Your absolutely right. They posted an update that many people already knew was coming. I'm not specifically talking about today's "update", I'm talking about daily developer interaction with the community. Please, don't label me as "one of those guys" who is never happy about the amount feedback and interaction between CS and the community when recently there has been hardly any. (In before HK update), thats not the type of interaction I'm looking for. Since you already beat me to the "FTP Is an update", I'll just say this is ALSO not the type of interaction I am looking for from developers and CS. Those who have played MMO's for more then a day know what I am referring to. As for the Guild Wars, my apologies, I should have elaborated that those standalone packs do cost 15 bucks or whatever there price is, but my point that even the developer, having adopted a FTP mode, was still putting out content. Thanks for the correction though.

I planned on playing this game regardless of whether it went FTP or not. I don't play SWTOR because I *have* to, I play it because I enjoy it. The *only* thing that ticks off me and a lot of other players is just the lack of communication from Bioware and regular, smaller updates. Even with a reduced staff, if Bioware can just get Developer interaction with players back on track, and do smaller updates once in a small while I would be a happy camper untill hell freezes over. And for those complaining about how there will be a lack of new content because of the FTP system, wasn't GW1 f2p? That game had 3 releases that added new continents, classes to play as, items, skills, etc. It also had a full fledged expansion pack, ALL FTP.

I lol'd.

Ladies...Gentleman... I'm really just happy to be getting *any* content at this point..so yes, I'm excited about the new droid..

Alternatively, and arguably much faster then some other methods... If your in a guild, get yourself a decent tank and healer and start running Hardmode Flashpoints and get your full set of Columi gear. Once you have full Columi, get yourself into the next Story Mode Denova (Exposive Conflict) and chances are you will gear yourself in full Rakata in no time. That's not to suggest that Denova is easy for a newcomer to operations, but if you can pay attention and listen to instructions you will do just fine with full columi. While you are getting your columi/rakata, keep knocking out your dailys for Black Hole commendations, and buy Black Hole gear for the Mods. Throw the mods in your columi/rakata gear to keep the set bonuses, and you can easily have Denova Hardmode equivelant gear without having stepped foot in the actual hardmode itself. You can continue to do this untill either A) You are ready to go into hardmode Denova with your guild and get actual Campaign gear, or B) You get best-in-slot mods with your rakata gear with the end result of having campaign equivelant gear. Either way is viable. You definitely have a lot more fun doing the operation itself though! Cheers!

Easy. 1. Goto Pandora.com 2. Make a star wars channel 3. leave it running in background 4. ? 5. profit

With the latest threat changes for tanks, what is the next step in your Tank analysis? I have seen the feedback thread recently posted for each AC, and it seems that there is a general consensus that while one AC has most of the feedback being positive, I.E. Powertech/Vanguards being happy for the most part with there tanking abilities and damage output, it seems Juggernauts/Guardians are very unhappy with there defensive abilities and overall damage. Is there any plans to streamline tank defensive abilities and DPS?

1. How do you think your Juggernaut spec is perceived by other classes? - Even fully campaign geared, I would be the last choice for Hard Mode Denova if 2 other similarly geared classes were available due to the spikiness of Juggernaut tanks. We need more sustainable short-cooldown defensive abilities to lower our spikiness in end-game. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? - Looking at parsers I feel we do the least damage of other tanks in endgame, we are the spikiest, and it seems all our good utility would-be tank abilities are in other trees or in the Marauder class. We have too simplistic un-tankish late-tier talents in the Immortal tree, i.e. Force Push cooldown. I think the marauder has better short-cooldown damage soaking abilities then the Juggernaut. Our internal/elemental resistance needs to be looked at as well, because most bosses deal this kind of damage. Overall I'm not too happy with our defensive capabilities being limited to just 2 cooldowns.

During his fight you get a stacking buff on your toon. That's the only reason you saw those numbers.

Accuracy as a tank isn't such a priority when your taunts never miss. The only thing you will see is a DPS drop, which is negligible if your DPS are doing there jobs. Your better off itemizing into pure defensive stats.

Oh man..

