LMAO i know exactly what you mean - never before have i had so much fun against a class that use to be so hard to fight.

I dont agree with the OP. Ive been playing a guardian tank since 1.1 and came from wow where i played a Warrior tank in end game. Because i played vanilla wow where i had to move and sunder to hold threat on a group i always play this way. yes some AOE skills are nice. and yes i played a hybrid and yes i loved it and would like it back. But actually you can hold agro on 5 mobs without any of your aoe abilities by moving and striking. Once you can do this (use key binds & tab targeting not mouse clicks) getting knocked back and having to move is no longer any kind of issue. Hit Blade storm while walking 4 meters and your back in range. you will have taunt and aoe taunt still free - so if your tired you can hit taunt, take a drink, have a crap - come back to the computer, blow your nose and continue tanking... You have 6 tools for range threat. taunt, aoe taunt, blade storm, saber throw, leap, letting overzelous dps die. its not that you cant get agro back when something bad happens it that getting knocked back is a pain in the arse. normally in a group of 5 mobs (im assuming this is an issue in multi target tanking because surely its not a problem in single target) you only have to hold 1 or 2 any way the rest a gona get owned by dps. you could try standing where you get knocked back to and wait for the moblie mobs to come to you then sweep and guard slash them. now check whch of the non movers are not shooting at you and tuant em (or alternativly use your leap which will now be up again) If you want to get better at managing these kinds of disruptions stop using your aoe skills for a while and rely on tab targeting and moving from mob to mob. after about an hour you will feel super charged once you use em all again. EDIT: you also have force choke and force push - both work from range and spell inturrupt. One of them even refreshes your leap.

The relics dont stack so you got to take one of each - now that their is no pvp alternative its a bit of a no brainer really. I have found that vengence has flat patches in dps the close range saber throw is very good at these points it produces much better dps than strike and does not miss. For short burst i agree it dosent matter but boss fights or dummy tests its very helpfull.

im going to spenf my first 300 basic comms on the two at the top - boundless ages and dark radience. if you get the proc relic you want the internal or elemental ones. If you have the dread guard equivalents i would probably run with them - they already have more passive power. The 66 gear for basic comms is all pritty awful - if you have dread guard its better itimised and plenty good enough to run hm fp at 55 so you can get 69 gear. The main hand saber for basic coms looks pritty good once you are hero with makeb. I am going for the implants first with my Eliet comms. i simple reason is that i want to keep the set bounses so would rather get these items from tokens - the fps all drop 69 gear without set bonus as well. i have been finding saber throw set bonus is very helpful for sustained dps so im gona keep my 63 armourings until i can up grade to the new set bonus. I agree about alacrity it looks no good for knighs. but i will prolly test it by replacing all surge with alacrity at some point and all crit with power and see what happens. Stats wise i have gone mostly power - i have 240 crit raiting and would be happy to drop it further. thats 17.something % unbuffed mostly from strength. then 100% accuracy and the rest surge which is about 66% surge for me at the mo. as we get more into 69 gear we might be able to stack more crit i went 25% raid ready on pts but in hind sight lower could be better.

really so they took momentum out of our rotation where it was cool and put it into your where its useless - bugger

Wondering how long till the Smash monkeys develop the run out and leap rotations that boosted Vigilance DPS by about 200. You get to auto crit sweep because of felling blow - and post leap you get a free blade storm. Leap has a cool down of 15 seconds which dovetails nicely with force exaustions 18 seconds for the stacks of singularity. Its eairly days in DPS output and there are not a lot of parses out there. Probably best to use Saber throw during the run out but if you use blade storm the free blade strom buff from Momentum lasts long enough to use after it is off cool down. On the PTS people claimed sentinals where 300 ahead of vigilance but the only parses i saw had the sentinals in 72 gear and the vigilanve in 69. 2200 for focus will probably be improved a lot if the gear is half 69 half 63. as vigilance i have made a parse at 2255 with 63 gear and just a 69 offhand (stim and adrenals are nano thou) se the guide at teh top to look at this. i recon is healthy to argue about dps output - it gets peope motivated to improve their rotations. i think vigilance is equalish to sentinal (i have both) when played well and it now has the capacity to burst 3500 over 12 seconds (like combat) and aoe 5000+ to me thats prolly enough for adds I have not played focus enough really - but i hope someone posts a parse with the run out rotation described above - i think we will all be impressed.

