No hate from here either Urd, you seem like a nice guy yourself, and much GD members do. I don't mind it very much either, because there are so many nights we play pub x pub all the way, that facing a GD premade is not that terrible. But as I said, I really don't understand how fun it can be to be in a 8man premade fully coordinated against a PuG group, getting easy wins often. You seem to agree from your text yourself, and I'm sure that when you solo and face a pub premade and can't do anything you don't like it that much either hehe. I just wish we could set up more ranked games with premades (GD included), and less normal wz with fully coordinated groups. I specially worry about fresh 50s which have even worst gear then I do, how terrible PvPing must be for them when premades are out there. But let me repeat that I do not think it's GD fault at all on this, it's partly a Bioware problem (lack of valor based matching; too few rankeds and because of that allowing premades to play normal, and so on) and partly a community problem.

On hint I can give you: Before you reach level 50, you could try a more defensive spec for leveling. After you get a healer companion (not going to name it or tell you were you get, but if you dont mind spoilers you can look it up), being a hybrid with a healer is the way to make most fights in this game very easy. I'm leveling a slinger DPS and I can't tell you how much easier guardian fights are in general, simply because we can survive much more than any other tank companion out there (even a sith jugg companion). Also, with the guardian + healer combo you get all the fun in leveling stage, being the one to actually kill everything (if you are DPS and bring a tank companion, he will do some of the killing for you, a healer won't). But that's mostly if you find yourself dieing too much during leveling, since this is your first toon in a MMO I understand it can be hard. After that, you are pretty much set, guardians are very useful if you know how to use it. Don't ignore the way Focus Guardians are doing in PvP though. They have very good mitigation + HUGE dps, it's a very safe spec to go for in 1.4. Gearing up after level 50 can be very hard, so you will be safe there. Vig will be better if you intend to do more level 50 PvE.

I hear you. I play in two different servers, and when it comes to PuGs, in both brackets republic players have a huge passing problem. I can swear republic gets half or even one third of the amount of passing in a game, compared to imperials. I just wish there was some statistics concerning this... Most times republic wins (not counting premades) is when there is a pretty good Guardian + a pretty good healer. Then the concept of grabbing the ball at mid and taking it all the way to the goal line somehow works. In all other situtations, we just keep trying to do it the hard way, and yeah, we have to watch those assassins scoring easy goals.

Neo, I haven't complained in forums or anything like that, but I'm one that disagrees with them. They should do ranked more and 8man normal premades less. Its is true that they end up losing, but there are many days when they win many many matches simply because the other team is not setup at all and can't offer any kind of competition. Specially early in the night, they get some easy games which don't sound fun at all to me. But it is pretty nice when we do win with a random group =). 10 days ago or so we had this awesome match in Void Star. I queued solo and ended up in a nice enough team, we fought a GD premade heroicly. We held them at first door in def. I don't know how many times I interrupted with 1, 0.5 seconds left, but somehow we managed to keep them. Then we nearly stayed at first door ourselves, they were pretty tough, but in the ended we planted. Actually, I planted the bomb and had one of the best games I can remember, yet nobody voted on me =(. Anyway, was a very fun much. Don't recall if you were there...

Sup Raygon! I missed the first "Thursday Night RWZ" in 4 weeks yesterday, but I was there for all others. I'm so sorry I wasn't there yesterday though, the naked wz seems fun. The video is great!! However, whats up with no one targetting you? Did you put up a rule about attacking the organiser being forbidden? eheh. I'm not so sure about why you are mad though, and the title is a bit narcissist lol, but I do agree with the quitters. A couple of weeks ago we wered doing a rwz, not sure you were there organising or not, but in the first game the team I was on lost badly. It was Novare and the other team was much better in terms of setup, so at some point the enemy team 3 capped us and someone complained. The guy that capped even went as far as saying he was sorry ("Didnt know we were taking south at the same time!"), but still when the game was over most of the team just quit. To be honest, in the last 10 ranked games I have played, only two or three times we actually managed to repeat most of the team or adjust/play again. I think everyone should be more commited so that even if it takes a lot to set up the first team (and it usually does), people stay together for 3 or more before quitting. Otherwise having to spend 15, 20, 30 minutes to setup EACH team, and redoing everything after each ranked ends, is just too annoying... Congrats on your enthusiasm and organisation of those events. I will be there next Thursday for sure.

