have you checked "Show Detailed Tooltips" in the game preferences?

I'd also augment with shield augments, your shield chance seems unusually low. you could also stand to lose some accuracy.

well in PvP if you want to be tanky going up the middle tree is your best bet, if you go up the right tree I personally suggest getting Assault Plastique for the sole reason that AP + HIB can produce quite a bit of burst. Note my comments on the right tree are my personal preference. There are also hybrid builds people use, 2/22/22 and 8/22/16. I personally don't like playing the middle tree in PvP that isn't to say it's not viable, it's a style preference. The Hybrids also should be viable in PvP since they generally parse a little better than the right tree or the middle tree. The Carolina Parakeet build that ZillaElite mentioned is a Left and Right tree hybrid, and was very popular a long time ago, long before 55 even happened. Iron Fist was a Left and Middle tree hybrid, where you'd go up in the left tree to get storm and you'd go into the middle tree to get Gut and Frontline Defense. The reason why people stopped using it was that Energy Blast's ammunition regeneration helped to manage your ammunition and in the end the damage you'd get and the fact that you can use it between global cooldowns made it entirely not worth it to use the Iron Fist build anymore. A modern variation of it is probably possible, but I'll be honest in that I'm not sure how it would perform. 2.0 brought about a very important change to the way shield and defense chances work. Shields can activate on any attack that does kinetic or energy damage. Defense (dodging) can only happen if you're dealing with a Ranged or Tech attack. So that means in PvP if you're stacking lots of shield/absorb you'll fair decently overall the only thing you'll be not great against mitigation wise is against a damage overtime build, whereas if you're stacking a lot of defense you'll only be great against specific classes and builds (ie. gunslinger/sniper left tree, or sage middle tree).

it adds threat regardless of it pulling the target or not, but as the other 2 stated it's not a huge amount, it could probably be better.

Yes and no to the stockstrike thing. From the skill tree you get +4% shield chance, and if you're not running Ion Cell you only get 5% shield chance from having a shield. So if you're not running any shield chance at all you have a base +9% shield chance and half of the time when your shield pops up do you even get a reset on the stockstrike cooldown. Ion Cell gives +15% shield chance, bringing the total to +24% shield chance. Also Neural Overload doesn't work without Ion Cell (so if you're not using Ion Cell Neural overload is a wasted point). So yes you'll be using it more because if you run Ion Cell you have a 12% potential chance to reset it. If you don't run Ion cell that potential chance is 4.5%. I say potential because if you dodge an attack you can't shield it. Running Plasma Cell with Ion Accelerator ability allows you to guarantee that Ion Accelerator comes up within every 6 second period. So you can potentially use High Impact Bolt every 6-8 seconds depending on your global cooldowns. Without Plasma Cell on, Ion Accelerator doesn't work. So you choose: Potential 12% chance to reset stockstrike or Guaranteed HIB reset with potential 4.5% chance to reset stockstrike. Also as far as survival it will have a much lower survivability than a pure tank because you're missing a lot of stuff like the 6 second absorption boost from Energy Blast. From a damage standpoint you lose a lot of little bonuses here and there, and more importantly you lose 30% critical hit damage on Ion Pulse and High Impact bolt, which I think actually would impact your damage quite a bit, since you're hitting HIB every 6-8 seconds and Ion Pulse is used liberally as part of your rotation. I cant say how much dps you will actually lose because I haven't tested it, but do keep in mind that you lose a lot of Tech Power switching from a Generator to a Shield. The best thing about the build that was posted by the original poster is probably the fact that it has a gap closer for a dps. Yes I know hold the line can be used as a gap closer, but Storm is so much better than hold the line for most cases (being that you don't have to jump to someone in cover). The ability to jump to a second floor after being knocked off it is something about storm that is a bit better than Hold the Line. That utility though I personally don't think is worth 13 points, I say 13 because the first 8 points (2 brutal impact, 3 steely resolve, 3 Overcharged cell Capacitor) are abilities that directly help your damage. You could cut it down to 9 IF Static Field and Rebraced Armor give you enough extra uptime to be better than the where those 4 points would otherwise be spent.

yeah harpoon has a flight time as well. Though I don't understand why the single taunt has a flight time since it's a laser thing that shoots it should be instant. Though about the harpoon flight time I find it sometimes useful because i can hit harpoon and position myself while the animation is going.

