So, what's the problem? It's mitigatable and it can be LOSed? There are no ranged tanks in this game. The closest is the Vanguard and even then, he does most of his work in melee range. Just like you shouldn't bother with "tanks," I generally don't bother with Snipers because I can't charge them and if I close the distance manually, I'm just going to get knocked-back. I taunt them and get on with my life.

"This pally with a 2-handed sword hit me for 30k. Tanks are overpowered." It's funny though because I used to blast cloth wearers in the face for 40K+ auto-crit shield of the Righteous constantly as Prot spec. My highest ever was 52K against a Warlock IIRC. The thing was, to do that, you had be be stacking like 8K vengeance with wings up, and your proc trinket as well as your on-use both "up." This means attacking a tank during a melee was generally a bad idea. Tankadins could not only laugh off melee, but their CDs and interrupts could keep casters from doing much of anything. Tanks don't work like that in SWTOR. In fact, if you're fighting a guarding/taunting tank, you need to be focusing him first. At the end of the day, the tank mitigation stats aren't all that great. Most Guardian "tanks" in PvP are using DPS gear and probably using a Vig/Def hybrid. All their mitigation is coming from Unremitting, protector, Commanding Awe, and their 3 min CDs. So, yea: when specced/geared right, we're hitting fairly hard for a "tank." But I find myself needing to bug out constantly after popping an AOE taunt. I can't always be at the center of the action laughing off multiple DPS. The problem is if they made our tank stats work better against more melee and some ranged DPS, we would be damned close to immortal. Just looking at my Vanguard, nearly every attack is Tech (I think stockstrike is as well, which is really dumb if true), which I can't avoid or shield (as far as I know from reading the tanking posts on it). Sure, it's mitigatable through armor, but all guards have heavy armor and Soresu. And that's another melee class. So gimp my damage output, but make your mainstay attacks (the big damage or spam-use) abilities run into my 25% avoidance, 40% shield, and 35% absorb. I wouldn't even need expertise with my Rakata/Columi tanking set. And then we'll be right back here saying "Tanks with Heals can't die" and you'd be right.

TK/Lightning spam Sages/Sorcs are ridiculously easy to kill. If they catch you off guard, force leap, then they shock and panic because "OMG HE ISN'T CCed HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?" (unremitting). Then they spam more lightning, which you kick, then they backpedal and do nothing for 4 seconds (or less because kick is pretty damn buggy), then they spam more lighting. And this point they're at 20% HP and you're at 80% with all your CDs still up. Sorcs/Consulars that are actually decent will kite you, root, etc and are more annoying than hard to kill because they can stall you for quite a while. And by "decent," I mean they can manage more than 4 buttons. It's when there's multiples of them that they actually get annoying and deadly. If they face off against multiple melee, it's spam lightning, knockback, root, root, knockback, root, slow, etc. I hate 1-button sorcs and BHs (tracer missile) because it's actually viable in PvP. You can do it and get kills. Sure, you'll get facerolled in 5 seconds flat by anyone with a heart-beat, but you can't do anything close to that with a Knight or Vanguard. Imagine the tears if Master Strike had no-CD and rooted the target while it was channeling. I think the forum would explode. Not really. The animation is advantageous only from the aspect of gameplay. Cinematically, lighting has a forgettable animation for both the caster and the target. The Consular looks like they're actually doing something with their animation and their target reacts to it by putting an arm up. Personally, I think it should be a stream of force with ripples coinciding with the damage tick. Lightning was cool back when Palpatine used it as a way to torture Luke to death. Now it's like a cub-scout badge for "I R Teh Eval sith lard!"

Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to detect in written form, so I'll just come out and say it: I was being sarcastic. My Rakata/Columi gear would have let me hold off 2 melee for quite a while.

