It's really not. HtL allows you to run out of a bad position, whereas storm can only put you into a bad position.

Once 8 man queues come out, here is what we'll probably do: - Send 1 guy with speed boost to west node, and 2 guys to intercept. - Send 2 stealth to mid to stall with saps. - Send 3 guys to east. - If we see the other team attempting to cut us off at east, we collapse back to mid over the wall. - If we see no one come west, we'll collapse mid from west as well. This is almost the same thing that Oozo outlined, except you would have 2 stealth stalling mid.

Like some people have said, it's only worth it if your 2 set PvE bonus is amazing. The damage reduction from expertise becomes better the more heals you get during the course of a fight. So, if you are queueing solo, rock PvE gear. If you are doing premades (or rateds when they come out), stack expertise.

TBH, Vanguards were added as an after thought very late in the Beta. In the beginning, there was no such thing as "mirror classes." Hell, the tank ACs didn't even have a DPS tree. Bioware probably needed to give Vanguards a charge, but couldn't give us a leap (Jedi/Sith already have one) or a rocket boost (Bounty Hunters already have one). So, we end up with a buggy looking airwalk. This is the same reason most of our abilities have a huge animation delay when compared with BH abilities. They were added at the last minute as an after thought, and were not properly tested.

When procced, the lightning cannot be interrupted. You are better off attempting to kite, then using Harpoon when they try to channel lightning.

Simple questions get simple answers. If you are offended by this, try alt>Backspace.

I chuckled a little.

This is what I'm confused about. First, you say that in a free casting situation (where you can maximize your damage), you don't cast Charged Bolt. Next, you say that in a "free cast situation," you have a sequence of 4 hotkeys (I'm assuming that you mean abilities). What are you casting if not Charged Bolt? If you are using free casting situations to apply IR and use Assault Plastique, you are definitely gimping yourself. Those abilities are instant, and can be used even while you are under pressure. I'm asking you to list the 4 abilities with a cast time that you use in a free casting situation. Charged Bolts is your only way to proc HIB outside of Full Auto. Since Full Auto is on a 15 second CD, while Charged Bolts is spammable, shouldn't you be using Charged Bolts more often to proc HIB? The impression that I'm getting is that you don't actually care about doing any damage at all, but instead feel like doing nothing but utility makes you a valuable member of the team. Hate to break it to you, but that's not really enough. At the end of the day, you are a DPS. Your main role is to find a target and kill it. Sure, utility is important, but you still have to make sure that you can actually kill something first. The sign of a competent player is someone who can do both at the same time. I've seen Assault Commandos hit 400k+ damage done doing nothing but tab target and apply IR + Plasma Cell via Hammer Shot. As I tried explaining to that person, spread damage doesn't really matter when it isn't bursty. Essentially, all you are doing is making enemy healers more efficient, since every single HoT and every single AoE heal they do translates into effective healing. Also, I'm curious about the "group utility" you claim to bring. What exactly can you do with Assault that you can't do with Gunnery? You keep making vague mentions about your "sequence of four hotkeys" and your "various tools for situations," but you refuse to actually give specific examples. Dark and mysterious is definitely sexy, but it doesn't really help us out all that much.

Minigames can't be fun, you heard it hear first!

Step 1) Die to a Powertech in 3 globals. Step 2) Whine about it on the forums. Step 3) Lie about my gear so people take me seriously. Step 4) Completely fail to mention Assault Plastique since I have no idea that it exists. Step 5) ??? Step 6) Profit.

This is why I said lay it down BEFORE they Force Cloak. The idea behind this is that they either run away from you before they can cloak, therefore preventing the insta sap, or force them to wait 10 seconds before cloaking. If you do this at around 30% health, it pretty much means they won't be able to cloak before they die. All that armor doesn't really matter when Assault Vanguards have 90% armor pen on their hardest hitting attack. Also, a Full BM geared Vanguard will have 110% accuracy on Tech attacks. This means that your resistances are also reduced by 10%. Sure, you'll take longer to kill (obv, tank spec is tanky), but it's not significantly longer. I'm actually talking about fighting full BM geared Tank Shadows, which is the same thing as Assassins. The amount of damage that they do is pretty negligible, compared to how hard real damage classes hit. My Reactive Shield (25% damage reduction) is off cd anytime you pop reck, so you won't be hitting me all that hard, even during your cds. Madness just seems stronger from personal experience. Maybe it's just that the one Madness Assassin actually knew what he was doing, but he took me lower than any other Assassin I've met. I'm pretty sure that you are correct. It's very hard for me to actually find a Shadow or Assassin of any spec that's even decent on my server, let alone find a good full tank Assassin (most that I see are hybrid). By the same token, I'm pretty sure that you've never fought vs. a good Assault Vanguard 1v1. Most of the things that you point out are pretty much incorrect on opponents that know what they are doing and have full BM gear. For example, 5-7k on one Lightning channel, pretty much can't happen vs. a heavy armored BM geared opponent. Using Spike (or any CC) to cover your vanish pretty much means you aren't really controlling the Vanguard at all throughout the fight. === On Topic: === The only specs that I lose to consistently 1v1 are Focus Sentinels/Guardians (Rage Marauders/Juggernauts) and Scrapper Scoundrels (Concealment Operatives). This is all pre-nerf to surge though, so things might be different now. Scrapper Scoundrels will also only beat me if they get a clean vanish and I miss on my Stealth Scan.

