Why the Vigilance Spec is awesome and how to make it work for you!

[Zarthorn]

I can pull 4 protection medals running in Shien or Shii-cho. One well placed AE taunt will yield the 2k, 5k, and 10k medal.

 

Soresu is a novelty outside of being an actual tank, or running with a premade where you need to cover someone -- and the larger problem is that shielding is, more often than not, worthless in pvp. Its only triggered by white damage attacks, and according to some testing not triggered on crit. This means the vast majorty of damage you'll take in pvp will completely ignore the fact you have a shield equipped.

 

Soresu is a novelty to Focus bombers, far from a novelty if Vigil/Def specced.

 

Again numbers...to try and once and for all debunk this whole Shien is fantastic for PvP when it isn't...

Shien has a 6% damage increase to all skills and a 6% damage increase to weapon damage based skills....that's 12% damage to:

 

Slash

Sundering strike

Overhead Slash

Master strike

Basic strike

Saber throw

Despatch

Riposte

 

That's quite an increase to overhead, master strike and Despatch, however it only increases the following by 6%:

 

Blade Storm

Force Stasis

Force Push

Force Sweep

Plasma Brand (yes plasma brand is elemental damage not weapon)

 

Two parts of your main combo are not benefitting from single saber mastery from a chain combo that is normally Saber throw > Leap > Sunder > Overhead Slash > Blade Storm > Plasma brand.

 

This shows that the single saber mastery talent is in itself, the weakness behind Shien's shortcomings as a stance, if it worked for all damage types, Shien would be absolutely fantastic and I would have no argument against it being viable as a PvP dps spec.

 

Now Soresu is a 12% damage reduction vs everything, throw in the extra mitigation from unremitting, improved guardian leap and popping warding call and you can become an impenetrable fortress for several seconds while still being able to maintain a consistent figure of damage (not as high as pure vigil but good enough) because you also use the overhead slash > blade storm portion of the pure vigil combo.

 

Can you get that kind of survivability and still be able to maintain decent figures of damage if pure vigil? No you simply cannot because you cannot use the Soresu stance as effectively as a Vigil/def hybrid nor do you have warding call as a panic button.

 

 

Again, my argument is that Shien is hampered because of single saber mastery the fact that it does NOTHING for the 31 point talent of the tree is a rather glaring issue and if this gets rectified and single saber is changed to work for all damage, I'd be more than happy to say that Shien is good.

 

Until that point, it lags behind Soresu and Shi-Cho in most PvP situations.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Zarthorn

[ChrisJSY]

 

Soresu has a 6% damage increase to all skills and a 6% damage increase to weapon damage based skills....that's 12% damage to:

 

 

Mistake?

[nickelplease]

Focus spec: GREAT when you don't have gear. GREAT against people with lower expertise than you. FANTASTIC when people aren't moving. Otherwise, it doesn't really hold up. Yes you will do 500k damage in Voidstar. . . And about 400k of that will have been healed almost instantly and be meaningless. It is just so brain-dead simple for your opponent to negate your force sweep in any 1v1 situation due to latency and the myriad of ways the attack bugs out and doesn't hit characters. I started having to run past the opponent I was chasing before I force sweep to guarantee it hit. The word on Focus spec is out and everyone knows exactly what it does and where the majority of its damage comes from and when they see you coming they will avoid your force sweep much more often than you will like.

 

Sir, you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

You do realize you can "cast" force sweep while you are running with the enemy and still hit them.....I probably never cast it stading still. If you are standing still in pvp you are not doing it right.

 

I never force sweep spam bomb when I play in warzones, yes, if there is an additional enemy near my single target I might try and line it up, but for the most part, I'm taking out my target before I move on to the next. If you spam force sweep after a leap, you are doing it wrong, wait for the knockback, then use it. Or if you know the class has no knockback, do it immediately.

 

As far as it being a novelty only used on the weak with low expertise, I routinely hit champions and battlemasters for 5-6k. That is really the magic consistent number, you don't need to stack surge and try and get 7k+ crits and the rest of your abilitys hit like crap.

 

If you make all your stats thick, strength, power, surge and crit, all your abilities will hit hard. I don't stack a certain stat.

 

Now for the AOE portion of your discussion. If you land 5k+ on 4 people including the healer, you are winning. No healer can heal through that, someone is going to go down in the group, and it's usually the healer. Unless you just tried to solo a group of 4 people which is pretty stupid.

 

What I usually do, is there will be 2-3 dps enemys doing dps on my teamates, then a enemy healer behind them, I leap to the healer, stasis him, then force push him in with his buddies and then force leap back and let a disgusting force sweep go on all of them. Now the healer is in range of our dps, no one got heals during the force leap/stasis/force push/force leap, and the enemy team is usually in a bad spot after that force sweep rips.

[Zarthorn]

Mistake?

 

Yep I really shouldn't post stuff while tired, thanks for that.

[Coiffio]

those who play vigilance/shien who say the survivability is poor, are not playing correctly. i never engage first, and I'm always on the outskirts of a fight killing the light armor and the healers or peeling for my own. the second I come under focus, I'm guardian leaping out then force leaping back in once their attention is turned. I never, ever die even though I'm solo queue most of the time.

 

players on my server want to kill me so bad that I end up leading them on a wild goose chase as I leap all over the map like a monkey, baiting them off objectives and wasting their time.

