As a Shadow with Tharan: Mind maze one of the three mobs. Prioritize the casters as in general their lightning attacks if not interrupted (which is trickier with multiples up) are more devastating than other mobs. (Especially as a Kinetic shadow which mitigate a good deal of melee and ranged attacks) You can decide to open up with Force Lift. With Tharan out Holiday will be taking out one of the mobs for quite a while too. As a result, most of the time, including the first 8 seconds guaranteed , you will be fighting a single mob. In this timespace you should be able to burn it down for a significant amount, so you will only briefly fight two strong mobs. (If you want to play it optimally, you can do Force Lift -> Holiday Deploy -> Force Stun -> Holiday Deploy for a total of 28 seconds of CC and 8 out of every next 10) Anything these throw at you should not be a problem between interrupts, Tharan heals, medpacs, Deflection, Resilience, Force Stun, etc. (From parts of your post I am getting the impression you are using AoE; this is a bad idea, you will want to burn down the mobs one by one.) Once the first mob is down, the remaining two are just fought one on one. If this causes you any troubles, you are doing something really wrong, especially outlvling the content. The big key here is to keep as many mobs as possible (As Shadow with Tharan, that's always one and for a very large portion of the time two) controlled while burning them down one by one. Trying to AoE is likely going to get you destroyed. (I didn't try, but trying to solo AoE anything above normal mobs down isn't particularly effective)

You could keep using the blue, but since it is not reusable and requires non-trivial amounts of mats to make, it would not be actually overly feasible. It's true that Biochem epics do not offer much of a direct stat advantage anymore. However consider the following: Purple Biochem consumables can be used an infinite number of times. When doing PVP you will typically use medpacks and adrenals close to on cooldown, whereas deaths are also fairly frequent. As a result, you would be using blue stims every two hours. Which is somewhat manageable, but requires ~20 minutes of crafting time every two hours. Rakata medpacks fall between Blue (which heal more) and Green (which do not get bonus health) medpacs. Let's say you don't value the extra health as much and don't overspend (considering adrenals are going to cost you badly) and make green ones. So every three minutes you need a green medpack to be crafted for you. (Which happens to roughly take 3 mins as well) For adrenals, let's say you go for the Hyper-Battle kind, which is slightly worse than Rakata. (Considering the Exotech ones require 4 Radioactive paste, which isn't terribly realistic to use every 3 minutes) Every 3 minutes you need a new one crafted, which is 20 minutes of crafting time and a fair amount of materials. Now adding this up, if I PvP as a Kinetic Shadow for 2 hours, I'd need: Prototype Hyper-Battle Resolve stim (due to lesser availability of the Exotech version) 40 Ultimate medpacs 40 Hyper-Battle Force Adrenal If crafting this yourself, the costs would be: 244 Psychoactive Compound 244 Red Goo 246 Quick-growth Agent 164 Experimental Serum About 15 hours and 40 minutes of companion craft time Now if you do this on your own, I think it's pretty clear you can't even sustain this with your own companions. Every 2 hours you have a maximum of 10 hours of crew skill time available (5 times 2), and we haven't even gotten into the staggering amount of materials you need and what it would take to gather them. (Either time investment for gathering, or financial and crew skill time investment) Assuming you'd obtain the materials from other sources, you have multiple characters working for you (who could be doing other things) or are looking at a staggering amount of credits required to sustain this. So true, you do not get a direct stats gain now from Biochem. However, the ability to pop an adrenal every 3 minutes to get significant extra burst output on demand is very, very significant. Consider that from the list above, roughly 66% of the green ingredients, 97% of the Experimental Serum and 80% of the crafting time went into crafting the Adrenals. (Which have no cheaper, green version)

