What's the point, theres no one on Republic side that is even worth focus firing with lol.

I just sent one to Caelie. I assumed you wanted it on your slinger.

The dailies at level 50 are worth 400 warzone comms, weeklies are 1200. Considering 1.6 is coming out with cheaper gear, its not a bad idea to pace yourself atm anyways. Basically, unless you plan to go all out and grind WH gear at its current price, I would just hit 50 and stick to completing the dailies each day. If you want to do more than that, Id stay between 40-50 as thats going to take a long while.

Yea, I never said that. I like Q, no problems with him, why would I say that? In fact, I wanted to make him an officer in the guild but he refused.

lol, ok well I was enjoying the arguing, but since we were (and specifically I was) mentioned here, Im going to throw my two cents in. I wasnt going to say anything about a former teammate, but since he threw the first punch... Vic is very much a key factor in why The Goombas are no longer playing. It's not just him, its the game as well, but he triggered it. Essentially he would just not show up on scheduled RWZ nights, leaving us without 8 players to queue. He quit the guild one RWZ scheduled night after he showed up an hour late and we found another pug vanguard to replace him. I essentially benched him for being inconsiderate for the 5th time in a row and let the PUG keep playing, and later that night posted on our forums that he was leaving, and that "its not you, its me" BS. Something about how he is quitting the game because hes joined 6 other guilds and none have worked out for him. The next day he joined Aftermath (so he lied), and I have no idea what happened with him after. From there we didnt have enough players, and the majority of us were worn out from this drama, so we called it. Objectively Vic was the worst of our three vanguards. Thexder was always #1 by a wide margin in dps, and absolutely destroyed the other two in protection scores (100k to their 20k). Octwo was second, with Vic as a distant third. The problem with our team was the damage aspect easily. We played Casual on Novare Coast without Thexder, and we got 0 kills. Zero. Despite the DPS getting no kills (did i mention NO KILLS), we managed to get them down to 50% on their bunker with a stealth cap and by having exceptional defense, which is why I laugh when Vic said the only ones who doing their jobs was 1 healer (Didious) and the shadow (Q) on the offpoint. After that game the damage dealers were all pointing fingers at one another, and Vic actually had the nerve to blame the tank guardian for the reason why we got no kills. Not the 2 pyros, sniper and sentinel, the tank guardian with 400k protection giving them all the time in the world to get a kill was the problem. What a joke. So yea, I heard about how Vic was talking **** about me after it was over, calling it leadership problems. The "leadership problem" was me rather bluntly saying our DPS is pathetic. Which it was. 3 players couldnt handle that, and got upset about it, passing blame instead of fixing it. We had practices in Outlaws Den where we had all 4 damage dealers (excluding Thexder) trying to kill two healers and a tank. It took them two minutes to get a kill. How is anyone supposed to take an objective like that? Anyways, thats some rambling about guild drama. I just find it funny to still find Vic talking **** about us. Especially considering when Ohh basically told me months ago what he said above, telling me I should drop Vic, I (lied) defended Vic, saying hes a good guy and a good player. BTW, most of the Goombas are in Teamspeak right now with me. I dont think it was the leadership that was the problem considering everyone has stuck by me aside from a couple of players. And seeing how Vic has a track record as revealed in this topic, I think all signs point towards him being the problem.

Hey Nochance, A few of us are still here playing the game everyday actually. It's been Empire lowbie pvp for fun recently though - Republic pug PvP at 50 is too painful to play. As for Rateds, we stopped playing in August, but have discussed over the last month playing again. If you search on Imp side after 4pm EST you should find a few of us for Teamspeak info (unless you still have it, it's the same as before). We'll give you an update. Search: Kharn -> Kharnz Tide -> Tidexy, Tidecupiscence, JellyTide Raph/Jel -> Kosmo, Xyly I'll log into my Guardian as well tonight to see if youre on.

