I mostly only level up tanks and have not seen any really challenging silvers. It may be luck or just that tanks are tougher and have def cd. I also extensively use cc and run with a healer companion. A tank may be a good choice if you are not into quick fights and more into finishing fights with always max hp.

If you are going to tank in the end, you can level as a tank. First, up to level 40, your dps is as good as any other PT spec (more or less) and your survivability is higher. Second, you will find it more easy to group as a tank. Third, your first crew mate is a healer and you can do a lot of H2 as a tank with a well stuff crew healer at low level (if you have crew bonuses from alts, it sure helps a lot). Fourth, you will more get used with your spec if you play it from the begining. You will just feel the way a new power has changed either your dps or your survivability. Fifth, even if the single target dps is not that great at high level, you have a lot of aoe and can then group the mobs and take them down quite quickly as a tank. I have leveled all my tanks as tanks and didn't find it too slow, but maybe I'm wrong. And the PT is certainly the one with the most efficiency at low level.

I generally level two characters and switch when my rest bonus xp is exhausted. It speeds up the leveling a bit. Choose one rep and one imp to avoid being bored by the repetition of the side quests. You can begin with more than two, but as said, you will be a bit lost.

It may depends on server, but generally, PTs are the rarest tanks. A lot of people like to play force users. Then, you may want to know the rarity of tanks in guild rosters. That I don't know.

Just did the quest after checking in a walkthrough how to manage it as a guardian tank (and after three unsuccessful attempts). It's just really bad design. I talked to the boss (with doc in passive mode) then went back behind the republic troops that managed to kill every imperial soldiers. I then just attacked the boss normally in soresu and never took aggro (didn't taunt of course). Boss went down very quickly. After that, I went down defuse the bombs. It really feels ackward. I don't know who designed it, but he never tried to make someone test it withut knowing what's to do. Otherwise, he would have found how silly it is.

You will want armor and absorb. A lot. Take first the torso, head gear and legs. then go for gauntlets and boots and then the remaining pieces. Depending on the credits you have and the craft skills you may change those priorities a bit. If you have both elite and basic comms, do a mix keeping in mind that armor pieces are more efficient in torso, head and legs.

If PT is ok for learning tanking, I wouldn't say it's the easiest. Without a carefull optimization, you will finbd it very hard staying alive and keeping your allies alive. On the other hand, Juggs have immortality and saber reflect to stay alive and powers to help mates staying alive. Also, saber reflect is just overpowered in term of aggro generation whereas I find that even with a lot of AoE powers, my PT need to take back aggro from sorcerers or some classes with initial AoE attacks the first 5 or 10 sec of combat. Having tried both in OPs and FPs, I find that the jugg is the easiest if you zoom out sufficiently and use your both jumps (on ennemy and on ally) extensively. But, finding a class to be 'easy' to tank remains highly subjective and I can understand that some people may find PT easier to play. Of course, less people find Assassins being an easy tank.

There are only three tank classes and PT is one of them. I haven't seen really any thing in the 2.4 modifications that have an impact on the tank aspect of PT, which is really sad. Every one that do FPs and OPs can see that us, tanks, are not really well represented to the point that I'm constantly asked is I'm available to join another guild and be part of a roster. Yet, nothing is done to make the tank role more appealing (in terms of fun mostly, a bit in terms of leveling, a bit in terms of efficiency, like a bit more damage output that would help leveling and managing aggro (even if this point is not very hard for a PT)). There was an opportunity for the concepters to do something to make PT tanks (the rarer of the tanks) more interesting or fun to play. Nothing done except the KO that is now 35% instead of 30% (and doesn't change the fact that when you trigger it, it generally means the fight is looking bad). We are still the tanks with the least CDs, with the least internal resistances (and with half the 55 ops that have a high internal damage profile, bad for us) and with the least specific tanking role (no stealth, no specific mate protections, nothing the oher tanks can't do better). So, in summary, I can just see that since the majority of people play DPS, the majority of players can have modifications implemented to help them and the minority have almost nothing. This will just have the logical effect to have the minority even more decrease to the point where the DPS will have difficulties to find skilled tanks in ops. Now, if DPS can help us tanks be heard by devs, it would smooth a bit the issues I can see in HL : too much DPS and too few tanks. Or not. That's not really a problem for me : I just have to be ready around 9PM in the evening, say which OP I on't have a tag on and can be picked up in almost complete guild composed groups in OPs. Like last saturday were I've done 4 ops in a row.

