Still too early to call, theyre bound to make adjustments before it goes live. Anyways thanks for writing this, I just got my first alt to 50 and want to make sure I gear him well, would you mind finishing the gearing section or at least make some general notes? What are your thoughts on crit vs power and alacrity vs surge in pvp healing? Thanks!

sry my partner hasnt been on all night, will u guys be available again tomorrow and/or friday?

will look for you tonight, hopefully we can sneak our match in before our raid. How late do you typically stay on?

scold - we havent been able to get in touch with 'two dudes one railshot' or catch either of them online, I sent ingame mail to Rhaffus since the day before round 2 began but havent gotten anything back. Can't send mail to the other guy. I know the deadline was yesterday, so not sure what you want us to do from here You play the winner of our match with two dudes one railshot, but...see above lol

To 'Two Dudes One Railshot' (Rhaffus/Kreytor) pls respond to my ingame mail when you can (except Kreytor I can't send ingame mail to you, are u f2p?) or post here or send me a PM on this site so we can set a time. Haven't been able to catch either of you on. We're mainly on Hoken and Tahu'ktak. Thx!

just a quick update from tahuken: Trying to hunt down our 2nd match of the first round, I sent an ingame mail to Rhaffus but didnt let me send to Kreytor (F2P?). Not sure if we have extra days as well or if we've been DQ'd, but will keep an eye out for them either way.

pretty sure that was you

Sorry to hear about your son, hope he gets better

I saw him on over the weekend. Asked if he was okay with coming on tonight for the match but haven't seen him Let us know if you're gonna find a replacement, my partner is going on vacation wednesday so we would have to try and squeeze it in Tuesday (2/5) night.

Tahuken: Tahu'ktak (sin) + Hoken (jugg)

I didn't know any better then, but putting my positioning in that fight aside, any other tanks happen to see something similar? It'd be at least good to know so we dont waste an ability stacking the two together, especially since Saber Ward is on such a long CD.

Was just digging thru my logs and noticed something strange…during tantrum phase of tfb sm I had activated Saber Ward, then Force Scream (proccing a Sonic Barrier), at this point it looks like the next attack is absorbed by Sonic Barrier (shown as 1001 absorbed) but even though Saber Ward is active, the 25% reduction (which seems to show up also as absorbed amount) has no effect. It's not until the second and third attack on me that I can see Saber Ward's effect (1686 absorbed). Log snippet here (non-related lines cut out): Hoken activates Saber Ward. Hoken gains Blade Turning. Hoken gains Saber Ward. Hoken activates Force Scream. Hoken gains Sonic Barrier. Hoken loses Sonic Barrier. The Terror From Beyond's Phasic Spittle hits Hoken for 6747 kinetic damage, causing 6747 threat. (1001 absorbed) Hoken loses Blade Turning. The Terror From Beyond's Phasic Spittle hits Hoken for 6747 kinetic damage, causing 6747 threat. (1686 absorbed) The Terror From Beyond's Phasic Spittle hits Hoken for 6747 kinetic damage, causing 6747 threat. (1686 absorbed) From this it seems that if both Sonic Barrier and Saber Ward are present, the 25% from Saber Ward is sidelined and only the absorption amount from Sonic Barrier takes effect? Is this intended? Or am I missing something? This would be huge in terms of how I manage rotation during burn phases. Although admittedly this log is from almost a month ago so if it's a bug that was fixed, just go ahead and ignore this

While I don't disagree our ceiling is apparently lower than other classes (see Mauull's parse vs someone like Vexo), we shouldn't use that as an excuse to stop trying (see Mauull). You really have to like the class and put effort into it, case in point I've been spending a lot of time bashing my head on torparse, I'm still only in about half 27s but I went from barely hitting 1700 to consistently 1800+ parses. Here's one example. Still need to figure out what to tweak next (actually if you see this Mauull and feeling generous could use a few pointers!) but I love the class, is my only 50, and I'll continue pushing out the dps that nobody thinks juggs can do (and listening to their stunned silence after they see mox is always nice ). fyi - he has posted several others parses over 1900+ that don't happen after NiM Pilgrim

Not sure which torparse you're lookin at, but he's pretty much the only jugg if not 1 of 2 only juggs in most parses. By most parses I mean EC and TFB HM/NiM, don't rly care about the rest and I doubt he does either lol.