Sry mate just wrong here. Even pre 2.0 Vigilance guardians were significantly less squashy than sentinals. I end game raid with both. post 2.0 the survivability of vigilance has been improved to make this a cleaer point of difference. Inspiration and trancendence are great raid wide utility. As i said above my personal preference is that utility is varied i think thats about the balance we hav eright now.

So im full dread guard. got to 55 started running the new FP and got this enhancment Level 66 End 52 Acc 66 Pwr 26 I took a look at my current enhacment level 63 End 29 Acc 60 Pwr 44 Developers why are you so determined to waste our gear points on endurance? Endurance is useless on DPS classes - yes we need about 20k maybe 25k health so that if we take a hit we dont get 1 shotted. But has noone told you that the point of being a DPS class is to avoid damage while doing DPS. Its not like we are tanks with great mitigation where the extra 37 points of endurance = quite a lot of survivability. if you put that 37 points of endurace on say a light armoured DPS sage its less than useless. So i took one look at my new level 66 enhancment and then re-ed it wondering if perhaps its designed to drop cool mats.... ill keep the dread guard till i either get something better itimised or get to a gear level where the wasted endurance does not mean an apparent up grade is actually a down grade. It would be good to hear from other DPS players about this. are there players that think we need endurance more than power.... maybe the developes will let us know the basis for this approach. i can see that maybe they want those people that did endgame content and got dread guard may want it to last longer...

Im in two minds about this. I do think the argument that some classes can respec so they should be crap at DPS is... well crap. when you are DPS speced for raiding you may not even have say a tank set and you may have no interest in tanking. the fact that you theortically could as an argument for being crap isw stupid. A bit like me tanking the final boss in HM FE on my sentinal because the tank had to go. DPS should be about the same. Utility should be varied with classes all having something of value. It looks like this has been achieved in 2.0 (yay developers). however in an environment where DPS are about = and utility is varied then pure DPS should either have slight better utility or slightly better DPS (for bragging rights). This is about how it looks in 2.0 to me. In the last patch it was hard to do serious raiding as a vigilance guardian but i think balance has been handeled a lot more carefully in this patch. It is no longer - sorry mate we need sentinals and slingers.

Yes Focus produces enough DPS to be playable in raids - but why would you? It is still slightly lower the vigilance, it has low survivability (while Vigilance is top of all melee classes) and it cannot apply its sunder armour from range. On the other hand I have been doing 5000 - 6000 aoe DPS using dread guard gear in the level 55 flash points as vigilance. Try: Plasma Brand (main mob if their is one) - Sweep - Cyclone 6x - Sunder - Sweep repeat Hard to see any arguments for rolling focus for raiding except if you prefer the play style(PvP is another story altogether)

Hey mate good to hear from you. I havent made a video - but indicitavly after getting the expansion and running EC i was between 300 & 400 dps up at level 50. That was pritty much with a face roll rotation.

yes you should absolutly

On PTS with all gear avalible i went with crit at 25% fully raid buffed. Surge is as before although you might like to try swaping some surge for Alacrity so we can work out weather lowering the GCD is worthwhile for guards. Re Surge and Power. You cannot swap surge for power - look at your mods closely. You swap power for crit (you may go with 20% crit raid buffed so that you can have more power). You swap surge for alacrity or accuracy.