I personally do not mind 'working' (I prefer calling it putting in effort, being a game and all) for gear. However a few observations from my side: I do not particularly like the massive impact gear has on PVP in many games, SWToR included. So you are a Battlemaster? In that case you shouldn't have any problems killing an inexperienced PVPer by virtue of your superior skills and experience. You shouldn't need to have such a gear advantage that such a player has no chance against you no matter the skill. I'd prefer PvP to be skill and coordination (across teams) based, not gear based. Requiring a major investment of time to be on even terms with those that has been playing forever constitutes a major entry barrier for PvP which could very well prevent a lot of very skilled players from bothering to participate. PvP should be players challenging themselves (and each other) to become better, in a competitive environment where the best player wins. While the best player might be a long term player who has honed his skill over time, most time invested and best are not one and the same. Again, if you are so great you do not need gear to beat others. Feeling that spending a lot of time on PvP entitles you to bash newer players into the ground by virtue of your superior gear and considering this a right bestowed for playing this much? Going to have a long term bad effect on PvP community and participation. If it were up to me, PvP rewards would not have an impact on the outcome of PvP. I have no issues with titles, ranks, unique visual gear and whatnot, but personally making those who are already the highest ranked (and thus *should* be the best) also the best geared is a case of 'rich getting richer' which interferes with actual competitiveness of PvP. This is not aimed at anybody in particular (nor the OP, as I agree on the general concept that especially in recent years gear can be too easy to obtain which cheapens the sense of accomplishment), but my personal impression is that a lot of people who defend the gear gap as something they have earned are actually scared of being 'exposed' by what would happen if their gear level was equal to their opponent, and prefer 'hiding' behind their gear advantage. Finally in case this topic is aimed at today's changes: I suspect the commendation gains have been tuned such that the overall rate of gear gain has stayed roughly equal. However in the new situation it will for the most part be a predictable influx of gear, where there is some sort of correlation between time invested and gear level, rather than a pure crapshoot where people can be geared after a few bags, or be Battlemaster and have little to show for it. (Both of which have happened far too often). I'd say that's a good thing.

Not exactly the most important issue in the game but still something which kind of bothers me, yet something I haven't seen a whole lot of talk (if any) about: At the moment, there's plenty of gear which is absolutely worthless due to stat combinations which are just not working. The only thing possible to do really is to vendor this gear; I see quite a bit of it on the GTN, but I can't imagine it actually being bought by any player. Some of the issues: Stats on items which are just by definition pretty much useless. More than half of the assault cannons on the GTN (since those I guess don't sell so just get stuck on there) have Cunning on them. Commandos are the only users of Assault Cannons, and do not favor Cunning. There is no logical reason to have Cunning appear on Assault Cannons. Similarly I am seeing defensive stats appear on Sentinel armor at a pretty high frequency, despite Sentinels not having a tanking spec. (And for the few who might for whatever reason put those stats on companions or whatever, there's also the item modification system) Stat combinations which simply do not work together. Defensive and Offensive stats combined are pretty bad most of the time. Shadow gear with Shield and Crit is pretty bad, gear with Shield and Alacrity is even worse. No Sage is going to want Shield stats, no Shadow is ever going to want Alacrity since it does virtually nothing. Basically there's a lot of gear going to waste here, and it's rather frustrating to get a blue or purple drop (or save up for a box) only to find out the item is worthless. With the way the gear is partitioned per advanced class, it's very easy to predict for which class a certain item type is (especially with weapons, and for the most part with armor as well), and restricting useless stats from appearing on gear should be fairly easy. So as suggestion: Restrict stats which will always be useless to the potential user of an item from appearing on items, and also prevent bad combinations of secondary stats from appearing together.

The ranked warzones are expected for 1.2 (as well as apparently another change in how gearing works) 1.1.2 is the commendation from bags changes.

I'm not really clear what part you are complaining about currently. If you are talking about someone trying to futilely blow up the door in Voidstar, agreed. Sometimes tho as mentioned above, forcing a player to blow cooldowns on an interrupt can be handy. Multiple players trying to cap the same objective is not always the best either, since the entire group can get interrupted by a single AoE, and the group has a better chance if some members ensure the opponents are kept away. If this is based on Alderaan however, nothing is more useless on that map than a midfield hero who racks up the numbers while achieving absolutely nothing that will help the team to win.

The removal of the random element is most welcomed and a step in the right direction, and will long term be the right solution. (Though seriously, just eleminate the random element and get rid of the small chance to get a superior token altogether) The problem here however is that warzones are already filled with players who have easily gathered Champion level gear, many of which mainly due to having high amounts of luck with getting tokens from their Champions bags. Making Champion gear mostly unavailable to newer level 50s while letting these players retain theirs simply creates an unfair gear advantage to those who were lucky, and which will take a long time to resolve. (Until hitting Valor 60) This wouldn't be all that bad (but a little annoying) if this was PvE gear we are talking about. However in PvP we will be constantly going up directly against players who have been given a long term gear advantage simply due to being lucky if this change is implemented in its current format.

