That's the crutch of the problem right there. Perhaps that's why I like this class as opposed to my jugg/guardians, the later is all about "invincibility nonsense" and eating damage while the Will-tanks focus primarily on absolute mitigation to make up for loss of Armor DR.

Now there's a Cartel Market idea. Bring back the old Light Armor PVP sets, get rid of the feathers, tattered robes, and bones 'n' spikes; give us a nice clean and smooth look instead. I would love the hell out of that set.

Honestly I'd just like to see us get Spinning Strikes to replace the open slot that Tumult left us. With Harnessed D/S at 3 stacks make the skill "uninterruptable" much like FL/TKT. Give it some kind of 50% defense chance but rather than its original incarnation or like Saber Reflect, it'd be purely for melee purposes. People would just have to stand back and /laugh until the channel is over or try to soft CC you. I actually like Lacerate and Whirling Blow but my problem with it is its energy cost to damage ratio. However I do admit, I'm still sore that they took away Spinning Strikes from Sin and Shadows and would like to see it come back. If it shared the same capability of FL/TKT (only a melee version) I'd love it and probably wouldn't use FL/TKT anymore when Recklessness or Force Potency was on CD.

Completely agree. Don't get me wrong you can still manage with its current setting but that window is very tight. Stupid Oricon Champions.

I would like to see Protections get boosted to 15 seconds rather than 12. Not that I can't maintain it with 12 mind you, with practice it's quite easy thanks to demonstrations from KBN and others (apologies for not knowing your names). However 15 still feels like a comfortable amount of time to maintain the stacks as they should be, at this point 18 does sound pointless but 15 seems to be right in the middle of "not too hot and not too cold". At the same time I still think Accuracy debuff on Force Breach/Discharge is stupid and hardly noticeable. Would have much liked to see the stacking buffs applied to FB/Dis instead and give FL/TKT some kind of damage boost for additional threat or something.

[*]1) Well keep it on Cooldown. Have it on a keybind easily accessible and just keep it on cool down. Once you get used to the timing and balancing that with protections you can delay it a little bit to get the maximum 8 from Bulwark. [*]2) I'm sure "number crunchers" (AKA the smart and talented ones) would probably frown on what I'd say here but I do feel that your over all absorption stat can make up for the lack of bulwark stacks assuming you're getting 5-6 going which is very easy depending on what boss you're fighting. My general rule of thumb is give Ward three seconds after cool down and trigger it again. For me it's second nature though, get the timing down with your threat generation and then "experimont" [*]3) Not that I'm aware of. Buff bars? Watch the buff for Ward that says 15. After the 8 stacks are used up, you're down to 7 but generally the recharge is quick approaching by then. Granted some fights are the opposite where they eat your stacks up so quickly that you need to keep it on cooldown for the best mitigation. That is precisely why I like it, as someone who started out as a jugg and felt it was too easy with their "invincibility nonsense", this class became quite the attention hog. Agreed. I manage well enough. I just think had the changes gone differently I would have taking the accuracy debuff from FB/Discharge and gave it the ability to stack Protection up to 4 times. Granted it would make keeping Protection up near trivial but our heals would stay and our armor wouldn't necessarily need as big of a boost that we got if any at all. I mean some, I want to say Kitru but I could be wrong, did say that while discussing our spikiness - all we needed was some kind of 5% DR boost.

Heals don't scale based on total health, it's also costing them more effort to top you off. Just some food for thought.

I've found that if you spam Shock/Project and Wither/SlowTime. too much, lose the graphic - it renders Force Lightning/Telekinetic Throw ineffective. FL/TKT will still deal crit damage but it wont apply the self buff.

Just give us something like the graphic Kolto Shield will grant us when we have 3 stacks of Harnessed Darkness Ignore the Sorc bubble.

Arguably Treek would be amazing since she's a DPS/Heal and speccing her better than HK makes a decent Comp. Have her set for damage and allow her to use heals on the off chance.

Any update on a set in full 78s fitted for Optimal-Mitigation yet? Hearing people claim they have 50khp while having the right stats so I'm wondering where, fully decked out in 78s, should put you in the HP department. I was thinking 44-45k at most.

Very good read, still think they extend the duration but I agree - it isn't impossible by any means. I always felt though that the up-time is, if anything, taxing. A lot of fights just aren't forgiving according to Bioware's "standards" in serious operation fights. I was doing Bestia last night able to keep Protections up throughout the fight once she was able to be fought so in a stationary fight, it's entirely possible - if a little close calls frequently - to keep the buff going. But I still feel 18 seconds would be perfectly alright with me.