I actually mistyped myself. I think both you and me mean War Leader gear =). http://www.torhead.com/item-set/36B1vTJ/battlemaster-war-leaders-gear

I got it now. Well, I think we are in very similar situations, since I also PvP more and do HM FPs, so we could wait for other considerations. I've said most of what I know. From my part, as a full vig spec I would mostly miss Warding Call, Guard Stance and Blade Barrier. One couldn't call it a huge mitigation loss, considering what you get from Vig. But since I haven't played a full vig before, I will stop answering here =). * You mean War Hero gear, right?

My favorite one is: "Sorry, double CC'd", just after dieing with the ball in Huttball. But I have to say until very recently I said this a lot, lol. I believe in sub-50 WZ I have actually said something like "Sorry, triple CC" once. Took me a while to realize that: 1) People just don't care. You died, tough luck. Try better next time. Nobody care for excuses. 2) Doesn't matter if u were double CC'd, it was your fault the ball was lost. Live with it. It's your job as a carrier to analyse the scenario and make sure you can pass or leap or anything before getting chain CC and dieing. You don't have to get it right all the time, but that's still your fault. About CW, at some point I was mad when people tried to cap right first, ignoring mid. But I can live with that, it works sometimes. What I do hate is when someone says "4 go east!" in Novare Coast, and I'm like "Come on guys, south first, let's put some fight", but in the end we lose the game in a single minute (enemy caps east and south with little effort, while my team is wandering around the map).

I'm down for it myself. Used to have fun in Ilum a month ago or so with a friend, but haven't been there in a while. Quesh sounds just as good. I would also be down for some prizes and general support. Guilds could support with creds or any kind of rewards. I know this goes against what Desi talked about, of people taking it too serious, but maybe prizes could be not for the team who wins, but for the most important player (in popular vote), or even most entertainning player or whatever we could think of. It should get more people attention. A simple idea would be to reward equally both commaders (republic and imperial), no matter the result, and they would give it to the 3 players they considered most effective in the game. I believe most guilds would have no problem donating a reasonable amount for such events (count Bane in). Thanks.

Hi Elisean, nice to see you around. Yeah, some people might complain, but I think you will be fine. Very few people use full Defensive tree specs now a days, it's not considered as good as Def/Vig hybrid, so that helps hybrids like us. Like I said I ended up coming back to a more DEF based spec, but only because I wanted Hilt Strike. It's working pretty well but I'm not sure I will keep it. In PvE we get pretty good mitigation, so biggest issue is aggroing. As long as you have enough skills to help you aggroing (threat generating skills like Hilt Strike, Guardian Slash; or stuns that can help out) your team should do fine. There are many people here in the forum talking about the benefits of having "more DPS" as a tank, like stacking Power and Strength. It helps generating threat and also increases your Blade Barrier damage reduction (I don't know the formula, but it is affected by offensive stats). So with a hybrid tank build you should do as good, if not better, than full tank specs. See you around!