That's the whole point really. It's been so easy to get with some luck that it's not fair to effectively lock those who are newly 50 or lack luck out of it until Valor 60. Basically Champion gear is what Centurion gear was supposed to be, relatively easy obtainable gear. (assuming you have some luck, which by now legions of players have had) You can't let a large number of players just get gear too easily based on sheer luck, and then make it much harder for those who come after. Only fair way to do this is just abandon Centurion gear altogether, allow for farming of Champion commendations to have Champion gear obtained at the same average rate as the bag system with random token drops allowed, and then unlock Battlemaster gear at higher levels. Or heck, if they really like the lottery of getting a better token in bags, allow BM gear from Champion bags and give BMs some sort of SuperBM gear. Either way, grinding for gear from commendations based on valor rank is good. Restricting new players from gear which was handed out like candy before is not.

What a horrible change to be implemented in this way. I am fully in favor of a solution where commendation gains are increased and token drops decreased. I'd go as far as to advocate removing the tokens outright, since I don't feel luck should play a major part in getting geared and I don't see how having a small chance to get a much better item than you are saving for really makes a whole lot of sense. However, implementing the proposed solution in the current situation would be a terrible choice. Basically this will allow players who won the Champion's Bag lotto to keep their gear advantage (which is considerable between Centurion and Champion) whereas others will be stuck in Centurion gear until Valor 60. If this had been done early in the game before many players had done significant gearing, this would have been a solid choice, and I'd have argued to actually remove the chance for a higher token altogether. However in the current situation where so many people have already gotten their Champion gear easily, 'fixing' the system by granting those who were lucky a massive gear advantage for a long time is beyond idiotic. Right now, the only thing to do is accept that Centurion gear is not wanted by players and too weak to be the gear players earn while working towards Valor 60 with the amount of Champion gear which has been handed out to players favored by the RNG. They should just put in Champion Commendations which allow for a steady and reliable grinding (not giving away) of Champion gear instead. For all I care add a Super Battlemaster tier which is 4 lvls above BM gear if somehow needed to get the system to work and provide incentives for higher valor ranks. Either way, gear should be earned. It should not be given out like candy to those who are lucky, and then changed to grant those lucky players a long term gear advantage.

While I agree there is a discrepancy here, Shadows do not have any targeted AoE either in their tank spec (Most Shadow tanks spec 31 Kinetic 10 Balance). The 'best' we get is a smallish radius AoE centered on a target which is 10 yards away; in most cases this is not far enough to reach the errant ranged mobs. I agree not having a pull to get 'that one ranged' you want to reposition is annoying though. (Keep in mind though that on the other hand Shadows lack a proper charge. Force Speed can be used in some occasions but there's plenty of times an actual charge is preferable, not to mention it being on shorter cooldown). Powertechs/Vanguards clearly have the best and most complete toolbox for these situations.

I've noticed this several times in the past, but got highly annoyed with this yesterday due to several issues in PVP which had considerable impact on how the encounter played out: Trying to knock back players from the door to have a team mate plant a bomb, only to have the delay cause an imperial player to have run past me by the time the animation actually fires and getting knocked towards the door. Being able to knock other players in a certain direction is severely hampered by the delay allowing said opponents to change location. Trying to knock people off the catwalks in Huttball, only to get knocked back by an imperial player who had not initiated any sort of knockback animation when my Force Wave started. Only to have a Imperial player initiate his knockback while I was jumping, causing me to be knocked back, Force Wave not doing anything, but going on cooldown. Basically being unable to properly position players due to the delay, as well as having later activated cooldowns activate sooner, negating the effect of force wave yet putting it on cooldown is just ridiculous. Force Wave is supposed to be instant just like the other knockbacks, and should not be this handicapped compared to those. (It's been a while since I was on my SI but I seem to recall it being faster; my trooper's knockback seems very much instant) It's not like it's possible to adapt to it. Especially the second issue is completely out of our hands since we cannot predict an imperial player activating their knockback after we initiate ours. The first issue has a little more potential to be somewhat adapted to (though we should not need to), but projecting where imperial players are going to be by the time the animation finishes in the chaotic environment of PvP isn't that realistic.

