You're talking about a difference of 80 hitpoints and .3 bonus damage in some of the cases referenced. At most, we're talking 250 HP and 10 bonus damage. I think maybe 1 in 100,000 fights will that difference actually matter to the outcome at all. Unless you think that you and the other people you're fighting have the EXACT SAME identical skill level to within .001% of each other, than it literally doesn't matter, it's not changing the fight.

I typically run something like this, but I've got weird online times and frequencies so I'm pretty much a solo queue regstar only, not sure I'd use it in ranked. In regs though it packs a punch and is a lot of fun, very survivable. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rfrodbfzMZczZfrzor.3

What I get from this is what I already expected. The difference between all the trouble and lengths of exploiting bolster vs just using the PvP gear as it comes is.... less than 100 base ability damage. This game is not so tightly/competitively tuned that it matters

Which is basically what I said. And hey, I play Concealment.

Operatives have no cool-down on Exfiltrate. It costs 21 energy when the talent is taken to reduce the energy cost. Which means you can use it approximately 5 times in a row before running out of energy. If you blow your Adrenaline Probe CD to restore energy you can use it 7-9 times in a row. That's assuming you're doing nothing but spamming it back to back to back. If you give it a 2-3 second window between uses to allow energy regen, you can easily get more.But you'll be energy starved when you get there.

To clarify, if you can equip a shield, the shield will activate no matter what stance you're in. So you do get a 5% Shield chance for holding a shield, even if you're in a different stance. But 5% of a chance is so low as to be virtually meaningless. Tank stance provides +15% chance for a base of 20, plus tanking talents raise that higher, and so tank stance is required to make shields MEANINGFUL. But they will, technically, work whether you're in tanking stance or not. But you're gaining a 5% chance to shield at the cost of potentially 60-100 on your bonus damage. Not worth it.

It has basically always worked http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=585245 It just doesn't appear in your combat log/on screen as shielded, which is why people thought it was broken. But extensive testing by multiple people over thousands of hits has confirmed that guard damage is in fact shielded against at a rate consistent with your shield rate. At least since January of this last year.

They fixed Guard so that yes, incoming damage through guarding someone can be mitigated by shield. What makes it tanky, and arguably tankier than a Shieldtech build, is the AOE damage reduction, the additional stacking damage reduction while stunned, and the CD reduction on your energy shield allowing you to have that cooldown up almost 2-3 times longer. With energy shield up, when stunned, an AP powertech can easily reduce incoming damage by more than 70 percent.

Every night this week I've qued up for solo ranked, and then given up after 40m+ with no pop. I'm just gearing alts now.

Unless somehow you're getting paid RL money to compete at PvP here, then we're all amateurs.

Until they fix it in the next patch, which they've confirmed they're doing.

Thanks for digging the quote up. I was almost sure that I had heard that before, but could not remember the source. So it's developer confirmed. Critical hits can never be shielded.

PvE. Many PvE mobs have Defense/Resistance depending on their level (Normal, Strong, Elite, Champion, Boss) against Force Attacks.

