I found the sticky for the Sith Juggernaut to be a fantastic resource when learning the class: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=2688 You have to get your head around the mirror terms for our abilities (I cut and paste the guide into Word, replacing the ability names and printed it out), but once you do, it is very informative. Tanks only get a 50% increase in threat over dps, so it is struggle in this game. A few tips: (1) Mark the target you want the dps to focus fire on. There's a target marker you could buy from the social vendor that you can keybind: I have not found a way to keybind the in-game raid icons. (2) Don't be afraid to use taunt, challenging call and guard to help manage threat. (3) We have a lot of abilities to juggle, some with long-ish CDs. I found using a Razor Naga mouse helped a lot (I've bound about 36 buttons - the 12 normal, plus SHIFT and CTRL versions). (4) Maybe don't worry about normal mobs? They seem to die easy, so it may be ok to ask the dps kill them first while you focus on the strong and the elites. [This kind of contradicts 1; you could reserve marking for the non-trivial mobs.] You get more abilities as you level and this helps, but on the other hand, the dps damage probably scales better than ours does, so threat is never trivial to manage.

I've just reached level 50 and think I missed a key backstory development. When the game starts, there is a "cold war" between the Empire and the Republic. However, by Act 3 (and perhaps Act 2), the loading screens say there is open war. What marks the transition? Is it an event covered in the JK story or is it explained in other class stories? I tend to get a bit "tunnel visioned" while levelling, but am annoyed with myself for not noticing the transition. Also is open war permanent? I.e. is it the status quo after the JK story ends? (I've just landed on Corellia, so haven't completed it). Or is the situation reset back to a "cold war"? (I don't need details of how war ends if it does, although I have a pretty good idea where the class quest is going by this stage.)

I'll keep updating the OP based on information received. Thanks for the responses so far.

I agree we need more info on threat. IIRC, tank threat in SWTOR is just 1.5x their dps. In WoW, it is now 5x their dps, so keeping threat seems much more of an issue in SWTOR than in WoW. Something to show the target of the mob you are targeting would help. Threatplates, the WoW addon, is the best system I have seen for displaying threat: for those in tanking stances, make enlarge the nameplates of mobs you don't have aggro on (the opposite for those in dps or healing stances). A threat meter like Omen would be extremely useful if bosses require tank switches.

Thanks for the quick responses. So would I be correct in saying that all healers can do long term (60 second) CC? E.g. for Republic, Commando can use concussive round; sage can forcelift; and scoundrel can use tranquiliser? So there would always be at least one long term CC ability in each four man party? That's neat. Shadow tanks get a nice bonus with mind maze. I am not seeing a pattern in which dps ACs can CC. I guess a better way of remembering who can CC is to think if they can heal and remembering about Shadow's bonus.

As a tank, I want to learn who can do long term crowd control abilities and found this link very useful: http://www.swtorarena.com/topic/91-know-your-enemy-crowd-control-abilities/ Am I reading it right, that there are [EDIT] FOUR 60 second crowd control abilities in the game? vis: Shadow (Assassin): Mindmaze (Mind Trap) Scoundrel (Operative): Tranquiliser (Sleeping Dart) Commando (Merc): Concussive round (Concussive missile) Sage (Sorcerer): Force lift (Whirlwind) For droids, there are 60 second CC abilities from: Sentinel (Marauder): Disable droid Smuggler (Agent): Slice droid I know there is a myriad of shorter term abilities, but I am thinking of the kind of abilities that a group might want to coordinate in advance of a pull. EDITS: Originally written from a Republic point of view, sorry. Empire names now in brackets. Force lift/whirlwind added. Anti-droid CC added.

Excellent resource - thanks! Please do continue making them. To the forum mods: this thread is worth stickying or at least linking to in a sticky.

This is a great guide: the description of abilities and talents is the most helpful I have read. I have a comment about a levelling build. There's a case for getting as fast down the defence tree as you can (to unlock the new abilities and other more powerful talents) which is a problem as all three tier 1 talents are rather nice. You rate Battle Cry as the least of the three and so I have not taken it yet. But having used it on the stress test beta, I am finding it hard to live without. With it, you can leap, then force scream and smash. Without it, early on, you can only do one and must build up more rage before doing the other. If I want 3/3 Battle Cry (and the other tier 1 talents) and want to get to Crushing Blow as fast as I can, I will have to defer 2 other points from the immortal tree for later. I suspect they should come from heavy handed. Also a question about Ravage. Before I read your guide, I was using this alot in the beta but you say it's channel can be broken by taking damage. I guess it can be interrupted by special moves, as we can use kick etc to interrupt AI channelled attacks. But does simply taking damage break it? I did not notice that in the beta. The problems I had were that movement broke the channel, as did mobs dying fast. However, is the damage spread over the duration of the attack (rather than back loaded)? If so, does it really matter if the channel breaks? You'd still be doing decent damage (for no rage cost) until it broke. I get the impression from my reading that ravage is not supposed to be part of the tank's rotation, so maybe I am missing something.

Thanks for the replies. Not being able to keybind marks is a pain - one of my favorite WoW add-ons is RapidMobMarker. It's easy to click on your target, click on a skull (or whatever) on a bar and then pull. Having to right click and select from a menu of marks tends to slow things down too much. The marks persisting through death would be irritating. I did notice the marker you can buy from the social goods vendor (I am not sure it even had a social level requirement) and I wondered what the point was. If I can put it in a quickslot, that would allow me to keybind it. No harm in trying, I guess.

I understand there is the ability for party leaders to mark mobs with icons to facilitate kill orders, CC etc. What is the command for this? I would like to key bind at lead the equivalent of WoW's "skull" but could not see how to do this in the keybinding menu. Thanks for any advice.