Our guild is pretty casual and we're trying Toth/Zorn Story mode. We easily clear EV and KP story modes. We do the strategy that has been described by most people. Someone had a mspaint diagram that looks just like how we do it. Toth taken to the right near the gate. Zorn taken to the left by some trees. One healer stands leftish keeping just in healing range of the left tank. Other healer stands rightish, keeping just in healing rane of the right tank. When Toth jumps we have out tanks switch places so Toth always stays on the right and zorn always on the left. 2 tanks, 2 melee, 2 ranged, 2 heals. melee always on toth. ranged always on zorn. Here's the problems we run into and would like to know what we're doing wrong. 1. Toth does constnat aoe smashes. Keeps the toth healer on his toes. When Toth does his mini bezerk our tank stands still. Toth's aoe smashes do a tonne more damage. healer cannot keep all three (tank and two melee) alive so the melee are forced to run to the healer and wait out the enrage. A lot of lost dps here. 2. The Zorn healer makes sure he is at max healing range from the zorn tank. he can't be half a step further away. When toth jumps to zorn he pretty much always gets the fearfull debuff. When Toth does his mini bezerk, Zorn spend that time throwing rocks at anyone within range. We expected this to be only the zorn tank but our zorn healer also gets hit even when he's standing at max healing range from the zorn tank. Therefore our healers end up switching places after the Toth jump as well so that the zorn healer never has fearfull. this isn't so bad, just means annoyance for healers. Is there any way minimize the damage we take?

My PVE Assault vanguard in full Columi gear keeps up on dps vs equally geared sentinels and gunslingers that i know. They're the only one's i've personally combared combat logs to. And on any fight that requires movement i do better since it really doesn't affect me at all. Maybe it's different in top tier gear but for our level i have absolutely no complaints.

the op never mentioned, is this only for people in full rakata gear? Or how else are we comparing between differently geared characters.

I agree. That's how eveyone assumed swtor did it. And probably is. But since i'd never counted loot i just wanted to make sure. However this new scheme is theoretically what wow will be doing in the next expantion. They laid it out pretty clearly that "every person's chance at loot is completely indepenedent of everyone else's chance".

So i was reading about what that 'other game' will be doing with its easy raid loot mode in the future. 1. Boss dies 2. Behind the scenes the game rolls for every player to decide if they win loot. Each player's chance to win loot is independent of every other player's chance. 3. Game automatically assigns a random spec appropriate item from that boss' loot table to every player that won loot. At first the only difference with swtor is that swtor is diong class specific instead of spec specific loot. Then i noticed the bold part in line 2. Every player's chance to win loot is independent of every other player's chance. The gripes people had with swtor normal mode was that they couldn't pass on an item for a guildmate or friend. But if everyone has their own independent chance then it's not an issue. So the question is if SWTOR is doing this independent of everyone else's chance thing already? Or is it doing a hardcoded X pieces of loot per boss which it automatically assigns. We've never paid attention if the number of pieces that drop is the same week to week.

As everyone said, do a story mission or two. When it's Dorne that get's injured you get some interesting animation bugs. While she is injured you can find her squirming on an infirmary bed in your ship. After the mission or two you go to the infirmary and can talk to elara where she says she has recovered and is ready for active duty. As soon as the cutscene ends she drops to the floor and continues to squirm around.

the rakata piece is better than an orange filled with armoring/mod/enhancement from the daily missions and daily commendations. If you have access to the mods ripped out of other rakata pieces then i think the orange can be better.

rakata wrist/belt is Bind On Pickup. In other words the Armormech crafter can make them for himself but not for anyone else. So you will be looking for orange ones.

Yeah. vanguard pve dps seems to be a rare breed. I ended up with an assault spec like yours. There was a thread on here at some time in the last month debating which spec gives better dps. Your spec or one with the three points taken out of burnout and put into Steely Resolve(Shield) and FrontLine Offsence(Tactics). Either way it's probably close. I had a blast doing vanguard dps. The mobility and melee/range hybrid nature of our class gives you something to think about and makes it fun. For example the 2nd boss in EV is Gharj. He does a peroidic stomp that hits everyone close to him for AOE damage. Our melee classes just stand still punching their buttons and eat the stomp. Range classes stand still punching their buttons and avoiding the stomp. I've found that if you stand at max ion pulse range you only have to take a couple steps backwards to be out of range of the AOE stomp. So you can easily run in to do your stockstrikes and still back off to avoid the aoe while barely affecting your dps at all. Most importantly it's something to *DO* that can actually make a difference in your contribution depending on how well you perform.

There was a big with version 1.0 where anyone could essentially re-sell a stack of 99 items to a vendor over and over without it disappearing from their inventory. You could get a million credits within a couple of minutes. it was patched eventually, but it was live for over a month. I heard about it when it became public knowledge after it was patched. :-( Did those people have their credits taken away or did less than 1% of players know about it? My highest was around 500k when i hit lvl 50. And then i bought the speeder training, a speeder, an my talents which essentially brought me back to 0.

Will it reset weekly even if you are continually repeccing on a daily basis? Or do you have to to a full week without doing even one respec to get it to reset?

Thank you for that spreadsheet. I've often wondered why the Trooper tanking mods seemed so lackluster with a +8 to a defensive state. I never realized the cunning/strength/willpower classes had such difference.

I guess I just have bad luck. The other night doing EV I could hit stockstrike and spam ion pulse until SS was ready again and not process a reset on my HIB. At least I'm not way off base. Thanks Oh right. If you're in an operation how the hell do you identify *you're* incendiary round dot on the boss from everyone else's dots/rebuffs?

Maybe i missed the important post but I've read many many threads about vanguard specs and rotations but I'm still confused about a couple of things. I actually want to understand what's going on and not just go with a 'hit these buttons and you will do dps' approach. This is for PVE dps. Going with an 8/8/25 PVE dps assault build http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZMsMZfGbbzGhM.1 Priority list is Hammer shot - if ammo regen is not at max level HIB Incindiary round - if target not already burning from IR Stockstrike ion pulse The general idea is to keep your IR dot and plasma cell dots going and pumping out HIB whenver you can. When HIB is on cooldown you get in as many SS and IP hits in the hopes it will reset HIB. It really doesn't matter if HIB is a 'free' one from a SS/IP proc or a normal cooldown reset. Use it whenever you can. You reapply IR every 18 seconds and you should never really have to pay attention to plasma cell dot since so many things apply/reset it. With these 'burning' dots going, all HIB hits will refund one ammo. Since stockstrike has a cooldown use it when you can in the hopes it'll reset HIB. if it's on cooldown use ion pulse for dps and the hopes it will reset HIB. You use hammer shot when regen is not at max level to avoid going into ammo deficit. Although i guess if recharge cells is available you can go nuts with Ion pulse until you're down to 1/3 ammo and then pop recharge cells. So... am i doing it right or am i missing something?

Also one of his best tanking abilities is a melee range flame thing which boosts HIS armor. However he won't close in on someone to use it. If he's tanking at range he won't use this ability and he will be squishy. But first gear him as everyone else says.