Hey guys - I'm from Shadowlands, so no records to post, but I do have a question: Zabuza, how did you get over 1 million protection? I play a Guardian tank, pure tank, in PvP (I have plenty of DPS and a dedicated healer that I'm always running with), and my highest has been ~300k. 1 million is just insane. I constantly switch my guard to whoever is getting focused, my taunts are used off cooldown (the AoE only when there's more than one target to taunt), and I'm G-Leaping like crazy. Basically my entire style of play is based around protection. I rarely if ever worry about getting kills. If you had put up 700k or so I would just chalk it up to you being more vigilant with taunts and switching your guard or something, but seeing the difference is so huge, I have to think I'm just completely missing something. Maybe making sure I get a taunt off on folks using big AoEs like Death from Above or Orbital Strike? *shrug* Interested to hear how you did it.

Archus - Guardian - Hybrid Def/Vig tank I would add the folks I play with as we've all been clamoring to get in any ranked match at all, but I'll just relay the message to them and tell 'em to post if they want.

Undercon downed Toth and Zorn tonight on 8man Nightmare. http://ff.devodog.us/dnn/Portals/1/Gallery/Album/6/Screenshot_2012-12-01_21_33_32_074320.jpg Wish we'd been going at this since it was released. This was our first look at it and it didn't seem to throw any curveballs.

I've got the Pink-Purple Hawkeye sitting around. Send and in-game mail to Archus if you wanna figure something out.

That's interesting, Kitru. I've read a lot of your posts and I think you've got a knowledge of the game that's both impressive and encouraging, so I'll have to try using PB on cooldown again if OS doesn't proc master strike. A few months back I realized the bleed time/CD time disparity on PB, so I just started waiting two GCDs after it recharged to use it again. However, once I got TORAssistant, I just wait for the swoosh sound and then I know I can use it again. Since I made the change of not using it off cooldown but letting it tick out, I noticed a considerable increase in my DPS (went from sustaining in the 1600s to sustaining in the low 17s). Have you from experience actually seen higher DPS by ignoring PB's bleed and just using it as an extra chance to proc? If my own tests tonight prove that out, I'll be so relieved as it will ease up the harsh timing requirements of the rotation.

Have a Pink Purple Power crystal available for trade. Email Archus in-game with offer.

Undercon downed 8m HM Terror at 10:00pm Eastern on Sat., Nov. 17th. http://ff.devodog.us/dnn/Portals/1/Gallery/Album/1/Screenshot_2012-11-17_20_59_43_394944.jpg Lockout photo since I wasn't lead and couldn't open Ops challenge window: http://ff.devodog.us/dnn/Portals/1/Gallery/Album/1/Screenshot_2012-11-17_21_05_11_851731.jpg

I downloaded it two weeks ago and have been running it ever since and no problems so far. Admittedly I'm not very tech-savvy, but I've run AV scans and stuff and everything seems alright.

I play Vigilance DPS in a top-tier raiding guild and I recently was introduced to this wonderful little program. Basically, one big no-no for us Vig guardians is hitting Plasma Brand off cooldown, because you're interrupting the bleed and not maximizing DPS. You gotta wait for the 12 second bleed to finish, and since PB recharges in 9 seconds, you either have to get a nice internal rhythm for waiting those 3 extra seconds, or just leave that up to torassistant. It has a lot of features you can explore, but the key one for me if having a little reminder sound every 12 seconds after I hit my plasma brand. It makes life so much easier, and I saw my DPS go up a good bit because of it. Additionally, you can enter debuffs such as Withering Terror or Vitality Extraction from the Dread Guards fight and have a reminder sound ring out when those debuffs are applied to you. Or you can add an audio effect to your Combat Focus for when it recharges, or your relic, or whatever you want. It has truly changed the way I play as a Vig guardian and made it much more fun and taken a lot of the micro-managing out of the equation. Just wanted to share it with me fellow Vig guardians (or really anyone). Enjoy!

Wait...really? I've been tanking as a guardian since the game launched, followed these forums closely, and I never remember seeing something that said Blade Barrier could be enhanced by stats. Shows what I know. Not that there's much room in my build to add more power, but it's nice to know the extra power in the augments are helping out with blade barrier. To the OP, I tank for our guild on 16m hard mode stuff (we're only 1/5 on TFB right now but getting there) and I use the War Hero Shield and Defense relics. I'm a big fan of having static stats over a clickie, so I'm partial to the War Hero relics. With full campaign augmented and those two relics, my numbers are: Defense: 28.35% Shield: 50.55% Absorb: 50:35 Damage Reduction: 52.43 HP: 25666 The numbers are all within a few .xx of their actual values...doing it from memory, but they're all definitely 28/50/50/52/25666 With those numbers I don't have any problems tanking the high end game stuff. I think it's mostly a preference thing. If you like having a lot of cooldowns and want a smaller boost every 2 minutes, go for the Campaign Relic (I used to use the defense one over the shield one since I used the absorb proc as well). But every time I equip that War Hero Shield relic and see my Shield Chance go up by ~5% I am reminded why I don't have clickie relics anymore.

