I use harpoon as an opener on a few fights and sometimes on Zorn or Kephess adds if I don't need to reposition a bomber. It generates ~3k threat, is ranged and doesn't do damage (important if damaging the target might kill me or break cc). It's something I can snowball with taunts or combine with other openers.

Probably a range nerf on plastique. *Maybe* a range nerf on HIB which would hurt me a lot more and in both DPS and tanking modes. Tbh I already try to be in melee most of the time so if they leave the dps/burst where it is I probably won't notice much.

Liked the guide, it might be the best I've seen. My personal preferences: 1) To take the additional elemental damage rather than containment tactics (marginally higher contribution to raid dps vs marginally better toolkit on trash). 2) The start of my "rotation" also prioritises bursting threat rather than building my power screen stack since this is the only time in the fight that threat might be sensitive. Nobody has ever noticed the difference in survivability but a few people have commented on the difference between my opening threat and some other tanks. 3) I have no use for explosive round, there's always a cheaper alternative. Also, while there are situations where full auto would be a good DPS choice they are few and if I'm that far from a mob then I am not holding still.

I'd be more likely to pay to keep them out of this game. If they ever did bring back world pvp, flying mounts would kill it immediately.

I love it when people say they want to min/max... but only a little. You don't have to be a mathematician to use someone else's spreadsheet.

I use it every day. Sometimes multiple times. Never had a failed run. Only ever met a couple of people I'd prefer not to run with again.

I thought it looked identical to columi gear?

Happy to help: http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/attachment.php?aid=295

I can't remember where I first read it but there seems even in this thread to be a trend that endurance gearing is favoured more often by tanks clearing EC HM 16-man. In 8-man defensive statting seems more popular. It was thought that with the resource pools of four healers it was better to gear for spike survival rather than efficiency. Edit: Found it. Justcae's post in the other thread.

Assault vanguards should be guarded and their tanks should be taking advantage of taunt boosts. Peeling aggro on trash might be a bigger issue but it's trash and you have heavy armour and cryo grenades. It's old content but assault spec really shines on a fight with lots of burst phases like Soa.

My first dark side choice after being rigidly light up to that point. It really made me re-evaluate all the previous choices. I realise now that my trooper would have been a far better soldier, and no less honourable, if I'd played him neutral/grey. I wonder if there is any other strategy I could have used which would have resulted in fewer casualties.

Thanks for posting Justcae.

White and red is in the game. Just not on the pvp vendor.

So it's effective health theory vs avoidance gearing all over again? Interesting.

Subjective gameplay: Guardians/juggernauts are based on WoW warriors right down to stacking sunders, building rage and the names of many abilities. Shadows/assassins share some concepts with unholy DK tanks. But also have druid tools like stealth. Vanguards/powertechs don't fall easily into the same frame of reference. They were originally going to tank from range (and still can with a little cheesing). I could point to sword-and-board procs and other minor stuff but the WoW comparisons would be a little forced. They play a little like vanguards in ME2. In terms of niche, don't bother. In terms of relative performance read the stickies or this blog. For further theory check here.

Heavy.

It's another option if you're forced to dps from further than 10m. It doesn't bypass armour the way our elemental attacks do. If I'm closer I'd rather spend the cells on something that procs IA. For me it's not worth speccing.

Sounds like you need a soldier!

Is DPS really more engaging or fun than tanking or healing? I always thought of it as the thing I spec for when I'm too drunk to tank.

My card's a 560. I was running everything on max except for shadows which were completely disabled. Performance was great, some lag loading fleet but basically ok once loaded and perfect everywhere else in the game. Tried the optimiser. It switched all my settings to low and enabled shadows. My fps did go up but not enough to make a qualitative difference and my game looked terrible. I'm guessing it works better for some people than others.

Any one of a dozen TH-15 series trooper helmets. Colour matched to chest.

Firstly: http://tor-fashion.com/2012/05/11/death-claw/ Secondly: http://tor-fashion.com/2012/05/13/imperial-pilot/

Reflective shield sounds nice. Would fit the shieldspec concept. I've been wanting an ability where you pull out a vibroknife and gut an enemy below 20% hp. A lot of other classes, including both of the other tanks, get something like this and I want one too. Not that I feel underpowered without it of course.

You don't have to tank those adds. I never do. Either get one of your dps to wipe them out while you stay on the boss or get one of your dps to interrupt incinerate while you go kill them.

I like your solution ideas. Here's another for the mix: In Warhammer Online guard didn't just reduce a party member's threat, it actually transferred it to the tank. Because of this, guard became a critical part of the tank's threat generation and always scaled with the DPS you were tanking for.