At first glance I thought "wth is this?" =). But I myself like to try different things, so I won't discourage you. However, after getting some experience on both Defence and Vigilance trees, I would say that a Vigilance+Focus Hybrid would be more interesting. The only thing in the Def tree that really matters and your build gets is Warding Call. You don't get as high as Hilt Strike, Guardian Slash and Inner Peace, and didn't even get full points into Blade Barrier and Barricade. Vigilance, on the other hand, have a set of very useful abilities that could help you. On the top of the list is Unremitting Force, a 20% damage reduction plus CC immunity that you can get at every Force Leap (and you will be leaping a lot because of Felling Blow). Single Saber Mastery grants defence and threat generation. If you can get as high as commanding awe, it's one of the best def abilities out there. And Effluence goes very well with your Focus part of the tree. Your post made me think about a Vigilance+Focus build, something that is much more mobile than any other build out there (CC immunity + a third Leap with Zeaolous Leap can make this guy quite interesting), using Sweep as main damage dealer and having some pretty good defensive abilities. If I can manage to get the 20% movement burst after Zealous Leap it would be grat (going to lose Commanding Awe, but would become a Huttball king). It would go mostly like this: Force Leap, Sweep, Guardian Leap back to main group, do anything for a few seconds, then Zealous Leap, Force Push (to activate Force Leap), and repeat. You can have 2 leaps every 15 seconds, one every 20 seconds, a force leap reset with push, plus a 20% movement burst. That's a leap every 5 seconds, 20% movement speed burst 1/3 of the time and 20% damage reduction 1/3 of the time (so every minute you can leap 12 times, get a movement speed burst for 20 seconds and a 20% dmg reduction + cc immunity for 20 seconds as well). Try to kill this fellow =). Sounds fun in theory...

I love Guardian Tanks (my main is one), but truth is we are the ones who have more trouble with aggroing, period. However, it's perfect doable and our single-target tanking/mitigation make up for it. As LarryRow said, most problems with Guardian Tanking is wrong focus from DPS. But you mentioned a specific problem: DPS pulling his threat. There are several things to work on in this case, besides having DPS focus on weaker targets first. Some things others didn't mention and could help: 1. Guarding DPS is not a terrible idea. I'm all about protecting my healer, but as much as it can hurt to not put guard on your healer, sometimes it's a good idea. If the healer can use knockback/stun correctly and you have a pretty strong DPS in the team, try guarding him instead of the healer. This will decrease his threat by a lot, and make gameplay a lot easier. If you do that, let everyone know it so DPS can take care of enemies that target the healer. 2. Use of Guardian Leap. This can be used as a great threat controller. I learned this from guides and videos mostly, and noticed how the "great" tanks use and abuse of guardian leap. Because of PvP, I usually leap to healers more often, but that's not the best thing to do. Leaping between DPS (and only once in a while to the healer) is a pretty good thing. 3. Save your Saber Thrown. I'm not sure the pros do this or not, but personally I avoid wasting my saber thrown at every rotation. Leaping + Sweep usually takes care of first aggro, so I save it for specific situations, like aggroing someone who is hitting the healer a little further away, or trying to re-aggro someone that just got pulled. As others said, it's important for DPS to use their threat debuffs. If you use ST right after this, it's very useful. 4. Stuns/CC. A Guardian is not complete without this. It took me a while to realize that even Freezing Force aggros mobs, but this is not just about aggro/threat, but crowd control in general. Correct use of Stasis, Push, Awe and Seismic Grenades (yeah I use them in both PvP and PvE, they can be your one and only range mezz) is necessary for a good Guardian Tank. Hope this was of some help. Thanks.