I click a lot in between but right now my core set ups are Attacks Thrash: ( Mouse Button 4 ) Lacerate: ( 4 ) Assassinate: ( Shift-V ) Spike: ( Shift-X ) Wither: ( Shift-E ) Shock: (Shift-Q ) Force Lightning: ( Shift-F ) Discharge: ( F ) Cooldowns Overcharge Saber: ( Shift-Z ) Utilities Taunt: ( G ) AOE-Taunt: ( Shift-MMB ) Recklessness: ( Shift-MB5 ) Jolt: ( Middle Mouse Button ) Med Pack: ( Shift-2 ) Force Cloak: ( Shift-4 ) Mind Trap: ( Shift-C ) Force Speed: ( Shift-R ) Stealth: ( Shift-3 ) Blackout: ( T ) Keep in mind Deflection and Dark Ward are not key-bound because, as I said, I click so usually my Dark Ward "Up-time" is kept by clicking directly via Mouse 1. On my bar, Deflection is right next to it so it's but a click away.

I'm still currently of the mind set that we lose the accuracy debuff from Discharge / Force Breach and instead give us a self stacking buff of Damage Protection ( 5 stacks at 5% . Each subsequent D/FB of course refreshes the stacks). This would allow us to have kept our armor where it was prior to 2.5 while, not only keeping our heals, also giving us that necessary 5% many suggested was all we needed to address the spikiness issue. The accuracy debuff is stupid and utterly pointless in boss fights, it's minuscule and useless against attacks that do not miss which are the attacks that hurt us the most.

I do like Spinning Kick and we used to have it when we still had Tumult. Personally I want a teleport-strike which the Watchmen from Dread Palace use. Make it a skill that places you behind the target while rooting them in place and places a debuff that increases the users Maul/Shadow Strike within seconds of the initial teleport. And then the skill itself allows the person to detoggle and go back to where they started from.

I usually find too that if Double Strike/Thrash doesn't refresh Project/Shock immediately then using Shadow Strike/Maul often does. Keeping Protection up isn't entirely too difficult assuming you're generating enough force via the mob's attention but I do find it rather taxing at times. At the moment I'm still of the mind set that it needs to be extended to what they had originally intended.

I tank in light all the time

Awareness and skill will always pull through in the end, if you know what you're up against, what you're doing, and play your class right they can do just about anything perfectly within their set roles. The gap is minuscule between tanks as far as TOR goes. Of course the numbers speak for themselves but there has been nothing stopping a good player taking a Sin or Shadow and tanking Kephess or Terror before RoTHC.

Most sensible people from my experiences do. Stacking HP would be fine if healing scaled by percentage of total health of a player, which would be ridiculous. Imagine the whole healing system, which in of itself is pretty fine for the most part, was to get a revamp like that. It wont. I've reached my 40k on my Sin and Shadow in some 78s, 72s, and a few 69s, come full 78s, I'll be fine - I have no intention of seeing 50k except if I were to lols about with a second set of tanking gear. There's little value. Sure you can go around bragging to players who don't know better but come the next op you'll wounder why you're taking so much damage.

Yeah, I notice it barely but then again I wasn't really having this issue. In fact the problem I have is even if I'm at 3 stacks of HD/HS - if I don't have the glowing affect on my character then the proc doesn't trigger regardless if the channel does damage or not. I still believe Protections needs an additional six seconds more given how some bosses don't stay still or dish out CCs like its candy. 15-18 seconds seems like a comfortable spot I think and kind of bummed they didn't stick to that duration after the patch having left the PTS. While it's fun to test myself to see how long I can keep Protection up, it is still a nuisance to manage in many fights.

I would rather see Bulwark stay as it is and get Discharge's accuracy debuffed removed, replace it with the ability to proc Dark Protection (1 stack - 4 total) that lasts 15 seconds at least.

Agreed. As far as tank specs go, it delivers a huge amount of threat to open with which was still greater than a fully channeled TKT even with its healing. Now with healing gone though, threat generation on TKT is a joke since it doesn't do any. I should note, not sure if it was mentioned, but Tank specs also get the ability to use Maul/Shadow Strike on proc from any direction (every 10s) with its cost reduced heavily. I actually really loved that from 2.0.

I have noticed that despite them buffing Maul/Shadow S., Lacerate/Whirling B., Double Strike/Thrash that I find myself using the standard rotation far more often and through the use of other skills pretty much puts me within a hair of losing all stacks if RNG doesn't like me. Now I only have one point in the ability for Shock/Project to recharge on skills which happens often enough but when it doesn't I've found myself to lose stacks pretty quickly after if I deviate so much as a second or two from the standard rotation. 18 seconds seems like it would be a perfectly fine duration for this buff.

Prior to the changes, it wasn't intended. They just couldn't find a way for the mechanic to work effectively while having a skill that by all intense and purposes works as the mechanic allowed. What they need to do, to balance this, is to allow all agro dumps the ability to pull them out of combat so that they too can be used numerous times in combat for the other classes. Otherwise, this is a change just waiting to happen. Which would suck because we lost out healing mechanic that made this little trick pretty OP.

Well you're playing the class as your role and should you succeed in winning roles or calls, of course it's worth it. This isn't WoW, not in the sense where DPS is highly critical that each and every class has to perform an exact amount to be optimal. If you have the ratings in your gear, regardless of your class - then you should be doing semi well. Just don't expect yourself to out parse snipers/gunslingers as that would be unfair because DPSing all they can do. It's not like you can't do content, of course you can. Normal and all the way up to Nightmare, you're bound to keep up.