Don't use Kira. Use T7. Don't start the fight by leaping in, you will need your leap to be up every single time he uses his knockback, and if you leap in to start the fight, leap will not be back up in time for the first one.. Every single time he knocks you back, immediately leap back to him. Use kick to interrupt chain lightning. When T7 gets low, turn his taunt off and Taunt Tarnis onto you. That is all you need to know to make this fight EASY. You won't even need a stim if you follow this procedure.

How is damage better? Didn't both Decimate and Heavy Handed get nerfed? 30%>20% and 15%>8%? They fixed the bug where Revenge procs were being consumed even when Battle Cry was up, but that shouldn't even come close to making up the difference in smash damage lost.

Better because you actually get more defensive talents than you did pre-1.2? Or better merely because we lost Protector in Vigilance? To me, 1.2 looks like a straight nerf to Guardian Tanking. No cooldown reduction on Challenging Call. AoE damage nerf to both Swelling Winds and Pacification. Dust Storm now requires an extra talent point for the same benefit. Protector totally gone. What did we get in return for all those nerfs? A Self heal we can't use?

I think what everyone was trying to imply: If you think it's appropriate to call someone else "fail" in a post, you should probably take more than 15 seconds to respond, lest your "fail" accusation ruin any credibility your response may have had.

You took Force Grip, and then also took Strangulate.... RIIIIIIIIGHT... Because pushback while channeling a spell that's instant (not channeled) is a pretty big problem right? http://www.priceisrightfailhorn.com/

Wouldn't this just cause most guilds to link all members to one legacy in order to max legacy levels as quickly as possible?

If you just look at the mechanics inside a vacuum, then you're right. Passive bonuses, a mitigation bonus lumped together with a damage ability, and increased focus generation seem superior. But when you look at the outcome, it's quite the opposite. Even though you don't generate as much focus with the hybrid, and even if you're "wasting" globals on leaps, you still do almost the same amount of damage. And even if you don't leap at all, mitigation is very close between the two builds. Leaps are just an added bonus.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500dMG0uZhGrMMhdzMM.1 That's the basic "PvE tank" 14/27 build. There are plenty of tweaks you can make to the build if you're also going to be PvP'ing or soloing such as: swapping Blade Barricade for Pacification swapping Lunge or Dust Storm for Solidified Force or 3/3 Momentum swapping Force Rush for Burning Purpose. In every one of those cases you're trading away some mitigation for additional utility or damage. Really some of those choices just come down to how geared you are and what content you're completing. I disagree completely. Just use it on a melee DPS and you never have to worry about moving mobs out of position. What you sometimes CAN'T do is Guardian Leap to a ranged class and then Force Leap back in to get both Protector and Unremitting together. But as long as you have a single melee dps, you should be using Guardian Leap on cooldown (or almost on cooldown if you can time it to take a special attack). Protector alone still averages 6% total damage mitigation, which is better than any other mitigation talent we have.

If you skip Heatseeker Missles you can pick up Power Shield in the Bodyguard tree for 12 seconds of complete interrupt immunity. Of course that's really only a good trade-off if you're specifically building for 1v1 or duels.

Question: If BH jetpacks allowed us to fly, does that also mean that other players should be able to shoot us in the back, causing our jetpack to explode; instantly killing us?

Usually less than one attack. The formula puts it at absorbing ~1200 damage at level 50, but I think that the absorb roll is done before armor or shielding, so unless the attack that you're absorbing with blade barrier ignores armor, it's only actually stopping around 700 damage if you have around 40% damage reduction from armor or even less if your shield would have kicked in. Even at its current numbers it's not TERRIBLE when you compare it to other damage reduction talents we can pick up like Inner Peace, Shield Spec, or Commanding Awe at current levels of incoming damage. The main problem with it (outside of how it applies the absorb) is that it almost doesn't scale at all, whereas those other talents are % based and will scale with incoming damage. So as time goes on and new bosses do more damage, Blade Barrier will go from being "ok" to being very weak.

Well if you're using bladestorm on cooldown and a zealous or force leap before it every time then it's the equivalent of gaining 1 Focus every 3 seconds, but works even if your focus bar is capped out so the mechanic is actually BETTER than gaining 4 focus. Victory rush is 1 Focus per 4.5 seconds assuming you can actually use sundering on cooldown. With Defiance, you'd have to be getting stunned once every 12 seconds to keep up with the focus gen from Momentum. That can certainly happen in PvP, but in PvE it's not likely. To me, Momentum looks like the strongest of the three, even though it costs one extra talent point.

Set bonuses are tied to the "armor" mod. (or they will be in 1.2) So you'll be able to move the bonuses to different gear as well.