What Balmuck said above is 100% right. We were on POT5 as well, one of the top teams, and lost a few players to GW2 and a couple of other players not working out. We had 6 players left, and despite knowing we only needed 2 more (to at least play some matches), we knew we were screwed, as finding replacements that were 1. geared 2. skilled and 3. playing the right class and spec was going to be impossible. There are no "easy" positions to play that have some slack, and having just 2 weak players would cost us some games. Unsubbed friends we had didnt want to return, as it was going to be a major gear grind for them to catch up to the new sets. Others had chosen poor RWZ classes or classes we already had, and either didnt have the time or will to reroll. Like Balmuch said, you need the right composition and every competitive team pretty much looked the same: 1. Guardian Tank Hybrid 2. Shadow Tank Hybrid 3. Sage Healer 4. Scoundrel Healer 5. Pyro Vanguard DPS 6. Pyro Vanguard DPS 7. Combat Sentinel DPS 8. 2nd Shadow Tank Hybrid, Smash Guardian/Marauder, Pyro #3 This game has an extremely high barrier of entry for new AND returning players due to the level and gear grind, which is why it seems competitive players are only leaving without anyone new coming in and replacing them. My entire group stopped playing this game when we lost those players months ago. However, we are still looking for a game to play together...we *want* to play Star Wars. The problem is, even if we were to find those few extra players, there is now no competition to play against (at least not consistently) as almost everyone is gone. Unless both teams have the above composition with BiS gear, it is a total cakewalk. Imo, the game needs to have: 1. Free level 63 PvP Gear that is 100% useless in PvE. Eliminate any sort of grind to allow new players to start playing the game properly, and not after an additional 200 hours invested in 50 pvp. I cant imagine why I would have any reason to continue playing the game as a new player getting (literally) 3 shotted in recruit gear for 50 games. The gear grind is supposed to keep people interested and playing, but all it is doing is making people leave or not return. Screw the idiots on the forums that feel that new players should be slaughtered because they "earned" their gear. 2. Introduce competitive 5v5 while leaving PUG games 8v8 like GW2. 8v8 is too difficult to have the right players on with the right classes and gear all at the same time. Arenas would also work. 3. Open World PvP, but that is another issue. As for his other points, the resolve change is indeed a joke (I couldnt believe it when I was reading the dev update). The class balance is awful. The initial design philosophy way back in beta where every class would be within 5% DPS to one another is the root of the problem, as the classes were not differentiated enough and some have more tools than their competition (ex. Pyro Powertech over Pyro Merc - has better mechanics, taunts, harpoon, etc.), leaving certain classes obsolete.

That attitude of entitlement because youve played longer is exactly why rated queues are nearly dead. My Guardian is from early access and is fully geared, I have no reason to cry, as I could easily swap the gear to my Jugg if I wanted to. No, my complaint and concern is that it is getting harder and harder for people to run rated teams, and even when you do run rateds, more than half of the time you are running into undergeared pug teams who are trying to quicken the gear grind (which is why "the best of the best" is a joke). This is not fun for anyone, or at least not for anyone who is out for competition and not a pointless rated number. Imo, the devs should be looking at a system with free top tier pvp gear that is useless in pve (similar system to the recently release fantasy mmo that is going to have pvp tournaments with cash prizes). Ignore the minority of players like tbowen who cry about their "hard work" and get everyone on the same level so there can be competition. The rewards for the time commitment should be cosmetic armour skins (not just different colours), pets, speeders, titles, etc.

So you play one game in the best damage tree in the game, lose while dying 11 times and tell people to stop whining? Recruit gear is bad. I have a full aug WH Guardian with both damage and tank sets of gear fully modded out properly. I have a new 50 Juggernaut in recruit gear that has WH Lightsaber and Offhand from levels 40-50. The difference is night and day. I easily die 10+ times a game, get killed within a 4 second stun and I'm afraid to guard people because I will die in seconds if that person gets hit by anything dangerous (ie. smash, pyros). I am the primary target of enemy dps the second they realize Im in recruit, as Im essentially a free kill. On the Guardian I am the last target, because it is a huge time commitment to try to bring it down. Posting a single screenshot of a single game is a joke. Under the right circumstances you can put up great numbers. I put up 200k damage and 300k protection in recruit yesterday because the other team didnt have enough damage to kill people through our fully geared healers. If the other team had a few decent players however, I wouldve been toast. The fact is you would never bring a full recruit player to a rated warzone, and that should speak for the issue. Even full BM isnt good enough. I dont understand the logic of the gear grind in this game. It is a barrier to (re-)entry in this game for unsubbed players, and as a subbed player with more time than the average player, it is a still an unfun bore. It is also a barrier to entry for rated warzones (probably why theyre so unpopular) because you need the right 8 man composition and you need everyone fully geared. Not an easy thing to have, at least not consistently.