Sir, no offense at all intended, because I believe it's pretty neat that people are using other builds other then the 31 immortal spec to clear endgame, but you are absolutely wrong when you say that the main and off tank need to pull their weight DPS wise and that the poster above you is not clearing HM EC because of this fact. It's pretty presumtive to say he (and all 31 immortals for that matter) aren't clearing HM EC. We (http://www.elitistisolationists.com/) have it on farm. We clear it in well under 2 hours weekly on 16 man HM. I am by no means bragging. I am full campaign, and can tell you from personal experience in EC, or any OP for that matter, that if your OP leader is asking you to consider changing gear around for added DPS instead of survivability then he/she is not holding your DPS accountable, or does not fully understand the particular boss you are having issues with. I would venture to say that your off tank doing 800 DPS is probably putting out higher numbers then a few of your DPS'ers, though I may be wrong. What strategy are you trying on tanks have you stuck? Maybe we can help you out As far as your gear is concerned, I personally cannot tell you what you need without you posting a mr.robot page or telling me what your current base defensive stats are unbuffed. But I'm more then happy to help. P.S. My dps when TORPARSE was up had me putting out only about 400 dps average per boss, with only base accuracy at that. We have literally ZERO issues with enrage timers on any of the bosses in EC HM.

Your job as a tank is to hold threat (not insulting your intelligence at all sir) and the DPS's job is to..well..dps. Tanks *normally* don't pull more then a few hundred dps, but there have been times when I've seen upper 600's (there may be better out there). If your not making enrage timers on the tanks I would be a lot more interested in seeing your DPS's parser logs, and additionally seeing what method or strategy you are using for attempting the boss. A lot of times it's just a tweak of strategy that can send you to a win. *edit* Oh, and a hybrid spec, like the gentleman above me said, is absolutely not needed and will only hurt you and your raid. You might see bigger numbers coming from your end, but your also forcing your healers to put out bigger numbers as well, which is never a good thing.

It's just poor itimization on Bioware's fault. I recommend keeping every single piece of tanking gear you come across, pvp included. This will let you be more flexible with removing and replacing mods in your custom (augmented) gear to fill those stats you need most. Theres quite a few pieces of WZ gear out there that have str/shield/defense mods that are straight upgrades over some lower level mods. I'm full campaign myself and run with 23/49/47 defense/shield/absorb unbuffed. I prefer to have 3% more defense over 1/3% shield and absorb, respectively. I could very easily switch a few mods around from other campaign gear to get 20/50/50, but I find more base defense for complete damage avoidance helps me and the healers out a bit more at these high levels. Not to mention my shield overcharger and shield/abosrb relics push them to stupid levels anyways on proc. To each his own though!

Those two tanks must be pretty awesome Raque!

Not really. They removed 3 percent from blade barricade and moved it into a passive +3 defense under SSM and made blade barricade 12 seconds long. One of the few changes I actually like.

Don't know how Jedi Covenant is, but it's relatively easy to get into a guild these days, especially after server transfers. I recommend asking around your server for a guild that meets your specifications. If you are unable to find one, you can always come over to The Harbinger server and I would be more then happy to help you! Toons: C'thrax Vedreth Taben

This might hold true for pre-Explosive Conflict, and I don't mean to come off as abrasive, but the whole "wouldn't get overly caught up in shield/absorb stats" thing is simply not true. As your mirror class (Jugg) who clears 16/8 HM EC, I can definitely tell you shield and absorb become FAR more important than accuracy. Taunts do NOT miss. Accuracy doesn't affect them. As long as your doing enough damage to keep your focus up, and using your Taunts effectively, threat doesn't really become an issue unless you have DPS that don't give you a second or two to build initial threat. I don't have ANY accuracy mods, nor did I pick up the +3 accuracy talent, and hitting Bosses and keeping aggro is of little concern to me. This will hold even truer in 1.3 with the threat boost. By the way, my base stats are 23k health unbuffed, 48 damage reduction, 48 shield 47 absorb, 23% defense.

Believe it or not I actually got in there with my body type 3. I just ran into the crack of the door continuously untill my companion ran through it completely, then I interceded to him and it pushed me all the way in. ..you know after reading that last bit a few times I forgot it was a datacron I was talking about...

Wade is perfectly right. Assassin self healing and overall mitigation right *now* is superior to what Juggernauts have to offer, however as he stated, after the patch this will be a thing of the past and Juggs *arguably* may take lead as best tank. In the end, Wade said it perfectly, play what you have fun with and the rest will fix itself eventually.