I used to play a similar build, but without the Shien Form points. A few weeks ago, I respec'd so I could get Hilt Strike and Command (more Force Push) instead of Overhead Slash and Commanding Awe. Most of the rest is the same. I play 100% tank style, and my gear is 100% War Leader (60% BM, 20% War Hero, a few Recruit left) using Soresu Form. I have a lot of fun and usually am among the top players to contribute to the team (in terms of medals, mvp votes...), so I think I do a few things right. Following opinions cover both specs (Vig/Def spec with Overhead Slash or Def/Vig spec with Hilt Strike). PvP: I play mostly PvP now a days. It is hard to adapt to a completely different gameplay (it's nothing like PvE) but once you do it's both fun and useful. As a tank, we just have to keep in mind that helping the team (mostly other players) is our real job, and not doing direct damage. I have some crit and surge augments, that plus the recent buffs can get me to reasonable damage results (100-150K per game, often 20-30 kills), but that's a secondary objective. Primary objectives are always to: 1) Protect healers (reason why I got Hilt Strike and Command); 2) taunt enemy DPS, specially in big fights (AoE taunt and correct use of stuns can really turn the tide of battles); 3) Make enemy's healers job tougher (again stuns and knockback help with this). That doesn't necessarely mean killing them - doing enough damage that they have to self-heal, or even pushing/freenzing them away from the main group works; 4) help strong DPS players on your team (with both guard and damage). That, plus what we can do in Huttball (yes, tank guardians are among the best players in The Pit, if not the best), really make PvP worth it for us. PvE: Although I don't do it often enough, I have played through all HM FPs but Lost Island, and a couple of SM OPs. A few players go as far as saying I am a pretty good tank, but I think they are just being friendly lol. Guardians have the hardest time aggroing, so if you don't get a good team PvE can be hard, but once you get the hang of it it becomes quite doable. I recently did a quick, safe Kaon Under Siege run (hardest HM for many players) with full PvP gear and with a team that had not a single player with full Columi or better PvE gear. Same with False Emperor and Directive 7, to name a few of the considered hard ones. So I think with PvE gear I can be as good as most tanks out there with my current spec (while we lack in multi-target aggroing, we are pretty good in single-target tanking and mitigation). Only parts I still have trouble are when we aggro as a mistake (and team isn't ready to deal with the mob), or when for some reason DPS can't handle big mobs quickly (sometimes I fail to aggro and they have to stun/run instead of killing; other times they just target wrong - playing with a melee tank, people need to remember to take out weak enemies quickly and by themselves, letting tank+healer handle the elite/champ). So yeah, it is a very useful class. The temptation to go full DPS with focus and hit those 6-7K sweeps is high, but for now I really like the concept, gameplay and benefits of playing a full tank in PvP.

Just you? =) They kill everyone horribly... I have a slinger alt in an european server and its really fun indeed in PvP. I play SS mostly because I feel like its the traditional way to play a GS/sniper - getting as high as possible single target damage. If wanted to do AoE damage or DoT I can think of other classes/specs that could do better than me as a singler. But it's a really interesting class to play with, specially when you start getting the tricks. Don't know for you guys, but things changed a lot for me once I started: ]Forgetting about being alone; I don't do it often (it's a team game), but I can wander off with my Guardian and many DPS can look around for a 1 v 1 match, but as a slinger attacking anything alone is very risky. Make sure you have someone near and you become twice as deadly. Learning to keep a low profile. Coming from a tank spec, it was hard for me to practice this because in my tank I'm all about aggro (yes, there's aggro in PvP, just a more psychological one). But once I learned to keep a distance, position myself well (avoid direct contact with a large group), focusing on those that are getting away from their group (mostly to kill your healers or good dps), all that, I started dieing a lot less (it's not uncommon to be among fewer deaths on the match). I don't see many slingers/snipers topping the damage rank in WZ, but their kills are the most useful ones - if proper planned, SS slingers can take down the most important enemies quickly, making the team's job much easier. Also there are some fun things only slingers can do. Like firing from above in some maps, killing many enemies before being noticed in Huttball mid, knockback + LoS + leg shot + stun while waiting for help in CW turret... And my all time favorite: in Void Star, after destroying first door as an attacker I don't mind dieing quickly. When I respawn, I do just above the panels needed to cross bridge. There are always some fighting there and the GS range is just enough to destroy the enemies defending the panels from above! I go into cover and melt them down one by one, giving them no chance to protect themselves (few LoS options for them) or even know where the damage is coming from!

Nice. We are doing a similar thing in Begeren Colony. Have been trying it for 2 weeks and at least in two nights (Thursdays and Fridays) we are getting a lot more RWZ than usual. I think biggest issue with RWZ right now is queue. You just don't know if queue will pop so people just don't bother. But every time some guys try to organize a ranked group, lots of players join - specially if some well-known players are helping organizing. Even though I understand that for some players the commendation is not the issue, some people seem to ignore the fact that a loss in rwz can give more comms than a win in normal wz. I think it should grant even more too, considering ranked queue is so slow, but right now it is worth it. We just need to make sure the group doesn't have to wait 5x, 10x more than if they just join normal queue...