I was able to use my Tionese/Columi comms to put together a decent set of DPS gear for use when our ops team needs no Off-tank and I need to do whatever DPS I can. This will be nicer when dual-specs come. Right now, I'm just gearing up my companions with any left-over Tionese stuff. At the least, it would be nice to sell the comms/crystals for a bit of profit. With my current gear, each death is $10+k in credits to repair and FPs/Ops don't offer much in the way of compensation.

Yea, and exactly how many people do you know who enjoy dealing with airports? I have a job-site that sometimes requires me to fly to an island. If it was possible, I'd rather swim there than deal with the hassle of boarding an airplane. Maybe we could go even further in SWTOR and have random droids ask you "Did you pack your inventory yourself?" or "Did you leave your lightsaber unattended for any amount of time?" If they find your answers unsatisfactory, they could stick you in a load screen for 15 minutes. Roleplaying! A feeling of unrepentant rage directed to the designer of the system? I'm ok with this.

I use the 14/27/0 Vigilance tanking build. I have no issues tanking HM flashpoints or handling my duties as Main Tank or Off-Tank in our operations (Hardmode, no nightmare yet). Actually, this build is pretty good for Off-Tanking because I can just swap into a DPS set of gear and do respectable damage for those fights we don't need an OT.

It doesn't bug, except when it does..... When our spin bugged (we did SSSN), we needed 3 spins on South and 2 on North. Basically, exactly what we needed if we both spun at the same time (which we did, and even waited a bit to spin final-N so the time difference would be minimal). It bugged by not spinning S for the last time, but thankfully didn't bug the console. The next spin got us our free loots. The previous time, when we did SSSS, it bugged on the last echelon, even though we timed it for N to spin and lock-in RIGHT AFTER we locked-in S, with people swapping to consoles as soon as they were available (to counter-act the debuff). The console clicked but didn't spin. Maybe you're just better at right-clicking than we are. Except there's been numerous postings (even by myself) about how neither works consistently. Good for you. I applaud you for finding a voodoo charm that works for your team. But that same charm doesn't work for us. Maybe I should chant a few Hail Mary's.

So, you claim it works every time, but then say it can bug out..... This week, we tried SSSS again and it bugged. We were able to exit area after CCing the Acklays. Next time: we did SSSN (which is what my recently downloaded App said). On the last echelon, the north side bugged and wouldn't turn. Thankfully, the console didn't bug out and they were able to hit it again and it turned: free loots. There still seems to be a bunch of "lol our strat always works, except when it doesn't" posts in this thread which just isn't helpful. The fight is buggy, get over it. Maybe there are certain combinations/echelon priorities that fail less than others. But it doesn't make people stupid and doesn't excuse posts like: Now if only Soa wasn't randomly dropping aggro......

I searched the forums using a few different variations of this term and didn't find anything but a closed thread about dual-spec that had equipment manager as an after-thought. I just wanted to see if anyone had any first-hand information that the developers are even considering adding this ability into the game and if they could link the thread/article/whatever. As the Off-Tank for our operations team, I've got a full tanking set, PvE DPS set, and a PvP set of gear. Keeping track of everything can get pretty out of hand, especially since the icons for all the gear are usually identical and the second implant needs to be manually dragged and dropped. I've found myself writing down my HP and/or Expertise when the correct set is equipped, but if I mess something up due to gear overlap, things can get annoying fast. Like I said, just looking for information on this. If it comes, awesome. If not, I'll just deal with it.

We had this issue Wednesday night (I think) after blowing through EV HM with no wipes until SOA. We left him there and blew through KP hardmode, then gave him another shot last night. His aggro drop is completely random, even with me OTing, in P3. I was staggering taunts with the MT constantly while standing in perfect position to get him under the pylon. Even while the "glowing red" taunt effect was in place, he would randomly start moving towards a DPS or healer. This is with absolutely no DPS on the boss at all while he was shielded. The real kicker was him being at 3% and 2-3 raid members dead (but more than enough alive to get him down), a pylon dropped right on him (killing the MT) but leaving the shield up. The pylon right before that didn't even hit him, but still dropped his shield....... All-in-all, not a bad run. After a few more wipes, we could tell people were starting to get lazy with the ball lightnings as previous attempts were performed flawlessly by everyone. We decided to call our week at 9/10. We'll likely save SOA for last every new reset.

