Playing 2 years pvp as a tanksin and switching to madness/deception now shows me how easy it is to taunt and get free medals. so many people playing juggs/sins never taunt it is beyond me. I usually get like 50k protection playing deception.

Thank you for an excellent reply. I will look into my strategies for TFB. If there is a video from a tank POV please point me to it. all i have seen is people tanking on upper platforms, so naturally that is what i did. I must repeat that unmitigated dmg is a joke, especially when tanks have it so much harder in gearing up (since healers and dps both use crt/power while we use 2 entirely different sets of gear for tnaking and dps)

I use it mostly as an opener. when i open through stealth on a healer, they usually use AOE mez to get the dps off their tails. i use resilience 2 seconds after i open, i avoid the mez and they get stunned for 6 more seconds and they die ^^ apart from avoiding dmg, it is a great way to also cleanse debuffs, especially from marauders and powertechs i find.

I have an assassin tank which i have a lot of fun playing. The class is exactly what i was looking for when i got into the game, an avoidance tank with self heals. I have been playing since launch with few breaks, but i only got into doing Operations recently, about a month ago. The tanking mechanics leave me indifferent at best, since keeping aggro is a 1-button job (games i played previously needed constant aggro building and not this easy 110% aggro swap). However, i was really fond of my assassin tank because of the mitigation that came into tanking. Taking as little dmg as possible is not a matter of stacking armor or 1 defence stat, it takes more than that and i liked it. Also i enjoy not needing huge amounts of hp, i have always been a champion of mitigation over health. I recently did some operations with my experienced guild group. Even though i had never done operations before cause i wasn't interested in pve, i mostly did pvp, my gear was pretty good, and it was not a problem. i have 61+ modifications in all my slots and black hole/dreadguard ears/relics that i bought off the vendor, and all ym gear is augmented. Doing some operations, it puzzled me how the development team decided to just throw out all tank stats in the most important fights. I have gamed for hours, farmed for commendations to buy gear, only to make my gear obsolete in all the important boss fights. Bosses like SOA and TFB and others that i cannot remember off the top of my head deal pure dmg, unmitigated by shield, defense or absorb. half my talents, and pretty much all my gear go to waste in such fights. Also, as a class that relies on aactive mitigation (shield/evade instead of pure armor like powertechs) i am plain worse compared to other tanks in those fights. I do not understand why the dev team would decide to just throw the tanks under the bus like that. I would do a better job tanking tfb or soa, if i changed all my gear with pure dps gear, just with the endurance heavy armoring/mods/ench and change my shield for a focus. I do not have an experience as a raider in any game, but i have tanked a lot of content across a dozen of MMOs, and i have never seen tanking stats being useless like that (i have seen dps classes being better tanks than tank classes in fights, but still shield chance and avoidance had an effect) Why did they decide to make tanking gear obsolete in most important bosses, and how can i effectively tank tfb and soa to make up for this handicap imposed on my character? Is there a way to mitigate their dmg as a sith assassin?

The problem is not the balance whine, this is bound to happen. the problem is when the devs themselves unanimously agree that one crew skill is ridicously overpowered and they still dont do anything to fix it. in the guild summit everyone agreed that biochem is the only useful profession. yet nothing was done to give something to players who did not choose it. so we will have to w8 1 month just to be competitive in pvp if we are not biochem... good choise devs. it is always good to come out and admit an imbalance yet do nothing at all to change it. it would literally take 10 minutes for the devs to make the reusable stims/adrenals/medpacks used by everyone. (not the rakata ones, the ones that got 380 biochem as a condition to use, which is unique in biochem since everything else i can make as a synthweaver is usable by everyone apart from the rakatas) yet they decide to say "we know biochem is the only useful crew skill, we are gonna fix it SOON" and leave us in an imbalanced game for 1-2months till 1.2 comes. also they do nothing about all those dead servers that got 4 lvl 50's in prime time.

this is why fighting shadows is rly easy. as soon as the pebble is raised, use force shroud and you are golden. then again their version of spike is much shorter than ours.

this is not a feature, it is just a shortcoming of the game engine which was built around 1990's settings. every single skill in this game has ability delay in it. they tried to fix it but as usual bioware failed. it happens to me with every single skill. best way to see it is if you use a skill while you are dying. animation will go off but effect wont. this is a "feature" that only ever happened in swtor cause of the terrible game engine. lots of other games are animation based, but in contrast to this lagfest we call pvp here, the effect took place on the start of the animation always. so even if the animation was cancelled (talking about instant cast skills like overload and discharge being cancelled by knockbacks/death) the effect took place normally. as it is right now if you cast overload and you have an experienced bh against you, he can just knock you back and he doesnt get hit by overload, even if you activated it right in front of him. combat in swtor can never encourage a competitive aspect in this game since it is all gimmicky and bugs. no skill works instantly(even though they are described as insta cast) except the channeled ones, which is why you get sorcerers dealing 20k dmg in 2 seconds with cancelling force lightning (an exploit they still havent fixed btw)

on my server republics have 5 times the people on a regular afternoon than empires do. therefore they get to play hutball a lot while we dont even get any queues for hours at end (since server has 5 active 50's total) they should allow mixed teams so if there are a total of 16 or 32 players available from both factions they could all participate.

