no longer needed

No longer needed

Well you have to remember too, that Guardians on raids are most likely going to be geared and specced for one or the other. And as I said previously, Sentinels should ALWAYS be doing significantly more damage than a Guardian when it comes to PvE. Their forms and cool downs make sure of that. Simply put: Guardians will never do more damage than Sentinels, and Sentinels will never tank better than Guardians. Sentinels will always be the better choice for filling in a DPS slot, regardless of the fact that a Guardian could off tank at times (which would still require a gear change and the fact that they would have issues with threat management being built for offense). Bringing a Guardian for DPS is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Will it work? Sure. Would it have been better to bring a gun (Sentinel) instead? Definitely.

Thanks! Yes, I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do with the Legacy system. There is such a large amount of potential there and I would love to see Bioware take full advantage of it without breaking the game.

Here's the difference between Sentinels and Guardians (and their Sith counterparts): Sentinels bring higher burst damage to the table. Guardians bring more constant DPS to the table. Two completely different types of play style, and a Sentinel should ALWAYS bring more damage to the table than a Guardian. I'm currently playing a Guardian full tank spec and I do plenty of damage to solo, and I always see people asking for tanks for heroics and flashpoints on my server (The Swiftsure). In regards to your original topic post, the game encourages flexibility in play style, not discourages class types. I am so absolutely happy that I can play a tank and still be able to do some very decent damage so I'm not forced to be dependent upon other people 100% of the time. I do like to group, but there are times when just running around and being able to be successful in PvE while not having it be extremely difficult is very rewarding. But no matter how much I go into an offense tree, I will never do better DPS than a Sentinel. Which is fine, because Guardians are a tank class. Heavy armor classes should not be pumping out the same insane DPS as a class designed with high DPS and lower armor in mind. That would be absolutely backwards. The good thing is, I still do plenty of damage to get through the game which seems to me that it is working as intended. If you wanted to play a hybrid DPS/tank, then you should have picked a Guardian and spent your skill points accordingly. If you want to be a full on high burst DPS and destroy stuff with lower survivability, then play a Sentinel. It's a matter of risk/reward. I would much rather take a Sentinel over a Guardian built for offense to fill a DPS slot in a group. Sentinels pack a very large, extra punch that Guardians don't, but while Guardians don't front load their damage, they have very good sustained DPS so they can fill that role as necessary. Sentinels can fill an off tank role, but they're soft so they can't do so for long without a large amount of healing. And for the issue of dual-speccing advanced classes, that is pretty silly because it would effectively take 8 classes and reduce it down to 4. A MMO needs a little more variety than that to keep people interested. Also, it means that everyone could just make one of every class on one server, which seems counterproductive to the whole decision making factor of this game. Hopefully the Legacy system will allow for further specialized class advancement to remedy the issue that people are having with limited class roles.