I'm a recently returned player who is looking for a PVP guild to join on a few of my characters. I mainly PVP on my hybrid Powertech, but am also getting legacy gear to play my Sniper/Operative/Scoundrel. What I'm looking for is a medium-large PVP focused guild (I already have a PVE home) that regularly runs premades and also tries to get ranked to pop. Here are some key facts about me: - I'm over the age of 18 - I turn with my mouse - All of my abilities are keybound - I have above average intelligence - I don't backpedal Feel free to contact me in game on any of the characters below. (My Pub is Sochët, alt code on the ë is 137)

Taking a leave from the game, anyone wanting to start another thread like this can do so pretty quickly with the template here and about 20 minutes of verifying and updating the last few pages.

Pretty much this, and I don't care to elaborate (Haterade got a clearer answer because they deserved one, and for those guys who saw the guild chat, don't worry I'm fine and will be fine. And Mith, I'm sorry to drop this leave on you so soon after joining you guys, couldn't have seen it coming at all). I may be back in game a while down the road, but some time away from this game to sort out some crap is very much needed. Anyone deciding to run this thread can do so with this document to provide the template and updates through about a week ago. Good job Xanther and the rest of Raze clearing TFB in your second week together. Also, Powertech tanks are hands down the best tank in the game. If you disagree then you need to L2P and think outside the pre-2.0 Flame Burst spamming playstyle, the skill cap on this class is as high as Sin tanks AND you don't go squish.

Reserved, with play with Endurance in this post tomorrow.

