Personally, I don't want to spend 2 points in Gather Strength, even if they made it more useful. I think the best idea is to give Zen Strike the ability to fully root a non-resolve bar target for the duration of master strike. But that could be way over powering.

Narrowed view. The only ability guaranteed to crit is smash. And the advantage of overkill over might is marginal, hardly noticeable. /GG //My GG is capitalized which makes me wittier and wins the argument

Thanks for the presentation! I personally build my Guardian very differently, preferring power mods over crit. In fact, I've eliminated every crit mod from my build now. I've also lent more weight to accuracy rating than you displayed. I've got accuracy/power in my pants and implants. Now that my implants are conq and str/end augmented I may be able to drop the acc in the legs for more surge. I've found it is vitally important to stay just above 95%/105% accuracy for PvP as vigilance. Thankfully it's easily achieved with just 2 to 3 pieces in conjunction with three points into skill tree accuracy. Also, I don't feel gather strength and defiance offer enough to justify taking them. It's tough to explain, but it feels like I'm always just dead or out of the fight completely when the CC those talents need to be effective actually happen. The extra 7.5% crit chance to dispatch from the focus tree is definitely worth considering, as is the 6% to crit force attacks.

Thanks for the clarification, again >8-) The only reason I can think of as to why they put alacrity in the focus is it is a shared item between guardians and sentinels. But it makes no sense as they could just as easily offered another focus for guardians. Instead I had to buy two pieces of gear to make the one viable. STUPID!

Math says you should go with power augments, but I say frack math and go with your over sized gut and get strengf. Fourteen power augments will give you something around 28 more power than you'd get from fourteen strength augments. But Strength is the spaccable stat for us, is increased by buffs and stims, adds to your crit rating, and has no cap soft or hard. I choose versatility. I choose justice. I choose strength.

This is such a ridiculous argument that has raged for over a derpin' year. It's not going to derpin' happen. This thread has turned into a "last" thread and is quickly approaching full derp potential. /derp //derpderp

No it's not a lag issue. I've been getting this too! Matter of fact, I mentioned it to a friend over mumble when I noticed it and he immediately suggested it was lag as well. I've been playing vigilance long enough to notice hey, that sniper just knocked me back less than a second after I leaped ... ***? This is happening to me for sure, and by every class no less.

Thanks for the definite info. Since alacrity does not effect master strike or dots, and since the resource generation is lost on us, it is definitely a detrimental stat for us to have in anything. I'm rather pissed that they would put it in our PVP focus offhand. *** were they thinking?

This is a very good point and one I had not thought of. Snipers are turrets, but they have cover, roll, and entrench amongst other defensive abilities that make them very good semi-moveable turrets. But being as they are different AC and Mercs have other abilities as trade off, it seems any additional abilities would be unfavorable. Maybe add the bonus of being uninterrupted to a defensive cooldown. Or granting them stacks (like a marauder when they attack) when they are dealt direct damage which could proc a passive ability, something like "Really Pissed Off", that makes them uninterruptable for a few seconds.

I disagree. We have Commanding Awe and Unremitting. You're asking for too much. Besides, Narrowed Focus gives us that much more incentive to stay on target by increasing our resource generation. It's worth the 1 point.

That actually doesn't answer any of my questions so I will simplify ... How much bonus alacrity (+140? +220?) would I need to reduce master strike channel from 4 to 3 seconds? Would I be able to noticeably increase my burst with 3 or 4 alacrity augments?

I've been researching alacrity in regards to Vigilance guardians, motivated by trying to improve my opening rotation's impact against players in PVP. I dug up some posts about Master Strike now being effected by alacrity. So I started playing with replacing surge enhancements with alacrity. It's immediately obvious that you start sacrificing a good amount of surge to achieve decent numbers in alacrity. Problem is; How much bonus alacrity alacrity (can't figure out bonus = %) would I need to reduce Master Strike's channel time by 1 second? http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/e5764433-7d35-4d5c-a0b7-84dc6fae2aab Also, does alacrity hasten the duration of our DoTs from Plasma Brand, Overhead Slash and Blade Storm? If it doesn't, why the fark not? Stands to reason that if they were so hellbent on making alacrity beneficial to Guardians that they would also allow it to reduce the cooldowns of our abilities. Finally, if alacrity actually means shiat for us, why force us to take it in the Focus Generators? Bioware having a laugh?

