I haven't seen one of these come up in a while so I decided to create a poll regarding the balance between factions and favored disciplines. Discipline Poll can be found here. Faction Poll can be found here. Note: This is NOT an overall representation of classes, disciplines, or faction balance in the entire game. This is simply for informational purposes. POLL IS NOW CLOSED, RESULTS IN SPOILER:

I got the same thing from it: I haven't seen anyone ask for damage increases, so it appears they are working on what people actually have been asking for, which is survivability and mobility. Regarding this: Will there be another post that specifically concerns Watchman and its rotation? I don't believe most Sentinel's are upset because the rotation is intended to be the most difficult of the three, I think everyone just wants it to be fun and dynamic like it used to be.

Fear not! The Combat Team has heard our concerns! Classes + Combat Jedi Knight Guardian•Removed the Stagger Skillful Utility. •New Skillful Utility: Unremitting. Force Leap grants Unremitting, granting immunity to interrupts and all controlling effects for 4 seconds. Vigilance

Vanguard is going to be your best bet starting out while you learn the fights and how to tank. They are very durable and you wont notice spike damage as much as you would on the other two tanks. They also have an array of ranged abilities that the other tanks don't have access to, so you have a lot of playroom to weave in and out to grab enemies. Their AoE is the best out of the three tanks, and once you learn the basics of the class you shouldn't have a problem keeping everything beating on you.

Game Update 4.0: Enter The Shadowlands...

Oh I most definitely know what you meant by "writing" (as in coding) lol. I was just under the impression your ultimate goal was to apply what you learned from the case study in some way, shape, or form since you mentioned you were working on a stat optimization app.

So just to make sure I understand what you are doing correctly... you are essentially trying to determine the "sweet spot" a class should allocate certain stats, taking into account increases of said stats in their trees, in relation to the abilities that are being buffed by the increase? And in doing so, you believe there is a possibility that we can min-max a bit more precisely, dependent on the discipline/class?

Check this out and support it. It's similar to what you are talking about except G_Hosa_Phat goes into a metric ton of detail.

In PvP, don't bother with defense, shield or absorb at all. Defense is next to useless because it only affects Melee/Ranged attacks not Force/Tech, and the majority of damage in PvP is Force/Tech. Shield works against both Melee/Ranged and Force/Tech, but the majority of classes in PvP run burst specs and there are AutoCrit's flying around all over the place so it pretty much shoves your shield off the table. In other words, Tanking stats need to be looked at in PvP. Aelanis said it best when he said stack Endurance and I would also recommend to queue with a healer or pray you have a great one on your team.

/signed Great idea. Reminds me of Titanfall's AI defending/assaulting objectives. This would be a really fun warzone!

/signed Another great idea!

/signed I would love to see this introduced into the game! I was going to try to offer suggestions but it looks like you have everything worked out so far.

After thinking it over, I agree that Flourish Shot would be a better choice now in 3.0. The original Leg Shot idea was made pre-3.0 when Flourish Shot/Shatter Shot also applied armor debuff which is why I originally didn't have it on Flourish Shot. I appreciate the feedback and I have made the following changes:

Any class that is capable of healing is currently viable. I'd take a look at the DPS tree's for each healing class if I were you, and pick the healing class that has the best looking DPS tree that fits your personal playstyle. Well, its "supposed" to be Watchman Sentinel's... but due to current balance many classes are putting out more DPS than them. The way they said they "try" to balance is so that: Melee Sustained does more damage than Melee Burst, Melee Burst does the same damage as Ranged Sustained, and Ranged Burst does less damage than Ranged Sustained. All tanks were relatively balanced since 2.5+, but with the current Discipline system we haven't seen any new information regarding current tank balance in 3.0. KeyboardNinja does most of the tank theorycrafting around these parts so I would keep my eye out for a post from him regarding tank balance in 3.0+. I can tell you from personal experience, as someone who has mained a Guardian tank since pre-launch and also plays every other tank class (every class for that matter) regularly in all endgame content, that they all feel fairly great. For respeccing to DPS on the fly, you'd probably want to go for Shadow/Assassin just because Serenity/Hatred is currently over the top right now. Vanguard/Powertech DPS is also over the top with Tactic's/Advanced Prototype's shoulder cannon burst. They are wrecking things left and right lol. Guardian/Juggernaut DPS is a fun and sturdy dps class that puts out good damage but they aren't currently the "highest." I would choose Guardian, just because its the play style that I prefer and it fits the theme of Jedi I would be if Star Wars was real lol. I don't pick a class just because they become FOTM. I pick a class that appeals to me and my personality and I choose that as my main. After I master my main, I play all other classes as alts and though I attempt to be just as good on them as I am on my main, I still know that my priorities lie with my main class. If you enjoy FOTM, pick Serenity/Hatred or Tactics/Advanced Prototype. Seems as if you have a sort of... Hatred... for PvP. lol (pun intended)

That's a nice idea, except I would prefer credits being shared throughout Legacy.

Stealth was just a means to keep the Gunslinger/Sniper alive while making sure that if they decide to deal damage earlier than 3 seconds, it would be their own fault if they started to come under attack. The stealth would've worked just like Force Camo, where as long as you don't deal direct damage you wont be broken out, except by Stealth Scan. Most of these ideas were made Pre-Discipline era so it will take some time and feedback to fix them. Shatter Shot is used often when trying to debuff multiple enemies, that's why I originally put it on Leg Shot so it would be used when you were trying to take someone down instead of just randomly applying to someone you were trying to debuff. Why do you think Shatter Shot would be a better choice? Also, thanks for the reply!

