Pyro all the way for leveling. flame burst, rocket punch, and rail shot. FT/DFA for aoe. That's all you need to know for a few levels at least, then you can ease yourself into the rest.

Nah it does IM and TD dots too. If it were only cgc would be a total of like 1% increase.

Its roughly a 3% increase over the fight duration. So add 90 DPS to a 3k parse. Personally, I'd just like to see the CGC dot bumped up a touch. Pyro was OP before 2.0, but a 50% nerf was way too much.

Assault does get a bit of a boost going from dummy to boss, because it has a bit more kinetic damage (50% ish vs tactics/hybrid at 30%ish), and is thus boosted by armor debuff more. Also assault has the execute, which is really only a 3% buff over the course of a fight, but that's 3% more than tactics/hybrid get. Assault also deals with movement extremely well, with all attacks but rocket punch being 10m and no crucial channels/casts. However tactics and hybrid have some of the best aloe in the game, which is definitely not insignificant this tier. Full tactics is definitely the tankiest of the bunch, with the better energy shield and aoe damage reduction, though only hybrid really has the points to spend on the 2% DR in tactics tree. Also, full tactics is the only one that can really go to tank stance without completely gimping DPS. Assault's cool downs ate probably the best for when accidentally pulling the boss (don't be shy about using them!!!) Personally, I like playing hybrid. I like the combination of assault play style and tactics aoe. I've just never been a fan of tactics' fairly set rotation. I do switch to pyro for some fights with constant movement, but probably going to be doing that only for council from here out(raptus kite tank)

Shadows use it cause it gives them like 9k threat or some such. For us its like 2k threat. Not worth using.

Spec hybrid and dominate numbers on draxus, grobthok, zero, bestia, and calphayus. Maybe they're not all that good or something, but I keep up with our snipers just fine, and I do better on my PT than I do on my similarly geared sniper. If we need anything at all, I think it'd be some real DPS synergy out of the top tier talents. The new TD is nice and the new defenses are nice, but the top couple tiers still don't offer much more DPS than the low talents in AP and shield. TDis by no means a "spec defining" or crucial rotation-changing talent, the way heat blast, sniper volley, sorc aoe heal, force crush, guardian slash, or most other 36 point talents are. Its still just kinda there. You toss it in between rail shots when its up, and it does OK damage, but its rather boring and weak for a top tier talent.

Leap min distance is 10m, not 14. Rage/focus gets a second leap with 10m max range. Maybe you can't kite them 100% anymore, but that would be unbalanced anyway. Between hydraulic overrides and 6sec snare on flame burst, you should be able to keep enough of an advantage to still kill them.

Spot on. Tank ignores dogs. In var ad fight, tanks won't do enough damage to var ad to push him over (20%) unless the DPS really suck. So one of thedps was focusing var ad or dropping heavy aoe on him. However, tank should still be focusing the correct turret to keep agro on it (as well as tossing a couple abilities on the second turret to keep it off healer) Sounds like both times it wasn't a tank issue. Fancy that.

I generally post on my phone, so yea, torparse is a ***** to navigate through. And obviously, since I heal a 16HM DF once or twice a week, I'm surely nor running my PT in DP or alt runs/pugs. Oh wait. You know what assuming does. It makes an *** out of you and umption.

Originally read bit about nefra wrong. Anyway, my opinions on our advantages for each fight: Draxus: charge would be nice, but the spawns are scripted, HO is plenty sufficient to get there. And we have better aoe (even in full pyro) than any other melee but smash. Also, explosive dart while running to shield. Grobthok: lol hydraulic overrides. Plus good aoe (my raid group just kites adds to under the boss). 10m range on 90% of pyro rotation makes keeping up DPS easy. Corruptor zero: again, good aoe. Hydraulic overrides for moving out of circles. Brontes: ranged should be killing fingers that are far away. Clones can be annoying to get to, but spaced out enough to get HO going one way at least. Mara cooldowns are kinda op for spheres, not much to say about that. Bestia: good aoe. DPS taunts are awesome in this fight for dragging larva under monsters, and keeping things separate while you burn boss at the end. Tyrans: 10m attacks help a bunch here. Still doing full rotation while dropping simplification and inferno. Charge not needed. Calphayus: movement is spread out enough to have HO up each time. Good aoe. Good burn phase. Taunt if tanks **** up and get inevitability. Raptus. 10m attacks help a ton for continuing to dps during the one with circle and 2 lines. Never felt like I needed a charge on this fight. Council: pyro pt is possibly the absolute best raptus kite tank. Plus aoe and good dots during burn phase. I'll definitely concede DPS could be a bit higher, but mechanically, our class has its advantages in practically every fight. You just need to learn how to use them.

Don't know about you, but I can launch them up to 10m, rather than 4m.

