You glossed over one other possibility-- hang onto it for an alt. If you were around during the chevin event to get a legacy-bound bowcaster then it won't matter if you get the crystal bound in advance because you can just rip it and mail anyway. If you don't have a moddable Legacy weapon then you could plop it in your cargo hold and then mail it to an alt down the road. Even if you'd normally use power crystals (i.e. any primary dps/healing class) it'd be worthwhile to go with the endurance one on a level 10 alt just because the statistical boost is so much higher than any at-level crystal. The 120-180k you'd most likely fetch for it nowadays is the equivalent of doing one planet's worth of Dailies at 50, far too easily obtained to be worth selling just for selling's sake.

Having finally gotten around to pushing 50 on my vanguard I had tried all three trees while leveling, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. Tank: still decent aoe damage, bit very lukewarm single target damage. Also doesn't tend to see a lot of great itemization while leveling (quest reward tank garb is all too often defense heavy). With elara you'll be quite beastly but it'll be a slow slog anytime you aren't dropping aoe. Assault: like most I spent the bulk of my leveling time in this spec. The burst is incredible and tends to benefit right away from low-tier talents. Only downside is that this is far and away the squishiest vanguard tree, and I dare say despite heavy armor can feel like one of the squishiest dps specs period. Goes decent with a tanking companion as you can keep tanno or forex alive longer by taunt swapping, seemed more effective then just running with a healeras the added bit of damage helped mow through mobs. Tactics: best versatility by far but at a tradeoff of being great at no one particular thing. In dps spec you feel less squishy then assault, with the added benefit of being able to run ion cell without losing the throughput of most of the tree. The added boost to pulse cannon is nice, but there's already so much aoe at your disposal that for leveling it doesn't see max potential. That said, for leveling you get a.feel for tankiness without the dismal damage output of shieldspec if you run a tweaked version of the old iron fist spec that's an ion-cell tactics hybrid

Actually Tanking So Part One handled gear, but what about all that actual-tanking stuff, from spec to rotation. Here's a few bullet-pointers that can help out based on what I've seen so far Spec-- Most of it is pretty cut and dried. At the end of the day most of the debating seemed to center around 2 floater points in heavy stock vs. soldier's endurance. My personal take-- if you start out with a 61 pvp barrel go with soldier's endurance (your damage/threat will already be in a good place while you need to offset the 20ish lost endurance of a pvp weapon). If you start out with PVE weapons (meaning most likely a tionese barrel until you're ready for LI HM) then I'd take heavy stock. Rotation-- Again pretty simple for single target, keep Stockstrike, High Impact bolt, Energy Blast on CD. Ion pulse at least frequently enough to keep Static field up. If its a fight where you can charge in don't forget your free explosive surges. Even if the damage is quite small on a single target, it's still free-- right after your first stockstrike/HiB combo is a nice place as you'll then be recovering the ammo from your first two abilities at the same time. Trash/Multi Mob-- This can be a little more complicated as it depends on several factors such as how many, mob placement, CC, etc. but by and large 1.Have any CC prioritize outliers-- This allows you to aoe center of mass. 2.Utilize AoE-- Vanguards are great aoe tanks with several generators. Ideally if mobs are laid out right-- Mortar Volley--> Charge--> Explosive Surge X2--> Pulse Cannon Pulse Cannon is usually most effective if you back up a step or two after the initial charge to position such that you catch most mobs in front of that cone. 3.Outliers-- If there's not the CC to handle all outliers, being just too many or the trash all spread too thin, a few things can be useful to help ensure you keep everything under wraps. Weak Target: Grenade-- Flinging a grenade at a standard mob will work the same as a short-term CC while causing damage (threat) at the tail end. Stronger Target: Set focus to the outlier --> charge the main group--> select focus target and harpoon to you--> explosive surge/continue with rotation as normal. 4.Taunts-- As general good practice (such as saving them for tank swaps in operations) I try to utilize taunts as an "oh crap" tool rather then an easy quick aggro item, using them generally for breakaway mobs heading towards ranged dps or one I missed that's healer-bound. Done right I'll go a full HM without using taunt at all. Obviously using group finder you'll occasionally run with dps that vastly outgear you and you will have no choice. 5.Guard-- While healers sometimes have a tendency to ask for guard, the reality is that the only time they should be pulling aggro is on a mob you missed/haven't yet hit, if you're dealing damage you should out-threat the heals, meaning that an aggro reduction via guard would still be useless as the mob running for said healer has had 0 threat established by the tank. Instead I prefer to place guard on the highest dps in the group, oftentimes a sentinel or DPS vanguard as they are far more likely to benefit from the reduced aggro by having more free-reign to go full-out. If you have two similarly geared/capable dpsers then keep in mind aggro reducers and defensive cds-- For example Force camo + the defensive cooldowns of a sentinel are far more effective then the toolset an assault vanguard would have. 6.Cooldowns-- Really not much to say here as vanguards are heavily passive-mitigation based, with few active cooldowns. The only thing to bear in mind is that because of this you better make entirely certain you need to use them before you waste them (such as seeing your healer out of resource, engrage, etc.).

