I love the Vanguard class to actually play, but, yeah, Trooper story is a little bland. Didn't really like the Consular story that much either. The Knight story was probably the most epic feeling, but my favorite was actually the Smuggler story. Act 1 was just awesome, in my opinion, partially because the dialogue you've got with the Act 1 villain in just awesome ("So, that's your plan for killing me? You're putting together an army of my ex-girlfriends?") though the galactic scavenger hunt plot I thought was a lot of fun. On the other side, the Warrior story line is great (dark Jaesa has some awesome bits, and I'm in the "Vette is more amusing than annoying" camp) and feels more... alive, I guess, than any of the Pub classes except maybe the Smuggler, and I've read that the Agent story line is even better.

Rage is quite good for leveling as well. Its strength is AoE burst which, by golly, is pretty much the best thing you'd want to be good at (followed by self-healing) for leveling. Its pointless until about 28, but once you get auto-crit Smashes and Shockwave then you do well. Be sure to leave a Strong for last, and be sure to get 3 or 4 ticks of Force Choke on it before it dies. Then when you're ready, leap to the next pack and immediately Smash them. Should knock off 1/2 to 3/4 the health of all the nearby Normal mobs and dent the Strongs pretty nicely as well. Clean-up should be quick enough that you can only do it every other pack until you get Berserk or Force Crush to let you do it roughly every pack. All 3 specs can level just fine, and Anni will probably be the best against a tough single opponent, but for leveling overall I'd say it goes Rage > Anni > Carnage. The speed with which you finish off packs will more than make up for any additional downtime you'd have vs going Anni. For PvP, I'd say Carnage is the way to go, but even there, Rage can be fun. Get 4 stacks of Shockwave, find a pack of opponents standing stupidly close together, pop your trinkets, leap and Smash them, and watch your screen light up with all the medals you just got.

Rage is isn't all that bad for PvP and is actually rather good for leveling/dailies. In PvP its all about AoE burst which can be a pretty useful thing. If there's a convoy close-escorting the ball carrier or clustered at a Civil War terminal or something, setting up a huge smash is quite easy to do and can do a gigantic amount of damage. If your opponents are disciplined enough to never stack up (which has never happened to me, but when rated WZs come out it could be another story) then Rage mostly gets neutered though it at least still has a little burst. Carnage is probably your all-around best PvP choice. The best single target burst combined with tons of roots ftw. This is the spec that fills people's hearts with terror when they see a Marauder coming. You CAN play Anni in PvP, but I think its honestly sub-par. Worst burst of the 3 and you'll have trouble keeping up Annihilator which will also cripple your sustained dps. You get some pressure with DoTs, but they're all applied melee range so its not like you're an Operative who can rack up nice damage totals and keep people off balance by scattering DoTs everywhere on the other team. People say Anni's got better survivability in PvP than the other two and that's technically true, but the margin is small. Lets say you've got 18k health. Your DoT crits will give you back 180 health. In PvE you'll be getting ticks of this every few seconds and it'll really add up, because PvE (esp leveling) is a battle of attrition. But in PvP you'll be getting hit for 3-4k at a time as people try to burst you down, the fights don't last long, and you don't have the luxury of carefully setting up all your DoTs to ensure you get procs. And even if you're lucky and get them when you need them, they still probably won't heal you for enough to really make that much of a difference. For leveling, again, Rage is all about AoE burst and, conveniently, leveling is all about AoE fights. Anni obviously has the self-heal sustainability which is nice, and against a single target that lets you really wind up to full speed (basically elites and boss fights) Anni will really shine. IMO, Rage comes out ahead when considering everything, because as nice as it is to get a steady stream of small heals, its even better to be able to crank out a full strength smash on virtually every pack you come across. Its like you're a BH with Death from Above on a 15 second cooldown. Carnage will perform fine, but its not as good as the other two.

Your smashes should be hitting about 20% harder than they did before.

