Thanks for the extensive reply Kitru! I thought I was ok for EC HM, but good to know i can give TfB HM a shot too - having spare BH comms helps gearing alts I'll adjust my skill distribution to fit your suggestions, makes sense to swap them 2 points! Concerning mitigation vs endurance, I did read some threads on it and it seems there are 2 (and a 3rd hybrid) paths to take. I decided to keep my 6 END augments for now and put Absorb/Shield augments on the rest. Also got 4-piece Supercommando bonus, since I had spare columi pieces in bank. So now my stats look like this: Health: 24732 Armor rating: 8678 Damage Reduction: 53.55% Defense Chance: 18.54 (394) Shield Chance: 56.89% (683) Absorb Chance: 56.94% (479) Some more questions: - Is my stat distribution close to optimal like this? - Should I get Absorb & Shield RATING to the same level or did you mean the %? - When do Defense, Absorb, Shield get hit by diminishing returns heavily enough to encourage taking the other tank stats? And finally: If any PvP focused Vanguard/PT Tank can help me with this question that would be awesome!

Still looking for a that special person with the healing itch that wants to see end-game ops!

After leveling and gearing a Sorcerer I got a bit bored and wanted to try out a tank. I am currently in i-level 61 gear, except for mainhand(mix 24/26) and offhand (BM supercommando). Since I am a bit new to Vanguard/PT tanking, I have some questions for PvE and PvP. Hopefully you can help me out! You can check my AMR here and i am 31/8/2 spec In PvE i have succesfully tanked KP HM and EC SM and am looking forward to trying EC HM but i still have a few questions. I am not fully augmented yet, because I am unsure whether to go full END or a mix of endurance and mitgation: 1. Is my skill tree build the right one? 2. Which augmentations should I pick for my open slots? (using 6 END augments already, 8 open) 3. Is it necessary to get 2-piece or 4-piece Supercommando to tank EC HM? 4. Should i get other gear upgrades before going EC HM? For PvP, I understand that alot of damage is tech or force damage. And there some people saying that tanks should not go for tanking gear in PvP, but should get DPS gear instead. Can I still be valuable in PuG PvP with a tank set or should i play tank in a dps set instead? Or just spec DPS for PvP because vanguard/PT tanks don't work well for it? Thanks for the replies!

Supercool Cantina Empire side Recruitment status: OPEN - Geared Healer especially for ops team Skilled and social players are always welcome to join and increase the chatter and hilarity in the guild. Supercool Cantina is a guild with UK roots, but has members from all over the world. Our average age is late 20's to early 30's, so we have a mature approach to the game. We do PvE, PvP in small groups and everyone is alting to see the storylines. Our focus is PvE progression through semi-casual raiding. This means we run operations three nights a week, but there is no obligation to join all nights. We all have a life outside of gaming! We run ops on Tuesday / Thursday / Sunday 19:30 - 22:30 (UK Time). We have cleared everything in 8man operations up to EC HM 4/4. Ultimate goal is 2x 8man or 1x 16man group! So far we had a few attempts on Nightmare Pilgrim & EC HM 16man, but still lack some operators. If you are interested and think Supercool Cantina suits your playstyle, whisper Sharissa / Shazzu / Cisero / Quantum / Pork / Jenstar or visit our website

What i meant to say is that I used the Ligthning AMR gear build posted in this thread to gear my healer. Currently those are my stats. You might be right on this, I have not checked on that. Might have been my gut-feeling messing with my brains. I bubble tanks @ start and usually tanks & healers just before a high damage phase on a boss encounter (Kephess + Bombardier phase / Gift of the Master phase etc). For the rest i tend to spare it for spikes (we run assassin tanks mostly). Rejuvenate is up all the time of course, but I almost always apply it for the +crit on Innervate. And yeh, I use DI to get em back from 40ish to 80ish. Fair enough I just wanted other healers to know that 35% crit unbuffed is not the only route to being a good healer.

