You should keep particle acceleration in your build because: 1. Spinning strike can proc particle acceleration. 2. Sometimes you may be in danger of force capping and wasting force. (pretty rare if you are using abilities on cooldown) 3. Sometimes you are unable to use AOE attacks. (also rare now that wither does not break CC on non-primary targets) I agree that rapid recovery is superior to applied force, but that's not saying rapid recovery is very good.

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

I wouldn't say that mitigation is always better than endurance or vice versa. The only general advice I can give is that you should gear to your level of progression. Analyze the specific fight your guild is progressing on to see if it benefits mitigation or endurance. Fights that are on farm are of really no concern to be optimised. There are beginning to be cases where 30k+ hp is very useful. For example, Kephess the Undying can chain a wrist laser (~9k) into a power punch (~13.5k unshielded) back to back. This is for an assassin on 16-HM. That's 22.5k damage in a length of time that healer cannot react to (of course they may have a heal queued up). That means Kephess can kill a 25k hp assassin tank at any time if they fall below 90% hp. I would argue that in this case endurance stacking is the way to go. Another is Stormcaller on 16-NM. Your health is on a roller-coaster for pretty much the whole fight. Giving your healers an extra few seconds to land a heal is crucial. Or even to ignore you for a few seconds and heal others. I guess I will see what the nerf did to the damage output this week. All I wanted to say is that it's important to think about which approach is best for your current situation.

I have noticed severe lag on Voss fighting the Nightmare Pilgrim, Dreadtooth in Section X, and Kaon Under Siege. This is on Jedi Covenant. I would say those three places are so bad it really interferes with playing the game. All abilities take about 0.5 to 1 second to register. The best solution I have found is to give those abilities time to fire - trying to spam the key seems to result in a complete loss of the gcd (much worse than losing half a second). Areas of major lag include Section X dailies, Black Hole dailies, and occasionally Ilum and Belsavis. This is typically the loss of a gcd or 2 second lag spike a few times a minute. Quite annoying, but it's dailies so no big deal. All of these areas are perfectly fine if the population is low. Areas of low lag are pretty much every planet and recently operations. This is actually very annoying because you never really know when the lag will hit. Everything will seem fine for a few minutes and then you get a few seconds of lag before everything is normal. I have virtually no lag in warzones so... whatever is happening in there might be a clue to what is wrong. For now I will avoid Dreadtooth and Nightmare Pilgrim as much as possible, it's really not fun at all with that much lag.

I'm certain the last time I did Deadly Operations I got 30 daily comms instead of the 10 listed. Am I remembering wrong?

I find it very unusual for someone to praise the story telling in World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 2 over SWTOR. I actually felt kind of embarrassed to be listening to some of the dialogue in GW2 - it is just so cheesy. As for WoW, after playing it for a long time and recently unsubscribing I was given a 1 week trial. I created a completely new character on the opposite faction with no prior experience of quests, lore, etc. It was bad. So bad I found myself day-dreaming and struggling to keep my eyes open within 5 minutes. Mechanically GW2 has the best leveling structure (shared loot, shared objectives, dynamic events) but to say it excels in story telling is a stretch. The comment about low population in leveling zones is pretty much applicable to every MMO after a few months. I played GW2 about 1 month after launch and many zones were almost completely empty - mainly mid-level zones where I must have chosen the least popular option. I never saw anyone in WoW during the trial. I like the FTP system a lot better in SWTOR than any other MMO I've seen. Sure LOTRO allows people to collect turbine points in game, but this is really a technicality. I wouldn't say having to kill 1 trillion wolves followed by 1 trillions orcs followed by 1 trillion bandits is a pleasurable experience. In fact, with the cartel items and unlocks being unbound it means that FTP players can most likely do more for free than any other MMO. If you do enjoy the game and play regularly it's rewarding to subscribe. I don't think that's a bad thing. Hopefully the recent pace of content releases can be sustained and with a bit more care to make sure there are no major bugs.

This is the rotation I use. And as you say, there is maybe a few chances for thrash per minute.

Quite true, but in practice there is simply not enough force to take advantage of the reduced cooldown. The primary motivation for thrash-less rotation is the lack of force. I would be interested to see if there was a rotation that: a) kept dark ward, discharge, and wither buffs present b) allowed more than 1 shock every 6 seconds. It may be that by delaying wither extra force can be used to get energized procs *and* actually have the force to take advantage of the reduced cooldown. At the moment I do not see this rotation being able to generate the same or similar hps.