 

If you ever played as a Warrior at a gladiator level in WoW you know that Vigilance guardians are pretty much the same class but on steroids. I fear the day that other vigilance guardians learn to play. I never see other guards/juggs using the full set of tools they have access to most just think I'm going to just stand there and give them a fair 1v1 fight, then after the game they come whispering me asking what spec I am.

 

I'm clipping my master strike instantly.

I'm blade warding your 4x singularity sweeps.

I'm using my teammates as extensions of myself.

I'm using stasis/push on you after I've loaded up my DoTs.

I'm dragging you behind LoS from the rest of your team.

I'm using awe as an interrupt

 

45 sec cd intimidating shout, rofl.

20 sec intervene with a defense steroid+heal rofl

2 stuns one that refreshes your charge (z axis also) CD rofl

defense steroid that doesn't sacrifice offensive ability and completely absorbs the first 2 secs of damage.

cc immunity

ranged execute rofl

 

Ever since Bioware fixed the responsiveness of this class, I feel borderline overpowered.

 

You'd be taken more seriously if you didn't punctuate most of your post with "rofl"

were you really rolling on the floor and laughing as you typed this?...

[RDeanOU]

Soresu is a novelty to Focus bombers, far from a novelty if Vigil/Def specced.

 

Again numbers...to try and once and for all debunk this whole Shien is fantastic for PvP when it isn't...

Shien has a 6% damage increase to all skills and a 6% damage increase to weapon damage based skills....that's 12% damage to:

 

Slash

Sundering strike

Overhead Slash

Master strike

Basic strike

Saber throw

Despatch

Riposte

 

That's quite an increase to overhead, master strike and Despatch, however it only increases the following by 6%:

 

Blade Storm

Force Stasis

Force Push

Force Sweep

Plasma Brand (yes plasma brand is elemental damage not weapon)

 

Two parts of your main combo are not benefitting from single saber mastery from a chain combo that is normally Saber throw > Leap > Sunder > Overhead Slash > Blade Storm > Plasma brand.

 

This shows that the single saber mastery talent is in itself, the weakness behind Shien's shortcomings as a stance, if it worked for all damage types, Shien would be absolutely fantastic and I would have no argument against it being viable as a PvP dps spec.

 

Now Soresu is a 12% damage reduction vs everything, throw in the extra mitigation from unremitting, improved guardian leap and popping warding call and you can become an impenetrable fortress for several seconds while still being able to maintain a consistent figure of damage (not as high as pure vigil but good enough) because you also use the overhead slash > blade storm portion of the pure vigil combo.

 

Can you get that kind of survivability and still be able to maintain decent figures of damage if pure vigil? No you simply cannot because you cannot use the Soresu stance as effectively as a Vigil/def hybrid nor do you have warding call as a panic button.

 

 

Again, my argument is that Shien is hampered because of single saber mastery the fact that it does NOTHING for the 31 point talent of the tree is a rather glaring issue and if this gets rectified and single saber is changed to work for all damage, I'd be more than happy to say that Shien is good.

 

Until that point, it lags behind Soresu and Shi-Cho in most PvP situations.

 

 

You never even talk about the focus advantage of Shien. I find that the lack of focus in Soresu is a bigger hit to the damage I can put out than losing out on the % damage boost of Shien. In Shien form I get an extra focus from EVERY focus gaining attack and every focus using attack refunds a focus. That is a LOT of damage potential and every post you have made bashing Shien form completely ignores this difference. Why is that?

[bamsmacked]

Soresu is a novelty to Focus bombers, far from a novelty if Vigil/Def specced.

 

Again numbers...to try and once and for all debunk this whole Shien is fantastic for PvP when it isn't...

Shien has a 6% damage increase to all skills and a 6% damage increase to weapon damage based skills....that's 12% damage to:

 

Slash

Sundering strike

Overhead Slash

Master strike

Basic strike

Saber throw

Despatch

Riposte

 

That's quite an increase to overhead, master strike and Despatch, however it only increases the following by 6%:

 

Blade Storm

Force Stasis

Force Push

Force Sweep

Plasma Brand (yes plasma brand is elemental damage not weapon)

 

Two parts of your main combo are not benefitting from single saber mastery from a chain combo that is normally Saber throw > Leap > Sunder > Overhead Slash > Blade Storm > Plasma brand.

 

This shows that the single saber mastery talent is in itself, the weakness behind Shien's shortcomings as a stance, if it worked for all damage types, Shien would be absolutely fantastic and I would have no argument against it being viable as a PvP dps spec.

 

Now Soresu is a 12% damage reduction vs everything, throw in the extra mitigation from unremitting, improved guardian leap and popping warding call and you can become an impenetrable fortress for several seconds while still being able to maintain a consistent figure of damage (not as high as pure vigil but good enough) because you also use the overhead slash > blade storm portion of the pure vigil combo.

 

Can you get that kind of survivability and still be able to maintain decent figures of damage if pure vigil? No you simply cannot because you cannot use the Soresu stance as effectively as a Vigil/def hybrid nor do you have warding call as a panic button.

 

 

Again, my argument is that Shien is hampered because of single saber mastery the fact that it does NOTHING for the 31 point talent of the tree is a rather glaring issue and if this gets rectified and single saber is changed to work for all damage, I'd be more than happy to say that Shien is good.

 

Until that point, it lags behind Soresu and Shi-Cho in most PvP situations.

 

*Yawn*

 

Soresu doesn't increase your survivability that much if unless you're a full tanking spec. All you're doing here is taking numbers the Single Saber Mastery primarily, pointing out that it doesn't effect abilities like BS, PB, and Sweep and saying that Shien suck.

