Cloak of Pain gives a marauder similar if not slightly better damage reduction to a dps spec juggernaut. The difference is that it's an activated ability and regardless of it's "potential" uptime it's not always there vs a juggs constant reduction. If you compare a marauder to a dps jugg the marauder hands down has better defensive/offensive oriented cooldowns as well as better options to dps, but juggs have superior group utility. Any jugg spec can aoe snare spam, taunt, gaurd if in defensive stance and juggs get force push and saber throw. That and a jugg can be a legit tank with solid hard/soft cc options. Marauders are all about dps and their playstyle and cooldowns reflect this. Juggernauts "can" dps, but they are not quite as optimal at this even though they can do similar damage. Marauders basically tunnel a target down. This is why marauders with pocket healers terrorize people. Juggernauts can do great damage, but you'll get the most out of one by utilizing your aoe snares, taunts, force push etc besides just focusing damage on a target.

I just dinged 50 yesterday and vengeance seemed to be doing pretty decent dps in pve. In pvp at least before you get geared I think it's weak. I say that because you don't get in really heavy crit damage attacks other than vicious throw which half the time someone else kills them before you attack registers it's damage let alone it can only be used when they are at 20%. The internal damage dot on shatter is nice, but again burst damage reigns supreme. As vengeance spec you go against a tank or healer you simply cannout output enough spike damage to really take them down if they know what they are doing. As rage you can potentially drop 2 big smash crits in the space of 9 seconds as well as your force crush dot which is respectable. I have heard that once you get geared vengeance starts hitting hard enough that it's viable, but I would assume the same could be said of rage with bigger and bigger smashes.

AFAIK, shield generators at least pre-50 give 5% shield chance and 20% shield absorb. Soresu form gives 15% shield chance IF you have a "shield" equipped plus the +60% armor boost. I'm pretty sure you cannot even equip a shield unless soresu form is on anyway. Last I checked if you have soresu form on, but have no shield equipped you will have 0 shield chance. If you want to build hybrid then you'd want to use soresu form with a good shield, but equip dps armor and mods rather than getting stuff that affects defense and shield. This has reasonable damage, but you lose alot of dps because the the different trees are setup to utilize their respective stances. It's entirely feasible to have a full dps vengeance spec while using soresu form and a shield, but you're looking at losing a solid 6% damage from not using shien form as well as reduced rage generation. In pvp it may be worth the extra sturdiness to give up that 6% damage and better rage generation for the significantly boosted armor alone especially if you play more as combat support rather than trying to just dps zerg people 1v1. The best advice I can give for reducing downtime in leveling is to keep both you AND your most used companions gear as maxed as possible every single level. After that it's a matter of knowing your abilities and how to use them. Always interupt channeled casts whenever possible. This greatly reduces incoming damage you take. Seriously, always interrupt when possible. Next when clearing groups of 3-4 enemies have your companion target the strongest mob in the group while you quickly clear out the weak mobs. Then taunt the strong mob and finish him. Doing this you take minimal damage and your companion only takes a small amount of damage which can be channel healed with 3-4 seconds. Utilize all your abilities to interrupt channeled abilities from silver mobs and stronger. As a vengeance juggernaut you have force choke, force push, force charge, intimidating roar and disruption. Last I checked these will all work to interrupt a gold elite's channeled abilities. You can then add force scream and smash to weak mobs as well. The better you learn to use these abilities the less damage you will find yourself taking. Your choice of companion also affects this. If you play the class well and utilize all it's tools effectively then you can solo all of your content np with any of the companions. That said certain pairings synergize better. If you level as tank spec you'll want a dps companion. If you level as dps you'll want either a tank or healing companion optimally. I pretty much use jaesa 24/7 regardless of what spec I'm currently leveling in because mobs that die quicker deal less overall damage. The only thing when going double dps is you have to utilize your abilities well and know how to split aggro on groups like previously mentioned. Otherwise double dps works quite well.

I'm not seeing what the problem is. He clearly knows how to play. I enjoyed the video. Thanks for posting this. I've been looking for a lvl 50 vengeance jugg pvp video for awhile. You've renewed my hope that vengeance spec does respectable damage in pvp at 50.