I can't argue this, because it doesn't apply to me. I played Natural Selection (a free Team-Based Objective Shooter mod for Half-Life) with the same guys for 3 years. The experience and fun was it's own reward. To me gear is merely a means to accomplish an end. I will say that you are correct about raiding, it's not that hard. But if you could lock out Rakata gear by doing either HM Ops or normal flashpoints: people would farm normal flashpoints to gear out, then just stomp the hardmodes/nightmares. This is why Champs/BMs need to be pulled away from the standard PvP game, but that's tricky to implement. They can't be allowed to fight people way below their gear-level and it be called "progression," because it's anything but.

I know personally more than a few people on our server (decently PvP geared players) who have major issues now getting their dailies/weeklies because Ilum is broken and buggy and during peak times (the only times they can play) they constantly run into the same 4 + 4 man premades with their PvP titles and gear. The wins they do get don't count a lot of the times and they quit in frustration. Our server is better than most when it comes to faction balance if the forums are to be believed. Dailies and weeklies are not a guaranteed deal anymore. And if you're undergeared, people will actively hate on you for being carried. It's actually one of the main reasons I quit PvPing. I got tired of seeing players with their EZ mode gear (like me) get angry and quit a WZ because other people DARED to PvP without being Champ/BM. So 1-2 geared players leave right before the match starts and you get to go up against 8 enemies with 6 people. It's not just the speed at which people gear up. It's that the people with gear get the same rewards for smashing people without the gear. That's not progression. You shouldn't be able to get BM gear from fighting undergeared players just as you shouldn't get Rakata gear for doing normal Flashpoints.

To take a non-MMO example: I got stuck in the bowels of console gaming for a few years and played loads of Left 4 Dead on the 360. Expert difficult was pretty damn difficult, but we downed all of them the legit way. The issue was that they were extremely easy to glitch out and beat on Easy difficulty and get the Expert achievements (this same thing happened in Left 4 Dead 2 except it was done a different way). So, I know I beat them legit, but actually proving it is impossible. And yea it kind of irked me that other people could get the achievements without having any actual skill at the game, but you get over it. So, saying you ground out your gear the "right way" when you were PvPing during the early access/release doesn't mean much. There were still numerous ways to get valor, coms, and bags without doing much actual PvP at all. And what actual warzones you did could be counted on to have numerous 10-49s to beat down. So, even the "right way" meant you were likely fighting people on your gear level, not fighting at all, or smashing sub-50s. WZs were a lot of "They have 5 guys under 50. We only have 1 under 50. We got this." And 99% of the time, they were right. Now? You will get into PvP and constantly fight players well above you in gear. Sorry guys, doing it the "legit" way was easy mode. The point is that with all the hilarity of 1.1 and under is that you didn't need to spend all that much time to get your gear. Knocking out weeklies and dailies would rarely take more than an hour. The 15 imps already there were more than happy to see me show up, launch my rockets, get my weekly. Did your unlocks in COD3 make you impossible to kill? No, they gave you some advantages (other than skill) over new players. But in CoD:MW, a level 1 with an M4 could still gun you down. A BM with full champ and some BM is going to absolutely crush a fresh 50. If that's what you want, fine. But a good system shouldn't reward you for this. As it stands, you get your wins, coms, tokens by beating the same group of undergeared players. And with the medal system, you actually get rewarded more because you'll do more damage and survive longer. Even a PvP system as broken as WoW forces players to progress to Rated BGs and Arenas if they want to continue their gear advancement. SWTOR only has gear progression in PvP, not actual progression. I've brought this up before, but how much crying would there be on the forums about "PvE Progression" if you could get full Rakata by doing normal lvl-50 flashpoints? That is what SWTOR PvP is like for people who started early: you get to farm easy opponents for free wins. For those just getting in, it's like fighting Hardmode/nightmare OP bosses in 50 rare gear.