Using CC and interrupts to limit incoming damage and make pulls easier isn't exactly a novel concept. It's been used in most MMOs and contrary to the occasional MMO concepts which might be not particularly intuitive to grasp for new players, it should be pretty obvious to anybody that using a skill which prevents an enemy from taking any action will make a fight easier. Interrupting the right casts is maybe slightly less obvious, but it's not exactly a giant leap to reason that the longer casts are usually the most devastating. So yeah, Attis station was easy. I zoned in, noticed I was up against a good number of strongs and elites. So I crowd controlled what looked to be the most dangerous mob (ie, elite casters), went after the most squishy and dangerous mob (ie, strong, if available a caster) first, and breezed through it. Don't think I dropped below 75% health at any point. All my beta experience came from playing in the last two beta weekends as an Inquisitor on Korriban and Bounty Hunter on Hutta. I didn't learn any sort of 'trick', I just used common sense to minimize the damage I took. I don't really think it should be necessary to include some sort of semi-intelligent tutorial which analyzes what you are doing wrong and tell you. It's also not really feasible given the development time that would cost. It's also not like Attis Station requires some specific 'trick' or gimmick to get through; it's been a mainstay of MMO's (and RPGs in general really) to limit incoming damage using crowd control. I agree the mission seems to be a fairly sharp raise in difficulty compared to most of those previously, but I don't think it should be nerfed down to the level of the rest of the questing content. (Which is mind numbingly easy and provides next to no challenge or risk of even dying) The difficulty curve should be smoothed out though, but the only way I would support that is by actually buffing the remaining content. This way there is a smooth curve of content getting gradually more difficult, and as a result players will learn the value of things such as CC and interrupts sooner, rather than it suddenly becoming a big issue in Attis Station. (Even if I find it hard to understand how someone who is apparently a MMO veteran could just completely forget about a 1 minute CC, but if anything this shows the earlier content was simply too easy) With a proper preparation and understanding of the two core concepts which are central to succesfully completing Attis station, the mission is far from difficult. I'd also like to note that complaining this is too hard for 'casual' players is not a particularly valid complaint. Every player will have completed the same amount of content by the time they reach Attis Station, the only difference will be the real time since starting to play the game. Just like in "that other game", 'Casual' is a term which should have no impact on difficulty or playing ability. I could play 1-2 hours a night and I'd still breeze through Attis Station. If you are lacking the time to complete a flashpoint because you don't have enough time in one session to do one that's something you could complain about as 'casual', but please let's not get this whole discussion again where people claim content is too difficult because they are 'casual'.

Bloodworthy Republic here. Finished the weekly (and daily) in a bit under an hour last night. Had a 24 man ops group which was still being pressed back against the republic base by a bigger imperial group, but some decent use of pulling and turrets had kills come in at a fairly steady rate.

I don't quite get this complaint though. You apparently spent a lot of time on the mission, got close to giving up, felt incoming damage was too high and hit a huge respawn timer. Yet only much later, after tons of time spent, you ended up using Force Lift? When you had this high incoming damage, and things felt too hard, wouldn't it make sense to think about what was going wrong, and getting the idea "Hmm, this incoming damage is rather high, so I need to lower it. I have this ability called Force Lift which will control one of three targets for a minute, that should help a lot." instead of just rushing back in and expecting that things would suddenly end up different the next time you tried? While I haven't had any issues with the story quests aside from the bugged Vivicar Awaits (hello there, 5 groups of mobs at once), I can agree that the difficulty curve isn't overly smooth, and could use a bit of work. However the difficulty mostly varries between 'faceroll easy and impossible to die' and 'somewhat challenging but quite easy when using the tools you were given'. (If anything, I'd advocate equalizing out the difficulty curve to smoothly increase the difficulty over the levels, not to nerf the few parts which offer a bit of a challenge) We're not exactly talking about missions which only a small percentage of the playerbase is even capable of doing. If you've played MMO's for that long, you've undoubtedly figured out by now what the value of crowd control is. I don't really think Bioware would need to announce the need to use skill X with big neon signs everywhere.