This is all fine and dandy, except shields and defense DO NOT work on split attacks. % Mitigation does. So either white damage should be completely blockable or this proc should not double stack. Honestly, I dont see how anyone can justify double proccing when it results in extra damage out of thin air. If you were doing nothing but trying to get top damage, you would just shoot people being guarded for magical procs.

Hey, earlier on a few of us went to Outlaws Den to double check whether tank stats work through a guarded target due to the lead combat designer saying they do (they dont). I, a Guardian tank, guarded a Scoundrel healer while an Assault Specialist (Pyro) Vanguard shot us. Anyways, we noticed something strange. When a Pyro triggers Combustible Cylinder/Plasma Cell on a guarded target, he applies it on both the guarded player AND the player guarding him, including the 2 second skilled snare. So essentially what this means is, if Ion Pulse/Flameburst or a basic shot triggers it, the PT/VG is getting a free extra proc. Meaning instead of damage looking like this: ----------------------------------------- 1000 Flameburst - 500 to Tank, 500 to Guarded 1500 Gas Cylinder - 750 to Tank, 750 to Guarded Guarder: 1250 Guarded: 1250 ----------------------------------------- It actually looks like this: 1000 Flameburst - 500 to Tank, 500 to Guarded 1500 Gas Cylinder - 750 to Tank, 750 to Guarded 1500 Gas Cylinder - 1500 to Tank Guarder: 2750 Guarded: 1250 ------------------------------------------- Basically the PT/VG gets an extra 1500 damage for nothing (+Crits @ 105% crit multiplier and an additional 30% damage if the target is below 30% health) as well as snaring an additional target. The tank is actually taking 150% of the gas cylinder, not 50%. The PT/VG DPS goes up simply for shooting a guarded target. In the simulation above, I died long before my guarded ally, even though I have an extra 5k health! Maybe this was obvious and I missed it, but this doesnt seem right. We tried other abilities (bleeds, burns, etc.) and didnt see any other ability that doubled up. SCREENSHOT: http://i.imgur.com/zRXlg.jpg .

Oh boy. Im not arguing with you bro, especially considering you know nothing about either team and are making ridiculous assumptions. Its irrelevant anyways, because my point was to show what the ratio between damage to protection can be like if the other team is constantly switching targets with good damage dealers and you have a Jugg that knows how to switch with them. You can suggest to people your way, Ill suggest mine, and they can decide for themselves. All this other BS about how great you are is irrelevant.

The article is wrong. Just tried it again to make sure nothing has changed. Defense and Shield do nothing for the person guarding (though damage reduction applies). I wonder if this intended now after reading this article.

Ahh yes, the perfect circumstances argument (and the predictable "you played baddies"). I dont really have time to go back and forth with "if you do this then Ill do this" BS (ex. If you CC my tank, DPS will CC your DPS switching until tank is ready). Reality is the game moves too fast and the circumstances are not going to be perfect (pulls do nothing to leapers, trinkets can be up, Juggs are immune to CC 1/3rd of the time, your team can be stunned as well, etc.). Guard Swapping is a legitimate tactic, and it can be done as fast as hard switching dps. It is obvious to me that your tanks, like Boarg said, had healers guarded the entire time and never bothered switching. Probably focused on doing some awesome hybrid damage .

Defense and Shield do nothing to help you through guard, despite what that article says.