You just don't get it! I got mine, so why should you get yours? Because it's ok when BW gives me easy mode, but you? You suck and I'm cool! (Do I even need /sarcasm for this?) I have to wonder if the people complaining really think PvP gear was difficult or even time consuming (based on getting your RNG bags, not them actually giving you gear) to get at launch. I finally did 3 days of dailies/weeklies and geared up in no time thanks to the RNG gods. Meanwhile, full Champs and BMs are complaining that they might actually have to fight people on equal terms sooner rather than months from now (longer than the game has even been out). That's it. And even then, if it's just more Cent/Champ gear, they should still have an advantage (albeit much smaller). I got to fight 10-50s with varying levels of expertise (usually much lower than my own) and getting my daily/weeklies was a matter of course. If I really didn't feel like PvPing, I'd just trade caps with Imps on Ilum for 15 minutes and get 4 bags. But how dare BW make fresh-50s PvP experience half as easy as what we had during early access!? THE NERVE!

Our groups solve each puzzle via the least set of moves. We tried 5-6 times on Pylon boss Hardmode. We did the NSSN, SSSS, NNNN (I think). All of these were "don't lock in yours until our side is ready to go." Sometimes it bugged on the first row, twice it bugged on the last. Our last go before I bailed, both sides had the timing perfectly on the consoles. Our side rotated and locked in, the other side completed the terminal use, but didn't spin the chevron. Every attempt was restarted after resetting the instance. We also wait to clear the Rakata trash mobs in front of the consoles because it seems to start the enrage timer without starting the actual fight (if you wait, Acklays will start spawning shortly after the first chevron is locked). If this isn't bugged, then I don't know what is. We have little issue on Normal mode and if we're doing something wrong, then I'd like to know what it is. As it stands, this HM OP would basically be a walk if it weren't for bugs. The only good part is that you can CC the Acklays and "Exit Area" to save yourself a repair bill when the consoles bug out.

In order to knock out our weekly fast, we ran 3 HMs (Essless, Kaon, and Maelstrom) in one night with a Guardian, Sage, Shadow, and Commando. Nothing but Smuggler gear/tokens dropped off every boss with the exception of the last boss of Maelstrom (who dropped Trooper Boots). On a related note: our Cunning companions are hella-geared.

Actually, doing PvP before 1.1 and getting all that champ tanking gear made hard-modes a roll for me and my healer buddy. Our hardest part was finding DPS who could put out the numbers. That said, a fresh-50 can farm Corellia comms to gear out in all 50 blue and hardmodes are definitely doable, even with pugs. They could do Ilum and Belsavis dailies to score some epics as well. All without ever doing a hardmode. With 1.1 the way it is, this isn't nearly as plausible for PvP because there is no real optimized and easy to grind out to go into PvP with any kind of chance. This is mainly due to the way you get gear, but also because Battlemasters keep getting into WZs with everyone else because it's how their progression goes. Imagine PvE players could get rakata gear by farming normal mode flashpoints because that's the same gear disparity BMs get for smashing fresh-50s. So the "progression" in PvP is anything but. Depending on the server, you may end up with just as many geared/undergeared players per team. But it's just as likely you'll run into premade Champions who will grind you into the dirt. This is literally like having a chance to run into hard/nightmare Operation Bosses when you enter a heroic flashpoint.

Your whole post can be translated to: "I hit the lotto when choosing my server/faction, so I don't see why the rest of you noobs can't compete."

What fresh 50s run into isn't a "challenge" anymore so than being forced to fight The Infernal One on nightmare difficulty when you queue for your first hardmode. So, you talk about me removing the "challenge," then say your friends will carry you to free WZ wins? The actual problem is that your geared friends have no where to go when they get geared out. They get just as much (more actually) benefit from fighting under-geared players than they do fighting people with equivalent gear. At least in PvE I'm forced to move onto hardmode/nightmare OPs for my tier 3. You get to smash pugs to get all your sparkly gear. Hehe, challenge....

I'm Valor 26. Before I even hit Valor 20, I had 6% exp from winning the Champ bag lotto. Now that I'm at around 7% exp, I just use Columni/Rakata gear to round out my stats. I was in WZs when I had more than a good chance at running into people = or lesser geared than me and I could stomp sub-50s in my WZs. I know how easy I had it. The people who are telling you to "shut up and grind it like we did" are living in fantasy land as they've likely never "started at the bottom" in SWTOR because they were in on the 1.0 farm-fest. They went to Ilum and traded caps with Reps/Imps, then blasted through WZs fighting under-geared <50s. The system is broken. It's a huge barrier to entry for fresh-50s and I'm sure people with their gear want to keep it that way because fresh 50s to stomp means faster dailies/weeklies for them. On the other side, I see a lot of players who just want to be competitive when they hit 50. The lotto-bag system aside, the easy fix is entry level PvP gear.

