I've tanked him many times (on two different tanking classes) - last night he did the same to me, something he's not done previously. I wonder if it's broken with a recent patch? Regardless just make sure your DPSers are leaving him alone in P3 when immune and make sure you're building continually building threat. Be ready with a taunt. It's the most you can do and tbh it's not too hard to handle.

The PT is a great tanking class - just don't get sucked into the "it's a ranged tank!" non sense that many people spread around these forums. Ranged aspects offer a situational advantage and not a core tanking mechanic; Rocket Punch, Flame Burst all put you closer to the boss and essentially turn you into a melee class. The Assassin is great too, but for different reasons. The PT has more base mitigation, but that's not to say the Assassin has low mitigation; base damage reduction is still very good, their defense is very high and their shielding is exceptional. Assassins are great tanks... again don't get sucked in by the "lol light armor kthxbye" crowd. I play a PT and an Assassin tank at 50. I prefer the Assassin, but not because it's better/worse. Juggs are the most conventional of the three tanks. If you've ever tanked as a warrior in any other MMO you've played a Jugg. Build Rage, spend Rage. They have excellent defensive cooldowns. You'll see a ton of people bang on about how class X does the best single target threat (which is subjective without meters), or has the best mobility (which is situational) or has the best mitigation (which depends heavily on damage school).. etc.. the reality is that all three classes are surprisingly well balanced, and all three are viable. Non of them are complicated to play, so play the one you think is the coolest. Balance in MMO changes; anyone choosing a class to be OP or "the best" now is in for a disappointment when 1.2 brings balance changes.

What raw mitigation? What gap? Assassins are in a good place; if you're seeing a gap because your comparing your DR with a BH then you're missing the big picture. Assassins, on the field and geared are fine.

I have a level 50 Shield Tech BH and a level 50 Darkness Assassin. I've main-tanked Hardmode and Nightmare mode operations on the BH, and this week will be tanking them on the Assassin too. For everyone claiming the BH is superior, then i'd like to add a little realism to this thread; I've switched from the BH to the Assassin as my main. The Bounty Hunter is a fine tank... but so is the Assassin. You're ignoring situational strengths in an effort to declare one tank "the best". The BH has more direct DR. The Assassin has a higher chance to Shield and more defense. I get hit less on the Assassin, and if I don't Shield, I take a little more damage. I'm fine with that; that's not the way to judge a tank. The Assassin takes less damage from Force and Tech attacks, and can become completely immune. The Assassin's ability to quick move around an encounter is superior; the BH needs a target to Charge. Grapple is great for adds but serves as nothing more than free threat on a boss. There are strengths and weaknesses to all three tanking classes; "The Best!" depends entirely on your criteria as situationally "The Best!" changes. But the Bounty Hunter is a ranged tank so it must be better! Which is nonsense. To be effective is to be in melee range. Any DPS player worth his salt will be able to out-threat a BH tanking at range. It's a myth that dates back to early beta and a perception the community seems incapable of shaking off. Oh, and on the point of AoE threat; My Bounty Hunter does more than my Assassin... but neither do enough to support a mindless WoW AoE spamming style of pack gameplay. The design of these instances support the idea that we're not supposed to be the kings of AoE threat, no matter which class you play. So the question becomes does my class do enough to perform as the encounter intends and the answer is yes to all of them.

I noticed a difference, but it was much more noticeable on plants like Tattooine. I have a 7200rpm drive and it died, using an OCZ Vertex. I don't have numbers, I didn't time it, I just know it's quicker and that i'm certainly not waiting around as much as I used to. That said, I never considered my loading times with the HDD to be slow; I simply consider the SSD to be a little faster.

No, he's telling you that PvP gear across the board is a little stronger than they want it to be. They're not nerfing you, they're nerfing everyone.