**Disclaimer** My merc is only level 24 so I'm not an expert. 2.0 merc/mando buffs focused on their mobility, which is clear. But it seems people are still displeased with no change to their "turret" style DPS. I suggest we compare mercs/mandos to juggs/guardians: Mercs/Mandos have heavy armor, damage mitigation, gap openers, CC, minor heals, cast times and range. Juggs/Guardians have heavy armor, damage mitigation, gap closers, CC, and instant abilities. It's give and take people. Mercs/Mandos have 30m range while melee MUST stay on target. I think the mobility buffs were fantastic additions to the class, and giving kolto missile (an instant cast perfect to use while running away) is more valuable than some people are able to see. And 6 seconds every 20 seconds of unimpeded movement is yet another gap opener. That's a ton of free movement time that people seem not to care about. I wish my Guardian main had that! We don't have anything like it. I'm not saying Mercs/Mandos are perfect, but they require a very different play style which takes time to master. They're also least favored for RWZs because of their need to "turret" to make a difference still. I don't know what to do about that, maybe make Unload a moveable channel or Tracer Missle instant. But it still stands that they are a completely different play style that requires intelligent decisions and practice.

I think this is a gross oversight that should have been addressed shortly after launch. This is only going to level the playing field. I can't tell you how frustrating it is trying to stay on targets in pvp. It's so freaking easy to stay away from a vigilance guardian. What sucks the most is we have to maintain 95%/105% accuracy. That takes up a considerable slice of the pie, leaving our power and surge ratings far less than a smash monkey's. If you min/max acc + crit/surge (like all the guides tell you to) your power drops to just above 600 (PvP geared). Such little power has you hitting like a child. I tried all this and it doesn't work. Even though you stay well below the 25% critical rating soft cap, the real diminishing returns is from the lack of power. In other words, your critical hits are far weaker and more irregular than the smash monkey's 8K aoes. To further complicate our gearing needs; We're supposed to crit our weapon and force attacks, but are told most of our damage comes from powerful damage over time effects mostly effected by power rating. So how am I supposed to min/max anything? I don't know what the answer is, but 15% movement speed is definitely a start.

You should first decide if you want to tank or not. There is one tree to spec for defense so that's easy and it's completely viable to level with. If you decide on dps and are under lvl 45, just spec Vigilance. Focus relies on Force Exhaustion as it's the "enabler" and you can't get it until you hit lvl 45. Vigilance's talents are pretty much good on their own. Single Saber Mastery, Shien Form and Overhead Slash are very beneficial to the tree and come much earlier than Focus's key components.

I've got the same issue with the Gree Lightsaber. If I show the weapon out of combat it has the cool graphics near the hilt with a long slender blade. But as soon as I go into combat it looks like a regular lightsaber, short and thick with no gree-like qualities. I'm about to give up on it and just use the conqueror's blade for it's wave-like effect. /should have saved up for the mount.

What's the incentive indeed?

I stand corrected if Blade Storm and Plasma Brand are indeed force attacks. Insight seems moderately useful in light of that. Still from a PvP perspective, I think six points into Force won't net you as much as 6 into Defense will.

