Who said I was in DPS gear? I'm in half-Rakata half-Columi tanking gear, thank you very much. I find that pulling 180k while in tanking gear, using a hybrid spec, is pretty respectable. (While PvPing I switch to half-Champion half-Battlemaster tanking gear. I've been a BM for a month now but I have been really really unlucky with item tokens (and now commendations) so I don't have a full set yet.) I never ever said that Shadows and Vanguards did not have it better. Just that the claims that we can't go above 100k are false.

Losing all your focus is not a big deal, especially if you time your stance dance after emptying your resource bar in the first place and THEN pop Combat Focus. Stance dancing is perfectly and entirely viable and it's everything it's cracked out to be and then some in the hands of someone who knows what the heck he's doing. Bad players not being able to pull it off doesn't mean it's not an effective tactic, it just means bad players are bad players. And bad players could make anything look bad.

I think you should look in a mirror before calling other people rude and insulting. First of all, Vigilance is a perfectly viable end-game tanking build, and almost every good tank I know uses it instead of pure Defense because the Defense tree is completely and totally borked right now. Second of all, "primary function"? Hahaha what? Guardians can tank or dps. They are not primarily tanks, or primarily dps, they are capable of choosing which they want to do. Just like how every other class can choose between, as appropriate, tanking, healing, or damaging. Except the classes that can't. (Sentinels, Gunslingers; alas.) Your perceptions are not welcome in this game. People can perform the function they want, as long as they have a skill tree for it.

Actually, Focus is better for most boss fights because most of them involve running around a little bit. Either you get knocked back a lot (Annihilator, Gharj, Bonethrasher), either you have to move a lot (Soa, Fabricator, Karagga), either AoE is actually useful (Gharj, Jarg and Sorno, Foreman Crusher, Karagga). This means that you would almost ALWAYS have the perfect opportunity to Force Leap back into the fight to set up your rotation. This pretty much means that Focus comes out slightly on top, especially when dealing with adds or a lot of movement (exploding mouse droids, mind traps, puppies, etc). Vigilance is really not much far behind, though, so whichever you pick, you will still be doing great. However, if you want to offtank, then yeah, Vigilance is where you'll want to be. It has some core tanking talents, so you can just pop Soresu whenever and be a decent tank if you have the gear. TL;DR: Both are great, but I find Focus situationally better in most operation encounters, and also a LOT more fun in PvP. Focus' real strength has nothing to do with its skills or abilities though. Focus' real strength is the ability to make you not care about losing a game in PvP-- because you'll still be demolishing whoever you aim at and enjoying yourself wildly.

That's why Defense sucks and you go Vigilance/Defense hybrid, for both PvP and PvE. Currently my stats hit: ~20k health unbuffed (add +5% for trooper, and +1k for stim) 51% damage reduction 21% parry (+6% while riposting, so technically 27% most of the time) 44% shield chance 42% absorb (60% for 6 seconds every 20 seconds due to a relic proc) Swapping to PvP gear-- well, I don't have the stats handy, but I can usually pull ~180k damage in warzones, while getting some 11-12 medals from tanking/etc. Defense sucks, go 14/27 Def/Vig.

Here's another question: You're a tank, why are you only looking at endurance? The Rakata Lightsaber gives you a LOT more stats overall than the Battlemaster one. If all you're looking for is endurance, I'm afraid you are Doing It Wrong. And take this from a tank who's 9/10 nightmare mode right now (we'll get Soa eventually, we're being lazy and not even trying him). Endurance is nice, but you do not need more than your Rakata gear will be giving you. As long as you're at ~21k HP or so fully buffed (I'm at something like ~22k, I need to check because I'm not logged on right now) and you toyed with your mods right, you will be FINE. ~22k HP w/ 22% defense, 42% shield chance and 40% shield absorb. IS MUCH BETTER THAN ~23k HP w/ a bunch less stats. It is absolutely and utterly false you need to specifically stack endurance for hard and nightmare mode operations. THE GEAR YOU GET FROM THEM WILL ALREADY HAVE ALL YOU NEED. The only exception to this is that currently Rakata gear has too much accuracy and surge, and you may feel free to replace those mods by shield/absorb ones instead. (I don't recommend stacking defense as a Jedi Guardian, we hit diminishing returns far far too quickly to benefit from getting a lot of it, and our skills already provide a raw +6% and another +6% when riposting).