 

Have you even got to level 50, got into decent gear and played the Vigilance Guardian like it's intended to play? Yeah, probably not. Or you're not playing the class correctly, which would cause you to write it off completely and just say Shien SUCKS because I can't survive with it.

 

Shien gives you 6% more damage to all attacks, which is a lot at level 50. Plus the refunding of 1 focus, and with the proper talents taken in the defense tree you can literally spam you talents over and over and over and over and hardly ever be focus starved like your hybrid would be. Seriously how the hell are you going to sit there and say it's behind the other forms when you're not even addressing the full advantage of having Shien?

 

Before Shien is activated these are the exact numbers and changes to damage on all my primary attacks in PvP.

 

Overhead Slash -- Default damage; 1393-1621

Blade Storm -- Default damage; 1398-1463

Plasma Brand -- Default damage; 833-888

Force Sweep -- Default damage; 1301-1384

Saber Throw -- Default damage; 974-1191

Dispatch -- Default damage; 1860-2211

Force Leap -- Default damage; 602-694

Master Strike -- Default damage; 2363-2643

Riposte -- Default damage; 864-995

 

With Shien activated

 

Overhead Slash -- 1672-1942

Blade Storm -- 1589-1666

Plasma Brand -- 998-1068

Force Sweep -- 1458-1557

Saber Throw -- 1172- 1434

Dispatch -- 2238-2660

Force Leap -- 725-834

Master Strike -- 2850-3182

Riposte -- 1041-1097

 

Now overall that's a pretty significant change to damage. Especially Overhead Strong which gets a whooping 300 more damage to both minimum and maximum. Now if you're so concerned about doing decent damage, you need to just go pure focus. Or you can go more into the Vigilance tree where you can get Commanding Awe which reduces damage to you by 4%, plus lowers it's cool down and Awe is a great interrupt and pretty good for CCing if used correctly.

 

Shien is not leap and bounds behind Soresu or Shi-Cho.

 

And finally if you're going into Vigilance and intend to use Shien form, why is survivability an issue? You're trying for sustained damage, not survivability. Your job is to root, taunt, pick off healers, and everything in light and medium armor while using your CC, your guardian leap to get yourself out of situations and then skirmish back in. Survivability isn't an issue because you're not charging in like a tank or a focus spec, and thus you live long enough to not need all that "impenetrable fortress"

 

I just see illogical in the point you're trying to make talking about survivability and trying to do decent damage all at the same time. I mean unless you're a Tracer or Grav Round spammer, you can't get the best of both worlds. So just go full defense spec and worry about surviving instead of doing damage, or you can play a trooper and or bounty hunter and be a happy camper.

 

Again, 6% damage increase and 1 focus refund on all attacks does NOT suck and it's not leaps and bounds behind anything.

Edited February 14, 2012 by bamsmacked

[Yongfu]

Vigilance spec is honestly the best spec for PvE and quite deadly in PVP aswell. The spec I run I can be a main DPS and also be a full on tank in HMs which i do quite often obviously just switch out my gear too do so and stance . Its amazing how much money it has saved me from not switching every other day from tank too deeps. Try it out, it works I do it everyday. Makes it easy with tank/dps sets of columi.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500cMZIhMRMhddGRZh.1

[Marqhill]

Soresu is a novelty to Focus bombers, far from a novelty if Vigil/Def specced.

 

Again numbers...to try and once and for all debunk this whole Shien is fantastic for PvP when it isn't...

 

Soresu has a 6% damage increase to all skills and a 6% damage increase to weapon damage based skills....that's 12% damage to:

 

Slash

Sundering strike

Overhead Slash

Master strike

Basic strike

Saber throw

Despatch

Riposte

 

That's quite an increase to overhead, master strike and Despatch, however it only increases the following by 6%:

 

Blade Storm

Force Stasis

Force Push

Force Sweep

Plasma Brand (yes plasma brand is elemental damage not weapon)

 

Two parts of your main combo are not benefitting from single saber mastery from a chain combo that is normally Saber throw > Leap > Sunder > Overhead Slash > Blade Storm > Plasma brand.

 

This shows that the single saber mastery talent is in itself, the weakness behind Shien's shortcomings as a stance, if it worked for all damage types, Shien would be absolutely fantastic and I would have no argument against it being viable as a PvP dps spec.

 

Now Soresu is a 12% damage reduction vs everything, throw in the extra mitigation from unremitting, improved guardian leap and popping warding call and you can become an impenetrable fortress for several seconds while still being able to maintain a consistent figure of damage (not as high as pure vigil but good enough) because you also use the overhead slash > blade storm portion of the pure vigil combo.

 

Can you get that kind of survivability and still be able to maintain decent figures of damage if pure vigil? No you simply cannot because you cannot use the Soresu stance as effectively as a Vigil/def hybrid nor do you have warding call as a panic button.

 

 

Again, my argument is that Shien is hampered because of single saber mastery the fact that it does NOTHING for the 31 point talent of the tree is a rather glaring issue and if this gets rectified and single saber is changed to work for all damage, I'd be more than happy to say that Shien is good.

 

Until that point, it lags behind Soresu and Shi-Cho in most PvP situations.

 

You have a valid point. Your logic is sound and well put together and represents a pretty clear understanding about the differences in the stances and how Shien works. I will say that there was one basic flaw in your statements above regarding Soresu and how it affects your damage reduction which actually is part of a big misunderstanding about Soresu and it's survivability in general.

