go....

Great post, with a lot of good info for us new Jug's out there. Thank you I have a few questions... 1. Is it worth 2 points in intimidation, when one point makes it essentially free with Shien Form refunding 1 rage? 2. Stagger.. I once had a guy push me into a non lit fire pit in huttball and charge me, the stun was enough to stick me in place long enough to get bar b qued. Other than that, is this skill really worth the points for +1 second snare? 3. I noticed a lot of people not taking decimate, -3 sec cd, 20% more damage for a free +1 rage skills seems pretty good right? 4. Lastly, Unyielding...Part of me wants to believe this is a great talent, but I can't say that rage is ever really a problem in this spec for me. I keep everything on cd, and if i get caught off guard w/o charge i usually just enrage. I know I must be wrong if so many people take it?

It is Needed.... Two things need to happen before a "pvp" stat is removed from a game. 1. Pvp needs to be skill based ie...first person shooter for example 2. A system needs to be developed that takes players off the gear treadmill

First, about me: For the last ten years of my mmo experience I have always played/pvp'ed as a melee character. Something about the play style has always resonated well with my personal play style. Now, the problem: I have been racking my brain for the past few months even before 1.2 to try to find a way to articulate the problems I see and the direction the game has taken with respect to melee characters and tank spec with dps armor. Simply put, I do not believe that pure melee dps specs bring enough damage to a fight that the lack in survivability makes up for it. I am specifically referring to both the Jug and Sin advanced classes (the ones I have the most experience with). Both classes I have leveled to 50 and geared and have found that the amount of time it takes to get blowin up is literally seconds. Further the damage I do is damn near equal to the damage i can put out as a tank in dps gear minus the added survivability. The problem seems further compounded by the fact that the only thing that sets out a pure dps spec from a tank speced dps is near the top of the pure dps tree you get some obligatory 30% more crit damage on you main spells. While on paper that seems appealing, when you compare the two specs side by side the survivability of the tank spec far outweighs the added damage. Just my two cents..

This question is mainly for the synthweavers out there, I am looking for/ wondering if there is an orange moddable equivalent of the warlord's heavy armor set you obtain from Dromund Kaas quests early on. I know Narr Shadda offers the helm and chest on vendors, but I am mainly looking for the pants. The legacy gear that just droped (set for 650k) is not the right model pants. For any unsure of the pants i mean, it would be the pant model the sith warrior is wearing at the creation screen. Thanks much for your help

It is really a matter of play style, both deception and madness are "glass cannon" specs and both very capable. Personally I prefer the deception for the movement and reduced cd's. I also think its more bursty than madness as it does not rely on dots. Again this is a play style preference. Dark charge is very useful early in leveling till 20-25ish. None of the specs give you much of anything useful until mid twenties, I say spec as you intent to play and work it out as you get closer to 30. 1. as deception i was able to solo 85% of the +2 heroics and probably 75% of the +4 heroics on my level. A few points, you need to play smart, turn off Khem's aoe's, Keep him geared, trade taunts and don't be afraid to burn cd's to reset and heal before you kill your cc targets. As a general rule any heroic that updated to kill a champion i generally was not able to solo (on level) unless i could kite him around corners while my raged companion nuked him. this worked some of the time. 2. We are squishy glass cannons, playing with a companion healer is not going to get you very far as madness or deception. I imagine tanking with a healer could be fairly productive as they have a lot of self healing and very good damage. In PvP we do just fine when a "good" healer is supporting us, that said it is generally better to pop cd's and gt*o when you are being focused. In all honesty the sin and operative have been the most fun classes I have leveled to date. 3 50ties, and 3 30-40ties. The ability to stealth through large quest areas is invaluable. The cc mechanics and damage output make them very good soloers, especially the operative cause he can cc droids, humans and heal. its amazing! And the ability to gt*o when things go bad is just to good to to give up. Hope this helped, good luck

I apologize if these are known issues, but I wanted to ask if anyone else was having animation problems with operative skills. 1. Rifle Shot: rifle shot seem to animate late, even to the point when after a npc dies you continue to fire sometimes in other directions. 2. Shiv: Occasionally when using shiv the target of your shiv will have "electrified daggers" in their torso as if you used debilitate. 3. Carbine Burst: There is a large delay between when you trigger carbine burst and it actually fires. The "cone" effect is a bit confusing as well as the player is unsure of the exact trajectory of the cone. 4. Sleep Dart: Sleep dart has an unusual delay when firing as compare to the assassins/shadow Mind Trap/Mind Maze

I am of the opinion that both the sin or the op can give you exactly what you are looking for. I have played/pvp'ed both extensively and think they both have their advantages and disadvantages. for example.. Both are capable of delving out damage although I think the Op is probably more bursty. The survivability/utility is roughly equal all things considered 20ish% damage reduction. The Sin has better mobility, but the OP has ranged abilities and healing. Bottom line, both are powerful classes the major difference i see the the mobility vs the ranged capability and healing, both have saved my butt a number of times so it really boils down to a matter of play style. **on a side note, I will say that playing as the OP is by the the best leveling experience I have had in game as of yet. Stealth combined with droid sap, human sap, off heals and big damage made soloing on level champions and 4+ heroics easy. Just keep your tank geared and you are gtg.