2.6 Update The original guide for guardian DPS raiding had been developed and refined since 1.1. In the thread that followed many top players presented their approaches and challenged that guide and their methods were incorporated where they were superior. Now we are into 2.6 since 2.0 we have been building up a guide new that will assist players of DPS guardians. I will continue to keep this guide up to date as I did the last one please contribute to it by telling us about your methods and include parses – I will integrate what you contribute into this guide if it makes DPS go up. What are guardians like DPS wise Vigilance is primarily a single target skill tree that has excellent clutch aoe. The main attacks do decent instant damage and they are backed up by mid-range bleeds. We have good burst damage. With the changes in 2.6 we finally have a sound low RNG rotation based DPS. If played well vigilance guardian can top the raid DPS list Vigilance guardians have high survivability. Heavy armour will now mitigate kinetic and force damage. We have excellent Panic buttons and Saber reflect. In emergencies we can switch to tank stance taunt the boss and rotate our cool downs. Our utility is not as great as Sentinals but its OK and unique. We have a poor threat drop in that it costs 14 rage and for this reason alone we should get the guard. Republic & Sith Mirrior Skills Sith - Republic Ravage - Master Strike Assult - Strike Smash - Force Sweep Sunder - Sunder Shatter - Plasma Brand Impale - Overhead Strike Build: http://pts.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/guardian/225/?build=020200000000000000000000000000000302302021200131212203200300010003200001000000000000000000000000&ver=20 This is the build I recommend in starting with your Vigilance Guardian it is the top DPS build – you can take Guard Stance the armour skill from the defence tree to make a DPS Guardian with even better survivability. Essential Skills: Victory Rush - for focus generation Burning Blade - Bleeds Burning Purpose - Bleeds Force Rush - for Crit procs Zen Strike - Keening – Plasma Brand Optional but preferred skills: Unremitting - Many bosses knock back this is an advantage to vigilance over the other melee classes that get knocked back. Commanding Awe - Vigilance Guardians are significantly less squishy than sentinels this maximises that fact and combat focus is quite a good multi use button with Commanding Awe. Skill Priority: Master Strike (MS) ~30% (no focus cost). Because MS refreshes its cool down when you use plasma brand and overhead slash you can do quite a lot of damage with it if you always use it when its ready - you can further increase this by putting 2 more skill points into it from the defence tree. However you cannot keep all 3 bleeds up if you use MS every time it procs. Master Strike cannot proc more than once every 10.5 seconds with 3 points in Zen Strike. Guardians have 3 abilities that have a bleed associated with them. The bleeds account for ~18% of your total damage if you keep them up as much as possible. Plasma Brand (PB) produces ~8% of total damage + procs a bleed 4 times over 12 sec. Blade Storm (BS) produces ~12% of you total damage + procs a bleed 6 times in 6 seconds Overhand Slash (OS) produces ~12% of your total damage + procs a bleed 6 times in 6 seconds Each tick can crit - also the ticks from PB & OS are only very slightly gear dependent. Along with Sunder, Plasma Brand has a 12 second cool down. Overhead Strike and Blade Storm each have a 9 second cooldown. Blade Storm always crits if you use any 2 of Plasma Brand, Overhead Strike or Dispatch first. This is an excellent guardian Parse http://www.torparse.com/a/565095 (not mine but top DPS at the time of writing) You will see that Plasma Brand is used every 12 seconds, Overhead Strike every 9 seconds and Master Strike every 10.5 seconds. If you master using these 3 abilities on cool down you will do very good DPS. Average Damage Plasma Brand: 3400 + 4 ticks of 1350 each over 12 seconds = 8800 or 733 internal DPS Overhead Strike: 4440 + 6 ticks of 245 over 6 seconds = 5910 or 656 energy DPS Blade Storm: 5000 + 6 ticks of 155 over 6 seconds = 5930 or 658 Kinetic DPS It is useful to think about damage output from these 3 abilities differently. Over a long fight of more than a min you want to think of the tick from plasma Brand as background damage ticking every 3 to 4 seconds the whole time. Where as with Overhead Slash and Blade Storm you want to think of the whole amount as happening when you hit the button, because there is a long gap from when the bleed stops to when the ability comes off cool down. If you think this way you will prioritize Overhead Slash over Plasma Brand when they both come off cool down at the same time because delaying 1x 1350 tick has less consequence than delaying 5910 by 1.5 seconds. Use Blade Storm after Overhead Slash unless you have to squeeze in Masterstrike before Plasma Brand or Overhand Slash come off cool down When Dispatch Procs you have 10 seconds to use