then why do you even spec energize to begin with if you prefer wither/simple shock instead of thrash? i never liked the wither build, imo it is unintuitive as a melee pvper to stand around casting FL so i run 24/0/17. so i spam thrash all the time and i crt for 25.k each thrash on squishy targets.

i have the exact same set: step1)replace all enchantements with 38end/19power/48surge or 38end/19crt/48surge (i prefer crt personally) step2)replace all mods with the ones that give the maximum amount of base stats (willpower and endurance) and only 10 crt or power. (i personally have all my mods on 3x endurance 4x willpower and 10 power) step3) saber/ear/implants/focus/bracers/belt all stalker done. if you can craft implants/relics/bracers of rakata level and get an augment slot do that. i am on my 27th craft of rakata bracers but my luck in rng is mythical (7/78 bm bags) personally now that i can get bm without rng i will build a bm stalker full set. survivor is good but it is a pain to do the same procedure on bm.

as a darkness assassin i find power pretty "useless". i mean i had 300 power which made me have 60 bonus dmg in melee and another 60 on range. this means that each skill i use will do 60 more dmg correct? maybe 120 if it crts cant be sure tho. i changed my accuracy/power and power/surge enchants for the crt/surge enchantements and i am happier this way. it is my personal experience and i find it suits me better, what with the -5% in bonus dmg and everything from dark charge. also concerning mods i always prefered the ones who gave the msot of willpower and endurance. 15 willpower>15 power anyday. same way 15 willpower>15 crt

Taunt is identical to warhammer online. so is guard. identical. this is to be expected since all swtor did is import designers from warhammer online and mythic. however there are lots of differences that made tanks much worse here than warhammer. 1)Shields. in warhammer you could shield every single attack in the game.even spells. even siege engines. even guard dmg. literally if you managed to achieve a nice shield rate (like i had on my chosen) you took no dmg from infront of you. i guarded my healer and took zero dmg from the guard, thus actually mitigating 50% of the dmg on him, instead of just being a sponge for his dmg. shield was mitigation. in this game shield is bonus endurance. 2) collission size. you could block people and prevent them from cornering your healers. 3)protecting the entire team. warhammer tanks had buffs and auras that protected the entire team. tanks here have zero buffs for their group apart from the generic class buffs. 4)counter-attacks. tanks had skills that allowed them to "reflect"dmg back to the attacker (most of those were also group buffs). thus they made attacking them/their group not worthwhile since you took dmg. 5)debuff/heal reducers. in swtor tanks cannot do anything to a well played healer apart from interrupt every 12 secs. in warhammer they removed HoT's, they applied healing debuffs (similar to marauders/sentinels here) so that they could wear down healers easier. playing as a pure tank in swtor is not worthwhile. however if you dont go pure tank your dps can be comparable to dps specs and you still gain good survivability . you cannot go the cc/debuff/protect route alone, you dotn contribute enough. i tried it on my assassin tank and it was bad. now i am on full dps gear on a tank spec and i do top or top2 dmg in warzones(when solo queued) and got rly good survivability and spamming taunt and guard lets me protect my healers/dps a bit. so for all the tanks out there, find a build that suits you and try to do some dmg. seeing BM juggernauts in voidstar do 80k dmg when i do 400k and i protect for more is really pitiful(i mention voidstar since there is not an objective that should prevent you from doing dmg like protecting a node or carrying a ball)

i am on 1 out of 8 now. i still bless my luck considering that on champion bags pre-change (where all they gave was 3 cent commendations) i was 3/60. yet i think if i dont get any again by my 13th bag or so i might quit. i know people who have bm mainhand/offhand in 3 days.

synthweaving can make nothing for pvp. i have tried crafting 20 rakata bracers none crt so they are similar or worse to champion. those grenades are awesome i would totally want them, but after all biochem is the only crew skill worth having anyway.

well i keep my team alive far easily with my 3 stuns than a guard on an exposed dps.(i always guard a healer or a dps i know is capable of carrying the game beforehand). then i throw a taunt for a bit extra. i suppose you are right about warhammer guard, i have forgotten all about gcd combat (i wish this game didnt have this wow inspired hateful combat and just go with animation-based timings but i dont think my wish will ever come true)