It is difficult to say because you can tweak all your gear to what you want, but defense will always be the tradeoff for offense. Their argument is health is not important in addition to tank stats being worthless. Even with all of the high endurance dps enhancements and mods, assuming power stim and colour crystal as well as overkill augments, you end up with less than 21k health (http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/88207abb-2f72-4a7d-9419-1278a6eac8e3). An optimal smash guardian has just under 19k health as well. Full Tank Gear nets you 26k (a difference of over 5k compared to the above link). The difference in health is as far as one wants to go with it, and what each person considers "dps gear". However, it will always be offense at the cost of defense. This post I agree with. Part of Target Swapping is that you need to 1. Use a GCD to swap guard and 2. Use either leap to get within 15m. That cuts down on DPS already. Now have the other team keep hard switching targets constantly, and youre wasting nearly all globals on just slows, cc, guard and leaps. Clearly the tank was leaving their pyros out to dry in the other screenshot. Here is a screenshot from week 1 of rateds (was still making the transition from dps to tank gear at the time). I have a screenshot of it ready simply because it was posted in our "highest stats" thread for the server. http://i.imgur.com/PLCis.jpg That game lasted far less than 20 minutes from the other screenshot, yet i have over x2 the amount of protection. It ended almost as fast as possible with a two cap (see the top), so probably around 10 minutes, meaning I probably did more than x4 protection per second. Obviously the teams are completely different and I dont want to argue over which teams have more skill or any of that ****. Im just demonstrating what Guard swapping can achieve (and remember, Guard swapping + repositioning costs GCDs for DPS). If you distribute that damage back to the other team, youd see damage on both sides were pretty close, yet the kills were not. Anyways, those three options in the quote are exactly why you want tank gear imo. With DPS gear, killing the tank then becomes a viable option because there are no guards to be put on him, and its not realistic to expect any dps taunts to be ready on demand. Defensive cooldowns are nice if theyre up, but that is all you have in this case. I dont really care what everyone runs. If dps hybrid works for you, then continue doing it. I see some advantages in it, though overall I personally wouldnt run it. Im still trying to decide which way to run the Guardian as ive said a few times already. I just want to have a debate with both sides bringing up points, as Im sure there are some things i havent thought of and Id switch my stance if something significant came up. Right now hybrid hasnt wowed me (unlike a smash Guardian protector that did well against us). Just dont dismiss facts, such as full tank gear having a lot more health or tank gear not applying to anything in pvp (when all of the popular classes can have at least some, if not all, attacks mitigated).

Endurance does matter because the Guardian uses % for its heals. 35% warzone medpac, 8% guardian leap, 30% focused defense, 30% enure. The bigger your health pool = the larger the heals, get it? Proper DPS gear is ~20k health. The 6k difference means an extra 2000 health from medpac, 2000 from focused defense, 2000 from enure, etc. (and again, you can pick up blade barrier as well for an extra 1000 every 9 seconds). Just because you use tank gear doesnt mean you cant get the 8% guardian leap as it is just tied to the armouring. I use 2 tank (4 second choke) and 2 vindicator (8% heal leap). As for "400k damage", uhh it was 300k that screenshot. And my point is with tank gear you could still pull 150-200k damage, so the advantage of dps gear is only 100-150k damage. Meanwhile your pyros died TWENTY FIVE times, *** was your tank doing with only 200k protection and 4 deaths?? Maybe if they were guarded and werent dead half the game they would have pulled 1 mil+, but it looks like your jugg was running around struggling to get his whopping 300k damage instead of guarding. EDIT: I see you are the other team. Still, same thing. Your pyro died 17 times and the guardian died twice. I cannot understand how this could happen if the guardian tank was protecting. it makes no sense. Not a very good screenshot to pull out if trying to prove hybrid is worth it.

Endurance is the most important stat, and like i said above, even if you were to go max endurance on DPS gear, youre still looking at at least 4000 health difference. That is compared to rather poor dps gear (12 power mods, 22 power enhancements), and is more realistically an extra 6-7k health with proper dps gear. Not having that extra endurance and tank gear made me extremely fragile against bleed through guard + stun healer + switch and execute me (I was in dps gear guarding at the start of rateds). Now 30% is harder to reach, is worth more when it is reached, and I can potentially take zero damage from executes thrown my way. If your team is relying on an extra few hundred damage to kill things, youre going to be in trouble anyways. Id much rather keep my focus on having Pyros or Sentinels alive for a few seconds longer (or indefinitely) than try to half *** a dps hybrid guardian tank. Those classes can easily triple the dps of a hybrid guardian. Remember that even in tank gear you still do some damage, so the benefit of dps gear is, at most (and this is being considerate), half of your total damage. So if you get 250k, dps added 125k. Again, that still seems too high, but is 125k when your top damage dealers are doing 500-600 easy worth dropping a beast tank? I dont think so personally. Another benefit is that if youre not worried about damage, you can take Blade Barrier over +60% crit chance on BS and Dispatch. This is essentially an extra 1000+ health heal every 9 seconds. Not much but it adds up when you take all the other defensive cooldowns, CCs and tank gear. Anyways, like I said, I still dont know if a full tank is worth giving up 1/8 slots on your team. However, I dont think a Hybrid is worth it at all, and it would be better to run some sort of focus guarder to actually be able to put out significant damage if the dps is needed.

