Is The Power of Comfort broken? I can't get any progress past 1/10.

Its da Rocktable Legacy yo! 12505 http://i.imgur.com/3mP6Qe7.jpg

Name: DiomedS Faction:Republic Time: 1900 Est Gear: Mostly EWH (tank) Special Abilites: Excel at losing Can't do Tuesday,Wednesday or Thursday due to raids.

and thread.

Black Hole Implants are 150k per combine with mats: Black Hole Annihilator's MK-3 Enhancer Black Hole Bulwark's MK-1 Enhancer Black Hole Bulwark's MK-3 Enhancer Black Hole Demolisher's MK-1 Enhancer Black Hole Foestopper's MK-3 Package Black Hole Force-lord's MK-1 System Send mats/questions to Diomeds or Scourgeslilbro.

If you're looking to get into an end game operations guild, now is the time. We are doing gearing runs every Thursday night with our progression group going TFB Hardmode Wednesdays and Thursday. We will get you up to speed!

Hand of the Republic is now 4/5 HM TFB 8man.

Hand of the Republic is now 3/5 TFB HM 8man

Hand of the Republic is now 2/5 TFB HM 8man

<Hand of the Republic> http://redcircleprocedure.com/ • Eternity Vault: 5/5 NM 8man & 16man • Karagga's Palace: 5/5 NM 8man & 16man • Explosive Conflict: 4/4 HM 8man 3/416man • Terror from Beyond: 1/5 HM 8man

I'm also a knight (guardian) and I'm 93/97 on locations. I think it may be the max for us at this time.

Are you talking about clickie relics? I figure our three class cooldowns to be sufficient plus biochem's absorb adrenal/medpack to be enough to use a passive over for clickies. If all my cooldowns are down the raid has wiped anyway at that point.

The rotation is basically the same as the defensive spec with overhead slash replacing guardian strike. Simple single target rotation would look something like Throw Leap Riposte when available Storm Sweep then Overhead/Stasis/Master/Push (on unmoveable mobs) when above are on cooldown.

I've gone into some detail on why THE SAN DIEGO RAINBOW DOLPHIN is the superior guardian tanking spec here. As for the campaign relic, its horrid uptime (maybe 20%) vs the warhero (100%) makes the decision easy for me.

An excuse to show off my stats? I'll take it. I'm vain like that. See sig. FIrst, Swtor =! WoW. Accuracy is a waste of stat table. You're a tank. Your objective is to survive bad healers, stupid dps and bad pulls. If you miss it isn't the end of the world in TOR. You have two taunts ready to go if you have a bad string. Plus guard if you have a bad/overgeared dps. Plus since you're defense speced two snap aggro abilities. Accuracy = no. If you're able really try to get that shield up first. If you need to eat some of that absorb to do it, I would. I suggest the warhero shield relic asap for your current stat load out. Long term, I generally set up my stats to be ~30% defense (with riposte) and then whatever I can get shield absorb 1:1ish. Some guardians/juggs hate defense and want to stack shield/absorb all day long. That's up to them, but there is already a tank that will outperform you on that out of the box. Our class niche IS avoidance (defense). Be a self hater if you want but you're gimping yourself until you roll a vanguard or stack defense.

Sorry to hear about your server's lag problems. As far as aggro goes I always make sure our high damage sentinels are guarded in order to not have issues early in the fight. Also with T & Z and Tanks or any fight with a swap you can use your area taunt once you've separated out the mobs. There is no better way to learn the exact size of the area taunt than to thread the needle on the two bosses. This is a little more controversial but with all of the aggro drops in this game now functioning there is no longer an excuse for dps pulling aggro. YOU are the tank, that is YOUR mob. If they pull aggro make a big deal out of it. Get all stupid ALPHA Broprah about it. If you are enough of a jerk, they WILL stop being sloppy with their threat.

