None taken. Nope, I'm running Plasma Cell. I'm not sure on the tanks taunt rotations, but I'll make a point to chat with one of the tanks sometime and see if we can find ways to coordinate. There might be some wisdom in me going in, adrenal bomb, go full bore, and have them taunt - because that should give them a good lead.

Expand on that please.

Not regularly...though a few times I've shied back a bit wondering if there was some additional proximity threat. Someone in a raid mentioned that ranged actually had an additional modifier for threat - or did I hear that backwards?

I'm having some pretty serious threat issues of late. Now I know I can't exactly lead off with my full burst rotation, but i'm still pulling threat several rounds into the fight and it's got me a bit flustered. My gear is good but not maxed, and my DPS is very good...but I'm leading fights with Rapid Shots (auto-attack), and only easing into my rotation after 3 or 4 GCDs. Later in the fight, I'm often a bit afraid to Adrenal bomb, because a string of some good crits can turn a boss on me quick. It's not the tank. Please, if you're going to blame the tank, don't bother responding. This isn't a single tank, it's happened with several, all well geared, and very well skilled. And I'm not an idiot that starts full DPS on engage. It's really causing my DPS to suffer. Here I am, min-maxing my gear, augments, etc...only to step into a fight and have to hold back. Any thoughts? Anyone else experience this? Is this me? I have a lot of crit/surge, maybe I should back off and work more on sustained DPS (power) to avoid crit bombs?

Some great posts here. You can stand 2 equally geared & specced DPS Vanguards side-by-side, and one who plays with more skill in target selection and CD usage will outdamage the other by as much as double. Taunts are a good example, but there's not a lot you can do about that except attack the person that taunted you (if you know). Guard is another good example; peel off a guarded target for a softer one if possible. Also, defensive cooldowns like the jugg ability where they take very little damage, etc. After a while, you learn to recognize gear (though, slotting orange gear has made that harder). But I can spot recruit gear a mile away, and like someone else said, if I see a 12-13k hp running around, i'll drop them in 4 GCDs or less. As for survivability, I can't offer much guidance. My playstyle is to burn hard, die fast, and respawn with full ammo. I'm sort of the kamikaze of the match (but not to the detriment of the objectives). I rerolled Vang (was a PT), so I haven't gotten fully geared up in WH yet, but with full BM I had a 660k voidstar and generally average about 400k.

I'd suggest giving it a little time. You are only 1 level above the split between Commandos, which are ranged, and Vanguards, which are more melee oriented. As you get more abilities and talents, you specialize, the gap widens, and things feel less clunky. In my opinion, we are the best of both worlds. We have range abilities that allow us to close on a target, or continue attacking even if we're snared or out of melee range. We are very mobile, and while we're most effective in melee range, we're very functional even a few yards out.

So I'm clear: 1) Combustible Gas Cylinder 2) Eliminator gear 3) What stats should I focus on? I generally roll with a shield tech build (guild main tank), but have been wanting to put together a fairly hardcore DPS PVP set set up. I'm valor rank 56 now, and have a few pieces of Eliminator Champion gear (and could buy centurion to fill in holes). I've been tank spec the whole time and haven't really strayed, so i'm kind of a noob when it comes to DPS.

YES! Something broke or was changed with the patch, I absolutely refuse to believe otherwise. It was clear from my very first WZ. I'm a valor rank 56 Powertech, so you can bet I know all about grapple, resolve bars, etc. The first time it failed yesterday, I wrote it off to a full resolve bar and just not noticing it. But the 2nd time, I watched carefully, and they had NO resolve -- they'd just run into combat from respawn, and hadn't been touched yet. I do not expect an official response, but we probably need to monitor this and try to figure out the issue.

Some folks are taking this personal, or calling names (childish? where could you possibly get that from my post?)...that was certainly not my intent. I just want to discuss. That's what forums are for, right? I'm not petitioning Bioware or screaming for the nerf bat. I see an issue; obviously, others do too, including healers. The last thing I want is for there to be fewer healers, or for them to have less fun -- I just feel like a single healer can have a bit too much of an affect on the outcome of a warzone. Today, if I had the choice of bringing 1 healer or 3 DPS, or 1 healer or 3 tanks, I'd bring 1 healer pretty much every time. To me, that is the definition of "overpowered", and thus should be at least looked in to.

You're right that he could probably focus on getting more medals. My complaint is really more that I can get to 8 or 9 without even trying, but he has to really set his mind to it to get to 4 or 5. Over time, I'm earning twice as many medals as he is, so he's going to have to run twice as many warzones to get the same number of commendations.

^ This. I agree very strongly. I believe that Bioware knows there are many, many bugs with abilities, which therefore cause class imbalances, and until they can get them worked out, they don't want people to have hard numbers. It is obvious that they're collecting the data, because you can see some of it when you hover over characters in the PVP results screen.