it so wait till you got a window. Sunder is your second priority when you need Focus after your free focus generator. Sweep will generate 1 focus and is on a 12 second cool down like Plasma Brand. It does Force damage and so is better than Strike or Slash. Saber Throw is also considerably better than either slash or strike. it generates 3 focus to strikes 2 and it provides more DPS than slash. Without the close range saber throw set bonus you will notice flat patches in your rotation where you are spamming strike - this set bonus is less useful than +10% MS now that we use MS all the time but the extra focus from this set bonus allows you to keep up your main abilities more smoothly. Now that we use Masterstrike every 10.5 seconds you should not need either slash or strike on your bar at all. However if you have more than 8 focus use slash less than 8 focus use strike. I have given this priority list because during boss fights you will have to change your abilities a lot depending on what is happening. However against Dummies we now have a set rotation for maximum DPS. Opening: Saber Throw (1.5) - Leap (3) - Plasma Brand (4.5) - Masterstrike (7.5) - Overhead Slash (9) - Blade Storm (10.5) Masterstrike (13.5) Dispatch (15) - Sunder (16.5) Plasma Brand (18) - Overhead Slash (19.5) - Blade Storm (21) - Masterstrike (24) - Notes: Uses Plasma brand immediately to get the big bleed ticking. Uses Master Strike early so that the benefit of the proc after the First Overhead Strike is a available. Uses Plasma Brand every 12 seconds, Overhead Slash ever 9 seconds & Master Strike every 10.5 seconds Uses Blade Storm most of the time after Overhead Strike is used. Clipping Masterstrike: You will find the third tick floats up from Masterstrike at about 2.7 seconds even though the ability executes for 3 seconds. you can clip Masterstrike short at 2.7 seconds by using another ability at this point (Dispatch and Blade Storm are good candidates for this). the will increase your DPS quite a bit unless you do it too quick and cut off the last tick. Burn Phase Masterstrike with no bleeds = 12756 over 3 seconds or 4252 DPS Masterstrike with all Bleeds = 16649 over 3 seconds or 5549 DPS If the Burn Phase is 9 seconds long you optimise you DPS by getting 3 ticks from Plasma Brand. 3400 + 3x1456 = 7768 Overhead Slash 4440 + 6x245 = 5910 So unless you can squeeze in 2 uses of Overhead Slash to benefit from the bigger initial damage you should use Plasma Brand first and get all 3 bleeds going before using Masterstrike: Plasma Brand (1.5) - Overhead Slash (1.5) - Blade Storm (1.5) - Masterstrike (3) - Dispatch (1.5) = total 9 sec total damage 37752 = 4194 DPS If the Burn Phase is longer than 12 seconds you should use your normal opener to get 2 uses of Masterstrike in. AOE DPS Vigilance does excellent AOE dps this is not well known. Leap (1.5) - Sweep (1.5) - Cyclone (1.5) 6x - Sunder etc If you are on 5 targets you will do over 5000 DPS easy. If their is a gold mob in the middle then Leap (1.5) - Sweep (1.5) - Plasma Brand (1.5) - Cyclone 6x etc Note: Always use combat focus when you leap. Gearing: Mods: Armouring’s provide: Strength + Endurance (choose the ones with high strength) Mod’s provide: Strength + Endurance + Either Power OR Crit (take the ones with low endurance with the bigest combined total of strength and Power or crit) Enhancements provide: Endurance + Either Power OR Crit + Either Surge OR Accuracy OR Alacrity (again take the mods with low endurance) Note: all the basic gear from comms are 'bad' mods and Set peace items have 'good mods' Notice that Power and Crit are always together, while Accuracy Surge & Alacrity are always together. This means when you are balancing stats you are balancing Power with Crit & Accuracy with Surge & Alacrity. You cannot swap Crit for Accuracy or Power for Surge etc – you can only swap a stat for another stat in its group e.g. Crit with Power. Take a look at this graph about diminishing returns in 2.0 http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2013/09/1362011240-dr-curve-2-0-swtor.png Strength & Power: 1 point of power = .23 bonus damage 1 point of Strength = .2 bonus damage + some crit. However Guardians get Perseverance which gives us +6% strength also the sage buff gives an additional 5% on primary stat. So 100 power x.23 = +23 bonus damage while 100 strength +6+5 = 111 times .2 = 22.2 bonus damage & around .25% crit. So stack strength not power but use mods with the highest combined total. Always augment for strength if you are choosing between augmenting for strength or power. The Diminishing returns do not currently affect power at all or strength in any major way. Crit from Strength is on a separate diminishing returns curve than crit from +crit rating so even after you hit the point at which crit from +crit rating becomes uneconomical you will still get roughly the same crit per100 strength. Crit: If you look at the diminishing returns curve for crit from +crit rating in the graph above you will see that we can stack