The other thing is, if you have the ability, taunt the correct targets. Like, don't waste a taunt on a healer, or someone already attacking you.

Guard absolutely does slow the rate at which a healer has to heal. Two people with around half life left is a lot easier to manage and keep alive then one person who is constantly one hit away from death. It also allows the better spread of HoT and AE healing effects AND it allows the use of twice as many survivability cooldowns (and even medpacks ) to mitigate the incoming damage. Most importantly, it nullifies the burst. That's what kills people, damage that comes in faster then it can be healed. Suddenly that Tracer-Missile spam that hits your sage for 3k a pop is only doing 1.5k a pop. The other half of that damage is dropping onto someone who is far more capable of surviving it and letting the healers manage it all. It lowers the required HPS throughput way way down.

Who ever is getting trained and is in my 15 meter radius?

Even without steady healing there is value in keeping a fight 2v2 with guard, instead of 1v2 without it. Dead men do no DPS and all that. One death is often all it takes for a fight to cascade out of reach. Would you rather have two people at roughly 50% health or one at full and the other dead?

Yea, when your tank spec as a Vanguard, there is very little reason to use anything but the tanking stance. The only time it would ever come up is if I am "DPSing" in a group with another tank and I don't want to grab aggro. Either way though, the Vanguard stances all have cast times.

PvE Shield Spec Vanguard here, mix of centurion and champion super-commando gear. All solo queue/PUGs, but my server seems to have a tiny PvP community so everyone is pretty familiar with everyone else. My highest protection so far has been : 164,657 (fun fact, I was only second in protection that game, another VG got 167,727 /shake fist) My highest damage so far has been : 225,269 (I did 160,947 protection that game as well and we actually lost this game. ) I've never gotten the 2.5k crit medal, I think the nearest I've gotten is 2.2k on a stockstrike.

The whole game is like this, it's actually a requirement for 3rd person games. If you don't basically double the ceiling/doors and stuff, the camera squishes in and makes everything feel incredibly claustrophobic. It's quit jarring without the extra space.

The only redeeming factor about our ship is that it looks like it might actually hook up to the Thranta Class Cruisers.

As the others have already said, it's just itemized poorly. As you've already guessed, absorption rating without a decent shield chance to back it up is of questionable value. Your best bet is to mix and match enhancements how ever you can to build up some better spreads.

To the best of my knowledge, it's just damage mitigated via Guarding and Taunting. Note that is looks like it has to be actual mitigated damage, not just the potential mitigation. IE: Taunting someone already attacking you, or not attacking at all will not give you protection score (nor is it terribly effective )

If you are familiar with WoW, then a Guardian is basically your warrior IN SPAAAACE. Specifically your TBC warrior, with AE threat issues and carpel tunnel. Vanguards are TBC paladins minus holyshield (they gave that to shadows) and the self healing (also gave that to shadows). They generate AE threat effortlessly and are far more forgiving and straightforward in groups. Even simple things like being able to pull with Mortar Volley as a Vanguard. It's just such a nice threat buffer AND herding ability. Another way to look at it: Guardians (and Shadows) are somewhere between being a Scalpel and a Rapier. There is some finesse and finagling involved. Vanguards are somewhere between a Cudgel and a Sledgehammer. We are a blunt object, to be used as such. Which isn't to say we don't have our own tricks, we do... but we are by far the most direct in application.

I just have both. My Vanguard is my main 100%, but I keep a wee little commando on the side for when I want to mix things up a bit.

