because good tanks take thrown guntlet /endsarcasm on another note i fully agree we lack aoe threat, but how many bosses require you to aoe tank? trash mobs, yea its annoying to keep em all sticked to you as jugg but even playing NiM i dont recall having loose mobs running around killing raid members.

I usually don't replay in official forums, but I just cant make any sense of your post. I've been going through the patch notes, cant find the aoe nerf you talked about, only thing that applies to aoe that changed is the move of 1 talent from vengeance tree to rage and it doesn't really nerf anything. besides some talent moves that don't really change much we get a threat buff on our biggest hitter. now regarding our current situation (witch isn't going to be drastically changed) we are more then fine, while we have a bit less sustained survivability then PTs and Assassins we have the best CDs and not mention the most CDs. healing either tank in good gear/skill is going to be pretty easy for most of the time, though when the **** hits the fan the jugg is gonna be the last one standing. regarding our aoe threat problem, yes its weaker then the rest, but in all honesty trash tanking isn't all that hard anyways and its very trivial compared to tanking bosses witch in turn also means it matters less we are also behind on dmg yes, but the dps difference between the 3 tank classes on a single target aren't all that huge and wont change alot in the grand scheme of things I think i have to say that my experience is both from healing and tanking, since my main is a healing merc cleared all NiMs and my alt is a jugg witch did 8/10 NiMs TL;DR currently we are fine, we have less sustained surv and less dmg and aoe, but we make up with better CDs and more mobility. the patch gives us abit extra single target dmg and threat, and doesnt change much else conclusion 1: we are fine and will be even more fine after patch. conclusion 2 : you either don't like the flavor of juggs, don't really appreciate the pros or just have fun crying over he internet

actualy i dont think its a bug, if you look at the wording of the spell it says only one shell can be deployed at a time not that a target can have only 1 shield, witch mean you can shield only 1 person and no witch actualy is happening in t he game.

Actually, I'm fairly sure this is not true, I'm absolutely sure a target can have 2 buffs on it, and from testing we did with our tank he said he got 2 different heals from the buffs. So unless something changed or our tests were incorrect then you actually can stack shells

the heat from unload is wasted only if you are gonna hardcast unload during your main rotation otherwise barrage finished its cd anyways.

Treating this as a "rotation" is never optimal, people just call it a rotation, but its a priority list. basically its like this: rapid shot(on high heat) > rail(5locks) > HSM(5sigs) > unload(barrage proc) >tracer with thermal sensor override and vent used either as many times as possible during the fight(when applicable ofc) or saved for specific moments in a fight. Some people suggest opening with unload because within the 3 secs of use it returns 15 heat, witch basically makes it free. The counter argument to that would be that you postpone all the rest of your rotation and this loosing dps. personally i prefer not using unload at the start, but as i said before, its pretty hard to tell whats the true answer since we have no logs or good sims and cant really compare, so its all a guess work and theories at the moment PS this is a good professional forum discussing arsenal merc(among other things) http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Arsenal-Mercenary-Gunnery-Commando-DPS-Compendium

Because its basically free, personally I'm not a huge fan of starting with unload, but the reasoning behind it is sound and until we get logs its impossible to know for certain if its actually worth postponing the rest of your rotation for the free unbarraged unload.