The lack of story feels like a regression to the mean for me. I enjoyed the trooper story, in a way that transcends just enjoyable gameplay. The plot twist at the end of ord mantel made me look forward to hunting the traitors down, and the fight on the gauntlet super weapon where all of your companions join you in a shoot out with dozens of imperials was simply epic. In five years I won't be talking about how I rid a farm of cabbage thieves in GW2, but I'll still be talking about my surprise when gearbox strolled out in a freaking at-at. So how about you give me the ten penny tour of the PvE endgame for GW2 since I've only played the weekends and haven't got that far.

I've played both, and can't bring myself to agree with the article. 1.) GW story yanks you out of the game and into a cutscene that would have been cliche and outdated in the 90's. Story doesn't get in the way of game play because the two never overlap. In fact most of the pve appears to be grinding different area quest that are completely free of story. 2.) Raiding is about player interaction, I know the people I raid with, their jobs, their families, and quite a bit besides. In guild wars I'd be hard pressed to remember anyone I completed an area quest with, and I'll never get the chance to raid with them. Being part of a raid is like being on a sports team, you get to know your team mates, you actively work on your teamwork, and contribute to a whole greater than the sum of the parts. Participating in Area quest in guild wars is like being part of a lynch mob, an anonymous person in a crowd marginally contributing. 3.) I disagree with the reviewer but feels is a hard thing to say one way or another. 4.) So the lack of an end game outside of PvP is a feature now? They were really reaching on that one. If the only thing I can do at 50 is grindy world events or PvP, I'm basically playing a crippled version of RIFT. 5.) Bioware has been much more responsive since the management changes. Also anyone else sick of the kid gloves treatment that Guild Wars 2 is getting? I was stoked for it before I played it, and playing it reminded me why I'm generally a cynic for video game hype.

Ion Pulse, Hammer Shot, Sticky Grenade, High Impact Bolt, Stock Strike, and Energy Blast for single target rotations, not sure how that compares to the other single target rotations. Energy Management is straightforward, use abilities on cool down (especially stock strike), then ion pulse if at 10 cells or more, hammer shot otherwise, and wait to use an ability if it will take you below the first tier of ammo regen. We have Three tanking cooldowns, reactive shield (great), smoke grenade (decent), and adrenaline rush (diet ensure). Add in a trinket you can cycle through them pretty effectively in a tough fight. Due to heavy armor and talents that favor mitigation over avoidance, vanguards seem to have a higher baseline level of toughness than our glow stick wielding compatriots, but our cooldowns just don't seem as cool as guardians or shadows, and we only have one active ability in our rotation that adds toughness (IP). To make a mention towards the unnamed game, feels like a slightly more constricted version of pally tanking.

Saw that after I posted, however does it have to be a teaching tool to be useful? The negative aspects are as important, I've never seen anyone get better at something until they knew there was a problem with the way they were doing it. I've always known that being part of a group/raid isn't a right. I group to have fun and hang out, however in a group I'm expected to perform my job at a minimum level of competency, if I don't I'm negatively effecting other peoples fun. You wouldn't hesitate to kick the guy who stood in the fire, or the under geared tank who makes healing a nightmare, why would you hesitate to kick the guy who is making your groups life difficult by not bringing enough DPS? For instance the council fight in EV, if you have a dps that can't kill a marauder in the time frame you have a problem where he is impeding the rest of the raid, and should be removed and replaced in order to continue. It's the same thing when you hit an enrage timer, albeit with significantly less clarity in the current implementation. That's why meter haters are selfish in the extreme, they are not willing to be accountable to their group mates for their performance, group mates who are dependent on their performance.

Not really, hes simply trying to come up with a motive as to why you don't want people to see what your damage is, and that one is close at hand. You could be awesome at DPS and hate meters because all of the adulation from your peers is embarrassing, somehow though I doubt that's the case. Whatever your motivations and whether or not he was accurate in judging them, it doesn't change the validity of his other statements. This isn't a mathematical proof where one error spoils the whole thing, this is a debate and you have to rebut the point you want to call invalid, using facts and not straw men.

