Bug or not: You didn't refute my point. OPs have had no issues since launch in 1vs1 despite being "nerfed into the ground" over and over. They're now "totally useless" once again. If the OP is to be believed, he can push out 8k damage in 2-3 GCDs from stealth. That's at or just under half of someone's HP and he didn't even mention Acid Blade ticks. Even if that's all they had (which it isn't, by far), that makes them one Hell of a DPS assist and extremely valuable for picking off wounded targets. There's a reason I always scanned for and taunted unstealthing Operatives.

So wait, you could actually get kills by hitting 3 buttons +stims,adrens, etc? I always thought that was a joke, not that the class was really that easy.

Pfft. Battlefield 2 was pumping out just as detailed assets and the same bland environments as SWTOR was years ago and doing 64-player battles back when DSL at 128k was pretty standard. Just google and compare BF2 SSs to SWTOR SSs. Even STO with all it's issues cranked out massive fleet battles of ~50 players with little lag while looking like this. None of these games have jaw-dropping graphics, but only one of them has issues even maintaining consistent FPS. You realize technology has actually been improving, right? In fact, it's idiotic that I could run a game like BF2 on a single-core Athlon64 with 1GB of RAM and it would run better than SWTOR does on an i7 with 4 cores and 4 threads and 8 GBs of RAM. I could photoshop a Jedi Academy screenshot with a SWTOR UI and it's likely no one could tell the difference. The graphics are that unimpressive. Boba Fett is the perfect example for this kind of argument: all style, no substance and prone to lethal amounts of stupidity (engage a Jedi at melee range, then get killed by a blind man with a stick, fans love you for being less competent than a Starfleet Redshirt). What people forget is Vader was "cool" in spite of him being evil. That was kind of the point of his whole motif. What passes for Sith in SWTOR are "cool" if you're 12 and imagine rebelling against your bedtime. All the Sith in SWTOR act more like spoiled children than competent anti-heros/vliians, with 1 or 2 exceptions. People aren't complaining that Ilum sucked. People are complaining that it felt like a piss-poor add-on after it was talked up for months in dev blogs and videos. Instead all we got was farming vehicles kills on an ice-world while our rigs overheated trying to pull 10 FPS.

This thread might mean something if PvP only involved: A. taking damage B. dealing damage

50 Guardian, but the same thing really. I've had good luck with the 14/27/0 build. And since Armor is the best mitigation stat: I run vindicator (Weaponmaster is Medium Armor/Mara gear: do not use it) DPS gear, in Soresu stance with a shield generator. I've found the flat % mitigation talents in Vig far out-perform the Defense equivalents. Guard is situational, but you should be Guardian and Force Leaping whenever they are off cooldown if it's possible. I stick with Surge and Power as much as possible. Since all my big damage comes from crit bladestorms and Overhead Slash increases your crit with BS/Dispatch, you'll get more out of those. Don't be afraid to bug out during a fight. Even Tank geared/specced Juggs are not immortal. 2-4 DPS focusing you can end your day in seconds. Use Guardian Leap liberally and LOS. This is important because your taunts/guard cannot do their job when you're the one being focused. I've also found it handy to "hide" my AOE taunt by throwing it right as my force leap lands. The animation never shows up, even if the effects do. I switch targets constantly during a melee and force leap away from the enemies hitting me. If you can target and leap to a casting target, more power to you for the free interrupt. You can then Guard Leap a friendly right next to you or save it. Spread your damage around. I've found I do much better when I'm constantly on the move, rather than focusing one target constantly. This helps keep melee off you (or make marauders waste their leaps on me) and make it much harder to focus you. That aside, you could always just respec into sweep bombing.....