Yea, skill > Gear. I PvPed the other night in my Rakata/Columi Tanking gear as a larf. I held left turret on CW against a BM marauder and Juggernaut because I'm awesome. It had nothing to do with me having 22k HP...... Seriously though, my damage was pretty terrible. But with CDs and Enure + WZ medpack giving me a 10k heal, I could have lasted forever even if backup didn't arrive for another 60 seconds. I do just as well, better in most instances, with my Champion set. I smoked a BM DPS Sorc last night who tried to solo me at left turret (it's where I like to setup shop in CW, sue me). No CDs, just straight burn: he died, I was at 60% HP. That a guy like that could make BM while I'm still Valor 31 is petty insulting. This is why I don't understand the "I put in time, so I want my shinies and recognition" argument. No one really takes it seriously and there were/are way to many way to no skill grind the gear/valor. Because that's not progression. You should get gear to take a step towards the next level. If you want gear just to make the same content easier, that's fine. Just don't expect people to respect you for it. Gear is a crutch. Personally, I'd be all for a system where everyone get awesome gear, then as you progress in PvP, your stats get worse and/or stay the same but you gear looks cooler or has fancy effects. Gear is also an excuse. "That guy only beat me because he's a War Hero with X HP." Remove the gear advantage/disadvantage and then you only have to worry about class/skill balance.

I recommend your friends do some reading or talk with some successful Sentinels/Marauders. There's a few on my server than will melt your face if given half the chance. There's a BM Sent in our guild I've run with a few times. He does exceptionally well on his own. If I guard, peel, and lock up opponents for him, we don't even need a healer because he'll massacre 2-3 players. He's awesome for picking off healers. If they get smart and hit me instead, I'll just kite/LOS and pop my AOE slow and watch him drain their health away. Good Marauders are vicious. Bad Marauders really show because it's not a 2-button spam class.

I use Soresu because I like the added survivability and guard swapping on the fly. It's also a bonus that my spec works great for PvE and PvP. That said, I don't see why a full Vig spec with Shien form wouldn't be viable. You'd just have to be much more aware of what's going on in a melee and know when to bug out with Guardian Leap and work LOS. This is a skill that even Soresu Guardians need to learn. Yes, we can take more punishment, but Taunts and Guard don't do their job when you're the one being attacked.

I don't know if Guardian Leap would flag you as you still aren't damaging him. What could be a possibility is that he guarded one of your targets, and the transferred damage flagged you. Dick move, but pretty slick on his part if that's what happened.

As said, Force Sweep is just weird. Tanking in PvE, sometimes I'll get bored or not want to wait for Force Leap to come off CD, so I'll just rush a group of mobs. I've noticed numerous times if I queue up Force Sweep before I get to the mobs and time it so that the animation completes (and deals the damage) right as I get to the middle of the group, either no damage will be dealt or only the front mob will take damage (the one that was likely in range when I activated the ability). So, I got to thinking maybe it determines who is in range when the ability is activated, but deals damage after the delay. However, I can't tell you how many times I've been chasing someone in PvP close enough for me to be clipping into their player model and find my Force Sweep wasted when used, even though I never move outside of even melee range (Overhead slash, strike, and slash have no problems connecting). So, I think maybe it puts down a void zone on where the ability was activated and players can move out of said void zone. Except then as combat gets crazy around a door in void star and two players try to plant the bomb, I get within range of them, use "Force Sweep" and immediately suffer a knock-back and my Force Sweep does nothing. Possibly the most head-scratching moment was once when I did this and got grappled by a BH. My Force Sweep didn't damage the planter, but did damage the BH when I got to him. So now I think BW developed some kind of highly advanced procedural AI that determines what exactly you are trying to accomplish with Force Sweep, then stops you from doing so.

If you're speccing focus, you should probably stick with Shii-Cho as the spec is based around it. I've never bothered with Focus, but I would assume the Focus reduction from Soresu would hurt it a lot more than it does Vig/Def.

