I have found Battle Focus to be a pretty good spell.

Well... Trooper Hammershot has been divided into 7 ticks since launch, and Bounty Hunter Rapid Shots has been divided into 5 ticks since launch. Since Mercs got offhand ticks, they ended up hitting ~7 ticks of Rapid Shots anyway. But for Vanguards vs Powertechs, the difference between 7 and 5 ticks is extremely important. Your chances of proccing most abilities with autoattacks drop by 20% or so per autoattack. Since almost every Vanguard tank ability procs off your autoattack, it makes Powertech tanks a fair bit weaker. It's also relevant when autoattacking a Shadow/Assasin with Kinetic/Dark Ward up.

Hey folks, Boarder was hosting the guide on *his site but his site went down. Sorry about not updating my signature for so long. I've uploaded the guide to my Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B166fRA6k_tzVER3ZU1ZbHpYM0E/edit?usp=sharing Please let me know if it doesn't work. Thanks for your interest! Edit: Boarder was hosting the guide on his site, not my site

You can also enter TFB (level 55/post 2.0 version!) at level 53. I can't confirm anything more than that. Incidentally, TFB trash is great for leveling. I entered at level 53, got to level 55 before we got to the Dread Guard. I think this was under double xp though.

For the ideal tank stat distribution, are you using a base 90% base hit rate for melee/ranged attacks? The bosses in your log tend to have around 80%-60% total miss rates on most attacks, so probably ~50% base hit rate on most melee attacks.

Are DTPS values what you'd get if every hit didn't miss, get shielded, and didn't have any damage reduction applied? Or do they already incorporate base boss miss%?

By the way, part of the reason why this thread didn't get many replies is because your ideal stat distribution depends upon your DTPS, and DTPS depends upon 1) cooldown usage 2) enemy behavior 3) which enemy you're facing. These things are much more consistent in PVE than they are in PVP.

PVE or PVP?

The strength of gear is determined by its mods. There is no 'best' armor, only best mods. The best mods you can ever get will be Nimble and Agile mods of the highest tear that you can wear at that level.

Everyone's being really negative. But the truth is, if you have watched videos of NIM TFB/SNV, it's easily clearable now in 180/186 gear. There are plenty of guilds that would pug a sage healer/dps for NIM TFB/SNV without expecting any payment or special loot rules. You might want to try advertising that you're looking for a group for those operations on the weekend (people will probably be pulling DP/DF NIM on Tuesday) and see what happens. Also, maybe I missed it but I'm not sure which faction you're in.

It's a class mechanic. You can't do damage and have stealth.

One tank picks up all the monsters. The other tank picks up one monster at a time off the other tank and tries to get all the larvae. All DPS hit the monster that's on the single monster tank. Larvae die to in-rotation AOE. The fight is designed so that there will often be more than 2 monsters + Bestia out. That is fine. Just separate the monsters and kill them one at a time. The strategy will need refinement for HM and NIM but that's the gist of how we do it in NIM as well. If you're having any trouble in any SM fight the problem is more likely with the DPS's skillset, not the strategy that you're applying to the fight. SM is designed to be possible to clear with just about any consistent strategy.

If you have the time I'd recommend leveling a healer first, raiding on it, then leveling a tank. Healing people will teach you when in this game a player is likely to not have aggro on something. That way when you level your tank and raid on it, you'll at least be aware of the problem. As I understand it, in WoW you can get aggro on massive packs of enemies and from thereon there's just one 'tank button' that you press repeatedly. SWTOR is very different from my vision of WoW tanking. In general you pull 1 pack at a time, build aggro on each enemy, and then move on to the next pack. Presuming you have aggro on everything in one SWTOR pack and that you have gear and/or cooldowns, you definitely can move on to the next pack.

I can tell that's not the real Ashwinn because this troll used capitalization and punctuation.

kare bear pls let me join im top vg dps on the harbringr. u were the only one in paladins i liked ill **** ur **** pls

unicorns are just skinny rhinos think about it

You should be using Flamethrower every time it's off cooldown so I don't see the big problem. Flame Engine procs -> Flamethrower cd resets -> I know it's time to use Flamethrower.

