Get it to max level or even into the late 30s early 40s. The game changes. Defense gear becomes a lot more prevalent in quest rewards, and you can buy a decent set from the vendor. We're the most gear dependent of the tanking classes from what I've seen. Get some defense on your gear though and get those higher level talents and abilities, and you really start to blossom For whatever reason, Bioware decided to give Guardians all their major abilities and their healing companion in the 30s. Doc makes questing loads easier even though Kira is spectacular as DPS, and I actually still use her instead from time to time if I think things are dying too slow and I'm not going crazy with large pulls. Saber Throw and Cyclone Slash are great for keeping threat on large groups but aren't until 32 and 36. If I'm given a second to toss out a Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash, I don't have much issue with holding aggro on groups. I'm very content with my Guardian though. Levels 15 to 32 kind of suck because you're in that area where enemies start to really get challenging and you're lacking skills that would make it a breeze, but I muscled through that and got to 32, and it went back to smooth sailing from there.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500dMGcubrouRZhGM.1 This is what I'm going for. I found the stuff that I didn't choose in the Defense tree were useful based on situation and opted for things that would help me out in the Vigilance tree with holding threat and building it faster. Also, Momentum became less and less useful as I gained higher levels and got better gear. Focus builds up much faster as do Courage stacks when you get better gear, and, if you're tanking only one thing, you won't find yourself really leaping around a bunch, so it has no real use on a boss except immediately after pulling it or when leaping into a pack of adds it might summon, but, again, I haven't had an issue with focus at higher levels. I didn't put any points in command because I hadn't been losing threat enough to really justify a lower Challenging Call CD and Force Push doesn't do much for me outside of positioning mobs.

Before I picked up Guardian as my AC, I did a lot of reading. Everything I could find said that Sentinel DPS would be marginally higher than Guardian if you could get a hold of a parse from a fight, enough to make it shine above Guardian as a damage spec, but you could still use Guardian and do a respectable amount of DPS. If you've played WoW, you can think of the Vigilance spec for Guardian more like an Arms warrior whereas Sentinel is closer to a Fury warrior. Sentinels are great single target DPS. Vigilance does a reasonable amount of single target but really shines in AoE situations from my reading and playing of it. If you go Vigilance Guardian though, prepare to do a lot of force sweep bombing. I find it fun, but my friend didn't enjoy it as much. I hope this helps. :]

Guardians are late bloomers like early to mid 30s late. You're a bit more gear dependent than the other classes I feel, and you have to really get used to the class before it makes sense to you. I've played both a kinetic combat shadow (in Beta) and a vanguard (for a bit in Early Access). While the shadow is much less gear dependent and the vanguard's AoE threat is amazing, I love my guardian so much, and I have to agree with the OP to an extent. The Guardian requires some finesse when picking up AoE groups, and I just absolutely love force pushing mobs into position, saber throwing to trash outside the main pack, and leaping from group to group. It looks amazing, and it's fun. On single target threat, people can't rip off of me. It's a pleasant change from the recent forms of paladin and warrior tanking in WoW. In PVP, I tear people apart and how resilient I am is just impressive. At level 40, I was taking on 2 to 3 non-50s without much issue and a pretty PVP geared out Bounty Hunter almost died and had major issues killing me through my cooldowns and CC. Overall, I feel like the class has a bit of a learning curve, takes some time to get used to, and makes you level it up a bit before it becomes pretty awesome. Once you hit 36, you'll have basically all your major tanking abilities and feel pretty substantial as a tank if you've been taking the time to learn to play your class. And, yes, by the way, I felt the same way that many of you felt that the class sucked and it was a horrible balance issue. I learned to play it, and I feel like it's just a different tanking style than the other two now that takes a lot more getting used to. The Shadow and Vanguard tanks are a lot more intuitive, but the Guardian is just so much fun that I can't give it up regardless of there being easier tank options. I've also heard from a few friends that guardians are amazing endgame tanks, so I'm a bit hesitant to believe many of the complaints. There's plenty of Guardian resources out there that will really help any of you struggling with the class and will definitely convince you that they're not awful, broken tanks.

I lol'd at the accuracy.

Dev Tracker also lets you know if they've answered your questions before. :/

I fixed it for you. I was in rambly mode, so it was more train of thought typing. :]

I'm pretty okay with this patch. Not a 10/10, but it is fine for a patch this early on. Looking at how things have gone, there was a hotfix almost every other day during Early Access. The game has only been actually launched for about a week, and we already have a patch to fix many bugs. While, yes, I would like many of the annoyances that I've dealt with fixed, I haven't found anything that has truly made me go, "OH, GOD, THIS GAME IS UNPLAYABLE!" That includes when my Kira decided that she just didn't want to give anymore story quests, which isn't fixed for me, since it only fixed it for new Jedi Knights. Looking at that other game, World of Warcraft, that game is years old and just gotten a new content patch a little over a month ago now, and it is still suffering from bugs from that patch, not to mention how horribly buggy it was at launch. We haven't seen a major patch addressing these issues, only slightly easy to overlook hotfixes. You can blame it on complacency, but chances are both companies are working on triaging and fixing the issues in an order appropriate to their seriousness and how long it will take them to fix it. If your issue isn't fixed, chances are that they either weren't able to fit it into this patch in favor of more important things or weren't able to meet the time constraint. I understand the bugs are frustrating, and I do find myself getting fairly annoyed at different bugs, but I trust that they'll fix it. I understand that they had the Beta and Early Access to see these problems, but, having a programmer background myself, I understand what they're going through. The coding in this game is massive in scale and finding and fixing the bug is a bit of a job in itself. Adding new code causes new bugs since your old code will never want to play friendly with the new code. Programming MMOs generally becomes a cluster**** of coding and bugs that you feel you'll never get out of. Anyways, if they're not making major progress within a month or two, I'll probably leave, but I don't see the point in bashing Bioware before then after they've given me many games that I've fell in love with and this game, bugs aside, is just horribly awesome in my opinion. Plus, this launch has gone shockingly smooth compared to other MMOs I've played at launch. Anyways, I'm done with my rambling, and I really hope this doesn't incite too much hate back at me. I'm not a Bioware fanboy; I just think people should give them more than a week after launch to fix things.