34 or 35, killed him on the first try. Tank specced guardian, had no problems.

Imo Riposte is quite good. It ignores global cooldown, hits almost as hard as Slash, cannot miss or be parried/dodged and costs 1 focus if talented. There is no reason not to use it everytime you can,

This doesn't make any sense. You still need to do X amount of damage to kill the person, doesn't matter how fast you gonna do it. If anything, the overall damage done should be higher as people are dying more often == more damage done. To stay on topic, ignore the score board. As was said, if you play the objectives, you most likely won't be topping the damage. And that shouldn't be your goal anyway.

This was the case in the first month or two, when everyone was gearing up and skill actually mattered. Good luck getting into any PvP guild or premade now when everyone has BM and war hero pieces and you just hit 50. You can be the god itself PvPing, but you will still be turned away from any premade because you simply dont have the gear. As a fresh 50, you are useless in WZs and have to sit through those losses to actually get your BM pieces to be competetive. Just create a new character now (preferably on a different server where noone knows you), level it to 50 and solo queue in recruit gear. Tell me how many premades offered you a spot in their group, how many pvp guilds wanted you in their ranks.

No tank can hold aggro on that kind of group if DPS unleash their AoE. Fact. I have a powertech, main tanked everything up to 1.2 on all difficulties, and while I'm not a great tank, I can get around and hold aggro reliably. But not on these kind of groups. And you shouldn't expect to. As was said, CC, kill order, focus fire. Done deal.

Nice post, but practically useless. You have no idea how BW gathers their data, you have no idea how their internal testing goes, you basicaly have no idea about anything regarding how BW balances the classes. THe only thing they said is that they're monitoring how the classes perform. They never said how. Your wall of text is based on assumption that is most likely wrong.

Reroll on a new server or unsub. Server transfers/merges were needed 2 months ago and I doubt they will come in near future. My 50 powertech in full rakata is on dead server as well, there was 6 people on imp fleet on Sunday night. Rerolled on a heavy populated server that is now slowly dying as well. Literally half of our guild there are people who rerolled because their original server is dead. I can only imagine we're not the only guild with this ratio. Its not hard but not everyone wants to throw away hunderds of hours and start fresh new. Maybe if at least legacy was universal and not server specific, since theyobviously refuse to make server transfers happen. I don't know if at BW they think their game is doing great, but the servers are dying one by one. If nothing happens, by the time they announce transfers or merges (with a great style and anthems I bet), it will be too late. HELL, it's alreay too late.

Exactly the reason I rerolled rep side on in that time Heavy populated server. Leaving behind my level 50 powertech in almost full rakata (havent been played in 2 months now). Sad thing is, now even this server is slowly dying, majority of 10-49 wzs starting with 6 or less rep players. I'm slowly losing faith in this game...

What shocks me most... And then they deliver this...

You demand screenshot yet you support none? You are the one with the ridiculous statement, provide screenshots of hits before patch and after patch on full BM geared player so we can see this 50% nerf. Otherwise, **** with your "facts".

That right there disregards everything you say.

The side quests are the same for all classes, you are not undercover to kill 10 bears for this lady on the street.

I'm playing on one of the least populated server (Senator Contispex, chose it at launch cause I saw population: Light and heard about the queue times on heavy populated servers). Do I want cross-server WZs? Yeah. If I dont happen to play in a prime time, the queues can get quite ridiculous for level 50 brackets. Being 20-30 minutes in a queue is not fun. Half the time, when you actually get into a WZ, it ends prematurely anyway, because there simply isnt enough players. It's better with the 10-49 bracket, but still bad in general. I stopped queueing for tonight half an hour ago (1 am GMT +1), because I was in queue with my level 23 for 10 minutes and got into a WZ that ended after 2 minutes. I'm not even gonna talk about 50, as it is impossible to get a WZ at this hour. I dont see me playing for much longer if this issue is not addresed. I don't care whether it's gonna be cross-server WZs, or merging Light populated servers together, or just allowing a server transfer. EDIT: To people who would suggest rerolling, I don't take that as an option. At launch, new players were encouraged to choose Standart/Light populated servers so they don't get stuck in queues, and so we did. Now we're being punished for that choice.

Aren't they talking about PvP? The guy is leading a PvP group that rolls over Imps. Is that not PvP? Do they not talk about it? Yes and yes, so they actually do talk about PvP.

I wouldnt throw tanks in the same bag as healers. tanks that do their job get 10 medals. I know cause I am a tank. If you see healer, you guard healer, aoe taunt the mob of players attackin him, unleash your aoe and then begin spanking those dps. Medals rolling that you dont even know how. Tank that just sits near a player he's guarding and doesnt do damage is a bad tank.

Don't let the door hit you on your way out.

Kinda infuriates me too. I'm valor rank 51 and so far from champ bags I got 2 chests, weapon, off hand and 2 implants. That's it. Then I see a valor rank 40 in full champ. I hate the system and would be totally fine with all the pvp pieces being buyable for tokens you get from bags. Even if it would be some absurd number, atleast it would be the frickin same for everyone. Not this RNG BS :/

Am I the one claiming one build has better DPS than the other? If I was to blatantly claim something like that, I would damn sure at least made the effort to provide some basic evidence to support this. Unfortunately, the common trend on these forums is that everyone is claiming the build they are using is the best for DPS with nothing but their own "feeling" to back it up. More often than not, those people didnt even try both specs, but are basing their opinion about the other solely on what they hear. Theory is often wrong. That's why the Parakeet build was believed to have better sustained DPS than 31 ST build, yet all the testing that was actually made proved the opposite.

