I came in here to point this out. Not only does this mean that healers need to heal you for more, but it means that they'll be spending more global cooldowns on you thus they have fewer to spend on the rest of the team. Essentially it makes you a sponge, whereas mitigation stacking means you can take the same hits and receive less damage. You want your effective health to be high, which means mitigation over health pool. The only time health stacking is really useful is in bleeding edge content where your team is undergeared due to it being fresh and having not yet gotten the new gear available. Our guild downed Hard Kephess in mid-May (basically the last time I played the game excluding transferring my characters) and I tanked with ~22.5-23k hp as memory serves. Our shadow tank only had ~24k at the time too. We were both mitigation stacking (heavy absorb). We did it with double smugg heals, for what it's worth.

All I know is it's next to useless in pve. Currently the only time I can think of when I use it and feel it's making a difference is when I'm kiting lightning spires on HM Fire and Storm, and that's only because I occasionally LoS my healer by accident.

For the most part I tend to subscribe to the same school of thought, but there are definitely some class specs that far outperform others (both in individual situations and over the long haul). In those situations, you're doing yourself and your raid group a disservice by not choosing the optimal performer. That said, Vanguard is not one of those classes now that the middle tree has been buffed. The two specs are rather close, although it does suffer from requiring melee range more than assault.

Way to repeat what I said unnecessarily guys. Good job.

Yes, having a class that relies completely on a weapon of precision like a gun smack the enemy with the weakest part of said weapon would be a great idea. That wouldn't cause the barrel to get bent and go out of alignment or anything like that. I appreciate that you're trying to come up with ideas to make us more interesting, but you have to remember at its core the trooper base class is about being the grunt and doing things by the numbers. No matter how you played out your story, you're still a soldier - trained to do things the way other soldiers do, and protecting yourself and your equipment is part of that. We just don't do outlandish superhuman things like the force-users do (unless you include walking on air XD ).

The last part may be true (even if the cons for defense stacking outweigh the pros), however the precise balance isn't really up for debate. Due to the fact that Vanguards will never be able to stack enough defense rating to dodge a significant number of attacks and because every one of our mitigation talents go to improving shield chance or absorption percentage, defense rating is a very lackluster stat to stack for VGs. The only way to improve our avoidance is Smoke Grenade and that is only 20 seconds out of every minute - hardly enough to write home about considering your shield numbers would plummet to the high 30s in order to stack enough defense to make that single cooldown worth it. You could have a second cooldown by going with the on-use defense rating relic, but that one is limited to 15(?) seconds out of every two minutes so you're looking at 35 seconds of high avoidance during the first minute (not bad), and then very large spaces where you're likely taking huge hits. The VG tank niche is taking most hits to the face, but also reducing the damage of a large chunk of them. I still think your overall damage mitigation would be sub-par compared to a shield and absorb heavy VG. This isn't to say that you should go out of your way to avoid Defense rating. On the contrary, once you get to very high gear levels defense will start to slightly outweigh absorb simply due to diminishing returns from stacking the stat so high. As it stands though, defense is low priority, standing only higher than armor. I would almost be inclined to say you would do better to stack endurance once you hit absorb DR, if it wasn't for the fact that you're not in danger of being one-shot by anything short of an enrage (and that's a dps problem).

Well you've already failed by having 7 of 8 slots filled by two basic classes and there's zero reason to be bringing that many knights.

No, I mean skill cap. They're both equally easy to do decent numbers on. However there's not much room to min-max a VG, but you can do plenty to make a Sentinel better. There is no "allegedly", sentinels require more skill to get the most out of the class but they definitely have a higher ceiling. That said, you should never tell a new person to roll the flavor of the month class. It's eventually going to get balanced back to the pack so they're better off playing a class they enjoy.

Well we'll agree to disagree on the numbers thing to avoid having another useless confrontation in this thread, but to the second point - a CD reduction to Reactive Shield would be nice, but frankly I think we need either a better or an extra self-heal CD (VG only, make it instant?) or we need to be able to increase our shield chance for a short time (think 6 seconds maybe). We know we don't dodge jack so we're gonna take hits, but if we could guaranteed drop the damage on a big spike ability by 50% (hell my absorb is well over 63% with full Power Screen stacks) that would go a long way to increasing our survivability over the course of a fight. Or maybe the ability to talent Reactive Shield so it nullifies more damage - 2 points for 6 or 8% more? Just tossing it out there.

It's not about the tank swap - due to the way taunt works (it vaults the tank to the top of the threat list plus 30%) the swap is the least of the problems with this fight. The real issue is what was just stated above - the dps are more than likely standing in melee range instead of max distancing themselves from the boss which means it takes a lot less to pull.