I believe it was replaced by Project.

I get the impression that he's probably one of the two least used companions we got. Qyzen is a char we get so early that he quite easily becomes the go to tank who gets geared up along the way. Similarly for Theran as healer (especially as KC shadow) being easily the most useful companion for many situations, especially factoring in Holiday. I don't find Zenith particularly interesting (or sympathetic for that matter), so there's not a whole lot of reason it seems to take him along. Kinda similar with Iresso, though he's at least a bit more agreeable as character. In my case I took Zenith along briefly after I got him, wasn't impressed with the damage, so he's been hanging out on my ship since. What's not really helping much is that his competitor as a DPS companion is Nadia, who seems to be a more fun character who plays a bigger part in the story, seems to do DPS more effectively, and can use hand me down gear we used ourselves previously quite well. Generally Seers will pick Qyzen, Kinetic Shadows take Theran, all DPS specs tend to need one of those two, and if we need more DPS Nadia is the more attractive option. Zenith just hasn't got a whole lot going for him, aside from being the least interesting character (my opinion) to begin with.

The most likely issue is having DoTs on you, which deal damage to you and pull you out of stealth and into combat immediately. You can prevent this by using Resilience right before using Force Cloak.

Usually my Sentinel guildy if I'm in a flashpoint with him for PvE. Experienced melee DPS who is quite trigger happy, so reduces any aggro issues. Not had any issues keeping aggro off healers single target, whereas when it comes to adds the biggest problem healers usually have is getting mobbed on spawn because the tank hasn't generated any threat yet and they do by healing. In those cases, Guard won't solve that either. And then there's of course the range issue. In PVP, Guard goes on my girlfriend who plays a healing specced Sage, if she's in the neighbourhood.

I think the disconnect we are seeing in this discussion going back and forth is that you feel there is a considerable amount of survivability being sacrificed, whereas others feel this is not the case. To summarize things from the impression I've been getting from all the discussions being held about this, the issue the people you are argueing with isn't one of the following: They are tanks with an identity crisis who actually want to be DPS. They expect to be immortal as tank. I don't think these are really the issues. What it comes down to is the following: PVP tank sets have Accuracy, Defense and Absorption as specific stats which aren't shared between all the sets of that advanced class. The problem people are having with this is that while accuracy will be helpful by making more abilities hit (in other words aiding DPS) whereas the two defensive stats do very little to increase the survivability of tanks in PVP due to the nature of attacks. The argument people have is that the value of getting this very minor increase in survivability is not worth the major loss in damage output and its value to the group. A large part of the tank trees serve to buff mitigation forms which are just like mentioned above largely ineffective in PVP. While these tank trees offer some nice utility which is considered quite useful, it feels like the points in added survivability are largely wasted compared to DPS trees, whose talents are fully effective in PVP. A large part of your argument seems to revolve around Shield, Absorb and Defense actually being useful in PVP, and this is where the disconnect seems to be. The issue here is that these stats do not work at all on Internal and Energy/Tech type attacks, which tend to make up the majority of the most frequently used and most devastating attacks seen in PVP. As such, the survivability benefit these stats offer is considered to be too marginal. (Note that a lot of skills you would readily assume were susceptible to shield/defense, such as Operatives plunging knives in your back and stockstrike/rocket punch are actually tech attacks and thereby completely bypass non-armor defenses) What it comes down to is currently tow questions which have been asked in numerous threads: Is the sacrifice in DPS for getting the tank gear offset sufficiently by the gain in survivability by its defensive stats? Currently many tanks feel that due to the dominance of attacks fully ignoring defense and shield mechanics that this is not the case. (And I'd personally argue that the discrepancy between how classes' attacks are affected by these stats is a cause for balance concern) Is the investment in the tank tree (and the increased survivability) worth the sacrifice in damage potential? The point being made here basically is that many feel that the difference between a Powertech/Vanguard/Sin/Shadow/Guardian/Juggernaut who is specced and geared for DPS and one specced and geared for tanking is making the tank choice a somewhat dubious one. A lot of the good functionality (Guard, Taunt, etc.) is baseline for the advanced classes. Tankspecs obviously get their unique utility which helps considerably, but the investment in specs and especially gear appears to offer too few gains for the sacrifices being made.

