I' m not sure why people say they aren't CC'able. Maybe it changed recently, dunno, we've only been running it for 2 or 3 weeks now. Anyhow, the Knight isn't CC'able but she's the only one. The rest can be put to sleep no prob. We wiped several times at first but eventually evolved our strat so that now we've learned how to master this encounter very well and have beat it about 8 to 10 times in a row and haven't even come close to wiping in the last half dozen runs. Hope it helps someone out there. Me: 26th Powertech, tank spec with healing companion named Mako out Wife: 25th Sorc, heal spec Son: 26th Assas, dps spec vs. Knight/Warrior (Wielding duel light sabers) Consular/Inquisitor (Wielding single light saber) Trooper/Bounty Hunter (Wielding pistol and wearing heavy armor) Smuggler/Agent (Wielding pistol and wearing light armor) First, one major fact of this group of 4 that some people may not know. Every time you kill one of them, the remaining mobs get considerably stronger. By the time you've killed three of them, the last one standing will be doing massive damage. So much damage, in fact, that that last man standing will be doing more damage than all four combined. So, with that in mind, here's our strat: Had Assassin Mind Trap (60 second CC, can't be used in combat so non-applyable) the Consular. Had the Sorc immediately follow with Whirlwind (again, 60 second CC but reapplyable with talents) on the Trooper. This leaves the Knight and the Smuggler. We discovered that's it's critical to focus the Knight down first and as quickly as possible. She's very disruptive, jumps around all over the place, aggro wipes, knocks back, non-CCable, non-stunnable and generally just a pain in the ***. In comparison, her friends are pushovers. So, we focus down the Knight while I throw an occasional taunt at the Smuggler to keep him interested in me instead of Mako. About the time the Knight dies, Mind Trap wears off of the Consular and he runs over and starts swinging his glow stick around. I grapple the Smuggler into the fight and we AoE / focus down both Consular and Smuggle to about 1/4 life each. Once we have them both barely breathing, I'll grapple in the Trooper and we slow and steadily focus him down to 1/8th life while letting heat dissipate, energy regenerate, cooldowns finish, etc. By the time he's at 1/8th we're "battle rested" and ready for the grand finale. On my call, we pop every cooldown we have and AoE all three of them hard. They all die within seconds of each other. The first of the two critical elements of this strat are to kill the Knight first because she is by far the strongest out of the 4. This fight is a marathon and has to be carefully orchestrated and she's just way to disruptive to healing and dps. Since she can't be CC'd or stunned, she must die. The second critical element is very counterintuitive, and that's to leave the other three barely alive so that they all die at once. Like most people, at first we tried killing them one at a time, but they get much, much stronger every time one of them dies. By the time you get to the last one, he's a beast. We left the Smuggler for last once and after his friends died he pewpewed through my hps like a 50 cal through paper mache. Yet before his friends die, he might as well be shooting BBs at you for the damage he does. Even Mako (BH healer companion and in general, wussie little girly girl) can tank him for awhile if you need her to before his friends all die.

This one time, I was playing, and I wasn't grouped with anybody. I think it's called soloing or something. Evidently it's legal and everything, although I haven't been able to find anyone that would believe me when I told them. I vote for Jet Boost. I think it would be a cool skill that wouldn't really throw off balance anywhere that make sense for non-tanky BHs to have. Heck, even the intro movie shows the hottie BH jet boosting up a floor before the Sith attack.