Keep in mind that I did that before the 1.5 changes. Force is more plentiful in 1.5 so it changes things. In particular it is now feasible to increase dps at a small hps loss if desired. This is shown by Ninja. Pre-1.5 it was difficult just to maintain buffs/debuffs and a reasonable harnessed darkness pace. Personally I feel that it is better to maximize survivability and possibly allow healers to dps more as tanks convert stats to damage at a very low rate. The best opening rotation I have found is: 0. Dark ward (pre-pull) 1. Force Pull 2. Shock 3. Discharge 4. Wither 5. Saber Strike 6. Shock 7. Force Lightning (1st charge of recklessness) 8. Saber Strike 9. Shock (2nd charge of recklessness) If you taunt after step 4 and step 7, it's about 2500-3000 tps 15 seconds into the fight. The second taunt will last 1 more gcd and the next taunt is available in 3 gcds. After the third taunt, you will be very far ahead on threat for the rest of the fight. If your dps gives you 2 or more seconds there shouldn't be any troubles even without the third taunt. The worst offenders for early threat in my experience are sorcerers and carnage marauders. After that, the thrash-less rotation provides best self-healing and more than enough dps and tps. Keep an eye on force and thrash if you will be capped.

You are making things too complicated. Don't worry about chain shock, harnessed darkness, or anything else. Thrash-less rotation is guaranteed to be able to generate harnessed darkness stacks and chain shock procs at least as fast as any other rotation. Therefore thrash-less is maximum survivability (not taking into account analyzing dark charge procs rates of different rotations). The only question is the dps and threat you are doing. As I have shown thrash is the worst force/damage of any ability. Therefore spending force on thrash instead of something else lowers your dps and survivability. In case someone is not aware, chain shock has no dependence on the shock that procced it. It's a different spell, with different coefficients, and crits independently of the originating shock. Critting on a shock does not mean that chain shock will crit, and it does not increase the damage of that chain shock. A simulator is able to analyze rotations - this is a proof that thrash-less rotation is superior. In addition, a simulator can give you a very accurate dps number, so if you want to calculate dps do it with a simulator, not a spreadsheet.

IMO the rotation/priority approach to this analysis is better done by simulation - SimulationCraft would do a better job of taking care of procs and irregular rotations. I use a different approach which was valid until the 1.5 patch and may still be valid but I no longer have 100% confidence in it: Note: I used this method because I did not have time to program SimulationCraft (no support for darkness) and this was a quick and easy way to analyze the thrash-less rotation. The assumption is that assassins are force starved. Before 1.5 this was true except if wither was used every 15 seconds and you were regularly gaining bonus force from defending/shielding. Personally I believe that any extra force should be used for more wither attacks as a priority. In 1.5 the additional force from defending/shielding make it possible to use wither every cooldown and still be in danger of force capping. Once you realize that every point of force is precious, dps and tps become irrelevant. Instead maximizing damage per force (dpf) and threat per force (tpf) become the goal. The question is whether thrash has a role to play in the rotation. Every time you thrash you spend 23 force, but you also spend 1 gcd that could have been used for something else. The only ability you can always use is saber strike, so the question now becomes: what benefit does thrash have over saber strike? Analysis: Benefits of using thrash instead of saber strike 1. The additional damage that thrash does over saber strike 2. The additional damage that an energized shock has over a regular shock multiplied by the chance to proc energize Costs of using thrash instead of saber strike 1. 23 force Using my gear the average damage after mitigation (~30% with armor debuff) of: 1. saber strike = 542 2. thrash = 1018 3. shock = 1319 4. energized shock = 1796 Which means that thrash generates (1018 - 542) + (1796 - 1319)*0.5 = 714.5 extra damage at a cost of 23 force. This means thrash is around 714.5/23 = 31.1 damage/force. Every other ability has a higher damage/force. So in the end, even if you have extra force to spend, it is better to save it for other abilities *except* when you would be force capped. In the end the rotation in 1.5 is mostly the same (thrash-less) except occasionally you may have enough force to thrash and hope for an energized proc. Fishing for a proc is highly unadvisable. Using thrash over shock or wither is also highly unadvisable. Mentally prepare yourself to use thrash on fights will many melee/ranged attacks, otherwise ignore it (10.4 force/s is not enough for the basics). Note 1: I used 0.5 for the energize proc chance. I have not seen a conclusive analysis of boss defense or even whether defense is consistent across all bosses. If you would like to use a different number please go ahead. Note 2: I don't use tool-tips to calculate damage. I use average weapon damage, average coefficients, and factor in crit chance, accuracy and surge, but excluding temporary buffs such as recklessness. Edit: Fixed some numbers.

It is explained in words here: http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-364.html Any formula that calculates mitigation will follow the two-roll system, although typically ignoring the crit chance exception. I have never seen a crit in any PvE boss encounter - I *have* seen crits on trash however. In PvP, it's rare for anyone to be wearing a shield, and attacks that can be shielded are relatively rare, and shield rating won't be stacked high even if they are wearing a shield, so it only comes into play when someone has an elevated crit chance. E.g. recklessness, laze target, towering rage. I believe the crits on trash are because of these special abilities.

So is calibrating shot being cast more frequently or has it changed in some way (or both)? It's not really clear from the reports so far.

