These numbers mean nothing unless you know the armor : damage reduction ratio. I'll use my own toon as an example. I have 6600 armor which represents a 39.47 (call it 40) percent damage reduction. 6% of 40 is 2.4. That is to say 6% armor pen adds a flat 2.4% damage on 6600 armor. Now my base health is 18k. To go from 100% to 0 health you need to do 18k damage. 2.4% of 18k is 360 dmg. That's how much damage the Armor Pen has added. Base CS does approx 1.1k damage. 6% of 1.1k is 66 dmg. 360 dmg / 66 dmg = 5.45 ( call it 6) So basically you would have to use CS 6 times to equal the damage from Armor Pen. I like this result. Much better than people arguing over builds that don't include Upheaval for PVP.

Spinning kick gives 1 bar of resolve, it does not fill the resolve bar. Its a 2 second knockdown, untrinketable and you can't do anything until you get back up so its *almost* three seconds. I can almost fit 2 CSs in per Spinning Kick. The second one lands just after they getup but before they can knock me back.

Finding a PA proc on your character when you are being healed/buffed/debuffed constantly is impossible. Hell I've tried to pickup the yellow tinge my character takes on for PA just solo'ing and its near impossible. You have to play at a particular zoom level to even see it minutely.

Carefully.

Add to this, if you use Force Potency and then use Project and get an Upheaval proc, the Upheaval proc will eat the second charge of Force Potency.

Where are you pulling this 22% number from? In 2 piece PVE gear you can get DW up to 20% (+5% from 2 piece bonus).

Surging Charge would be so much better if they unlinked it from Saber Conduit and just kept it linked to Static Charges. I've used this build for PVP, its definitely useful for medal collection and survivability.

See the many other threads in consular/inquisitor forums. I'm not disagreeing with you, however if you know you are weak in a certain area, then consider doing the following: Popping your +def trinket after the pull. Getting hit 3/4's of the time just became getting hit for 2/3's of the time. Now how long does your DW last? Knowing your DW has a 12 sec CD and lasts 20 seconds allows you to setup some pulls for instant DW recovery. Start with DW at 10 seconds left then you can guarantee that your next DW is up instantly after the last one fades. Getting a higher base shield rating. We already start with high +def, but we lack +shield in a big way (due to DW use). But what if we compromised on a percent or two of +def to stack +shield. BTW you get more shield % per point invested than +def, take a look at the graphs on Sithwarrrior.com. Pop an absorb adrenal (for +armor), and a shield/absorb trinket, to make up the difference. Again, I'm not saying there isn't a problem with DW, what I am advocating here are ways to deal with the problem right now, so we can continue to tank and do well while BW has a chance to review us.

You already answered yourself.

Why would a Kinetic open with Project? Waste of force. You can open with Spinning Kick as well in fact you can use it out of stealth as Kinetic.

You should probably understand the context in which the link was given before posting drivel like this.

So your argument is that Chain Shock is terrible because when you pop recklessness + shock there is a chance that your second charge of recklessness might be eaten by the second shock hit? Yes it sucks and perhaps we will get it reviewed, but it doesn't lessen how much better chain shock is than 9% arpen. I do agree that Lightning Recovery is awesome, but I'm not losing burst for utility CD's. Especially since I can control when the fight starts and my chain shock in full tank gear/spec does more damage on a single hit then I would gain with 9% arpen.

As others have pointed out, he's got pocket heals and no one is targetting him. He's not playing to control because I don't think there's ever a situation presented in the video where he's being controlled. However if an Assassin opens on you as ranged, they are uber easy to kite from the start, and if you aren't getting your procs up, then you aren't doing decent burst, whereas they can get all their procs/burst up from afar. Not sure if you play a sin or not, but he does indeed do lots of control, he just doesn't open with it. Pressure play is being able to put a player into a heal deficit before they have a chance to react, if sins don't play this way we get controlled and killed. Playing BM against a bunch of glads and sub glads doesn't showcase this whatsoever. Again this is why I'm not sure you play a sin at all. Knockdowns are great openers because: 1. You can't trinket it. 2. The animation to get up actually takes the knockdown time up into the 3+ second range (I can always get a solid 2+ GCDs in on a knocked down player. 3. Its low resolve. Again if you understand sins then you would understand that our burst requires significant setup. We backload burst damage whereas other classes frontload burst damage. In order to frontload our damage more, we need our opponent to be unable to keep us from doing so. Maul can hit bloody hard, but position is harder and buggy unless the target is running from you.