1.) True but sometimes necessary. 2.) So every time you pug someone, your raid leader rolls the magic 8 ball on inspections, or if he's unsure you make your entire raid stand around while the pug clubs a tank to death, multiple times in order to get an accurate read? Even if you are telling straight (and I have my doubts) you think this is a better answer than just giving us logs? Plus what if he sucks at a particular fight style (lots of movement) how is your test duel going to find that out. Besides gear will tell you what someone is capable of, not what they will achieve, so your guilty of the same sin as all those gear score is life failers from wow.

Tactics is usually the easiest to level as because of easier ammo management, but if you want to PvP while your leveling assault wouldn't be a bad choice. Something along the lines of the Build below: http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/trooper/vanguard/#::f19e2f2ef8df6e10f2efe3f The single most important thing you'll learn as a vanguard (or trooper in general) is ammo management, the short answer is stay above 8 cells unless your in a burn phase with a short rest afterwards.

Those are almost my exact stats in nearly full Columi. Here is the skinny on how all of these abilities work, SWTOR is a two roll system, first roll to hit, then roll to modify the damage. First roll is against your defense chance minus their accuracy, so if you have a 15% defense chance and they have +10% accuracy then you have a 5% chance of dodging. Next roll determines if the damage is a crit, shielded (if applicable), or normal damage. so if you have a 45% shield chance, I have a 20% crit chance the results would break down something along the lines of 35% normal Hit, 20% crit chance, 45% shield chance. If crit and shield chance overlap (IE add up to more than a hundred) crit will reduce your shield chance by the amount of the overlap. Example if I have a 75% shield chance due to a buff or trinket, and you have a 30% crit chance, the results look like 30% crit 70% shield. Reactive shield seems to modify this in some way, but I'm not sure on the specifics.

Umm... I solo'd every elite I came across leveling up, almost all of them are interuptable on their hard hitting abilities, but otherwise function like a strong that ate a bunch of protein bars. The most challenging fights were actually two strongs, with no CC you had to take quite a bit of damage to kill one, and hope you had enough health to kill the second (usually the case though not always). At end game vanguards are quite good tanks (being absorption tanks they are easy on healers), and assault specd vanguards are very dangerous in the BGs (a well played vanguard should eat commandos alive). DPS in PvE seems so so, I was usually middle of the pack on the council fight in EV, despite using cool downs and managing ammo well, but without meters it's hard to say for certain. If your looking for a straight dps class, I'd go sentinel for melee or commando for ranged. If your looking to tank or run as damage in BGs, Vanguard is a solid choice.

You sir are absolutely correct, and I'm mortified that I made that mistake. I had read somewhere about the GCD being 2 seconds and accepted it uncritically, if I had googled it I would have known better. I will update the information in the first couple of post, and thanks for pointing that out. It's feasible, but not recommended. If your DPS you shouldn't have agro, so toughness shouldn't be an issue. If your a tank, the easier you can make your healers life the better, and there are quite a few helpful talents in Shield spec for tanking. That depends on whether the upper talents are worthwhile, and I think between tactics and assault they are. Havoc training and assault training are good investments at end game levels of crits, and assault plastique/Fire Pulse are both very strong abilities, especially Fire Pulse (1 energy, hits a little lower than HIB). Plus some of the combo's won't work without the upper talents. That depends, if you can regularly find unguarded healers in the BGs shield spec is probably still worth it. Healing is the number one force multiplier in battle grounds, and anything you can do to make those selfless souls lives a little easier will help your team. However I haven't seen too many of those since the healers on my server tend to bring their own tanks, so if your not guarding someone assault is probably better.

Thanks Mminas, I see where your coming from but I'm not sure I agree. I think tactics is more than a quality of life improvement, Assault used four hammer shots as opposed to one by tactics, and had to wait a GCD on two occasions to use one of it's high priority shots due to energy cells. Both of those result in a dps loss, which would have to be made up by an extra dot and the small delta in tree specific damage talents. The data isn't great right now, but what we have from tor head and darth hater just don't support that conclusion.

Thanks

For Solo and flashpoints/operations purposes I prefer tactics hands down, as shown above it has a much smoother rotation, with High Energy Cell outperforming High Friction Bolts by an average of three energy cells per thirty seconds (or 150% for the math fans in the audience). The Fire Pulse stock strike combo is more reliable than Ionic accelerator (which will give free HIB every so often), and has an initial cost of 1 cell and can be planned for. Assault is designed to be the vanguard PvP DPS tree, it's not reliant on being in melee range, it can perma snare opponents for kiting, It has two dots to add pressure, shorter cool down durations, better damage against wounded opponents, and works best when sustained fighting is not the goal. Sadly as cool as it is, shield spec eclipses it for PvP, to make a comparison to that game it's arms spec during prots time as the number 1 spec for Arenas. So what are your thoughts?