I spent some time skinning in Jedi Outcast/Academy. Real amateur hour stuff though. I always wonder what I might have been able to accomplish if I actually worked on 3d modelling and learned more about graphics editing, then worked a 40 hour a week job doing it. Then I see that it really doesn't matter. AAA companies routinely crank out garbage or just lazy reskins and call it a day. That it all gets through QA is amazing. Some guy/girl did a rough sketech of this armor, then modelled it, skinned it, and (hopefully) took it to his/her boss/editing meeting and had it stamped "Approved." It boggles the mind how many hideous or lazy design decisions get pushed through AAA studios. And this isn't just a BW deal. WoW is well-known for this. There's a 2-handed sword model that got passed around in Cata with nothing but a color change (there's a version from Tol Barad, Ozruk drops one, and the Ring of Blood quests). The entire design of Death Knight PvP gear seems to be "More skulls. I SAID MORE SKULLS." There's a plate helmet from ZA/ZG (which a lot of players could get stuck with since you had to raid to get anything better) that's literally a plank of wood that covers your face. I was thinking Jug gear had to be better than what I was wearing (either PvP or PvE). Yea... no. I dodged a bullet. Juggernaut gear is hilarious. It's all pretty underwhelming, but the PvP gear looks like you need a "safe word" thought up in advance before you put it on.

Pfft, the times I get hilt striked by a Jug in PvP, I laugh because I'm about to destroy him even after he burns all his CDs and have at least 60% of my HP left and a CD here or there depending his gear/skill. Then I'll move on and put up the same protection numbers and loads more damage. As for 1.2, it's looking like BW is doing everything they can to put PvE Guardian Tanks back into the Defense tree with the barest amount of effort required, merely shifting some things around without understanding why Guardians are lacking in PvE when compared to Vanguards. So, I'll have a Defense spec no matter what. Since dual-specs are coming with 1.2 (or at least they were last I read), I can mess around with a modified Vig/Def build and work from there. I don't see much point in arguing which I'll use, because I'll end up using what works best.

I believe you about as much as I believe you sit in fleet decrying all those people on your PvP server for trying to form Flashpoint and Operations groups.

That was kind of my point. Looking at the Guardian Defense tree, there's a lot of talents that only work in specific situations/attack types. With a Vig/Defense hybrid, you're picking up flat % damage reductions, which are just better for PvP. You're basically getting the big mitigation from Defense and an extra 12% melee and ranged defense against those few classes you can use it for. Soresu gives ~14% more mitigation via armor (I'd have to recheck) and a 6% flat damage reduction. For good or bad: you don't need to be a tank to use it. You can switch instantly in combat and pickup that mitigation (I just stick with Soresu 100% of the time in PvP), and only lose your focus reserve (which is usually kept quite low in PvP as it is).

The problem is numerous "melee" attacks are actually tech/force attacks. Operatives and Vanguards do most of their work as tech. Smash/Sweep bombing Jugs/Guards as well (Force). I believe blade-storm is force as well. It seems that all auto-attacks are some form of melee/ranged and so are some of the big hitters spread across the ACs (like Vanguard High Impact Bolt). What is tracer missile? I don't have a commando. All that damage in the middle of that adds up way too fast to bother with tanking gear. Armor has always been our largest mitigation stat in PvP (at least for Guardians). Internal/Elemental damage wrecks everyone the same and there's a lot of it going around in PvP, so flat % damage reductions are way above defensive stats in PvP (this is why I avoid Defense builds). If I DPS as Soresu, I get all the armor and damage mitigation I need. This applies in PvE as well. Anyone who has fought SOA knows Shield/Defense are next to worthless in that fight. In fact, I don't think Riposte has ever procced in that fight. If you can keep your HP from dropping with the right mods/enhancements, you're better off "tanking" that fight in DPS gear, same amount of armor, better damage. I do it all the time, but it's based on cooldowns (Saber Ward and Warding Call), umremitting (20% mitigation for 6? seconds) and Protector (20% for 6 seconds). There's also the enure + WZ medpack combo. It's unlikely I can beat them, but 2 DPS aren't burning me down before backup arrives. And if there is no backup, I'll stall them for a good while. Left to my own devices, I will tank like a madman in PvP. But it has nothing to do with my defensive stats, of which I've ditched many in favor of DPS gear (which still only gives me like 2.8k crits at the max). All that said, if I had the same defense against every class that I have against snipers, I would be immortal. Two BM snipers kept focusing me on Void Star yesterday for some reason. I don't know what they were thinking, but with barely any pocket heals, I was ignoring them most of the match and I'm losing a lot of defense/shield with my gear setup.

