I suggest you reread your skill tree: Hits from Double Strike (= 2 hits) have a 30% to finish the cooldown on Shock and make your next shock a critical hit. -> 51% Chance to get an auto crit shock -> on average a lot more threat from a Double Strike. (Not even mentioning faster Force Lightnings + more Shocks....). And no, a normal tank has about a 20% critical Rating. You mistake crit with surge rating i guess... And no, on an optimal scale Discharge does less threat then Thrash (as proven in the calculation above). If you would account the faster rotation aswell, it would be even more (Thrash >> Discharge then), but i don't have any calculations about how much extra threat you generate when having more Shocks + faster force lightnings and i can't be bothered to make some, because the matter is already clear without accounting that. ... Taunt stuff: You tell me that Pull + Taunt ( 1gcd) eats more global cooldowns then Taunt + Pull (1 gcd). I ask: Logic? Taunt doesn't level you to the top threat. It levels you above the top threat! You will be at 110% or 130% depending on the range. And as you generally have the top threat (or a very very Close amount of the top threat) on a spawning add Pull + Taunt is the superior move. If you taunt of another tank you shouldn't waste the global cooldown of Force Pull anyway.

The definition of spikiness is really difficult and probably one of the very few tanking things, were you might find me disagreeing with kbn. A few definitions/statements first: Spikiness factors multiple things: - Your average mitigation - The damage profile your tank takes - The damage your tank takes from a temporary unlucky number of unmitigated hits Apart from very few exceptions (Kephess the Undying for example) most of the Operation Bosses have splitted attacks. For example most of their main tank damaging attack (which is usually a defendable m/r attack) is splitted into multiple (3+) hits. Most of the force/tech attacks are usually not that often splitted and tend to do more damage on average. Therefore most of the bigger tank spikes tend to happen while a big f/t wasn't shielded + the constant m/r attack from the Boss deals above average damage. Popular Example: Tyrans Tyrans has 2 main attacks on the tank, a defendable Shock (which is splitted into 5 hits) and a f/t Thundering Blast. Big damage spikes on Tyrans happen mainly while he casts Thundering Blast, normally he will use a Shock 0,1 second later on the tank (therefore a lot of Shadow/Assassin Tank think they had the famous 5% failing chance when they use Force Shroud on Thundering Blast) . If a Tank is not shielding the Thundering Blast + is neither shielding nor defending some of the Shock hits, he will get a noticeable damage spike, but the main noticeable point is, if he shields Thundering Blast or not (especially for sins and powertechs). That makes assassin tanks having the least probability to spike, but also getting the highest Spikes (as they still have less base armor and are therefore getting the most damage out of an unmitigated Thundering Blast). .... A bit more general now: Requirements for having a stable incoming damage Profile (e.g. not being spiky) is, to have a stable mitigation. If assassin tanks are played good (and the stacks are up all the time) they have the most stable profile with only the Dark Bulwark stacks slowly rising from 0- 8%. Absorption tough is not really that important for spikiness as it just affects already shielded attacks (as kbn already pointed out). For Powertechs it's pretty similar although their difference in absorption rating has a larger difference. Juggernauts on the other hand get a large amount of average mitigation out of their Force Scream bubble (which is ~95% of the time not availabe) and which also would help more against spikiness then absorption rating would. Compared to Dark Bulwark, Force Scream is giving more mitigation on an average scale and it's either 100% or 0% while Dark Bulwark stacks are more fluid in their effect. -The damage profile: Powertechs are considered to have the best incoming damage profile (and i think that's true). The reason for that is that they have the highest passive armor + the best overall mitigation (especially when considering oil slick as being constantly used) + a good shield/absorb mitigation for force/tech attacks. Juggernauts and Assassins definitly have some problems in that category. Without Sonic Barrier (and Sonic Barrier is a lot less time active on average compared to Oil Slick for example), Juggernauts have substantially less damage mitigation then the other two tank classes + they have by far the lowest shield/absorb mitgation for generally more spiky force/tech attacks. Assassins still have the lowest base armor (although they have by far the highest Chance (defense + shield Rating) to actually mitigate things). which makes them get more damage then the other 2 tank classes when you get really unlucky with mitigation. Ok i will stop writing endless pages about that topic and i will try to make an easy understandable statement about spikiness for tanks according to their tank stats: Your base armor: Important as that's your main mitigation against receiving unmitigated (unlucky hits). Your defense rating: Rather unimportant as it's most of the time just works against already splitted attacks + Has a larger probability to fail Your shield rating: Important, as it works against all attacks and directly reduces the probability of getting an unmitigated attack Your absorb rating: Rather unimportant as it just works against attacks which were already shielded Temporary absorbing shield: Unimportant as they are just temporariliy active.

