What if we go with your theory that Scourge's vision was implanted by the Emperor, but instead of it being because the Knight was a threat to him, what if the Emperor planned to be "killed" by the Knight all along, as a way of drawing attention away from himself, so that he could work in even more secrecy than he has been? This ties in with a theory of mine that the Emperor is secretly manipulating the Dread Masters into causing many of the events that take place after 50, such as Denova, TFB, etc in order not only to draw attention away from himself, but perhaps also as part of a larger, as yet unclear plan, which is hinted at by the Dread Masters when they speak sometimes. Spoilers for the Scum & Villainy operation follow: We know that the Emperor and the Dread Masters have a history together, that he specifically ordered them freed from Belsavis (mentioned by Commander Calum during the Imperial planetary questline on Belsavis), so this all seems to hint that he is using them as part of his plans to me.

This is the same with Ravaged Reconstruction on Taris, I believe that the reason these are in the achievement logs is because they are still in game files, but there is no way to access the areas (at least not conventionally, it might be possible to get into Ravaged Recon with some clever force pushing) or the actual quests in the game. I believe they are still in a database and whoever did the achievements simply took all the heroics from a database list for a planet and plopped them in there without realizing they weren't actually in the game anymore.

Yeah, tank companions suck at threat gen, unless maybe they're overgeared Xalek. Like Kitru said, you'd probably be better off with a real tank.

Well in 2.0 Shadows/Sins get a talent to let you use it from the front and get a cost reduc on it from a proc, so this won't be so true anymore, although there's still no reason to run around behind

Its not though, because energy regen rate is faster to begin with, so stim boost is needed less.

Uh, guys, you could already log in using your display name, so this cannot actually make your account less secure.....

Pressing ctrl for some reason grays out the play button, this might have been it.

I do move around a lot during fights, it's probably instinctual from moving around in raids where I have to dodge AoEs and such. Generally I try not to move them around so much that it hampers melee dps though, and I rarely do it during boss fights since bosses often tend to be static. I know it's not really necessary, idk why I do it, I just do .

Ah, using it before a fight makes sense. I apologize if I made you cringe, I have very little experience playing my Assassin tank

I would make the argument that force management was always fairly trivial on a Shadow/Assasin, at least compared to the other tanks, given that Force doesn't regenerate slower the less you have, and how quickly it regenerates to begin with. However, I agree the changes have made Shadow/Assasin a lot more powerful, but I am not sure if they are OP yet. The changes to force costs have definitely made them easier to play, and the change to Ward is great, though sometimes on trash pulls I do still find myself having all of my charges eaten up because I just shield THAT damn much, but its usually only a second or two away from being usable again. I think some testing needs to be done to see if the higher shield chance Shadow/Assassin can obtain are properly offset by their lower armor values or not. I do still die on trash pulls if I try to pull too much, so I think at the very least they are not god tanks. Whether or not the three classes are balanced I can't say, I think the Vg/PT have an advantage in that they get higher absorb values and higher armor, but I'm not sure about how Guard/Jugg fit into this model on the PTS currently. I will optimize my Vanguard tonight and see how well he stacks up to my Assassin in terms of durability and threat and post my general impressions for y'all.

*jedi knight

I don't remember when they said this, but basically they said they decided they didn't really want to continue it and that... something.

First, shadows were NOT the weakest tanks, period. Second, this happened to all of us, and given Dark Ward/Kin Ward, you're much better off on the shield chance front than the rest of us. The armor rating could probably use some boosting, but one: that's what PTS is for, and 2: shadow tanks have never been about their armor rating. You also seem to forget that damage reduction is vs opponent of current level. When your level goes up, your DR goes down, until you upgrade your armor. Upgrade your armor and then come talk...

I think there are far too many inconsistencies in Star Wars lore for this debate to have a real conclusion.

Yes they did. And I forgot to include the change to shield, that will be great. Vanguard's going to have an easier time managing ammo now that its 100pt and also we no longer need ion pulse for much of anything besides the debuff. I'm glad to see guardian get the huge buffs it deserved finally, personally. Moderate buff to vanguard, minor changes to Shadow, seems pretty good overall to me.

Wow, don't I feel silly now? Lol. Thanks for clearing that up.

Yeah, it does.

Yea, the changes to stats are weird, it will be interesting to see how these new talents work once we get our stats back up to where they were.

I notice that the changes to alacrity affect the regen of class energy pools, how does this factor into the focus/rage mechanic of knights/ warriors? I wonder this as it does not regenerate but is instead generated by the player.

So anyone who's checked out the PTS talent trees so far probably noticed most of the tank classes recieved some pretty big changes, guardian / juggernaut in particular got a bunch of new talents, and Vanguard/ Powertech isn't too far behind. You can see all the PTS Talent Trees here, please note this does have some errors, for instance when you max out Single Saber Mastery for the juggernaut/guardian it reads as it increasing melee/force defense by 30%, which obviously can't be right. Despite this though there are some very neat changes, some new possibilites for Shadow/Assasin, a whole bunch of utility goodies for jugg/guardian, including a damage absorbing shield to every group member in range when they AoE taunt, interesting changes to Sunder and C Blow/G Slash, including doubling the number of targets the aoe on G Slash/ C Blow can hit. Also, interesting procs for force leap and guard. Vanguard/ PT are also getting some new goodies, including a VERY interesting proc for pulse cannon/ flamethrower, which when 2 points are spent, gives direct damage attacks a 15% chance to- finish their cooldown, make the next one free, and make them cast and tick twice as fast. (can occur once every 12 seconds with 2 points). Also getting a SELF HEAL from the shoulder cannon/whatever the BH equivalent is, probably jetpack missile. Also, buffs to defense rating, a change to power screen/ flame screen, which is now no longer granted by ion pulse/ BH equivalent but instead simply by shielding, stacks up to 3 times, and enables the use of energy blast/ flame burst at 3 stacks, which when used will consume the stacks and increase absorb by 25% for 6 seconds. All these changes look pretty cool to me and I think this will make VG/PT and Jugg/Guard tanks a lot more interesting to play. Thoughts?

Yeah I was checking it out and it seems like VG tank is going to be a lot more interesting to play, I'm currently D/Ling the PTS to test it since it looks so damn awesome.

Um, don't tech/force attacks do tech/force damage?

We can't shield force/tech attacks, we can shield energy/kinetic attacks that aren't from direct weapon damage attacks. Also, given the fact that here http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/guardian/225/ you can see that we get CD reduc on sunder now as well as still getting a focus bonus to it means it'll CD in 12 seconds and generate SEVEN focus if you take these two talents.

I have absolutely no idea what you guys are talking about, my repair bills have been higher but not bad, and I'm mostly in 61s...

Wait, so you're telling me that forcing players to put in more characters increases performance on the GTN? Not only does that not make sense, the GTN's performance did not need much help, it works fine as designed (though the design could definitely use some work) all this does is take away convenience for the player. I'd much rather be able to just enter "27" to find my dreadguard stuff than have to shift through 10 pages of stuff I don't want in order to get to what I do want. I don't care if my search takes .0003 seconds longer as a result, and I don't see why you should either.