While most threads tend to be made by those already well-versed in Vanguard tanking I thought it might be interesting to just throw out there some of the tidbits and items I've picked up so far as a player with a fairly fresh Vanguard tank (about two weeks at 50) and what I've noticed from that vantage point: 1.Stat distribution: While there has been some debate on specific values it is a general consensus to put a far higher stat budget into shield/absorb than defense, with most of the arguments being centered at either 14-15% or 17-18% defense. Also of note was that a great consensus seemed to be that Accuracy was of little to no value with threat being heavily based around tech and ion cylinder. 2.Freshly 50: When first gearing my fresh 50 a big asset for PVE was to pick up the pvp supercommando set and buy one shield relic on the side. This way I could use earpiece/implants/belt/bracer for PVE along with being able to rotate between 2 shield relics or one each shield/defense based upon how my other gear looked. Most of the first few days were spent with the 1 shield/1 defense, only switching to shield X 2 once the BH gear started filling in. 2a.If you are not adverse to pvp, spending some time either in the 10-49 bracket before you level or gutting through being a recruit 50 can help a lot, Weapon/Implant/Earpiece/Shield can be especially helpful here, leaving your endurance a bit lower but putting your secondary stats in a good place (if you can find at least a columi grade offhand you can swap out the armoring in your shield, but the mod/enhancement in the war hero shield is well itemized and makes an almost imperceptible stand-in for BH while you fill in the rest of your pieces. Note: When doing this don't forget to buy a couple of cheap endurance color crystals off the GTN-- If you don't care about color you can get +41's very cheap. 2b.Augmentation-- When it comes to augments you don't want to waste credits on something replaced in two days time. Because of this one should probably think about the order in which they will be augmenting their gear. Because the 4-piece set bonus is quite valuable you will be able to comfortably keep 4 pieces of your tionese on as you upgrade the innards, So depending on which piece you may want to have aesthetic flexibility on (usually head or chest) augment the other 4 right away. Also able to be augmented right away would be one shield relic (the other one will probably see enough changing around that you can wait on). Weapon and shield are also moddable and thus be a safe early augment. You could also utilize a slightly sub-par tionese/daily comm grade armoring/mod in orange belt/bracer so as to open it up right away for augmentation. These all put you at 9/14 items augmented at a cost of roughly 380k credits (or one set of all dailies, which you'll be running for either the absorb proc relic or rakata implants/earpiece). note: Unless you are overflowing with credits, blue 48 augments are significantly cheaper, being able to be in 10 blue augments provides far superior gains to 3 purple augments at a similar cost (even counting the additional 30k install fees). 3.Now what: THe biggest difficulty when you first hit 50 is figuring out just what priority to go after when it comes to your gear. This is compounded when you don't have the luxury of a few alts with legacy gear to have some simultaneous gear acquisitions. That said, there are some things to bear in mind: a.Implants/Earpieces: They come very cheap, but the flip to this is you can get War Hero ones fairly easily, as well as Rakata Implants via daily comms or GTN (as they are both well itemized and BoE). b.Ideal Stat distribution: While there may be some temptation to jump first to belt/bracer/gloves/boots as they are far cheaper then other items, they also leave to be desired in terms of their enhancements (being accuracy heavy), belt and bracer will eventually displaced by moddable orange ones. The Chest/Helmet/Legs have itemized such that you can use all three items (armoring/mod/enhancement) giving you a much better early return on investment. 4.Fine Tuning: So the early gear path is planned out, you have the majority of your gear augmented.... now what? This comes the part where you start getting slightly smaller return-on-investment items. This comes in terms of two-item pieces, which generally are either legs (mod/enhancement) or gloves/boots (armoring/mod). Which order is up to you. Personally I got two spare set of legs to drop the mod/enhacement into my columi-grade boots and gloves first, then purchased the gloves and boots, moving the mods into orange bracer and belt slots (with armorings yoinked from columi offhands). I would base which you do first around the rest of your gear, the above way means keeping ahold of the defense relic for a little while, the other swapping that out for a second shield relic (until you have the comms for absorb-proc). Obviously there is more detail-work to go beyond that, but it is at least a start and leaves you at a point where you're able to effectively handle everything short of top-end progression operations as it puts you at (unstimmed) just over 23K health, 60% shield, 60% absorb, 13% Defense (yes a bit low but some is recouped on stim, and a tiny more gained via the fine-er tuning that I've yet to reach.