 

Soresu form does NOT give a flat bonus to damage reduction. It increases your armor value by 60%. Armor of course determines your physical damage reduction against kinetic damage only. The approximate amount of damage reduction that you recieve from the 60% increase in armor is about 12 - 13%. This damage reduction in no way shape or form translates to any increase in damage reduction against Elemental or Internal damage. There is a skill at the top of the tree that gives you a 4% bonus to internal and elemental damage, which is the same thing you get at the same level in the vigilance tree.

 

So Soresu gives you an approximate 12% increase in physical damage reduction and Shien gives you a flat increase of 12% physical damage. When things balance out this perfectly the difference in which is "superior" comes down to personal preference. Personally I would rather have the 12% damage. Some people like the damage reduction because it keeps you alive longer. But I look at it this way, a dead enemy is as good as 100% damage reduction. So I'll go the route that kills my enemy faster.

 

Now you listed the abilities that single saber mastery increases the damage on. I don't see how this is anything but a good thing. I use a lot the abilities in PvP constantly. I'll give you examples

 

Slash - I use this only sparingly, but it's the attack that I use in melee range if I need something to reliably drop my target from just above 20% health to Just below 20% health. It only costs 2 focus in Shien form and doesn't have a cool down, so if I need to use it again it's no big deal.

 

Sundering strike - Always spam this in ANY spec. The fact that it does an extra 12% damage is just better any way you cut it.

 

Overhead Slash - This is going to be one of your main DPS abilities. It's a huge hit to begin with and it's only on a 9 second cool down. In Shien you'll do an extra 12% damage every 9 seconds over someone in Soresu. At the end of the game that adds up.

 

Master strike - Personal preference on whether or not you use this at all. I sure don't. But why wouldn't you want an extra 12% damage on an already huge hit?

 

Basic strike - basic focus generating regular hit and it does more damage. Nothing to write home about but extra damage is extra damage.

 

Saber throw - I love the fact that my saber throw hits squishy targets for 1200 damage. I actually just had a critical hit on my saber throw last night for 2200 damage. The extra 12% makes a big difference here.

 

Dispatch - The most important ability in the entire tree. 12% additional damage BEFORE the Critical hit multiplier is HUGE! As I've stated before the point of the Vigilance tree is to get your target down from 100% health to below 20% health as fast as possible so that you can use your automatic critical hit dispatch. When you're hitting targets for 3000 - 4000 damage on your critical hits when they're below 20% health they're NOT survivin that.

 

Riposte - Riposte.... HAHHAHAHA!! Who cares about Riposte?! Poor poor Riposte.

 

Then there's the fact that all of our force abilities get a flat 6% damage increase. I won't go into as much detail about that as I did on the physical attacks but I think that it really doesn't require as much detail. All my force abilities do a flat 6% extra damage. Which is quite nice. Keeping in mind that I use plasma brand every time it's off cool down means that the the burn effect from the previous plasma brand isn't even over by the time I stack a new one on. That kind of damage adds up. The best part is that all of this damage ignores armor. Focus Guardians know this well enough.

 

 

I'm ok with the idea of a Shien/Soresu stance dance. If you're in Shien form it's nice to be able to switch back every now and then and guard someone in an emergency situation. I don't do it myself because I find it to be somewhat cumbersome, but the idea is sound in theory. However, running your Vigilance guardian in Soresu form is seriously hampering your ability to do damage.

 

Something I want to bring up again is that when you're running your the Vigilance skill tree in Soresu form you're losing 1 focus per focus generating attack and you're losing the focus refund that shien gives you. So again, you're operating at a loss of 2 focus per focus generating attack when you think of it that way. On top of that you're losing a flat 6% - 12% damage on ALL of your attacks. You gain some extra damage reduction and you get the ability to guard, but EVERYTHING else you do is going to be significantly worse in every possible way. You won't be hitting as hard or attacking as often and you don't have any of the abilties in the Defense tree to sufficiently be a support class.

 

If you're currently a Vig/Def hybrid Guardian then I recommend you just give full vigilance a try for a week and look at the difference in your damage out put. I switch from vig/def hybrid to pur vigilance and my damage shot up by about 50,000 per war zone. It's totally worth it. Your slightly decreased survivability doesn't matter because you kill people faster. A dead target can't hurt you ya know.

 

I think my next Thread is going to be regarding the evolution of the vig/def hybrid because I'm finding it somewhat interesting that almost all the guardians I know have done or are doing a vig/def hybrid. It's a very curious development.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Marqhill

[VertisReaper]

Soresu is a novelty to Focus bombers, far from a novelty if Vigil/Def specced.

 

Again numbers...to try and once and for all debunk this whole Shien is fantastic for PvP when it isn't...

Shien has a 6% damage increase to all skills and a 6% damage increase to weapon damage based skills....that's 12% damage to:

 

Slash

Sundering strike

Overhead Slash

Master strike

Basic strike

Saber throw

Despatch

Riposte

 

That's quite an increase to overhead, master strike and Despatch, however it only increases the following by 6%:

 

Blade Storm

Force Stasis

Force Push

Force Sweep

Plasma Brand (yes plasma brand is elemental damage not weapon)

 

Two parts of your main combo are not benefitting from single saber mastery from a chain combo that is normally Saber throw > Leap > Sunder > Overhead Slash > Blade Storm > Plasma brand.

 

This shows that the single saber mastery talent is in itself, the weakness behind Shien's shortcomings as a stance, if it worked for all damage types, Shien would be absolutely fantastic and I would have no argument against it being viable as a PvP dps spec.