Although I agree with you that 100% crit chance with Recklessness is a very good way to save someone from dieing due to an unexpected damage spike, i'm going to play devil's advocate. I did not build myself towards the 35% crit self-buffed, but followed the Ligthning BiS build for healing. This way I have bigger standard heals and less stat points wasted in diminishing returns. Downside, I have to use other methods to 'Save from big spiking'. My reasoning is that i have more raw healing power with this and still a decent 35% crit buffed. Whenever I see the tank getting spiked, I use my shield (shield more damage because i have 1k+ power) + rejuvenate + innervate (60% crit chance). Then i use recklessness for Dark Infusion. Even without direct crits, this usually gets the tank to 70%+. So I personally don't see a need for 35% crit unbuffed in current content. TLDR: You can either go the 35% crit unbuffed route or the higher +power route, both will suffice for current content.

I want to thank Quicksil for his very neat description of what to get as a PT tank. My own PT is slowly getting to 50, and I have some related questions. I will be having 3,500 ranked Warzone Commendations when i hit 50. Considering that i can get the Columi MH via legacy gear, what should i use the comms on: - War Hero relic (+113 def) & War hero relic (+113 shield) or - War Hero Supercommando MH Also, is there a PT tank BiS link available that i can work towards? Maybe on AMR?

I think there are three plausible options.

There are some theorycrafters that made a big post on the three best DPS specs, including skill priority and other advise. Take a look in this thread . On a side note, if you want to know what gear is optimal for those specs, look here!

Gabrandt is right in his short summary. For a more complete read up on the topic i advise you to read this sticky It basically handles everything you should know for PvE healing!

As a full-time healer, i have to disagree with you. 31/8/2 might be the best PVE heal spec, but it also does extremely well in PvP. I am always hitting #1 or #2 healing done in a warzone, in my opinion it is the best healing spec for a Sorc in a sensible group. There are a few requirements: 1. Convince a tank to guard you 2.Try get peels from dps/tanks 3. Learn how to use environment to line of sight and hide 4. Have full BM with some WH pieces to shine #1 Convincing a tank to guard should be easy enough and it makes it alot harder to kill you! If you happen to match up with a good tank that looks out for you, add him/her to friends and try go in warzones together. #2 With peels i mean that if you get focused, your teammates taunt/interrupt/stun the ones chasing you. Make sure to tell them in chat that you can't heal if they focus you, this should remind skilled players to protect their healers. Once the enemy realizes they are not getting you down and wasting time, you usually get some breathing room. #3 This comes with practice and also requires some basic knowledge from your opponents builds. When to knockback, when to use force sprint, when to use interrupt. Against a marauder, I try to use force slow to get distance. I only use Force Speed when his Leap has been used or i can LoS him hard. #4 Against high burst dps classes, expertise is your friend. In recruit i was paper thin, now in BM/WH mix in can actually stay alive in most 1v1 situations (mind you, i can hardly kill ) TLDR: 31/8/2 is an awesome Sorcerer heal spec if you get your teammates to guard/peel and use common sense. Sorcerers aren't very good going solo.

Your videos were the first i watched when preparing for the operation content. Thanks alot for the community input! I totally understand your reasons to move, but like yourself hope that Bioware picks up the slack and presents some challenges for us all to come back and enjoy the game at a later date. All the best in the game-not-to-be-named!

It would be professional to provide us with at least an update on the subject. Either telling us you found the issue and are working out a way to resolve it or that you haven't identified the problem yet and apologize for the inconvenience. You can't fix a problem that you haven't discovered yet, just let us know where you (and we) stand. Also, explain to us how this was not discovered during the testing phase of the patch. I am assuming you are testing whether your implementations work right? So you should also be able to see if the patch does the complete opposite? If you don't test your patches, admit that too. It's time Bioware grows up and shows its customers some maturity and honesty.

If they would just say month x we plan to release Explosive Conflict Nightmare and month y we plan to release the new operation / patch 1.4, that would make a lot of people happier.

Thank you very much for doing these simulations and explaining in plain terms how the sims differ from intelligent play. For me this makes it plain what path to take. As i'm almost 75% healing and 25% dps in operations, i will gear myself using the Lightning BiS. This should suit the needs for both goals perfectly!