Any tips / rotation for Vanguard?

[Ravendax]

Hi,

 

Do you guys have any good tip and rotation type advice for vangard? I do pve exclusively and I'm about to get the healer companion.

 

I m spec in shield of course with no specific build so far..

[Wallsie]

Leveling in shield spec is very viable, I did it from 1 to 50 but that was partially because I knew that I wanted my first character to be a tank so I wanted to be ready to do that as soon as I hit max level. Once you get your healer companion after finishing the story quests on Taris you'll never have downtime (although things die a little slower). A lot of your spec depends on what you want to do while leveling, so take that into consideration. As a pure shield spec VG you'll want to run in Ion Cell (the tank stance).

 

If you want to tank for groups in pve, your spec should be this or very similar. If you're going to be doing mostly solo leveling the above spec works well enough, though you may want to consider something more akin to the Iron Fist build. This one gives you a lot more dps at the expense of some of your defensive ability. It's primarily a pvp spec, but it works well in leveling content. If you're not pvping then I'd recommend altering it to this. It drops the bonuses to your pvp abilities and gives you more mitigation. The sticky at the top of this forum does a good job explaining the build.

 

Now on to ability usage. For your opener it'll be something like Sticky Grenade -> Storm -> Stockstrike -> Ion Pulse -> Hammer Shot -> High Impact Bolt -> Energy Blast (if you're 31 into Shield spec). The priority list once you get on a mob is Stockstrike -> HIB -> Ion Pulse for max damage. Don't forget that Energy Blast does not count against the GCD so you can use it while using another ability so it's like free damage and also generates 1 ammo instead of costing you ammo. A lot of your rotation is dependent on the type of pull (single target or aoe). For aoe pulls you're of course going to open with Mortar Volley if you can hit a couple mobs, then Harpoon any ranged mobs into the group so you can Pulse Cannon the group.

 

Really the best way to learn your abilities is to read your tooltips and compare the talents you can get to them. It's pretty easy to see your more important abilities and which ones are going to be used as much as possible.