Vigilance or Defense for leveling?

[Nortro]

Title is my question, just wondering do most of you guys level Vigilance or Defense? I plan on being a main tank for my guild at 50 (Level 40 atm), I'm currently Vigilance but would also like to hear from others about their solo leveling experience, I feel as if the vigilance guardian goes down too easily?

[Marqhill]

Well, I'm pretty new to MMO's in general but I personally have found it to be not particularly difficult to level when I'm up doing the defensive tree. I honestly can't tell you how many times the defensive buffs have saved me from dying during any of the boss/champion/elite encounters in the game. It's really quite nice being so survivable. I've found that while you don't do as much damage as the other classes you can mix and match spacing out your defensive abilities along with your offensive abilities along with your debuffs to make so that during a fight you will consistently do more and more damage to your target while your target does less and less damage to you. At level 30, I can force leap in stun, sunder armor and then hilt strike for huge damage and an additional stun then hit them with other attacks to build focus during the stun, stasis, then sunder armor and then force push them away from me and then jump back in with another force leap to stun them and then start the cycle all over again. Granted it has taken a while to kill some units in this way but it's effective and they're taking huge damage all while not really being able to attack. That's really only one example but it's the thing I do most often. It even works quite well in pvp when I don't screw up or as long as my team is keeping my targets team at bay. Anyway, I'm fully enjoying the defense tree as a guardian in PvE and being full tank hasn't actually impeded my leveling process one bit. Hope this helps.

[nanith]

I'll agree with Marqhill about Guardian tree not impeding my leveling at all. I too have to admit that the rate I kill things is much slower but the raw durability I have allows me to take on the harder missions and flashpoints a lot easier. Plus it's plenty of good practice to get your threat generation rotation down too.