Yes, you do get threat from the grapple, but it's a pretty miniscule amount of threat, and it costs you a GCD. Not worth it, especially if you were going to be firing a taunt anyway.

Comments pertain to Powertech/Vanguard only: Defense Rating/Shield Rating/Absorb Rating looks reasonable, though IMO you already have enough HP, so I would go with Shield augments rather than Endurance augments. Your skill tree is still pretty weird...if you're trying to be PVP-friendly, why do you not have Neural Overload? I have done math previously to show that Rail Loaders is actually a very inefficient use of talent points, offensively speaking. I'd put those points in...almost anything else. Such as Power Armor (which is really, really good).

I think once everyone gets the fight down pat, it'll probably be more reasonable to clear all of the color phases on the first pass, but for right now my guild has found the dulfy strategy of intentionally failing the purple phase to be the easiest.

You can do KP with a pickup group before your guild night. If you're locked out of KP, groupfinder shouldn't queue you for it.

Hmm, that is something I experienced a couple times during 1.3. I think I eventually decided that it was caused by using Storm to jump over to Firebrand while I was inside the model for Stormcaller's turret. I made it a point to not be standing inside the turret before jumping across, and then I didn't have that problem again. Who knows if that's actually what the cause was...

Stockstrike is the biggest single contributor to your DPS in boss fights. http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/combatlog/8cb5040e-ee08-4ced-9191-e2af955bcb01/player/5#d=0,f=28,b=1 Note that the particular parse I've linked above (EC Kephess HM) has big swarms of adds, so Pulse Cannon and Explosive Surge are much higher than they would be for a typical single-target fight. Also, remember that a good portion of the Ion Cell and Shocked(Tech) damage is a result of Stockstrikes. High Impact Bolt deals more damage per shot, but its cooldown is longer than Stockstrike's, hence a lower overall contribution. (BTW, you can use HIB against any target suffering from a DOT...such as the one applied by your Stockstrike)

57 for ear, 57 x2 for implants, 57 x7 for enhancements (head, chest, gloves, pants, boots, mainhand, offhand). Where are you getting that 11th 57 from? Or are you looking at 1x Champion Relic of Forbidding Secrets (WH power relic is better)

For an all itemlevel 61 geared character, you should have 570 points to divvy up among Accuracy, Alacrity, and Surge. Accuracy is obviously useless for a Sage. If you put 570 into surge, your surge value will be 80.11%. The first couple of blocks of 57 you move from Surge to Alacrity will give you almost 2% cast time reduction at the cost of only about 0.5% surge value. It does get steeper pretty quickly though, to where you're trading ~1.5% surge value for 1.5% cast time reduction when Surge = Alacrity and even worse when your alacrity is above your surge. At 570 Alacrity + 0 Surge, your cast time is reduced by 15.14% and your surge value is 51%.

Getting hit by both barrels of Double Destruction also rockets you like 100m straight up into the air, which is somewhat amusing.

...hmm. Good point. Guess I was conflating it with Force Scream. Anyway, I don't miss crits on Vicious Throw very often with +60% crit chance (most of my raid logs don't have even a single non-crit).

The red pheromones don't do anything unless there are spawn out, so I don't think this is a bug.

+60% crit chance to Vicious Throw is plenty to get you to 100%, you don't need to jump through any hoops. Remember that it's a Force ability, which means you also are getting some crit% from your Willpower and from Malice.

The flat 4% damage reduction is the entire point of the hybrid build, because that is more damage mitigation than 4% internal/elemental and 4% shield chance, which are the only mitigation talents in the defense tree once you get past Blade Barrier. Coupled with reduced cooldown on Blade Storm and the occasional defensive bonuses from leaps, you actually come out pretty far ahead on mitigation even if you never activate Focused Defense (tip: fire it off immediately before you were going to taunt anyway)

As an endgame Vanguard tank, yes, you do use Hammer Shot a fair amount, but you probably won't be spamming it repeatedly unless you mess up your ammo management. Stockstrike, High Impact Bolt, and Energy Blast should be kept on cooldown, and you should Ion Pulse whenever ammo permits. Depending on the fight, sometimes you can sneak out to 11m for a quick Storm to reset your free Explosive Surges (which are slightly better than Hammer Shots even for single-target DPS).