up to 300 crit rating without pushing into diminishing returns to far. Additionally in 72/78 gear you will have about 3300 strength and this provides ruffly 8.6% crit. So with 3000 strength you get +5% base crit +8% crit from strength +1% companion crit & +5% gunsliger buff = 19%. I have been running my Guardian on 250 crit raiting and 23.5% total crit and my jugg on 150 crit raiting and 22% total crit. It is apparent in raiding with both that 150 crit raiting is better this means more bonus damage from power that you get when you replace the crit raiting with power. Some people are saying even less crit raiting is better still I think 100 is about as low as i would want to go. What is clear cut is that augmenting with Strength is a LOT better than augmenting with Power because of our perserverence talent giving 6% on main stat and the crit we get from main stat. When my strength was 2794 if i added 100 strength i would get .23% crit. If you add 14 might augments you get 448 strength thats just over 1% crit at around these strength levels (the curve is not quite but almost flat up to 4k - check the DR curves linked in the guide). You also get 99.45 bonus damage (92 if your focus). If you add all power augments you get 103.04 bonus damage but 0% crit. Is 3.5 bounus damage worth 1% crit well comparitivly you get 3.5 bonus damage from 15 power while you get 1% crit from ruffly 1 mod or 70 crit rating (depeding on how much crit raiting you have).... that makes the extra crit from strength augments 3x better than the extra bonus damage from power augments. The best use of that 1% crit is to remove 1 crit mod and replace it with 1 power mod - thats effectivly 14 more bonus damage from stacking strength mods (still 4 bonus damage if your focus). Accuracy: 100% accuracy means our special attacks hit 110% of the time, since boss mobs defence is 10% you will hit with specials 100% of the time. Since most of our attacks are specials after 100% accuracy we are better to stack other stats. Alacrity – Accuracy – Surge: Pre 2.0 Alacrity was useless so best stat balance meant getting the right balance between Surge and Accuracy. Post 2.0 Alacrity shortens the global cool down (GCD). However while for many classes alacirty now increases resource generation it does not improve focus generation for us. So the up shot is that alacrity is garbage compaired to accuracy & surge. You want Zero alacrity - if you get it on gear get rid of it. Vigilance Guardians get 3% accuracy from the skill accuracy. This skill has now gone up in value considerably since accuracy is now more expensive – it allows us more room to stack Surge. Once you get 100% accuracy you want to stack surge. Keys to high DPS while raiding: Doing good DPS against dummies is one thing being able to put out good numbers in actual raid conditions is entirely another. Against a dummy the only thing that is tested is your ability to exicute skills according to a priority and your gear. Every Boss encounter challenges you to vary your play to achieve the best results given the conditions of the specific encounter. 5 Keys to maximising DPS against bosses: 1: Time on target is the single biggest factor affecting your DPS output. A typical boss encounter is 5 min in length - 5 min equates to 200 global cool downs. The DPS player that uses the most of the 200 available will invariably have the biggest total output in the encounter. If you do 2500 DPS against a dummy over 5 min that’s 750,000 damage if you miss 10% of your GCD's that’s a DPS loss of 75,000 if the guy DPSing next to you does only 2250 DPS but hits every GCD he’s gona do 675,000 equalling you even though on paper you are 250 DPS better than him. If you look at the variance in a boss encounter you will quickly realise that 10% time off target is small and 20% difference is easy to get to - 20% is only 60 seconds mucking around. Ranged DPS have it easy in-terms of time on target because all they have to do is change target and keep up the same rotation but Melee often have to navigate the space between targets. Example: On the final boss in TFB you hit tentacles then switch to adds then back to tentacle. If you switch to the add as soon as it appears and leap by the time the add is dead your leap will be rdy to go again and you can leap back to the tentacle - DPS is high because the armour of the add is lower and the smooth transfer from target to target means you maintain with little gap. If you stop DPSing to run you might waste 5 seconds, If your target selection is messy or slow you might waste 5 more, If you arrive at the add with all your big hitting abilities on cool-down you will waste maybe 5 more seconds with a full focus bar and no way to use it. You can see that over the course of a 5 min fight it is easy to waste 60 seconds and drop your output by 20%. Ask yourself: How often do you use force push to refresh leap so you can get back to the target and continue DPS? (bosses dont move when you push em) How often are you first to arrive back at the boss