If you're in any amount of DPS gear, that means you intend to deal damage in some way. It's simply NOT worth losing the force power (which is a HUGE damage gain) when you equip a shield generator. The debate is more for hybrid specs and I feel it's again, situational. If you intend to sit at a flag/cap or run across the map, then go with the shield generator. If you're going to be providing some protection to a healer while trying to kill someone, go with the shield generator.

I've experimented with tossing in vicious slash in high-rage situations where other sources of rage generation are possible, it's POSSIBLE to weave it in, but it's very much a marginal damage increase overall. Done perfectly, it's a gain of about 30-60 DPS depending on how you manage to get it in, but it's so tight for rage and has no other benefit (doesn't provide savagery or dots/armor debuffs/rage gen). Otherwise it can actually lead to a damage decrease if you're not careful with how much you use it. Not worth the hassle, imo

Malice is amazing for PvE DPS and arguably decent for PvP if you want to skip out on intimidation as vengeance (which I don't recommend). It seems to affect all of vengeance's dot damage as well (even though it's not all identified as force damage, don't tell bioware that!).

*happy dance* someone gets it : )

Again, other classes do that better. Why bring a rage juggernaut when a marauder or a well-played madness sorc can do more damage AND provide better utility. Slash SHOULD be good, but it isn't. Rage marauders LOVE overpower due to the fact that berserk refunds the rage cost when they use slash (they actually gain rage with VS crits, we just offset losses). It's a problem the spec suffers with in the long term, the lack of a meaningful filler that doesn't force us to itemize in unoptimal ways hinders the spec greatly.

Pyro is fine. Good players know how immoble and squishy they are. Bad players, as always, will continue to flounder.

Here's the big problem with rage. It's ability to sustain rage. Rage, prepatch, got away with the rage issue because there was such a short cooldown between smashes and shockwave generators that it did not need to worry unduly about keeping enough rage to smash, enrage's rage gen was enough that you could almost ignore assault and use sundering assault in conjunction with enrage and charge to keep up your rage throughout a fight. Now, you have the problem wherein rage has to use enrage at the start of a fight before charge to deliver it's maximum burst. With the reduced rage gain from enrage and the longer duration between smashes, you have downtime between smash that can only really be filled by vicious slash (which, if you're gearing for, skews itemization). Simply put, rage has too little rage to spend and too many things to spend it on within the time frame of shockwave ticks.

Rage is fine if you play against idiots that don't know what they're doing. Otherwise, the spec in its current state has serious rage-sustainment issues. You can make the argument that OMG I GET 900k+ DAMAGE GAMES ALL THE TIME, but the fact of the matter is that the spec functions on a crutch reliant upon your own healers to front any sort of mobility or long term damage. Not to mention that rage does not offer any unique utility that other juggernaut specs or other classes cannot offer. I would sooner take a rage marauder (which is still a horrible spec relative to annih/carnage) than a rage juggernaut because at least the marauder has the means to provide better offensive utility for the group as a whole. Vengeance offers unstoppable which, in and of itself, is more than enough reason to bring one along (being able to charge a sorc and drop his bubble without being stunned or functioning as a secondary, perhaps even primary ball carrier is huge). The rest of the tree is just icing on the cake. It has the best rage management of all three specs and the best ability to make use of enraged defense (which is absolutely amazing if you use it at the time times with enrage).

Lolwut. Force grip is in immortal for a reason. Vengeance juggernauts or heaven forbid, rage juggernauts with the ability would be nigh unstoppable in the right hands (though it would certainly help them with their *ahem* rage issues). Force choke is fine as is, it's very useful as an interrupt or a positional block against a lot of classes. If it ignored resolve, we'd be the most irritating class to contend against as endzone defenders.

OP, you misread the article. Ohlen contended that sorc healers never treated force like a resource (which was true) and that the changes in their healing efficiency was made in order to address the discrepancy. Sorc healers are fine as they stand, their healing output is slightly lower than BH/Op healers BUT they have FAR better offensive group utility (ranged interrupt/pulls/sprints/stuns) which the other classes lack. Bad Sorc healers need to get used to better positioning, the class does more than well if you play the maps right.

