Yeah, Guardian DPS is fine. Don't let anyone tell you different. I use Vigilance for hard mode ops and flash points and have no issues. For PvP Focus is the easy mode spec but Vigilance has better utility.

Are you doing PvP or PvE? If you're doing PvP I would recommend the augment that gives 18 Endurance and 12 Power. That usually ends up being good for PvP because you get the huge pool of hitpoints that you need and also do sufficient damage in PvP. I can't really make a best recommendation for PvE content. I don't really PvE myself.

Interestingly I see more vanguards with 0 protection in war zones than Guardians. But I find it funny that a lot of people don't say anything because of the broken damage that Vanguards put out.

I get 20k - 40k protection per war zone on average without having a Guard. It's very VERY important to make sure that you're constantly taunting enemies when you're mixed up in a big furball with the enemy team. The AOE taunt is as important as the single target taunt as well. The single target taunt is great for dealing with high priority DPS targets. Snipers, Marauders and AOE spamming sorcs are all important targets to keep taunted as often as possible. Additionally, The AOE taunt is important to use in literally ever war zone when you're either fighting over an objective or fighting to protect, or kill, the ball carrier in huttball. I've actually frequently gotten over 50 - 70k protection in war zones just from staying dilligent with taunts. It's an extremely important difference between Sentinels and Guardians. A lot of people ask "Why do we take Guardians in war zones?" but those people either A) are playing with terrible Guardians or B) completely under value an extra 30% (!) damage reduction that we provide ot the team.

No. You're a DPS. Do more damage. Your best defense is your offense.

Might armorings. You're a sentinel. You want the Damage.

That was actually hilarious. But I disagree. Besides some basic balance tweaks I think they just really need to add more war zones. Particularly war zones with more dynamit terrain the way Novare Coast is.

You lose exactly 5% damage reduction switching from Heavy to Medium armor. I wore one piece of Medium armor and my guild gave me **** about the reduction in 1% damage reduction for that one piece of armor. So I switched back to heavy armor.

We had the same issue with the republic side being severely outnumbered. Whenever it got to the point where there was any significant amount of republic players on Ilum then the imperials would zerg us like crazy and we'd be outnumbered by anywhere from 3 or 5 to 1. It was terrible. We'd spend a lot of time camped up in our base not really doing much until me and some friends came up with a tactic that we called "The Jedi Knight Yo-Yo" You basically needed a Jedi Knight (Guardian or Sentinel), a Sage and as many Vanguards as you could get together. At the time usually about 2 or 3 before people figured out they were OP. It was pretty hilarious, we would wait for the imperials to come close and try to fish our base. So I would use Force Leap and jump out into the crowd and pop Awe, along with all my defensive cool downs so that I didn't get freakin' murdered. My Sage friend would then pull me back into our base and then the Vanguards that we had in the group would pull any of the stunned imperials into our base immediately killing them and giving us kills. I found it hilarious how shockingly reliable this trick was.

1) I play a Vigilance Guardian and as others have said the General perception is that the DPS is weaker than with other classes. Generally at the end of a war zone I'm not at the top of war zone damage charts unless I outgear my opponents by a certain amount. If we're on equal gear my damage is still good in a 1v1 fight but other DPS classes like the Assault/Pyrotech Vanguard/Powertech or a Marauder/Sentinel will have a solid advantage vs. me in single target DPS. 2) I enjoy playing my class rather a great deal. The rotation and fluidity of the Vigilance DPS spec is all there. The single Target DPS could be a bit better in some respects. Not a huge deal better but just a little bit. I also think that Plasma Brand should be adjusted. The DOT should be a shorter duration but apply the same amount of damage. Additionally, it should apply a snare to make it more comparable to Force Exhaustion. Force Exhaustion does more damage, has a 10 meter range and applies a snare.

I open with saber throw and charge just because it builds so much focus and makes me very hard to kill. But I try not to get into the trap where I Force Push someone and then immediately charge them again. I will force push someone and then usually run over to them while they're getting up. If they use their knockback then I'll just immediately leap back to them. It's extremely frustrating for a lot of people.

If someone using Shien seems squishy then they're doing it wrong. Unremitting/Unstoppable gives us an additional 20% damage reduction after a force leap. So when we initiate a fight we have 55% damage reduction (assuming full war hero) and are immune to CC. If you use Focused Defense proactively and you have Commanding Awe then you will have 50% damage reduction and a self heal. (+15% damage reduction from Commanding Awe). If you're in an all out survival situation then you can switch to Soresu form and activate Focused Defense. I do this all the time when I'm in huttball. If I'm in Soresu form with Focused Defense active getting shot by sith lightning actualy does 0 damage to me. I actually remember one situation where I popped Focused Defense, Enure while I was in Soresu Form and was getting shot by sith lightning by a sorc who had less expertise than me. Not only was I not taking any damage but I was actually being healed! It was hilarious. This is by no means common but it shows you the type of durability you can get out of being a Vigilance Guardian. I'm a pretty tough nut to crack.

