Competing for top numbers on a threat meter isn't fun. That's sad. The point is to play the game and enjoy the content, not stare at a meter. Although, if you like reading meters, the police department or electric companies might have the perfect job for you.

I can't speak to Gunslingers and Vanguards, but you couldn't be more wrong about the Shadow. I play a Shadow tank and we have a 60 second out of combat long CC plus the standard force lift in combat for 8 sec in combat. Add in our stuns, knockbacks, and knockdowns, controlling enemies is no where near an issue for Shadows. Again, I am not sure why you are having such an issue with this.

Well your problem here is tactics. You should be killing the boss out of the range of the turrets. That would solve your issue with T5.

As stated previously, threat shouldn't be that huge of an issue. As a Shadow tank, I have a combat stance that give me 50% more threat. So for every 1 point of threat that the DPS is gaining, I am gain 1.5 points. So a DPS has to do 150% of the damage of the tank, just to keep even with the tank on threat. Beyond that they have to do something like 110% threat to steal aggro (or 130% for ranged classes). So in this case, the DPS has to do 60% (or 80%) more damage to pull threat. This percent is also over the course of a fight. If the DPS pulls aggro, the tank should taunt. The tank no is on top of the aggro chart. The DPS has to do 60% more damage again to take aggro. However, it is now 60% of a much higher number. If the tank has 1000 threat, the DPS can pull threat with 1600 threat. If the tank has 10,000 threat, then the DPS needs 16,000 threat. With a long boss fight, if the DPS managed to pull threat and a tank taunts back to get 100,000 then the DPS now has to do 160,000 threat to pull aggro. These numbers are staggering and they don't even include the fact that the tank is also generating threat of their own beyond simply taunting. So threat shouldn't be an issue for DPS if they start slow and throttle up as the fight goes. By the end they should be able to open up and have very little chance to pull aggro, and even if they do it would take more time then the cooldown for the tank's taunt. As for how to recognize threat, this is the job of the tank. The tank should be facing the boss away from the DPS. If the DPS pulls aggro, the target will start to turn for the DPS at which point the tank simply should taunt and they will have the target back before it even attacks the DPS. So with a little common sense, threat meters are simply a waste of UI real estate.

As a Kinetic Combat shadow, Theran is far and away the best. I have tried going with Nadia but even when she is better geared, she just doesn't come close to matching Theran.

They are "Best in Slot". There is some discussion about this depending on what you need. If you want pure mitigation items, the Veracity Nano-Optic Resistance Implant has better mitigation stats than the Rakata implants. That being said, you get the extra mitigation at the cost of Willpower and Endurance. So there is some room for adjustment depending on what you need.

I'm not sure what you are talking about here. I have run HM FE a number of times with vastly different groups and I have never had a CC issue. I'd question what your strategy was that caused you problems.

Who cares which of the 3 it is? It doesn't matter. As was mentioned previously, taunt to get aggro back. That's the beauty of taunt. Having a meter telling you why something happens won't change the fact that it happens. A good DPS should give a tank a run for their money with threat. The only thing a threat meter could do is give a raid leader or tank an excuse to yell at DPS. However, nobody likes those types of players. Simply use your taunt to pull aggro back. Using taunt allows your DPS to run at a higher level without throttling. If aggro is lost due to boss mechanics, then the threat meter won't help you at all. If you use smart raiding practices like spacing and boss positioning, threat meters really have no value. It simply becomes a tool to make the game easier and require less skill. Why would anybody want that?

I play as a Shadow tank so my experience will probably be about the same for you. When I hit 50, I started running all of the daily missions on Belsavis and Ilum. The daily commendations rewarded from these missions allowed me to get all level 50/51 armor/mods/enhancements for my orange gear. Once I had done this, I started running HMs and have been fine. Beyond this gear, the biggest thing you need for HMs is a good understanding of how your class is meant to be played and what the mechanics of the boss fights look like. Beyond that, have fun with the HMs and good luck with gear drops.

I couldn't disagree with you more. You shouldn't have everything given to you. This is a game. You should have to work to figure out how to beat it through trial and error. There is no fun in games where you can walk through them with no effort. The point of raids is to beat them, not to brag about stats. Therefore as long as you beat the bosses, you have succeeded. As for your threat meter comparisons, they are shaky at best. A quickslot is a static UI element whereas a threat meter is by nature dynamic, so that comparison is useless. The closest comparison was the GCD vs. threat meter. Even this is different. The GCD is there for the game to tell the players what is available for them to use. This is showing things the user is meant to see. The problem with DPS and threat meters is that the internal game mechanics are being exposed so all of the challenge is removed.