The 4pc set bonus is definitely worth it. It lets you keep up stacks of sunder up and get them up more quickly while making switches on fights a lot easier (which is the crux of all the EC Fights atm). The extra rage generation also enables you to sustain a higher DPS rotation and enables you to almost remove assault from your rotation.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101RrZsMrRruddroZM.1 and http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101MMZsMrRruddGRZM.1

Rage without crush doesn't work, period. It's arguably better than it was in the patch (Thanks to the talent that gives you 4 stacks of shockwave when you enrage) but not having crush grossly reduces the control and damage you have as rage. As for vicious slash, it's workable in PvP but it's very luck dependant and causes you to shift some itemization out of power to accuracy and crit. It's up to you how you want to approach that.

Not a word on ranked warzones or premade queues, just a little tidbit mentioning class balance and huttball and how we'd have to wait for matchmaking. My guild and I are getting fed up and we're bleeding absolutely phenomenal players. Dancing around the issue isn't helping, so let me pose a simple question to you. WHEN?

The toolset for sages/sorcs is fine as is their damage. People need to stop tunnelvisioning into the hybrid spec and try out other things every now and then (A well-played madness sorc will shut down any melee except a madness sin if they play right).

If you want to keep the set bonus and use the black hole gear, just use a columi/rakata shell and toss in the armoring, it'll keep the set bonus so long as there is no set bonus attached to the armoring.

I wouldn't consider gear to be the biggest determinant of how someone performs in a WZ. Mechanics (which you sort of brush in the last part of the article with VOIP communication) are the best way to better one's performance in a game, this can range from keybinding to general class knowledge. Remember friends, knowledge is power

Vengeance Juggernaut here, this is my priority queue when I'm group queued. Priority: 1. Marauders: If I have all my CDs up I will outlast a marauder and if I keep him taunted, he won't be doing murdering my allies. The more defensive I make him, the better my chances are at getting rid of him from the game. 2. Sorc Heals, there's no class I can shut down or pressure better 3. Arsenal BH: I can shut them down and by staying on them, prevent them from killing off me or my allies. I simply cannot ignore these guys. 4. Pyro Pts: I can't ignore these guys. Enraged defense as vengeance can really help reduce a lot of the damage they deal and keep me alive while I take them out. Contrary to popular opinion (or hysteria), PT Dps drop VERY quickly when focused, even with their shield active. 5. Tanks: I can kill tanks very efficiently and quickly due to the fact that itemizing for accuracy gives me a huge edge over my teammates. 1% of accuracy past 95% is as good as 30-40 bonus damage to me. 5.5. Non-sorc heals: These are really easy for me to pressure, especially operative healers if they don't have guard. BH heals can be tricky (due to their shield preventing interrupts), but pushes/chokes can really make it hard for them to heal multiple targets and themselves. 6. Other DPS: I have no particular priority, it's all dependant upon positioning and what I want to deal with. Snipers (esp eng and lethality) are my least amenable fight while operatives and juggernauts are interesting.

No single DPS will kill an enrage timer =P, if a group is having difficulty hitting enrages, it's likely a facet of how the collective DPS is doing and is not the fault of a single player. We're quite viable in Ops/Hms and have very high DPS (top 3 imo) and offer an armor debuff as well as marginal damage reduction for tanks if you use intercede right.

If you look at the damage reduction component from 1200-1300, it's barely a 1.5% increase. The net gain of overall damage from extra power will offset a 2-3% increase in damage at that point. It's worth marginal drops in expertise (ala the crystal and hilt), not all the way.

For now, yeah

His opponents are in PvE gear for the most part. I see no issue with this type of damage as I see pretty much every other DPS class pull similar numbers on idiots that run in without recruit gear. When he fights geared opponents, his damage is pretty normal (4.3-4.5k crits max) which any Geared DPS class can emulate in a similar time frame.

I've inspected players wearing various levels of expertise and done the math manully with a spreadsheet of my own. I'm at work right now so I can't actually get to it, unfortunately.

Take it from someone that's cleared all the NM and HM content this game has to offer, there is literally NO difference between having a guardian tank or a shadow tank in your raids if they're geared and know what they're doing (Pretty much applies for all tanks tbh). if your groups are failing and you have gear, then it's probably your own fault.

A couple of things: A) Zoom out your camera, you have literally no map vision the way you're zoomed in. B) Intercede more often C) From personal experience, just shorten the video up a bit, clean up respawns/deaths etc so that we don't have to watch you exit every time.