 

Now Soresu is a 12% damage reduction vs everything, throw in the extra mitigation from unremitting, improved guardian leap and popping warding call and you can become an impenetrable fortress for several seconds while still being able to maintain a consistent figure of damage (not as high as pure vigil but good enough) because you also use the overhead slash > blade storm portion of the pure vigil combo.

 

Can you get that kind of survivability and still be able to maintain decent figures of damage if pure vigil? No you simply cannot because you cannot use the Soresu stance as effectively as a Vigil/def hybrid nor do you have warding call as a panic button.

 

 

Again, my argument is that Shien is hampered because of single saber mastery the fact that it does NOTHING for the 31 point talent of the tree is a rather glaring issue and if this gets rectified and single saber is changed to work for all damage, I'd be more than happy to say that Shien is good.

 

Until that point, it lags behind Soresu and Shi-Cho in most PvP situations.

 

Shien is amazing, survivability is never an issue for me unless I'm playing lazily. I'm never really "soaking damage" unless I have a healer and even then survivability is even less of an issue. Biggest advantage of Shien form is the focus generation being able to chain all my abilities repeatedly on CD is amazing, the damage increase is just icing on the cake.

Edited February 14, 2012 by VertisReaper

[DoctorWhorrible]

Sir, you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

You do realize you can "cast" force sweep while you are running with the enemy and still hit them.....I probably never cast it stading still. If you are standing still in pvp you are not doing it right.

 

 

I hate o be that guy, but you didn't read the actual paragraph you quoted if this is your response.

 

I understand people love their focus spec and it has large burst which is really sexy. I merely don't agree with all the hype that it is the only way to go. I find many flaws in the spec. Such as the ease of avoiding force sweep and how its biggest damaging ability being an aoe can fluff the numbers to make it look more effective than it really is.

 

I am just of the opinion that the utility the Vigilance tree provides is too good to give up for bursts of damage that require a set series of moves. This could also stem from the reduction in fluidity that occurs when going from Vigilance to Focus.

 

You are more than welcome to keep your Focus spec and wreck face with it. To say I don't know what I'm talking about while cherry picking my post, however, I'd prefer that you stop. We're all on this boat together friend. No need to see who goes wee wee the farthest.

[Mirialol]

words cannot describe how terrible vigilance is in pvp

 

 

 

vigilance guardian is same as watchman sentinel, but it is squishier / does less damage / have ZERO self heals

 

and i thought watchman sentinels were garbage in pvp

[DoctorWhorrible]

words cannot describe how terrible vigilance is in pvp

 

 

 

vigilance guardian is same as watchman sentinel, but it is squishier / does less damage / have ZERO self heals

 

and i thought watchman sentinels were garbage in pvp

 

See, I keep coming to this thread and it just keeps depressing me.

 

I think my only response in here should have been: Please keep underestimating what Vigilance can do.

[Marqhill]

words cannot describe how terrible vigilance is in pvp

 

 

 

vigilance guardian is same as watchman sentinel, but it is squishier / does less damage / have ZERO self heals

 

and i thought watchman sentinels were garbage in pvp

 

Must be a troll. Because if you could please describe to me how having a flat 12% physical damage buff, temporary immunity to knock backs, a 4% increase in Endurance, a free force sweep and an automatic critical hit on your dispacth is a bad thing then I'd love to hear your reasoning.

[JackMinn]

Vigilance is a much better spec. Its just that in order to take advantage of vigilance you have to be a good player, between effective target selection, positioning, efficient skill usage, effective taunt usage, intelligent use of leaps esp guardian leap, people typically find themselves struggling quite a lot and thus rule it out.

[Zarthorn]

*Yawn*

 

Soresu doesn't increase your survivability that much if unless you're a full tanking spec. All you're doing here is taking numbers the Single Saber Mastery primarily, pointing out that it doesn't effect abilities like BS, PB, and Sweep and saying that Shien suck.

 

Have you even got to level 50, got into decent gear and played the Vigilance Guardian like it's intended to play? Yeah, probably not. Or you're not playing the class correctly, which would cause you to write it off completely and just say Shien SUCKS because I can't survive with it.

 

Again, 6% damage increase and 1 focus refund on all attacks does NOT suck and it's not leaps and bounds behind anything.

 

You are an exceptionally rude and irritating little man.

 

Like you already pointed out earlier you are in BM/Rakata gear and you are trying to claim "this is how it's supposed to be played" when running around in effectively endgame gear but your vision is so narrowed and you cannot see why you are coming across as ignorant on the whole subject.

 

-Overgearing someone does not equal balance.

 

-Soresu generates focus just fine because of the abudancy of CC that tends to be thrown around

 

-You are still giving up your primary function (tank) to do more damage, you should have rolled a sentinel.

 

-Stance dancing isn't half as effective as you and others might claim because you lose all your focus for doing so, stance dancing is only effective if you are delaying for backup or guarding someone in huttball, it's no good for anything else.

 

-I can survive in Shien, but I survive longer in Soresu and I generally feel better about knowing that I can keep teammates alive rather than "throwing the odd taunt" for epeen medal farming, team game and you are not being a team player.

 

 

Again I'll emphasise this fact heavily since it doesn't seem to be sinking in.

 

You are giving up your Primary function to go with your Secondary function, you should have rolled a Sentinel because you are harming your team more than helping them just so you can have your "personal glory"

 

 

This argument was so common in WAR because of people that were stubborn and just simply would not let it sink in, i'll give it time to sink in for you but I doubt it will.