Yeah... The build Pondarro linked makes no sense. Towering Rage is kind of the centerpiece of Carnage. Any build that skips it is missing the point. IMO, if I was starting a Marauder right now, I'd bounce through the specs a bit as a I went, as they pick up their core abilities at different points. I'd start as Anni because it gets core abilities first, then at like 26-28 I'd go to Rage (once you can get at least some points in Dominance and Shockwave) though at 30 both Rage and Carnage hit their stride and either would be good. Everything hits on full cylinders at 40 so it becomes whatever you'd choose. Personally I like Rage over Anni for leveling, though both plus Carnage are competent at it. Anni certainly wins if you're going against a single Elite, but Rage's burst is quicker to bring out (make sure you save a Strong for last in each group and get some Force Choke ticks on it before it dies. Next group won't know what hit it) and in my experience when leveling you spend a LOT more time killing normal/strong packs than Elites. A fully prepped Smash isn't very hard to line up and it brings a lot of pain to a group of regular mobs. Sure, you'd be able to kill them just fine as Anni or Carnage, but they'll die a lot faster to those big Rage Smashes.

Great ability, and the single thing I use it the most for won't be affected. When a sniper covers up on top of the wall by the middle turret of Civil War they're annoying as can be. Their ranged dps is vastly better than mine, I can't move them or get to them (quickly, anyway) and they've got defensive cover. Drop MV on them and 9 times out of 10 they'll get up to scoot out of its radius. So they stand up, start running, take a hit or two of the volley (maybe zero if they're fast, but that's ok), and then I harpoon them down onto the ground, cryo grenade to keep them from immediately covering and then I turn them into chutney. Works great and they rarely realize they can just soak the MV damage and snipe me to death.

I haven't leveled a sage so I can't speak for them, but I've done a fair bit of pvping on both my gs and my commando (dps) and gunslingers seriously have nothing to complain about in terms of survivability. Sure, cover locks you into place, but the benefit of being unchargable and un-yank-able for a ranged class is HUGE and once a melee manages to get to you, you've got more ways of dealing with it than a commando. If its seriously a problem, spec into Dampeners for goodness sake. For 1 GCD that you can even do while out of combat, you get -30% damage taken on your next 3 attacks. That's almost OP if you use it a lot, and its really not all that difficult to use while fighting, either.

The biggest problem I have with sab is that I can't find any real theorycrafting on it. With tanks, the exact damage numbers arent quite set yet, but they have fairly tight ballparks set along with with resorce and gcd plotting to work out exactly what you shoul use when and why. With Sab, which I LOVE playing, there are a bunch of basic questions that I cant find the answers to. Like, how good are my abilities compared to each other? Speed shot and sabo hit hard, and aimed shot is good for pulling, but everything else seems up in the air. Is aimed shot ever worth using mid fight? Does Vital shot REALLY hit hard enough that a12.5% chance of a double tick is better than Incendiary Grenade? I'll hit 50 in a few days and chart it myself then, but I was kinda hoping someone else has done it.

Smugglers/Operatives are the least frequently rolled class overall, but it looks very different if you break it down by advanced class and look at people at level 50. Among 50s, by advanced class, Scoundrel is actually pretty well represented. I'm sure it varies from server to server, but its somewhere between 3rd and 5th (the top two, by a significant margin, are Sage and Commando). Gunslinger, on the other hand, is dead last and by a pretty decent margin. Sentinel is second to last. Generally speaking, in terms of population, it goes: The three healer classes, then the three tank classes, then the two pure dps classes. Sage and commando are first by a lot, and Gunslinger is last by a lot, but the other 5 are actually all fairly close together.

The npc who does respecing only does respecing and nothing else. I believe there are two on Coruscant, one of whom is just past the Trade kiosks on the left side behind a counter. I can't recall what the person on the right does.

Ty. You'd think I'd have noticed something like that.

Why don't tanks pick this up?