Great guide, good ideas, tips and suggestions. Only one change I'm going to recommend and I apologize if it has already been said. but you really need to change the 2 points you've put into "Sonic Barrier" and throw it into "Deafening Defense". Since we don't have our PVE 4 piece for tanks, the absorb shield from Sonic Barrier is actually rather low, and especially when you compound this with how much the damage increase is in percent from Expertise, having a guaranteed 4% reduction is immensely better. And then couple this with the 15% damage reduction while enraged defense is active, it essentially gives you another mitigation cooldown on top of your existing arsenal. Other than that, nothing to add. Cheers!

Why is there an apparent lack of regard for the guilds/groups who choose to raid 8 man content? I ask because Nightmare Pilgrim, a world boss that drops the Campaign Boot Token, therefore you need to kill it if you want total best in slot gear, doesn't suggest using 16 players it REQUIRES that amount. There are plenty of other examples littered throughout the currently available Operations, 8 man hardmode Kephess's Gift of the Masters ticks way too quickly and even extends beyond the giant purple circle placed on the ground, it wasn't even happening in 16 man and you chose to fix 16 before 8.

It can be a pain if you choose to do it, at the end of the day it is an option available to you and your class and not me or other classes in the same boat I am, so either your offhands need to brought down and made into singular stat sticks or our shields need to become moddable. Simply because an option exists it doesn't mean that people need to pursue it.... my class (and many others) simply don't have the choice available to us so we can't even decide for ourselves if we want to pursue it or not.

It just occurred to me the other day but Marauders and Mercenary Bounty Hunters have a slight leg up on every other class with regard to offhand weapon slots. I play a Juggernaut and in my offhand my choices are a shield generator or a power generator, Inquisitor's get Foci as their choice, Agents get Knives and Powertech Bounty Hunters also get the choice between Shield Generators and Power Generators.... the similarity between all of those pieces? No individual mods to use for trying to get an augment in said slot. Presently a Marauder can get a critically crafted lightsaber shell, pull out their existing hilt, crystal and mods, slap em in and get an augment and improve their effect in whatever setting they find themselves. Same as a Mercenary Bounty Hunter. Every other class does not possess this ability due to knives, foci, power and shield generators being single unit stat sticks with no modification available. So as far as a suggestion is concerned, please either make all offhand weapons singular stat sticks to prevent modification and subsequent augmentation or change knives, foci, power and shield generators so that they can be modded and subsequently augmented.

First off, thank you! Everything about UI customization has been great, I'm so glad for the ability to change my layout to precisely how I like seeing it. There are two additions I would greatly like to see added for further customization as well as uniformity. The mission/quest tracker needs to be able to be flipped. Currently it is justified to the right and if you move it to any other side than the right of your screen, it won't work well because the text will extend outward to the left and in my case right off the screen if the quest text is long enough. So the ability to switch justifications would be great. Second, I'm a little OCD when it comes to this but really there should be an alignment feature of sorts. I've done my best to set my bars up so they are exactly parallel but the human eye and hand is only so precise. Please add both of these functionalities and I would greatly appreciate it.

I almost had hopes this was actually going to happen..... then I'd have something to do!