after some encounter dynamic that requires time away from target? (If the sentinel always leaps back faster than you then your DPS is lower not because you’re a guardian but because he’s a better player than you) How often do you spend time working out what to do next or waiting for something? (If you have a gap between targets kill an add don’t just stand there) Do you know the number of targets that need to be present for you to put out better AOE dps then single target DPS and do you start doing single target DPS once the number drops below? If you have the biggest DPS numbers during trash pulls it’s a reasonable indicator that your target selection and transfer is good. Try taking longer to select the next target and see what happens to your position on the MOX output list. 2: Skill priority. If you spend a lot of time practicing your rotation against a dummy you will refine your sense of skill use to the point where you instinctively maintain the best possible skill use when you are on a target for a long period of time. During an actual raid encounter there are many variables the require you to alter your priority’s. For example: If you are between 4 and 10 meters of the boss (Kephess in TFB moves a lot) your priorities should be: 2 stacks - Use Blade Storm, Less than 2 stacks Use Dispatch, Dispatch not up use Saber throw > Blade Storm>force push> stasis (while running for 1 tick). don’t do nothing when you are moving use ranged skills the fact that you don’t have 2 stacks does not make it wrong to use Blade Storm in this instance. Ask Yourself: do I know the best distance and conditions to run away from the target so I can leap and when is it best to close the distance by running. Do you vary your skill use for short bursty periods? Many people use the opening: PB - OS - BS - MS Dispatch. If the encounter is now over half way through the MS your DPS is a lot lower than it would have been if you had used: PB - MS - OS - BS - Dispatch. There are so many short bursty periods in most encounters and being able to match your skill priority to the length of the period is key to maintaining high DPS. For example when the burst period goes for more than 12 seconds it’s correct to go PB - MS - OS - BS - MS - Dispatch again. Ask yourself: Do I always use my clicky relic during the best phases of the encounter and do I consistently have focus and big skills ready to go when I need them (e.g. when Kephess gets hit by the pillar). 3: Don’t Die. If your busy maximising your time on target and you die because you did not want to interrupt a MS cast your an idiot. Dyeing is the single biggest way to lower your DPS - taking damage (from aoe for example) so that you can keep doing DPS is acceptable if the heals are keeping up no problem. If your are constantly taking damage because you want to put out the biggest numbers you’re not gona be liked that much. If you have the lowest damage incoming and the highest damage outgoing your exceptional keep it up. MOX has a tab to tell you the damage incoming as well as damage outgoing you don’t want to be constantly at the top of this list just below the tanks. 4: Pulling Threat. Our threat dump costs up to 14 focus to use. For most classes it is free. The raid leader should know this and give you the guard - not because you going to do the top dps but because your DPS will be considerably lower without it. If you don’t have a guard you might consider going hard out on DPS and using your threat drop when you pull threat rather than before (actually use reflect first then after 3 seconds use threat drop if the tank has not taunted yet). I’m not suggesting you try to pull threat by front loading your damage - give the tank a few seconds lead so that you start slower. I am suggesting that if you pull threat you should then ask for a guard and let people know your threat drop is bad. Dont pull threat when it will wipe the raid (for example on the tanks in EC pulling threat eairly causes the tank to use his taunt and can cause issues that then wipes the raid. The guys I am raiding with at the moment told me not to apologise when I pulled threat 20 seconds into the Writhing encounter in TFB (I had a guard). The tanks like to know that the DPS are gona do all they can to kill the boss fast - good tanks will like being kept on their toes like this. But players that want to prove how good their DPS is by pulling threat are a pain in the ARSE - if you do it once sort out what happened. 5: Focus on Target Hit the right target. In FP this means killing the weak mobs first so they dont go to the heals. In raid it means making sure you hit the target that has a tank attached to it (you can focus target the tank so that you can hit target of target). Dont hit some random mob that you like the look of. Dont break CC's by targeting the wrong mob or using AOE when there are CC's up. If you get threat while attacking the wrong target dont expect the tank to save you. When im tanking I let these DPS die. Parses & Screen Shots: Under Construction