You can prevent this by simply laying down a stealth scan on them when they get to low health. They have the choice of running out and allowing you to kite them, or stay in and not have vanish available. Most Assassins will use Force Shroud to get a clean vanish. You can still use Stealth Scan to get them out though, even if they are immune via Force Shroud. Tank Assassins are actually very easy to beat. Most of their mitigation comes from shielding attacks, and the vast majority of our damage completely ignores shielding. The fact that our DPS cd gives us 25% extra crit, and that they can't shield crits, makes Tank Assassins very easy to burn down. They do very little damage, so there is almost no counter pressure at all. In my experience, Madness Assassins are the hardest type of Assassin to beat (doesn't meant they are actually hard, just harder than the other specs). You can't really kite them since most of their damage comes from dots or are long range. You can still out damage them by a huge margin, however. It only get's dicey when they stack full dots on you then vanish and watch the dots tick you down.

Full Auto has a 15 second CD. If that's the only thing you are using to proc HIB, then your damage is going to be kind of horrible. As for free casting, what 4 castable spells do you have as an Assault Commando? All I'm seeing is Full Auto and Charged Bolts in order to proc HIB. IMO, Assault Commando is all about proccing extra HIBs to get more ammo and do more damage. If you aren't using Charged Bolts to do so, then you are definitely gimping yourself. Tank can definitely do 450k+ damage if they only aoe. The ability you are referring to is Flame Sweep, a spammable AOE. The problem with using Ion Cell is that you lose a dependable and free source of applying a burn effect. Competent players will simply cleanse off your Incendiary Round and completely shut down your damage. Operatives and Mercenaries can both cleanse off your burn effect. The extra survivability you gain from Ion cell simply does not make up for giving your opponents the ability to completely ignore your damage. On top of this, you are also losing a lot of utility or damage just to spec into Ion Cell.

Isn't there a forum just for the French community? Why post this here?

I was comparing the two most popular specs in the two ACs. It might have been a little off topic, but then again, the guy I was responding to sort of already derailed it with personal attacks. As far as Assault Commandos go, I just haven't seen any good ones. The only Assault Commando that I've ever played with insists that tab targeting and spamming Hammer Shot on everything to proc his dot is a viable way of dealing damage. Also, if you don't spam Charged Bolts when you can free cast, what do you do? Vanguards rely on spamming Ion Pulse to proc HIB. How do you proc it as a Commando if not with Charged Bolts? You mentioned not seeing Assault Vanguards use SS. It's one of our hardest hitting abilities, and the one that is most likely to proc a free HIB. If a Vanguard doesn't use it, he is gimping his damage by a huge amount. Sure, you can sit at 30 yards all game as an Assault Vanguard, but you'll do negligible damage. As far as survivability, Assault Vanguards have the exact same armor as Commandos. The reason a lot of Vanguards seem more survivable is because they are tank spec running Ion Cell.

7k in 4 seconds isn't that amazing, tbh. If you go full Assault, you can pump out 10k+ damage in 3 seconds on people with heavy armor and full BM gear.

You already made a thread about action bar setup and hotkey mapping. Why not keep that discussion in that thread?

At a very basic level, Commandos are very easy to play. Very few classes can get away with spamming one attack and still do damage. The fact that there is auto-facing in the game makes this even easier. In the very next sentence, I said that good Commandos will have to be very careful with their positioning and target selection. The ability to do these two things well is extremely rare. If you would have taken the time to actually read my post and instead of blindly attacking me, you would realize that I think Commandos have a very low skill floor, but the same kind of skill ceiling as any other class. The fact that they are so easy to lock down (note, this is why I talked about 1v1ing Commandos: they are very easy to disrupt) means that Commandos actually have to work HARDER when playing against competent players. Pretty much just a reading comprehension fail on your part. Gunnery Commandos are actually a lot tankier than Assault Vanguards. Not only do you have the exact same survivability cds as a Vanguard, but you also get an additional 10% damage reduction while dpsing and two knockbacks. Whereas Vanguards must be very careful about how far they can push into the enemy team to be in melee range, you can simply sit by a pillar at 30 meters and unload damage. TL;DR - You didn't understand what I posted but still decided to attack me. Then, you made false assumptions ("Vanguard has higher survivability"). Next time you make baseless attacks against someone, try not to make a fool of yourself.

If you bind "Previous Action Bar" to a easy to reach button (one of my mouse side buttons for me), you can switch between bar 1 and bar 4 with one button press. This means that you can use the same 12 keybinds for the second set of 12 abilities. It made finding comfortable keys a lot easier for me.

Vanguards are one of the most fun classes in SWTOR. You never feel as if you can't win. No matter who it is you are up against, you have the tools in your arsenal to outplay him and counter everything he does.

I guess I stand corrected Not sure if that screenshot is from pre-surge nerf, but I'm impressed regardless. The problem with Tactics is that it's better the better your team is doing. If you never get CCed and never get focused, Tactics is amazing. However, it is the very fact that Tactics is so ammo efficient that their damage is low. Anytime you get CCed, you lose full damage. If you have to kite out and line of sight to survive, you lose full damage. Whereas for Assault Vanguards being CCed and kiting merely means they regen some ammo that they can use to spike harder a few seconds later, the ammo efficiency of Tactics means that any time they aren't spamming on their target is damage lost.

Actually all I said was that HIB is affected by weapon damage. Correcting you and arguing with you are two different things. An argument would mean that there is something up for debate. In summary, I agree with pretty much everything that you've posted. I just wanted to make sure people understood you were wrong when you assumed that higher weapon damage doesn't affect HIB at all. P.S. You know you guys love the back of forth. It makes these forums lively!

So what you really want to do is have statistics to resolve the pointless arguments that pop up all over these forums? Sign me up! In all seriousness though, I actually want to see statistics too. However, I feel that they would create so many problems for Bioware that they would be insane to do it. Who knows, though. The last time I called Bioware crazy, they told me, "THIS IS BIOWARE!" and kicked me in the chest.