@NickAlexander: First part: You forget that double strike (which consists of hits of 1,5 k threat each on your log uncritted) also has a 51% to proc a critical shock hit., which a) allows more Shocks b) allows shock to do 1800 more threat c) allows faster Force Lightnings Even if we wouldn't account, by just accounting b) you get 900*0,8 (because of 20% crit chance)= 720 more threat out of thrash. That means 1500 + 1500 + 720 = 3720 > 3463 (with accounting a) aswell it's more like 4200 > 3400 but nevermind). With c) it's even more.... Spamming Double Strike is better threat wise, then spamming Discharge. Your own numbers prove you wrong. Second part: About Pull and Taunt: That's also wrong. You will always "waste" 1 gcd, no matter if you taunt + pull or pull + taunt (logic anywhere ?) The combat log is not telling you how much threat you actually gain from taunting (therefore just the 2 or 3 in the combat log) He puts you to 110% (if you stand in melee range) or 130% of the threat of the current top target. Taunt + Pull is just superior threat, when dps were already hitting that target for a longer period of time. If you want to grab a new spawning mob, you should always Pull + Taunt. If another tank had the mob before, threat won't matter anyway.

I don't think you can conclude that out of this article. They just write that they will release new operations during 2014. For 2.8 there's just standing: nim dp and new ships. If 2.8 shall be the biggest game update so far (remember 2.4 had 2 operations and more) it may entirely possible that they also release new operations in 2.8.

High amount of threat just means the attack has a higher threat modifier then 1,0. As Slow Time/Wither deals a lot more damage then Force Breach it also deals a lot more threat (as tehy have the same threat modifier). Also its incorrect to taunt and pull. You have to do that the other way round (pull and then taunt) as taunt is a threat Multiplier. Fight should never (never never never....) be engaged with a stim. You continously lose Dark Bulwark stacks (always when you reapply darkward). With the healer things it's completely the other way round: At the beginning of the fight every competent healer will have hots/shields on you, the whole raid will be at 100% health,... Using a defensive cooldown at the beginning of a fight is the worst point a tank can possibly use a cooldown.

I will just write a bit about that topic: Before 2.6 whenever Orbital was used on adds, the 15% damage increase was straight superior to the 25% damage increase for corrosive dart (the increase in duration is not straight damage increase on a pure single target fight). In df/dp hm that would've been Draxxus, Corruptor Zero, Bestia, Calphayus and Dread Masters (last Phase is the most important phase dps wise). Also on fights with fast swap and many small targets, the straight dps increase of instants was favorable over the damage increase of a dot. In df/dp hm that would've been Brontes. That leaves us with Nefra, Tyrans, Grob'Thok (which are more or less dummy fights for snipers with some little movement) and Raptus (which needs some burst in the challenge). On these "dummy" fights, personally i would normally play hybrid, more movement + slightly higher single target damage. For 2.6 changes: Explosive Probe is still just a filler with a big cooldown, it's damage Output is not really important. Orbital damage will be nerfed, it's damage Output is now a lot lower then Corrosive Dart, unless it's a very heavy aoe fight. Corrosive Dart stays roughly the same. Therefore the typical mm spec will now be 36/4/6 or 36/3/7 (probably they fix it), unless a sniper will also use Fragmentation Grenades for more needed aoe. That may theoretical happen on very heavy add fights like Draxxus or Corruptor Zero, but i guess that will Need testing. (Note: On Draxxus it's probably more likely to happen as for very large parts of the fight there's no possibility to really dot anyone with corrosive grenade).

No you don't waste a stack when activating Force Lightning. All 4 ticks of Force Lightning will consume one single stack of Recklessness at the end of the Force Lightning cast. All 4 ticks of Force Lightning deal a lot more damage then Wither or Shock. Therefore Recklessness needs to be cast with Force Lightning. There are no double shock crits. When the first shock of chain shock hits it will immediatly consume 1 stack of recklessness (anyway that's rather unimportant, use Recklessness for Force Lightning + either Wither or Shock). As i just know very few mechanics were a tank is very far away from anything he actually has to tank, i suggest to use Recklessness as a dps and threat increase for Force Lightning.

Force Lightning crits >> Wither crit (as Force Lightning does a lot more damage and threat then Wither) Shock crits may double proc (Chain Shock) and eat (waste) both Recklessness stacks. Therefore you can just use shock at the second tick of recklessness, but never at the first. It's therefore recommended to always use Recklessness with 1 Force Lightning. Waiting for Force Lightning + Shock Autocrit is not really practical cause that relies on luck, but you can try it on the Recklessness after your opening Rotation (after 90 seconds) as you generally have a 51% Chance after shock-thrash- Recklessness + Force Lightning - Shock to get that.