That's so hilariously misinformed, wrong and close-minded that I don't know where to start correcting you. So I'll just say you're wrong and should have read the entire thread before posting.

Because apparently, according to Bioware, we are "working as intended". That said you CAN put on DPS gear and DPS almost as well as a full Vigilance build could. Therefore it IS hybrid. Whether we spec into it or not for the flexibility is another issue, but it doesn't make the build any less able to perform both functions.

HAHAHA WHAT? DO NOT STACK CRIT AS FOCUS. Your big damaging ability -should be auto-critting-. Stack surge and power. Crit is only useful as Vigilance, because you're using a crapton of stuff that you want to see crit.

I disagree. The defense build has poor DPS. The defense/vigilance build only has slightly less DPS than a vigilance build would have, and has more tanking ability than the defense build would have. Therefore it IS a hybrid build, one that can tank better than a defense build and DPS only slightly worse than a vigilance build. But it is a hybrid build, not a tank build, because you don't actually skip on many of the DPS skills. I don't know where you go off thinking hybrid means you have to perform better than your sources at both roles. The term hybrid usually refers to jacks of all trades but masters of none-- it is a term that refers to specs, builds, classes and characters who can perform two roles instead of one ROUGHLY as well (or better, yes, in some cases, but that is not a requirement of the hybrid terminology) as their counterparts could. Classic examples of hybrid classes include things like: Paladins and Rangers in D&D Red Mages in FF Feral Druids in WoW (dps or tank with ~ same efficiency) Etc etc.

Currently the hybrid spec performs better because the defense spec is a wreck that was built incredibly poorly and does not provide a lot of benefits. It does not perform MUCH better, but it performs better. Anyone arguing otherwise is basically stuck in their ideas from other games and are refusing to acknowledge people have found a better solution than going pure-defense to tank. Is it wrong? Yes. Yes it is. Bioware needs to fix the defense tree, real bad. But that's how it is.

Well except that you're completely wrong. The only "survivability" you gain from Defense is +4% shield chance. The rest is all pointless gimmicks and utility tools. And that 4% shield chance is made up for by the 4% damage mitigation of the hybrid build AND the 4% endurance bonus. Leapfrogging is a BONUS and by no means is it necessary for the build to be equal or even viable. Proper leapfrogging does however push the build from "roughly equal if a bit superior" to "superior" so if you can manage it you should definitely do it.

Happens to me all the time, yeah. My only tip is... to not get knocked back, or to pay attention to who you are fighting. -> ARE YOU CHASING SOMEONE? You will get knocked back. You WILL get knocked back. Use force push, leap to them and THEN force sweep, or use force push, let them knock you back, then leap back in to force sweep. Don't be greedy about trying to use your force sweep when you know your opponent will try to chase you off. -> ARE YOU 1V1 FIGHTING SOMEONE? Sages, Commandos, Gunslingers and their Empire equivalents will knock you back as soon as they can, because it's a gag reflex to waste the knockback ASAP. Either force push them ASAP to have force leap ready, or don't use force leap to get to them and only use it when they push you back. Other classes will not knock you back, either because they cannot, or because they want to fight you in melee as much as you want to fight them in melee. -> SO BASICALLY. It's about figuring out if your opponent has already used his knockback or if he is going to use it, and planning accordingly.

The diminishing returns for Defense is roughly around the time you'd hit 23-24% parry with Soresu active and the +6% bonus from the Defense tree-- I'm not sure what that translates to exactly. However, since you get +6% from using ripose, your actual parry is going to be a lot higher in combat than out. Right now in Columi + some Rakata gear, my tanky stats are, out of combat, unbuffed: 51% armor reduction, 22% parry, 35% shield chance and 43% absorb. This is actually high enough that even in Nightmare Mode, my healers have more trouble keeping the group alive through AoEs than they do keeping me topped off, so I wouldn't mind losing some more of those stats for extra threat. My one wonder is WHAT would provide the most extra threat. Power? Crit? Surge? Assuming accuracy cap, anyway. Rakata gear has surge, but unless you're rolling a hybrid Vig/Def spec like I am, you won't get much use out of it.