Ok, so to put this in perspective, I've got a 26th level PT ST and a 20th level Jugg. I'm sure I'm missing some stuff that will come with higher levels, but here's my take on ST vs Jugg right now. And for the people that say, wait till 50th, everything changes at 50th, I respond, why should a game be based solely on end game? Why should I have to powerlevel a character to end game to finally get to enjoy him. Why are there even flashpoints every 4 levels if all we're concerned with is end game? I've got a built in group because both my wife and my son play. She plays a SI Sorc and my son plays a SI Assas. We run at least one FP almost every time we log in (pretty much daily) and have run every one we could so far. The three of us crushed Mandalorian Raiders with me at 26th, my wife's sorc at 25th and my son's assas at 26th, which, from what I've been able to gather, is pretty good. So, here's my take, copied for the most part from another post I made on the PT forums: As a tank, I have no problems whatsoever with damage mitigation or holding aggro and I don't even have Rocket Charge or Sonic Missile yet! Popping Oil Slick and Energy Shield always seems to help on the tougher battles. I like to pop them early to give my wife's sorc time to do some damage up front, mostly via dots, and then I have them available again on long fights when she might be low on mana. I actually started playing SWTOR as a Jugg, but hated it. Now that I've rolled a PT, I understand why. Basically, the mobs in this game tend to be really spread out and tend to do a lot of knockbacks and jumping around. It's rare to see a boss, or heck, even trash, that's all alone and doesn't do any knockbacks / jumping around / ranged dps. That requires either a very mobile tank or a ranged tank. The BH PT is blessed to be both. This is where I think most people that play Juggs get so frustrated. Juggs just don't have the ability to ranged tank and they just aren't that mobile. Playing my Jugg, I feel like I spend most of my time chasing the mobs around in a frantic attempt to get them all close enough together to use smash. Playing my PT is completely different. If I get knocked back, I can do ranged dps while running back, or better yet, grapple the mob to my new position and once I have JC, I'll be able to add that to my toolbelt of "ways to get back into the fight". One of the most frustraing things that can happen to a tank is to be knocked back and slowed at the same time. Ironically, the devs seem to have taken a twisted pleasure in combining these two abilities at an alarming frequency. When this happens to me, I simply stay put and tank at range until the slow wears off rather than trying to make that long slow walk of shame back to the mob I'm supposed to be tanking. Using this method, I normally never lose aggro, even on KBs. I can imagine how awesome life will be after SM and JC. With multiple mobs I use ranged dps / taunt / grapple to convince mobs at range to pay a little more attention to me and better yet, come into range of Flame Sweep (PTs version of Smash) and use my melee dps to convince mobs that are already hitting me to keep doing so. I have found this to be extremely effective and totally blows Juggs out of the water. Their only method of dealing with multiples at range, or worse, mobs at range doing ranged dps, consists of hoofing it around from mob to mob (while FC is on cool down, of course) or worse yet, as I've seen in post after post on this forum, just letting others tank the mobs that are too far away for them to bother with. I guess that may work for the right group, but as my wife reminds me frequently via her personal IRL ability, Sonic Screeching, it's tough for a healer to heal with 3 reds hitting her. I don't make these comments to tick people off. I want Juggs to get better. I like the IDEA of playing my Jugg, but actually playing him is just painful when compared to the awesome functional utility that my PT ST offers. If you disagree, please, just roll a PT ST and try them out. Then join me in asking for Juggs to get some of that great functionality and versitility. Oh, and PT STs are awesome just like they are, so if after rolling one you start hollering that PT STs need to be nerfed, I'll find you and murder you in your sleep

I'm mystified by your post. Ironically, I have a 26th level PT ST and I have plenty to keep me busy. As a tank, you don't need A LOT of abilities, you need a few that gets the job done. I'd rather have 10 great abilities that I use almost every battle than 30 crappy ones that I use once in awhile. If I had more abilities, I'm not sure what I'd do with them and the extra heat they would generate. I do use unload a lot. It does more damage than your default attack but generates less heat that FB. I found if I use FB - RP - RS - UL (if RP isn't back up already) and repeat, I don't really have time for much else, especially when you throw in a few cooldowns and perhaps an occasional taunt if you need it. Also, having the Flame Shield talent makes a big difference. It finishes the cooldown on RP a lot, allowing this awesome