Well... because of the cooldown lengths I usually just Cryo Grenade or group stun someone after a harpoon. IF you go for Defensive measures then don't give up Static Shields for it. That's a terrible tradeoff. Especially if you're going for Static Field in tier one (which turns Explosive Surge into a group debuff) and Ionic Accelerator and Heavy Stock. (Stockstrikes are awesome)

Also, Supercharged Ion Cell is not as good as putting 2 points into Shield Cycler. That extra ammo regen will allow you to almost never worry about resources (when you're being attacked.) Supercharged Ion Cell looks like it's a huge damage boost because it says 25% but the Ion Cell only procs for a small amount of damage to begin with and the extra tick on your dot isn't really a huge deal in practice.

Degauss can be taken over Nightvision Scope but Defensive Measures is TERRIBLE compared to Static Shield. Read the Static Shield tooltip a few more times and then look at the cooldown of Harpoon and think about how often you actually detect someone with Stealth Scan. Static Shield is the arguably the BEST talent in the Shield Tree. Defensive Measures is one of the worst.

Awesome. Thanks for the advice. My gear is the supercommando set which is as close to a tanking set as the pvp gear gets for vanguards, I'm also full tank spec. I figured that headshot skill needed to be interupted but we gave up early with it. I'm also really glad to hear that these flashpoints are doable with the gear that I have. I was worried there might be a really steep gear curve/progression for tanks but if it's just a L2P issue I will keep at it.

I'm a lvl 50 tank with all centurion/champion gear and would like to start tanking some HM flashpoints but don't know which ones to do first. I tried Esseles the other night thinking it would be the easiest but the second boss killed me in one hit (+15k HP.) Somebody then told me Esseles is apparently designed to be the hardest HM. Is there a recommended order for trying to tank HMs? Or at least a recommended starting point? I'm feeling a little lost.

Oh yeah, the other benefit to the layout that i've got is you can touch type everything because your index fingers always rest on J and F which have the little bubbles on them.

E - Move Forward D - Move Backward S - Turn Left F - Turn Right W - Strafe Left R - Strafe Right T - Toggle autorun Q - Target Next Enemy A - Target Target's Target X - Crew Skills J - Quickslot 1 K - Quickslot 2 L - Quickslot 3 ; - Quickslot 4 U - Quickslot 5 I - Quickslot 6 O - Quickslot 7 P - Quickslot 8 N - Quickslot 9 M - Quickslot 10 , - Quickslot 11 . - Quickslot 12 H - Shift Quickbar Down Y - Shift Quickbar Up ' - Toggle Map [ - Abilities Window ] - Skill Tree Window 1 - Bottom Quickslot 1 2 - Bottom Quickslot 2 3 - Bottom Quickslot 3 4 - Bottom Quickslot 4 5 - Bottom Quickslot 5 6 - Bottom Quickslot 6 7 - Bottom Quickslot 7 8 - Bottom Quickslot 8 9 - Bottom Quickslot 9 0 - Bottom Quickslot 10 - - Bottom Quickslot 11 = - Bottom Quickslot 12 Functionally H and Y do the same thing because I have my right quickslot bar enabled and just have abilities that i don't need on there ie. Cells, Quick Travel, Emergency Fleet Pass, etc. Aside from skills like Mortar Volley I almost never need to use my mouse for anything which is great for playing on a laptop.

Harpoon is ONLY good in PVE tanking to pull patrol mobs OR to get mobs off a healer/ranged dps (while already in combat.) If you've speced far enough to get Storm then you should not be starting combat with Harpoon. Harpoon doesn't even work on many of the elite flashpoint mobs starting as early as Taral V. That's in PVE... in PVP harpoon is used a whole lot more.

One thing that you may not realize is vanguard tanks are pretty much a melee class. They have range on their auto-fire and their sticky grenade but otherwise have to get real close to do any real damage. If you're not using stockstrike and you're tank speced then you're doing it wrong.

They're not a rogue. They do have guns you know...

Yes. PVP needs brackets. It is so disorganized at the moment that it's stupid. 7 games for one win (heck for one lousy goal in huttball) is silly. At first it was cool that there weren't brackets because there WERE no level 50s but now it's just dumb.

Amen.

I was in the same boat so I left and came back at level 34 and it was no problem. Go do a couple runs of Boarding Party and a few warzones and come back and it will just seem like any old fight.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#401MffMzhRRdsZ0cZGb.1 This is how i'm going. Works good for pvp and pve. The evasion speed is good for making a dash in huttball for example.

You may have only 3 stealth only abilities (you forgot sneak), but that doesn't mean that those are the only skills you'd want to use from stealth that you wouldn't normally have on your bar. I'm heal specced so i'd like eviscerate and backstab to show up when i'm stealthed. I don't need a bunch of lousy heals when i'm hiding.