(A few parts I copied from my original post in this thread: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4815362) Well, Im still trying to figure out which way to implement the Guardian/Jugg on an 8 man team, as they are simply a must have in one way or another due to their utility. There seems to be 3 ways of doing it: 1. Full Tank Gear, Hybrid Spec (18/23/0) 2. DPS Gear, Hybrid Spec (16/25/0) 3. DPS Gear, Focus/Rage (x/x/31) Personally I am leaning towards either option 1 and being a full time bodyguard, or option 3 where I have a Kinetic Shadow DPS hybrid guard teammates while still utilizing Guardian Leap and Freezing Force and smashing everything in sight. I think the Hybrid Spec in DPS is a poor idea. You are simply not good at anything. Your damage is still going to be pitiful. People are talking about being able to hit 200k damage, but that is pathetic. Your real damage dealers are going to be hitting 500k+. A smash Guardian will do more damage to a single target in 1 smash than a Vig Guard will do after using both heavy hitters (OHS and BS), and follow through with even more damage with focus specced BS and exhaustion. Even if you hit 250k damage as a DPS Hybrid, that is only ~100k more damage than a full tank. People are posting that you can do 100% more damage than full tank gear. Thats actually probably true, but you are doubling the worst damage spec in the entire game. This is nothing to be proud of. It is still pathetic damage, and it is still going to get you the 3rd lowest damage on your team (possibly 4th if the kinetic shadow guards the other node the entire game). HEALTH POOL ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Compared to a full tank you are going to be giving up at least 4000 health. With full High Endurance/Low Power Mods and Enhancements, you end up with 22k health (and mediocre damage stats, especially when compared to 1300+ power smash guardians). Obviously this depends on how far you want to go, but running no tank stats is a loss of at least 4k health as full tanks can reach 26k. 4k is a lot of health. That is at least 8k extra damage to the person youre guarding before you die - then take into account 5% DR from guard, 30% taunt, 20% guardian leap, natural damage mitigation, DR cooldowns, etc. A large healthpool from tank gear (properly modded gear will equate to 26k health) also affects abilities such as: Focused Defense - 30% heal over 10 seconds [8000 health] Enure - 30% temporary health boost [8000 health] Guardian Leap - 8% heal with pvp set bonus [2000 health] Warzone Medpack - 35% health [9000 health] Rakata medpack - 15% temporary health boost, depending on situation [4000 health] You still have Leap, Saberward, Enure, Guardian Leap, Blade Barrier and Warding Call as well for increased DR. A guardian tank can make 4k extra health be worth 15k of damage from the enemy team (even more with tank stats like defense). TANK STATS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For the "Shields are useless argument", I was right there with everyone 5 months ago when this became common knowledge. However, if you stop and think about individual classes for a second, you would see shields are in a good place atm. Which classes have *all* of their attacks cut through shields? Sages/Sorcerors Scoundrels/Operatives Commando/Mercenary And how many of the above do you actually see in Rated Warzones? Almost none. These classes are considered the worst in the game atm (whether or not that is true is irrelevant, it is the majority opinion). What do you actually see? Sents/Marauders - Combat spec is in demand as well at higher tiers for the 80% speed boost, which is ALL white damage aside from Bladestorm. Even Watchman sents get most of their damage mitigated Pyros - A tank hunter class with tons of elemental damage, and while tank gear doesnt mitigate flame burst/TD/IM, it does help against the 5k railshot they shoot every 6 seconds. Assassins - Requires white damage attacks to set up yellow, and have white damage executes. Snipers - Marksman Sniper are the deadliest class in the game against unshielded enemies. With tank gear you negate everything they do (30s CD Sab charge excluded) as they are purely white damage. Smash Juggs - Smash is extremely deadly to the tank/healer combo, but aside from Smash, Exhaustion and the follow through Bladestorm, it is all white damage. One important point I think worth mentioning is that ALL executes are white damage. If you only have 20k health in dps gear, theyll reach 30% faster and you will get target switched to and destroyed with no defense. This is what was happening to me when rateds started up and I was in dps gear guarding. All they had to do was bleed me through guard for 14k health and then I was toast. In reply to the "tank stats give you 5% extra of each stat" BS, here are the actual numbers: 12% higher defense chance - 26% total - Base 5%, 11% with defense skill 25% higher shield chance - 45% total - Base 20%, or 0% with no shield if doing dps 28% higher shield absorb - 48% total - Base 20%, or 0% with no shield if doing dps --------------------------------------------------------- Anyways, I still do not know whether a full tank Guardian is worth it, despite what Ive said above. It has nothing to do with the actual survivability - Full tank Guards are the toughest to kill in the entire game, and the tank stats definitely help. My concern is you are already using 2 healers that do no damage, and having a 3rd slot used on another class that does no damage might be too much (whether it is full tank or hybrid, they are both useless damage when compared to the top damage classes atm). A kinetic shadow will put out much better damage while being able to guard, and working as a team you could still get the rest of the Guardian's protecting benefits while now being a major damage dealer. However, when it comes to Huttball carrier or AoE slowing enemies while your team tries to run ahead to cap points becomes far more difficult in focus. EDIT: I also find it funny that people are saying shields and tank stats are awful, and that you should go full DPS gear...... in a spec that is all white damage (minus BS) and tank stats apply against.