I think there should be a new ability called "Nerf Operative." It should be a passive buff that goes along with our AoE taunt. Whenever you use your taunt it makes any and all Operatives caught in the AoE completely ineffective in the war zone for the next 15 seconds. I think this will balance the game quite a bit.

Everything that you're saying is absolutely correct. The AoE damage is absolutely crucial in PvP and very very useful. However, the Vigilance Guardian utility is actually also incredibly useful. There are situations where regardless of your spec it isn't realistic to expect you to be able to kill everyone who is currently surrounding you. Sometimes the most important thing is just to be able to survive for as long as possible. Vigilance does this MUCH better than the Focus spec does. Examples of this would be situations like if your trying to keep enemies from capturing an objective while you wait for your team mates to arrive in pretty much any war zone. Vigilance does this better than Focus.

I hate the voice too. It sounds absolutely ridiculous. The best way to fix this is, of course, to nerf operatives.

You'd think.

If you're a Guardian then rated groups will want you as a Defense spec or as Focus. This is mostly because asking for anything else requires too much thought. With Focus people who don't play the class just assume it's the best because of the huge damage number at the end of the game and people like numbers that are big. They don't think about the overall usefulness of a class besides damage number. Vigilance hybrids and Vigilance Guardians in general are actually quite useful but for some reason still frowned upon in ranked war zones because people don't directly pay attention to what you do during war zones even if you do score 3 out of 5 of a teams points in a huttball or get twice as many killing blows as an assault Vanguard in Civil War. All they care about is "Was the number that I like to look at on the ending scoreboard as big as I think it should be?" While I understand how obviously useful it is to have someone drop a massive AoE critial hit force sweep for 6k damage to everyone in the area of affect, I also find Focus to be incredibly boring, predictable and squishy. As soon as I've done my first couple of sweep bombs and they see me focusing healers usually ranked teams will immediately mark me and focus me down after every force sweep. It's obnoxious at best. I personally find Vigilance to be a great deal more survivable and the CC immunity is a game saving ability in War Zones. Also, the +60% critical hit chance on Dispatch from Force Rush means that if someone needs to be elimintated within 10 meters of me as long as they're below 30% health then there's very little they can do to keep that from happening. I'm just about finished building my War Hero gear for my Vigilance spec and I find the overall damage to be similar between the two specss. Vigilance is more useful overall... but it doesn't put up the big sweep. So people won't take you. because they read the forum. Additionally, they want tank spec'ed guardians solely for the purpose of Guarding healers. So ya know. If you're tanked spec'ed and geared be prepared for a long boring war zone of getting punched in the face for a healer. But that's just my opinion. If you're into that sort of thing then go ahead. But you will NEVER get MVP votes for it. I've done it. About 50% of the time I MIGHT get an MvP vote from the healer that I just spent an entire war zone Guarding. If I'm lucky. But there were more times when I got no recognition for it. So I stopped doing it.

Before anyone mistakes me for a random QQ'er I'm going to begin this by saying that I'm actually a Guardian and not a Sorc/Sage. I've never played that class. I currently have no intention of playing the class either. I'm very happy with both DPS specs for my Guardian and I hope that doesn't change any time soon. But just from having done several PvP War Zones as both Guardian DPS classes I can say without question that there is a significant problem with Sorc/Sage War Zone survivability. There's a dramatic difference in the overall survivability of this class in pre-50 war zones and post 50 war zones overall. In pre-50 war zones they seem reasonably invincible due to their damage absorbing bubble that they can cast. Dealing with this bubble can be a pretty frustrating experience pre-50. However, post 50 the bubble is the exact opposite. The bubble is about as good as nothing post level 50. I consistently hit sorcs for anywhere from 2.5 - 5k damage through the bubble depending on what spec I'm playing at the time. This is really a shame because of the fact that they really seem to depend on that for a lot of their survivability. I think the problem is that this defensive bubble doesn't scale particularly well at all. It absorbs a certain flat amount of damage and that's really it. At lower levels it absorbs what seems like WAY too much damage and at the higher levels it doesn't seem to offer nearly enough protection. This is causing a lot of the light armor wearing sorcs/sages to just plain melt in war zones as soon as they're focused. Wouldn't it make sense for the amount of damage that the bubble absorbs scales with the Sorc/Sages stats and level? I think that would really help with a lot of the current survivability issues that I percieve them as having. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like they have a survivability issue. Mostly because of how fast I kill them regardless of defensive cool downs. I can't imagine that's supposed to be normal. God forbid they ever get hit by a Powertech/Vanguard as well. They just explode in about 4 shots. Anyway, that's just how I feel. I mean considering that they nerfed the Sorc/Sage damage there really isn't a reason for them to die so fast anymore I think. Agree? Disagree? Let me know how you guys feel. It just feels really unbalanced to me.

