Unfortunately you're wrong, and Shadows and Vanguards are able to aoe tank extremely effectively because they have an actual spammable aoe move that does decent damage. Meanwhile, force sweep and cyclone slash suck.

Artifice is the most money I've ever made selling magenta crystals. During the first two weeks I could get about half a million credits per. Also, we do have level 49 shields, which if you RE into their purple counterparts, are equivalent to what you'd find in hard mode flashpoints, or just about. ALSO, my Rakata relics with augment slots disagree that Artifice sucks.

My concern exactly.

That's an extremely bad idea and it would be equivalent to making pvp and raiding less desirable than being a crafter. In fact, it would make it completely useless, since a crafter will get you all the best gear and then... you could go raid for worse gear?

HOW is Biochem useless now? You guys will be able to make a FORTUNE by selling all the stuff that is no longer only usable by you. AND you get to keep using the stuff too! They single-handedly made Biochems rich with this patch, why oh why are you complaining? Because you lost your unfair advantage? Augment slots do not compare to having an infinite health potion, an infinite buff potion and an infinite third relic potion.

That's irrelevant, though. You're still telling me that even after I raid or pvp to get good gear, I'm going to have to scrap all of it to put it in crafted gear so I stay optimal. There should be a way to be optimal without crafted gear, is what I'm saying. It could be a good idea to make it possible to add slots to your items via commendations of both kinds (pve and pvp), and maybe even credits (100~150k per slot?).

Okay, but. How are you going to address the fact that after these changes, crafted gear will be more optimal than raiding gear OR pvp gear? There will be ZERO point in using raid or pvp gear if you can obtain crafted gear with augment slots in it, which will provide a very, very significant stat increase if all your gear has slots in it. In other words, you're going to be replacing one problem with another. There should be a way to add augment slots to raid gear as well. What about using commendations earned in operations to buy the slots on your gear, once you're fully up to par? Or extra pvp commendations, even? That way people don't HAVE to default to crafted gear to be optimal, which is what the new system will encourage heavily.

AOE threat is an issue while leveling up, and I guarantee you it WILL be an issue if you do 16man operations, especially Eternity Vault. Those warden droids and fire doggies might not hurt in 8man, but in 16man they will eat through your group, and if you're using two Guardian tanks, you're going to have it rough. Combat focus does help, but we shouldn't have to rely on a cooldown to do what everyone else can do right off the bat. The fact def/vig is preferable to def for tanking speaks volumes about the fact the skill trees are poorly designed. If I go 31 points into defense, I should be tanking better than someone with only 14, yet the way the trees are designed, this is not the case at all. I've done a full clear of HM operations 8man, and of operations in 16man. Is the Guardian defense tree unplayable? Nope. Playable. But it underperforms, severely, in PvE. In PvP I always enjoy myself (battlemaster, in fact), so that much is fine. PS if you don't believe me RE: operations and battlemaster, because I'm fully aware people love to lie and make stuff up to validate their opinions: http://songstorm.net/raids/celscar.jpg (Me, with the hardmode car and guildies.) http://songstorm.net/raids/karagga-8h.jpg (Us, in front of the body, and you can see my title and saber there.) All that to say. I think the class has issues. It is not UNPLAYABLE but it feels vastly inferior to the other two tanks. I've heard a lot of DPSers complain they have to hold back with Guardians, but NOT with other tanks, and we don't keep aggro any better once we finally have it either.

Only applicable to focus spec.

Guardians are fine IN PVP. Defense spec does its job, and both damage specs hit like trucks. Guardians are fine IN PVE DPS ROLES. Both damage specs hit like trucks and you'll be pulling your weight; can even offtank. Guardians SUCK AT PVE MAIN TANKING. The defense tree has less tanking tools in it than the vigilance tree, not enough damage to hold threat as well as the other tanks (both in single target and aoe environments), and actually has lower defenses all around except for raw parry chance. I believe it speaks a LOT about a tanking class when the acknowledged tanking tree is a DPS tree instead of the dedicated defense tree. You cannot deny that the defense tree is broken if every single upper tank tells you "I tank as vigilance" due to threat and mitigation issues. Mind you, THE CLASS IS NOT UNPLAYABLE. You can do operations, and hardmode operations, with Guardian tanks just fine, like my guild does with me tanking. However, your DPS is going to have to hold back a lot more than if you were using a Vanguard or Shadow tank, and that means you might slam into enrage timers more often.

How could I ever forget. Oh wait.

The new patch notes are here, and it seems Shadows, who are already amazing tanks, are getting a huge fix. What do we get? Nothing. At all. Currently: - Guardians have the hardest time generating start-of-fight aggro, due to starting with an empty resource bar. - Guardians have the hardest time generating threat period, because our tanking tree has roughly half of the DPS Shadows and Vanguards can pull off. - Guardians have the worst tank tree of the three tank classes, a fact people have pulled the builds apart to point out: Shadows, and Vanguards, get about twice as many stat increases from their respective trees. - Guardians have a tanking tree that is actually worse to use for tanking than the vigilance tree, a DPS tree. Vigilance offers higher overall damage mitigation and DPS than the defense tree, go figure! At the cost of having a slightly harder time generating focus. Not a big deal. - Guardians have no easy way to keep AOE threat, as opposed to Shadows and Vanguards, who are not only better tanks, but who can keep threat on five times as many enemies as Guardians, except even better. Bioware, please. At least give us a sign that you've been reading the Jedi Guardian forums. Is that asking for so much?

