Would be really nice to see this added - I'd like to compare with my friends, but that's difficult right now.

Master Strike is one of the more underutilized abilities we have, I think, but I never let it go past the first second. I will try to work in Zen Strike next time I respec to see how I like it, I think.

Defense needs buffs, I think Plasma Brand needs a slight change (to make the dot 9 seconds and/or remove sunder requirement) but other than that I think Guardians are fine overall.

Infiltration is fun for two shotting people without gear, but meh. The utility it gives up is too much. It may have some use in smaller group settings where there is someone to help keep it alive and it's primary job is spiking but I think KC just is overall a superior spec in today's game environment.

Frankly, I don't care if in a 1 v 3 or 2v5 he is killing people with less gear. That is still quite a bit of skill shown on his part in a lot of those fights, because he is kiting, using his CDs and abilities to dodge damage, mitigate it, and put it out. He's also keeping enemies off of him on a regular basis etc. I think one thing you miss is that he is avoiding damage as much as he is mitigating it. It's true that not all of his opponents were well geared, but until we get rated WZs, it's hard to actually put together warzone clips with 1vX without some of the people being undergeared. That's why people also get footage of 1v1s.

hahah I love this... "The only reason you beat me was I was too stupid to realize I wasn't in a stance!"

I don't know if we're the worst designed class ( I think Scoundrel/Operatives have far more issues than us), but I personally think we're a pretty good class overall in need of a few minor adjustments (perhaps more than that for Defense). We need some small tweaks, but they may need to come with some reduction in the burst of Focus if they buff that tree, as right now guardians are totally fine as Focus (in PvP anyway), Vig is overall fine (maybe some tweaks, but not huge ones ori t'd become too strong), and Defense needs some work.

In my opinion, Vig is FAR more gear-reliant to perform well (unless you are talking about vig/def or something). A vig with poor gear is basically unable to pressure anyone significantly without a great, whereas a vig with good gear is able to drop people solo pretty quickly. Focus, on the other hand, still puts out large damage numbers even in poor gear (I had 5k crits without biochem in centurion-level gear as Focus pre-surge nerf), and still scales extremely well. Vig's survival starts out better than Focus', but it's damage is lower. I think they come closer together in terms of survival and damage the better the gear, though Vig always has a lead on Focus in the survivability department, and Focus always had a slight lead in the damage department, imo. Neither "lead" is so large as to make the other spec not fun to play or bad in warzones right now, though.

I did not get a huge "DONT USE BLADESTORM" feel from this video at all, though i do think that even if you aren't geared for crit, using bladestorm is good. But I also run a 6/3/32 build, so Bladestorm was free. If it's *not* free, then it loses a lot of it's appeal considering it's cost etc.

Medals being broken doesn't mean that Sawbones are bad healers in PvP or PvE. They can use some buffs but they are extremely frustrating to kill.

I would suggest http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500cMZI0rkrhdzZGr0zz.1, with the extra points (including that one in Burning Blade and 2 in Gather Strength) going in some combination of Gather Strength, Improved Sundering Strike, Accuracy, Burning Blade, Protector. My preference would be to take Gather Strength and Protector but beyond that I'm not entirely sure. This build oozes focus. Without Plasma Brand to consume your Focus, and with basically bladestorm NEVER costing focus, you're likely going to have quite a bit of focus, so you might get off more slashes than the typical build or something, but I don't really consider myself focused starved as Vig. However, I don't know if you really gain anything meaningful on a full Vig build. You'll have slightly higher burst in that Zealous Leap can crit decently hard compared to the first hit on Plasma Brand, but Plasma Brand is better overall damage. On top of that, you lose Awe (which is nice utility imo) and at least some of the DoTs. If you really hate Plasma Brand, give it a try... but I don't know if it'll be worth it.

Zealous Leap is a piss poor gap closer.

the 1.3k he's talking about wasn't on someone in light armor. I routinely get 3-4k crits on people with low expertise and light armor and I only have a champion saber... 4k being dispatch, but I've gotten an overhead that high with gather strength procced, and 3ks are not terribly uncommon vs low armor targets. As to the rest of this thread, vig/def has a place in pvp, pure vig has a place in PvP. Shien is a fine stance, Soresu is a fine stance, both have their uses and most builds that take Shien also will use Soresu some times. There is utility in the Vig build that Vig/def can't pick up, and there's certainly survivability that can lead to utility in the vig/def build that Vig can't pick up. The builds have very different purposes in pvp. Play whichever you like more.

I lost 11% crit damage, but my base +damage is like 50 lower than yours unbuffed ()... I had only had a 5k crit once before this patch. I used to get 4ks several times a game, but those are (mostly) gone. Did crit a debuff sorc when I had gather strength up for 4.2k earlier, that was nice. Of course, it was with Dispatch and he had like 1k health, talk about overkill... but... Thinking of picking up Biochem. Artificing now because I stupidly expected Bioware to make other professions competitive by now. Anyway, I appreciate your video & posts. Please keep makin' em

Vigilance requires more gear than Focus. It's not that Focus doesn't scale well or whatever, but Vigilance DOES scale well, so there is a greater disparity between undergeared focus players and undergeared vig players than there is better geared focus and geared vig in terms of damage output imo.

Are you planning on changing any gear choices given the recent Surge nerf? Also holy hell that's a lot more strength than I have...

If you do not occasionally guard team members as a Guardian DPS spec, you are either running in a premade with a tank, or you are doing it wrong. There are invariably moments when guard really can turn the tide of a fight, and knowing when those times are is part of what differentiates average players from good players. You are 100% spot on that we do not NEED To guard to protectp layers. As DPS you can easily mitigate a great deal of damage with your own pressure, as well as judicious use of taunts, guardian leaps, peels, and CC. But even with all that, there are times where I need to throw guard in a healer to keep them from dropping, because I know that the key to holding a node is keeping that healer alive through a stun or knockdown when some of my other abilities are on CD.

I've gotten just under 4k overhead slashes in full champion with gather strength procs on sundered cloth. Still a far cry from his numbers, and much more rare for me than I bet it is for him, but I've managed it.

Could I get a playlist of the songs on that? Was a nice video, you are clearly extremely well geared and know how to play your class very well. What gear are you wearing there? Keep making them

So I wanted to let you know you aren't allowed to do that kind of damage. You didn't get the memo, but you're supposed to be hitting for 1k or something. Enough with the 5k overhead slashes/Impales!!

am I missing something? Where's the link? >.>

Maybe it's the nature of my server, but I am constantly stacking Gather Strength procs. I almost never have an overhead slash without at least one stack due to the million f'ing sorcs on my server. I'm using a build very much like Vertis' but I have dropped a couple in Burning Blade for Stagger because I really like that extra second root. I do not have the accuracy for Zen Strike yet but I kinda want to get it because of how much damage Master Strike does.

Yeah I agree. No reason to spend the points there. Even if Second Wind seems awful, you're going to likely get far more use out of the healing from it than you will from a bit of extra damage on Slash.

Overall I enjoyed it but it felt over-edited at times to the point of distraction. I don't mind zooming in on health and damage numbers but the one point where you showed the same number over and over, flipping the color to negative, was a bit weird to me. but I did enjoy it, thanks for making one

Focus is great in voidstar and good for burst but I have found the utility in Vigilance to be of greater worth, if only because 95% of all the games I play are Huttball (My server is probably the only server where there are so few Imp 50s queueing)