ability to be used far more often. Where PT ST really shines is ranged tanking / mobility. See below, I copied this from another post I made on another thread. As a tank, I have no problems whatsoever with damage mitigation or holding aggro and I don't even have RC or SM yet! Popping OS and ES always seems to help on the tougher battles. I like to pop them early to give my wife's sorc time to do some damage up front, mostly via dots, and then I have them available again on long fights when she might be low on mana. I actually started playing SWTOR as a Jugg, but hated it. Now that my PT is a little higher level, I understand why. Basically, the mobs in this game tend to be really spread out and tend to do a lot of knockbacks and jumping around. That requires either a very mobile tank or a ranged tank. The BH PT is blessed to be both. This is where I think people that play Juggs get so frustrated. Juggs just don't have the ability to ranged tank and they just aren't that mobile. Playing my Jugg, I feel like I spend most of my time chasing the mobs around in a frantic attempt to get them all close enough to use smash. Playing my PT is completely different. If I get knocked back, I can do ranged dps while running back, or better yet, grapple the mob to my new position. One of the most frustraing things that can happen to a tank is to be knocked back and slowed at the same time. Ironically, the devs seem to have taken a twisted pleasure in combining these two abilities at an alarming frequency. When this happens to me, I simply stay put and tank at range until the slow wears off rather than trying to make that long slow walk of shame back to the mob I'm supposed to be tanking. I can imagine how awesome life will be after SM and JC. With multiple mobs I use ranged dps / taunt / grapple to convince mobs at range to pay a little more attention to me and use my melee dps to convince mobs that are already hitting me to keep doing so. I do wish they'd remove the minimum range on grapple. It's annoying to have a mob just outside of melee range but too close for grapple. That seems to happen a lot and drastically reduces the functionality of this awesome ability. Plus it just doesn't make sense. I can hook onto you with a cable and pull you in from 10-30 yards away, but not at 5?

Granted, I'm only 27th at the moment, but I have a built in group as both my wife and my son also play. Having a consistent group allows me the time needed to properly evaluate the PT's tanking abilities. We have had very little problems thus far in FPs and have run every one of them up to our level many, many times. The three of us have slaughtered Mandalorian Raiders with me 26th BH PT ST spec, my wife, 25th Sith Inq Sorc, healer spec and my son, 26th Sith Inq Assas dps spec several times now. I keep Mako out for the extra healing and I am impressed at how easily it goes. We tried the same FP in our early 20s and did ok at first but then wiped several times on the 4 Jedi before giving up. We came back at 26th and we wiped once on the 4 Jedi, switched to a different strategy and mowed them down easily. Our strat was to take out the annoying knight first. She just needs to die quickly as she's very disruptive because she aggro wipes frequently, knocks back and does a pretty good amount of damage. We had the Assas mind control the Consular (good for 60 seconds, but can't be reused because it's only avail out of combat), had the Sorc CC the Trooper and keep him that way for the duration and burned down the Knight asap. After that knight dies, I grappled the Smuggler away from the CC'd Trooper so that the Assas and I could safely AoE him and the now un-CC'd consular. Neither of them do a whole lot of damage with just the Knight dead. We dps/AoE those two down to about a quarter life left. Then we start DPSing the trooper down. When we've got him down to a quarter we pop every cool down we've got and start AoEing the three of them like crazy. They all die at about the same time so you don't get a whole lot of frenzy action. That was the problem we ran into when we wiped the first time through. We killed them one by one and left the Smuggler for last. Even though he's the weakest of the 4, he frenzied after his 3 friends were dead and smoked me quick! Everything else in the MR FP was cake. The untauntable / unCC'able hounds that are grouped with the first boss are annoying and usually kill little Mako every time, but they don't have a huge amount of hps and can be burned down relatively quickly As a tank, I had no problems whatsoever with damage mitigation or holding aggro and I don't even have RC or SM yet! Popping OS and ES always seems to help on the tougher battles. I like to pop them early to give my wife's sorc time to do some damage up front, mostly via dots, and then I have them available again on long fights when she might be low on mana. I actually started playing SWTOR as a Jugg, but hated it. Now that my PT is a little higher level, I understand why. Basically, the mobs in this game tend to be really spread out and tend to do a lot of knockbacks and jumping around. That