There are plenty of us players that are not 50 yet that are serious pvp'ers that just so happen to be enjoying the story and leveling of the game. Lvl 50's with access to all of their abilities and full skill trees PLUS gear advantage stomp on lower levels. Just yesterday I was pvp'ing in the Alderaan WZ and I ran down under the mid point and ran into a lvl 50 scoundrel healing up. He was at 90% hp when I attacked him. I managed to get him down to about 60% hp by the time two of my team mates arrived. One of them was level 23 and the other was 10. By this point I was down to 20%. I know you're thinking what do you expect having such lowbie's take on a lvl 50 scoundrel with +14k hp, but this proves how useless the bolster system really is. That scoundrel proceeded to kill me, pops disappearing act and literally 1 shots the level 10 and finally died to the level 23 who comes out of the fight with like 5% hp... If I hadn't stumbled on to him at 90% he likely would have downed all 3 of us. And the thing is it's not like he was leet skilled. Not by a long shot. He didn't use his 4 second stun. He didn't use any cc except for when he popped his vanish and then opened on the level 10. It was just all basic damage. This is why lvl 50's need their own bracket.

I'm playing vengeance and I just got shatter last night(lvl 40). In pvp now I can actually 1v1 legit kill people 1 on 1 except 50 tanks. I used to be able to 1v1 people as immortal in world pvp and still could since it takes them 3x as long to kill you while your geared dps blasts them, but in WZ's it takes too frickin long to kill people as tank spec to try to play as a dps while spec'd immortal. Long story short I noticed that while shatter doesn't have a big flashy crit it applies a hefty dot that combined with impale, free smash and crit force cream gives me enough damage to be a legitimate threat now. Before I got shatter I just felt my sustained damage sucked and the little burst I could do wasn't enough. Now I'm interested to see how the damage starts scaling with levels and gear. I'm gonna main both a dps juggernaut AND a marauder because they both have perks that I like. I know that as I swap between characters I'll miss force push and saber throw. I get 3-4 kills guaranteed every hutball game just force pushing people into the green goo or flames and that's a conservative number. Voidstar I generally get a kill on the bridge as well. Saber throw. Doesn't do that much damage, BUT when that enemy is scrapeing by with 1k health I cannot tell you how many times I have finished an enemy off with this from 30m.

Currently I'm level 40 and doing roughly a 60/40 split of pve/pvp leveling so I just manually target enemies. When I hit 50 I'll change some keybinds around so that things are abit more efficient for pvp. I use a logitech mx518 mouse which imo is one of the best mouses ever made and have things like my trinket bound to it. I have target nearest enemy automatically set atm so if I get right up on someone in pvp I can switch to attacking them without manually clicking. P.S. Keep at it with the thumb pad. Like I said it takes a couple weeks as you gain dexterity and strength in your thumb, but once you get used to it you can try playing with just your keyboard and you'll be like *** this sucks, back to the speed pad! The main thing about using your thumbpad for movement is that it frees up your 4 fingers so regardless of whether you are jumping, circle strafing or whatever, you will always be able to use your abilities without having to momentarily shift your hand for movement reasons. This may not sound like much, but it saves milliseconds in which you can fire off an ability slightly faster than your opponent provided you have similar ping levels. It's sort of the same principle between mouse vs controller. Mouse and keyboard is far more precise and the thumbpad movement allows for greater speed in activating abilities. As an example say you are circle strafing an opponent and your q key happens to be an ability. For the split second you have to click that ability you will not be able to strafe left. With the speedpad this never happens IF you use the thumbpad for movement.

I think it would be viable for vengeance juggs since it will allow you to ravage an enemy without them getting more than a step or two away from you. Also it will give you time to sundering assault+shatter before they start moving. Imo this is a viable skill mostly for a vengeance jugg because there is a high chance ravage will be up every force charge cd thanks to rampage and since with unstoppable you can't be cc'd/interrupted ravage becomes quite useful as an opening damage move after a force charge. This also allows a marauder to use 1-2 damaging abilities before the enemy can move. Anything that will allow you to slow or immobilize an enemy in pvp is extremely valuable especially against casters. 3 second vs 2 seconds may not seem like much, but it could be the difference between getting the kill or not. 15% crit on a move you hardly ever use isn't worth it imo.