Please read quoted text to get better context - I was directing that toward the individual that decided to bring up sentinels in a VG thread.

Recruit isn't too bad, although it's still pvp gear. I wouldn't try to do D7 or Kaon in it, but the rest is probably fair game. The Esseles and False Emperor are good Hard Modes to start with as they are pretty tame (though FE is a little on the long side). Make sure your dps are pretty good if you plan to do False Emp, as the droid boss (name withheld for spoiler reasons) is a pretty big dps check. Taral V is also a good intro Hard Mode, pretty simple place. Just don't attempt the bonus bosses unless the rest of your party is either well geared or knows the strats down cold. If you need any help with the FPs you can post questions in this thread or just hit up the Flashpoint/Ops forum.

I can agree with that. After leveling a knight to 50 and seeing the variety of choices they get from the daily rewards on Belsavis it frustrates me considering our only choice is between a few points of power/crit/defense/whatever. I came off as a bit of a jerk there so I apologize for that. I just get irked when mods jump in for no reason.

Early summer is going to be too late. I'm gonna play out my free month and probably unsub after that until free merges are available. If they won't give me free transfers for my entire legacy I'll be done with the game. There's no excuse for this to not be available right now. We just saw them do it for the Aussies.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

It's impossible to put a group together when you only have 5-8 people on your fleet and 30 across the entire server. Just because you were willing to re-roll on a high pop server or got lucky enough to start on one doesn't mean everyone else is in the same boat. I have 2 50s, a 45, a 40, a 26 and a 21 currently and re-rolling is not an option. Due to the low population issues, I've had to take most crafting professions because I can't buy stuff on the GTN. I'll wait for my free transfers and if I don't get them for all my characters I'm a ghost.

Mostly because the average subscriber hasn't even stepped into EC as of right now. Raiders just aren't at the top of the totem pole when it comes to bugfixes, that's just the way of the MMO now. They've become such a candyland jaunt that anyone that can move a mouse and use WASD can play them. This means the devs have to cater to them.

If you're not satisfied with your class, then go reroll and get off this class forum. VG dps is doing extremely well right now, and sentinels are more of a hindrance to an ops group than they're worth more often than not due to the higher skill cap on the class.

You obviously have no understanding of what the term "gear-dependent" means. It means that we require higher levels of gear to get better, and it is absolutely true in our case. The other two classes can perform fairly admirably at lower levels of gear than we can. I don't see how that's so hard for you to understand. Like you said - we play it, we clear stuff with it. It obviously isn't as broken as you would like to think it is if we're capable of these things. I don't need to see major changes to the class and I'm not whining for them. Would I like to see some? Sure, I think you would find that most people would like to see changes to their class. That said, we're not that bad off as it stands so no harm no foul. And if you don't like my words then refute them. Calling your post a ton of tripe was accurate. If I had referred to it as nonsense or rubbish (synonyms for tripe), then you wouldn't have even known the difference. Reporting is a coward's way out. Whichever one of you mods edited my quote, kindly keep your fingers to yourself.

Dulfy's guide says it far better than I will right about now: http://dulfy.net/2012/04/13/dailies-and-pve-gearing-in-1-2/

You pretty much contradicted yourself in the midst of your little rant there. The reason that shadows and guards are better single-target tanks is solely because of their better cooldown abilities. VGs are limited to a 25% damage reduction, 20% accuracy debuff, and 15% health regen over time. If any dev thought that was a good set of abilities for a tank, clearly they've never tanked. That said, our mitigation picks up very quickly when we start stacking actual mitigation stats. My VG currently is sitting at 51% shield, 55.54% absorb and 11.82% defense. I still need to replace my garbage Rakata chest, my modified rakata gloves and gun, and get augment slots for chest, gloves, and head. That's a ton of room for stat stacking which makes us much more viable. We don't dodge anything unless the 20% accuracy debuff is on the enemy, so defense stacking is almost entirely a waste. I don't know why you said anything about gear selection available to a fresh 50, since that has nothing to do with whether our class depends on gear to improve mitigation or not. Also not sure why you're complaining about "spamming ion shot" since Ion Pulse is an ability that is a regular part of your rotation anyway. The only time it feels like it's being spammed is the very beginning of the fight to build your stacks, and it's not that imperative since no boss uses a heavy ability before you can get off 6 or 7 GCDs. Are we rough to heal? Moreso than the other two tanks (or at least shadow for sure, with their ridiculous amount of self-healing) absolutely. I know our guild healers have commented on it. I can't say anything about a guard tank for sure since I haven't been in an op with one since like my first op. That said, only a truly bad player would say that VG tanks are not viable. As long as you're using cooldowns at appropriate times and your healer cleanses the stuff he's supposed to you will never have problems with either threat or mitigation. When it comes down to it, we have mitigation like a Warrior tank from Wow. We rely on our shield to decrease the damage from most attacks we take, but most attacks are going to hit. It's just a different style of tanking and if you don't like it choose another class.