Blitz Instant Cooldown: 45s Range: 4 m Bashes the target, dealing 2253 - 2315 kinetic damage to weak and standard targets or 1613 - 1676 kinetic damage to strong targets. Only usable on incapacitated targets. --- So there is the ability, if anyone is not familiar with it or if a BH is peeking on our side. I understand that it's sort of a pseudo ammo regen ability, since it's free and will give you extra ticks of regen. I also understand it's a way to help 'burst' down a target a bit faster. I still have some issues with it though. First issue I have, and one that isn't exclusive to Blitz by any means, is the very restrictive usability on targets. I think most classes have at least one ability like this, that is only usable on trash mobs and silvers. It's extremely limiting, means the ability has no use in PvP OR high end PvE. No players, no golds, no champions or bosses etc... It just feels like one restriction too many, between the long cooldown, the requiring of a stun AND only usable on standard/silver mobs. That's way to constricting in my mind. I feel like we could let the ability be used on everything without issue, the cooldown and stun requirement are more then enough to ensure a throttled use of the ability. My second issue, one more specific to Blitz itself, is how it interacts with talents... or how it does not to be more precise. Blitz in a nutshell, is a 'double stockstrike', it's roughly hitting for two stockstrikes worth of damage, in a single GCD. This on it's face, is fine. Nice little burst ability right? The issue I am having though, is while my stockstrike has like half a dozen talents that really supercharge it in various ways, Blitz has none. Like, to the best of my knowledge, NOTHING modifies Blitz talent wise. (Please correct me if I am wrong). So it's falling behind, rather rapidly in fact. To a point where it isn't much better then a stockstrike anymore. I feel like Blitz should get the same benefits from talents that Stockstrike does. If a talent gives stockstrike 30% more crit chance, it should give 30% more crit as well. 8% more damage to stockstrike? 8% more damage to Blitz. You could even have the Shield Spec talent that resets stockstrikes cooldown on a successful shield chance, also somehow reduce/reset Blitz's cooldown. My last issue is more of a 'would be nice' thing, rather then an actual mechanical/useability issue. I kinda wish the cooldown was either shorter, or the trigger was more forgiving. Like maybe bring it down to 30 seconds reuse, or let it fire off of stuns or DoTs, like high impact bolt. Again that's not really a BIG deal, just a 'be kinda neat' thing. TLDR - Blitz feels underwhelming because of a lack of talent scaling and extremely restrictive trigger conditions for questionable gain/power.

Yea, there isn't actually much point in shutting off her two special attacks, she doesn't have enough healing abilities to fill all her GCD's either way. Just turn off her Carbonized Stream CC thing, that is easily the biggest offender in terms of eating away healing time.

Really, there isn't much difference in terms of ease of use. Troopers in general are pretty straight forward in their gameplay and execution. The exception being the healing spec, that can be sorta finicky at times. We aren't scalpels, we're sledgehammers... and that's the way I like it.

I'd give it a 5, I am mostly indifferent to it now. I'm also fairly convinced our ship is supposed to attach to the outside of those Republic Frigates/Destroyers, two Claps per frigate, at the middle 'hub' section of those ships. That middle hub, you have 4 circles, the top circle has the Sensor/Comm dish, the bottom circle has a large cannon, but the two side circles seem to be empty. If you can manage a closer look though, it appears to be some kind of docking ring/hatch. Now on our ship, on the short side, you can see a docking hatch. You can see the door for that air-lock/hatch inside our cargo bay, it's the one painted yellow and red for warning/danger. The short side of our ship looks like it would slot right into the circles on either side of the Republic Frigate. With our ship acting like a little 'wing' on the frigate. Another thing, is we have 4 large blasters on on ship. Three smaller ones and one unusually large one. We use the Three smaller ones in our space missions, but that one odd large one doesn't get used. It looks to be too large for a ship our size. I'm guessing it actually IS too large for our ship normally... but gets used when our ship is docked onto the Republic Frigate and can draw on it's larger power source. Augmenting the Frigates firepower. The one oddity with this theory, is that if two Thunderclaps are docked to the Republic Frigate in this way, one of them would either be backwards OR far more likely, 'upside down'. Being 'upside down' wouldn't actually mean anything with how space and artificial gravity works in the Starwars universe, outside of the odd transition between the Frigate and the Thunderclap itself.

TD-17A Talon Leggings http://www.torhead.com/item/dfCWXvw/td-17a-talon-leggings "This piece is a reward for completing the Taris Bonus mission chain." from the comments. There's a whole suit of it. I believe this is what you saw.

I've wondered this myself. I'm currently going with the extra 3% aim, partly because aim is universal and partly because I hate seeing half finished talent slots I imagine until we get a proper combat log, we won't have a definitive answer either way though.

I've SEEN it, but I have no idea what or where. Not really helpful I know But it exists!

All the companions 'class' is actually themselves. Like, Elara Dorne's class is "Elara Dorne". Mako is a class called "Mako" as far as the game is concerned. It's how they flag/limit companion gear and stuff. So yea, Elara isn't a Trooper, she's specced into umm... 'Elara Dorne'.

Not really, maybe an afternoon, less if you win a lot.