I've been sitting on these spreadsheets for about a month for pretty much one reason: In the following post there are inconsistencies about when I did and did not account for the Wither debuff for Assassin tank's armor. I noticed I was doing it wrong during my last set of calculations, but the overall results should not be effected as for each row or segment I calculated, the same Sin tank armor value is used. There are just segments that I included Wither's debuff and segments I didn't, and I haven't had the time to redo all of the Sin tank calculations. I'm confident my calculations in the first segment about defense rating are done correctly, and that it's the second post that has the errors in it. What follows is the answer to a question that had been bugging me since 2.0 came out; If you geared entirely for Melee/Ranged damage then how would you fair in a fight that's heavily Force/Tech? As well as the opposite way of gearing for Force/Tech and going into a Melee/Ranged fight. I ended up heavily using KeyboardNinja's stat weighting code to answer this question. The second half of this post addresses the concern I had about losing ~700 endurance for each Veracity ear and implant I took over the Underworld counterpart, and I use KeyboardNinja's Thrasher/Ops Chief spikiness code heavily to address this question. Defense/Shield balancing between NIM TFB and NIM S&V Changes made to KeyboardNinja's stat weighting code: For the try at home crowd (and KeyboardNinja) I made two key changes to the stat weighting code. For Powertech's I removed the average contribution of Oil Slick, it has a 25-28% uptime so while I understand the argument for time averaging it, I throw Oil Slick into the proper Cooldown category. Additionally, I changed boss accuracy to always be 90% for melee/ranged attacks. In the combat logs I have looked through I have seen dodge percentages that fully agree with a 10% increase in effective defense chance. At no point do I try to account for relic effects. Now the methodology in looking at each class is pretty simple. First I look at how Force/Tech heavy a fight is for the code to spit out a result of 0 defense chance. I then see where that falls in relation to the splits I have for S&V and TFB (NIM and HM assumed to have identical damage splits). I then calculate the mitigation for the 0 defense rating case, the TFB case, the S&V case, a 100% melee damage case, as well as a crude average over TFB and S&V case. For S&V I use a 0.79/0.21 Melee/Force damage split, for TFB I use a 0.52/0.48 Melee/Force damage split, and the crude average over the two instances yields a 0.66/0.34 Melee/Force split. Powertechs The case for Powertechs is the easiest as they have no consistent self heals. At a Melee/Force damage split of .58/.42 the code suggests taking 0 Defense Rating. As this is above the Melee/Force ratio I used for TFB, the case of 0 Defense and gearing for TFB are exactly the same. In the chart that follows, the top row labels the Melee/Ranged damage split used to calculate the column. The second row lists the mitigation percentages for each case, and the rows below show how much damage taken per second you will take based on the pre-mitigation DPS listed down the left column. The pre-mitigation DPS values are chosen to roughly correspond with an easy HM fight, a hard HM fight or a NIM fight where both tanks are active (DG or Phase 1 tentacles), and the highest 2 values are meant to get around the heavy damaging NIM tank check (Writhing Horror). All calculations in this section are done with a 2382 mitigation pool, and 3154 base endurance. Melee/Ranged Mitigation 100% Melee S&V S&V/TFB TFB 0 Defense Mit %: 0.711587 0.70972 0.705298 0.698933 0.698933 5000 DPS: 1442 1451 1473 1505 1505 7500 DPS: 2163 2177 2210 2258 2258 10000 DPS: 2884 2903 2947 3011 3011 12500 DPS: 3605 3629 3684 3763 3763 Force/Tech Mitigation 100% Melee S&V S&V/TFB TFB 0 Defense Mit %: 0.618151 0.633124 0.656074 0.668488 0.668488 4000 DPS: 1527 1468 1376 1326 1326 5500 DPS: 2100 2018 1892 1823 1823 8000 DPS: 3055 2935 2751 2652 2652 9500 DPS: 3628 3485 3267 3149 3149 What does this mean? If we look at the extreme values of mitigation % for the Melee case, we see that a 0 defense build only takes 4.4% more melee/ranged damage. At the higher end of damage outputs this came turned into 158 more DTPS. On the other end, a full defense build takes 15.2% more force/tech damage, which at the high end of damage turned out to be 479 more DTPS. Comparing S&V to a 0 defense build, we have the 0 defense build taking 3.7% more melee/ranged damage than the S&V build, and the S&V build taking 10.7% more force/tech damage. This means that if you gear your Powertech with a lot of defense rating, you will only improve your melee/ranged mitgation by a small amount, but