[Celeitia]

You are an exceptionally rude and irritating little man.

 

Like you already pointed out earlier you are in BM/Rakata gear and you are trying to claim "this is how it's supposed to be played" when running around in effectively endgame gear but your vision is so narrowed and you cannot see why you are coming across as ignorant on the whole subject.

 

-Overgearing someone does not equal balance.

 

-Soresu generates focus just fine because of the abudancy of CC that tends to be thrown around

 

-You are still giving up your primary function (tank) to do more damage, you should have rolled a sentinel.

 

-Stance dancing isn't half as effective as you and others might claim because you lose all your focus for doing so, stance dancing is only effective if you are delaying for backup or guarding someone in huttball, it's no good for anything else.

 

-I can survive in Shien, but I survive longer in Soresu and I generally feel better about knowing that I can keep teammates alive rather than "throwing the odd taunt" for epeen medal farming, team game and you are not being a team player.

 

 

Again I'll emphasise this fact heavily since it doesn't seem to be sinking in.

 

You are giving up your Primary function to go with your Secondary function, you should have rolled a Sentinel because you are harming your team more than helping them just so you can have your "personal glory"

 

 

This argument was so common in WAR because of people that were stubborn and just simply would not let it sink in, i'll give it time to sink in for you but I doubt it will.

I think you should look in a mirror before calling other people rude and insulting.

 

First of all, Vigilance is a perfectly viable end-game tanking build, and almost every good tank I know uses it instead of pure Defense because the Defense tree is completely and totally borked right now.

 

Second of all, "primary function"? Hahaha what?

 

Guardians can tank or dps. They are not primarily tanks, or primarily dps, they are capable of choosing which they want to do. Just like how every other class can choose between, as appropriate, tanking, healing, or damaging. Except the classes that can't. (Sentinels, Gunslingers; alas.)

 

Your perceptions are not welcome in this game. People can perform the function they want, as long as they have a skill tree for it.

[Marqhill]

Vigilance is a much better spec. Its just that in order to take advantage of vigilance you have to be a good player, between effective target selection, positioning, efficient skill usage, effective taunt usage, intelligent use of leaps esp guardian leap, people typically find themselves struggling quite a lot and thus rule it out.

 

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Vigilance is Superior to Focus. They're just different. AoE Burst vs. Single Target focused DPS. A huge misunderstanding of how Vigilance works is the actual damage you're doing during the course of your rotation. It's not one huge burst of damage that you get from Focus but it's several large bursts of damage over a brief period of about 8 seconds after you force leap.

 

This is an example of your Ideal rotation with an approximation of damage dealt.

 

Saber Throw (1000 damage) + 3 focus

Force Leap (800 damage and immobilizes) + 3 focus

Sundering Strike (1000 damage) + 3 focus

Plasma Brand (1000 damage + 1400 burn) - 4 Focus

Blade Storm (2000 Damage + 500 burn) - 0 Focus (Momentum) *Auto Critical Hit

Overhead Slash (2000 Damage + 500 Burn) - 3 Focus

Force Grip (1800 damage over 3 seconds) *stun

Sundering Strike (1000 damage) + 3 focus

Dispatch - (3000 Damage) - 3 Focus *Auto critical hit

 

Keeping in mind that this is all an approximation of the actual damage but this is the rotation that I usually go through and the approximate damage that my Vigilance Guardian does in full champion gear against other targets in champion gear. With this approximation all of the damage that I'm doing leading up to the dispatch would get a target that is starting with 16000 hitpoints down to 19% health and the rotation gives you enough focus to be able to do all of your moves in perfect sequence. My snare doesn't factor in here at all because it costs no focus and is an auto cast with no cool down so in terms of time it makes no difference. I do this as an opening rotation to my first target in pretty much every warzone. That target dies and gives me 2 - 3 medals in the process. 2.5k single hit, Killing Blow and if no one else hits my target then I also get a solo-kill medal. You can't tell me that's bad.

[RDeanOU]

Zarthorn, YOU are the one coming across as completely ignorant in this thread. You dismiss all of the advantages of Shien form with a wave of your hand and an absurd claim that our "primary function" is tanking. You are closed-minded, hard headed, and ignorant.

 

Just because you think that we are *supposed* to be tanks doesn't mean the developers intended or designed our class that way.

 

Soresu builds have a place in pvp, but so do Shien builds.

[Highglander]

Hi there, just tossing my 2cents of a guardian who played the specs in question here and some other weird hybrid testings

 

first deep focus : YAY sweep bomb, fun, efficient if placed correctly, but it is only damage. You want to hit hard and get big numbers, do it.

 

focus/def : same as above, except less often, has some nice defensive tricks however, nothing to get excited.

 

deep vig : nice damaging tree, has been described over and over in previous pages. I found it missing some utility for the team. Sure all the leaping giving damage reduction and CC immunity is nice for the guardien himself, but ultimately it is the team winning that is important.

 

vig/def : same as above, trading some damage for defense, and has a very tricky focus gestion, it won't forgive mistakes if runned in soresu, but in shien looses guard.

 

Vig/focus : fine i guess, i found it to be some sweep bomber like focus/def but with an easier sweep, moved on fast enough.

