Wow, thanks so much for the input everyone. Special thank you to Dukibritches who is amazingly informative. It is really hard to find people who will make the comparison, even loosely, to WoW without flaming hard about it. Now, I'm off to start leveling my Tankassin.

Final question and then I'll leave this thread be: Would I be better suited with Biochem or Artifice as a Darkness tank?

Do assassins also use avoidance as a main source of mitigation?

Hmm, after reading up a bit this morning, I found more than once that people say the BH/Vanguard is more like a DK, just without self heals, and that being the Alchemist prof (sorry I don't know it's name) covers that just fine. Is there any truth to that statement? p.s.: Would Kitru be averse to commenting in here? She seems rather knowledgeable on the status of tanks.

Ah, well, the DK would forgo a shield in favor of a larger two handed weapon. The tanking was based half on avoidance, and half on their shield mechanic. They had a self heal ability that activated a shield, and the trick was to have the shield up constantly, with the avoidance hopefully stepping in to handle any errant unshielded hits.

Which of the tanking classes feels more like a Death Knight from WoW? Obviously I'm not talking about the lore or story, but the mechanics. I enjoyed that becoming a great tank on the DK took a bit more finesse than the sta/block stackers that were the Pallies and Warriors. As an aside, I also enjoyed tanking on my fuzzy butt bear quite a bit. Bonus question: Which tank class ends up with the biggest, most ****** armor in the game? edit: the censored word rhymes with madhass

I suppose I should mention I won't be doing PVP...

...Anyone? Beuller?

As an Operative, should I chuck all cover based abilities? Become the quintessential McStabby?