thanks a lot for sharing that! Awesome discussions here guys keep it up I noticed the scream on CD from his parse as well, and it makes a lot of sense. When used correctly force scream is virtually an auto-crit so its one of our most consistent dmging attacks (as opposed to many others that seem pretty crit reliant). Scream is also a rage generator too after leap (if spec'd) so that's a nice bonus too I'm also interested in his rotation when ravage doesn't proc, it seems like that's when he uses Force Charge the most since we do eventually run out of force. Still trying to figure out how he got away with only 10 smashes in a 7min parse, I find myself using it quite a bit, not sure if that's good or not. But at least I'm making improvements, at first I was pulling higher using Rage with little effort, last week I was finally consistently pulling higher as Veng. I'm able to break 1800 at least half of the time now on the dummy which is awesome, gonna keep tweaking my rotation and bashing my head on torparse until I figure out how to push every ounce of dps out of veng because its way more fun than Rage

Okay, that's all known facts already, and I never denied any of it. You should stop focusing on these modifiers and see some real time parses. Because you seem to have ignored the sample parse I showed before I'll paste it again: Crushing Blow hits The Writhing Horror for 1000 energy damage, causing 2601 threat. Crushing Blow critically hits The Writhing Horror for 1475* energy damage, causing 3837 threat! Impale hits The Writhing Horror for 1391 energy damage, causing 2782 threat. Impale critically hits Jealous Male for 1976* energy damage, causing 3953 threat! When it comes down to it, the base damage of impale is higher so the final threat turns out very close. Plus Impale is on a shorter CD. Even if CB comes out slightly on top, it is absolutely not enough to give up 4% flat reduction at all times + a higher frequency of sonic barrier + 20% DR after jumps (yes even for 4 seconds - a perfect example is dreads on tfb, after lightning storm everybody's low on hp, you leap and scream for 20% DR and a 1k+ sonic barrier. Even if the DR is for 4 seconds that is huge for the healers at such a point.). In actual gameplay, as far as operation bosses go, the threat difference between the two moves is moot anyways, since if you proactively taunt you would never lose aggro after a minute (assuming no threat dumps) so really the only things that matter are all the extra mitigation you get from hybrid. Am I saying Immortal is not viable? Absolutely not, all I'm saying is hybrid is better at mitigation, which is what tanks should be doing. It still sounds like you've never even given it a go, I still urge you to at least take it for a spin before you argue so strongly against it

Enraged Defense is not used on CD, so its not 19% DR every 35 seconds. We're talking 4% damage reduction to all damage which is also continuous/passive at all times. The extra 15% from enraged def is tricky to manage but if used properly is a huge DR bonus that also comes with innate healing. What you're ultimately trading is 4% reduction to elemental/internal which deafening defense more than covers, and a 4% shield vs 4% total mitigation. That's 4% flat reduction of any incoming damage that doesnt require a shield proc. Its just plain better than a 4% boost to shield that will only increase your chance to proc ur absorb %. This is so not a bonus. It's IMO the biggest selling point of hybrid, 3 seconds might seem small but over the course of an operations boss fight which lasts several minutes, the increased uptime of sonic barrier is huge. Combine this with our set bonus of +20% absorb, then throw in a rakata adrenal with force scream you'll be absorbing a huge amount. There's plenty of parses/math supporting this, I'm not gonna misquote them by going off memory, but the additional amount you end up absorbing is way more than you think. No offense, but I think you're the one confused . Every point of damage is translated to a point of threat. WIth Soresu it translates into two. Much more than "a small % of threat". Impale may not have the % threat boost but it more than makes up for it with it's much higher damage. All you really need to do is check out a parse to see that they are in fact very even. Impale will also be on a shorter CD than CB. Here's an example, a crit and a non-crit from each one: Crushing Blow hits The Writhing Horror for 1000 energy damage, causing 2601 threat. Crushing Blow critically hits The Writhing Horror for 1475* energy damage, causing 3837 threat! Impale hits The Writhing Horror for 1391 energy damage, causing 2782 threat. Impale critically hits Jealous Male for 1976* energy damage, causing 3953 threat! Small sample size I know and admittedly I just pulled the first one I found but def not as far apart as you thought was it? Unstoppable is just a bonus we get on our way up to the real strengths of hybrid. It's a huge quality of life as almost everything has a knockback even in PvE. 20% addition to DR for 4 seconds is still 20% DR. But again, this is strictly a bonus. This is not an issue anymore with subscribers getting free respecs, yet there's still a ton of tanks running hybrid (and yes, using it to clear the latest end game content) Personally it doesn't sound like you've ever even tried the hybrid spec, if you can get past the myth that most of these abilities are "PvP only" you'll see that they really aren't, and really do make a difference in PvE. It's not for everyone, and does have issues with rage, but at least give it a shot. I did and never looked back