requires either a very mobile tank or a ranged tank. The BH PT is blessed to be both. This is where I think people that play Juggs get so frustrated. Juggs just don't have the ability to ranged tank and they just aren't that mobile. Playing my Jugg, I feel like I spend most of my time chasing the mobs around in a frantic attempt to get them all close enough to use smash. Playing my PT is completely different. If I get knocked back, I can do ranged dps while running back, or better yet, grapple the mob to my new position. One of the most frustraing things that can happen to a tank is to be knocked back and slowed at the same time. Ironically, the devs seem to have taken a twisted pleasure in combining these two abilities at an alarming frequency. When this happens to me, I simply stay put and tank at range until the slow wears off rather than trying to make that long slow walk of shame back to the mob I'm supposed to be tanking. I can imagine how awesome life will be after SM and JC. With multiple mobs I use ranged dps / taunt / grapple to convince mobs at range to pay a little more attention to me and use my melee dps to convince mobs that are already hitting me to keep doing so. I do wish they'd remove the minimum range on grapple. It's annoying to have a mob just outside of melee range but too close for grapple. That seems to happen a lot and drastically reduces the functionality of this awesome ability. Plus it just doesn't make sense. I can hook onto you with a cable and pull you in from 10-30 yards away, but not at 5? Anyhow, I know I'm pretty long here, but I just wanted to encourage peeps that are considering playing a BH tank. They are pretty damn awesome, have amazing functionality and are just a blast to play in general (pun intended). I'd like to see Juggs get some more ranged / mobile abilities. I like Juggs and think they should be just as good at tanking as BH PTs are. unfortunately, as things stand, they are sorely lacking.

I love my PT. I played a Jugg to 16th. That was enough. I was just bored to tears with him and when I couldn't get aggro off of my wife's equally leveled sorc companion I had had enough. I started researching other classes and found the PT. Didn't realize, at first, that this game had more than 1 tank class. I rolled one the following day. Wow. While I never really cared for my Jugg, even at the single digit levels, I loved my BH from the very beginning. It was love at first Missile Blast and every time I get a new toy I fall in love all over again. Just got Flame Sweep and I'm suddenly finding myself at max heat in nearly every fight. Gotta figure out how ... to ... stop ... hitting .. that .. button.... PTs just have sooo many toys. For the first time ever, I've had to figure out how to configure the extra buttons on my mouse and set them to the alt and ctrl keys so that I could fill up 3 rows of skills and be able to use them all. Oh, and my wife's sorc? She's still playing it. I've caught up to her. I've been tanking for her for a couple weeks now and I can safely say that the only time her pet pulls aggro is during his taunt. As soon as it wears off the mob switches right back to me. Finally, I don't understand why people think it looks stupid tanking with a blaster pistol. I love unloading right into someone's face. Really pay attention the next time you do it and you'll actually wince and go wow, that's really got to hurt! Oh, and earlier someone mentioned ranged tanking. A lot of people have said the PT can't do it. BS. Are we more effective at melee range? Sure. Can we also range tank? Yep. Got lots of toys to happily blast you, and keep aggro no prob, from 30 m away. No more running around after mobs for me! I can safely tank 3 to 4 stationary mobs all several meters from myself and each other. Show me the Jugg that can do that! And in a couple levels I get jet charge. From what I've read, after that, my addiction will be complete. A thread I read a few days ago summed it up perfectly: "How can Juggs be the better tank when their charge doesn't even leave a flame trail??"

Did it once with 18th Powertech and 19th Inquisitor Sorc. I think we must have just gotten really lucky because we tried it again and gave up after wiping about 10 times on last boss. Rest of it was pretty easy, but that last boss is really tough with only 2 peeps. My wife was playing the Inquis and just couldn't dps down the adds and heal at the same time. Tried again at 22nd with the addition of an Inquis Assas and it was a piece of cake. Almost too easy. I would like to see more flashpoints as the two that I've done so far (BT and Hammer) are pretty short, although I'm sure that will come with time and/or levels. One thing we did learn for anyone trying to two man it, don't let a pet tank that last boss. I think that was the biggest mistake we were making when we were trying to two man it. We were letting the Inquis pet tank it while the two of us burned down the adds. It's much, much better if a player tanks him 100% of the time because you have to keep him turned away from the group so his machine gun blast doesn't hit the group.