First off, I'm posting this as a non-healer. I'm a level 50 tank, full Champion gear, currently valor rank 53. However, I have run about 90% of my PVP with an Operative healer, so I feel I have some perspective from both sides. OVERPOWERED First off, healers are OVERPOWERED in PVP. I can defeat or put up a good fight against pretty much any class 1v1, even well geared and well played ones. However, healers are another story. If they have an ounce of skill, I can't beat them. They're practically invincible unless you have 3 or more people stunning and interrupting. Add a 2nd healer to their team, and you have pretty much NO chance. Last night, I watched 2 healers hold the door in Voidstar against no less than 5 Champion level opponents. They didn't kill us, but we couldn't take the door because of their combinations of stun/vanish/blind/whatever. And when we did focus fire one down, by the time we handled the 2nd one the first was back from respawn. Basically, Civil War has become a battle for who can take the turrets first. If you don't take it first, you'll probably never get it back if they have any healers at all. Voidstar can be impossible to win if there are more than 2 or 3 healers in the group. Add to that the fact that on my server, Republic seems to be about 50% healers (and Imperial about 10%). Huttball is similar; 1 player running the ball with 3 healers is pretty much impossible to beat. I don't have a solid suggestion on how to fix this issue. I know healing is already lowered in PVP. Maybe have interrupts lock the healer out of that ability for longer? I'm not asking to be able to solo one, I am just growing weary of facing a group with 4 healers in it and watching my entire team fail to take a single node. Now, counterpoint... UNDERPOWERED I'm a fair, objectionable man. So, I want to show love to the healers. Last night, in Voidstar, as a tank, I gained 11 medals, something like 112 warzone commendations. I did decent DPS, protection, etc. My healing partner did 500,000 (!!!!) healing, and ended the match with 4 commendations. We've taken to setting up medals for him (ie, i take a player to low health and let him get a killing blow, etc). There's a sad imbalance in the amount of medals healers can gain, since it seems to be biased toward DPS and tanks. The humorous thing is, healers are so very important to winning a match, as stated above, and yet they get the least amount of credit! I know some will tell me to L2P. I know how to play, fairly well I believe. I'm not nerdraging or anything, I'm just looking for some constructive discussion on how to resolve this issue. Maybe it's just my server; again, Rep seems to have a lot of healing, so I find myself on the losing end of many warzones thanks solely to that. Thanks for reading.

I've played with this a little, and except for a little trouble with heat management (which can be overcome), I liked it. Do you think it's a viable end game tank spec? I'm not really talking nightmare mode just yet, but EV/Rancor, hard modes, etc.

There's some bug with Huttball, where a win sometimes doesn't count toward the daily (at 50). We thought it was a mercy win (6-0), but I just won one 5-0, and didn't get credit. It's quite frustrating, wins aren't coming fast enough for me to give away one like that!

What really sucks is killing the jorland and massey, then for some reason dying to the medic, but since you killed the main boss you've already gotten credit for the instance and cannot zone back in if you wipe - so no loot. The bugs and difficulty differences in hard modes are really overwhelming. My group, who have played together for years and are all well geared and skilled, have given up on some of the hard modes because of the bugs and the mistuned risk vs. reward.

You're right about on the trail, i totally forgot

I agree. It either needs to dump ALL heat, have it's damage increased substantially, have more threat added, or have a shorter cooldown.

I concur. I got my PVP helmet, and nearly wept. I get made fun of everywhere I go, it's ridiculous. I had such a cool helmet in my 40s, similar to Boba Fett. I'm fine with something different, but this is ridiculous. I know I could turn it off, but I am a tanking Bounty Hunter, I shouldn't be bare-faced!

I'm also a PVE tank. What finally worked for me (after many, many tries) was to use Gault, and focus fire on guard as much as possible. Stun/interrupt as possible, but just focus on the one. Get him down, and then the other is cake - or, just die, rez, and kill the other. Be sure you're using all your tools: - AIM stimpack - Largest medpac you can use - Relic click effects - Grenades (if you have access to them) Also, when you run in, stun dart him early - then use "On the Trail" to start a regen on yourself, and refresh stun dart. I killed him with stun-carbonite-stun and interrupts when needed. It's not easy, and needs BADLY to be tuned. Bioware needs badly to look into any encounters with multiple healers that are meant to be done solo by a class without a long duration CC. There are a couple others that I bypassed because they were just ridiculously hard, despite very good gear and tactics. ~Xiv - 50 Powertech - Corellian Run

I'm a Shield Tech, and the only heals I have at my disposal are: - Kolto Overload (restores 15% of health over 10 seconds, 3m cooldown) - On the Trail (restores 2% of max health every 3 seconds for 1m, 20m cooldown) - Medpacs I've been tops in healing more than once in warzones, and I'm generally always in the top 3 or 4. You can definitely get a medal for 2.5k heals from a medpac, I get them every time. ~Xiv

Great guide! I felt like I had my head wrapped around most of the mechanics, but this definitely filled in the holes.

I solo a fair amount, and haven't had any issues with this build. I'd guess a DPS build would be a little better, but at level 37 I haven't yet encountered any problems solo. I can bring Mako for heals, but I generally run with Gault or Torian (both DPS) nowadays and don't even use the healer.

This is pretty much my build exactly. I'm curious about the threat on the surge dart (stun), and possibly taking that bottom talent in the AP tree for the extra ranged threat. Tanking flashpoints, i'm finding that I am using all my ranged threat abilities trying to maintain aggro on 4+ mobs because healing threat seems high...and DPS don't focus fire sometimes.

Is there any way to set myself afk, but not have it clear whenever I move? Mostly I want this for space combat - so people don't think I'm ignoring them when I don't respond! (Apologies if this has been answered, but for the life of me i cannot find a forum search feature!)