I have been racking my brain trying to find the most effective way to come out of stealth to have the most impact and was hoping to ask the community what they use/have found the most effective and why? 1. Maul, I find using maul w/o duplicity seems week, its a big force user even with dark embrace and w/o the 50% armor pen seems weak. 2. Spike, I find the most use out of spike when interrupting casters, other than that give global cool downs, people are usually back on their feet moving away by the time i am ready to follow up. thanks

One of the big downsides to "rogue" type classes and their positional requirement specs is simply the class is less than effective offensively when they gain the ire of whatever it is they are attacking. A simple solution to this particular issue in the Deception tree would be when Duplicity procs to allow the use of maul regardless of the positional requirement, but when attacking anywhere than other from behind you suffer a **30% (30% is just an example, not sure what the number should be) damage penalty while maintaining 50% force cost and 50% armor pen. I think this simple fix would make people decide if it is worth burning a stun to get behind the target for a big hit or consume the proc for less damage and save the stun for something else. Either way it would avoid two scenarios...1. Sitting on unusable procs of duplicity and 2. feeling as if i am only 1/2 as offensively effective when i have aggro.

The first thing that comes to mind looking at your build is that your big nuke (shock wave x4) Smash only come once every 50 seconds. To me it feels like you are gimping yourself for a skill on a large cd. In addition the defensive benefits you are trying to get seem to be lacking. I'm not sure if you are absolutely sold on rage, but if not you may want to give this a look.... http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101cMG0uZhGMMrhdzMM.1 This spec offers better damage mitigation by stacking soresu form with deafening defense for 10% total mitigation. In addition to the 12% defense from Guard stance and Blade Barricade. 6% of that being from your one rage cost retaliation. Unstoppable and huddle both give a temporary 20% damage mitigation plus 4% more endurance to boot. And invincible. As far as Offensively, You have impale and savagery and force scream on a 9 second cd so wont fall short offensively. I'd consider this to be a more PvE oriented build, as I do not think you will see the benefit of the added defense quite the way you'd like to in pvp. Now If I were going to run a similar build to be more pvp oriented it would look like this.... http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101crhczZhGMMrhdzMM.1 Basically you get all the same benefits of the other build minus the +to defense and add a spam able rage free slow and heavy handed for more offense. Hope this helps

Have you looked at many hilts? Some of them are pointy!

If you don't mind I'd like to pick apart your sec a little bit first then give you my 2 cents... First, I find the bleeds in this spec pointless. Even if you are only picking them up to keep people off a door/flag when you are going down the are weak and more importantly not spam-able. So personally i do not pick up Draining scream or Eviscerate. That being said you have 1 point left over you need to invest to get to the tier 5, i usually go w/ 1/2 unyielding. Second, I also find ravage to be very weak and situational in pvp. Just as Morgond said about the only time i use it is when the target is standing still trying to self heal. Otherwise people move away or simply interrupt it. Personally I do not pick up rampage, as I am usually sitting on ravage anyway. I'd move those 3 point to accuracy. Id invest the remaining 4 point you have into the immortal tree in both enraged sunder and Intimidation. You'll find if used correctly you can completely replace assault with sunder in this spec. And a rage free spam-able slow is to good to pass up! This is my spec currently... http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101crZIGRorhdzMRZh.1 As for you rotation, the only thing i'd suggest for your opener if to keep in mind savagery. 60% crit to a free scream after impale. I like to come out swinging and make them react to me. 5 Seconds is plenty of time to get off and impale and scream while stacking 10% damage. Save your choke and push for timed interrupts when they count. You are not choking people for the damage it pushes out in this spec. Another spec I have toyed around with is more of a mitigation/soresu form spec. http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101crhczZhGr0rhdzMM.1 Deafening defense stack well with Soresu, but I find rage generation to be biggest problem in this spec. Also, when you are being focused I do not find that being a tank helps your survivability unless you have a good team backing you up, which would make this spec very appealing for the benefits such as guard etc

I think you may find it rather hard to "shoot your self in the foot" in this game in terms of being under level given the volume of content. Not to mention xp gains from both pvp and space missions if you got really desperate. The whole point of this post is to avoid grey content, I don't find it very fun running through and slaughtering everything in one hit. Exactly, this mmo unlike any other has spent a mountain of time developing the story and really defines your character through your actions and decisions. It is a truly unique feel compared to the grind in another game. (again this is not every ones cup of tea) This just seems like an easy fix for people who really enjoy the content while leveling. Even an option to decrease the xp by .5 would make a huge impact on the volume of content you can see before you level 50.