My main is a PT tank and I can say there are a lot of support power to help you manage crowds : - many aoe attacks (death from above, flamethrower, flame sweep, explosive missile (don't remember the exact name), the top-of-the-tree attack (don' remember)) - grapple and jet pack jump - oil slick and flame sweep mass debuffs - one short targeted cc and one short mass cc (carbonite) - one bump/deplacement hep with your hydraulic. Other than that, there is no OP def cd power, but you don't really need one in most encouters if your op group is efficient. In most ops, I tend to let the big boss tanking to the other tank (which btw is a boring tanking generally) and tank the adds with my many tools to get the aggro. On top of it, you have the best armor and if you have enough in shield, a very smooth damage profile (with some CDs to help smooth it even more, no immunity but a 35% heal and a blue bubble).

I've never played DPS. I have around 12 characters half healers and half tanks. Healers are boring in most situations since you don't see the fight if there is some challenge (your looking at bars) and if there is none, you could just sit and do nothing. Tanks are fun to play and I don't think you should have to get to the headache when doing FPs. I did a lot of FP's to get my 6 tanks to the 50's levels. Now I just do some with my main for the weekly 3 FPs. I use mostly the group finder and if in a group there is a dps that is too painful to manage, I tell him once what I'm expecting him to do. Second time I let him die. Third time I ask for a kick out and if I don't get it, I leave. If I'm tired after a hard work day, I just leave without saying anything. After that, I put every dumb DPS in my ignore list. Now if you think about it, you can leave and find quickly another group because there is a lack of tanks. Since there is a lack of tanks, if many tanks put the dumb DPS into ignore list, those DPS will just never find any group for FP. That's just like natural selection : dumb DPS won't do FPs in the end.

I justy play a PT tank in PvE so will only give my concerns about that configuration : - grapple doesn't generate enough threat and there are really to few attacks that generate an increased threat. That means we may have difficulties to keep the aggro during the few first seconds of a fight. The shield cannon increased threat could be more sensible than 5% and may be have something to add threat to the flame thrower too. - we have a lot of mobility as it is and have jet pack and grapple as gap closers. I don't think we need anything there. - I think we have a good survivability. Ok, nothing OP, but nothing critical that would make raids too difficult. I'm not sure that it's a good idea to ask for another CD since we can't really show that the lack of a new CD makes our AC non viable as a tank. On the other hand, when I see a PT, I can see a huge armor that hides every part of the body. Yet, we get the same protection than a Jugg that doesn't appear to be like Ironman/Boba Fett/Whoever has that big metal armor. Thus, for balance issue, take just the comparison between - Rebraced armor (16% of armor increase for 2 skill points) - Guard Stance (15% armor increase for 1 skill point) Rebraced armor could either : - add 10% per point for a total of 20% - or add 8% armor and 2% elemental/internal protec per skill point - or both (depending of the balancing issues). That would mean that the PT is the tank-with-armor attitude tank that is tanking mostly in passive mitigation and doesn't need a lot of CDs : all the tanking is focused on mobility and gathering enemies. We would have a bigger role in raids for the add managements and group fighting : good aoe attacks (no need to specifiy here), jet charge+grapple, HO, 30/10/4 m attacks That's just my idea to avoid having (for balancing issues) a replication of the jugg as a tank.

I would add one thing : know the aggro mechanics. Most have been explained here, few remain. 1. DPS produce threat at a 100% of damage ration. Tank at 150% ratio Healers (when healing) at 50% 2. But the targets of the aggro are different when you heal or damage : for damage threat, all goes to the one taking the damage and for healing, it's divided between all the participants of the fight, including those that have not been yet damaged. That's why in case of group fighting, your healer becomes te target of trash mobs or adds. For that, you need to : - damage the most targets you can with aoe and moving around the battle ground. - have the dps focus on trash and adds before focusing on strong and elites. I know it may seem evident, yet I can still see in some 55 hm fp some dps focusing on bosses and forgeting the adds. With PT mechanics, depending on the group configurations, I can use DFA on the group I'm charging on or on the side groups and then charge with flame sweep another group (I mean, not a group that wouldn't be included in the fight, just a set of mobs a bit outside of the DFA area). This way, I pull almost all the mobs of the fight and let the dps have time to eliminate the trash mobs before anyone takes the aggro. See : if you do a trash mob 30% of its life in damage, that means an equivalent of 45% of its life in threat. That is, no one can take the aggro before it's killed.