Lvl 29 Vanguard Looking for some Spec Help

[Takaede]

So recently i have been having thoughts on respeccing. I have been rolling a pure Tactic's tree Vanguard and the dps isn't so bad, but my guardian friend seems to be doing more damage than me overall. Now i know he is using kira but i just dont think im doing enought damage, and im fully geared with blues/oranges/purples. So really i dont know what im doing wrong.

 

Now after having these thoughts, i respec'ed into the Assault tree sparing 3 points to get the 60% armor pierce for HiB from the Tactics tree. The Damage was overall better with Plasma cell and Incindiery Round coupled with HiB (750 crits), but now i was so squishy elara couldn't heal me enough.

 

With my Assault spec, i have around 2300 armor, and when i used ion cell i have roughly 3600. So i was thinking about respeccing into the SS tree, and i've heard that its probably the most used tree out of the Vanguard branches. However i've invested a lot into elara, and i don't want to wait for yuun for a dps'er, unless i can easily buy good gear for either jargin or x4.

 

So i think the main thing i'm asking is, Are SS Vanguards good dps even though they're full tank? And if not how viable is a full Tactics spec because at the moment the amount of damage i had with Tactics compared to Assault was quite disappointing.

[onethreeone]

Two things:

 

1) If you're running in Plasma Cell, you should probably have 4X tank for you as opposed to tanking and having Elara heal you.

 

2) I am a hybrid Tactics / SS spec at level 30. It seems to be a good combination of tanking and dps. For instance, I was able to solo the first Heroic 2 on Tatooine, the one that spawns the 37k droid + 2x 5k adds.

 

Here's my build at 30: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801RMRMZMsr0o.1

 

I went up Tactics to Gut, and then up SS taking Ion Overload first in the 2nd tier, then Rebraced Armor. I took 1/3 Steely Resolve, but now I'm thinking I'd rather have it in Neural Overload since I won't have a free point from the coming tiers.

 

(disclaimer: I am not a pro, but I'm having success at the same point in the game as your question.)

Edited January 3, 2012 by onethreeone