Just wondering, why would you take Expertise as a Kinetic tank? The damage improvement is rather marginal, and I'd say for example you'd be much better off with full Psychokinesis to give you more force to play with. (And tbh I'd take Mental Fortitude and Rapid Recovery before Expertise as well)

45 here, but from my own experiences and reading other players' accounts I don't get the idea that we are broken. One issue we seem to have though during group pulls is that Kinetic Ward can be fairly easily consumed before its cooldown is up (8 charges go quite quickly when a bunch of mobs attack you), which leads to higher and more spiky damage input. (Maybe they should fix it by somehow limiting the speed at which you can lose charges, increasing the amount of charges or just dropping the charges - BHs and Vanguards get a static shield chance which is close to ours with KW up) Our overall mitigation is apparently a little lower (but fairly marginally) than BHs, but on the other hand we do now get a fair amount of self healing with Combat Technique (~450 with 4.5 sec cooldown). Hard to really quantify though how much this compensates for without a combat log however. We'll take slightly more spikey damage (due to higher avoidance and lower mitigation) than BHs, but I've not heard a lot of people experience this as a major dealbreaker. I would assume any glaring issues will be fixed eventually (tank balance will shift between patches), so I personally don't see our weaker points as something to really require class switching, and would guess you're best off playing what you enjoy. Lvl 45 though, as mentioned ;p

It depends really, when it comes to endurance. Of course more stamina and a higher time to death is never a bad thing. On the other hand, I have yet to really run into situations where time to death actually had any sort of impact on the outcome of a fight. Usually so far if you avoid the easily avoidable stuff, it seems to more be a case of the healer needing to properly manage the resources to handle the sustained damage a boss puts out. Then again I'm level 45 and haven't done any hard modes yet as result, so maybe things change there. (Then again, I haven't heard much about enormous burst outside AoE pulls, and times where 3% extra Endurance will make a difference between life and death will be rare) Overall there's some use I would guess, but it seems rather marginal. When it comes to Combat Technique and Rapid Recovery, I would say the increased time between procs might somewhat diminish the value of the talent. On the other hand, it will have a bit of an effect on how quickly and reliably you can proc it after the cooldown wears off: Without Rapid Recovery, you have a 50% chance to not apply Combat Technique per swing. So over the course of a Double Strike for example, you'd have a 25% chance to not apply Combat Technique. With Rapid Recovery, you have a 35% chance to not apply Combat Technique per swing. So a Double Strike after the cooldown expires would have 12.25% chance to not apply Combat Technique. Overall the time between procs will increase a little if you don't take Rapid Recovery (From an expected 1.53 attacks per proc to 2 attacks per proc) and the spread in time between procs will increase a little bit (as the higher chance to not apply Combat Technique means you might go several attacks without a proc). Overall I'd say these are the last two T2 talents to consider picking up (assuming you do not consider Expertise) when tiering up, after taking the entire T1 and Elusiveness. Personally I'd probably still lean slightly to elusiveness since it will increase the overall healing done by combat technique, be it fairly marginally, whereas Mental Fortitude will rarely make a chance. Maybe my opinion will change as I hit hard modes, but overall both talents are fairly marginal atm in my view.