Many things in the above post are simply wrong "something like maybe 5~6% higher defense chance and 4~5% higher shield chance" Actually it is (all numbers are for guardian with 18/23/0): 12% higher defense chance - 26% total - Base 5%, 11% with defense skill 25% higher shield chance - 45% total - Base 20%, or 0% with no shield if doing dps 28% higher shield absorb - 48% total - Base 20%, or 0% with no shield if doing dps "This tank also holds better odds against tank-killing mara/sents" Sents are not tank killers. Yellow damage wise, Watchman has a couple burns (that require attacks to land first), Combat has Bladestorm. Combat's 100% armour pen is actually a DPS hybrid tank killer, because it ignores your only defense (armour reduction), whereas full defense tanks can still rely on shields and defense stats (as well as increased health). ". We don't have higher health," This is a joke? For both Mods and Enhancements, you have High Power - Low End, Low Power - Medium End, and No Power - High End/Defense Stats. Mods: Low End - 32 Endurance, 39 Power Med End - 41 Endurance, 12 Power High End - 49 Endurance, 0 Power, 32 Tank Stat +80 health over medium, + 170 health over low (remember 6% boost from Trooper buff and Companion Buff). 8/14 armour slots have mods, so multiply the difference by 8. Enhancements: Low End - 27 Endurance, 41 Power, 51 Surge Med End - 45 Endurance, 22 Power, 51 Surge High End - 55 Endurance, 0 Power, 51 Tank Stat, 12 Second Tank Stat +100 health over medium, +280 Health over low (+Endurance % buffs). 6/14 armour slots have enhancements. Then consider a stim that will give an extra 1120 health (+Endurance % buffs), Colour crystal that is 410 (+Endurance % buffs), High End Armouring piece for belt and bracers, +60 health for each fortitude augment, and Shields have far more Endurance than Generator. Then consider all of the % based health regens I mentioned in my above post. Obviously there is no rule where you cant implement some of these into a hybrid tank, my point is there is still a direct tradeoff of power vs health and survivability. If I were to go a full smash jugg that could guard, I would have 19k health, 8% defense, 0 shield, 0 absorb. I would do a lot of damage however. If I were to go full defense, I would have 26k health, 26% defense, 45% shield, 48% absorb. I would do little damage however. Anyways, Im still not entirely sure what the best way to go about it is in terms of rateds. However, saying that full tank only has 5% extra survivability is a joke. Full tanks are extremely survivable. What should actually be up for debate is whether or not sacrificing 1 of 8 players to do virtually no damage in order to stay alive and guard is worth it.