Hi Georg, You've essentially just improved the money making potential of the best money making crew skill in the game, and left the other's behind even more. I completely acknowledge the changes that are coming, but as it stands Armormech on my BH tank and Synthweaving on my Assassin tank has given me a belt and wrist pieces... and i've reached a point where I can acquire them anyway. I'm struggling to squeeze money out of my crew skills - the great lvl 136 schematics i've acquired through Operations either produce BoP items or take a stupidly exclusive material (last boss HM/NM drop) to craft, and in an operations group these BoP materials get prioritised to people crafting for themselves for progression (which is obvious when you think about it). The other day I passed a BoP schematic to make a BoP belt for Agents on my Bounty Hunter. It's utterly useless, and yet given the strength of PvP gear and the relative ease of acquisition it's the only kind of item I could craft that has any potential to make real money. In the end everyone passed on it; non of our agents could craft it and I couldn't craft it for them. People aren't flocking to Biochem because of it's overpowered BoP items - people are flocking to Biochem because it allows a raider to be entirely self-suffient in a way that no other crew skill can. It makes a lot of money and easily covers the raiding-tax, it offers a lot of BoP items (even now) and raiding even provides mats for it as you go. Suggestions; Give Synthweaver/Armormech 400 lower repair costs or the ability to repair their own gear at a reduced rate. Give Armstech 400 the ability to repair their weapons for free. Give All crafting possessions a +% modifier to gear they craft for themselves - i.e. "Stats on your own crafted chest piece are increased by 10%" Give Artifice crystals that can also proc effects. It may not be very Star Wars, but given that every class uses crystals this could very easily become the proffession most like a typical enchanting proffession. Ease off the limitations on use - most raiders in our guild when they get schematic drops from Hardmode and above are already acquiring gear that is comparable to the BoP crafted gear being discovered - it goes mostly unused. Introduce an alternative way of acquiring these exclusive BoP mats that is a solo effort or a personal reward for group play - It could be a quest that rewards a Rakata Energy Node for completing a Hardmode+ operation two weeks in a row. Or a way of trading in another resource ("Hand over five Self-Perpetuating Power Cells and get a Rakata Energy Node"). Something other than the whack a mole need/greed system would be appreciated; i've been able to craft a couple of BoE 136 items for quite some time now, yet due to the nature of raiding and the way most guilds prioritise drops i've yet been able to craft a single one for sale on the GTN. I love this game, I love the crafting system's implementation, I see it's potential - I just hate that I feel limited by it in my chosen game style.

I think the thing that bothers me the most about Inquisitor gear is that it's the same regardless of AC/Role. Sorcs look like Mages, and Assassin/tanks look like... Mages. Sigh. My Powertech Shield Tech tank LOOKS like a tank. Our Juggernaut looks like a tank. My Darkness Assassin looks like, you know, a mage and looks nothing like the character the AC was modelled on; Maul. The class really does have this strange identity crisis that is unique to the inquisitor.

Oh how I hope that's not the case. Expertise scaling a key PvE survival aspect is poor. I was under the impression that nothing scaled it now, and is a fixed value provided by the rank of the ability. I've certainly not seen any scaling with our core stats.

Engines evolve. If there are problems with the current engine then the logical thing to do is fix them, because he's the thing; nothing is perfect in software. The engine behind TOR is just software and it can be improved like any other piece of software. It took Blizzard a long, long time to get WoW to be stable and it still has bugs, FPS drops and laggy moments. Patience, it'll come.

Hello! Ilum can be tremendous fun when real PvP happens, however more often than not it's a base camping game. Mob mentality kicks in and two huge balls of players stand 35 metres apart occasionally pulling someone for a cheap kill. The design of the map encourages this behaviour; two bases, a large no-mans land with objectives and awkward spawn points makes true PvP unlikely. The frustrations with Ilum often come up on our Team Speak as we're playing, and one idea that keeps bubbling up is this; Remove the two faction bases as objectives as well as the speeder bike entry into the PvP area. If you remove the two bases objectives and leave the three control points there is a focused fight. Removing the speeders removes frustrating travel times but also removes known camping points. Instead players should take a drop ship into the PvP area which will drop them at an appropriate battle point. Ops groups could take a drop-ship together and be deployed at a location with a large imbalance, single players could be dropped at a objective point with a low population of players to stimulate combat. Award a buff for controlling a majority of the objective points; lower the amount of valour gained by default for killing an enemy player and increase it if your faction controls two of the three objective points. This could stimulate flanking behaviour and battles for object points happening on multiple fronts. When players die they can spawn in place as usual or take the drop ship again. The problem with Ilum is a simple one; players will always find the easiest and more efficient way of getting rewards which leads to these situations - why would people spend 5 minutes travelling the length of the map looking for PvP action when they can join a ganking squad and camp a base? Focusing the objectives and introducing an entry mechanic that stimulates combat should go quite some way to removing this behaviour; a drop-ship will put you where you're most of use at that moment in time (in much the same way a commander would in a real battle) and removing the bases as objectives would keep the battle focused. As an aside; the vision for Ilum just isn't clear. Many people, myself included, just don't bother with it at the moment... despite it's potential.

Thanks Rain Man.

How about realising that this game is publicly a month old and the current difficultly level of endgame is the measuring stick at which Bioware will use to balance future content? It's how MMOs work. As an aside, you keep saying Hard mode Ops; have you done nightmare yet? If you want hard seek it out. If it's still easy make a post explaining why instead of this drivel - it's no use to anyone.

If you turn the game into an endless gear grind then you deserve to be miserable with it. You could do every one of the things you've listed for fun and in the spirit of MMO gaming... instead all you care about is purple gear.

