice having a third set of taunts should one of the tanks or healers be in real trouble. Secondly in pvp, being appropriately geared, a focus spec guardian is one of the most feared sights because within 12 seconds they can unleash over 10k-15k damage to multiple targets and still have the ability to absorb lots of damage. Plus snares and stuns. Once again, gear and experience make the difference. If you had any more questions, please feel free to message me here or find me on the enjin forums. I will be glad to answer any guardian related question. P.S. for any imperials out there, plz substitute the word "juggernaut" wherever you see "guardian"