Weren't you guys on PTS? Does it really count as a "server first" if you had a few weeks worth of practice on the PTS? Honest question, not trying to troll.

On a similar note, for those of you who (like myself) may not be Greek but might be Classics nerds... does anyone else fall out of their chair laughing at the guilds that use Latin in their names and get it completely wrong? I saw an Empire guild that I assume was trying to call itself "Fear Us" but instead it said something more like, "We are Fearful/Scared." It was awesome.

I'm with you, Aldoram. I'd love to see such a poll on the forums in the coming months.

I really hope something... anything... can be done by BW to help rectify all of the lost names, but somehow I doubt they'll take any action. The only thing I can think of that may be possible is for BW to, at some point down the line, do a name purge like CoH did a few years back. Basically they find all of the accounts that have been inactive for a certain period of time...say 2 or 3 years...they send an email to that account informing them that they must log in their characters or have their names released for the rest of the player base to claim. I am completely with you guys who are unhappy over the consolidation. I have moved twice now, from Darth Bandon to Corellian Run and now to the Shadowlands, and in the process I have lost every name I started the game with. Add on top of that the fact that I pre-ordered, was in the first day of early access and was eagerly awaiting the servers to go up at my computer for hours, and then got these names in the first minutes the game was live...well, you get it. It's clearly not a unique story in this thread. However, other than my above suggestion, I just can't think of any feasible way to rectify the consolidation. I heard someone say have a complete name wipe and allow people the opportunity for "first-come, first-served" again. Now personally, I would be absolutely fine with that. But there's no way that would pass.... I don't think. I have come pretty late to the thread and it's fairly gigantic now, so I'll just ask: have there been any other constructive suggestions for how to possibly fix the situation? I, for one, have very nearly given up hope of ever having the names I fell in love with back in the first few months of the game ever again. It's just so ridiculous that the developers of a game that is supposed to be based around story and character immersion would pull the identity rug out from under its players not once, but twice. So ridiculous...

Love the idea, OP. /signed

It came out of nowhere. It's just one of those grammar mistakes that really bugs me. And since I'm one of the folks who is horribly, hopelessly attached to my old names and sad some of mine are gone, I lashed out at the guy who said we who care about names have issues. I was in a bad mood too over the consolidation, so my apologies. I don't usually post one sentence, snarky ******** like that.

If you are over the age of twelve and still do not know the difference between "than" and "then," then you have issues.

Aside from the fact that this will be the 2nd time I'm having to rename my characters in a game that is hyped as a story-driven, heavy immersion MMORPG, here's what really rubs me the wrong way... I used to play on Darth Bandon and I had the name I wanted since, literally, the first hour that this game was released. I was invited to the first day of early access and was just waiting to get on so I could get this name (not to mention the other names, but the main character was the one I was really passionate about). Then Bandon was moved to Corellian Run and I had to rename almost all of my characters and my legacy name. I found some new, alright names, and I was already progression raiding at this point and loving it so I stuck with it. Now we are consolidating to new High Population servers and, as I have heard it, whoever gets the name will be based on who had the name first chronologically. As I said, I had the old name I wanted from the very first few moments SWTOR was live. But since I transferred before this consolidation, I guess I classify as no longer in the running for that name, so no luck. This is a blatant whine post and I know nothing can be done, I just wanted to voice my disappointment. Now, let me get back to praying to the MMO gods that I get some good names tomorrow.

Can you give us a rough timetable (or, even better, an actual date) for when we will get the chance to rename our legacies? Just getting excited about it and wondering how long I'll have to wait. Also, I highly suggest allowing everyone a free re-name for their first name as well. Chances are, for those of us who try to make names that sound good and "Star Wars-y," if we lost a legacy name some of our old first names might not have worked with the new legacy name we had to switch to. Now that we're gonna have our old legacy name back, I'd like to be able to go back to some older names that I know are open for some of my characters. Just a thought.

Sorry, but I don't have the time to look through and make sure this hasn't been asked yet and the search feature on the site isn't working too well right now, so... Does anyone know where the RD-07A Viper Helmet (the eyepatch) drops?

Aienir, please post a parse or a video of you doing 1900 sustained DPS. Until I can see some proof, that number sounds like exaggeration. I mean no offense, I'm positive you know full well what you're doing and you're putting out big numbers...but 1900 sustained? If you give proof, I'll eat my words and commend you on your performance, but until then that number seems quite impossible.

The chestpiece is the Indignation Chestguard and is frequently on the market. The pants are the medium armor knight legacy pants, so this guy shouldn't be wearing them. And I'm not sure about gloves and boots.

A while back, after the backlash Bioware got from a multitude of players who found the armors that were introduced with 1.2 pretty disappointing to say the least, you guys stated that you realized the players were more interested in simpler, more "Star Wars" looking armors at high levels and that you planned to shift your focus for armor design in the future, but it would be a while before we saw the changes implemented. It's been a few months, so can you provide us with any updates on the new direction the art is taking? Some concept art, maybe?