... and yet having played many of the "new" mmos I have to disagree. TOR needs work. The bugs are annoying, there is imbalance... but it's fun. Rift, Aion, Cataclysm etc etc felt like a boring monotonous grind. Pandera looks even worse and non of the big ticket features go any way to fix the issues I have with WoW. Given a choice between those i'm sticking with TOR. If BW really bunker down and kill the current crop of bugs and deliver their commitment on March's patch then they're on the right track for me. If this doesn't do it for you then GW2 isn't far off. Go play that instead... but I suspect you'll be disappointed with that too.

Exactly - and tbh most DPS classes have a stun and a hard hitting ability for stunned normal/weak mobs. Too many people play this game expecting it to be mechanically identical to WoW; tank runs in, grabs all, just nuke. It just doesn't work that way. Tank AoE threat isn't great, spacing between adds encourages co-ordinated play and most mobs can be stunned/controlled/knockdown/moved. The DPS players who home in on the mob with the most health "because it's the elite!" are fail .

You haven't actually made clear how a Juggernaut is harder to play. You've just stated they are and built your entire argument around that opinion. Perhaps you find it hard; don't assume everyone does. You have the easiest resource to manage; there is always something other than the free ability to push. Your survival is procs from other abilities or baselined. You have the most consistent and recognisable defensive cooldowns in the game, and it's the class most comparable to another popular tanking class in another popular game. There is nothing hard about Juggernaut tanking, because there's nothing hard about tanking in this game generally. Ask an Assassin about how frustrating it is to track Dark Ward procs and time Harnessed Darkness heals to make the most of them. Ask a Bounty Hunter how hairy things get when Heat, for whatever reason, builds too high, etc etc. So, again - WHY do you feel juggernaut tanking is hard or harder than the other classes.

I wouldn't say it's broken for boss tanking; it's just not particularly fun. Pushing the same button every 10-20 seconds just to be on-par with other tanks is frustrating play. It's pretty pointless for pack tanking, but tbh I get the sense that AoE tanking isn't something they want tanks to be great at (AoE threat is lacklustre on all three tanks) and instead would prefer players to CC/control/prioritise kills (also evident by the packs that have more than 5 mobs).

It's not supposed to. If you've managed it it's a bug, but I suspect you haven't. Sages have one that works on friendly targets (and not on enemy targets) - perhaps you're thinking of that? @OP; it's in the tree because they don't want DPS Assassins using it. By the same token DPS Vanguards don't have a charge/speed burst. Grapple/Harpoon has 45 second CD and Vanguards/PTs need to spec for their Charge; our equivalent (speed) is trained. So basically; Shadow tanks have Speed + Pull. Vanguards have a Charge + a Grapple.

Loved Taris. Seeing the Endar Spire again was a great little moment. If I had one complaint it was just too dark and the zone was essentially the same throughout. Would have loved a little golden glint with the suggestion of a sunrise, or weather in some areas (ash clouds and acid rain?). Just something to make the dead world feel a little more dynamic. Love Hoth. So bleak. The ship graveyard is brilliant, and everywhere you look there are ships and debris frozen in the ice. Didn't enjoy Voss overly, just felt like a fairly typical fantasy MMO zone. Hated Nar Shaddaa. It was essentially an endless rat run of corridors.

Without a threat meter it's your fault, as such, but don't feel bad about it. Many BH tanks will attest to having threat problems at one point or another. First thing to do; Guard him. If it's consistently that guy Guard will do wonders. Secondly it's all about heat management making the most of the procs. Stay below 40. As much as I like the parakeet build I do miss Heat Blast (sure it looks awful and it's damage is a little weak, but as a heat management tool it's very good). Keep your heat low and maximise your procs (which will be plentiful with the parakeet build). Does he out gear you?

But that doesn't make any sense; give players even better gear with nothing to progress on to? Rakata gives you progression into nightmare mode, and downing nightmare modes gives you bragging rights. It's the first MMO i've seen that actually has a sensible gear progression structure.

You can't tune up or down without a base measurement. The current tier of raiding is that base measurement. They'll make things harder if the current tier is too easy. One thing is for sure; normal mode ops will always be easy.

Don't be so short sighted. Drops are RNG, commendations aren't. You're not guaranteed a drop. You will amass commendations over time. It allows you to buy the pieces you're missing after spending the time trying to acquire them via other methods. It's as simple as that; it's a secondary gear source.

Guis guis the sith are wielding lightening! Quick, equip your copper codpiece and cotton dressing gowns! Charrrrrgee! This isn't WoW. You're not a mage. This game isn't real. Armor mitigates lightning. Roll with it.