I don't know what to say. If you google "kephess calibrating shot" and look at any of the guides written months ago, they all mention that this must be interrupted to prevent enrage and most mention that it increases damage, damage reduction. E.g. http://mmo-mechanics.com/swtor/forums/thread-872.html which was last modified in April. Now maybe they have decreased the time between casts in 8-man because everyone has an interrupt now. On 16-man the cast is every 4 seconds. I can only interrupt every 4th cast (probably because of lag) with a 12 second interrupt. You don't need to get every interrupt, just enough to prevent enrage and get through the phase relatively quickly.

Thanks for the correction.

Isn't that how it always worked? I know on 16-man they enrage at 8 stacks. Everyone has an interrupt now so it should be even easier then before.

Zorn also puts a debuff on you called mental anguish. You can dispel this with force shroud or ask for a dispel. It does considerable damage and has some other nasty effects. IIRC it looks like a yellow/orange icon of a grimacing face.

Yes, it's quite possible to kill 5 probes before the enrage on hardmode - although I never did that before having majority campaign gear. A bit higher dps needed on 8 man vs. 16 man. The suggestion to start the probe-channel while the mine is being defused will probably get you a consistent kill. Edit: One other thing that might be slowing you down is killing the assassin droids. If you have an assassin let them force shroud the explosion. If not, just let the tank eat it. Everyone should be calling for dispels if they get the debuff. This will allow your healers to dps a bit more.

Every tank has two abilities that work differently in PvP and PvE. The first is taunt which causes the target to deal 30% less damage if they are attacking anyone but you for 6 seconds. So taunt doesn't force them to attack you but it does punish them if they choose to ignore you. The second is guard which does a few things. It reduces the guarded persons damage taken by 5% and they generate 25% less threat - this part works in PvE as well. It also redirects 50% of the damage that the guarded person is taking as long as you are within 15 meters. The damage that you prevent shows up in the "protection" column at the end of a match. Other than that, tanks are beefier and generally have more control tools (stuns, gap closers, pulls, etc.) than the average class. The trade-off is much less damage. It is popular to wear DPS gear because the vast majority of player attacks are tech or force which can't be defended or shielded. In PvP, tanks are best paired with a guarded healer. This combination can be extremely difficult to take down. They also make good ball carriers in huttball.

I don't follow your math. Your first part says you hit with 68 saber strikes and missed 16. The average hit was 192.75 (not sure if this average includes zeros). Therefore you missed out on a potential 16*192.75 = 3084 damage. The elapsed time of your experiment was 368 seconds which means 3084/368 = 8.38 dps. You instead report 0.647 dps lost which is 13 times too low. I didn't check the rest of the math but I think you should do a review of the numbers. In addition, do not assume that spinning strike will not miss! It can and does miss, with a very high variance because of the low number of strikes per fight. Missing one spinning strike of 2000 damage over 5 minutes is 6.66 dps! (not to mention < 30% is often critical phase in some fights). Please note: I am not advocating accuracy for tanks. Quick guide to 1.4 gearing for tanks: 1. Get Dread Guard gear. 2. Replace accuracy enhancements with your campaign enhancements. 3. Get more Dread Guard gear. 4. Customize your hp and mitigation stats to your liking.

I looked through last weeks logs and got this data (16 EC HM): Z&T - 42 S&F - 12 (tanking stormcaller) CV - 91 K - 55 So you might get an extra 2 to 5 shocks. I am guessing this is about 5 to 15 extra dps. It is a little funny to tie a cooldown that protects against force/tech to dodging/shielding non-force/tech attacks.

For about 3 (or 2?) weeks there has been little or no lag in operations. It seems that the limit for people in one instance has been lowered quite a bit. Before the change there might have been 3 or 4 instances max with 90+ people in each. After the change there are 15+ instances with very little lag and around 16 to 32 in each. As for dailies... I don't really recall a lag issue. There was a bit of a problem with respawn rates in crowded places but that is being fixed in 1.4.

I'm interested mostly in this part: "Lightning Recovery ... increases the Force recovered by Lightning Reflexes". I'm guessing it will be 50%/100%.

"Lightning Recovery has been redesigned. It now requires Lightning Reflexes and increases the Force recovered by Lightning Reflexes. Successful shielding, parries, and deflects now reduce the active cooldown of Force Shroud by .5 second per point. This effect cannot occur more than once every second." Can anyone on PTS give the details on the new Lightning Recovery? - How many talents points? (assuming 2) - What is the improvement % on Lightning Reflexes? Edit: Thanks to Herem for providing the updated text.

These changes are only for story mode. From the patch notes: "A number of changes have been made to Explosive Conflict's Story Mode in order to make it more accessible for pick-up groups:" Doesn't really impact anyone that is finished with EC. IMO this is a good change to allow continuity between EV/KP story mode and EC story mode.