I can play the hybrid specs, and I do play tactics every now and again, but I don't like to play the hybrid much personally. However my statement was more of a rebuttal to someone saying that 2.4 brought the death of the hybrid vanguard/powertech builds. I'm also not crazy enough though to say that because something performs well on a dummy it will yield results in ops. I do however believe that it gives an indicator on a relative relationship. For example if you parse on spec A and produce 200 dps more than spec B, I think that in an ops boss fight that you'll get somewhere from 0-200 more dps in spec A vs spec B. However because of situations or things even this may not necessarily be true. I would however argue that what you end up parsing is somewhat dependent on gear. I could never produce much more (difference was about 100 dps) in the hybrid specs when I first tested them against a dummy, however I was running old pre-2.0 crit/surge gear. As a rebuttal to the last bit, I'd argue personally that Tactics has better damage mitigation compared to assault because of 2 reasons: Power Armor (straight 2% damage reduction) Reflexive Shield (20% chance to get a shield that absorbs damage and reduces CD on Reactive Shield).

If you want to kill stuff going full tank building the Combat Tech 4 piece set is really good because of the bonus to Stockstrike. This is something people used to do, and even Taugrim stopped doing it after 1.3. I can only assume after 1.3 it was no longer worth it because they broke his Iron Fist build and the mitigation was far more worth it. Now though the mitigation from running full shield/absorb gear is probably far more worth it than anytime before because of how they reworked the way shields work.

Do you take Rapid Recharge? and based on your personal impressions do you think having 1 alacrity enhancement would help? or hurt? The other question if you have Rapid Recharge are you using Reserve Power Cell and Rapid Reload on cooldown/as necessary?

I don't know if this statement is necessarily true, I know for a fact that on my server people are still running hybrid specs, as evidenced by this thread. 2/22/22 is the top parse right now at a little above 3400. The other variation I've been seeing people run is 8/22/16 for that extra elemental damage. I don't know how it compares to your parses or your server's parses but at least it seems viable to me. On the other hand I would like to know why you say that Assault has better defenses in PvP than Tactics, most people believe the opposite.

I've always said this to some of the other vanguard tanks in my guild, where it always seemed like there was a delay in taunt time because of the animations and they've always told me they didn't think so. Nice to know other people experience it.

no, its' not what I think, I ran several flashpoints without blaster augs, because I put some thought into it and realized that blaster augs should be garbage. I tanked them the exact same way I normally would, and I ended up not being able to hold threat whenever it came to the group pulls. I only changed 1 thing, I had taken that one point of out of blaster augs and put it into heavy stock, since I've always favoured heavy stock over brutal impact. Based on that empirical experience I realized that lack of blaster augs at the time proved to be not optimal for the way i played. As I said "I can only speculate . . . " I didn't know the reason then, and I still don't really know the reason now.

this is something I will admit, to be honest I believe (haven't really checked my parses) that Heavy Stock will yield better threat increases than Brutal Impact. As I said it's a personal choice that in the past used to make sense, and now it doesn't really matter since it doesn't make a difference as far as I can feel. Admittedly I haven't checked my parses with it that much.

serendipitous assault is a must have for dps no matter what. After that the crit seems like an okay choice?

healing a dps geared tank is ridiculously tough.

assault and pyrotech are the same thing . . . are you talking about Advanced Prototype/Tactics? well if Stockstrike and Ion Pulse are going to be your main attacks with any build you choose, and then you have either High Impact Bolt, or Pulse Cannon as your big attack. You fill in Hammer shot as needed to keep your ammunition up.

Since you're tanking I'd suggest putting a bit more in Shield/Absorb rather than Defense. As for damage you could augment Aim as the previous poster said, but as a tank don't worry too much about damage your main function is to mitigate damage (I'm assuming you're going full tank since you went with full supercommando set). Personally if I were to tank again (in PvP) on my vanguard I'd run 2 piece Combat Tech and 2 piece Supercommando set. Though if you just wanted kills in PvP ranking board you can just attack as many people as possible everytime you go into combat. The main point of a tank in PvP however is to mitigate damage and disrupt healers (if you can). So your protection stats in the ranking board are really what you should be paying attention to. The other thing to note though tanks don't get appreciated much in PvP. I've won warzones where I've ended with 280k protection, and gotten 0 MVP votes. Warzones where I've broken 400k protection generally have always been losses for me.

we got nerfed because of all the PvP whiners that would whine about AP + HIB. I used to run my 4 piece commando PvP bonus and had near 50% crit rate on HIB and managed to pull about 1400 in TFB on a normal basis. I don't know if that's good but I was told by other guild members at the time that 1600 in actual ops was not easy to maintain.

this build hasn't been viable for a long time. They changed it so you can't benefit from a Ion Accelerator without having Plasma Cell on. In which case all those points past 8 that you put in the left tree are better spent elsewhere since all they give you is utility and not damage or mitigation for that matter (since you'll have to run Ion Cell with a shield to really benefit from things like static shield) as the guy who posted above me said you might as well run a tactics build if you want to be more tanky.