I've been using a nostromo speed pad for about 3 years and having gotten used to one I literally cannot imagine trying to play an mmo without one. Here is how I setup my keybinds with it. All my most important abilities and skills I put on my 2 center quickslots in the game so I can easily see their cooldowns etc. I then keybind these to the 3 main rows of keys on the nostromo. Imagine you are looking at your top center quickslot bar. The first slot on the left of the bar would be the first keypad button on the middle right of the nostromo. speed pad keys l l v [][][][][] [][][][][]<---middle right key [][][][] So I map the keys going left to right on the quickslot bar and when I bind them to the speed pad I reverse that and start them from right to left. This may sound bassakwards, but I set them up like this because that first quickslot on the left corresponds with your first finger on your right hand. The second quickslot is your middle finger, third slot is your ring finger etc. This works better visually. I don't use the top 2 left keypad buttons on the speed pad because I find them awkward to reach for. laid out on the keypad this is how my binds look [ ][ ][w][e][r] [ ][a][d][f] [][z][y][x] (())<------thumbpad, map forward, back, strafe left, strafe right to this. ^ l l l I map jump to that open left keypad on the bottom row. This lets you use your pinky to jump and it's very comfortable. Looking at that little diagram you can see I only have 10 keys mapped. This is when you apply an alt modifier to an easily accessible and comfortable spot on your mouse. I use the 2 center quickslot bars and the right quickslot bar and have my companions abilities on the left quickslot bar. Alt+f, alt+d, alt+s etc in the same order on the bottom center quickslot bar. This makes 20 total keybinds with all your most important binds visible on the center quickslots. I have 5 buttons on my mouse and each has an alt modifier for a total of 30 keybinds. The right bar I put my basic buffs and abilities that do not have to be keybinded on. Notice there are 2 un-used quickslots on the center bars on 11 and 12. This is where those mouse keybinds go. We get so many abilities that even 30 binds isn't enough, but it's enough for every thing that is a priority. If you learn to move using the thumbpad with your thumb and turn/look with the mouse you maximize your efficiency because your fingers never have to leave their keys in order to move. I don't care how awesome anyone's keybind setup on any keyboard is they cannot claim this which is the greatest strength of the speed pad. You will never have any of your fingers in use for moving when you need to press a keybind. It takes a couple weeks to get used to steering with your thumb, but trust me it becomes second nature and once you get used to it you'll see how efficient this is. This is a long winded post, but hopefully it helps. The nostromo speedpad is the best gaming accessory you can own after a good mouse/mouse pad imo. It took me a little trial and error to come up with this setup so I thought I'd share.

I can run Skyrim at 1920x1200 at max settings with additional ini quality settings. I played Deus Ex on max buttery smooth. I played WoW in a full on raid max settings AND STILL pulled better fps than I get in warzones in swtor. I have tried a ton of stuff and nothing is working. Changing video settings does nothing. It literally does not increase performance which tells me either this game has ZERO optimizations or there is something seriously tweaked on Bioware's end because it sure isn't my computer. In fact I have never had this problem in any game I have played on the pc. EVER. I can assure you many, MANY other people are having this problem as well. I can shout in general chat on the imperial fleet about bad fps in warzones and ability lag and get multiple people admitting to having the same issue. I can't say how many people are having this problem, but it should be a MAJOR priority for Bioware. Making sure you can emote while riding a speeder is not a priority fix... I know guys that have insane rigs that get anywhere from 5-25 fps fluctuating in warzones and have terrible ability lag. I'm fully sure I'm losing at least 50% of my possible damage output in wz's because abilities simply refuse to fire sometimes as many as 3 gcd's. Even trying to be super careful and press each ability only once for sure when the gcd is over many times it will not fire. We are being vocal about this because it's literally ruining the game for us. It may be all happy happy joy joy for you, but for us our preferred activity in an mmo is a hair pulling, nail biting slog of a tortured experience.

My first alt and possible main will be a marauder. I rolled juggernaut first and like that I can tank or be a psuedo-tank/dps hybrid or full on dps. That said the maruader being a pure dps class IMO has superior dps options and superior defensive cd's vs dps juggernaut. I have to comment on warrior leveling in general because to me it's been a cakewalk and I've never used Quinn other than after you first get him and only for like 2 minutes and didn't enjoy using him at all. I'm now level 38 on Hoth and I haven't noticed any huge leaps in mob difficulty. Taris was easy. Quesh was easy. Hoth so far is easy. I'm still waiting for this huge jump in difficulty. First time stepping on Hoth I killed a 20k gold elite as vengeance jugg without using any defensive cd's and jaesa. I really think it's an issue of people not knowing how to prioritize damage abilities and when/how to best use offensive cc and defensive cd's. Just because you can push buttons 1-2-3 on another class and pwn face does not make the warrior class bad.

