this build in several variations has been around since beta but 1.2s changes to the tank tree have improved the possibilities. it is a viable PvP tank spec and definitely fun. just some stuff to consider: i would drop burning blade since the dot is really terrible and rather invest the 2 points to max stagger and get shien form. this way you can stancedance for situations where you might want to go for max dmg output. since overhead slash in soresu form is a bosslike focus-eater and with focused defense also being very hard to focus up you could drop the vigilance tier 4 and get up to hilt strike in the tanktree. combined with stasis mastery this just gives you an insine amount of control for the cost of some mitigation. //edit what is that talk about perma bubble? blade barrier absorbs 800ish dmg so its gone pretty fast. and if you say you take little to no damage then you fight the wrong people. sure with CDs you can ramp up your mitigation pretty nice but thats not a permanent state.

jugg and gimpy? thats news to me. sure a marauder will melt through the content like nothing else but a jugg is everything but slow or hard either. plus the SW story is my favorite to date.

yeah you will pretty much have to wait til 1.3 augment tables since all augment-blasters right now look like **** imo.

chapter 3 was awful. after winning the great hunt and having a good time with mandalore running errands for that sith lord was a serious downer. chapter 3 had nothing "bounty hunterish" to it. without the fact of the bounty on your own head the whole thing could have also been a sith story. but i can't agree with the above that the wohle BH story is bad. prologue, chapter 1 and chapter 2 are good imo - just chapter 3 is skipworthy altogether.

actually i like this change. there were days when i got so frustrated by seeing the same premade over and over in my enemy team and always loosing to them and having to play 15+ WZs to finally get 3 wins. i also /sign the poster above that people who potentially leave WZs in situations like above now will just stick with it and try to win instead of just bailing out the second they see that its another PUG vs Premade. and the point of grinding losses for your gear isn't that valid imo. when you only do your dailys to get your gear you will take ages to get anywhere near full WH. plus when you loose you will get much less comms anyway so there will always be a reason to give your best and try to win.

i think u are referring to immolate (AP tree) since that is some seriously huge fireanimation. to the topic of PT being OP: they follow a simple risk vs reward system. as a pyro PT you either win or you die. (yeah i watched too much game of thrones <.<) you have zero escape abilities except for stunning and hoping not to get chased down. and you have to be dancing in 4-10m range to be at your most potential. that is why they were given that huge burst. there is no force camo'ing out of OH **** situations. no interceding back to your team. no force speeding away from there. no cherry picking fights to your liking (except when grappling peeps but then you likely have to also use your stun to keep your target there).

first: gunslinger has no stealth second: not even an unnerfed all-consumable-stacked operative/scoundrel was able to hit you for 11k in one move.

definitely yes. ~3k RP crits which reset quite often with an ED and off-GCD HB make some nice burst. and shield is given less credit than it deserves. it certainly isn't as useful in PvP as it is in PvE but every class i take on resets my RP quite often except for sorcs/sages. you don't have a juggs control or a sins sustain but having all 3 tanking classes at 50 and pvping with all of them (all at least valor 50; jugg and PT even before the easymode valor gain patch) the PT has the highest burst of them and when up against a class with many melee/ranged attacks to reset your RP your dmg in DPS set is quite good.

even as a pyro RP and ED are nice while lvling. the common three-trash-mob-group is cleared super fast and without much loss of HP when you ED one (preferably a melee) so he doesn't do anything while unloading on the second so he can't do anything too. by the time unload is finished the ED goes off and all three are knocked down. pick the one with the highest HP and railshot him. move in for FB and RP as needed and after that with the help of gault nothing should be alive anymore and you barely took a scratch. mix in IM and FB/RP for PPA procs when there are silver mobs within but otherwise you don't really need pyros tools for fast mob clearance when it comes to lvling. maybe it's just me but discarding ED and RP in PvE is just denying yourself some useful tools. i also use carbonize in PvE on a regular basis simply due to the fact that i don't like to take damage where it isn't necessary. on trashmobs you can even chain a RS directly after an unload which is also handy. i still use the aforementioned tactic when doing hardmodes and its just sweet. once you have TD you don't have the AoE knockdown anymore but PT has more than enough tools to make up for that.

i lvl'd in this spec from 10 to 50 while pvp'ing, tanking FP's and later offtanking KP and EV OP's (we haven't done denova yet but from what i've seen thats where a full tank spec might be more desireable for the second tank). from my own experience i can say this spec is perfectly viable for all of it. i lvl'd and tanked normal FP's in full dmg equip only with a shield gen and it never gave myself or the healer any trouble. high attack plus ~30% crit and ~70% surge combined with still good tankiness and an up-to-date equipped gault as companion guarantee you to fly throug the content with nothing left to be desired. in pvp you are sturdy enough to whittle down most of your opponents by yourself and distract the **** out of your enemies while still doing enough damage to be on their to-kill list. 1.2 didn't change anything for IF itself so its still a perfectly viable choice. but since it buffed heat blast it now just comes down to the choice between more utility (IF) or slightly more burst and survivability (full ST).