Assault Spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZ0MZfhMbdGhrs.1 Priority Blitz (When available) Incendiary Round (when DOT is Down) Assault Plastique Ion Blast (When no DOT is active) High Impact Bolt Stock Strike (At 8 or above cells) Ion Pulse (At less than 8 cells) Hammer Shot Rotation mechanics: Procing a free HIB is the energy generator for this rotation, which requires that 1.) the target be on Fire and 2.) That ion pulse or stock strike be used. This is a very RNG dependent spec, I regularly went 20 seconds between HIB procs, which puts this spec 3 or 4 ammo behind tactics. For the purpose of this comparison though I'll smooth out the randomness and say HIB gets a proc every other stock strike, and every third ion blast, for the sake of not loading up a part of the rotation I picked the first stock strike and the middle Ion Blast. As with Tactics you'll want to stay in the top tier of ammo regeneration Single target 0.0 Incendiary Round (9 Cells) 1.6 Regen +1 2.0 assualt Plastique (8 Cells) 3.3 Regen +1 4.0 Hammer Shot (9 Cells) 5.0 Regen +1 6.0 High Impact Bolt (8 Cells) 6.6 Regen +1 8.0 Hammer Shot (9 Cells) 8.2 Regen +1 10.0 Regen +1 10.0 Stock Strike (9 Cells)(Proc) 11.6 Regen +1 12.0 High Impact shot (11 Cells) 13.3 Regen + 1 14.0 Ion Pulse (10 Cells) 15.0 Regen + 1 16.0 Incendiary Round (8 Cells) 16.6 Regen +1 18.0 Hammer shot (9 Cells) 18.3 Regen + 1 20.0 Regen + 1 20.0 Assault Plastique (9 Cells) 21.6 Regen + 1 22.0 Stock Strike (8 Cells) 23.3 Regen + 1 24.0 Hammer Shot (9 Cells) 25.0 Regen + 1 26.0 Ion Pulse (8 Cells)(Proc) 26.6 Regen + 1 28.0 High Impact Bolt (10 Cells) 28.3 Regen + 1 30.0 Regen + 1 30.0 Ion Blast (10 Cells)

Tactics Spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZMsrbRrfkzsZb.1 Single Target Priority Blitz (When available) Fire Blast Gut (when DOT is down) High Impact Bolt Stock Strike Sticky Grenade (At 9 or above cells and 5 stacks of the buff) Pulse Cannon (At 8 or above cells) Ion Pulse (At less than 8 cells) Hammer Shot The goal is to never dip into lower than the second best recharge rate, so when in the second recharge rate hammer shot replaces Ion Pulse since it's free. If your doing your rotation correctly you should rarely use hammer shot. Updated Rotation with Full auto 0.0 sticky Grenade (10 cells) 1.6 Regen +1 2.0 Fire Blast (9 cells) 3.2 Regen +1 4.0 Gut (8 cells) 5.0 Regen +1 6.0 Stock Strike (9 cells) 6.0 High energy cell +1 6.6 Regen +1 8.0 High Impact shot (9 cells) 8.2 Regen +1 10.0 Regen +1 10.0 Full Auto (9 cells) 11.6 Regen +1 12.0 High energy cell +1 13.0 Ion Pulse (9 cells) 13.2 Regen +1 15.0 Sticky Grenade (8 Cells) 15.0 Regen +1 16.6 Regen +1 17.0 Fire Blast (9 cells) 18.0 High energy Cell +1 18.2 Regen +1 19.0 Gut (9 cells) 20.0 Regen +1 21.0 Stock Strike (10 cells) 21.6 Regen +1 23.0 High Impact Bolt (9 cells) 23.2 Regen +1 24.0 High energy cell +1 25.0 Regen +1 25.0 Ion Pulse (10 cells) 26.6 Regen +1 27.0 Ion Pulse (9 cells) 29.0 Hammer shot (9 cells) 30.0 High energy Cell + 1 30.0 Regen +1 30.0 Rotation ends with 11 cells