Well if you *must* know, because you seem like such an inquisitive guy, I *guess* I can tell you what guild I'm in and tell you we killed HM Kephess on 19 April 2012. http://www.elitistisolationists.com/ I must concede that it took the guild a bit longer to kill him on 16 man HM (29 April 2012), unfortunately Space Slug server isn't heavily populated. But, I guess being number one on the server since launch should count for something right? Well I guess not, seing as how it's not your server and we're not you so we could never *hope* to be as good as you, amiright? /sarcasm and immaturity off http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=209751 Seriously broseph, I still don't understand why or how you ended up getting so riled up over a simple, friendly and lighthearted response in a thread designed to help someone else. Is your EPEEN so sensitive that you take everything not even directed towards you as a personal attack? Your responses just make me want to learn more about you that's all. You seem like a knowledgeable person based on your advice you gave the OP, so I even gave you kudos earlier, then you took it even further by insulting my integrity and call me a liar. So, instead of just doing the whole "Umadbro" routine I'll just legitimately ask you what is wrong with you? Surely your angst doesn't end with trolling the forums with your elitist comments? Or maybe it's just the only place you can get away with it? Oh, if you want to meet up or something in Space Slug later tonight I can show you my full Campaign gear I guess, then you can rage a bit more about how dumb you made yourself look... up to you.

Nice guide with the Culumi gear, should be helpful to him. However, you mentioning me not being very good at PVE is pretty funny considering you and I have literally the same defensive stats and gear, meaning we clear the same content. So I gues that means I'm one of the best Juggernauts in the game too then, huh? At least if your just going off content cleared and your gearset, which is what you basically just said. You can be constructive and make corrections to other people on the forums without being disrespecful or fecetious. Me stating he would want a higher healthpool on KP would be a large quality of life boost for him and his raid, moreso after Bonethrasher. It doesn't mean it would be impossible, so I apologize to the original poster for any confusion. 15k health can dissapear pretty quick if he eats a cleave then gets targeted for a pummel or backhand though, but I should have probably informed the OP that a tank isn't really even needed for the first fight and if he were so inclined he could always go into his DPS stance for it. That being said, OP, let us know how you do! And good luck in there.

Yes I am well aware, thanks for pointing that out though . I was simply stating that that's usually what our DPS Jugg does when he taunts Kephess, that guy tends to hit pretty hard and the ability to boost your armor rating on the fly is what I was referring to when I spoke of utility. Again, this isn't a strategy we plan around, but it has happened once or twice when one of our MT's don't get the taunt off quick enough during Breath or make a mistake on the AOE drops, and gets killed. It's just nice to know you have a DPS there to take a few hits in the event all hell breaks loose.

I find the changes to be satisfactory. We clear HM EC weekly (8 or 16m depending on who logs), and I for one am very excited to see the new AOE machanics work out when this goes live. As for the DPS nerf, well to be honest if your dps loss with the nerf to Crushing Blow and SSM and Backhand will prevent you from downing a boss because of the enrage, then really your DPS just needs to work a little (Lot?) harder. The tank shouldn't really be focused on dealing a ton of damage (I only average around 350-400, sometimes 500 dps on bosses). If these DPS "nerfs" drop those numbers to only 200-300 dps, it still wouldn't really matter when you look at the overall picture when you factor in keeping threat, and knowing the fights inside and out, and assuming your DPSers are all doing there jobs well. Ultimately by improving our threat generation, AOE especially, and overall mitigation (scream being buffed and a passive +3 defense rating, which is actually a pretty nice buff as well), it will allow your healers less time to focus on healing themselves and other DPS because the mobs will be focused on you, and will allow your DPS to focus more on standing there and maximizing there rotations for optimal DPS instead of worrying about defensive abilities. I've seen some people say retaliation being nerfed is bad, but you gotta figure, that other 3% is PASSIVE, and is pretty nice considering some people don't sport 25+ base defense rating and rely on retal to maximize there defense rating. They even buffed it to 12 seconds, giving you even MORE time to get a proc and keep it up. Overall very good changes IMO. A 50 percent boost to threat..might have been a bit excessive, but I'm not gonna complain.

End-game ops as a DPS Juggernaut is absolutely viable damage wise. One of our best DPSers in HM EC is a Juggy DPS, and he brings not only dps but a lot of utility to the raid. For one his overall mitigation is higher then the other classes, he hits just as hard if not harder, and he can also pop tank stance and throw in a taunt in a tight situation (HM Kephess for example if a maintank goes down and we need a taunt during Breath), he can easily run to the other side of the room and taunt, buying precious seconds while popping his defensive cooldowns, and even eat a few hits. So overall yes, very much so.