To be honest, the theorycrafting is great, but it leaves out a pretty damn critical detail that can only be acquired through experience: Past a certain point, you really don't need to become any tankier. Your healers will be able to heal you through enrages for a while (the rest of your group is another story if the boss has aoe) and boss damage will be pretty insignificant for the most part. Once you're in full Columi gear, you really don't need any more shield/defense/absorb. It's a waste. You can argue that it'll make you easier to heal, but all it'll do is make healers overheal more. Once you start getting Rakata gear, leave it as-is. Yes, you'll lose tanking stats. No, it won't matter at all. The extra accuracy, power and surge from that set of gear will increase your threat, which is going to be a lot more important than your ability to survive a little bit more.

It depends on your playstyle. Focus is a lot more burst oriented and requires you to use Force Leap (or Zealous Leap) as often as possible. Therefore, if your playstyle is to jump all over the place and never stay still, you're going to want to consider Focus. This is doubly true in boss fights where movement is key, or where knockbacks are plentiful-- which actually makes up a vast majority of boss fights. Vigilance is a lot more steady. You'll want to move as little as possible so you can focus on chaining your abilities properly and nonstop. Your burst damage is near-inexistent but you'll be doing consistent damage across the board. On the other hand, during a high mobility fight, or PvP, you'll often be at a disadvantage due to needing to move a lot and not getting to really draw the most out of your abilities. TL;DR: - DO YOU WANT THE IDEAL PVP OR HIGH-MOBILITY SPEC WITH 5-7K CRITS? Focus. - WOULD YOU PREFER SOMETHING STEADY AND RELIABLE INSTEAD? Vigilance. It is also worth noting that Vigilance has enough tanking talents in them to make you a viable offtank if **** hits the fan.

I never even so much as implied that damage was all there was to threat. I just thought people were smart enough to assume that if Soresu Form says '50% more threat' it means that your damage is going to do 1.5 threat per point instead of 1. And that abilities that do more threat, like Hilt Strike, followed the same mechanic, and that means Hilt Strike would inflict 2 threat per 1 damage compared to normal abilities. (But yes, you're right, they stack. Then again, Hilt Strike is also our only high threat move, so it's not such a big deal.)

I think the reality here is that you're one of those "pure defense" tanks who're trying to shut their mind off to the fact there is an alternative spec people believe is better. Both specs are roughly equivalent, and I say this having played with both of them a god damn lot in both PvP and PvE situations. I do however think the hybrid spec has higher overall utility because you can snap-change between DPS role and Tank role without losing any efficiency whatsoever, something the defense spec cannot do as well. Stop being so close-minded. Right now vigilance is not only equal to defense for tanking, but depending on the situation, and whether or not you're capable of leapfrogging effectively, it is actually better.

Some people like to claim that abilities do static threat independent of damage; IE 1 ability = 1 threat, no matter if it's 100 damage or 10000 damage. I've run enough tests to know that this is absolutely and utterly wrong in all possible ways, and that hitting harder does in fact = more threat. This isn't just based off one test, but of four weeks of doing Operations (hard/nightmare) with the same DPS crew, as well as asking a DPSer to use a crappy weapon to spam abilities and try to peel aggro off me. As they got better gear, they got much, much better at pulling aggro off the tanks. Comparatively as the tanks geared up, their ability to hold aggro did not itself go up very much if at all, since the gear upgrades only provide a slight increase in strength, and thus in DPS. The Rakata gear however made a pretty impacting difference in terms of threat, using the hybrid spec specifically. Rakata gear has surge and accuracy on it more than tank stats; the hilarious part here is that by the time you get that gear you will NOT need to be tankier, you will need to hit harder. The accuracy and surge makes the hybrid spec shine thanks to its auto-crit on Blade Storm and Dispatch, and the overall threat increase from hitting the boss in the face without ever missing.

No, actually, the issue is that Jedi Guardians have really really awful threat. The hybrid spec actually provides greater single-target threat, but it's (our threat, not the spec) still basically awful in all ways.