you will gimp yourself on Force/Tech damage. If you gear for a minimal defense build, you'll take slightly more melee/ranged damage, but your Force/Tech mitigation will be significantly better (and in fact, far better than any Jugg or Sin build, making a minimal defense Powertech the best Force/Tech tank in the game, so claims of Powertech's needing a 5 second F/T cooldown have no merit). What you should do: Start getting rid of your defense rating. A 0 defense build is not actually possible since you'll have 70 Defense from a stim, and Ear, Implant, and the BIS relic all tend to carry defense on them. Furthermore, getting either Bastion or Bulwark 31 enhancements can be a pain, so getting rid of your defense enhancements can be difficult as well. Assassins For Assassins the contribution of self healing (taken to be 300 HPS) tweaks how we look at mitigation percentage, but the methodology is the exact same as for Powertechs. For Assassins a Melee/Force ratio of .60/.40 suggests a 0 Defense Rating build, so the case of 0 Defense Rating and gearing for TFB are the same. In the chart that follows, the top row labels the Melee/Ranged damage split used to calculate the column. The second row lists the mitigation percentages for each case, and the rows below show how much damage taken per second you will take based on the pre-mitigation DPS listed down the left column. The pre-mitigation DPS values are chosen to roughly correspond with an easy HM fight, a hard HM fight or a NIM fight where both tanks are active (DG or Phase 1 tentacles), and the highest 2 values are meant to get around the heavy damaging NIM tank check (Writhing Horror). Melee/Ranged Mitigation 100% Melee S&V S&V/TFB TFB 0 Defense Mit %: 0.665603 0.665223 0.660353 0.653894 0.653894 5000 DPS: 1372 1374 1398 1431 1431 7500 DPS: 2208 2211 2247 2296 2296 10000 DPS: 3044 3048 3096 3161 3161 12500 DPS: 3880 3885 3946 4026 4026 Force/Tech Mitigation 100% Melee S&V S&V/TFB TFB 0 Defense Mit %: 0.507497 0.539712 0.556968 0.570637 0.570637 4000 DPS: 1670 1541 1472 1417 1417 5500 DPS: 2409 2232 2137 2061 2061 8000 DPS: 3640 3382 3244 3135 3135 9500 DPS: 4379 4073 3909 3779 3779 What does this mean? This is a bit trickier than the Powertech case since the self healing is static, and as the boss damage increases the contribution of self healing is diminished. This makes it hard to pick 1 row off the Melee/Ranged table and look at 1 row off the Force/Tech table since I didn't choose damage levels that are exactly equivalent between the two damage types. What I will do is compare the raw mitigation percentages, and the second to last rows. For a 100% melee/ranged build, the raw mitigation is only 1.7% better than a 0 Defense build against melee/ranged attacks, but the 0 Defense build has 12.4% better mitigation against Force/Tech attacks. If we compare roughly equivalent damage levels, the 0 Defense build will take 3.8% more melee damage, or 118 DTPS, than the 100% melee build. On the other hand, the 100% melee build will take 16.1% more force/tech damage, or 506 more DTPS, than the 0 Defense build. Comparing the S&V build to the 0 Defense build, we see that the raw mitigation for melee damage of the S&V build is 1.7% better than the 0 Defense build. But the raw mitigation of the 0 defense build is 6.3% better against force/tech damage than the S&V build. At similar damage levels, the 0 Defense build will take 1.2% more melee damage, or 113 more DTPS, than the S&V build. At the same time, the S&V build will take 7.0% more force damage, or 247 more DTPS, than the 0 Defense build. This means that if you gear your Powertech with a lot of defense rating, you will only improve your melee/ranged mitgation by a small amount, but you will gimp yourself on Force/Tech damage. If you gear for a minimal defense build, you'll take slightly more melee/ranged damage, but your Force/Tech mitigation will be significantly better. What you should do: You already shouldn't have much defense rating if you've followed KeyboardNinja's advice since his numbers are for an S&V build. A 0 defense build is not actually possible since you'll have 70 Defense from a stim, and Ear, Implant, and the BIS relic all tend to carry defense on them. Furthermore, getting either Bastion or Bulwark 31 enhancements can be a pain, so getting rid of your defense enhancements can be difficult as well. Juggernauts For Juggs the contribution of self healing (taken to be 120 HPS) tweaks how we look at mitigation percentage, so the results will need to be interpreted similar to Assassins. For Juggs, a Melee/Force ratio of .43/.57 suggests a 0 Defense Rating build. Unlike Sins or Powertechs, This leads to a 0 Defense build being distinct from a TFB build. In the chart that follows, the top row labels the Melee/Ranged damage split