The answer is relative- if you are over 35% crit/75% surge then the answer is far different then if below. Assuming already somewhat optimized mod arrangement on Wah gear then probably not

Agree in part, while rage/focus needs no attention and is viable for both, there are flaws within some of the others, though I would say none are any worse then can he seen in non shared-- Lethality: resource usage on a sniper and awkwardness of ranged/melee hybridism for an operative (needing melee for upper hand procs) Madness-- decent but a bit resource hungry in pve and cleanse-vulnerable in pvp Pyro- I'm a good place for pts still but could use something to add a tick of mobility to mercs

Power or willpower can both be given pretty good arguments, personally I lean to willpower myself because of I grab the talent to boost it. As far as alacrity, having all three healers I would say there has never been a situation on any of them where I sat back and felt like I wished for more, and generally when I start optimizing I look to shed a bit of alacrity, never gain. I think devs tend to itemize gear for 11-12% alac on healers when in reality I tend to keep mine in the 9-9.5% range The thing to take into account is raw target dummy healing output vs. Resource management and situational response capacity. Alacrity is.better for healing in a vacuum but in terms of practical application, not a fan

Well technically there still is a gear gap it just now tends to be optimized vs. Default, which is a combination of the time to do so and the awareness of what does optimize (getting vindicator set bonus vs. Weaponmaster on a sent for example)

Technically this is only a money sink, not a time sink-- Legacy gear is already being used to move mods around from alt to alt, and the cost has been reduced dramatically over time.

To be honest I think it is a recipe for making content pugged via groupfinder into a hassle as half the folks will start needing on everything "it's for an alt" and the other half will waste time chewing out the first group for needing when they should greed despite the drops being Tionese/Columi quality and everyone in the group being in BH.

So few items in pvp are actually shield-able that even most tank Spec players go with their dps offhand over a shield. Though you'd give a sniper/gunslinger stacked.team fits with a shield heh

Kinda like pve, think my sage has picked up at least 4 BH striker's boots so far, mebbe more

Takes a lot more situational awareness for a melee team on the first droid as far as lightning placement while the disease swapping on the pipe.boss can create more total damage to heal through, also makes it a.tad crowded on lorriks's poison circles. It isn't terrible, my sentinel has no real issue with it, but it does make things more involved

Gotta agree, with the much smaller gear gap now it is far more efficient to try and optimize a new 50 with war hero then EWH, mebbe tucking aside rated coms from daily and weekly at the same time

Mone are completely optimized, but how close they come is very class/spec dependant. My sentinel for example needed extensive mod swapping to get where I wanted, especially for combat or focus. My scoundrel fared pretty well directly buying half gunslinger/half Sarbanes gear- didn't have to swap a whole lot. Last time my commando was in a warzone War hero had only been out a week or two so I really don't remember too well optimized yours is statistically. Biggest place to get a good idea are the enhancements, you can really judge the optimization of a piece almost off the enhancements alone.

Lost island is very execution based. Having healed it on all three healer types (yes 4 republic 50s and 3 heal what can I say) the difficulty is squarely on who you are with. Ran today with my scoundrel and had enough energy most fights to drop my flyby aoe and keep dot up no issue, heck most trash I'd pop my aoe HoT and join in the dps. I've also had to use every trick I have to squeak the group by. If the tank is good interrupting incinerates, dps and tank get second boss on the first jump, and lorick is handled properly then you could probably heal it in recruit gear. The overall damage is not that high, it just really makes you pay for every mistake.

