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.

So you're desigining an interface that, at least for the foreseeable future, has some fixed values. The gathering professions mission window will have 5 entries in it. So WHY OH WHY OH WHY do you create interface that only shows 3.5 entries before having to scroll? Sure you must make it flexible so if in the future there are more entries (when you learn a consumable mission is one such case) it will be scrollable. But you'd think at least design it for efficient usability in the game as it exists now. Just a pet peeve of mine.

I know somewhere i read about how vanguards were 'shield tanks' while guardians are 'defense tanks'. Essentially saying that vanguards should take shield/absorb over defense. Is that right? And if so, to what extent? i'm sure someone has done calculations. Focus on sheild/absorb until X% and then get more defense. Or whenever defense % is within Y% of sheild change go for more shield instead. etc etc etc. Essentially i'm doing illum/belsavis dailies and when i get the mods/enhancements i have to choose wether to take the +defense ones or the +shield/absorb ones and just wondering how to go about making this decision.

The taugrim guides have all the info i could want on PVP vanguards. But where is the best resource for detailed PVE information? Many threads here talking about it in general (like the sticky) but none that help you calculate which stats are best at your current gear. Looking for specific stat weights on defense/shield/absorb and such. Any thoughts appreciated

Haven't delved into pvp until just recently (lvl 45 vanguard) but i am now using my Shield/tactics build that i've been leveling with. I think about the same as the OP. Just finding out about this taunt damage reduction thing and want it clarified. So there is an imp beating on my healer. I taunt him. He will do 30% less damage to the healer for the next 6 seconds? I'm assuming he really has no way of knowing i just taunted him and will essentially just be frustrated why he seems to be doing less damage? And that aoe taunt of ours.... Someone mentioned they'd throw the aoe taunt into the mob attacking the hutball carrier. EVERYONE is now doing 30% less damage against the hutball carrier (assuming the carrier is not me).??? If so this is awesome. Essentially i should be using taunt and AOE taunt every cooldown against someone who is not actively trying to kill me. corect?

I think there was a bug in the mission to do wtih clicking on doors.

Wild speculation here without having ever stepped foot in an operation. Just using other mmo experience and general guessing to write this post. I would guess that the auto assignment of loot is not done until the boss actually dies. So if you drop group (does swtor let you drop group while in combat?) before the boss dies, then there is no chance it will assign the loot to you. So this might be a valid strategy. I base the assumption on the fact that it can't realistically do the auto assignment at any other time. It can't do it when you zone into the operation. Because then it would have to do it for every boss when you first zone in and every time you zone back out or switch group members. Plus the idea that loot has already been destined the moment you zone would freak people out. It can't do it when you pull the boss. No other game has done it this way and there has always been that problem that if you disconnect, release and leave the instance, or leave group before the boss kill happens you don't get loot. I can't see SWTOR having chosen to do it this way. It can't do it when the first person 'loots' the boss. Otherwise you could kill the boss, switch out a bunch of raid members, and then loot the boss thus giving loot to people who weren't there for any of the fight. This leaves the only option to be that loot is decided when the boss dies. It's the only sane choice. Then again Swtor does seem to do somethings that make us question Bioware's sanity.... but moving on... Therefore if you can get into a state that SWTOR consideres 'out' of the kill, loot should never be assigned to you. Run out of range, leave the instance, leave the group, or go offline. One of those should work.... theoretically.

Ok i am out of the loop and am just finding out about this normal operations auto assigned loot thing and now i see the point of the OP's post. I thought he was trying to influence what loot was randomly generated to drop. Now i see he just doesn't want to be auto assigned a duplicate item that he already has. Although he does mention hardmodes and i thought you could do master loot in hardmodes. So does it ever happen in a normal operation where loot drops that no one can use? In other words i'm wondering if in addition to auto assigning loot the game is genearating peices that are guaranteed that someone in the group can at least use.

You're implying that the loot dropped by the boss somehow is affected by who attended the operation? I was under the impression that no such 'smart loot dropping' was being done by the game. random loot is random. Or am i just totally out of the loop? edit - i now know about the normal mode operations 'auto assigned loot' thing. But general concensus is that still only affects who randomly receives the item, not which loot is randomly generated.

Thanks for the replies. Guess i'm going to have to raise my companion rep. I know this one wont' be answered since no one has numbers but now i'm wondering which is better to send on underworld trading missions if the intent is to hope for crits and therefore purple materials. An 8000 affection companion with no bonus to UT crit or a 1000 affection companion with +1% bonus to UT crit. anyway... thanx.