You assume you can get bags at all. The point is that getting dailies/weeklies done is not a guaranteed thing, especially on some servers (thankfully, mine isn't one of them). What about servers where Ilum is a stomp for your faction making getting kills almost impossible? And if you happen to be on a server where WZ wins are rare? Join premades? Who is going to take a fresh 50 with 0 exp into their premade? Even so, you would need like, what, 9 bags dropping nothing but comms to get one piece of gear? Even more for a main-hand? I have guildies who have opened 20 bags and received little to no gear and/or lots of duplicates. Their companions are almost as geared as they are. I gave up after getting 5 belts in a row. So, you grind WZ loses. It's like 65 hours of constant PvP to grind enough WZ comms to buy enough champ bags to get your main-hand. You could spend weeks getting stomped to get crap gear all the while your team is hating you for being undergeared. I sure am glad I got in on the <1.1 gravy train because I had it easy. Once you get over that "hump" at 50, things get exponentially easier. This is both for PvE and PvP. Once you get enough gear/exp to compete in PvP and Hard Modes, the game is almost on auto-pilot. But that barrier for fresh 50s can be pretty daunting, especially when you know other people had it much easier and even now people standing next to you are getting lucky with their champ bags.

50 Guardian Tank We just started in on EV hardmode last night. We downed the Droid and Gharj with one wipe a piece. Then the pylon boss bugged out 5 times in a row (once on the last chevron on 1 side.....) so I went to bed. At no point was my damage intake too big and cooldowns were easily able to get me through the spots where I got stuck far away from my healers. Threat is only an issue when I get stunned or knocked-back from the boss (thus dropping my DPS/threat to 0). But with a good rotation, you can never need to use taunt until those situations come up. I've tanked almost every hardmode (we don't do some because we don't need the gear) and at no point has my class selection been an issue with getting content done in either those hardmodes or OPs. In fact, it's the DPS that has issues as they are expected to deal damage needed to beat the enrages, CC adds, focus targets, and be ready to tank a standard mob or two. If you know your spec, abilities, stats, and cooldowns: you shouldn't have any issues with tanking content in SWTOR. Guardian tanks are fine. I would like to see a few tweaks to the defense tree and make it more viable, but I'm getting by just fine.

I don't care to argue storylines because it's pretty subjective. But just the starting planets for JKs (Tython) and SWs (Korriban) have noticeable differences in the ease of questing and getting around. During the beta, it took me like 4 hours to get off Tython. This was doing every quest so I could hit the fleet at level 10 for my prestige class. Even when the game went live, I couldn't get off Tython faster than 2.5 hours unless I skipped a lot of content and just burned class quests. There's just too much walking and backtracking for each stage of the quests. Orb Mantel isn't much better. My first time through Korriban with a Sith Warrior capped out at like an hour and 20 minutes. Heroics are right on the path to class/filler quests and they are extremely easy to 2-man with no companions. In fact, the planet is so small and so bereft of mobs, it only requires 2 speeder points and you can walk across the planet in no time. Contrast to Tython where your class quest ends in an area where you could walk across Korriban twice. On another note: Datacrons are just lying around waiting for Imperial characters to collect. In fact, two are noticeable when you take the first taxi. One is even on the shortcut path after doing a class quest. It's pretty annoying hunting them down on Tython, even when you know where they are. Man, getting the Matrix Shard for our Commando's Relic was bad even with rank 3 speeders. I've heard this is pretty much the standard for Imps: smaller questing zones with fewer but faster spawning mobs. So, neutral content is annoying, but Imp only content is faster-paced. Must be nice because Tython is an extremely annoying starter planet. And Imperials don't start their careers as Force Users by killing a bunch of over-weight hammer-head sharks.

"Wanting to avoid getting rolled by players 10 levels above yourself by playing on a PvE server" = "carebears." Man, this forum never never fails to offer a good laugh.

That's my build except I took "Burning Purpose" instead of "Force Rush." I haven't weighed which is better though, I'd just rather have the extra threat from dots for when I'm Guardian/Force Leaping around.