ya wanted to post this too since i finally got my columi mainhand token friday night but you beat me to it. even tho i got the tank weapon, since i'm tanking in ops, i noticed that the early retirement uses the same model. next token is reserved for our arsenal merc but after that i will add the early retirement to my dps set once there pops another token. but i don't think its a better texture model just slightly different color scheme like champion combat tech which also makes the champion look a bit better than the glowing gun. but since champion wasn't given mods in 1.2 but completely taken out blizz now holds on to it until i get something for him. and to the poster above that. WH combat medic and WH combat tech have the exact same stats. but for me theres no point getting another BM mainhand since i'll just rip the mods out of the WH combat tech once i got it and put them into my glowing gun. and even tho its just a minor issue but i kinda like my gun more when it has a name like glowing gun or early retirement rather than war hero combat techs mainhand blaster.

geez i kept my mouth shut about all those "this is impossible" kind of threads but hell no.... did you guys start arguing back in the day when yoda lifted lukes x-wing out of the swamp that its an impossible thing to do? if something of the EU is too much for you just ignore it and enjoy the rest instead of starting discussions which are meaningless at the end of the day. if it makes you feel any better about this particular issue you could even say since this trailer is part of a game that its a gameplay feat. and those are considered non-canon unlike the games stories.

well as already stated sorcs/sages are freekills most of the time. juggs/guards can be more demanding but are also doable. a mara/sent will just steamroll over you. this is from a PT perspective.

theres a orange set (skirt + top) my female jugg used to wear. http://www.torhead.com/item/7MiTiNq/indignation-chestguard

i don't agree with that suggestion because i like the area denial effect of DFA. (and if the enemy doesn't feel like being denied then he gets hammered =) but i feel with the new (ridiculous) range that 1m CD is too long. 45 seconds is what i would suggest.

you seriously answered your own question there. you can not shield tech and force attacks. only melee and range attacks. there is no tech and force damage. damage types =/= attack types. back to basics: attack types: melee ranged force tech damage types: kinetic energy internal elemental

thats the model of the old champion eliminator blaster. still obtainable in form of the T1 pve tank weapon (the glowing gun). don't know if there are other versions of that model. use this beast on my PT for all sets. even mako got one for her rifle mods.

armorings override shells.

the damage difference between 31 ST and IF is also only minor when it comes to pure stat-build. IF doesn't really have anything over 31 ST damage-wise since HB and RB aren't that different in numbers. you base this solely on the equip but a 31 ST can also wear pvp dps gear. i'd even say with HB off the GCD now 31 ST with the same equip as IF has superior burst while maintaining higher survivability and better heat management for the cost of some utility.

just for some clarification since i've seen several people here still mixing up their basics. attack types: melee - able to shield ranged - able to shield force - not able to shield tech - not able to shield damage types: energy - mitigated by armor kinetic - mitigated by armor elemental - not mitigated by armor internal - not mitigated by armor as of the current topic i have to say i haven't played ST since 1.2. used to only play IF pre-1.2 but since a while everybody and his mother is playing a darkness sin on my server and i felt we seriously lacked damage in WZs so i went pyro which i usually only played in pve when there was a dd needed somewhere. hope all those new FotM marauders i keep seeing with my twinks in the sub50 bracket make it to 50 fast, because even enjoying pyro i really want to go back playing tank in pvp. and after the buff to HB i think i will go 31 ST in pvp as well as opposed to my formerly beloved IF. already love the polished ST playstyle in pve.

i think the argument about grinding the WH gear is a bit off anyways. correct me if im wong but didn't BW state that the current way to get WH gear is just a filler since they were not able to bring rated WZs with 1.2? so instead of not giving us the chance for WH gear at all ( since there are no rated WZs to get rated comms out of) they just went with the old comm trade model from the mercenary comms and gave us the chance to get some new gear. i think when rated WZs finally hit the live servers WH equip will be a lot easier to get. but i feel you compare the wrong pve set with the effort of getting WH gear. you should compare between black hole gear and WH. for getting black hole gear you first have to get your raid in decent equip, so you have to do some normal raids for columi, then you have to do some hard modes to bring some rakata gear in the mix and then you can start working on getting those black hole parts.

well i don't play deception but from your rotation i see one flaw. are you saying you use maul out of stealth without exploit weakness proc? and no spike? as non-darkness you can only use spike when stealthed so use it first when you engage - except you plan on force cloaking midfight and then reopen with a spike. and never use maul without exploit weakness. 50 force is just waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much cost. other than that a more seasoned deception player should leave his 2 cent.

you are lvl 13 ..... you can't even call yourself tank assassin since you get dark charge with lvl 14. barely any utility at that lvl (no force shroud, force cloak spike, force speed) and no real dmg (energize + chain shock, assassinate, harness darkness for 75% more force lightning dmg) i lvld my assassin as darkness from lvl 10 and you really don't bring anything to the table for WZs pre30. but once you get energize, pull, harness darkness and wither things get a lot better. like all tank specs it takes time til you really notice being a tank since all the sweet stuff is higher up the skill trees.

ya just like above. get at least the lvl 40 implants/ear for you and your most used companion and spend the rest on WZ adrenals/medpacks and have some fun in pvp.

well the chapter transitions normally go with tons of flying between korriban/dromund kaas/random space stations/planets. but basically its: chapter1 korriban dromund kaas balmorra/nar shaddaa tattooine/alderaan chapter2 taris quesh hoth chapter3 belsavis voss corellia depending on your class you may have to revisit planets sometimes for some minor class questing. another thing that marks the chapter transitions is when you have to go back to the fleet and talk to a npc near your class trainer who doesn't say a word but gives you some exp.