I recall running away a lot and letting them blow themselves up, which the game counted. Just attacking a bit and staying out of melee range should work

They are white? My apologies, then. I'm posting at work and was trying to get the attacks from memory. I will have to double-check the attacks from home in a few hours.

I checked the actual set - it's the PvP War Leader's 2 piece set. I remember seeing quite a few complaints that if you had that set bonus and Status Mastery, Force Status would become channeled again.

There is a difference between special attacks and melee attacks. Dispatch, Saber Throw, Guardian Slash, Overhead Slash, and Master Strike are all Melee abilities, but are Special attacks, dealing yellow damage and having a baseline accuracy of 100%. These are not force attacks, they can be shielded against.

With Jarg and Sorno, you can have a DPS go in to a tank stance for Jarg while the actual tank is on Sorno. Most of Jarg's damage is Elemental Tech attacks, so the Extra Armor, Defense, and Shielding don't help. For the Heavy Fabricator, do that same strategy. They only need to hold the boss until the tank's debuff stacks drop off. I haven't seen a fight in Hard Mode Ops that need a second tank with anything more than a DPS build and a tank stance, but I have seen a few HM bosses enrage, so it's not worth sacrificing the DPS for a second tank.

The 100% isn't only for Force, it's for Special attacks; attacks that deal yellow damage. In melee, if you cursor over your accuracy, you'll see 2 different numbers, since melee can be normal or special. Force only has 1 number since Force attacks are always yellow damage.

Being hit doesn't reduce threat. This can be tested easily: Get threat on the mob Have someone heal you, so that they are on the threat table. Never touch the mob again and don't get healed again. If being hit reduces threat, eventually the mob will run at the healer, even though the healer hasn't generated any more threat. Losing threat single target also isn't that hard once your DPS start getting in to Rakata gear. Every upgrade for DPS is designed entirely for increasing damage, and therefor threat, while tanking pieces have very little in the way of threat, mostly accuracy, which isn't a big increase since Slash is the only ability that doesn't start off at 100% and we can talent for a 3% increase.

It's a bug with one of the Set bonuses. There's a set of gear that has a bonus of increasing the duration of Force Status, but this bonus breaks Status Mastery.

Typically, I'll start with Saber Throw, Force Leap, then Sweep After that, my priority is Sundering Strike Sweep Overhead Slash Blade Storm If I have a free CD, I'll try to use Master Strike or Force Status if available, Strike if I'm low on Focus, or Slash if I'm near Focus cap. I try to hold off on Taunt until someone grabs threat. If someone is going to pull threat in the first few seconds, I need not only taunt locking threat, but also it pushing me to the top of the chart or they'll just get aggro as soon as the 6 seconds are up.

If leaping is causing problems, you don't have to do it - the Def/Vig mitigation is about even with full Defense even without leaping. Also, don't forget you can just Guardian Leap someone in melee, you don't have to leap a ranged and leap back

The biggest thing that's going to kill a tank is the boss enraging/ If the boss is enraging, sacrificing DPS to be an off tank is going to make things worse. The reason everyone is bringing only 1 tank to Ops and using a DPS to in the offtank role on the fights that need it is that the Enrage timers can be pretty close and sacrificing damage makes the biggest issue most ops have (that or EV bugging out) worse.

The talents Warding Call, Commanding Awe, Unremitting, and Protector will also work since they reduce all damage, but only Commanding Awe and Inner Peace are passive. Additionally, Saber Ward's reduction of Force and Tech attacks should work unless you encounter some strange melee or ranged elemental attack.

Right now there isn't much point, but in 1.2 should change that due to 2 things 1. You can crit orange armor for an augment slow (you can already do this with orange weapons) 2. You can remove all item mods from Tier gear, including the set bonus With these, crafting will be able to make the Best in Slot gear for any slot that has oranges.

Sorry if I explained it poorly before - I post from work and sometimes get calls while writing, then return having lost track of my point.

I'd definitely call it a full tank. The big things that a tank needs are threat to hold the enemy and survivability since they'll be the one taking all the damage. This build has that better than any other that the Guardian has. The biggest piece of utility that it loses is the stun from Hilt Strike, which is on a one minute CD and doesn't work on bosses or the Channel-free Force Stasis, which is nice, but just lets you get out 1 more attack per minute if used on cooldown. Also, although you already have Guardian Leap, this build's playstyle encourages its use more, which helps group survivability

The actual stat scaling should be the same between both classes, but the screenshots won't show bonuses for things like Blade Barricade or Kinetic Ward Your Best bet would be to compare the effects of their talents and abilities. I think the tank class forum already has a post that does this, although it only list it from Defense, not Vig tanks.

I think you may have read some of the Pros and Cons backwards - the Vigilance tank build is actually more of a specialized tank than the defense one - it sacrifices some utility (Stun from Hilt strike and unchanneled Force Stasis) for more survivability

This isn't really a gearing issue though - they seem designed for a single tank, even on 16 mans. The pylons in EV and the Heavy Fabricator in KP are the only fights that seem built for 2 tanks and you can have a DPS throw and a shield and tank stance to offtank those.

If this is for questing, try using Kira as your companion and making sure she is geared up. She'll do a significant portion of your DPS. For Flashpoints and PvP, you won't be able to use her, but you'll be mostly focused on tanking more than DPS (provided you have enough to hold threat)

Are they at the same gear level as you? As you get to the higher gear levels, the DPS gear keeps increasing DPS and therefore threat, while the tank gear is focused more on survivability and doesn't increase threat much.

Using a Vigilant Tank spec, I feel I'm not only still viable, but better for tanking, due to having better survivability and better threat.

First thing we'll need to know is if you're a Tank or DPS - they are going to have very different gearing. For a tank, Defense will be a bit better than Shield or absorption until your Defense rating is ~400. Shield rating and Absorption rating want to be both increased about evenly since each makes the other better. Endurance gives more survivability, but you don't want to sacrifice too much strength since you may have some threat issues.

I don't think this is a gear issue; Armor takes the armor rating of the Armoring and multiplies it by a fixed value based on the type of armor. Rather, this is a skill tree issue. Vanguards get a few skills that give a percentage increase to their armor. Because of the bonuses in the trees, a Vanguard in equivalent gear will have more Armor, Shield Change, and Shield Absorption.

All of the reductions will work, but I think the damage split from guard comes before the damage reduction from Guardian Leap. I think Taunt's may come before since it's a debuff on the enemy, not a buff on the target. I don't know if they are additive or multiplicative, though.

If you Guardian Leap every time it's up, you can Leap 3 times a minute, so the mitigation is more than that. Also, if you are leaping someone at range, then Force Leaping back, you also have the 20% from Unremitting.