Belgoth's queues can range anywhere from 5 seconds to maybe 10 minutes. It's usually in the 2 minute range over the past few weeks. The population has been fluctuating a lot though and sometimes I can't get a queue to pop at all. We still have major issues starting matches 6 vs 8. Or having like 3 players on our team and the warzone shutdown sequence abort right before the match starts, leaving us down more than half a team while the rest zone in. Then they get in, see the situation, and /quit. This happens, albeit much more rarely, for the Imp faction on our server. Actual competitive matches are few and far-between. X-server queues can't come fast enough. Why is it PvPers think that people on PvE servers should be denied content out of spite, but it's totally normal that PvP servers have no issue getting into PvE content? Should we remove Soa from PvP servers? After all, if you wanted to PvE, you should have rolled on a PvE server. PvP servers are superfluous in SWTOR. Any area worth PvPing in flags you anyway and the other zones exist solely for ganking. You can't even raid the other factions territory/fleet and it's always on the other side of the map anyway.

You ignored my previous point: what you're talking about aren't references, these are large portions of gameplay/development concepts lifted directly from another IP. Reference my "Captain America" comment. It's a poor showing on their part. We aren't talking about the entire game: we're talking about this instance. The whole MMO part is irrelevant because you only need 4 people to do the instance. You mean like how A New Hope took multiple elements from many established genres, smashed them together, and made a movie which spawned (among other things) this game? Totally unoriginal: Star Trek did it first, argument over..... Really? That's your point? Star Wars L4Dead is "modern survival horror?" Ok then: Star Trek Online. Borg: the ultimate space zombies. The tutorial for the Federation easily qualifies. The Infected (irony?) Instance has a lot of survival horror elements. During the ground section, you have to fight waves of respawning borg. WoW: Culling of Stratholm and Stratholm. The entirety of the Plaguelands. Even Rift has at least 2 dungeons that are a crawl through numerous waves of undead. Hell, Rift has an entire zone filled with undead, giant spiders, and other "horror" creatures. The whole point of the story quests there is curing yourself of a curse (that transforms you into a werewolf thingy) by hunting down and killing the wicked witch. Borderlands, which is basically an MMO in everything but server capacity, did the same thing in a DLC. But this assumes the medium in which something is presented is somehow relevant to it's originality, which is a non-argument, both legally and ethically. So, the first "Romeo and Juliet" movie was original? The Lord of the Rings movie should give no credit to Tolkien? Also, you keep using "genre" when it's clear you mean "medium." The horror "genre" would exist across all mediums. And zombies don't a horror movie make. Zombies can easily be played for laughs.

I think BWs intention is to make money. And considering Lucasarts track record when it comes to protecting their IP even from non-profit groups, I find the whole issue hilarious. I doubt valve even cares. I don't either, but the idea that any of the good content in Kaon is original is just not there for me. What references to L4Dead did they make? If you haven't played the game, you'd think 70% of Kaon was an original idea from BW. I've seen nothing referencing valve or L4Dead in interviews or from official sources. This was much more than a reference to another work. A reference is Hugo Weaving's line in Captain America: "Hitler digs for trinkets in the desert." By your logic, Captain America going to Egypt and finding the "vessel of the holy pact" would be an "homage." "Honestly at this point, show me a story about space-faring civilizations locked in constant war that can be considered original." The setting isn't what makes L4Dead original, it's the gameplay concepts they implemented in an established genre. That the infected are even zombies is supurflous to the game itself with the exception that people like killing zombies. They could be aliens or demons and the game wouldn't play out differently. So, L4Dead isn't original, but BW takes multiple gameplay concepts whole-sale from it and implements them into roughly 70% of an instance and that is original? Double-standard much? Yea, Avatar and The Lion King both made millions taking other people's ideas, changing them a bit (or not at all with Lion King), and putting them on a big screen. Theft of people's ideas can pay-off. Who knew?

Mercs and Sages aren't all that awesome 1vs1. The issue is that they scale up very well in high volumes. My smashes hit for like 1.6k with my current spec. A smash bombing jug/Guardian has little utility outside his one big hit every 30 seconds or so and that's if it even lands after all the buildup. 1vs1, bombers are a pretty weak build as they sacrifice all mitigation talents for 1 big hit that is highly telegraphed. 1vs1 skilled operatives/scoundrels can be deadly, especially if they catch you without your CDs. In larger engagements, they don't scale so well as any tank worth his salt is saving his targeted taunt for them and unstealthing sins/shadows. 1vs1 with CDs, my only real issues are with certain sin specs (what spec, I don't know) and good maruaders. Tank specced DPS Guards also scale extremely well in large engagements, which isn't surprising with all our mobility, CCs, snares, and mitigation.