Maybe next time you'll see the "least important" part and understand I was making a joke. But on that note, yes "fun" can actually be a qualifier for doing something (even raiding) especially when you aren't gimping yourself by doing so. And "should be" is a relative term: BW may have wanted Guardian tanks to spec full defense, but they shouldn't have put so many useful tanking abilities high in a DPS tree (which I assume they did this because melee takes a beating in raids and also PvP utility) and put the best tanking talents low on the tree in Defense. Full defense just does not keep up (by a small margin) with a Vig build IMHO. And since my build isn't dependent on taking damage for focus generation, it makes OTing a hell of a lot easier because I can focus on damage and immediately jump into the fray on adds when I'm needed, then going right back to putting out decent DPS (for a tank, that is). So, if I'm forced to main tank, I'm doing about as well as a full defense spec tank, but I find OTing with this build to be better. And aggro swapping with our MT is a lot easier. I can force leap in, Guardian Leap the MT (almost always riping aggro), and start tanking the boss with a filled Focus bar, and 40% damage mitigation (which makes it cake for the healer to top off the MT while I take a lot less damage for 4 seconds or so). I lose a bit of Focus generation if I'm forced to stand still, but I still find myself with many abilities on CD and spamming Slash as a focus dump, so it's not as bad as it seems. After pulling Slash off my bar and putting Master Strike back in it's place, I've had almost no issues with down-time. Combat Focus will correct this rare problem 99% of the time. In full defense, I constantly found myself with a full Focus bar and no ability to spend it on besides Slash. On fights where I'm allowed to go all "waaah Jedi," my focus generation and damage mitigation is going to blow away a full defense spec. But I do just as well with a boss beating on me in place. I just don't see the benefit of Full Defense right now. With some tweaks, definitely. To each his own really. Both specs are about on par with each other tanking-wise. I just prefer one over the other. Also, since you use Guardian Leap so much, you get really good at finding who is taking a beating, quickly targeting them, and giving them an aggro dump/damage mit.

First off, and least important, is that it's fun as hell (14/27/0 Build right here). The actual uses of the build come in quite handy over full defense. 1. Guardian Slash never impressed me, and you can get your stacks up to 5 so easily anyway. Yea, it hits a bit harder than Overhead Slash if you have 5 stacks, but in the same time I can throw one GS, I can throw two Overheard Slashes, that also have a (albeit small) DoT on them. I also get access to a lower cooldown on my Bladestorms. Hilt strike is worthless 90% of the time. I haven't missed it once since dropping it. 2. Since I can grab Blade Barricade and Commanding Awe, I get a 4% all around damage mitigation and an extra 6% melee/range defense chance (same as full defense on the 6%). I have better all-around mitigation than defense, because I'm only dropping 4% int/ext damage reduction and a 4% shield chance (bleh). 3. Blade Barrier is unimpressive when compared to unremitting and protector (which gives the 20% self damage mit buff to myself, as well as 4% more endurance). Bosses with cleaves/conals are annoying because you have to be careful where and when you leap, but really: I'm not losing anything at all to have this build that (IMHO) generates much more threat and damage. The only annoyance is losing the 15 second CD reduction on my AOE taunt, with good DPS who know their role, I haven't missed it too much. Commanding Awe more than makes up for it (on boss fights with non-droid adds that is).

Someone doesn't understand the concept of gear progression even though you claim it's what keeps you here. You also don't understand the concept of "Barrier to Entry" nor why the gear disparity is actually a bigger issue in SWTOR than in WoW. The crafted set of PvP gear could make some classes (res wasn't nearly as useful to every class in WoW as it is in SWTOR) viable in standard BGs from the start. The gear was on par with what you could get from doing normal 80-85 dungeons (iLvL 339 vs 333). This was more than enough to make you competative with the average gear you'd run into in BGs (352 iLVL). And a set of 352 was more than enough to make you viable, even against 365+ PvP geared players. That's gear progression. Not hitting 50 and fighting Battlemasters and Champions while you have no Expertise, then praying to the RNG gods that gear drops. This is provided you can even get the wins since queuing at 50 with no Expertise, since there's no large BGs, is as annoying to the other 7 people on your team as it is to you. Or they got to 50 quickly and were able to fight 10-50s at about the same gear level. Or, like me, they did that and then got really lucky with the RNG. Except you can do things to mitigate that gear gap. Other MMOs do this. SWTOR does not.