I play a Guardian and I've actually had the issue where I was knocked to the ground and couldn't get up as well. It wasn't just from one type of knockback. It was from any number of knockbacks but it was all based on whether or not I died while knocked back. If I died while knocked back then I would respawn still knocked down. I couldn't move or do anything. I've been booted from war zones because of this bug. It's really annoying.

His numbers are assuming that your gear is augmented or that you have the endurance stim. If you have gear without augments then you're looking at having around 16k hitpoints on the DPS battle master gear. For the War Hero set you'll end up with around just under 18k Hp. When you get it augmented that's when it gets to around 19k. I'm currently sitting at 18.5k on my augmented gear for my Vigilance spec and just over 19k on my augmented gear for Focus Spec.

If you're doing it correctly then you will never be in a situation where absolutely every move is on cool down and you will need to use slash for any reason whatsoever. I took slash off of my toolbar and replaced it with riposte. It's a much more useful talent because it does about as much damage, it doesn't miss and it's off the global cool down. Using Slash is definitely a DPS loss. If you're Vigilance spec'ed the stop using it.

Ya know they DID say that the hood up/down toggle was supposed to be in the next major update after 1.2. I find this a little annoying because I actually just finished augmenting my jedi battle lord armor and it's still annoying to wear because of the FREAKIN' HOOD! haha.... C'mon Bioware! Please please please add the hood up/down toggle!

Truly. It seems like they didn' t take into account the daily and weekly war zone rewards when they did this calculation. I mean, unless you're somehow playing 800 war zones without ever picking up your daily/weekly missions. That sounds like something that you'd do if you truly hate yourself.

That was probably me. Do you play on Prophecy of the Five? Because I had a very similar experience the other day except ya know... I was on the other end. But don't worry, it's sunshine and rainbows on the other end of it once you get your battle master gear. Do you have a Guild? I do. I group up in regular war zones all the time with my lower geared guild members so that they can earn their battle master gear. If you have an organized guild that has players that aren't complete selfish jerks then you should group up with them to help you along in regular war zones. If they're smart they should be playing regular war zones as well so that they can get extra comms to buy more pieces of BM gear in order to customize their war hero gear. So playing regular war zones when you're full war hero geared isn't actually a complete waste of time. Also, another great thing that you can do for your alts is that you can buy battle master gear on your main and put the mods/enhancements/armorings into legacy gear. Then you can send the gear to your alt and they'll be able to use it because it's bound to your legacy and not your character. It's a great way to have a character with full Battle Master gear as a fresh 50. I know that doesn't help you now, but your alts will have a much smoother progression. Anyway, I'm sure you're sick of hearing people say this but it's really not nearly as bad as it used to be. You hit 50 and you get into the 50 bracket and the first thing that happens to you is a battle master geared scoundrel/operative would decloack, stun you, knock you to the ground and kill you before you could get up. THAT was annoying. Now you hit 50, you get free gear, you can earn your battle master gear in about 2 weeks of consistent play (I know people who have done it in 3 days) and you can earn your war hero gear in ranked war zones where if you win you can get up to 140 ranked war zone comms (equal to 420 regular war zone comms). i'm just saying, it's really not THAT hard to get gear anymore.

You're exactly the kind of person I was talking about in my post so I figure it's fair to assume that you don't have gear. I've been playing war zones for a while and I can tell the difference between a player who is geared and a skilled player who is geared. Your manner of speaking assumes that all players that have gear have no skill, which is kind of hilarious and pompous of you. It's about as funny as the way that you're talking down to me as well. "I know it's hard to swallow"... like the fact that you DON'T have gear and HAVEN'T played long enough to get it somehow makes you a guru on the game. I also like the way that you completely ignored everything I said about how sometimes players who have gear are also very skilled due to the amount of time you have to spend doing war zones to actually get there gear. There's a good chance that you're going to end up getting very good at the game if it's something that you dedicated yourself to doing every day on a daily basis for months. It's a pretty simple concept. But that's ok. You clearly know more about the game than me because you play... less...? No one is claiming that every player who has gear is an amazing player. Far from it. There are some very bad players who have very good gear on my server. But more often than not the people who complain the most and are just plain terrible at the game also have terrible gear on my server. So instead of improving their gear and learning to play they just come to the forum and complain about the gear progression. This isn't a coincidence. But you keep on telling yourself what you want to believe to make yourself feel better. Gear = Skilless hack who is obviously terrible at the game. No Gear = Supremely skilled underdog who is being opressed by the unwashed hordes of slobbering idiots who only win because of unfair gear advantage. That's EXACTLY how things are.