damn, nice. I've been hovering at 1800 only, guess I still gotta tweak my rotation a bit. Do you keep shatter on CD to proc ravage or do you let the bleed run like some of the other threads here are discussing?

Your guard should be on dps at all times to begin with. 25% threat reduction is always better than a 5% damage reduction on the healers. (unless ur on last phase of tfb hm, because ur dps doesn't generate threat on the big boss - and even then you're guarding the healers to reduce their threat, not for the dmg reduction) I think you're only reading what you want to read. 4% reduction to internal/elemental is swapped for 4% reduction to all damage, and if you can manage properly an additional 15% reduction to all damage popping enraged defense. You also get Force Scream more often which means more procs of Sonic Barrier, as in more mitigation. Impale replaces Crushing Blow perfectly fine. A free smash coupled with Quake is also a great way to help mitigation, and of course Unstoppable is just a nice bonus (+20% DR to all damage again after jumps, which btw happens more often than u think). Full 31 juggs are viable, but the immortal tree is seriously lacking in many areas. That's why hybrids are formed, and the way to go nowadays. Plenty of discussion backing that on these forums.

Just curious - how often do you hit that high on parses vs the dummy? It seems like an outlier parse due to all the crazy high crit percentages (ie. 61% on impale, 52% shatter etc).

I've been using rage in pve a lot more recently too and am definitely parsing higher (maybe my veng rotation is off, i dont know). The myth of "rage is only good for aoe'ing trash" is totally out the window now, I'm able to out-dps our sniper+mara's on single-target boss fights with rage. Dire - if you dont mind, since you've cleared so much with rage - wanna pick your brain a little lol. Is the bug where datacores dont take aoe dmg in operator IX fixed yet? If not are you respec'ing for that fight at all? And are you sporting double EWH relics? Or u throwing DG's in there too? Lastly, from what I can tell, force crush actually ends up top3 if not 2nd in our overall dmg so in terms of shockwave generation I'm assuming that has highest priority. What about enrage vs choke?

In terms of the skill tree, what do you think of this (both same but with mirror classes for ppl more familiar with certain faction)? Juggernaut: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/juggernaut#22-8iddid82k3-1k Guardian: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/skills/guardian#22-8iddid82k3-1k I did this from a pure dps perspective and maximizing potential dps in an operations boss fight. Gather Strength/Pooled Hatred may not proc that much in PvE but it is a damage booster. I've never taken notice of how much it actually procs for boss fights, so if it really is super rare then pls let me know. I've omitted Commanding Awe/Deafening Defense because in terms of dps it does nothing, same with Unremitting/Unstoppable (I only put a point to advance the tree, it might be better to put some into Defiance/Unyielding to help with rage generation?), theyre both for survivability and when distributing points for this tree I'm assuming we have awesome healers and we can focus on best dps. I'd like to put another point into Swelling Winds/Decimate for the extra boost and CD on smash damage but I ran out of points, I think it would be worth it because crits on the smash for me can hit for close to 3k. Any thoughts?

Do you guys run any kind of parser? Full BH doesn't mean much these days, it's stupid easy to obtain. We had a former guildie sporting full 61s with several 63 mods and he was always last on dps, so yea rotation/skill >>>> gear. If everything else is spot on then my guess is at least a few of your dps are not pulling out the damage they should be doing.

Thanks for this guide! Could you elaborate a little more on when you were experimenting with 40% crit all the way back down to 28%? There's a lot of different opinions out there and I'm really not sure which to follow. I've been sitting on my stabilizers not sure what to get crafted to min-max myself, what have you found to be optimal?

I would like to know this too, at 40% crit and 105 accuracy arent you gimping yourself quite a bit on power/str? Unless you're talking about force attacks