I computed all the stacking additive/multiplicative effects you need to worry about in my table: http://i.imgur.com/1MSauDP.png. In the image, Dummy Reduction represents conditions where you won't have the standard 20% armor reduction debuff that Grav Round, Shatter Shot, and Sundering Strike give. Boss Reduction represents conditions where you'll have a 20% armor reduction in addition to your spec's other specific bonuses. To compute a % increase in DPS between any two armor conditions, find a postcondition tooltip scalar 1 that matches your conditions after applying some armor debuffs, and a precondition tooltip scalar 2 that matches your conditions before applying whatever debuffs, and then compute tooltip scalar 1 / tooltip scalar 2. For example, if I'm an Infiltration Shadow (9% armor penetration) and want to know how much more damage I'll do after adding the standard 20% armor reduction, I find my post tooltip scalar is 0.718 with 20% reduction and 9% penetration, and my pre tooltip scalar is 0.671 with just 9% penetration. My DPS increase should be 0.718/0.671 = 1.0700, or 7% when I add the 20% armor reduction. Note that this is the % change that you'll see in kinetic/energy damage. Internal/elemental damage won't be changed.

If you are blessed with the ability to never miss an attack with 101% Tech accuracy, then definitely don't put more points into accuracy. I suspect if we parsed a 5minute+ combat log we'd find that you're either at 111% Melee accuracy or you're actually missing attacks. Accuracy doesn't compete with power in any gear slot so you can't choose to put points into power instead of accuracy.

That Absorb adrenal thread demonstrates why the Rakata Absorb adrenal is better overall than nano-infused for given weights of m/r vs f/t damage. But the OP of this thread is really asking about Tyrans' melee to force damage ratio. Unfortunately I don't think anyone has prepared a full write-up of DP NIM damage ratios yet, but there's an easy way to check whether Tyrans has melee attacks in nightmare. Parse a fight against him, check his miss rate per attack, and ignore instances where you resisted an attack. That gives you actual miss rate, and if it's anything other than zero then the attack is probably melee. In DP HM Tyrans' shock was melee: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=685465

Yep, Boarder/Paowee did take a break from SWTOR. His job schedule changed. It looks like his site (swtorboard.org) also is no longer hosted. I have no idea if he'll ever play SWTOR again or contribute to SWTOR community content, but it is likely that the original post of this thread will never be updated.

I obviously don't represent Bioware or Cox and I can contribute little apart from these troubleshooting questions... But here are some troubleshooting questions that, when answered, might help to understand the nature of the breakdown. 1. Is the insertion of the new CPU the only condition needed to trigger the route breakdown? 2. Does the problem persist when you attempt to log in to any SWTOR game server? Does the problem persist when you attempt to login with a new SWTOR account? 3. Does the problem persist when you attempt to login to any SWTOR game server while on an IP other than Cox? 4. Follow the process listed here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=749507 to produce log files of your launcher's attempt to boot up, and consider reposting to the customer service forum here: http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=11. The CS agents monitor the CS forum pretty closely.

Starspitter Starcaller Starsplitter Starreaver Stareater Starburner Starqueller Starpiercer Starlight Starstorm Starlance Starchild (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starchild_skull) Starmie (pokemon) Staryu (pokemon) Starving Starvation Startle (the verb) Starling (a bird) Star'armor Star Star Star...

you need seven crits eight is too much

In 3.0 they will release the operation 'Attack of the Bread Masters'. The Carb Combine is attempting to take over the galaxy and has formed a pact with the Bread Masters. The enemies you will face include: General Ised Alergee, who uses a large number of damage over time attacks and who sometimes gives a debuff which deals damage to targets who receive healing The assassin known only by codename 'Sloth'. He has no enrage timer. Players will be constantly slowed. When players do not move at all, they will build up stacks of a debuff called 'Fatass'. Reaching 20 stacks of 'Fatass' causes you to die. If you go AFK in the proximity of this boss for too long (there's always "that guy") he will attack you Apprentice Froster: you must attack him in his kitchen. The Apprentice Froster is obsessed with building masterpiece cakes and confectioneries. He has deceptively low HP. As you attack the Apprentice Froster he will build a stronger and stronger wall of glazed sugar around himself which absorbs more and more damage. The only way to beat him is to make him encase himself in so much sugary delight that he cannot eat it all and dies. Master Bakarn: you may remember Syo Bakarn as a member of the Jedi High Council, among other things... After being awakened he served the Dark Rye side of the force and now seeks to spread Bread's power throughout the galaxy. He force lifts tasty, meteoric chunks of bread and throws them at raid members, so whoever has the reticule targeted on them needs to bring it away from the raid group. Make sure to focus down his Parmesan Partisan adds, or they will give Master Bakarn the 'Garlic Parmesan breath' aoe attack. Master Sheff: randomly picks out raid members and uses the channeled attack 'Balloon Whisk Whupping' on raid members. Raid members are knocked up and around through the arena while under attack. If his attack is not interrupted, the raid member becomes encased in the Bread Prison and must fight his/her way out. secret boss: Diabetolus, the secret mastermind behind it all. What happens when all party members build up 20 stacks of 'Fatass' at the exact same time? Find out...