I've never felt rage starved playing Immortal spec at lvl 34 currently. I can see the pvp application of the spec at 50 as well because as another said this class is very gear dependant and level dependant. If you fought a geared prot warrior in WoW it was like *** shockwave crit Ow, from a tank? Huzzah! Use a soresu/shield for some extra defense/resist basically and stack strength/surge and smack **** hard while still being beefy. Currently after having tried both rage and vengeance I found vengeance superior to rage both in single target sustained dps and group clearing. The smash crits while nice wouldn't drop a group faster than force charge<force scream dead, impale<ravage dead, by now companion has killed one etc. Plus vengeance does decent smash damage anyway and can do it for free. I will say that rage was nice though because it did feel like a different playstyle. All the specs have their own flavor which is nice. One last thing. Why does everyone seem to hate ravage? It's free. It hits hard albeit over the course of the 3 seconds. In pve it is not hard whatsoever to use 99% of the time. Considering it's cooldown for most specs you would think you would want to use it first and then cycle through your abilities. It's pretty obvious with vengeance spec that it is supposed to be in your rotation having the possibility to use it once every 9 seconds inbetween shatter, impale, force scream and smash for aoe. I'm not sure, but if even one of the hits on ravage crits the damage is huge and the fact it's free makes it a no brainer to me. Has anyone tested alacrity with ravage for a dps spec? If it were possible to get the cast time within the gcd this attack would have amazing dps.

Last I heard lvl 50 geared marauder with carnage spec is like a chainsaw.

Kudos for noticing this. I'm not sure if defense in general is causing the problem or the ability retaliation or both, but BW needs to take this seriously and get it fixed soon. I pretty much hardly every use retaliation as an immortal spec tank because I always getting gcd locked for 1-3 gcd's using it.

If you compare a marauder to an immortal tank spec juggernaut then ya the marauder's cc/defensive capability will look like crap. If you compare a marauder to a dps spec juggernaut then you have ZERO to complain about. Why's this you say? Let's compare marauder to dps juggernaut. A dps spec juggernaut has saber ward which marauder has. A juggernaut has access to endure pain, a +30% hp for 10 seconds boost once every 3 minutes. Juggernaut has force push which can be used offensively given the right situation or defensively. And that's it for cc's/defensive cd's for dps spec juggernauts folks. Now let's compare that to any maruader spec. Marauders have saber ward too. Marauders have access to force choke as well. Marauders have undying rage which sacrifices 50% hp for 5 seconds of 99% damage invulnerability on a 90 second cd. Marauders have force camouflage which vanishes you from combat, drops aggro and grants invisibility and 30% movement speed for 4 seconds on a 45 second cd. With a certain talent spec you can either make this grant 100% damage reduction for it's duration or break all movement impairing effects. Boy that must be nice. Marauders get Obfuscate which reduces enemy melee and ranged accuracy by 90% for 6 seconds on a 1 minute cd. For those of you not in the know, 90% accuracy reduction is damn near equivalent to +90% defense. And we're not even done! Marauders get deadly throw. A 10m ranged saber throw that does damage and reduces healing by 20%. And with a certain talent spec you can grant deadly throw a 3 second immobilize from 10 meters! Marauders get cloak of pain which in a 1v1 fight can have near 50% up time and reduces damage by 20%. With this active you have similar damage reduction to a dps juggernaut in heavy armor. But, it gets better because with 2 talent points you can get the up time on this ability even higher! Marauders get Fury! Hey you get to be a unique and beautiful snowflake! With this you gain fury killing enemies and using rage costing abilities. Once you reach 30 fury you get to activate 1 of 2 awesome group/self buffs and 1 individual buff. And hey, you also get frenzy when you just have to have 30 stacks fury right now! I'm not gonna even go into the whole juggernauts do more dps bologna. Try getting to 50 and getting geared. If you want to dps as a sith warrior marauder has all the best goodies. The best pvp ability that dps juggernauts have access to is Unstoppable which grants 20% damage reduction and 4 seconds immunity to cc every time you force charge. That's it. Roll juggernaut if you want to tank AND have the option to dps, but don't go making up BS about how dps juggernauts are superior when I just listed myriad reasons they are not just from a cc/defensive cd standpoint.