Here is something I think a lot of people are not accounting for. Raids only require one, and in some very specific cases two, tanks. BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN, CELEITIA? That means that if you're rolling with a Jedi Guardian offtank and they are pure Defense, against an encounter that only needs one tank (basically 50% of the bosses), you are gimping your DPS and may hit enrage timers on Hard and Nightmare difficulties. On the other hand, if your offtank is using the Def/Vig hybrid build, they are easily capable of switching between Tank and DPS roles without needing to respec at all, but while retaining their full ability to switch between either roles mid-fight if something goes wrong (maintank dies). IN OTHER WORDS: Given that the hybrid spec offers a fairly substantial increase in DPS for an extremely minimal loss in tanking ability, it is the IDEAL spec for someone whose role is not absolutely set in stone (i.e. tank and only tank), especially if your goal is Operations, and double especially for 16man, where the number of necessary tanks does not increase despite group size being doubled. Even if your role is maintank, it's still good if only for the fact that you can use the spec in PvP with a lot more oomph than a pure Defense build. I don't believe either spec is truly superior, but I believe the hybrid spec is situationally superior in a lot more circumstances than not.

I kind of disagree there. One week after being level 50, I was in near-full Champion gear already because I basically spent all day doing warzones. Even losing a match I'd get 80-90 commendations because it's exceptionally rare for me not to have some 10-11 medals due to being a tank who knows how to play. Full Champion gear gave me something like +11% expertise boost. Now I'm in half Battlemaster gear, and my expertise is barely at 12%. I imagine, at most, it's going to reach 13% once I'm fully outfitted. How is this too steep? It's a negligible boost. And if they make it super-easy to get Centurion gear, then I imagine the boost between that and Champion is also somewhere near 2-3%, meaning that even someone in full Centurion gear should stand a reasonable chance if he's skilled to take down even a Battlemaster.

This seems like the most retarded theory I've ever read on these forums, because if it's true you could hold threat by spamming your basic attack, and it would be impossible to lose threat if you're using an ability every single global cooldown. Yet, it is VERY MUCH POSSIBLE to lose 15 seconds' worth of threat in 5 seconds to DPS who isn't being careful. The logistics for your theory to be right would imply that if you used 10 abilities in 15 seconds, at 1.5 threat per ability, your threat was 15. DPS would have had to pull 17 to 20 threat to peel off you-- in 5 seconds. That is four abilities per second. It. Does Not. Make Sense. I would like to see these threads that claim threat is ability-based and not damage-based, because it sounds absolutely stupid and impossible. And again, if it were true, then you would be saying that I can do nothing but spam my basic Strike attack and hold threat if I never stop.

I've done a lot of PvP in full champion tank gear, as vigilance and focus spec both, to get a feel for 'dps in tank gear' and all; using a shield generator, of course. Vigilance spec was extraordinarily underwhelming; not bad, but not great either. Focus spec was actually amazing, because even in full tank gear I was getting the 5k force sweep crits, while being pretty hard to kill if someone's healing me. Running focus spec while in soresu stance was actually pretty damn nice with a pocket healer, and while it had some focus issues (basically after doing your first two force sweep rotations, you're completely starved and combat focus is on cooldown), it went a pretty damn long way. All in all viable if you don't mind losing some of your damage for the ability to nearly be a tank. Get a pocket healer if you want it to work well, though.

For MOST people, and this is something that has been the subject of MANY papers and thesises (thesi? thesis? theses?) by social science groups, MMORPGs are ABOUT the rewards. In fact, they proved that if you incorporate MMORPG elements to the daily work routine of people, they work better and have a higher morale. MMORPGs are about filling bars and getting new abilities, they're about getting better gear and obtaining not just the satisfaction of doing something, but a trophy for it too. This is because, in the real world, there are no rewards for grinding your daily life for the common folk. You go to school, or work, or whatever, you do your thing, you get the money to pay your bills, and maybe once in a while you buy a new game or five. You don't get to watch your exp bar go up, you don't get better clothes to show off how much you grinded at work, you just... conform. You're like everyone else. If this is not the case with you, congratulations, you are a better human being than the average population of a MMORPG. I, and most other players, will be over here in the corner of those who play these games because reality is not rewarding enough, and we want our new purple-quality chestpiece to show off we did something. It is vain, and technically fruitless, but it is rewarding and gives you a feeling of accomplishment.