I would disagree with this statement on not needing tank gear for non-hard mode flashpoints. Vanguard was my first character, I became a decent tank, and while levelling, I did a lot of flashpoints. I'd run flashpoints for gear but even with full tank gear I could still easily get ripped apart because of undergeared or bad healers, or sometimes just bad dps who decide that they should kill the strongest enemy possible and expect you to just sort of tank everything and kill everything else before the gold(s) go down.

So i've got a question, I don't tank on my vanguard in PvP anymore, but how does it stack up to switching guards all the time? From what I understand one of the best tactic in Ranked PvP (as a tank) is to constantly switch your guard to the person being focused. This actually plays havoc with opposing team's ability to take someone down because it helps your healers keep the person up and when they switch target, you switch your guard (obviously maintain taunts throughout). However if you're spending most of your time attacking, and taunting switching guards isn't something you can constantly do. I also try to play as a tank in PvP from the mindset that your job is to mitigate damage first and disrupt healers second. So I'll actually spam node channels sometimes to take damage off my team.

good melee shouldn't be standing in front of you or slightly to the right/left

this is very true even very good tech healers aren't always going to get your dots off, I've landed a lot of Assault Plastique/Thermal Detonator hits timed with High Impact Bolt/Rail Shot because a healer can't react fast enough to cleanse everything. One thing to remember about the right tree (Assault/Pyro) is that a healer has a 5 second cooldown to try to cleanse something off. Your Stockstrike/Rocket Punch always lands the dot, and your basic attack will get you a dot, not to mention Incindiary Round/Incindiary Missile will guarantee it if your dots get cleansed off. One thing to keep in mind is timing when it comes to running the right tree, if they cleanse your dots first it's fine as long as Assault Plastique wasn't affected. I've run both trees, and hybrids from 2/22/22 and 8/22/16 in PvP. However playstyle wise in PvP I still prefer a full Assault over tactics. The burst from Assault Plastique is just a little hard to ignore for me. With the recent changes in 2.4 ammunition management in full assault is a LOT better. You can practically maintain Incindiary Round on your target along with Assault Plastique on cooldown, which is something you could never do when I started playing assault tree.

I would say play what you feel is the most fun. If you however want to tank, level as a tank as the previous poster said. Tanking is . . . well it's tanking, situational dependent and will be the hardest to switch to if you decide in the middle "i don't like this and want to try something else" The middle tree is an Area dps build for the most part, you need a minimum of 22 points in it for the area damage to really come out. The right tree is mostly single target, however the recent most popular builds on the server i'm on are 8/22/16 to get High Impact Bolt to recycle every 6 seconds, and get pulse cannon to have it's damage boost. If you've played a Jugg/Guardian or Sentinel/Marauder the middle tree is a lot like the right tree there, you build up your 3 stacks of damage increasers and then you unload. The vanguard/powertech however builds its damage increaser through attacks, and the unload is a 3 second channel (Pulse Cannon/Flamethrower). The right tree centers mostly around High Impact Bolt/Rail Shot, a big hit on a target that requires a dot on it otherwise you can't use that attack. You need 16 points in this tree to open up the biggest portion of damage which allows you to refresh your High Impact Bolt cooldown every 6 seconds. So the style is instant attacks until you get that Ionic Accelerator then fire off.

So the problem with this tactic is that you're great when it comes to dealing with a sniper/gunslinger in the left tree. Since defense doesn't affect force or tech attacks, it will only affect melee or ranged attacks, so that Sniper's 100% accuracy is immediately dropped down to 80% since your 20% dodge pushes that accuracy off the table. However when it comes to say a Vanguard/Powertech, or a Sage/Sorc you're in trouble. Since a lot of their attacks are Force or Tech. Stacking defense in PvP is great if you know you're up against mostly non-tech and non-force attacking people, if not (which most specs are skewed heavier in force or tech attacks) you're in trouble.