Did it on my Sin-tank with Talos...not overly difficult. The only annoying part is dealing with the unending string of silver/trash mobs that spawn before the boss/champion. they dont do any real damage...there just seems to be about 50 before the boss spawns - Neither of the champions do any real damage to a columi/rakata tank and my comp is in some columi gear.

All of your gear should be defensive in nature. There is no reason for your raid to be dpsing SOA before his shield comes down. They should allow you to build threat and then they can go all out once his shield comes off. If you are linking taunts as I described a few posts above then there is really no way to drop aggro on soa. Wearing damage gear or replacing one piece of tank gear with dps mods/enhancements or using the matrix cube is not a solution to this problem. So I'll reiterate the main point of my previous post: taunt-mass taunt-taunt (when it comes off cd) gives you 18 of the first 21 seconds of every pull to generate threat where the boss is guaranteed to be attacking you. In my opinion this is more than enough time to build a big enough lead so that only an aggro wipe mechanic will cause you to lose the boss.

^This is really the key. Since we do very poor damage as a tank, it is important to string your taunts together early on. single taunt 6 seconds-mass taunt 6 seconds- 3 seconds after that your single taunt comes off cd, use that again. So for 18 of the first 21 seconds of a boss you should have taunt aggro and should be able to build substantial threat from that window. If after the third taunt you are still losing the boss then it is a rotation issue. If you don't open with taunt and some version of shock/wither/discharge then you are going to lose threat immediately. Also...guard a player that is repeatedly pulling off you and insist he/she stay in guard range. Don't concern yourself at all with trash threat as it's a mess and basically impossible to hold threat on 5 or more gold/champion mobs as any tank class right now. Many of these packs do multiple stuns on you and someone else will have threat soon after that. Marking targets helps if your group is struggling on trash to ensure that everyone is targeting your mob.

This is correct. I'm in the upper 90s and nobody pulls threat off me and I'm in an 8 man that runs 3 BH's in almost full rakata spamming tracer missile like there's no tomorrow.

I've done 10/10 HM on 2 toons and 4 specs, from a dps/tank/healing perspective and some nightmares and in my opinion Taking extra armor is a waste (unless you're a tank). I've excluded that talent since I've started raiding and as long as I stay out of high damage abilities like pounce, force shroud ball lightning on soa, stay out of fire on jarg-sorno etc etc etc then I'm fine in deception. There are high damage abilities on every boss that are avoidable and doing so should be reflex to "most" raiders after a few runs and if you use medpacs and defensive abilities at the appropriate times during strenuous healing for the raid healers then incoming damage is not a concern. The point I guess I'm trying to make is the armor talent isn't going to save you on any boss. If you want to go the chain shock route and take defiance for flat damage reduction then that makes sense. But taking the extra armor on top of it is excessive and you voluntarily opt out of dps talents. I'll state again that the long breaks between any threatening damage abilities render the "insulation" talent as unnecessary in the long run.

The DPS for deception is very burst heavy and very much like the rogue of wow with several abilities and PVE strats that mirror that class. There are a few procs to keep track of at level 50 when dpsing, but not anything you can't handle. the priority rotation is pretty straight forward. I play a tank version (darkness) as my main spec and have raided successfully in HM and nightmare for a few months now and that spec offers very balanced and strong defensive cds with good all around enemy aggro management. You also have a 12% self heal in tank spec that is up every 10-15 seconds or so depending on your rotation. I have 3 level 50s ( jedi guardian, bounty hunter merc healer and the assassin) but this is the class I play the most. For me it has great versatility.

I remember this quest as well and I know it was razor thin survival for me. Maybe throw in a whirlwind CC if things get dicey. Or you can always respec madness for the extra cc you get from whirlwind and the improved aoe from death field. Your rotation seems fine. I cant remember if you can seethe between waves. If so then hammer that key as soon as you get the first wave down. And if things look like they are going bad then force cloak and try again....assuming that resets the encounter. As far as the class goes...I respecced to tank at 50 and have had a blast. Our survival/mitigation is excellent.