used to calculate the column. The second row lists the mitigation percentages for each case, and the rows below show how much damage taken per second you will take based on the pre-mitigation DPS listed down the left column. The pre-mitigation DPS values are chosen to roughly correspond with an easy HM fight, a hard HM fight or a NIM fight where both tanks are active (DG or Phase 1 tentacles), and the highest 2 values are meant to get around the heavy damaging NIM tank check (Writhing Horror). Melee/Ranged Mitigation 100% Melee S&V S&V/TFB TFB 0 Defense Mit %: 0.700847 0.700408 0.697376 0.690619 0.676244 5000 DPS: 1376 1378 1393 1426 1499 7500 DPS: 2124 2127 2150 2200 2308 10000 DPS: 2872 2876 2906 2974 3118 12500 DPS: 3619 3625 3663 3747 3827 Force/Tech Mitigation 100% Melee S&V S&V/TFB TFB 0 Defense Mit %: 0.569359 0.588333 0.599328 0.610561 0.624916 4000 DPS: 1603 1527 1483 1438 1380 5500 DPS: 2249 2144 2084 2022 1943 8000 DPS: 3325 3173 3085 2996 2881 9500 DPS: 3971 3791 3686 3580 3443 What does this mean? Similar to Assassins, the self healing leads to different mitigation percentages and thus damage taken ratios, based on high high the incoming damage is. The case for 0 Defense rating is also distinct from the TFB gearing case, so I'll summarize a comparison between a 100% melee build vs 0 Defense build, and a S&V build vs a TFB build. Comparing the raw mitigation percentages, the 100% melee build has 3.6% better melee/ranged mitigation than the 0 Defense build (compare to 1.8% for PT and 1.7% for Sins). On the other hand, the 0 Defense build has 9.8% better force/tech mitigation than the 100% melee build. At roughly comparable damage levels (10000 melee vs 8000 force) this leads to the 0 Defense build taking 8.5%, or 246 more DTPS, more melee damage than the 100% melee build. The 100% melee build will then take 15.4%, or 444 DTPS, more force damage than the 0 Defense build. Looking at the S&V and TFB builds, we see that for raw mitigation, the S&V build has 1.4% better melee/ranged mitigation than the TFB build. On the other hand, the TFB build has 3.8% better Force/Tech mitigation than the S&V build. At roughly comparable damage levels, this leads to the TFB build taking 3.4%, or 98 DTPS, more melee damage than the S&V build. And for force damage, the S&V build will take 5.9%, or 178 DTPS, more force damage than the TFB build. This means that while Juggs have the wildest differences in melee/ranged damage taken, and a very wide range of force/tech damage taken when comparing a 100% melee build to a 0 Defense build, the actual operations in the game show a Jugg geared for 1 operation will still do fine in the other operation. For Juggs it actually looks like splitting the difference between the S&V and TFB melee/force ratios leads to the best results for tanks working on both of those operations. What you should do: Probably nothing. If you've geared for S&V following KeyboardNinja's numbers, then dropping a small amount of defense in favor of absorb will make TFB go smoother without really effecting your S&V performance. If you've geared outside of the 79/21 and 52/48 damage splits, you'll want to bring your gear more in line with one of those operations. Spikiness In regards to the above discussion about how much defense vs shield/absorb to take, I did some quick runs of the different builds through KeyboardNinja's Thrasher/Ops Chief spikiness code. I'm not sure how to interpret the results, so I'm hoping KeyboardNinja can chime in with his knowledge of how the code works. Basically for all 3 tanks, taking less defense led to better survivability on Thrasher, but worse survivability on Ops Chief (likely because the spikiness on Ops Chief is 1 ranged attack). Powertechs: A 100% melee build gave a Thrasher death chance of 3.398, and a 0 Defense build gave a chance of 3.321. This makes the 100% melee build 2.3% more likely to die on Thrasher. A 100% melee build gave an Ops Chief death chance of 4.588, and a 0 Defense build gave a chance of 4.761. This makes the 0 Defense build 3.7% more likely to die on Ops Chief. Assassins: A 100% melee build gave a Thrasher death chance of 4.075, and a 0 Defense build gave a chance of 3.916. This makes the 100% melee build 4.1% more likely to die on Thrasher. A 100% melee build gave an Ops Chief death chance of 8.397, and a 0 Defense build gave a chance of 8.649. This makes the 0 Defense build 3.0% more likely to die on Ops Chief. Juggernauts: A 100% melee build gave a Thrasher death chance of 3.651, and a 0 Defense build gave a chance of 3.545. This makes the 100% melee build 3.0% more likely to die on Thrasher. A 100% melee build gave an Ops Chief death chance of 5.665, and a 0 Defense build gave a chance of 5.785. This makes the 0 Defense build 2.1% more likely to die on Ops Chief.