None taken, but try this on for size... I have vehemently posted these 2 things: Post #1) Presently don't have an assassin to compare with, but the discrepancy between Juggernaut tanks and Powertech tanks in terms of damage dealt/threat generated and overall mitigation is just straight up ridiculous. The Powertechs, if specced correctly and have their 4 piece, of even just Tionese gear, get: 5% mitigation from Ion Gas Clyinder, 2% from their 4 piece, 2% from "Ion Screen" talent and 2% from the "Power Armor" Talent for a grand total of 11% full on mitigation. Combine that with their talent "Combust" which lowers the damage dealt to them by their attacker by 4% we now arrive at a 15% total. Ion gas cylinder provides a 60% increase in their armor total, however they also have a talent to increase their armor by a further 16%. Furthermore, the Ion Gas Cylinder provides a 15% passive chance for their shield to proc, and then they have 2 talents which increase their shield chance by a total of 12% for a combined total of 27%. They also have the talent "Ablative Upgrades" which increases their absorbtion total by 6%. Juggernauts, however, do not have the same myriad of tools We get 6% reduced damage for being in Soresu and our Dark blood talent increases our Elemental and Internal damage reduction by 4%. So even if we do a fight that is just Elemental and Internal damage the most we get in pure reduction is 10% vs 15%. Jugg 4 piece increases the active shield we get from Force scream by 20% (20% of a low number, is still a pretty low number) considering the tooltip merely says "a moderate amount of damage" it's hard to give specifics but I've seen hits of about 2.5-3k go fully absorbed. We receive no armor bonus beyond Soresu putting us 16% behind Powertechs, and we gain 4% shield chance due to talents plus the passive 15% putting us 8% behind Powertechs on passive shield chance. Juggs also do not possess a talent to increase their absorbtion amount. We do receive a 6% passive defense and 6% active defense increase upon using retaliation, but since defense is a chance, whereas Damage reduction is guaranteed the two just really don't compare. Now before anyone else posts and gets all uppity about how Jugg threat is fine... consider this, We pulled a champion mob, I was the only one attacking for the first 30 seconds, and then our Powertech started in, within 20-25 seconds of him starting his attack he had pulled threat... sorry but that is absolutely imbalanced and needs a fix. Juggs have 1 ability with +threat on a minute. Post #2) I just put in now a combined 3 tickets regarding a single issue, other guildmates put in a similar ticket about that issue, for a grand total of 11 tickets and the severe lack of service was extremely unimpressive and exceedingly angering on Bioware's part. #1 Not everything can be solved by simply going and reading patch notes, I'm sick of getting that as a response. #2 You can't begin to tell me or anyone else who is experiencing a genuine bug that it is working as intended, unless you in fact intended to create a buggy game... but then you shouldn't be claiming that your game is good to go... let alone releasing it. Ancient Pylons still remain bugged, sure there are work arounds, but even those aren't guaranteed and everyone has a different one. Some say let North solve first, others say South, we're getting puzzles with portions already solved etc etc. Last night my guild and I went for our Infernal run (we've been having a rough go of it with people quitting, having to recruit and regear all over again otherwise we'd've had it a long time ago) and during Ancient Pylons the consoles randomly stopped functioning and didn't allow us to rotate them in either direction. I wrote a ticket regarding this matter, Ticket #4660825 in which I describe the bug that occurred forcing us to reset the instance in order to get functionality back, thus ripping us off from getting our title reward. (We went on to finish all of Operation: The Eternity Vault in 1 hour, 45 minutes and 51 seconds and received no title, no codex entry for completing Soa on Nightmare mode, nothing). This ticket wasn't responded to, it is (on client side) closed with no information from Bioware about anything. The other ticket I put in, Ticket # 4661317, was handled in an even worse manner. Again client side, all of the information in the ticket was wiped clean. The ticket is just a hollow shell, with no answer at all from Bioware. So I opened up my final ticket regarding the matter and here is an exact quote from the Customer Service Agent, "In addition with the other ticket (4660825), please take note that we have investigated the error you reported, and have confirmed with our specialist team that in fact this is not a bug, and is working as designed." -Quoted from Protocol Droid X0-A2 (aka Jozen Eli). The other ticket (4661317) has been forwarded to bug report people, but I'll receive no information and I should watch Patch notes for potential changes or statements about said issue. So one of a couple things, either your so called "specialist" team is indeed really "special" and figures vital parts of fights stopping their functionality as being working, or there was no real investigation and it's just easier to push us off instead of admit a mistake and try to rectify the situation, or it is indeed truly designed as such making the patch notes regarding the matter factitious. I am of course referencing Patch notes for 1.15 on 3/6/2012 which clearly states "an issue that could cause buttons to stop responding during the Ancient Pylons encounter has been fixed". To me, it's a simple fix. If Bioware can check Metrics to see who was spawn camping in Ilum and punish them, then use the same process and check our times in Nightmare Mode Eternity Vault and if we beat it in under 2 hours, which we did... then give us our rightly earned title, and the appropriate codex entries. Should be fairly simple. And have yet to receive any... and I mean ANY acknowledgement or post of any kind from Bioware regarding these issues. Both provide numbers and logically thought out feedback and yet absolutely no recognition on any aspect of it. So no, no offense taken but don't assume that because I complain about their apparent continuation of flippant remarks about the kinds of posts they plan on answering that I have no clue what I'm talking about or that I haven't already attempted to provide constructive feedback and basically been flipped off.

Basically what I took from it was "Post comments and suggestions about class balance/in-game mechanics/bugs etc in the manner and format we want you to or don't expect to be heard". Which to me is a load of crap. Just because it's not written in the exact same way every single time it doesn't make the points that some people make any less valid. I have personally participated in and contributed towards numerous discussions about the tanking pitfalls of Juggernauts and comparing them with the only other tanking classes in the game and have demonstrated multiple times exactly how inferior we are and have yet to see any real input from Bioware. Not to mention Bioware, you guys should really pay attention to sithwarrior.com they have many great posts and posters who are doing an enormous amount of testing and number crunching to try and essentially help you fix your problems and it seems/feels like you just ignore everyone else but yourselves. The main point I would like to make is this: perception is everything. That's all there is to it, it's one of the simplest business concepts and right now the prevailing perception of Bioware is this: "A true customer service lacking, casual player hugging, produces a bug riddled game for which they take no blame and admit no fault in anything released (Soa/Ancient Pylons anyone?) a distant company that pays Customer Service Agents by the number of tickets they respond to rather than the quality of the response given." and I could really go on and on, the point is that it's not the best look ever. And attitudes and perceptions aren't the easiest thing to change. So my fire and brimstone warning is this, 1.2 better live up to the hype and expectations that YOU have set out Bioware or expect your game to fall even further and faster than it already has. Bugs are inevitable, it's how you handle their fixing. If you admit fault, apologize and say you're working on it... trust me you'll engender much more love and support than by just remaining silent.