I would guard far more people if bioware fixed tanks and made guard not cost a GCD. as it is now, you loose out on dps,survivability and game time by switching guard targets. i still do it every now and then if i want another healer or someone who is helping me survive (or just for the medals) but usually i find using this gcd on a dmg ability far more useful thn throwing a guard. (i always taunt though since this doesnt consume a gcd) tl;dr: Make guard an instant skill not requiring a GCD. While you are at it, make class soecific buffs (mark of power, unnatural might etc) not requiring a GCD aswell. guard is too difficult to use right now with gcd added to the ability. it wasn't like that in any gcd based game i have played (i thought the designer was the same as warhammer online, and for sure it didnt cost a gcd there)

problem is people like me who hit 50 3-4 weeks ago are in a huge disadvantage than people who hit 50 rly quickly. they used illum 1.0 and illum 2.0 day 1 to get battlemaster in a week,while i have been pvping for 3 weeks non stop winning 70% of my games and doing illum runs in operation of daily (so i get valor no armament ****) every day and i am still not a battlemaster. there is a really easy fix for that, just let us stuck battlemaster bags (or champion bags in the 1-50 bracket) so people who exploited/were lucky dont have such a huge advantage over us. i still do not understand what the harm is in storing champion bags while you are leveling or BM bags when you arent 60 rank if you cannot open them anyway. can someone explain to me why this is not allowed? if it was the case in a week that i will be hitting valor 60 i would have 60 bags to open and so be competitive again full BMpeople (not that i am not now but still every bit helps). my champions bags so far have only given me 5 champion pieces(out of ~110 bags) anyway so not that i lost anything off it. all this system does is allow players who kill-trade and exploited first versions of illum to stomp on undergeared people.

expertise has diminishing returns so if you get a high lvl (rakata) pve gear it is preferable to use over champion/bm since it has so much higher stats. like my rakata bracers have 30 willpoiwer and 25 endurance more than my champion for 46 expertise. worth the trade anyday. i wouldnt touch the set bonus though since champion set bonus are awesome.

i have a full champion survivor set filled 3/5 with power mods from champion stalker robe/boots. i still use shield though cause in my server there are tons of sentinels/marauders (although i own a focus which i swap to in some hutballs with 5 sorcerers against me or smth). ofc implants/ear are stalker and for bracers/belt i use rakata ones although stalker are nearly just as good. i prefer bonuses of survivor but want power and some surge. so i use survivor set with diff mods.

i rly cannot count how many times i have interrupted people with death field while they try to plant bombs/capture turrets. i run 24/0/17 and i survive a lot, protect a lot, dmg a lot (usually i top dmg charts) and also help with interrupting a lot. for me 30m>10m any day. thats why death field wins in my book. also it does internal dmg which is awesome against commandos/scoundrels who have high armor. also harnessed darkness is unintutive as a melee in pvp you never want to cast a spell for 3 seconds. and the +crt dmg on thrash gives more single target dmg overall than harnessed darkness. also whirlwind insta cast has saved me numerous times and helped me win 1v2 effortlessly. also let me cap turrets/plant bombs quite some times. My current build after all going 31 on darkness tree offers near to none survivability (apart from the heal of HD in 1v1) in contrast to my build. also death field wins on illum "PVP"

i don;t understand why you would ever use stalker set with this talent spec... just go survivor set and change all mods/enhanchements much much better. 20 sec spike is awesome and 5% more dmg all the time is invaluable compared to force slow and jolt (dont remember what 4piece bonus is) also atleast on my server i face lots of jedi knights (mostly sentinels but some guardians aswell) and gunslingers so shield is recommended(you can shield most of their attacks). i have tried with focus and i couldnt 1v1 efficiently those classes. also the force regen from shielding an attack is really good. thats my 0,02 about your itemization. the build otherwise is rly good (i would idd take dark war instead of the electrocute/spike perk but thats personal and experience preference). personally i find death field 10 times better than wither, and harnessed darkness is only rly good for 1v1 cause in warzones standing still casting as a melee is just bad (even if you use recklesness and cast from 30m then for 6 seconds you are out of the fight till you are on their tail again. much better to constantly be in melee range)

afaik there are no pvp "stims" available in this game yet. only heals and adrenals. it takes 200 wz comms for 1 heal. i might use 5 heals in a commendation... should i come out with nothing out of it?

i am 26/0/15 always on dark charge and i top dmg charts regularly. i am almost always top 3 but a lot of times i am top dmg. in voidstar door holding i regularly break 300k, even reached 400k sometimes. hutball usually 200k for a long match and alderaan 250k-300k. before raze and surge nerf i had hit 500k in voidstar.

my point was about pvp. pve bonus was in brackets. i repeat to be clear for a 4th grader like you: how does synthweaving help in pvp?

atm biochem helps in pvp through stims, medpacks and adrenals. synthweaving offers nothing, nada, zero to a pvp player(nor a pve one for that matter since operations usually just drop jedi-only designs and i am imperial). how is that balanced?