Bingo. This is what I'm talkin bout. Can you tank as a Jugg? Of course. Can others do it better with less effort? Yep. No way is that right. If it's all about checks and balances, then a Jugg, with very few ranged attacks and horrible AoE should be a monster up close in melee as well as being able to soak up large amounts of damage.

So to summarize this thread: Theory 1. Jugg is broken and can't hold aggro at all. God forbid someone else in the group should peek around the rock they are hiding behind, lest the mob stop laughing at the jugg's puny attempts to do damage and get serious, in which case the jugg will cease holding aggro and instead spend most of his time running around chasing the mob from person to person. Loads of fun, btw. Theory 2. Jugg is fine. No problems whatsoever. Yeah, right. I have no problems at all holding aggro, so long as I'm solo and don't have a companion out. So I read through the entire thread, because like many of this forum, I'm a WoW tank from waaaay back. I rolled a warrior the day WoW released. I've played enough gimpy classes to know what it feels like. I came here just to make sure I wasn't doing something devastating wrong and to get three questions answered: Could I play the class better? I'm sure I could. Will it make a difference? A little, yeah. Will I still suck? Yep. I remember the "bad old days" on WoW where you had to micromanage your group, mark targets, order people around and discuss every battle in great detail. It was novel at first, even interesting, but it rapidly got boring, then really boring, then people just started leaving the group. A common complaint became, "You people suck, I've got to go, we've been in this dungeon for 8 hours and we aren't even halfway through! I'm gonna go mine for Thorium, it's more interesting!". WoW abandoned that system for good reason. Most people hated it. It was tedious, boring and prone to accident. God forbid someone misclicked and accidentally hit the yellow triangle instead of the purple star!! *WIPE* I see a lot of you actually want to go through this hellish process. Some of you actually rellish the idea of micromanaging your group, I suppose envisioning yourselves as little Sith Napoleons, issuing orders to your troops. I hope I never find myself in your group. If I do, you'll know me by my speckled backside because that's what you'll be seeing about 30 seconds into your first lengthy dissertation about the various symbols and their meanings. I'll be on my way to find a different group with a tank that can actually hold aggro without long explanations or complicated strategies. So, to summarize. When people play a game, they don't want to hold back. They don't want to say, oh, I better not hit that button because then I'll just be too awesome. They want an efficient killing machine of a group that can mow down mobs like fields of wheat. They want blood and xp and loot. They want a lot of it and they want it fast. They don't want a long speech about how we mustn't hit the purple star first, it goes yellow triangle, THEN purple star THEN four leaf clovers! And you there, in the purple robe, whatever you are doing there that looks and sounds so awesome and makes the mob's arms blow off? Stop that! It's too awesome for this group. And finally, they don't want a tank so weak that they have to sit and watch him fight for 10 to 20 second, and then hold back because he's too much of a gimp to hold aggro. That's lame. Really lame. My grandmother even thinks it's lame. She wants to run in, with the entire group, screaming her war cry like a 3rd century barbarian Hun warrior bad*****. I honestly believe this system you guys crave is created for egomaniacs who just want to force other people to have to sit and watch them while they pretend to be awesome, and then have to hold back, under threat of certain group death, lest they prove just how impotent their fearless leader really is. I haven't rolled a BH yet, but I've been playing a Jugg and I'm sick of the gimpyness. I'll be rolling a BH until Bioware gets Juggs figured out, if they ever do. Playing a jugg right now is like being a quarterback for a team that has the best receivers in the NFL, only you can't throw the ball to save your life, so you just run the ball instead. The receivers are really just there to sit, watch and cheer you on anyhow.