Settle down, the guy reporting the bug used two Partisan relics and the patch note only explicitly said Arkanian, Underworld, and Kell Dragon relic. As for the sim... maybe I'll get to it. I think some interesting results may come out of it since my short testing (1 minute dying to flashpoint trash) of the double procs showed the had a likelihood of proccing around the same time. Maybe the 7-15 minute boss fights change that, maybe they don't.

Patch note: "Arkanian, Underworld and Kell Dragon proc relics will no longer prevent other Arkanian, Underworld and Kell Dragon procs of a different type from activating." Says nothing about Conqueror or Partisan relics. I tested the Underworld Fortunate Redoubt and Arkanian Shield Amplification and they are both proccing at the same time.

Vanguards have a rough draft of their questions up (and ask them next Friday): http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=668352 They're basically asking the obvious questions: 1) Can we have better defensive cooldowns and survivability in pvp? 2) Why is the Hybrid outperforming both pure specs in PVE? 3) *** is up with our burst? So based on them asking those obvious questions next week I think we need to reevaluate the direction we're taking the PT question set since most of our proposed questions fall into those three. And since my last post seemed to be blatantly ignored, I'm going to reiterate: Powertech Tank cooldowns are FINE in PvE. It's a waste of a question to ask for our tank tree to be buffed into the OP realm when the other two trees are struggling so much.

I'm curious about how you arrived at this BIS setup. Are you looking at the relic tables you've had up since 2.0 and taking the 2 relics with the highest rating for each class, or are you running a sim/calculation where you find the average mitigation of each relic pairing? Reason I ask is for Guardians and Vanguards, the defense proc is clearly BIS, and the second relic comes down to: abs proc 0.3130 0.3023 0.3168 0.0038 pvp 0.3134 0.3168 0.0034 Since the absorb proc is only 11% better than a static pvp relic, I think it's possible that a defense proc/war hero pairing could be better than a defense proc/absorb proc since the value of the absorb proc is diminished every time the defense proc is active and increasing defense chance by ~4.5%. To better illustrate my point, my Jugg tank is sitting at 20.5/41/31 for def/shield/abs. Now with in combat buffs and 90% boss accuracy, I dodge 40.5% of all melee/ranged attacks, giving me an effective shield percentage of 0.595*0.41 = 24.4% shield. With the defense proc active, I'm dodging 45% of all melee/ranged attacks, giving me an effective shield percentage of 0.55*0.41 = 22.5%. So that means the defense proc decreases the absorb proc relic's chances of proccing, or applying its increased absorb by 1.9% during that 6 second window.

You're linking a 2710 parse which doesn't make the top 5.

Wrong dummy, updated all of the rest during massive patch download.

Very annoying mechanic/bug that can wipe an otherwise flawless run. Here's what I've heard as explanations work arounds: -Taunt the boss right after the black obtuse channel ends. -Taunt the boss right before the black obtuse channel ends. -Everyone must be inside the shield around Operator when black obtuse channel ends. -It's a heal check and you just have to have everyone topped off. I've tried all of the in NIM as the main tank. The first 3 do not work 100% of the time, at best they work 50% of the time. The last strategy isn't really a strategy, but is a blunt and straight forward way of dealing with it, but it can be pretty difficult some times.

Denchet used to mark inactive or disbanded guilds on the progression lists to keep people from trying to apply to a defunct guild or making assumptions about them, and I think it's time for me to do the same. The following guilds haven't had an update since the WH, most of those kills being 2 months ago (note, I am making presumptions here, but I have no intention for these presumptions to be insulting): Decimation 6/12 10:30 am - Saw a lot of their members joined Hatred, would like to know if this guild is still going without them. Ewokalypse Now 6/12 10:50 am - I don't know anything about these guys. Tatooine Royal Navy 6/12 5:13 pm - Will mark as defunct since Denchet would be running this thread otherwise. Psy-Ops 6/12 5:44 pm - Still around Tyranny 6/12 7:14 pm - Their core raiders are all elsewhere, will mark as defunct/inactive unless a current Tyranny member says otherwise. Knights of the First Order 6/12 7:27 pm - I don't know anything Pub side Solo's Cholos 6/12 10:29 pm - I don't know anything Pub side Night Stalkers 6/13 12:53 am - I think they're still around, I'll be tracking down one of their guys in game tonight to ask him. Fearless Arms 6/13 1:02 am - I don't know anything Pub side Swoop Gang 6/19 7:28 pm - I don't know anything Pub side Excession 6/20 5:09 am - I don't know anything Pub side Underhanded 7/18 5:55 pm - Kill was reported with as "This guild doesn't really raid anymore," I'll be marking them as inactive unless told otherwise.