If you posted some actual numbers it might mean something, but since so few actually upload logs for FPs and SM ops, it doesn't really mean anything. Need to have a decent sample size to use this as definitive proof of anything.

I still main my pt. And I do better on him than on my sniper. Granted, pt has better gear, but not that much better. Maybe I just suck on the sniper, but I dunno. I typically run hybrid for any fight with aoe (draxus, grobthok, corruptor, bestia, calphayus), and hybrid does excellent on aoe. For the rest I run pyro. Helps a lot in several fights being able to constantly move and DPS from 9.5m, especially on tyrans, raptus, and kiting raptus in council.

Yea, heat/ammo management in hybrid is super easy now that IR/IM and PC/FT are cheaper. Now if I could just stop having to heal in our guild ops, I'd behaving fun with all the aoe in this ops tier.

Guardian/vanguard raid utility is primarily off taunt. Especially in PvP this is very powerful. Whether you actually use it or not is completely on you, however. While they are capable of sustaining a spot in top tier raids, they will still be lower in DPS than an equally geared/skilled player of several other specs.

Yup. Not that you need it though, since you can hang just inside 10m and do 90% of your rotation, with hydraulic override for emergencies and pyro's now-decent mitigation cooldowns.

I'm pretty sure my guild's sin tanks are thrilled by the proposed changes.

OK, so, on my guardian, I play focus primarily (mostly PvE, haven't done much PvP since 2.0). Focus isnt amazing in PvE, but IMO is definitely more attractive than vigi. Simply put, vigilance needs to do more damage, and it needs to be more consistent. Things working against vigil: - melee range (obviously common to all melee) - master strike roots you, and you need to get the full cast for decent effect. This is a major problem on movement heavy fights or fights with knockbacks. - fairly long set up time/lack of burst - mediocre/poor aoe (sweep is free, but still, aoe really only beats assassin) - damage very dependent on lucky master strike proc - no actual damage cool down (combat focus is a resource cool down) - fairly weak execute, due to focus problems and dispatch already in rotation Advantages - decent survivability - 15% move speed cool down (does not outweigh disadvantage of casting in melee) - taunt (and easily the best non-tank spec to throw out a taunt in a ops encounter) - provides armor debuff in rotation (value dependent on raid comp) Now, with all of the things working against vigil actually performing to max capacity in ops, one would expect vigilance to be one of the highest dummy-parsing specs in the game, especially since their dummy parse includes armor debuff and they don't have much of an execute. But this simply isn't the case. Especially when you consider that all of the best vigil/veng parses generally have amazing master strike proc rates, and DPS varies down from there substantially based on luck. Some things I would suggest (just some ideas, NOT suggesting all be implemented): - increase bleed damage (should be simple change, wouldn't substantially change rotation or PvP ability, can be "dialed in" to the correct amount easily) - add master strike proc to slash. This would add an interesting element of risk to fishing for procs, and alleviate the pain of your two ~10 second cool downs not proccing your core DPS ability - increase proc chance. Makes it somewhat more reliable, but still subject to RNG. - talent to give master strike physics immunity, rather than a root. This would benefit PvE players. Not sure of effect on PvP. spread master strike damage equally through duration (4 equal ticks like TkT or pulse cannon) The bottom line is, with the things working against vigilance in an ops environment, it should be one of the best-performing specs on a target dummy, and it simply isn't. If there are any arguments against either part of that statement, please let me know.

Gharj only takes like 2-3 minutes to kill anyway. EV will still be faster I think. Plus, EV has no trash between council and soa. Though I guess the platforms add as much time as killing KP trash. Soa fight is more fun though, IMO.

You can do whatever for solo PvE content. For group content in PvE, you're either tanking or dpsing, though, not some subpar mix of the two.

JMD for class rep!!! The whole game needs to experience the sensation!

Constant class balancing is a staple of pretty much every MMO. Especially after an expansion.

Unless you run 2 maras in 8m or 4 in 16m (2 in each group of 4 DPS), and theyre all carnage,this change is not a nerf. Bloodthirst now applies to the whole raid, not just the group, and maras can continue to gain fury during it and predation.

HM athiss on my sniper. Op healer stealths to go get the explosives. Tank goes by himself to kill the first pull of lizards and gets wrecked, I finish off the last couple and walk up to rez him. He leaves group after cursing us out. Wait for a replacement for a few minutes, no dice. Finally I say "**** it, treektank". Proceed to use my treek (in full DPS/healing gear and tank stance). Super smooth the whole run, even do beast out in the open instead of cave. Prophet picked treek twice and I had to put her on passive and run and kite them. They are apparently single target damage and thus CAN hurt companions, hah. Everyone commented it was one of the smoothest runs they'd had.

So much aoe in the current ops. Focus guardian is very fun to play and does just fine.