Kind of wish I had an armormech that could have grabbed the patterns, though don't see my synthweaving missing them at all... Would have been fun to put my sage in the Sorc. Outfit however

"WishIwastogruta"

Having twice as many healers as non healers at 50 so far (one of each republic side and a Sorc) I'd say they all have good strengths and weaknesses that make it more personal preference then anything. Sage/Sorc is going to feel the closest to a traditional caster healer from other games, while the bubble is a nice fire and forget tool (allowing you to pre-bubble and be.more freed up to actually dps during fights, while the lack of accuracy on the classes dps side frees you up to dual-purpose a lot easier (I.e. buy field respec, level as dps respeccing for free when a flashpoint pops). I'd say it has the lowest learning curve to the healing rotations as well. The bad-- force mechanic is less resource friendly the longer a fight stretches out, is the squishiest of the healing classes with bubble and self heal the only defensive cooldowns Merc/commando- the best aoe in healspec for dealing with those 3-4 regular mob pulls while leveling. Good personal survivability makes them a bit low maintenance for soloing with and can handle a bad multi mob pull very well. The bad- feels like the worst single target damage and resource efficiency, meaning you will run out of ammo fast doing both healing and dps while.questing, but recovers faster so I'd say comes out roughly equal to a sage in terms of downtime. Also dps rotations while healspec feel a bit clunky and awkward to me comparatively speaking. Scoundrel/operative- is my favorite of the three. It is great for soloing because you can skip mobs you don't want to deal with and has the best opening burst while healspecced. Also is built on a whole lot of instant abilities both for healing and dpsing that keeps you mobile whole the heal-over-time aspect is great for keeping a tank companion alive while still dealing damage. Is very versatile with the biggest toolbox to work from (things like dodge, combat stealth, etc.). The bad- probably requires the most activity and awareness of the three types, I like that because I think it keeps yoy more engaged but for someone new and just learning to heal might feel a bit more involved. Dps is also very position dependent- take away shoot first and back blast (both require you be behind the target, one also is only.opening from stealth). I think also you tend to feel it more when they are undergeared compared to the other two, but with a nicer payoff once geared (a two stack of my heal over time for.example now Crits for 1520ish per tick).

I tend to shoot for lesser used combos when I can myself, so I made my sage a ratatakki and am pretty happy with that overall aesthetic. Also have an imperial-colored zabrak smuggler, chips vanguard, mirialan (green guy not the blind one, always mix the two up) juggernaut, and a two'lek bounty hunter to go with a handful of pre-unlock classes

Necro aside interesting to note how the OP was dead on in guessing the oversized mounts would go the way of the dodo while white crystals have wormed their way back. Snagged the oversized pvp mount on my then main myself, sadly that character is mothballed in "only one without the same destination server he11" alas someday paid transfers mebbe...

Slowly, eventually, yes. But not going to make any particulareffort to go quickly. Given the way itemization is it will be a whole.lot of one mod.here, one enhancement there, so the gains are going to be.minimal. Instead think I will put my early time into grinding WH sets to ship over to one alt that just hit 50 and another that is likely to do so in another week or two

Every profession started with some key item that gives them a leg up by virtue of having that profession, i.e. a couple of Bind-on-pickup items that are locked only to the crafter Synthweaving/Armormech it would be belt bracer Biochem-- Reusable stim/adrenal/medpack Artifice-- Augmented Relic Cybertech-- Reusable grenades etc. Some of these translate extremely well to the gearing evolution of a year's worth of the game (Biochem for example), some have aged horribly (Artifice Relics now that everything is augmentable and WH relics are easily obtained). Color this an item that falls somewhere in a middle ground, nice start for a fresh 50 (especially since the 'high end' mat is so cheap now) with little longevity due to orange belt/bracers with offhand armorings (rakata through columi) or crafted ones (Campaign/Dread Guard)

Brings about an interesting idea--being able to take pets and "raise" them into becoming functional companions. They'd lack any of the dialog aspects obviously of more sentient companions, but still be able to fit the basic role and afford the player a means of personalizing his experience just a little bit more.

Yeah I on my sniper I used Kaliyo for a long time despite being sub-optimal (basically if you wait until you are hit then have the tank taunt them off you instead of having them go in first you buy some extra time for them) by keeping her better geared then I usually worry about doing with a companion and then just using range to obliterate mobs. Even with that I found the down time/effectiveness was a lot better just switching to the healing companion by the time my sniper hit low 40's, That said, a scoundrel/Operative with a hybrid spec can do quite well with a tank companion (basically just go 11 points into healing for the HoT then the rest into dps tree of choice).