I've been trying to word this question on my own but can't get it to come out right. Essentially there's a VG/PT mirror asymmetry in regards to auto-attack. For Vanguards Hammer Shot is 7 separate attacks, and for Powertechs Rapid Shots is 5 separate attacks. For Shield Tech and Pyro specs, the cylinder's effect is to give a 15% chance for any damaging attack to proc a DoT. For Shield Tech that DoT proc also reduces the cooldown on Heat Blast, which is the only active mitigation a PT tank has. For Pyro the asymmetry is less important, but Rapid Shots is the only way for a PT to DoT a target farther than 10 meters away, allowing Rail Shot to light up (the need for this almost never comes up in PVE, but can be the difference in a PVP scenario). The problem arises in that each separate damaging attack has a chance to proc the cylinder. So a Vanguard activating Hammer Shot has 7 chances to proc the cylinder, compared to a Powertech activating Rapid Shots having 5 chances to proc the cylinder. This works out to about a 50% chance for a Powertech to proc the cylinder, and a 62.5% chance for a Vanguard to proc the cylinder. As for the format of how we should be asking the questions, I would be very hesitant to ask a question relating to PVE tanking. The Shield Tech tree is in a very good place right now, and asking "Can we have another CD" will likely get a response of "No," but at best will get a response of "No, your CD uptimes are more than comparable to the other tank classes, and you don't need a 5 second I WIN button against Force/Tech damage since your Force/Tech mitigation is miles above the other two classes." My troll question to ask would be "Now that every other class is parsing 3k, can we have our PTS auto-critting pyro hybrid that parses 3k back?" But really, would like to see some love for Powertech DPS.

If the single weakness of VG's is their cooldown suite then I have to ask if you paid attention to the 2.0 patch notes. Kolto Overload got taken from nearly useless all the way up to the best heal in the game. Energy Shield got its duration increased, and is now the longest cooldown in the game. Oil Slick had its effect increased by 50% making it quite a powerful cooldown. Increase Sin tank armor while decreasing their other stats, and decrease Jugg tank armor while increasing other stats. All tanks have roughly the right amount of average mitigation, it's just the spikiness that's causing imbalances. I've played with KeyboardNinja's Ops Chief and Thrasher spikiness code, and there are only 2 parameters with a significant effect on spikiness; armor rating and health pool. Right now Sin tanks can greatly increase their chances to live through spikes by taking B lettered mods and UW/KD ears and implants over the Veracity ones (which is why I roll my eyes at any tank, but especially a Sin who claims to be BIS with 34k health). But that increased chance to live still leaves them far behind Jugg tank spikiness, and only tweaking armor will fix that. As for your quip about current content being designed to obliterate 1 tank more than the other, I'll kindly point out that a lot of the NIM content is designed to accommodate Sin tanks. Huge Grenade is 7 simultaneous attacks, the Writhing Horror's melee attack is 3 simultaneous attacks and his force attack is 2 simultaneous attacks. Any time 1 attack is broken down into several hits a Sin tank. And before you chime in about many attacks blowing through your Dark Ward stacks, a Sin tank should be expected to continuously have Dark Ward up if the APS is 1.67 or less, meaning bosses that attack on a 1.5 second GCD, attack with an average of 2.5 simultaneous attacks. I'll spot you Terminate. I think the intention was for it to force tank swaps to cycle good cooldowns, but the design of the attack allows Jugg tanks to just cycle their own cooldowns, and allows Powertechs to just eat it.

I fell out of my chair laughing at your Kelsara phase strategy. Tell the Sentinels to go sit in a corner during that phase while your 20 Gunslingers take care of everything. Good luck on the rest of the run.

Did you remember to hit your interrupt on Ciphas once actual damage numbers started flying off his head?