The San Diego Rainbow Dolphin is what I call the hybrid tank spec because the vanguards had the carolina parakeet and just hybrid is lame. San Diego cause I hear its nice and rainbow dolphin because of my affinity to change color crystals and fly around with jump and leap.

My stats are in my sig. My gear is maxed for this tier of content (using Rainbow Dolphin spec). Add a rakata stim worth of hp and defense as well. Stats can vary from this as some would rather stack more shield or absorb though I think our niche is getting defense up. People are still stacking accuracy at the cost of defensive stats? Aggro in this game comes down to taunts and boosts (ie threat changes in 1.3.) Burning stat table for accuracy at this point seems silly, but to each his own. Aggro doesn't work the same as in That Other Game, the rare miss isn't the end of the world.

We're seriously still having this argument? Why? People are still using full defense/immortal specs? Spec:San Diego Rainbow Dolphin Rainbow Dolphin is what I call the hybrid spec as a reference to the vanguard's old Carolina Parakeet and during jumps rainbows fly from my person much like our beloved aquatic friend, the Dolphin. Oh and San Diego because I've never been there but I hear its nice. Credentials: Leveled Defense spec switched to Rainbow Dolphin (Hybrid) to tank my 16 man guild to Unyielding (server first). I switched back to Defense just prior to 1.2 as I was unhappy about losing the endurance buff from Dolphin (still am). Our healers immediately bit...I mean complained about it though at the time my aggro was clearly easier, my mitigation wasn't. I stayed defense until my guild got to HM Kephess. I had to get the mitigation from Dolphin (before you freak out about my claim read further) to allow our comp to beat him (also server first). Outrageous statement 1: Bioware wants guardians/juggs to be tanking in San Diego Rainbow Dolphin for current hard mode EC. The breakdown between stats has been done to death but here's my take. You can have 4% shield with 4% elemental/internal OR you can have 4% Damage REDUCTION against EVERY FORM OF ATTACK (Including Elemental/Internal) with the bonus of a free 20% reduction in damage for four seconds every time you jump (plus the quality of life of not getting knocked around during that time) AND more blade barriers with a shorter cooldown on bladestorm/scream. I consider the 4% straight DR the breaking point between the two specs with any jumps I can do during the fight a pure bonus. There's also that little enraged/focused defense thing but I'm usually too much of a chicken to screw with aggro dumps on boss fights. Now back to Outrageous Claim 1 Lets look at the fights in EC. I'll be talking about Hardmode here so if you've only done normal this probably won't make a whole lot of sense to you unless you've been doing the fights this way. There are four boss fights in EC. THREE of the four require jumps. Four of four if your guild is odd and likes to do tank swaps on T&Z (we do dps swaps because we don't want them to die to fearful). Firebrand and Stormcaller require a tank switch (several free jumps). Vorgath knocks the tank back every 20 seconds or so (LOTS of free jumps). And there is Kephess. Oh that MFer. Anyone who has tanked him in Hardmode knows this fight is just murder on the tank especially pre 60%. This fight is where Dolphin really shines and ALLOWS YOU TO KEEP YOUR COOLDOWNS for later phases. Looking at each part of the fight: Initial Kephess drop ----> Jump to him and by the time he leaps away Unremitting will have have just faded (1 cooldown saved) Second Kephess drop ----> Jump again. This time hes down a little longer I generally watch and burn Inure/whatever its called for juggs (shortest cooldown we have) if I really have to but usually its not needed Final or third (depending on your dps) Kephess drop ----> Jump and then you have BOTH of your big boy cooldowns ready to go if needed while your dps finishes off the walker and burns him to 60. Post 60% phase: After you are done placing your circles, guess what its time for a taunt and 1-2 free jumps depending on our raid's dps. Outrageous Claim 2: Defense/Immortal is obsolete at best, broken and stupid at worst. With the changes in aggro and guardian slash defense is outdated. I've always felt it was weak but with the latest changes its really soft. You will hear people complaining about Dolphin not stacking armor debfuffs as fast as defense spec. This used to be the case, but now with sweep (free with dolphin) stacking the debuff in addition to normal Sundering Strike we're getting that armor debuff to cap very fast. We've all seen aggro is now ezmode with the changes (thank you Bioware) so that one advantage that I always had to yield to defense/immortal spec is now gone. Yes Defense/Immortal may generate focus/rage faster than dolphin but there are two tools that can be used to augment that. Instacast (with my build) Stasis/choke and combat focus should be more than enough to ensure you have the focus needed to handle a fight. If its not, I previously found myself using Sundering almost as much with Defense as I do with Dolphin. I feel the damage output is similar between the builds though I have not been defense speced since 1.3 so Dolphin may be even better than it was pre patch. Closing thoughts: Dolphin is not for everyone. I don't feel this spec is as easy to play as defense/immortal though the benefits make it a no brainer to me. New tanks getting their chops need to learn how aggro works, gear up and then switch. I understand my build is a bit of a variant on the common hybrid as I don't pick up Shien (I'm a full time tank) and do get insta cast statis/choke. I like the focus building of stasis (and pvp implications) enough to justify the expenditure though I suppose I could unselfishly take the second point in sweep in defense. Its really up to the tank what they feel they need. TL DR: Rainbow Dolphin is the spec, I believe, is MEANT to be used for current endgame raiding. Three of the Four fights in EC HM need swaps/jumps. Kephess is made EASIER with it. Defense's aggro/debuff advantage is dated at best. Changes in 1.3 further pushed full Defense to the sidelines.