I dunno... right now my VG is running with 55.54% absorb (444 rating; so 63.54% with Power Screen up) with 51.00% shield (488 rating) and 11.82% defense (142 rating). I'm starting to feel like they want us to get either more shield on our own or start stacking defense. I still need to replace the mod in my rakata chest (or get campaign) and replace mod in gun (or get campaign) to drop that 102 accuracy for actual mitigation. Gun, head and legs are the only things I've got augmented as of yet (all with +18 absorb) and I maintain my 4piece (even though it seems pretty lackluster and I was willing to get a +53 absorb upgrade to lose it for a while).

If you're talking about leveling gear, just keep replacing with blues whenever you can make an upgrade and continue leveling. There's really not much point to continually replacing your armors. Even with orange gear, the only thing you really should replace as soon as you can is armoring and hilts/barrels. World comm mod vendors can cover the mod and enhancement slots easily the whole way up as long as you're taking comms whenever there isn't a significant upgrade for you or your main companion as quest rewards.

Very nice. Always glad to see you guys doing stuff reppin' Troopers.

First issue - you didn't specify whether this is for pvp or pve, although you mention "other classes". If this is for pvp you're really wasting talent points by going into the top two tiers of the shield tree. Due to the way shielding works in pvp, using that many points on it is a waste and they are far better used to increase your utility. I won't go too in depth here since pvp shield spec is addressed rather well in other threads here as well as the bounty hunter forum. If this is for pve, the first mistake is having a "standard rotation". Abilities should be on a priority basis, and in a single target fight Mortar Volley is a poor choice. It's usefulness is limited to leveling content (and dailies) and trash packs in flashpoints (including add phases). Using it on a boss pull is an indicator you don't know how boss fights work as many/most of them require the tank to position the boss from the very start of the pull. These include Gharj, Fabricator, Karagga, and every boss in EC off the top of my head. Full Auto shouldn't come near usage for a shield spec VG as it's simply a waste of ammo. Due to it being a physical ("white") attack, it's subject to a higher miss chance than all your tech abilities and equivalent to Hammer Shot. On top of that due to it being a channeled ability subject to knockback, as soon as you take one hit from the boss you're going to lose a tick of damage on the back end of it so the damage is always going to be dropped by a third of what it would do in an ideal situation. This ability in short is a complete waste of a cooldown on every situation except one: Bonecrusher. Since his aggro table has the element of randomness integrated into it there will be periods when you can turret up and use it since you won't be taking damage. I'm absolutely sure the numbers you provided are from a training dummy and will not believe otherwise until you link an Ops parse from EC where you are tanking. Sticky grenade does a sufficient amount of damage and should be used any time HIB and Stockstrike are both on cooldown unless: a) Power Screen will drop off if you don't Ion Pulse/Energy Blast on the next ability used or b) you're about to enter a phase with adds and expect to be using it to help burn them down. Pulse Cannon is an excellent threat gen ability so long as it is used intelligently. Once you learn the bosses you're fighting you'll figure out when they do and don't use knockbacks. During these periods is a good time to use it. It should only be used in conjunction with one of your ammo regen abilities however, ideally Reserve Powercell. Pop RP then Pulse Cannon and it's a free big damage attack and you regen ammo while it is being channeled - win/win situation. I find another excellent time to use it is on the initial boss pull after popping Battle Focus -> Stockstrike -> HIB -> Energy Blast -> Ion Pulse -> Sticky Grenade -> Recharge Cells -> Ion Pulse -> Pulse Cannon. Throw Taunt in with Recharge Cells or sooner if your dps are going crazy and threatening a pull. This is a huge amount of burst (both threat and damage) on the initial pull and the best time to burn your dps cooldowns (which is exactly what Reserve Powercell and Recharge Cells are). For the record your ability priority list should be as follows: Energy Blast Ion Pulse (if Power Screen will run out within the next GCD) Stockstrike High Impact Bolt Sticky Grenade Ion Pulse Hammer Shot Obviously when to weave Hammer Shot into the rotation is entirely dependent on your current ammo regen, but more than likely you'll be using it on average once every 2.5-3 GCDs once the fight gets rolling. Also, try to always make sure you're at 10 ammo or less every time Energy Blast comes off cooldown to increase overall dps. I know you're just trying to help some people and if your raid group is able to down all your progression fights then more power to you and do what you do, but this comes off to me as someone that just wants to be a special snowflake and do something different. There will always be a mathematically ideal way to perform each role in an MMO and given enough data and tools the community will find it. Your way is not it.