16m content hits the tank a tad harder but is MUCH less forgiving on the raid as a whole when it comes to their secondary abilities: double destruction actually hurts on 16m and red circles will destroy you this makes it so that healers have more raid healing than tank healing. The easiest part of 16m is that you have more dps slots in the raid and the bosses have roughly 2x the hps so you are able to burn them down a bit faster.

1. Sure I think you are actually trying to get that statistic from Keyboardninja and it is actually 76.35% and it is not damage it is actual attacks. Aka the bosses basic attack is able to be mitigated but there are attacks that bosses do that are not able to be mitigated. As I said previously great examples of these are all of Stormcallers attacks (around 9k unmitigatable damage) or Kephess's bleed (around 5700 a tick). You as you stand can eat 2 maybe 3 of SC's attacks before dieing, I can definitely eat 3 and with minimal healing take a 4th. Here is a link to the article that you were trying to quote the "damage from" i suggest you reread it. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=497115 2. Again I will give you the SC fight where in 16 man HM his double destruction puts a very nasty dot on the 2 that eat it requiring 2 healers to specifically focus on keeping them alive, then you also need to keep the 2 people down on the ground alive while they are dpsing and cleansing the debuff that is put on them to drop the lightning spires so a healer is needed to keep them alive as well. That leaves 1 healer left to heal both tanks. In a perfect world the tanks would all have their own individual healers and the other 2 would focus on the raid, thankfully they have made this game a little more chaotic then that.

The advanced reflex augment 22 is 18 aim 12 endurance. The advanced fortitude augment 22 is 18 fortitude 12 power. These are your best options for getting any amount of fortitude. I personally run with the fortitude augment.

You really need to take into account all of the abilities that bosses (or trash) do that are not able to be mitigated at all such as all of Stormcallers damage or Kephess's bleed. Running around with 23k hps in HM 16m EC is damn near suicide for a few bosses. A healer would have to be specifically on you at all times and not have time to cleanse/heal dps that need it.

Here is my experience before I even get into anything: I am currently one of the tanks for Methodical, we have cleared all of the content this game has to offer. Here is my current gear: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/b37979e0-8387-4ee0-b281-35d549e02fd8 The honest answer is it depends on what you are currently working on. Some bosses do very painful unmitigatable damage (Stormcaller and Kephess's bleed) so higher hps are wanted to tank them, but most bosses you can mitigate a good chunk of their damage. I personally focus on endurance first then i try and balance out my shield/absorb. I avoid defense like the plague simply because it is better suited for other tanks and I enjoy having a high ammo regen (hate working taunt into my rotation and our guilds DPS is silly good). Our guild runs a shadow tank, guardian tank, and vanguard tank. We all are free to focus on different niches and all of us have found it is better to stack endurance. Our healers love us for it as well because they know the tanks won't be going down quite as fast as if we were running higher RNG mitigation and less hps.

I used her from the second i got her till the end of the story. Send her in first, let her take the elite down to about 90% before you open up on them, start your burn on the target, and dont be afraid to kite. If the mob is a ranged then run around corners while they are dot'd. If it is a solo elite turn off her aoe so she sticks to the target and doesn't pause to cast wild energy. She isnt designed to tank and hold agro, she is designed to do damage. You need to give her an opportunity to build agro. Maybe drop mind cloud after doing your opening rotation. Also consider giving her better armor then greens, i was ripping the mods from my oranges and giving them to Nadia who was also in full orange while i was leveling.

I have found its nicer to have force in balance on the mob before i start with dots, and i find the damage from mind crush semi lackluster without presence of mind's 20% buff, it isn't horrible but i prefer that 20% boost so for me i personally i do the rotation i stated above. Waiting 3 seconds for the presence of mind buff to drop the mind crush isn't game breaking as far as damage is concerned imo.

Ive found quite the opposite with Nadia. She is my go to companion when I'm ever soloing content. She can solo clear a group of standards, solo kill an individual strong, and keep agro on an elite with relative ease. Just keep a force bubble on her and you are fine. I think it really comes down to what spec you are, as a balance spec using Nadia i can solo elites without taking any damage. I've even solo'd all the 2 man and 4 man Ilum/Belsavis dailies (4man through work arounds and no actual combat involved). When i had sever force it was even easier due to the root allowing me to keep getting distance on the enemy whenever i needed to cast. Gear her out and she turns into a monster, mine has 14.9k hps and just destroys things, her wild energy hits harder then my force quake. The only other companion that i really like is Qyzon (though i find his AI annoying) due to his aoe agro gain. All the other consular companions i have played with have been trash which was really a let down compared to my 50 Vanguard who gets 3 or 4 good companions.

Oh and to answer the original posters question, I was TK until halfway through Taris, i found the playstyle to be too clunky and it didnt have a good enough natural flow for my liking. Balance flows very well and has a very nice rotation, plus the mobility really adds alot in pvp and moving fights.

As a raiding 0/13/28 sage i agree with you on never running out of force. With the talents appropriately picked you actually regain around 24 force each time you cast telekinetic throw (6 per tick of damage and 8 natural regen a second) and when buffed you can get its crit chance upwards of 50% (with decent gear). I have a feeling that the people running out of force are not letting their dots go their full duration or are throwing project in the mix when they are standing stationary which is generally unneeded, the only real reason to use project I've found while raiding is during mobile fights or while moving up to position after my force in balance and weaken mind are on the target. Project is a costly ability and I've found the damage that it does generally doesn't qualify using the force that it takes, unless your doing a major burn phase.

You are gonna ask for a link to my build, here it is: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#600ZfcM0dZcMfRsMkrc.1 There is nothing special about it, its basically ripped from the sticky on the top of the page. I took upheavel specifically for when I'm running around on mobile fights but often find on a stationary fight I don't cast project. My standard rotation is force in balance => weaken mind => telekinetic throw till presence of mind proc => mind crush => telekinetic throw till presence of mind proc => telekinetic wave after that your priorities are keeping dots ticking, keeping force in balance debuff on, double spamming telekinetic throw on weaken mind crits, and throwing telekinetic waves when all of the above are completed. Never free cast anything aside from telekinetic throw. For aoe pulls I drop force in balance => telekinetic throw till presence of mind procs => telekinetic wave rinse and repeat. Force quake is nice if there are alot of standards for the knock down to save healers frustration. Also, always keep yourself bubbled since you will often grab agro.

I raid as a dps sage. The second I got orange gear with full purple mods I have been able to pull agro from any tank I've ran with whenever I want to. Every tank I've been running with is 4/5 columi with good specs and nothing lower then purple in each slot minus their matrix cube. The commandoes and gunslingers have a hard time pulling agro from these tanks. I run a 0/13/28 build and my aoe damage is unmatched from what I can tell, I can clear the average standard trash in 2 casts. One thing I have noticed if I'm running with scrub tanks is if I do more then just telekineticthrow I'm pulling agro, if telekinetic throw does a chain if crits in gaurenteed agro. Cloud mind will turn into your best friend, and sometimes that doesn't work. When you get your columi gear run taral v a few more times and rip the mods from the gloves and replace your other gears mods with the crit and surge mods. I've found alacrity to be more or less useless because of the instacasts you get from your telekinetic throw procs, I've also found that if you spam telekinetic throw after your weaken mind crits you can often get 2 faster casted telekinetic throws, not just one. With this build and in semi scrub gear I've broekn 528k damage in warzones. Sorry if there are any typos I'm posting this from a tablet with a funky auto correct.