S^ Nurds =P I've had a bit of a hard time figuring out how to play this new build so I thought I'd relay some things I've learned. PvP Vigilance: http://www.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/guardian/17/?build=021200100000000000000000000000000322202221220031212203200300010000000000000000000000000000000000&ver=20 Some quick comments about this build. I am not well geared and I have zero augments in any of it right now, but with this spec and my current mods I'm at 99.5% accuracy. Also, I feel speccing into Swift Slash is a waste of six points. The only force attacks we really deal, and please correct me if I'm wrong, are Force Stasis and Sweep, so Insight is useless to us. Slash and Force Sweep are low priority fillers for us ... so why loose points trying to buff fillers? Comparatively speaking, the attainable talents in the Defense tree round us out quite nicely by increasing Master Strike damage, increasing focus generation, and giving us greater survivability. Rotation: There is no fluid rotation beyond the initial sequence anymore since 2.0. We have to be on top of our Keening procs. It seems to be the consensus that using Dispatch and Master Strike as priority filler is in our best interest. This means that beyond our opener there is no specific walking through of our hotkeys. The best way to talk about rotation is to talk about priority. Opener: Saber Throw > Force Leap > Master Strike > Sundering Strike (use before MS if you don't have Sundering Throw) Burn: Plasma Brand > Overhead Slash > Blade Storm (with Force Rush) Priority fillers; Master Strike (on cooldown/proc) > Dispatch (on cooldown/proc) > Sundering Strike Non-Priority fillers; Saber Throw > Force Sweep > Strike It will take some practice to find your fingers, so think about what you are going to do before every fight until it becomes muscle memory. Please no trolling. Constructive criticism is welcome >8-) Shout out to White Sun/Black Sun on Jung Ma!

Did you all do your extensive testing in world PVC or warzones? Because warzones have been broken since they patched 2.0. Bolster mechanic is broken so that if you are naked you have super stats. Conversely, war hero gear is nerfing anyone wearing it. So these statements of which class is better or worse are moot until they fix the war ones.

this ...

twelveoffifteen jagrevi Wow, what an entertaining and self affirming read! I applaud Jagrevi for her logic, reason, and impartial observations. For posterity, I submit an infamous event where the validity of it's official explanation was presented with similar voracity and style as Twelveoffifteen presented his argument here: Some religious men from caves half a world away infiltrated our country and multiple commercial airliners, evaded multi-billion dollar sensors and monitoring systems, performed statistically impossible flight maneuvers over protected hardened military and government buildings, caused three skyscrapers to collapse within their own footprints at near free fall speed after igniting fires at the building's summits and without eliminating their structural bases for the first three times in history, inexplicably evaporating flight grade aluminum aircraft structural frames and engines with burning jet fuel, and managed to leave the shred of a trail in the form of an undamaged passport ejected through a fireball and exploded debris down over 100 stories to be found blocks away. Prove the validity of this report wrong. It's obviously the only explanation because it was reported in the news for over a decade and I am repeating it here again, on the internet.

I can't see a reason to put out a schedule. If you enjoy the game and play it frequently, then you can't miss it.

You have a few questions here. Let me see if I can answer them. In many mmos like WoW, there are 1H and 2H weapons. 2H weapons have higher rated dps with slower swing speeds, logically doing more dmg per swing than 1h weapons that swing faster. So if there are only 1H weapons in SWTOR then why should you limit yourself to one as a Jedi Guardian or Sith Juggernaut. To further explain your question, you are curious if additional force power abilities are granted to single lightsaber classes which offset the omission of an offhand saber. Whereas the animations for Guardians/Juggs are two-hand stylized I do not know if they actually do more damage. But the class has a far different role to play than their dual wielding counterparts. Much remains the same as they do share their base class but are given different abilities which center more on mitigating damage than strictly dealing it. Guardians/Juggs also get shield generators held in their off-hand designed to mitigate damage received and provide stat bonuses. Everything considered they are evenly matched with equal gear and equal skill. There are aesthetic decisions to make in the beginning but really only one to consider for the elder game: Do you want to strictly deal damage, or be able to tank one day and dps the next?

IMO, the hood toggle absence is parallel with the Twi'leks being unable to wear hoods. There is no other reason I can think of that the developers would choose not to even respond to these "issues", and that is they are both intended with supreme conviction. The must really want it this way. My guardian is Twi'lek, so I have zero chance of ever wearing a hood. My Lekku stands out amongst the hooded Borg, which is rewarding visually for me. At least they fixed the headband disappearing glitch last year. Something to consider when you roll your next toon. Twi'leks should stick to their guns and flaunt the fact that they have more visually aesthetic characters. After all, you rolled one, right?