I'd like to first say, I like Kaon. It's one of the few flashpoints I don't mind running. I will also say I like it because it's basically Star Wars L4Dead. That said, this post made me cringe. Irrelevant to deciding if something is an homage or a rip-off (or both, really). Yes they are, by their nature. You're using elements of another persons work in your own. Ripoff just has a negative connotation. But if I tell you a funny story about Bob and you go around telling people the same story, except about Jim.... yea, that's ripping people off. I wish there was some corny line like "The shuttle is gone, we've just been.... Left for Dead." Who knows, maybe there is something like that, I tend to zone out the voice acting. That's just a non-argument from an ethical and legal standpoint and pretty insulting as well. James Cameron pulls this all the time and it's cost him some (of his substantial) warchest over the years. Avatar being just the latest in "hommages" that were large ripoffs of other writer's ideas. Just because Avatar was stolen from a book doesn't make it original because he made a movie. Kaon skirts a fine-line between homage and "rip-off." There are so many elements taken directly from Left 4 dead, including the mobs themselves being mirrors of Left 4 Dead infected, the horde events (first "boss"), and extra mobs spawn (with distant screams to match).

Pfft. If a team fielded 4 guys in tank spec/gear and 4 full healing whatever, they'd get stomped by a team with a better mix or it would just be whoever got to what point first in VS and CW. You would think it would make a good huttball team, but there's not going to be a lot of DPS going out, so it would come down to who got the ball first. In a vacuum, I do pretty well for myself. I put up damn good consistent damage (which isn't everything in PvP) and good protection. Most of that damage is going to be AOEs at the door and crit blade-storms every ~6 seconds. If you compare me against Kito (a BM Sentinal) you'll notice my protection + damage is only a bit more than Kito's damage (which is pretty damn solid). This is about right, but Kito is also going to put out his damage in a shorter amount of time, making him better for PvP DPS. Me being in tank gear: the protection numbers would be about the same. The damage numbers for me would be probably 30% lower (at least) depending on Force Sweeps (they actually hit harder in Full Defense). I would go as far to say my damage output would be halved, for no real survivability gain. As for another game looked at in a vacuum. - Hahahahahaha. In my defense, I was guarding left by myself almost the entire game. I plan to start uploading more of these. Kind of fun to see the team breakouts. Just wish I could see actual AC without making assumptions based on the numbers.

I remember about a month or two ago how many Guards/Jugs were complaining about how weak they were in PvP and "best PvP class" lists had jugs barely above Snipers. Since then, the only changes made to the class has been Force Push resetting our leap. I can't think of anything else (feel free to add). Now we're unstoppable 6k crit killing machines with 31/31/31 builds, wearing War Leader gear over a full-set of Vindicator, and surviving Base Delta Zero attacks while everyone in the WZ screams "My health! The cooldowns! They do nothing!" Just looking at the AC during the beta, I figured it would be a solid PvP class if built right. First off: no. Left to their own devices, Snipers will lay down loads of single-target DPS. Second, Snipers/Gunslingers being poor utility-wise in PvP is a problem with that class, not tanks. Snipers need to be retooled.

Most "tanks" who got the message use a hybrid spec, DPS gear, and their tanking "stance/cell/whatever." Since armor is the most reliable form of mitigation you can have, this is about the only way to go. You just can't afford to give up all your DPS on stats that only works against ~20% of useful PvP abilities. I said this way back in the day, but "BW didn't make tanks viable in PvP, they made tank abilities viable." Congratulations, you do not know what you're talking about. "Full tank spec" for a Guardian would be something like 31/10/0. Focus Bombing, which gives you those big AOE sweeps, isn't even in the same ballpark spec-wise. To get to that, you have to skip literally every talent with damage mitigation on it. I mean literally, every talent. Look up the spec. Also, if you could stop zerging and clumping up at choke-points, you might live longer.