As a guardian tank who has played many rated warzones with a full guild team against the best teams on the server, Ive come to the conclusion that there is simply no time to even be doing any sort of damage if your job is to guard. Youll essentially be spending all of your time guard swapping (have to be fast, and it is part of the GCD), keeping defensive buffs up (on guardian that's bladestorm barrier, focused defense which requires 14 focus for self heal, charge, guardian leap), AoE slowing and CCing your opponents. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Class wise there are 3 tanks. However I would never use a Vanguard tank (should be assault specialist/pyro), as they are too slow to get into guard range and dont have enough peeling abilities. Shadow tanks are great because they can guard your side node/offhand door long enough for reinforcements to arrive, and can swap to damage gear at any time if offense is required while doing respectable damage in the same skill tree. Guardians are the ultimate bodyguards in their 18/23/0 spec though, as they have tons of CC, the best defensive cooldowns and are extremely fast (they can either guardian leap to the friendly being attacked or charge the enemies attacking him to get within guard range). A large healthpool from tank gear (properly modded gear will equate to 26k health!) also affects abilities such as: Focused Defense - 30% heal over 10 seconds [8000 health] Enure - 30% temporary health boost [8000 health] Guardian Leap - 8% heal with pvp set bonus [2000 health] Warzone Medpack - 35% health [9000 health] Rakata medpack - 15% temporary health boost, depending on situation [4000 health] Focused defense + warzone medpack will heal a full tank guardian for 17000 health over 10 seconds while having 67% damage reduction + 25% defense + 45% shield chance and 50% absorb. You still have Leap, Saberward, Enure, Guardian Leap, Blade Barrier and Warding Call as well. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As for the "Shields are useless argument", I was right there with everyone 5 months ago when this became common knowledge. However, if you stop and think about individual classes for a second, you would see shields are in a good place atm. Which classes have *all* of their attacks cut through shields? Sages/Sorcerors Scoundrels/Operatives Commando/Mercenary And how many of the above do you actually see in Rated Warzones? Almost none. These classes are considered the worst in the game atm (whether or not that is true is irrelevant, it is the majority opinion). What do you actually see? Sents/Marauders - Combat spec is in demand as well at higher tiers for the 80% speed boost, which is ALL white damage aside from Bladestorm. Even Watchman sents get most of their damage mitigated Pyros - A tank hunter class with tons of elemental damage, and while tank gear doesnt mitigate flame burst/TD/IM, it does help against the 5k railshot they shoot every 6 seconds. Assassins - Requires white damage attacks to set up yellow, and have white damage executes. Snipers - Marksman Sniper are the deadliest class in the game against unshielded enemies. With tank gear you negate everything they do (30s CD Sab charge excluded) as they are purely white damage. Smash Juggs - Smash is extremely deadly to the tank/healer combo, but aside from Smash, Exhaustion and the follow through Bladestorm, it is all white damage. One important point I think worth mentioning is that ALL executes are white damage. If you only have 20k health in dps gear, theyll reach 30% faster and you will get target switched to and destroyed with no defense. This is what was happening to me when rateds started up and I was in dps gear guarding. All they had to do was bleed me through guard for 14k health and then I was toast. Anyways, that is my argument for tank gear. I used to think it was garbage as well, but it has some major advantages, especially because there really is no time to go on the offensive. However, I will say I am interested in trying a Smash specced guarder. You can set up the 4 stacks while slowing and guarding, and then smash everyone on your healer. I just dont know if it is worth the loss of endurance, defensive cooldowns, etc. Hope this post gave some food for thought.

Collateral Strike and Tactical Opportunity are a must for Concealment Ops. Why would someone take 4% endurance boost over them? Your job as an op is to drop an incredible amount of damage in a short amount of time. Drop Energy Screen (not used frequently enough), Revitalizers (Alright but not enough health to justify loss of damage) and Inclement Conditioning for Collateral Strike and Tact op

I do not understand why this is even a problem in the game. Why is this enhancement still not available on the Imperial side? My Operative is now 50 and Ive had to deal with this. The best way to make up for this (due to diminishing returns and such) in my opinion is to use these enhancements: x2 War Leader Warriors Boots (40 Endurance, 20 Defense, 51 Surge) x4 Assorted Gloves (24 Endurance, 37 power, 51 Alacrity [probably can get Accuracy as well, but it is 100% useless for a Concealment Operative]) Compared to my geared Scoundrel Ive: Lost 74 Power Lost 102 Surge Gained 32 Endurance Gained 40 Defense Gained 204 Alacrity So basically Im trading 2 really good stats for a little bit of health and 2 mostly useless stats. I realize that there are War Hero versions of these enhancements, but when it will take 375-450 games (Need ~42000 Warzone Comms) Even with a forgiving estimate, that's still about 120-150 hours of gameplay (assuming 1 game every 20 minutes) JUST to get these enhancements and be equal to the Republic. That is ridiculous.

This really needs to be fixed. I have a Scoundrel with these enhancements in all 6 slots. I am also levelling an Operative, and I know it's going to be a joke with only 60% surge in full BM gear.

How the hell are you supposed to prove that the gain is ridiculous? Should someone have taken a screenshot day 1 with a newspaper and valor rank and then do the same again day 2 just incase some idiot on a forum asks for it? It's not hard to figure out that 200 valor per kill for 8 hours means absurd increases in valor. I was way ahead of a guild mate at 55 (he was 47) and while ive been levelling an alt the last couple of days, he has been playing Ilum and is now about to ding 60. He's even on the Rep side and doesnt usually get a multiplier, and he is still able to do it.