Yes we lost our symetrical rotation - i loved it too. Now we got an asymetrical rotation which means more filler less flow - it sucks. it dose mean more burst fontloaded when we want it. The thing about having sunder on throw is that it provides utility. Ever been in hutbowl where the team i trying to take down the opps tank and you got no leap. Best way to help the team is to apply sunder at range. I agree in pvp i tend to leap first because getting the drop is so important. I think in raids this ability gives us quite a lot more utility than we used to have.

Rage is consistantly 80 to 100 dps behind Vengence on dummies. Additionally vengence parses really badly they get an auto crit on viscious throw during the exicute phase which you dont see on parses and they get more focus in live raids due to aoe damage. Planet J is right - vengence is far superior. Dont even start talking about survivability differences.

Guide updated in preperation for 2.0

actaully you got 3 dps classes that have similarities and are also unique. 2.0 will make vigilance less different which is a pitty imv but will probably be good for their general accecptance as a dps class. Damage wise they do: Master strike 20-25% Bleeds 18 - 20% (plasma brand, overhead slash, and blade storm) Overhead slash 15% Blade Strom 15% Plasma Brand 10% Sunder 10% Sweep 10% Dispatch 10% They are similar to watchman in that the best DPS in generated by getting the bleeds roling then using big instant attacks and master strike. The are similar to combat in that they get more of their damage from big instant attacks than bleeds (sentinals are currently 30% ish). What makes them unique is that they proc Master strike often making this a primary sauce of damage - and they get sunder which is better generating focus than strike and it makes the armour debuff.

play a guardian vigilance will play like watchman in 2.0 but he uses 1 saber. if you play sentinal you gota use 2 sabers or your DPS will be worse than a gril at level 10.

Thanks for that. I think people are pritty down on guardian DPS still - they actaully perform well in the current content i often top or near top the raid dps and i play with top players. In this review the Sentinal is tested with level 72 hilts and 2.0 augments and consumables. with all that he does about 300 dps more add to this that if you look at the parse inwhich the guard does 2500 dps he is very variable this suggests he could prolly do more when he really masters the roations. the gap in reality is going to be very narrow. That said i am very sad that our beutiful symetrical rotation has been taken away. in place we get a priority list very similar to the Sentinal priority list... imv this is a bad move we lose some of the features of vigilance like the auto crit dispatch which makes us much better raiders than parses currently. on the other hand we apply our debuff fast and from range now and our utility has been improved.

Edit: Would be good to see classes with equivalent buff ect - but guess we need to wail till we go live

please link the post where you found this list for 2.0 - i could not find it. thx mate

2nd saber does not actually mean more damage. It depends on what formulas are used to produce damage. for example Sentinals used to get modible offhand while other classes did not this resulted quite a lot of stats in the sentinals advantage - but now all classes get modable off hand. Guardians get Perserverance 6% strength - which buffs strenth and crit. Weather one class or the other does more damage has nothing to do with the second saber this is purely a visual thing. For example if guardians did 100000000k damage with their master strike they would top dps by using it.... EA looks at total DPS output and then looks at what to buff or nurf to get the output they want.

Vigilance get some quite awsume utility that is generally underrated for pvp because the dps numbers are not great. The get high kill numbers in comparison to total damage output because they are not smash monkeys they actually do very good single target dps e.g. saber throw - Leap - Plasma Brand - blade strom - Over head strike - Master Strike - Dispatch = avarages 30k damage in 12 sec. Saber ward lasts almost that long. - they can auto crit dispatch. They get taunts and guard stance if you are into that sort of thing. Force push actually resets leap. This has many applications besides pushing people off stuff. like any time you want to take control of the fight you can push em way and run, guard leap to an ally, force leap back to them or to some other opponent. focus defence is a 19% damage reduction (4% permanant) - that also provide a 10 second self heal. aoe slow stacsis for 3 sec hard cc - that does damage and gives focus - this has good aplication in 1v1 fights where often beiong ableto control em for 3 sec while an important damage ability comes of cool down is the difference between a win and a loss. enure + to total health. Best used to keep you out of dispatch range what they are in dispatch range - also buffs your self heal and you pvp heal pot. a 12 second bleed usefull for invisibility types. unremitting

focus guardians = easy to play glass cannons Vigilance guardians are actually more survivable than sentinals contry to everyones misperceptions DPS for pvp is low currently but will be equivalent to sentinal in 2.0 Sentianl combat and focus has already been said Sentianl watchman i personally find a lot of fun with v good 1v1 dps and decent survivability. personally my fav in vigilance guardian - which will be dangerious in the expansion