If you're in a WZ, after the match, hover over his damage (I think) section and it should show you his highest damaging hit. DPS like this, provided it's true, needs to be countered immediately with taunts and CC. Just like when, during a melee, if I see an Op or Sin unclock on a teammate, I target them immediately and taunt, then go back to my business. Same with Snipers that no one is paying attention to. Marauders also need to be locked up, slowed, taunted as often as possible. Probably Focus bombers which can only do that once every 30-40 seconds or so and it's very telegraphed. Also, that's about the least "tanky" Guardian spec in existence, since you skip any talented mitigation and are using Shii-Cho form (not the tank stance). Which is on a 1.5 minute CD unless you're specced for it in the Defense tree. No Guard with that talent is hitting anywhere near 6k. Ilum requires a high-level of awareness at all times and you should constantly be paying attention to the warnings that show up on your screen. Re-reading your story, you just got beat by two focus bombing Guardians. That's actually pretty easy to counter, because they can't spec into unremitting (which you noted when they lept on you and you immediately knocked them back). They are building stack of singularity to throw one hell of a force sweep. Those are one-trick ponies with numerous ways to be countered, especially 4vs2. In your defense, if you don't know it's coming, you can be dead before you even know what hit you.

I'd love to see some screen-shots of that damage. Also, if he's doing that, he's not a tank. Just thought I'd say: it doesn't heal. But Enure + WZ Medpack = 9100 heal for me. It's awesome. I have 20 keybinds for my Guard and I still have to click medpacks. I can't even find a good place for Pommel and Opportune Strike because there are many other abilities that are higher priority. Yes, we have great utility, but we have to work for it. Hey, can I have the name of those two Guardians and the server you're on. Those are two guys I'd like to talk to for when Dual-Spec comes. Although, your story sounds over the top, you also sound like you didn't go in with much of a plan or setup (instead relying on 2:1 odds) and you got spanked for it.

I agree. But even if you aren't a tank, your taunts should be used whenever they are off-CD, provided you aren't the one getting focused. I think what's starting to happen is people are seeing skilled Guards/Juggs (who aren't just Focus Bombing) finally come into play and putting out respectable single-target damage in PvP and using their interrupts intelligently. They cry OP because, as I said earlier with my pally comment, they don't understand that not all Guards are specced/geared for Tanking. That said, I still don't understand why so few Guards use Guardian Leap.

I don't know about 16-man, but I have no issues with my build MTing NM 8-man. 6-7.5k over 60 seconds? If things go bad and that 1.5k shield is the only thing keeping you alive, you're probably doing it wrong. I go off what my healers tell me. And since our OP group also has a 31/10/0 Guardian as well as me, they get to see both sides. They say there's no difference in healing either one of us.

You said it was a dumb mechanic. Ranged Physical DPS QQed constantly that their "Rift Hunter" could have their attacks blocked by a shield user (and from behind). I thought that was a cool change (except maybe the behind blocking). Bring up "Avenger's Shield" on any caster forum in WoW and watch the tears flow. But, how is it not dumb I can't at least shield lightning attacks? The thing is, I feel this is one thing BW got right. A Sorc has to choose between out DPSing my taunt reduction or out DPSing my armor rating. And kick is still buggy, but it's nice to see some lightning spam Sorcs actually learning. One actually fake-casted on me yesterday. Was like seeing a baby take it's first steps.

I heard about 2k, but that was from people just spit-balling a month or so ago. So, with the set bonus, you're looking at ~1500 damage absorption every 15-seconds..... No thanks. For PvP, a good Vig/Def build outplays the survivability of Defense, more so if you're allowed to stay mobile with Guard/Force Leap. And the damage isn't terrible. For PvE, I can tank NM Karagga and my healers aren't complaining about my damage intake.... unless I stand in the fire too long... then they get real mad.

"SWTOR isn't like every other MMO! This is a bug and must be patched immediately!" Lightning in WoW is actually nature damage. And lightning in SW isn't really lightning, unless you also think "Blaster Rifles" are actually rifles (hint: they are not). The fact remains that tank stats are heavily unreliable in PvP. Just looking at my 30 Vanguard, the only 2 abilities that are defensible/shieldable are his Hammershot (basic attack) and High Impact Bolt. I can walk up to someone and smash the butt of my gun into their face and it's a "tech" attack. Just look at your ability list and see how many abilities are "Tech/Force." Unless it says "melee/ranged:" tank gear is worthless outside the endurance boost. Now, there are classes they work against well, but when you think about just how many Sorcs there are in every match (at least on my server), I'll stick with DPS gear. If all your ranged attacks did internal/elemental damage..... that would be a riot.