Reserved for future expansion

Matrix Cube Miscellaneous

Sage/Sorcerer Commando/Mercenary Scoundrel/Operative

Sentinel/Marauder Gunslinger/Sniper

I have been working on most of these suggestions (some suggestions I have seen from others and I just expanded on their suggestion so credit goes to them for that) for well over a year and most of the suggestions are before we all found out about the discipline system so I left many, many things out that wouldn't quite work anymore since we don't have "points" to spend. I constantly read and gather player feedback both in-game and on the forums and I tried to look at the problems people were having as a whole, and see if there was a way to implement a solution to those problems that wouldn't cause an adverse effect somewhere else. Anyways, I didn't want everything I came up with to just go to waste so I figured I would post it here to help with future suggestions and see what others thought about it. I also want to give a shout out to a few other threads that I recommend for people to keep tabs on: Onslaught PvE Arena, Field Commander, Capture and Command, New Warzone's, A Thousand Papercuts, and Magnusheart's Compendium. Note: Commentary always belongs to the bullet above it. Commentary also usually speaks from just the Republic side, but sometimes I will mention Empire counterpart to explain the idea better. Times of cooldowns, rate limits, etc... are all just examples that will need to be tested and changed before being implemented. Suggestions are not intended for "right now" fixes, simply long term thinking into future updates. Edit: Work in-progress. I encourage others to post feedback and suggestions, keep it constructive. Updated 4/6/15. It took a good bit of work but I was able to resurrect this from my Onedrive after it was wiped with the rest of the threads in the roles section. Re-posted cause I didn't want all these suggestions to go to waste. Guardian/Juggernaut Shadow/Assassin Vanguard/Powertech

If you look at Roles sub-forum under classes, it appears that it still shows: 46 Total Threads, 2,116 Total Posts. So Im thinking they may just be hidden. Hopefully they will get restored.

Many people are confusing the standard trinity with the type of trinity we have in SWTOR. In a standard trinity you have a trinity of classes that each fulfill one role: 1 Tank Warrior. 1 Healer Mage. And 1 Damage Rogue. In SWTOR we have multiple classes/disciplines with a trinity of roles: 3 Tank's 3 Healer's And 18 Damage Dealer's Assuming strictly 1v1 balance: Rock should have a slight advantage against Scissors Paper should have a slight advantage against Rock Scissors should have a slight advantage against Paper In a standard trinity balance, a Tank should have a slight advantage over Damage Dealer's, due to mitigating their damage. A Healer should have a slight advantage over a Tank due to the Healer being able to heal through the Tank's low damage. A Damage Dealer should have a slight advantage over a Healer due to the Damage Dealer's high damage overpowering the Healer's heals. In SWTOR, it is my personal belief that balance should follow the standard trinity, to an extent. I think that the advantages listed above, should be slight enough that the other class can counter those advantages through skilled play/proper tactics. You also have to remember that since classes and disciplines are diverse, and not homogenized, that 1v1 balance is out of the question. Each discipline in SWTOR receives a "toolkit" of sorts, that allows them to fulfill their role in an unique and engaging way. Regarding those saying Tank's shouldn't do damage since its "not their role", a Tank NEEDS to do just enough damage to a player that they are a thorn in their side. If a Tank can not harass an enemy enough to the point where the Tank is causing problems for the other class, then there would be no use for a tank in PvP. A Tank should be able to jump on an enemy who is chasing the Tank's ally, and deal enough damage that the Tank is now a threat. That doesn't mean the Tank should deal AS MUCH damage as a Damage Dealer, it just means the Tank should deal enough to be a problem if not dealt with/countered. In PvE, they still need to do enough damage to maintain threat and be involved in the process of defeating the enemies. Imagine if a Tank dealt 1 damage each hit but they had super high threat(similar to what many of you are suggesting), and everyone died in the raid except the tank due to mechanics. The boss is at say 1% or 2% health levels and the tank is the last man standing. Now lets say he is able to survive for another 20-30 seconds just due to him being a tank, if he only dealt 1 damage per hit he would not be able to defeat the boss and everybody would be disappointed, and then all of you would be changing your mind saying: "yeah they need to do a little more damage than that!" My point is that a Tank needs to contribute to killing stuff, hence why they need SOME damage.

For the record, only Vigilance discipline gets the talent Unremitting, not all Guardians. I do agree some form of baseline CC protection is needed for all Knights, and then certain disciplines should get upgrades that: extend the duration, increase the number of effects it protects from, adds some additional effect while active, etc... Tank Guardians have been needing one for a while. It sucks to leap in and immediately get knocked back from adds when your DPS are going all out. It forces you to use taunts/saber reflect immediately, instead of using it tactically.

True. I was just spouting stuff off the top of my head lol. Ill edit the post. As far as I know, its not. There is one called Mitigation but that only shows personal mitigation of self, others and companion. It doesn't actually show "protection" from taunts/guards. I was thinking of something like an indigo blue or a royal blue. Light colors are only hard to read on light backgrounds and dark colors are only hard to read on dark backgrounds. The way that the flytext is rendered on a screen allows for plenty of light and contrast so I think most colors will work, I just prefer a shade of blue because its "friendly." Edit: Blue is also MANLY!... 'Merica!