No. Raid Encounters generally have a diversity. You don't need always the same constant healing. Nor do you need the same constant dps (unless you are "raiding" worldbosses). When there's little incoming damage, healers should dps, when there's a lot of incoming damage dps should off-heal. When dps or healers say that they don't use some of the abilitys they got while leveling, they have simply a big room for improvements. Also: Incoming damage and required dps are more or less independant.

Get engineering up to the second clusterbomb Talent (16-18 Points) and marksmann quite high up the tree (mainly the rest of the points there). The mm/eng is very good for leveling (it has the highest burst of any sniper spec), but has serious energy problems after 1 Minute (as you cant get sniper volley), therefore its bad in raids.

Yes, every ability/talent any tank class has is either accounted or specifically not taken (defensive cooldowns with a Long cooldown for example)

I meant that you have to be better with the hybrid build then you have to be with the standard spec. If you are just able to refresh Dark Protection a millisecond before it runs out in the wither spec, that's not enough to run the hybrid and to get a good significant uptime of Dark Protection there. What i wanted to say is, that the hybrid is not allowing any mistakes in Rotation as even 1 single gcd missed = 1 gcd less with Dark Protection up. Therefore the hybrid requires a lot more skill actually . Edit: The only boss i use a 33/11/2 build sometimes is nefra, it's the only boss that fulfills all the requirements if ithere's someone with the 5% damage reduction buff (no movement, no stealth rez possible, you get all the time damage and can (and should) vanish on cooldown, no Need for aoe threat....). I tested both specs intensively on nefra 16 man hm with 1-4 healers and compared the damage profiles i took. Because of rng you can't really see differences in the logs tough, still the hybrid should take slightly less damage overall. On the other hand the wither build is so insanely easy to play on nefra, while it's easy to do mistakes with the hybrid.

4% Damage Reduction increase = ~7% DR Blackout on the other Hand is just a normal 25% DR Because of that and the reapplytime of Force Lightning, the standard build is superior on average (tough not so much anymore after 2.5.2). The 11 deception hybrid is just slightly superior if you 1. have a permanent 5% damage reduction on the Boss 2. are able to use Vanish on cooldown more or less 3. have a better rotation then 100% Dark Protection stack uptime

1) Hmm, very close between Powertech and Assassin 2) Assassin slightly favored over Powertech and Jugg here 3) There's not really any difference between all the tank classes here 4) More then 80% of the tanks are either jugg or assassin (lightsabers). Therefore the most common tank combination for guilds is jugg/assassin. Powertechs are as strong as the other tanking classes, their only problem is that lightsabers > blasters for the majority of the playerbase. Most guilds will put a jugg tank on the boss, as juggs get more bonus from being attacked and an assassin rotation is rather unaffected and doesn't really need to mt a boss. Also tank assassins have some abilites (stealth rez, reapplying phase walk) that are just usable to their full extent when they are not attacked . All tank classes can maintank anything in this game, the overall damage they take is very very similar. 5) In current content Powertech, when 2.6 Drops Vengeance Juggernauts 6) No

Well i don't think the damage increase to shatter is needed, there's already the first 3800+ parse. I think the sustained single target dps issues of juggernauts/Guardians are solved.

Update for Zah'ik - Sniper - Hybrid -5/18/23 - 4m 17,81 s - 3878 Parse: http://www.torparse.com/a/561842/time/1390390352/1390390609/0/Overview AMR: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/fb550a37-1bce-43a3-be9b-3bac27443f2a

We should break 3,7k without that buff (even 3,8k should be possible when looking at current live 3500+ parses). Even if you buff Shatter by 5%, that will just be a 1% dps increase Overall.

Ok new calculation: 1,5% damage increase in Shatter (so basically nothing ). The question is obviously: Does vengeance need a bigger increase in Shatter damage? The ability itself feels fine, but the spec might need some more help. PvE speaking: Survivability: very good (enrage defense should be very easy usable + instant switch to soresu without much disadvantage....) Area damage: nothing Single target dps: Good, dummy parses up to 3800 should be possible, thats in range of current marauder dps. Burst: Good, with double ravage Windows Reliablility of dps: Average at best, vs moving targets constant ravage channels are not very good, although you have unstoppable Well i suppose, you could buff shatter up to maybe 5%, but overall i don't think that vengeance juggernauts need a big buff anymore after these changes. Because of the constant ravage procs, rage-consuming defensive abilitys like enraged defense or the switch to Soresu Form got a big buff aswell. Vengeance's dps and utility (a nice example is tanking one of the Guardians in the last draxxus phase in my opinion) for operations is in my opinion now comparable to marauders. Edit: I don't know why you think that shatter is a weak top tier ability. It's a 7,3 k internal! ability on a 12 sec cooldown. It's one of the hardest hitting abilities for a single gcd in the game.