No problem. Just for the record: Jedi Knight - Strength Jedi Consular - Willpower Smuggler - Cunning Trooper - Aim General etiquette in flashpoints is to "greed" or "pass" on equips you can't use or are not upgrades. "Need" on anything you can use that would be considered an upgrade. When in doubt ask "Mind if I need on that?" In the situation of the trooper rolling on a piece of gear you can use that he can't, I would have asked him to justify why he rolled "need" on it. Honest mistakes are fine, but I would avoid people like him if they do it on purpose. Also, even though Sentinels are Jedi Knights, they cannot use shield generators or Heavy Armor, so they shouldn't roll "need" on them either.

Since you're using Shien, I don't think it's worth going that deep into Defense to snag a 3 minute defensive CD and a 15% damage increase for Force Sweep while missing out on plasma brand in the process. Yes, Warding Call can be a life saver in a clutch situation, but without the survivability that comes standard with Soresu, you're likely to want to Force Leap in, get your damage done, and Guardian Leap the Hell out of there at the first opportunity. Maybe AOE taunt right before you bug out to really piss them off. I really only use Warding Call as a stop-gap or stall-tactic. If I'm getting mobbed by 3-4 players, it may let me hold out just long enough to stop a cap or wait for healing backup. But with your build, I don't see your survivability being high enough for it to make a difference. Just my opinion though.

If it had "Aim" on it, it was for his class. If it had "Strength" (which would make it only useful for a Guardian) on it he either A. Made a mistake by rolling Need or B. Is a jerk.

Guardians have an ability on a short cooldown which immediately moves them to a friendly target. Kiting is in fact very easy if you have a player in your party who knows your playstyle and where they should stand and at what range for easy Guardian Leaping. Kiting while DPS does damage can be another issue, but one a good Guardian can deal with. That's really the rub: Guardians have a pretty high skill ceiling. From what I've played of Shadows and Vanguards (and those I've talked to), theirs is much lower. Guardians suffer because you have to work much harder to be a decent tank and it's likely a lot of players aren't up to the task. "Best" tank is pretty subjective for PvE. We just blew through NM EV last night (didn't have time to kill SOA and I was MTing as a Guardian). The only time I ever had issue with tanking was the 4 man-council fight in Mando (I think). At that level, I just did not have the AOE ability to keep the mobs from eating our healer. After that, any issues we've had in Flashpoints, Heroics, or Ops has had nothing to do with me as a tank. That said, the Vanguard has numerous advantages over the Guardian. I've only hit 27 with mine, but threat generation is laughably easy and I hit pretty damn hard for my level. Looking at the trees, tanking is only going to get easier because the Vanguard Tank Tree is well thought out in balancing resource management, mitigation, and damage. The Guardian Defense tree however devotes way to many talents into resource management to make up for the Focus loss from Soresu stance. It begins to fall apart in the higher tiers while both the Vanguard and Shadow trees get stronger. To be honest, going 31/10/0 as Guardian isn't worth the trouble. A hybrid Vig/Def build outperforms it consistently in both damage and mitigation. The only real loss is that the 4-piece set bonus for your gear will mock you. It's my opinion that Vanguard tanks are "better" in damage output, mitigation, and ease of use (you could fall asleep tanking as Vanguard). But since I have no issues MTing NM Ops, even with our Sentinel's face-melting DPS, I don't consider myself screwed for rolling a Guardian main.

You need Lunge and Blade Barricade as Riposte is an ability you should be spamming every time it comes up as it's a mitigation and DPS increase for 1 Focus cost (when specced). Without those abilities, the Vig hybrid loses a lot of what makes it outshine Full Defense spec.

Power and Surge are all I really look for. Speccing into Vig, I get almost guaranteed crit Blade Storms and Executes every time I throw an Overhead slash. Operatives can cry all they want, but the surge nerf hit Guardians hard too. On the gear front, I've got a War Leader set that I swapped DPS mods into. You still get the extra Endurance from the built-in armoring, but I haven't missed the absorb/defense chance. Since I still run in Soresu, I keep a shield generator equipped. My damage output was doubled and my since my damage reduction is based around CDs and the 20% damage reductions from Guardian Leap and Force Leap, my survivability hasn't suffered much. I'm thinking about giving up on the 4-piece War Leader set and snagging two pieces of Vindicator in order to get the 8% heal on Guardian Leap. Unless there is literally no one around, I use it damn near everytime it's off-CD. ~1500 healing every 15 seconds may not sound like much, but that may turn the tide of a fight. Unfortunately, I just do not PvP that much anymore, so I don't know if I'll be able to bother putting those piece together.