Confirmed as not available through legitimate means yet.

Yes, but toast aren't designed with easter eggs in mind. This game was. Considering the puzzle of the magenta crystal, and a few other goodies, I don't think it's a stretch to think 'gee, this kind of looks like Hoth's mountains' when you find a dead guy in a hidden part of Ilum next to that. Easter eggs are found by pulling every string you find, not discarding them.

The image isn't from me, but from Reddit, where several people have drawn several versions-- I'm not sure this is the most accurate, but a lot of people see the resemblance. Some people even went to the location on the map and found an unique mob that appears nowhere else on Hoth, although it only drops decent items, nothing amazing or unique.

Referring to: http://i.imgur.com/Vc45h.png Stephen Reid recently debunked both the White Crystal and Queen of Sands myth. That's good, in a way, since it focuses players' efforts to find weird stuff. What about the dead man on Ilum, with the miniature tauntaun inside what seems to be a map of Hoth drawn in snow? Are we on to something, Stephen, or are we wasting our time here too? I'm not saying for definitive hints or clues, just a 'yes' or 'no' so people can keep, or stop, looking.

"Only true DPS choice." No, it's not, and you are absolutely wrong. I believe what you meant to say is "Vigilance is the only spec I like for PvP." and not "Vigilance is the only viable spec for PvP." because Force Sweep bombing is the territory of all JK/SW Battlemasters on my server, and they're nasty.

Here's what I see. Palpatine is a Sith Sorcerer engaging a Jedi Knight NPC (elite) with four Jedi Knight NPCs (weak/standard). Being that this is a class quest instance (obviously!) then it is tuned to be soloed, meaning the four weak/standard NPCs have no health whatsoever and can, in fact, be hacked away by a Sith Sorcerer's autoattack or basic slash skill. Having dealt with the rabble, the Sith Sorcerer does the stupid mistake of trying to take on the Jedi Knight (elite) in melee combat as well, and promptly gets his *** kicked after a minute or two of holding up. By the time he realizes he needs to use his Force Lightning, it is far too late and he has to be saved by another NPC who will, obviously, become a Companion. AND THEN, IT WORKED JUST FINE.

While it WOULD be gimmicky and only apply to certain fights, it is THEMATICALLY ACCURATE that Jedi kill more targets by deflecting their attacks that they do via lightsaber combat. Looking at the movies, comics, novels-- whenever a Jedi is facing an army with blasters, they stand still and deflect everything until the army is basically dead. Granted, a lot of them also run in to bash faces in, but they continue deflecting bolts as they do so, and most of the people they bring down are brought down via deflection. It is really a shame that we don't get this gimmick.

Enure does not count as a buff and bragging about having that much health with it just makes you look silly. With that in mind, it sounds like you only have 21k health. This seems on the low side, for "fully buffed", seeing as how I can hit 22k in mostly Columi (+1 Rakata) gear. I really wish I were Biochem, then I could get a free +1k health. Ugh.

Haven't actually touched the mods in my gear at all. Basically, all of it is +shield/+defense with the default +end/+str from the gear itself. Keep in mind that getting a Columi or Champion level Lightsaber is going to kick your damage up a LOT, since you'll be switching from (I assume) a rating 48~50 Lightsaber to a rating 56 one.

Hilariously I cannot, because bosses are usually so big that the numbers are off my screen and/or I just don't pay attention. However, I can roughly tell you that: Slash lands ~1k hits. Guardian Slash lands ~2.5k hits. Hilt Strike lands 1.5k hits (equivalent to, I believe, 3k aggro in Soresu Form). Force Sweep lands ~1k aoe hits. Blade Storm lands ~1.5k hits, and shields for ~2k. Force Statis ticks for 400~600. Master Strike lands 1.3k hits. (But I only use it when absolutely everything else is on cooldown and I feel like I haven't seen the animation in a while, because it looks cool.) The rest, I couldn't tell you, and even those numbers are kind of off the top of my head and probably not exact.

I roll as a pure-Defense tank in full Champion gear and it is extremely rare for me not to be the guy with 10-12 medals due to abusing Guard, both Taunts, and dealing pretty decent single target damage. Guardian Slash CAN give you the 2.5k damage hit medal, too-- Overhead Slash and Plasma Brand usually CANNOT. (Focus spec can hit 5k, though, so yeah.) Also people rage when they see me guarding a Huttball carrier, or worse, carrying it while guarded by someone else.

Full Columi/some Rakata. Standard raiding gear.

Tried it. Didn't think it was worth the Focus cost, honestly. Soresu + Vigilance is really, really awful at Focus generation, and your main abilities cost 5 and 4 Focus from the spec, without any ways to generate extra focus in Soresu Form without being hit, and even then, not often enough to help. I used to be hybrid Vigilance/Defense but ever since we started hardmode OPs I switched back to Defense and haven't had any troubles. Using Hilt Strike properly fixed a lot of my aggro issues.