I was testing on pts aswell. I could push ravage usage to once every 10,5 seconds so far(theoretically it's 10,66 but you have 2 ravages you can cast in the beginning). Damage Increase on Shatter should be 4,4% so rather neglible in the overall damage, probably that was changed just to make clear that Shatter should be your top priority . Overall you should see a slighty more then 250 dps increase on pts compared to live.

At the latest suggestions 2-3 posts up there: All are giving assassin tanks up to 8% additional damage reduction compared to all the other tank classes -> 2 assassin tanks would be best for every Operation like pre 2.0 At the moment we have a very good tank balance, but i guess not everyone likes to be in line with other tank classes. And yes, i cleared all the content and i have all these titles and my assassin tank is currently my main.

For aoe dps at lower Levels i would suggest powertech or merc (vanguard or commando). Flamethrower and Death from above already at Level 10 are very good (all the other classes get their aoe abilites/talents a lot later). For aoe heals at lower levels i would recommend kolto missles from merc healers aswell. All the other healing classes get their good aoe heals a lot later ingame.

@all the Posters above me: DTPs comparisions are useless on bosses like nefra and on most other bosses (a reason why i stopped the tanking leaderboard). A sorc healer for example with static barrier can easily reduce your dtps by 200-300 if he justs casts Static Barrier on you. Same for a powertech co-tank. DTPs is not comparable unless the different tanks are using the excact same group composition on bosses like nefra. (On other bosses i wouldn't even go so far..) 1200 dtps with sorc healer and powertech = ~1800 without them.

Take the Exotech/Rakata Adrenal in all situations.

As the cooldown of ravage is always being reseted when you get 2 stacks, it doesn't matter when you cast it, as long as you cast it before you use your dots again. Ok let's look what we have and we should try to cast on cooldown: Shatter (12 sec cd) Impale (9 sec) Force Scream (9 sec) Ravage (no cooldown ; Comes off cooldown) Vicious Throw (~20 sec) Sundering Assault (12 sec) A bunch of rage-giving, rage-neutral filler Starting rotation i would suppose: Saber-Throw-Force Leap - Shatter - Ravage (at this point we should have first destroyer proc) - Impale - Force Scream - Sundering Assault - Ravage - Shatter - Impale - Force Scream - Vicious Throw -Ravage - Sundering Assault - Impale - Shatter - Force Scream - Ravage - Vicious Throw (27 sec after the first proc) - Impale - Sundering Assault -Force Scream - Shatter - Ravage - Impale - Saber Throw - Force Scream - Sundering Assault - Vicious Throw (43,5) - Shatter - Impale (delayed by 1 gcd) - Force Scream - Ravage - Sundering Assault - filler (Smash f.e.) - Impale - Shatter - Force Scream - Ravage - Sundering Assault - Impale - Force Scream- Vicious Throw - Shatter - Ravage - Impale - Force Scream - Ravage - Sundering Assault - Shatter - Impale - Force Scream .... Hmm, i simply couldn't stop the theoretic rotation . I will test if you can rly do your rotation with just a single filler every Minute if the changes go on pts. If i did count everything correct, you should be able to get an additional ravage proc every 96 seconds, as Impale is 3 seconds faster off cooldown (and it has to run through a shatter Rotation 2 times + you need 2 additional procs for an additional ravage means you need 8 shatter rotation -> 96 seconds). That means you should be able to get 9 ravage procs every 96 seconds -> ravage every 10,66 seconds now (previously the best results i saw were ravage ~ every 15 seconds and my 3750 calculation counts with ravage every 12 seconds). New theoretic calculated damage is now 3800 (did some mistakes previously) with the top parse on leaderboards.

While alacrity would be a much more viable stat then surge, on a raw scale, it has some problems on dps toons: While focus Regeneration (note that Guardians have a natural focus Regeneration of 0, their regeneration comes from their Rotation, so faster Rotation = more Focus), and the gcd are affected by alacrity, the normal cooldown of your abilties is not affected. As most of your stronger attack moves have a natural cooldown, they are largely unaffected by alacrity. You will always cast them on cooldown and casting them faster will not help increasing your dps as you can always just cast them every 9 or 12 seconds. So, abilites like Plasma Brand, Overhead Slash or Bladestorm are largely unaffected by alacrity. With the probably upcoming changes for vigilance Guardians, it might be viable to get 1-2 alacrity pieces but i doubt it so far.