I am using the standard 31/8/2, or the ezmode threat but possibly take more damage, build and it has been just fine for EC. OP could you supply more information about when and where you are dying? What is your gear and guild's gear level like? I think what a lot of guilds are assuming is that EC is the same tier as EV/KP. Bioware designed the instance to be much more difficult than the prior two raids and it seems that enrage timers (especially on Toth and Zorn) are razor close even with rakata+ raids.

Protector also scaled much better than the joke skill blade barrier does. Rakata geared guardians get the 840 absorption with barrier while protector currently adds the same 840 to a 21000 hp guardian in straight hp with 100% uptime. If blade barrier approached even a 30% uptime I'd be shocked as the guardian requires the cooldown and focus to execute bladestorm. The shield is then gone in one hit fighting just about any level 50 anything. The value of protector vs blade barrier is one of the big reasons I've been using the 14/27 spec for the last month or so on nightmare. With protector gone I think I may be forced to switch back to the defense tree though the talents in terms of mitigation are laughable. My only hope is that taking protector out of the damage focused tree they will move it to the tank tree where it belongs eventually. The other tanks gets hp thrown at them yet guardians/juggs have now no passive add. It is a testament to how screwy the defense tree is when the best tank talent for the guardian class (Commanding Awe) is still in a dps tree.

If this is the case full Immortal spec just became completely obsolete. On the Tank side: Why was protector even ever in the dps tree? See on the DPS side below. When I read the Commanding Awe change I pronounced the 14/27 hybrid spec (The San Diego Jumping Dolphin as I call it) dead. But if it still adds the straight damage reduction there is life left in it! Immortal's viability depends on how important 4% shielding is on the new diminishing returns table (It would have to be VERY important for full 31/10 Immortal to be worth it yet it CAN'T because vanguard tanks become op fast if that small percentage of shielding is weighted so hard). In short blade barrier instead of protector is a moderate hp nerf to someone reasonably well geared since I could outscale the benefit of barrier vs straight hp gain from protector (not to mention the 100% uptime of protector). On the DPS Side: I thought one of the design goals of this patch was increase guardian dps survival, but they take out the only straight hp increase talent guardians have (Protector) and replace it with the possibility of blade barrier forcing DPS guardians to spec moderately into defense to get a bonus that is, depending on gear, worse? Odd.