 

deep def : here i found my horse, realy. The damage is rather poor, don't be fooled. The main damaging abilities here are guardian strike and master strike, with some sweep and riposte, \o/ ... ahem. The fun part here is what deep defense gives

- 5 sunders in 3seconds flat

- x2 4s stuns (hilt and statis), which enables a full hit with master strike on the way

- reduced CD on force push and challenging call (and statis down in focus)

 

At the end of the day doing damage is fine, and in this regard running focus or vigilance will do the job, but if the damage is healed through it won't help the team. I found that playing a guardian in a team is shutting down the opponent while my friends are killing them.

To sum it up :

- vigilance : single target consistant damage

- focus : high limited aoe burst

- def : ennemy control and team support

 

Nice guidelines for a vigilance guardian in first page however, good job , My opinion on a guardian damaging spec for a lone wolf would be deep vigilance, soresu vigi/def has a tedious focus generation.

 

ps : don't stance dance in pvp, just don't. Losing focus and GCD is too harsh.

[Marqhill]

Alright, before this turns into a flame war lets get our tempers under control. I started this thread in order to cultivate discussion and gather opinions regarding Vigilance/Shien. I didn't start this thread so that people can throw around insults or having a "get better gear!" or an "L2P" pissing contest.

 

On that note, Zarathorn does have some points even though I disagree. The primary role of a guardian is NOT to tank. The Guardian can effectively Tank or DPS in PvE and PvP. I've DPS'ed Flash points for people before and the amount of damage my guardian puts out in PvE is reasonably massive. Only certain classes have a predefined role. The Guardian as it turns out does both damage and tanking and is quite effective in either role. There is a reasonably common misconception that "if you're a DPS guardian then you should just re-roll sentinel." This is proven to be a flawed assumption. For the past several weeks I've been in the top 3 DPS in the warzones that I'm in. There's entire threads on THIS forum about how Guardians are putting out 300 - 500k damage in Warzones. With numbers like that you really can't say that if we're not tanking then we're not contributing to the team. I know that for myself I usually put up about just shy of 300,000 damage per warzone without any battle master gear and about half of my kills are killing blows. If you think that kind of damage isn't contributing then I don't know what you expect.

 

Now what I can get behind is stopping the medal farming. I even fall into this habit sometimes. I only pop my AoE taunt to get my protection medals and then I immediately stop thinking about it. THAT is doing your team a disservice. I've actually gotten into the habit of turning my chat box off so that I can't see what medals I'm getting as their coming. That way I'm no longer thinking about getting medals and I only focus on the game. I pretty much only do this in Void Star and Huttball because in Civil War I need to see the chat when people call out incoming. I've found that doing this gets me a lot more protection per game because I'm more dilligently using my AoE taunt and not worrying about medals.

 

Honestly I think they should change the way the give medals for protection. It's WAY too easy to get the first 3 protection medals and then never protect again for the rest of the game. I've actually had situations where I've walked up to a huge fight with AoE's going on everywhere and hit my taunt button and gotten 3 medals within 3 seconds. I refuse to believe that this is working as intended. Either that or they severely underestimated the protective abilities of the AoE taunt.

 

Protection Medals should just scale instead. 1 medal for your first 10,000 protection another medal at 25,000 and another Medal at 50,000 and another when you do 100,000 protection. I like getting my "T button medals" (My AoE taunt is bound to the T key) but it's pretty unfair. It's WAY too easy to get medals that are completely unavailable to other classes. They should make it something you have to work dilligently at and not something that you get because you timed doing your AoE taunt pefectly one time. The time that I managed to land 133,000 protection in a single warzone. It was a great feeling but I had to work at it. Which is the way ALL medals should work. Healing works that way, Damage works that way and Protection should work that way too.

[Marqhill]

Hi there, just tossing my 2cents of a guardian who played the specs in question here and some other weird hybrid testings

 

first deep focus : YAY sweep bomb, fun, efficient if placed correctly, but it is only damage. You want to hit hard and get big numbers, do it.

 

focus/def : same as above, except less often, has some nice defensive tricks however, nothing to get excited.

 

deep vig : nice damaging tree, has been described over and over in previous pages. I found it missing some utility for the team. Sure all the leaping giving damage reduction and CC immunity is nice for the guardien himself, but ultimately it is the team winning that is important.

 

vig/def : same as above, trading some damage for defense, and has a very tricky focus gestion, it won't forgive mistakes if runned in soresu, but in shien looses guard.

 

Vig/focus : fine i guess, i found it to be some sweep bomber like focus/def but with an easier sweep, moved on fast enough.

 

deep def : here i found my horse, realy. The damage is rather poor, don't be fooled. The main damaging abilities here are guardian strike and master strike, with some sweep and riposte, \o/ ... ahem. The fun part here is what deep defense gives

- 5 sunders in 3seconds flat

- x2 4s stuns (hilt and statis), which enables a full hit with master strike on the way

- reduced CD on force push and challenging call (and statis down in focus)

 

At the end of the day doing damage is fine, and in this regard running focus or vigilance will do the job, but if the damage is healed through it won't help the team. I found that playing a guardian in a team is shutting down the opponent while my friends are killing them.

To sum it up :

- vigilance : single target consistant damage

- focus : high limited aoe burst

- def : ennemy control and team support

 

Nice guidelines for a vigilance guardian in first page however, good job , My opinion on a guardian damaging spec for a lone wolf would be deep vigilance, soresu vigi/def has a tedious focus generation.

 

ps : don't stance dance in pvp, just don't. Losing focus and GCD is too harsh.

 

Clearly we're of very like minds on this matter. You put it in a nutshell but you drew almost all the EXACT same conclusions that I drew through trying different specs. I never did do the Focus skill tree but I had enough people tell me what it's all about to know well enough what it does.