I've found the 31/10/0 build pretty underwhelming on all fronts, even PvE. You get about the same survivability (In my experience, much less if you're allowed to move around) than a 14/27/0 build. You also have considerably less damage output. Tank PvP gear is also pretty underwhelming as the stats just don't offer much. In fact, I get bored sometimes and PvP in my Rakata/Columi Tank gear (~22k HP) and find I'm taking a bit more damage, but Endurance is really better than any mitigation stat. So, it's DPS gear all the way because the extra HP isn't worth the damage trade-off. With ~10% expertise, I've found myself doing quite well for myself solo in PvP. It isn't that players can't damage me, but I can slow their damage down enough so that mine can compete. I've seen Marauders chew through classes 1 vs 1, then get to me at the point and just have little success trying to burst me down while I whittle away their health. The issue is that I believe Shadows and Vanguards can do this better and they don't have to bother with a hybrid build because their tank specs aren't stupidly broken like the Guardian. However, when a Guardian is given a pocket healer, I've found they're nigh immortal even up to 4 vs 2 odds. Or at least immortal enough to make surviving long enough for backup to arrive a moot point. Our mobility through force/guardian leap and the mitigation that comes with it combined with our defensive cooldowns, CC, and kiting abilities makes us extremely annoying to deal with. If I find my healer being focued, Guardian Leap, AOE taunt/CC, Force Push, whatever gives him time to stay alive while I'm badgering the OpFor with 95% crit bladestorms. If they get smart and turn on me, I can kite them away from the healer with my AOE slow, stuns, etc and create enough distance to Guardian leap back to my heals, buying even more time. I've seen Vanguards do about the same, but I still think Guardians have an edge in this because our mobility and spammable slow giving us that last little bit of an advantage.

You guys are messing with me, right? You do know same faction Huttball exists? As much as the larger faction on your server may complain about it, at least it's there. The problem is that it gives a huge advantage to the larger faction on your server, because the only aspects of the game (both PvP and PvE) that slows down for them is Ilum, but they can still farm armaments if they're masochists. But you are semi-correct: it's unlikely faction balance is the issue on the OPs server if we take his post at face value. It's more likely PvP (and/or PvE) for his faction is dead. 2 hour queues would mean he couldn't even field 8 to play against the other faction or 16 to play against his own. For the smaller faction, entire areas of the game become almost inaccessible. That's pretty much a dead faction and it's not a "L2P" issue. What's likely happened is that more people on the zerg faction got to 50 faster, got in on Ilum and bags while the getting was good, geared up faster due to faster queues, then smashed the smaller faction when those WZs popped due to more time spent PvPing (hence more skill/experience) and better gear from faster wins. The smaller faction likely rerolled faction/server or made alts to run the 10-49 bracket rather than trying to ice-skate uphill, leaving the dedicated PvPers (like the OP) with no one to queue with. I honestly couldn't care less about you or your guild. What I took issue with was your "waiting in a queue for 2 hours only to get an automatic loss when it pops because not enough people joined is somehow a skill issue" argument.

^ This. My pocket heals get focused: Guard (if I haven't already), Guardian Leap, AOE Taunt,....., profit. A good tank/DPS wants his healer healing, not worrying about getting focused. Just like I should find a good pocket heals to run with, a healer should find a good tank/peeler. I can't tell you the number of times I've quickly tab/click targeted over to an uncloaking agent/shadow or force leaping marauder and taunted/force pushed, etc to get them off my heals. In fact, I'm all for the OpFor focusing the healer because it will take 4 of them minimum to get him down if I'm on the ball. If they play smart, they'll switch to me and more often than not, my guardian leap will be up for me to bug out/kite to give the healer time to top himself off and get to healing me. Seriously, the OpFor should CCing/locking up the healer and burning the tank down. But marking heals anyway is good business because it lets you know their positioning and who you should really be CCing.