Because I'm assuming you manage to take that target from 100% health to 0% health. Thus doing 18k damage. Of that 18k damage, 4% of it would have been the contribution of ArPen. Totalling a measly 720 damage. No its not ever a much more significant number, in fact it becomes a much less significant number on low armored targets and over time a very small number because a chain shocking build with decent surge/power/crit will destroy that 4% number in one hit. Think about it, you have to do upwards of over 16k damage on a high armored target to make up for the loss of not using a chain shock build. 2/31/8 is the burst build, live it and love it.

You can't let him finish casting the cave-in ability. If he does manage to finish this cast then it will one shot you.

9% armor pen translates to ~4% damage increase on high armor targets, and less than 3% on lower armor targets. A high armored tank target will have about 18k health, 4% of 18k is 720 damage over the whole fight, chain shock will outperform that in less than 2 hits. Its definitely a preference, but overall the math supports chain shock. Spinning Kick -> CS -> Force Slow -> CS (whatever the Imp equivs are) from stealth, how else are you going to setup your burst? By not opening with a stun you give your opponent a chance to kite you before you can setup your burst. Never a good idea. As long as you get Force Slow off before they get up you are fine. On low resolve targets with Force Stun/Low Slash up, you shouldn't even need Force Slow.

It's so you can watch CD's in the bottom bar. You don't need to see the abilities that are GCD or so close to GCD bound that its irrelevant to watch.. Many of us have been doing this for years. Hell I'd love to be able to play with just one bar visible.

Look at what I quoted and how it applies. In WoW a two handed weapon deals greater damage than a single handed weapon. However you don't get to equip anything in your offhand slot, meaning its possible to customize the stats of your 1h+offhand character more than your 2H wielding character. In SWTOR you can equip a MH+offhand combo period, no stat discrepancies exist and weapon damage is the same across the board.

This is WoW-think. DBLS may be a two handed weapon, but you can still place a focus/shield in your offhand. DBLS + Offhand is stat equivalent to two LS. Your argument here is invalid.

There are no reliable rotations in this game, so macro'ing will for the most part be a waste of time. There are certain things you may want to group together, but due to the limits of our force power/regeneration, you may not reliably be able to group them together. Overall, its probably better to learn the system and forget macro's. Bioware did a great job in making sure the user was engaged in the combat system, trying to avoid it will simply make it harder.

Happens often enough. Solution is to select a target and hit ctrl + 1 he will instantly start healing again.

Trash mobs are trash whether they are boss spawned or otherwise, KW isn't making or breaking those encounters, if you feel it is then you are doing something else wrong. However I think the argument here is really one of being squishier in a particular situation and not liking it, that's fine, but that really doesn't mean its broken. I can't say that KW being down for a whopping 5-7 seconds every 12 during an AoE fest is a noticeable disadvantage either. Again obtuse statement, no one is saying don't bring it up. For a problem that's not entirely problematic. That's great, no one is saying DON'T DO IT KITRU. Not even me. However I'm going to keep offering alternatives that we can use RIGHT NOW, instead of harping on the fact that there is a very slight problem with Shadow AoE tanking.

First, the SWTOR world is controlled by Bioware, we simply play within it. Thus adaptation to the skills we have, the items we have available and the strategies we can undertake ARE solutions. Whether they fully solve the problem or not is irrelevant, because we do not control the world at large. Simply knowing that Bioware *could* introduce *A* solution, does not preclude adapting to our current situation which may or may not change also being a solution. Again you take an idea and turn it into an absolute. You aren't going to kite incessantly, you only need to if you need some breathing room for healers to get you back up, for CD's to reset etc. There's no one sitting here saying, kite mobs FTW! However to throw the idea of kiting out the window simply because you believe we have piss poor aoe threat generation (we don't, but I digress) is again obtuse. Again no one is arguing otherwise, in fact we have all done it, either in this game or others. However you aren't pointing out anything that hasn't been pointed out in beta already. We already knew KW was lackluster during mass AoE fights. I'm glad you care so much about tanking trash, I really do, but saying we are lackluster AoE tanks because we lose 15-20% shield rating in 3-5 seconds on a 12 second CD is painful to read, because we are still very good tanks even for AoE fights. Our CD's, our stuns, our ability to scale armor adrenals, our debuffs and our AoE threat and a lot more are working in our favor even for tanking trash.

The problem is valor in Ilum is easier and much quicker. For people who already have full champ gear, there's no reason to queue wz's. I went from insta-queue warzones full of people who actually pvp'ed, to 20 min queue wz's full of absolute nubs. Then I go to ilum and there's 2+ ops groups hunter sith ... Stupid move BW.