I'm going to weigh in as a pre-2.0 hybrid Jugg. Most of the NIM EC or HM TFB fights could have threat issues resolved by either letting the Sin tank pull first (WH, Op 9, Kephess, Vorgath, phase 2 Terror), or by waiting or being forced to wait to DPS (DG, T&Z, EC Kephess). That left the NIM Tanks and phase 1 of the Terror as the real threat test. The EC Tanks were a tight enough DPS check that you couldn't hold the DPS, and the timing of the swap kept taunt fluffing from being heavily used. Phase 1 of the Terror made each tank in the raid accountable for holding threat 4 separate times, but there was no penalty for taunt fluffing. The EC tanks were really the only 1.4-2.0 fight that a Jugg tank could wipe the raid by losing aggro (which I did even after earning the Warstalker title several times over and having no issues with phase 1 of the Terror). Now where can Sin tanks wipe the raid now? Most progression fights and some HM fights. 8 man Writhing Horror dropped my co-tank in 2 seconds on one of our first few pulls. Kephess the Undying Power Punched his face in during our progression kill. Then there's a really key point when trying to compare pre-2.0 Jugg threat to current Sin spikiness. Pre-2.0 Juggs could solve the issue the vast majority of the time with skill. But Sins can't out skill a bad set of defense/shield rolls.

Updated all the above.

What time zone is this picture taken in? Congrats to Hatred for a world first.

Blow your preferred cooldown, have the other tank taunt the boss off you and keep him until the next terminate using his preferred cooldown. Etc.

I thought the Heroic missions were only around to occupy a bunch of flagged baddies while you pick them off 1 by 1?

I'm running both a Jugg and a PT through NIM progression right now (2 NIM Kills on the Jugg, 3 on the PT). Anyone claiming PT's are gimped is trying to play them as the pre-2.0 Flame Burst spamming variant. Their utility is amazing, their damage output is fantastic, they don't suffer from spike issues, and their cooldowns are actually quite good (18 seconds on Energy Shield is almost as long as the Imperiling Serenity relic). For Jugg's, I'm not sold on them being beyond OP aside from Saber Reflect. I think the way to nerf it is to tweak some boss damages to just bypass Saber Reflect. Best example of this is Scream from the Terror. I'm not there in NIM yet so I don't know if it works there, but a Jugg shouldn't be able to Saber Reflect scream if a Sin can't Force Shroud it. I'm not even sure how a Jugg is able to Saber Reflect it, seeing how it's actually a cleave and not a single target ability. It's not a nerf or buff sort of thing, but I would like to see the gap between Jugg and Powertech armor become noticeable again. Having Jugg armor only .5% behind PT armor really infringes on the Powertech's special niche. The above idea of upping absorb chance on a Jugg would be a good way to do that since proper Jugg gearing has absorb just over 30%, so shielding an attack doesn't really do that much. On a different note, I got to try the 2 Sin tanks on 16 man HM Thrasher a few days ago. That was hilariously impossible, and was a nice practical lesson in Sin tank spikiness.

The "high threat" tag actually isn't a flat 50% threat increase before tank stance. Including the tank stance, the following abilities have the following threat modifiers: Smash - 230% threat increase Crushing Blow - 250% threat increase Discharge - 260% threat increase Wither, Backhand - 300% threat increase Ion Overload (PT cylinder dot) - 800% threat increase Flame Sweep and Sweeping Slash also have talented threat increases, but I pretty much only use those on trash and don't want to go log diving for them. I'm pretty sure Sweeping Slash has the same threat modifier as Smash. For the grapples, Sin grapple is around 9k threat and should be an Assassin's opening move on a pull. Powertech grapple is 2.7k threat and is a waste of a GCD on the pull. Both of those values are completely static and found from logs (PT threat grapple hasn't changed by even 1 threat since I hit my PT to 50 in December). Log excerpts backing these claims (just take the threat done and divide it by the damage done)

What incompetent way is everyone else doing Xeno? Sin tanks cloak out as soon as the Thermal Tolerance channel starts. You get one stack of 20% damage increase debuff, and can even taunt the boss right back and continue tanking just fine with 1 stack. If you're a Jugg or PT tank you need to tank Xeno from range when you know the Thermal Tolerance is coming and run behind one of the pillars. You do this because otherwise you end up with a massive damage taken increase debuff that gimps your raid if you let it ride up to 10 stacks. If you screw up the timing popping a cooldown and either interceding to ranged or hitting hydraulic overrides should help you get behind a pillar before 10 stacks.