This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but can they add a way to turn off or limit experience? This is a brand new game and I love to explore every nook and cranny, but I am finding that out-leveling a planet is far to easy. For example, on my latest character I leveled a sith warrior and was really enjoying Balmorra so i decided to do the bonus series, but by the time I finished and got to Narr Shadda (sp?) I was lvl 26 and every mob/quest was grey. So I am finding in order to "keep up" I have to completely skip a planet and only do my class quests. I just don't think I should have to be rushed up to level 50 only to be bored with nothing to do again. Like I said before, this is a new game, and Id like to explore it at my slow pace.

Corrected thank you

That is the point of the post, it seems to me you need/get a lot of unnecessary fluff in Vengeance just to pick up two "important PvP" talents in unstoppable/impale. When you compare vengeance side by side to rage the talents seem to feed off each other.

First off this is not a rant, I am just trying to educate myself. I have played a rage Jug to level 50 and have been looking to try vengeance for some time, but just could never pull the trigger. I have sort of a love hate relationship with rage as I love the big hits, but I hate waiting on procs and I feel the survivability is almost zero. So when looking Vengeance I am discouraged by the talents as they do not appear (on paper) to be very strong. For Example.... 1. Draining Scream: A weak dot over 6 seconds seems pointless unless you are going down and trying to protect a door/flag but even then other classes have 15 second dots. 2. Pooled Hatred: at first glance a 50% increase to your next rage ability looks great, but how often does this stack on practice given the duration of snares and the frequency at which we spend rage. 3. Eviscerate: Another weak dot over 6 seconds? 4. Rampage: 30% chance to reset ravage cd, but in my experience ravage is utterly useless in pvp as people tend not to stick around for the full duration or simply interrupt it. 5. Shatter: This one is just more of a question....Do you need to have sundering assault on the target in order to use the skill? And if so, is it worth pick up both improved sunder assault and enraged sunder? Also will sunder replace assault in this spec? I'd love to hear your opinions...Thanks in advance.

Hey way to think outside the box! Two words.... tunnel vision

That is correct if you are only taking into account endurance and comparing them side by side, but as I said before by itemizing raid gear appropriately and properly utilizing your secondary stats in this case defense, shield chance and absorb your effectively take a tank with less health than his pvp counterpart and ramp up his mitigation so he would be taking far less incoming damage than a pvp geared tank. The trick obviously would be in determining exactly how much of the secondary stats to allow the pvp or pve gear sets to obtain. Then compare your tanks side by side again.

I not sure I see the parallel. How does skipping content have any effect on people who only want to pvp? I sure there are dozens of people (my self included) who have never set foot in a raid in this game. Personally I cant stand the drama. In my OP, I advocated for a static debuff in all pvp world/warzone of 15-20% damage reduction. In your scenario with a tank in full pvp gear trying to tank a raid I would assume the lack of +defense and +absorption would make him a far less effective tank. Further more in the same scenario the healers trying to heal in full pvp gear should be far less effective in both cast time and potency of heals and lastly the dps in full pvp gear trying to raid probably could not avoid the enrage times. Now I do not know what the magical math formula is to make all this happen, but I am sure Bioware has someone on staff that could do it. =p

Maybe not being in purples is the problem. I am a max level armortech on my vanguard and am currently wearing the full set of craftable lvl49 blue gear. The stats seems competitive compared to the pvp vendor gear, but in practice playing as a midrange/melee I just get steam rolled.

This is straight from the horses mouth.... "Expertise Increases your effectiveness in PvP combat." Again, I think there is a very simple solution for this problem. Design gear specifically for the scenarios they are intended to be utilized in. Pvp gear should be designed with survivability in mind. Higher armor, More Endurance etc.. PvE gear should be designed to make the most use of secondary stats and push out the maxim amount of healing, dps or tanking a character can muster.

I understand the whole "right of passage" thing work/grinding up to gear. I've done it with every mmo I have ever played. And this is not to say that I expect to turn level50 on a toon and be top damage, most kills and 10 medals every game, but I do like to be competitive. In it's current form I do not think you can be competitive in warzones as a new level 50. I think you are more of a burden to a team than anything. And worse yet, if 3 of 10 people on your team that are effectively 30% less effective than everyone else that is a huge disadvantage to your 10man team.

I understand that, but it seems to me that this is a problem that could easily be fixed with proper stats itemization. For example.... PvP: Gear should be very Endurance heavy with secondary emphasis on core stats (strength, aim etc..) PvE: Gear Should Strongly emphasis Core (Aim, Strength) and Secondary (Surge, Alacrity etc) stats. You then would have two very different gear sets people would want for very different reasons. Your pvp set would give you the survivability you would expect from a pvp set, and the Pve set would allow players who wanted to raid/pve get the most out of the important raiding stats. No raid is going to want a dps with a lot of health that cant push out the numbers another dps could. And while having a big emphasis on core and secondary stats does not necessarily discourage people from pvping, I think one could make the argument that in terms of organized pvp it would be far less competitive.