Showed up for what I thought was the time, and the teamspeak server was dead, couldn't stay for anything later as that is my raid time... kinda bad when the organizer can't help people with timezone calculations. As I was there for both 7pm my time and 8pm my time and yeah, nothing.

Baerik of <Dark Side Up> will be more than happy to attend, at present just trying to figure out the times (always been bad at timezone calculation), if anyone can assist, I live in Saskatchewan, Canada thus I am CST with no DST, so what is that EST with DST?

I like how everyone responds with how resolve SHOULD work... thanks, once again... not an idiot. I'm commenting on how it ACTUALLY works in practice. In theory, it's a wonderful idea. In practice it falls extremely short of the mark and is nothing other than a big let down. I don't need anymore lessons on how it SHOULD work, I'm merely commenting on the situation as I see it and as I have experienced it. I unfortunately can't supply video to this effect because, quite simply, my machine isn't good enough to do that. But I'm saying with raised palm and full sincerity that I have experienced this multiple times and it's annoying especially when you know it's supposed to be different than it is.

Or... and I know this is a crazy idea here, but try Diminishing Returns! I can hear the crys/jeers now "*Gasp* he mentioned using a system that WoW uses, how dare he" Grow up. It works, it's tested, tried and true. It's stable, guaranteed, predictable and reliable and there is nothing better than that especially in the PVP environment. I'm not stupid, I know the difference between stuns, snares, immunities and all of that crap and I assure you, multiple times, while having a full resolve bar, or even a bar that was ticking down to empty (meaning it's still basically full) I have been gripped by BH/Troopers and grappled into fire traps, I have been choked by Sith warriors... etc I have been effected by CC's at multiple times where I shouldn't have been due to the level of resolve and yet I still was.

I'm sorry... it's a great idea in theory... however it just plain, straight, doesn't work. I need more than both hands and feet in order to count the amount of times that the displayed resolve amount didn't translate to the effects of what happened within the game, either: 1) I have a full resolve bar and yet still become affected by snares/cc's/stuns, etc 2) I have either no or a partially full resolve bar and I somehow manage to resist/not be affected by snares/cc's/stuns etc And of course those same effects I have seen on other players which leads me to conclude only one of two things and either frankly doesn't work and ultimately needs to be fixed: 1) The resolve values aren't being properly displayed on characters, thus leading to misinformation making PVP that much more frustrating and difficult due to the lack of accuracy of a person's ability to have an effect on another character OR 2) Resolve just plain doesn't work. I'm partial to number 2, because I find it to be one of the dumbest systems I've ever attempted to work within, but once again that is a personal feeling/assessment. Resolve, to me, is unpredictable, unreliable and imprecise and that, to me, is just too many negative possibilities for a system to hold a segment of a game together. I know people immediately go bananas if you mention WoW or any other MMO that has ever come out but let's be frank and honest, each one did something and right and it also did plenty wrong... Bioware, please, for the love of christ look at the upswings and pitfalls from other games and combine some ideas and avoid other ones and make yours truly the best game out there. I know there are a lot of doomsayers out there breathing fire and brimstone but at present, if you continue down the path that you are, you are only going to prove them right and miss your "one shot" to do something great. Get your house in order.

But they didn't get Soa right... Soa isn't even a challenge on 16 man... it's laughable at best. We joined up with another 8 man guild to try doing 16's and see how it faired, and the only boss who I'll argue was considerably more difficult on 16 man than it was 8 man was Jarg and Sorno simply because both tanks got hit with the carbonizer probe and we weren't expecting it the first time. Other than that everything else proved to be a reasonable shift considering the additional resources at your disposal. Soa needs to have it's difficulty increased on 16 man, or the difficulty reduced on 8 man. But it cannot remain as is. And many people have been quick to point out the glaring amount of bugs still present within the fight, this complicates the difficulty presented in 8 man even further. Not saying bugs don't complicate 16 man... but imo it's considerably easier to deal with seeing as the rest of the fight is a joke in that realm of...."difficulty"

It is difficult, especially when you compare the differences. Not to mention the bugs still present in the fight. 5 Lightning balls, yeah that's obviously ridiculous, but the nerfs to 16 dwarf any sort of nerfs that may have happened to 8 man... they just aren't the same and it's not even a question that 16 may or may not be easier.... it plain straight up is. To continue the discussion but put you right in the middle, consider this. In 16 man, with the now reduced back to back targeting of certain abilities there will, more often than not, be a free healer to help keep people up, and top them up before damage. In 8 man, you can have a person go right from lightning ball explosion into force cyclone with no chance for someone to heal due to one healer being stuck in a mind trap and the other being targeted by the second lightning ball in the pair previously mentioned and that is a guaranteed death for the person tossed in the force cyclone (Has killed our attempts at least 10+ times out of the multitude of attempts) The resources available to each when compared with the resource cost during the encounter are extremely skewed, with 8 man basically requiring any and all tools, while 16 man barely makes use of even 3/4. Make 8 man easier or put 16 man where it should be.