Hey, I'll try and answer some of these for you as best I can, I've studied a lot of the theory-crafting/math, but I'm by no means an expert. Some of this may be slightly wrong in some cases. But it should give you a good general overview. First the damage types. Regular/Weapon damage is White on your screen. Force/Tech damage is Yellow. This used to be a more significant difference, because White damage could be shielded but Force/Tech damage (Yellow) could not be. This changed in a recent patch so that now SOME (but not all) Yellow Force/Tech Damage can be shielded. Specifically Energy/Kinetic damage can be shielded. Elemental/Internal can not be. Elemental/Internal typicall has much lower damage reduction as well. Armor is effective against kinetic/energy damage. It is not effective against Elemental/Internal. But Elemental/Internal damage tends to be much lower in scale, most of the Elem/Internal things I can think off of the top of my head is dots. To Sum: White/Weapon Damage Shieldable, can be kinetic or energy. Can be shielded, Armor is Effective Yellow/Force Tech Damage, can be kinetic, energy, elemental, or internal. Kinetic/Energy can be shielded and can be reduced by Armor. Elemental/Internal bypasses armor and can not be shielded. Accuracy vs Defense: Your Base Accuracy is 90% for basic attacks (pretty much only like, your first attack ever) and 100% for everything else, hover over your accuracy stat on the screen and you will see the difference for accuracy vs special attacks. Adding the Accuracy stat stacks onto this. There is a formula for to-hit rolls that takes your level vs attacker's level into account. But generally it is Accuracy-Defense as a percentile chance. 100 Accuracy - 25 percent Defense chance means 75% chance to hit. If you fail to hit, you will see either Dodge/Miss/Resist pop up on your screen, depending on whether the attack was Ranged White/Melee White/Yellow Force( or Tech). There is no mathematical difference. The Dodge/Evasion (Scoundrel/Operative) ability you're talking about just raises your Defense chance for x period of time. This to-hit roll applies to ALL attacks of all types, again as of recent patches that made Accuracy slightly more important. But Special attacks (again, this is basically everything except your first attack) do get an extra +10% accuracy. The base defense chance for all characters is 5% (10% for tank classes) against White Damage and 0% against Yellow damage. Generally, there is no way to raise your Defense against Yellow damage, though you can Accuracy Debuff your opponent. Shielding: IF the attack hits, then there are three possibilities. It is a Crit. It Gets Shielded. Or it is a Normal Hit. As Crit and shield chances raise high enough, they push the chance of a normal hit off the table. Crits are not shielded, because of the "flow" in which the crit chance is determined first. Example 1: Attack hits. I have 30% chance to crit. If I fail to crit, then YOU have a 30% chance to shield. Example 2: I have a 100% chance to crit (from temporary buff ability). There will be no shielding or normal hit. So combat flow is: Did I hit? (Accuracy - Defense Chance). Did I crit? (Crit Percent Chance). IF I crit calculate crit damage. IF I do not crit, roll Shield Chance If shielded, reduced damage If not shielded, regular damage Damage Reduction: Again, there are complex formulas that depend on your level vs the level of your attacker. But generally effects are multiplicative, not additive. Example 1: You have 1000 Armor. I have 10% Armor penetration. Your DR is calculated as if you have 900 damage. Example 2: You have 50% damage reduction. You also shield the attack and absorb 20% of the damage. I do 100 damage base. Result is: 40 damage (100 divided by 2. Then 50 - 10) Abilities: A little more complex. Some abilities increase damage reduction. Other abilities reduce incoming damage. The type will change the order of operation. So if you're trying to math-craft, you need to pay explicit attention to whether the ability reduces incoming damage, or raises your damage reduction. There is a difference. Example 1: Skill Tree passive buff reduces incoming AOE damage by 30%. I have 50% base DR. Incoming AOE Damage is 100. Final Damage will be calculated as 14 ( 70 - (70 * .80) ) Example 2: Passive Buff raises DR by 30%. My Base DR is 50%. Incoming Damage is 100. Final Damage is 20 (100-80) Saber Ward/Shroud/Evasion: These generally raise your Defense chances directly in an additive way, but are complicated to explain since they all work a little differently: Operative/Scoundrel (Evasion/Dodge): Raises your Defense by +200% (Base Defense 10% becomes 210% with ability activated) but only against White Damage. Saber Ward: Raises Defense by +50% against White Damage Shroud: Raises Defense against Yellow Damage by +200%. It is currently known to be bugged, more information can be found searching the forums. Also, not all hostile effects are removable. Plus, some DoT skill trees have a passive buff so that if their DoT is cleansed a weaker version is immediately applied. DoTs: Almost always elemental/internal. Once applied, each individual tick of the dot is rolled as normally and so may either be Resisted, Crit, or Normal. Since they are almost always elemental/internal, they will never be shielded. Though there are one or two DoTs I can think of (Force Crush/Exhaustion really the only one off the top of my head) that are kinetic. Phew, that was really really long, but I think I got everything, any questions?

I keep seeing people saying "But look at all the people posting" or "This is happening to everyone in my guild!" or "Everyone I know" You realize, even if it was happening to every single person in your 100 man guild, that's still a statistically insignificant sample of the total playerbase right, and fairly meaningless in terms of deciding whether the math is working right. Even if it honestly was happening that every single poster in this thread complaining about it was having the same WZ 6 times in a row, that probably wouldn't fall out of the expected range given the total SWTOR playerbase and really isn't proof that anything is broken.

I literally don't know what the OP is talking about, I've been eating face on my Concealment Operative. They're doing great from what I can see. Sure, not the BEST, but they can definitely hold their own.

They've explicitly stated that expertise is not included in the stat budget of the Partisan/Conqueror pieces.

Yeah, I would take both and drop the alacrity talent, which is so small.

Hit and Run has nothing to do with your hard stun. It is a +50% for 4 seconds movement speed increase every time that you use Shiv. It's in the first level of the lethality tree. You're thinking of Slip Away.

Um, Force barrier (the new channeled 10 second ability) makes you immune to damage during the duration. Are you sure he wasn't just using that? I only ask because at least on my server, I see a ******** of people who are still unloading all the burst they've got while the Sorc is channeling this ability, making me facepalm while I just calmly stand there and wait until I can actually do damage again without burning through all my resources.

So has anyone crunched the numbers yet and looked over the pieces to figure out what's the best way to min/max the new PvP gear? Which ones should we be trying to farm mods from, what the sweet spots for Crit/Power/Alacrity are, things like that?

The shield can currently on live block "white" damage, weapon hits only. This means that it's fantastic against a Sniper or Marauder (who primarily rely on weapon damage) and useless against all "yellow" Force/Tech damage. When 2.0 goes live next week though, shields will be able to block SOME Force/Tech "yellow" damage, and will be much more effective than they are now on live. Additionally Kinetic Ward is getting a secondary talent in the tree that will give it quite the boot.

I lol'd at "made us go back to" Did Bioware send people to your house and put guns to your guild's head and say 'You better do the Nightmare mode or *********** else!'

No, Bolster does not give you stats equivilent to top-end gear. It gives you stats roughly equal to or slightly better than current recruit. So slightly less than War Hero stats, even if you go in naked, so top-end gear will still have a 1-3% advantage. It just narrows the gap so that someone who comes in in full Columi isn't exploding in 2 hits.

10-29, 30-54, 55.