That is what is wrong with "hardcore" raiders. Raiding isn't an individual thing, it is a team activity. It shouldn't be about belittling and excluding players because they aren't as good as some other player. The game should be about using the group you have to clear content. It is nice to see that this game is doing something to prevent these loser guild leaders from acting like tools. As has been said many times before, use trial and error. It is fun to try to clear something, wipe, and then go back and how to do it differently to succeed.

The dev team covers this issue in their latest Q&A post. It is not intended to be this high. Q&A Post link

Leveling as a Shadow Tank is actually not very painful. They have the best survivability of the shadow specs and still do good damage. As far as gear is concerned, it isn't that hard to find. You can get a lot of gear or mods/enhancements as quest rewards or purchase them with planetary commendations. For profession, I prefer Biochem for the resusable medpac/stim/adrenal. The reusable heals are great to help take a little strain off of your healer in FPs/Raids while they keep the rest of the group healed and the defensive stims/adrenals really add to your survivability.

I always start with Slow Time then Force Breach. This gives you all of the movement, damage, and accuracy on your targets and then allows you to settle into your basic rotation. Double strike until Particle Acceleration procs, then use Project. With 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows, use Telekinetic Throw. If I have it, I will pop Force Potency before Telekinetic Throw. I save Spinning Kick for when I need to knockback a specific enemy. The other reason I don't lead with Spinning Kick is that it doesn't affect Champion level enemies. So in HMs it has limited utility.

I'm not sure then. I haven't experienced any issues with this skill.

I don't know much about PvP. It doesn't appeal to me all that much. As for PvE, tanking is great at level 50. It is very focused on avoiding/shielding damage based on secondary stats and skills as opposed to mitigating damage through armor (like the Vanguard). With this in mind, you can find yourself taking spikes of damage in a short period of time, but you can also go for long stretches were you get hit very lightly. Some of this spikyness can be managed by how you stat your gear. The ability to stealth as a shadow is great, both for setting up CCs and pulls as well as for dropping combat and running if the rest of the group is wiping. All in all, I really love it.

I don't know if it will help with point 1, but I have found it advantageous to go into the preferences in game and increase the pre-activation time. This allows you to queue up your next attack slightly before you current one ends so your character will always be doing something. I believe this value can even be increased up to 1 sec.

HiB only works against targets taking periodic damage (i.e. affected by a DoT) or ones that are incapacitated. If the target doesn't meet either of these criteria, then you can't use the ability. This is why HiB comes after GR in the rotation. GR provides a DoT that allows you to use HiB

You have to be careful stacking defense over shield/absorb as it will lead to more spikey damage. If you have a good healer though, you should be ok.

The person you quoted said AoE THREAT, not AoE damage. My main is a Shadow tank and they have great AoE threat especially due to Slow Time on such a short CD. The problem Shadows run into with AoE is that if they pull too many enemies, their Kinetic Ward (shield buff) loses all of its charges before it comes off of CD. This is why Shadow tanks need to make use of their various stuns, knockdowns, interrupts to control adds right after the pull. As for the Shadow AoE abilities, they do decent damage but they are even more important for their debuffs on the affected enemies.

Kitru, you are slightly off here. You can defend against a force/tech attack, but you cannot shield it. You can see this when you are able to avoid a Force or tech attack. Attack type determines if you can shield/absorb or not. Melee/Ranged can be shielded and Force/tech cannot. Damage type affects how damage is resisted. Damage resistance works against kinetic/energy damage and internal and elemental damage are affected by a player's corresponding internal and elemental resistance values. It is also worth noting that damage resistance is based off of armor and not defense.

He also didn't properly handle the case of crit chance + shield chance being greater than 100%.

Another thing to consider is that Absorption only helps shielded attacks. Force and Tech attacks cannot be shielded. Therefore Shield/Absorb are only helpful for melee and ranged attacks. Defense on the other hand, can help you to avoid being hit altogether for all types.

This can easily happen. I am level 46 Kinetic build and I am over halfway through Corellia. I haven't done and flashpoints and I only solo Heroic 2+ missions. I have done some space mission though. If anything, it is a good challenge. If you can beat the content when you are underleveled, you should be very strong when you eventually get to an even level.

Project does kinetic damage so it is affected by armor.