(my experience is one clear of this fight on 8 man hard mode) According to the tooltip on the debuff, babies will spawn when the Incubation debuff falls off OR when the Incubation debuff gets to ten stacks. If a DPS pulls aggro at an inconvenient time and causes the boss to skip an attack on the tank, that could be long enough for the Incubation debuff to drop off and spawn babies. Note that whenever the Incubation debuff falls off, another debuff is applied to the tank that will cause an instagib if a new stack of Incubation is applied to the tank. This means that tank #2 really needs to pay attention, because if tank #1 gets a lucky (unlucky?) string of dodges, or takes too long to catch up to the boss after a move, or a DPS pulls, tank #1 will explode when the boss resumes attacking. I don't know yet what causes the red pheromone pools to spawn. My guess would be a timer, but it could be health or boss moves or something else.

I felt the final boss of Terror from Beyond was horrifically boring to tank on 8-man story mode. Hopefully there's something more to that encounter for hard mode. I will note that I did enjoy tanking the first two bosses on 8-man hard mode when my guild did them for the first time last night, so hopefully the rest of the raid continues that trend.

The cast time has always been .5s faster in Hard Mode than in normal mode.

I'm using the hybrid build, so I don't have the "high threat" abilities. Last night we ran story mode Terror from Beyond and wiped several times on the last boss, so I got LOTS of practice watching initial aggro against two marauders who were putting out 1500+ DPS. I held aggro just fine so long as I got Ravage in early. Try throw -> leap -> scream -> ravage -> taunt. (It is seriously ridiculous how much threat Enraged Defense dumps. I now 100% recommend making sure you have both taunts up when you use it, because you will lose aggro immediately when you activate it, and again when your first taunt wears off...you really need the second taunt or the boss will stomp your DDs.)

If you know how to tank, you can tank just fine with Vengeance spec by throwing on a shield generator and switching to Soresu form. I did that for plenty of flashpoints as I was levelling up. You won't mitigate as much damage as if you were tank spec, but you will put out more damage and hold aggro better (and make up for slacking DPS) which could otherwise be a problem.

The calibrating shots have always given a stacking buff that increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken, and at 8 stacks it has always granted an additional buff that gives them even more damage output. From the OP though it sounds like 8 stacks are making the droids literally invincible, which would be new (and frankly BS). FWIW, I play a Vanguard tank, and I am the only person interacting with droid #2 until the rest of the group has burned #1 completely, and I'm reasonably sure noone helps me with interrupts once they have jumped over. I've worked out a pattern to my attacks such that droid #2 will only have 2 stacks by the time he dies, but it requires some fairly tight timing and if I get even a tiny lag hiccup (or have a brain fart) he could easily be at 4+. Droid #3 is often at 7 stacks by the time #2 is down.

There's a monster that looks a bit like a giant frog - it dropped 2 matrices and 4 stabilizers for us on story mode. That guy is kinda like a chest with legs. Not hidden at all, we ran right into him.

I've seen videos of people tanking Kephess just fine with their backs to the wall. Remember, Breath of the Masters causes the circles to drop from the target; it is completely unrelated to the one-hit KO.

Chance of not mitigating two consecutive attacks is (% not shield attack 1) * (% not dodge attack 1) * (% not shield attack 2) * (% not dodge attack 2) so, for Kitru's scenarios Vanguard, 15% dodge, 60% shield (.85) * (.40) * (.85) * (.40) = 11.56% Shadow, 30% dodge, 65% shield (.70) * (.35) * (.70) * (.35) = 6.00%

Think I figured out the problem...combination of using Project and Disturbance way too much and clipping many of my TK Throws. I imagine tidying that up will help a lot, and in the meantime I should probably use both the cost reduction and increased force pool, rather than +6% Mind Crush damage, until I get better at playing the spec. MC was only about 16% of my total output, which means that increased MC damage would account for less than 1% of my total DPS.

PVE: 4% Endurance is a trivial amount of HP. I would move those points over to 4% alacrity or possibly +16 energy on Adrenaline Probe.