You are running the wrong spec! According to your picture you have the Shien form passive. That means you run a Vigilance (DoT DPS) discipline. That essentially means you try tanking with a DPS spec, which is not working well. For a tank, you need the "Defense" discipline. That starts with giving you the Soresu Form Passive at 15, which does quite some stuff with your damage mitigation. You also get warding strike, which gives defensive buffs and will be be boosted by later abilities. At 23 you can decide if you want to buff warding strike towards defense or threat generation. You also get another passive that boosts Force Sweep with damage reduction buffs. And so on. Basically, switch your character to Defense, and read a Guardian tank guide. Yes, you can level with a tank spec. I did that way back when quest content was more challenging than today, and it seems to work nicely today as well. It is a bit slower sometimes, though. I recommend forgoing the healing companion and setting Kira to dps, which should do the trick in most world pve situations. And in Flashpoints, if you tank you need another player as healer (except for tourist mode, where GodBot seems to provide enough healing). Another note is keep your gear current. That includes implants and relics. And don't forget maintaining your endurance - some people recommend forgoing certain tank gear (eg relics) in favor of normal dps gear just because the latter provides way more endurance.

Can somebody explain how I am supposed to claim the season 3 rewards providing Tech fragments, as I have no character over level 61? It is my understanding they will simply vanish when I claim them..... (I have not yet tried)

I understand the vendors were upgraded / restructured. So - where did the level 20 pvp comms armor end up? I want to get hold of Force Evangelist's vestments and legwraps. Where do I need to go?

There are some good reasons, too role playing. Some people like to drive consistency a bit farther than others... guild matters. EG You might not want to carry over certain animosities onto all your alts. harassment. Sometimes you really want evade somebody's "attention" real life matter. Your Father/Son/Boyfriend/Girlfriend knows you play as "JoeThePlumber". Which is fine. But you'd rather not tell them every thing you do while playing an alt. and so on. Privacy matters.

Hello,. ive been mostly offline, for a number of reasons, from the game since last summer (June 2014) Now I looked in again, renewd my sub (expired, ironically, in early January), and I'm finding what looks more like a different game. So, I've got a few questions, putting them here since they read somewhat noob-ish. 1st - character builds. Do I understand correctly that "builds" are a matter of the past? That you can not tinker with your various talent and skill settings any more, but instead simply choose from 3 available standard builds and can then set a few utility points in this or that direction? Does that mean that the creative and unconventional builds that have arisen in the past from imaginative player tinkering have been shut down and excluded forever? 2nd - planets. What, actually, are new planets, and what are just flashpoint or mission backgrounds? Yavin? Rishi? others? ... 3rd, are there, beyond those two, any other major gameplay changes lurking? 4th - am I assuming right, that, like with the 50 items, all my hard fought for lvl 55 gear is destined for the dustbin and I am back to zero in the next iteration of the rat race for acceptable gear? If so, are there dailies and stuff for that? 5th - ist there any concise summary of all 3.x changes, beyond the long list of release note postings? 6th any other words of wisdom on the general topic?

Bioware must really really hate Healers. At least, scoundrel healers. Thats what I take away after several hours of trying Oricon with my Scoundrel. I know the place. Been there and done it with four other chars (3 dps and a tank). Have max Oricon reputation. My healer is not undergeared. She's got all 156 modded gear, w/o augs, and Akavi all on modded 148 (ex 66 blue). With this I can move around and deal with mobs just fine. Akavi does the damage, I heal oand occasionally help with damage. I also can do the southern cave quest boss. But I cant even make a dent with the tower boss and the nothern cave boss. The tower boss is an unbelievable monster. he cuts through Akavi's heavy armor like butter, and I stand no chance healing against it. I interrupt him where possible, but since my Interrupts are all 10m bound, this makes me getting stunned constantly (Bioware!!!! Why the f** have Sages 30m interrupts, while ours are only 10m???). I tried this 8 or 10 times, there is just no chance. By the time Akavi dies boss usually has more than 50% of his life; which I alone stand no chance against. The northern boss is even worse. I cant even bring him to less than 90%. He heals more than Akavi does damage. And I always interrupt his healing spell (but cant kill a tentacle since it never even shows up). Often Akavi dies with the boss even at 100% again. Also, the low interrupt range is especially onerous here as it exposes me to the Boss's frequent area knockbacks. Basically I have not found any way to solo the solo quests and apparently cant do Oricon without substantial help. What's your experience? Does Bioware hate healers, by making PvE content that does not work for them?