Yeah, that's totally possible. I know a few folks who've done it, but they're in top-end guilds with really talented healers and DPS. You really gotta have a solid team to completely forgo Warding Call, Blade Barrier, and Riposte for the extra DPS. But it definitely can be done, especially for a Biochem who can make up for the loss of Warding Call with a Rakata or Exotech absorb adrenal. I just like to have both.

*deep breath* The top talents in the Defense tree are mostly not even based around defense, and if you go deep into Vigilance, you get a talent that gives better damage reduction than Inner Peace, the one talent aside from Shield Specialization in the upper tiers of the defense tree that provides you with a defensive bonus. That power I am referring to in the Vigilance tree is called Commanding Awe, and it gives a 4% damage reduction to all damage types permanently. Inner Peace, the talent in the penultimate tier of Defense, only gives 4% resistance to Internal and Elemental damage. In addition, Vigilance gives you the talent Unremitting, which provides a 20% damage reduction boost and complete CC immunity on every force leap. This means for the few seconds after I jump in against a hard mode boss, I'm getting an extra little buffer to deal with that first hit, which is very helpful at the start as healers are still getting positioned. Best if I don't get hit too hard and give them time to get set. And on bosses that KB a lot it's a wonderful talent to have. Additionally, with a full defense spec you only proc your blade barrier once every 12 seconds. But with the build I posted above you get a talent called Vigilance, which lowers the CD of Blade Storm by 3 seconds, making the final Cd of Blade Storm 9 seconds and making your Blade Barrier proc more often and providing you with more damage absorbed over time. With the recent changes to Blade Barrier and the 20% damage absorbed boost from the set bonuses, it's really nice to have it up quicker. The main argument against the build I posted would be focus generation is limited while in Soresu Form if you're not running Cyclonic Sweeps. This is true, and focus generation is not even a factor for full defense builds, but in all honesty if you learn how to play the Hybrid spec right, you're not worrying about focus either. True, you'll be hovering around the lower end of the bar rather than the top, but with lots of Sundering Strikes and well-placed Combat Focuses, you get by perfectly fine. And did I mention our Force Sweep is free? Some have claimed that this type of build is lacking in aggro control, but that's just not true. Hilt Strike is not needed to keep single target aggro, and the recent changes to Guardian Strike, IMO of course, are useless. The times when I'm required to tank multiple mobs are few and far between, and even then it's trivial if you're playing with a good group. Usually on, say, the Trandoshans on HM EC, we're CCing the champions and we're focusing on the Elites. Seeing as that Op is always going to have two tanks running it, the most Elites you're going have to tank is usually two or three. In that situation, I don't need Guardian Strike to be a cone... I can just use Cyclone Slash and space out my Overhead Slash, Blade Storm, and Master Strike. It's fully possible to tank 2-3 mobs using solely those powers, your taunts, your guardian leap, and your guard with 2 other DPS beating on them. Plus, the baddies are rarely close enough for you to even use your cone Guardian Slash on them. AND the damage was reduced on Guardian Slash, so Overhead Slash is now way more damaging and thus more threat-building. And with the Hybrid spec you get a 100% chance for your Blade Storm to add a DoT that adds "13 damage over 6 seconds." That's not huge, but still takes it over the top of a Defense specced tank's Blade Storm. And then you could even spec into Force Rush with the hybrid spec, making your Overhead Slash increase the critical chance of Blade Storm by 60%! That's nearly a guaranteed crit! And as an aside, Vanguard's already are gonna do the AoE tanking job so much better than us anyway, I'm of the mind to just let them have it. They can tank the trash mobs and keep them all aggroed all day long... I'll be here when we need to fight that Ops boss and you need a tank who can rotate cooldowns all day long. And single target aggro...well with the recent threat changes, once I've gone through a round of Saber Throw, Leap, Sunder, Overhead Slash, Blade storm, and then a taunt just to seal the deal, there's no taking the aggro away on the target unless I just stop doing anything. I do miss the +4% Shield chance, but honestly that's just not enough for me to go full defense when you compare it to the bonuses from Vigilance. I would strongly encourage you to try out the Hybrid spec and see what you think. It's really a whole lot of fun. Great synergy between the powers. Sunder, Overhead Slash, Blade Storm, another Sunder, Master Strike, another Sunder, and OH Slash and Blade storm are back up by the time you get that last Sunder off, which wouldn't be possible without the Vigilance talent from the Vigilance tree. It's a great rotation for building threat. I thought for a long time, "how could a spec with more talents in a damage tree than the defense tree be better at survivability? That makes no sense!" I was right... it doesn't make any sense, but it's the bottom line truth in my experience. (And here's the usual caveat I provide in these discussions: I am in NO WAY saying the full defense spec is terrible. It's a perfectly fine spec and I know plenty of tanks who use it and make it work wonderfully. These are just what I consider the nearly indisputable pieces of evidence that put the hybrid spec on top. As has been discussed and discussed, in some nice threads and some decidedly venomous, there is always gonna be room for debate about it.)