You can check the effect details on torhead for threat modifiers. I don't see a threat Modifier on Project at all, it just happens to do a good amount of damage which is modified by combat technique for an extra 50% threat. ~2000 avg damage + 50% = ~3000 threat Slow Time and Force Pull both have threat modifiers, though that doesn't necessarily mean they'll give you more threat than Project. Example: Slow Time - ThreatPercent=>0.5 So it gets an extra 50% on top of the 50% you get from Combat Technique. But it only hits for ~450, so if you use it on a single target it's only going to give you ~900 threat. But if you use it against 5 mobs grouped up, then a single cast would give you ~4500 threat spread between the mobs. Force Pull - ModifyThreat: StandardHealthPercentMin=>1.6, StandardHealthPercentMax=>1.6 We have to find the correct table to get the StandardHealth number, and I believe the game counts the level for which the ability is learned, not your current level for attack calculations. So Force Pull is trainable at 30, which makes the StandardHealthPercent number 1130. So Force Pull would do ~2712 threat while in Combat Technique. So it looks like Project is actually slightly better than Force Pull even though the project tooltip doesn't say anything about additional threat, and Slow Time is actually only good in AoE situations even though it says "This ability generates a high amount of threat." Unless I'm missing something in the way the game applies these formulas (which is certainly possible). Threat is SUPPOSED to be touch and go at times though. It keeps the combat interesting. If you could just spam an AoE taunt and hit defensive cooldowns, then combat would be totally mindless.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong about this, but when I last checked, C2-N2's heals weren't leveling up with him, so his healing was FAR below that of Doc's. If that's still the case, then no amount of gear is going to help.

The plain fact of the matter is that you need a high focus generation rate to make a defense build do damage. In PvE, it works fine because you can control who the mobs attack, and as long as you're getting beat on, Courage and Cyclonic sweeps keep you fed with enough focus to keep an active rotation. But the second you stop getting attacked, your DPS in a Defense heavy build drops faster than Newt Gingrich's approval rating any time anyone brings up the fact that he divorced 2 wives after they were diagnosed with major diseases. But there is a silver lining in the 14/27/0 spec because you can tank just as well as a full Defense build in PvE but aren't affected anywhere near as much by the focus generation problem present in the Defense build.

Not that you need any Justification for choosing Focus, but since you PvP, I think you made the right choice because a PvP focus build is pretty much identical to a PvE focus build. Whereas with Vigilance builds, two of the best PvP talents in the tree are quite worthless in PvE while you're filling a DPS role, and some great PvE talents carry little value in PvP. Pure DPS Vig build might out-dps your focus build in PvE, but is nowhere near as flexible or survivable in PvP. And if you were to drop some of the pure-dps talents to bolster your PvP, then it's doubtful that you'd still be able to out-dps the Focus build. So if you're going to do both, I think Focus is definitely the way to go.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that Master Focus is your best bet because although waiting for the full cast of Master Strike is a DPS loss, letting the first two hits complete (which happen at the start of the animation) and then interrupting Master Strike with another ability is a notable DPS gain. That is the only reason to take Zen Strike, and Master Focus builds on that concept, leting you use it 2 GCD's earlier in each rotation any time Zen doesn't proc.

The devs also love him... So much so that they gave the Sith Warrior their Doc equivalent companion ~15 levels sooner. TOTALLY BALANCED.

Fixed that for you.

Yet you're ignoring the profit you can make from selling mission schematics you get from slicing missions for the EXACT same reason. Your argument contradicts itself.

GTN price is NOT irrelevant because instead of running the mission for those Scavenging materials, you might have been able to simply buy them off the GTN for less money. If that were the case, you didn't "gain" scavenging materials, you just lost money. Anyway, most of the discussion in this thread is irrelevant now anyway as we've already been told:

Technically it would have to cost you rubat crystals to even run the mission, and then only return a portion of what you spent on it, and killing mobs would have to drop rubat crystals, as well as getting rubat crystals as quest rewards... but I know where you're coming from. If they like the current overall return from slicing, then they could adjust the top returns down in order to adjust the low returns to at least break even. Also, I can't believe that no-one has commented on the response we just got: So it looks like they've already got some updates in the works.

What you're essentially saying is that every time I run an archaeology mission, the materials I get from said mission can ALWAYS be sold for more than the mission cost me, which just isn't true and depends HEAVILY on GTN pricing on your server. Although I agree that a successful credit box mission should not be returning less than the mission cost to run, I think people are blowing the "problem" out of proportion and making grandiose claims about other professions in order to support their desire for a "credits button" in the game. Sure, if you compare it to running Underworld trading missions, it looks weak, but that's because UT is "broken", not slicing. Underworld metals are currently used in Armormech, Armstech, Cybertech, AND 2/3 of Synthweaving patterns. Demand is enormous compared to other mission materials, and obviously inflated pricing is going to reflect that fact.

From my experience, if I were to level another Guardian to 50, I would: 1) Grab Victory rush, then build straight up the Vigilance tree to overhead Slash as such: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#5000MZhGrMMhzz.1 I found Defense heavy builds to cripple my damage while leveling all the way up until you can finally grab key damage talents at level 40+. 2) Get as much orange gear as you can early on, and accept as many commendations as quest rewards as possible. Use all your commendations to buy "Might" armor/hilts, and Strength/Power heavy mods and enhancements. You simply don't need defensive stats while you're leveling, even if you tank Flashpoints. 3) Wear a Shield, and use Soresu form. The added damage mitigation FAR outweighs the loss in damage while solo questing (at least until you get Doc at 32), but by then you should have a good feeling about how you would like to play the game (tank vs dps) and can re-spec to Shien Vigilance or Focus DPS build and not have to worry about re-gearing if you like. Otherwise just continue with "Might" style gearing until 50 when you can easily replace your armor/mods/enhancements with "Guardian" equivalents in only a couple week's worth of dailies.