Hi, just played a Flashpoint. Maelstrom Prison, story mode, all 30-something players. I healed with a scoundrel. Our tank was peculiar. She was a Shadow, and first thing that came up was she refused to guard me, even though I kept pulling aggro in every fight. She didnt guard anybody else, either - both DPSes were puliing aggro every time, too. Turns out she was using Shadow stance. Asked to switch to Combat she insisted she were a different type of tank and that this was her playstyle. When told this wasnt working she said "it works for me". She claimed to be a "Solo Tank" - whatever that is. And blamed us for taking her aggro away. From the healing perspective it felt like she was just a sub-rate DPS - I basically had to heal like we had 3 dps. Our "tank" got the least damage and needed the least heal, though. One of the dps was a guardian, and nicely guarded me in a few tough fights. We made it, but with a few unnecessary deaths, and I was frequently out of resources at the end of fights. So my question: is that legit? Is there such a thing like a "Solo Tank" or is there a working tank spec using shadow stance instead of combat? And, if yes, should such a player join flash points via group finder as a tank?

Hmm... should I translate that as "forgo healing, act as your own barebones dps" and "with decent tactics, your standard damage skills should carry you to level 30". Not a good way to learn healing - but, well, if its that what must be done.....

'till level 20 or so it didn't make much difference. Just dpsed, but put points into the healing tree. Now I'm running out of steam that way. At this point Mako should either tank or dps for me, while I heal her. Doesnt't really happen, though. I understand the next companion is due after Tatooine ... but that is nearly 10 more levels. As a solider, you start with a dps companion, get a healer on Taris and a tank on Nar'Shaddaa. But as a Merc, its just Mako, or Mako. What's the conventional wisdom on that?

This bug is actually pretty old - It crept up sometime in summer 2012. I have an ATI card and use Windows XP SP3. I play with gamma setting at 80. Now whenever I al-tab out of the game and back in, or whenever I change any preferences setting not in the graphics tab, the game engine falls back to using default gamma. It gets very dark. The only way to fix this is restart the whole game, or go into preferences and pseudo-change the gamma value. So I change it from 79 to 80, or vice versa, and suddenly everything is back to normal. This used to work fine for the first half year of the game (I joined at launch), but got messed up somewhere in the ramp-up for free2play.

Seconded. Bioware, sticks are a must-have for dogfighting.

Actually no - they attacked me. I ran as soon as I understood what they were. The problem here is The Wolf. Overpowered AND unescapeable..

Nope. they started attacking me. I ran - wrong direction (deeper into area). Tried to get out again. Met The Wolf. Died. I think the Wolf is way worse than the Tauntauns. Especially his flight-preventing harpoon and his oneshot kill.

So you get to go to a new base. New base means a new area, and a bunch of new quests. So what do you do now? Well, first thing many of us do is explore the area surrounding the base. Ah, some Tauntauns - cute as always. Ooops - they aggressive? Damn, have to kill them. Bzzz... What The Frig - the thing kicked me once and im half dead??? panic - ! run. Ok, I could outrun them. Heal. Now how to get back outr of here again ... maybe along that little ship? Uh, a guy with a gold star. Will have to run again. Run... WTFWTF - he pulls me back. Start running again. Bzzz - dead. He killed me with one shot. One friggin shot. xWTFx is this? Bioware?? Is that your idea of game design? I never stood a chance there - level 43 even, slightly over-leveled for Hoth, but this is just gross. Directly next to third base, no warning, no heroic area marking. You go in there, bzzt - you are dead. No chance to flee, no chance to fight. It sucks. Whoever placed these guys there is seriously delusional; this is not how you design games. It used to be workable when they were level 50, but now its completely deadly. How tro fix it? Best option - move the whole circus somewhere else, where unsuspecfing players dont stumble into it. Next best: switch Tauntauns for some known aggressive and dangerous creatures, and defang The Wolf. Take away his harpoon and his oneshot kill, so that there is a chance to get away alive. Seriously - what were you thinking?

seconded