No, it's definitely both guarding and taunting. With taunting, the 30% lost damage from the person attacking someone other than yourself is added to your protection count.

Pretty sure taunt does put you 10% ahead of the current threat leader, however I'm also pretty sure that other people can still build threat while taunt is active. Which means, unless bioware screwed up and allowed you to build 10% threat ontop of yourself, spamming it doesn't really help you, and if nothing else, punishes you if you happen to loose aggro and your taunt is on CD. Letting yourself lose aggro on purpose, then taunting back and using your bigger threat moves could be viable as a threat boost, depending on whether the boss requires intricate positioning. However, in ops, quite a lot of bosses do, so it doesn't really help unless you time it perfectly.

Well, I wasn't even on about premades when I said that about the healer. I just mean a team where a few of the DPS are smart enough to go for the healer straight away, like they should. Very true though, a lot of it depends on the player, as well as gear.

I definitely noticed it, I was wondering what was happening since I usually have no issues keeping him following me throughout the phase. Oh, and to add, we also had the structures not taking the shield off as well.

A is very debatable. Against a good team an healer alone is going to get killed so fast that he probably won't be able to do much healing. I'd argue tanks are in a similar situation, without an healer, you'll probably die the most on your team because you're taking damage from them without any heals to keep you up. Now, a good healer and a good tank together? Definitely. You'll be hard pushed to kill the both of them. Unfortunately that is pretty rare in pugs. As a tank, I rarely come across a solid healer who knows to keep me alive as well as themselves for optimal protection.

There's 4 heroic dailies on Ilum and Belsavis, and 3 out of 4 give mod pieces. One armoring, one enhancement and one mod.

The hybrid tanking spec doesn't pick up hiltstrike/backhand.

It gets better, yes, but you may be waiting a while. Even at 50 you need good gear to get the most out of the class. Though I'd argue it depends on what you want to do. I think the DPS trees are in a bit better state than the tanking one.

Most people I know just went to Ilum to get valor quickly. Unfortunately, I'm melee and only have 5FPS on Ilum, so it hasn't really been a viable option for me. Half way through rank 57 so far, may be a while before I get to 60 though. Been leveling alts instead lately.

Nerf the only thing that tanks are any good at in PvP, great.. The only issue really is that dps spec tank classes can use them, making going tank spec rather pointless in PvP thanks to mitigation issues.

What happens then is people dont properly learn to play. They just stare at a meter till it reaches a point and then dump aggro. For anyone who has played without these things, you learn when to dump, and when to burst. Its part of the skill set a DPS player gains as he gets better. People are SOOO scared to wipe these days. Failure is a part of life, without it we learn nothing. I understand it would make it easier, but it also takes a lot of the fun out of the game. I used to love the rush I got in vanilla wow as DPS in MC. .You had to learn to control your damage, and work with the tank, it was a blast, and when i screwed up, i got one shot. Very quickly I learned not to screw up! I think the issue is, a lot of people don't learn to play properly even without them! I was an healer in Vanilla WoW, so I can't really comment much on how it was in that, bar the occasional over-aggro which would cause a wipe.

I'm fine with not having addons. I just think threat meters would be particularly useful. It plays a massive part in bosses, and yet you can't see it. I mean DPS don't realise they're over aggroing until it's too late, and tanks don't realise they're losing aggro until it's too late. Can you go with out it? Yeah, you can, but it would make life easier. DPS and heal meters... Meh, I don't think they're quite as necessary, it's only really a way of telling who's slacking off and even then it doesn't take into account different classes.

On my server it's still Imperial Agent, followed by Warriors, followed by Bountry Hunters and then Inquisitors are by far the most played. Always seeing Assassins and Sorcerers.

I managed to get to just under social VI by co-oping the entire game with a friend. Took me forever to get to VI though once I'd hit 50.

The only real benefit DPS Jugg has over Marauders is that you can swap to soresu form and use guard, so if that takes your fancy, then yes. Mitigation isn't an whole lot better, nor is damage.

Heh, similar issue here. I've made myself a Sorc alt which I'm slowly levelling up. You certainly don't find it hard to get groups for flashpoints, on my server tanks are by far the most asked for when it comes to HMs, with healer naturally coming second. Guilds doing operations is another thing though, due to operations only requiring one tank, two at the most.

I didn't stay for long, and on my server we didn't turret camp, so I only gained one valor level from 46->47. It was faster than getting it from warzones, but no where near 2k per minute, or whatever the turret campers were claiming.

Yeah, as melee you pretty much have to wait til someone decides to pull an enemy into your group. Either that or kill steal using your saber throw.

That's if they even bother giving you the items. The chest from the council bugged for us, and the only reply we got was that it was being fixed in the new patch, and sorry for the inconvenience. Two people lost out on their boots, and myself and another lost out on relics.

I don't think Bioware really considered that when they designed the boss fights, a lot of them have enrage timers which don't really take into account having to build up threat at the start, etc.

You can also get an hooded robe which has armour underneath from the Corellian comms vendor too. I was using it for a while until I got the Columi chest.

Not as much as you think probably. It's a well known issue that the shield/defence isn't working great at the moment. Although the issues are more noticeable in PvP rather than PvE.

I think a lot of people mentioned that though. Endure Pain is great if you have an healer. I mean as you say, in raids it can be exceptionally useful. Especially if you know you're about to take spike damage from a boss. However, if you wanted to improve survivability overall, even without an healer, reducing the CD of the other defensive cooldowns would have been more preferable.

It's also worth nothing that some mobs do random aggro skills regardless of whether you taunt them. They just choose a random person for that skill, use it, and then they'll go right back to you when they've done it. Some examples of this are the final boss of Black Talon(Jumps away to a random person and then jumps back to the tank permitting they still have the highest threat), and the robot in Boarding Party does a random snipe attack(In fact your taunt is actually greyed out when he does this unlike most other bosses). There is a lot more examples too, however the boss names are spoilers.

Not entirely true, I've been main tanking operations. However, admittedly I bet the other two classes could probably do the same job with less effort.