I have almost no accuracy on my gear and I tank HMs and nightmares just fine. What you want is a mix of defense/shield/absorption. I'm currently at 27% defense, 55% shield (with Dark Ward up with the set bonus) and 44% absorption. The class seems to be built around your shield. Since Dark Ward has almost a 100% up-time you seem to get very good mitigation out of stacking shield/absorption after a certain amount of defense. My numbers are derived from a full columi set with a few rakata pieces from which I subbed out the rakata mods as they're bad and all filled with accuracy which does 0 for your mitigation. Being in full Columi (tier gear) seems to offer the best combined mitigation right now as you'll lose a defensive stat if you equip the rakata substitute which has accuracy on every piece...yes every piece. Go check out Sithwarrior.com and the tanking compendium. It has good info. Hope this helps. The tanking compendium that is stickied on this forum shares most of the info from the other site as well.

^ This guy got it right from top to bottom. While I don't expect developers to adhere to the every request from the forums/player community, it has become apparent that this well worded reply is the consensus. Playing as a BH healer I've run into similar situations and now wonder how I'll manage heat issues in 1.2. I'm not even saying that I won't be able to heal...I'm saying that at first glance that healing as a BH may be unreasonably strenuous. I'm hoping that some of the changes don't make it into the final notes. If they do I think i'll respec to DPS as the progressive guilds on my server are wary of bringing BH healers to begin with.

I leveled as deception and liked it very much. you get multiple stuns/interrupts and leveling is a breeze with stealth. You'll complete missions much faster and force cloak will save you many deaths as it is basically a do-over whenever a pull goes wrong. It is especially useful coming out of conversations that launch into boss+adds encounters. I began endgame thinking I would never be a tank. Within the last 2 weeks I started tanking and was able to build a full columi tank set and got access to a hard mode clearing operations group. The assassin tank has excellent mitigation and a self heal that is available about every 10 seconds or so. I'm surprised by how much I enjoy my tankasin...for this versatility alone I'd recommend this class over the marauder. I will say this...there is a maurader in my guild that does incredibly good damage. For fun the other night he solo'd BT hard mode with his companion (skipping the bonus boss). So there's that.

Not only am I glad that there is a tanking tree, I use it quite often and have built a set that has over 21k hp with pve set bonuses. I use it to get my flashpoints done and can raid on it as well. When dual spec comes out and you no longer have to pay for respec it will be even more valuable. Bioware wasn't thinking about how a class name matches up with every ability they gave them. Bounty hunters/troopers can heal and tank...not the first thing I think of when I hear "Bounty hunter" or "Trooper". They were thinking of utility and I'm glad they did it. And the respec Isn't even that bad. Since I raid on weekends I tank Tuesday-Saturday then respec back to dps and do my raids and then back to tank after the raids end. And because tanks are always in demand I get my FPs done in short order. Yes the name doesn't match up but I love the utility.

oddly enough over the last two days I have been in two separate pug groups, all with similar gear (some tionese and columi) and we zerg down Jorland first...interrupting his knockback. Then we kill Massey....everyone is up for the healer at the end. The healing is intense early but we had everyone pop all their class defensive cds and medpack and we're all at around 70% hp or better when Jorland goes down. A player in my group said Jorland couldn't be dps'd first but after some convincing we went with this strat. We found the healer doesn't heal often enough for it to be an issue. Just wanted to put this out there for people experiencing frustration on this boss. Try it once...it might work for your group. we had: op heals Jugg tank Assassin dps (me) Marauder dps

yes, Voltaic replaces thrash whenever it becomes available.

also remember to check your quest log. When you highlight each quest there will be a level suggestion/requirement for it. If something is in red odds are it is out of your reach as a solo aatempt until you level up a bit more.

My 2 cents: For late game you can still use Khem but on class quests if you aren't fond of interrupts he will go down fast as class quests bosses start hitting very hard. I ended up using Talos for the Voss class quests as I found Khem going down too fast and that depending on your toon level the bosses in the 'vision' could not be solo'd. I used Talos for the final class quest as well but I won't post any spoiler details here. I've never used Andronikos or Ashara but I enjoy gearing them when I'm bored.