Actually yes, if the bosses all drop healer gear the healer can use, he is entitled to every single piece which drops. Random number generators will generally result in a reasonably fair loot distribution (by dropping useful pieces and winning rolls) over a large sample size. A single instance is too small a sample size however to get such a fair distribution. The result is that you might have players see some lucky streaks (and accompanying unlucky streaks in which nothing drops). Using the above principles of loot distribution (apparently denying the healer gear he could use in favor of companions or even vendoring) is only going to hurt you in the long run as well. This run you might be unlucky and nothing drops for you. Another run, you might get lucky and see all that useful gear you can use drop. Using the principles you came up with above, you would have taken useful healer loot 'away' from the healer, and would similarly have useful loot 'taken away' from you in a subsequent run. The bottom line being you now have two players with worse gear than they could have had. So yeah, if you are in a group and a lot of gear drops which a single player can use, let him have it, congratulate him, curse him in your thoughts and vow that you will be more lucky next run. As for companions: As you get higher in levels, companions typically tend to get less effective than actual human players, and as such get less useful, and are less likely to be used. Partially due to the very limited scripting possible (the Dragon Age scripting systems would have been wonderful) as well as the difficulty of properly positioning companions and the slow response time they seem to have. (Getting a companion to run outside an AoE groundeffect targetted on him is a pain) The result of this is that companions are only really used for solo gameplay, for which they quite honestly don't need flashpoint drops. Some cheap greens from the AH and the occasional commendation item will have them perform just fine for all the content they have been designed for. In the long run, it's a much better idea to leave instance drops to actual players if they need the item. It will actually help the effectiveness in content such as operations, hard mode flashpoints and warzones, where companions will hardly be used. While you might offer the argument that you will not see these players again, thing is that if this kind of rolling becomes commonplace as you propose, you will be losing gear to companion rolls in the future yourself. Resulting you to be worse geared and less effective in content that actually matters than you could have. So bottom line: Rolling need for a companion if nobody else needs it, sure go right ahead. But don't be idiotic and steal an upgrade from an actual player.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601rcR0k.1 would be my suggestion for a lvl 21 Kinetic tank build. Tier 1 all the talents are fairly useful, Tier 2 is a bit of a crapshoot aside from Elusiveness comparatively), whereas Tier 3 is good enough to be completely filled out again. Mind over Matter is a pretty nice talent to get out of knockback snares and back on target fast, whereas more defense is of course always welcome. Once you get to 25, you will obviously want to max One with the Force quickly. Overall tanking will feel somewhat limited in the early twenties, since you still miss your AoE tool without cooldown. Luckily between CC and standard mobs, AoE tanking isn't a particularly big deal in instances (as mentioned, standard and even strong mobs are fairly easily soloed), even if the tank in me always wanted to keep as much on me as possible Single target threat should probably not be such a major issue since you are able to get Particle Acceleration, which makes Project hit very hard. Generally speaking it will come down to keeping on Force Breach while Double Striking and using Particle Acceleration procs on Project. It's a little boring and basic, but it works and gets more interesting later on For pulling, I'd suggest going in stealth, use Blackout to get close to Mind maze a target if needed, use Force Breach if you don't have to be careful with CC, then start with some Double Strikes and Particle Acceleration projects on the mobs you need to keep on you (ie, the elites). Force Pull is a great skill to have, but is generally better saved to pull a ranged mob into a more favorable position, rather than to start off a pull. (Excluding times you want to safely pull annoying ranged patrols when they are between static groups)

If you had actually bothered to read, instead of quickly rush in to flex your e-peen in an attempt to sound tough, you might have noticed Kitru didn't actually have any major issues, but was just noting that Force Lift isn't worth casting usually for Kinetic Shadows. Which I think is fairly sensible since 2 seconds of casting (+pushback) will rarely make a major difference. Neither do I see how just checking out how much a healer companion can make you survive is part of being lazy and a bad player. But if it is what makes you sleep at night, good for you I guess... I'd be similarly interested in your argumentation on how Balance is "by far the best and by all accounts has the most survivability". It has some nice tools, but if you look at the Kinetic Combat tree, there's talents such as Technique Mastery (Balance doesn't exactly use Combat Technique all the time), Kinetic Ward, Shadowsight, Mind over Matter (not being snared while running slowly towards your target after a knockback), Impact Control, Harnessed Shadows and even Slow Time. These will allow Kinetic Shadows to survive a good deal more than Balance Shadows with their minor bit of extra CC. Might be the reason they are the tanks I suppose... Personally not run into any problems yet while soloing with Tharan, just interrupting and CCing stuff where applicable. Well, aside from the zerg bug while on the way to Vivicar (That said, due to being a bit of a completionist, I seem to outlvl content most of the time, so might be expected as result) The main problem is that your abrasive posting style makes you appear to be an *** who hardly bothers to actually read what others wrote, but instead ends up writing posts which either lack any useful content and only contain insults, or merely poorly argumented points (which are at least partially wrong, to boot) while adding nothing of value to the conversation. This causes the sometimes toxic atmosphere in MMOs (and their community) where (often mediocre) players feel the need to assert their perceived superiority over others whenever somebody asks for advice.