This post has everything and is the reason I keep coming back to these forums. It answers none of the complaints addressed in the thread/OP, shamelessly plugs his server/guild, claims that server/faction selection luck is somehow tied to skill, is flat-out insulting to the OP when doing so, is structurally designed (either intentionally or unintentionally) to maximize quantity over actual content, and uses an insult like "noobism" which is to hilarious to even take seriously.

Congratulations on winning the server/faction selection lottery, which I'm sure is a testament to your psychic ability rather than blind luck. Further, your inability to understand a problem you yourself aren't having and being a jerk about it should be commended. Anyways, faction imbalance affects all aspects of content in an MMO. In SWTOR PvP, Ilum broadcasting your location makes "guerilla" tactics worthless as you'll be mobbed and trying to 10-man a 40-man OpFor is worthless. WZ queue times favor the zerg faction in this game with shorter queues and more instant-wins due to unbalanced teams. New 50s on the zerg side can hide in with better geared players, while the smaller faction fresh-50 will likely be treated to jeers and players leaving WZs constantly. On the PvE side: the smaller faction has issues grouping for quests and heroics. Flashpoints are almost impossible to get done. HMs have the same issues as good/geared players are snatched up as quickly by guilds. But the real kicker is that since more zerg faction players will be running this content, schematic drops will be spread out more keeping the numbers of high-end gear on the AH up and the prices down. The smaller faction can easily have it's Market controlled by 2-3 unscrupulous players. What it boils down to is: "Roll on the right server/faction or piss off." WoW does this exact same thing but won't fix it because $25 character transfers is just free money.

I'd argue the "seconds" comment, but it's really not worth it. Yea, I eat up Sorc/Sages 1vs1 even with my 14/27/0 build. It's not guaranteed by any means though. Maybe 60-70%, which is pretty good odds. But if you have 3 melee facing off against 3 Sorcs, you get free tickets to Root-fest and it's just yawn inducing. Personally, rather than bother with the Sorcs, I'd like to see what happens if you gave Guardians a way to spec into having Force/Guardian Leap remove roots. Then Sorcs/Sages have to kite within your minimum range, relying more on snares (which actually affect resolve) and positional awareness aside from LOS. This would address my main complaint with the class: not that's it's overpowered, but that it's skill-cap seems to revolve around smashing your face on certain parts of the keyboard. I imagine the QQ on the forums would be insane, but hilarious to read.

Man I wish premades did this more consistently. I was solo queuing last night for some dumb reason, and got into a CW with 2 premades (3 guys and 4 guys) so I was the odd-man. Our team was: 4 Vanguards 2 Commandos (full DPS spec) 2 Guardians (inc me). The other team had 2 dedicated healers and an off-healer judging from the end-game scoreboard. It was so hilariously one-sided. And one of the guys on our team complained about the bad matchmaking system by BW......

Just spitballing here, but it's also possible (in addition to what's already been mentioned) that more and more synthweavers/armormechs/etc are getting access to the recipe drops from operations, making the already limited market more expensive as people burn their mats/ purchase more to craft this gear.

You're using 2 points to lower the Focus cost of a 60 second CD ability and skipping a talent that reduces the cost of an ability you're basically spamming as a tank. You really can't skip "Inner Peace" as a Defense Guardian, especially to pick up talents that stun targets (which doesn't work on bosses). You might try pulling "Slash" of your bar completely and seeing where you're at with focus generation. Slash hits for next to nothing and is really just a focus dump. I would bet with your build and not burning Focus on Slash, you'd be surprised how much excess Focus you're generating. You could tune your build from there.