 

I LOVED going deep Defense but what I found during my time using that build was that it was heavily dependent on having a good healer backing me up and guarding the CRAP out of that healer. A good healer under my protection would not die. If they tried to attack the healer my DPS team mates would focus down my targets because as you said I would immediately stun the target an then stack on Sundering Strike and Guardian Slash at which point that attacker was a deadman. I would do moderate damage, get HUGE protection numbers and my team wouldn't die because my healer wouldn't die.

 

Now as much as I loved PvP tanking the requirement for a solid healer was where I lost interest in the build. On my server the odds of your queueing up for warzones with a good healer are slim. So I had to start looking out for myself. As you said, if you're soloing then Vigilance is kind of the way to go and that's just what I did. It was supposed to only be a 2 week experiment but I haven't looked back or really at anything else at all. I love the build now and plan on sticking with it for the duration.

 

I'm glad you're enjoying PvP tanking. It's awesome. You're pretty much unkillable and you keep the team alive by keeping the healer alive and while you don't get a lot of killing blows yourself you set your targets up to be murdered. It's great support but it requires that your team supports you back.

 

(P.S. I completely agree on the "Stance Dance." It just makes you worse at everything you do.)

Edited February 15, 2012 by Marqhill

[Dee-Jay]

Vigilance is a much better spec. Its just that in order to take advantage of vigilance you have to be a good player, between effective target selection, positioning, efficient skill usage, effective taunt usage, intelligent use of leaps esp guardian leap, people typically find themselves struggling quite a lot and thus rule it out.

 

How is any of that specific to the Vigilance tree when ANY Guardian can do those things?

 

 

Here's my 2 cents for those who care.

 

I've tested both specs in PvP with half Battlemaster/half Champion gear.

 

 

Unremitting aside, the Vigilance tree has no real redeeming quaility that somehow sets it apart from any other DPS spec. Sure, you do respectable damage and can kill targets reliably. The Dot effects especially are very useful for interrupting caps.

 

But then again, just about every DPS spec can perform on the level of Vigilance.

 

 

Focus DPS on the other hand is unique in the way that it can put enemy healers under a huge amount of pressure within seconds. Nothing Vigilance brings to the table can ever compare to that.

 

Vigilance has a redeeming quality, and that's constant and reliable DPS on a single target. But this is a quality that is way more valuable in PvE than it is in PvP. For PvP however, I don't think the spec has much going for it outside of decent but unspectacular damage.

Edited February 15, 2012 by Dee-Jay

[Zarthorn]

Zarthorn, YOU are the one coming across as completely ignorant in this thread. You dismiss all of the advantages of Shien form with a wave of your hand and an absurd claim that our "primary function" is tanking. You are closed-minded, hard headed, and ignorant.

 

Just because you think that we are *supposed* to be tanks doesn't mean the developers intended or designed our class that way.

 

Soresu builds have a place in pvp, but so do Shien builds.

 

I came across ignorant because you guys have been clearly trying to shove it down my throat since passing my own opinion that I'm wrong so tbh can you blame me for getting a little short tongued when all you keep saying is the same mindless drivel of l2p and you bad hrm?

 

When you come across rude, you get rudeness back.

 

I'm saying that Shien isn't all it's cracked up to be and I notice that I get more mileage out of Soresu Vigil/Def Hybrid than I do out of pure Shien because of the utility.

 

If you can make Shien work, good for you but it doesn't stop it being sub-optimal for PvP when compared to the hybrid spec because you are giving up a fair bit of utility for it.

 

Shien is without a doubt, the top DPS build in a PVE environment for a Guardian, no debate there, it just doesn't have enough going for it to warrant dropping warding call and Soresu in PvP however.

 

Remember you have no burst, no warding call and switching to Soresu to tank/guard costs you all your focus, the minute you bump into a team with equal/higher geared healers you will realise what I'm trying to say and that full Vigil isn't all that it's cracked up to be in PvP.

[stilari]

As a decently geared Vigilance Guardian I can pull the same numbers I did as Focus (except only generally 300k+ in voidstar instead of 400-500 in focus) except without the padding that splash damage affords.

 

Honestly, I think once you PvP with Unremitting it's hard to even want to PvP without it. Yes, Focus Sweep crits are fun to watch, but on similarly geared or better geared players they are not impressive and require too much setup. In Vigilance you will be constantly attacking and putting pressure on someone and gain surivivability and be freed from the constraints of a rigid setup for force sweep.

 

The pressure/presence offered by the Vigilance spec is unparelled. When you get on a roll and you're stomping through crowds of people being a nuisance, you make an impact. Sure, the damage numbers will not be massive, but you can get substantial scores damage wise (I'll top the WZ from time to time). What you're looking to do is cause a ruckus, stick to squishies and disrupt people. Get focused, you can take quite a bit of abuse especially with backup. Your presence (an intangible concept, I know) is really unmatched in battle. People remark that melee fighters in this game get the short-end of the stick, but have you ever played a team of all ranged when you have a good mix of melee with you? It's often a slaughter if you can harass them enough.

 

But with regard to the OP, not a real informative "guide". It's more a description of abilities rather than anything. Perhaps you should add strategies, alternate specs, priority list on abilities, recommended crew skills, recommended adrenals/buffs, match-ups to look for, match-up strategies, specific Warzone goals/tasks, favored companions in open world PVP, favored partners in PVP, etc.

Edited February 15, 2012 by stilari