I would advise against using your taunts unless you lost aggro. The only thing Taunt does is, that it places you on top of the Hate meter for that specific mob (and obviously locks the mob on you for 6s). It doesn't add any additional threat if the mob is already attacking you, afaik. Save your taunts for when you lose threat which can happen on stun/knockback heavy bosses, or as you pointed out when the boss drops threat during the fight.

I like these debates. I expect you both have numbers to support your claim that one is better than another? As was said in other thread, go find yourself a 35ish (if you're 50) world boss and fight him for 3 minutes on both specs, then do the simple math (total damage/180). Post your results and observations. If you haven't done this, then your claims that one is better than the other in terms of DPS are of no value.

This is not a wall of text, it's wall of crap. Half of your observations are wrong, the only thing I can aggre with is the uselessnes of Shoulder Slam, but your changes to it would make it OP. In fact, all of your changes to perfectly balanced abilities would make them OP. Just to address your issues. Threat Single target threat should be no issue, unless you have significantly(!) worse gear than DPS in your group. Your big hits to secure aggro at the beggining of the fight is Jet Charge -> Rocket Punch -> Rail Shot, followed by Flame Bursts. Following the priority list and managing your heat, you should have no problem holding aggro. I don't, so I don't see a reason why you should. (cleared normal EV&KP/ HM EV&KP as MT) AoE threat, it usually comes down to the group being impatient and unload all its AoE before you can even gain aggro on all the mobs. If you expect to be able to Flame Sweep throughout the whole fight, you are wrong. If you expect that you should hold aggro, when every member of your group attacks different mob, you are wrong. This is not WoW where everything is glued to you. Focus fire is pretty much the only way you can hold aggro on a group of mobs, and that's how it should be. If you cant get your group to focus fire and save their AoE after you used yours (Usually Death From Above), you will have to deal with mobs running after DPS. Even then, they usually pull aggro. But you have AoE taunt, don't you. Heat Blast is great ability. Venting 8 heat every 15s, and it does better damage than Flame Burst, so you don't lose any threat using it. How is that horrible? You should use this ability everytime it's off cd. Flame Sweep is good ability, but despite its no CD, it is not something you are supposed to spam. If you do, you find yourself in the 70+ heat very quickly. You use it when you have mobs round up around you to apply the dmg debuff you get from ST tree an that's pretty much it. Oil slick, DFA, Flame Thrower to secure more aggro, then hitting the mob that is being focused. Grapple Amazing ability for both PvE and PvP. There is no reason for it to be usable on allies. You suggestion would make it borderline OP, no matter how much you try to wrap it into the "you have to decide wether to use it on ally on enemy". Ability that can save an ally from bunch of enemies and pull enemies is a bit too much. No other class has that, why should we? Shoulder Slam I can agree it's pretty much useless in its current state but again, your suggestion would make it stupidly OP. No other class have two charges available, why should we? Oil Slick Another great skill, mostly only useful for PvE. I don't have any problem with that. It's stationary debuff, no matter how much ompf you'll give it, people will always move out of it. Give it a slow component and ppl will use it for that reason only in PvP. I know I would. Having AoE slow, that is a dream for huttball. Shield Vents Just fine. Your concerns with is related to AoE tanking, which I explained earlier. You can't expect to hold aggro if your dps unloads their AoE. That is pretty much impossible. Even if you open up with flame sweep, DFA and FT and you hit all the mobs, once sorcs starts its Force Storm, mobs will go after him. That's why you have AoE taunt. You seem to think that Flame Sweep is the Flame Burst for AoE tanking. It's not. It's not supposed to be spammable, it's supposed to help you with initial aggro. And that it does.

For PvE, there are better PT specs for both tanking and DPS. If you use this spec, you are gimping yourself in both. You either trade mitigation for damage, or the other way around. None of which you want to do to maximize your potential (be it tanking, or DPS) in PvE. This spec is designed for PvP, to give you the ability to take some damage, guard ppl and dish out some damage as well. Pure pyro will outdamage just as pure Shield Tech will outtank you any day in PvE.

You need to realize that in this log, every bolt from Rapid Shots has its own line. So one use of Rapid Shots shows as 5 lines in this particular example. Not that hard to figure out why it did that. The initial condition is IMO not ideal for best DPS. What I would expect for both builds is Flame Burst; Heat <=25 Rapid Shots; Heat >25 Also obviously prioritize RP and RS over FB if any of them is available.

Nice piece of information. I guess as close to reality as we can get without combat logs. Definitely looking forward to see the version for public. A question: I noticed in the 31/8/2 combat log (havent gone through the others yet) the excessive use of Rapid Shots at very low heat. Wouldn't it be better to spam Flame Burst instead, and not only use it to refresh the dmg debuff? I personally only use RS as a filler if my heat goes higher then 30, otherwise using FB. Did you try that approach?

Using the 31/8/2 build, I'm having no problem with heat or aggro management. My usual starter for boss fights is: Jet Charge > Flame Burts (to apply the dmg debuff) > Rocket Punch > Rail Shot After that I spam Flame Burst, using RP and RS whenever they are up, . You want your heat to be under 40, if you go over 40, use Heat Blast > Rapid Shots, that should get you back into the <40 zone easily. If your HB is on cooldown, utilize Rapid Shots. That said, you never want to be in a situation where you have to use 2 or more rapid shots after each other. Basically, if you have your HB up, go crazy with your dps and when you hit 40 heat, use HB > RS. If you don't have HB up, use Rapid Shots as a filler whenever you are approaching the 40 Heat mark. Takes a few boss fights to get used to it, but after that you will have no problem tanking while keeping your heat low.