Defense does parry for melee. so it works on ranged and melee. Also shielding(and therefore absorb) does not apply to force/tech attacks, so Defense >> than both assuming you are not at DR.

Defense rating. Defense rating increases your chance to completely avoid damage. Absorption increases the amount of damage absorbed when your shield procs. Defense>Shield> Absorption.

Sound logic, and it makes sense, its a bonus, but not a gamebreaking bonus that you HAVE TO HAVE! The presence buff you get makes leveling an alt a joke.

They are under the legacy tab, classes. As for the actual numbers I just looked at the bonuses on my character sheet. like if my crit bonus was say 26%, the break down was +25% from crit stat, +1% from somewhere else, so I took the educated guess that the bonus from the companion legacy was 1%. This was consistent with he other bonuses for surge and accuracy (as in there was was a mystery 1% that was unaccounted for). As for the +health and +inc healing i don't know the actual numbers but if the pattern fits I would say 1% is a good guess.

Also on a side note, I have NEVER seen my accuracy below 95% and i never tried to stack accuracy, in fact i avoided it while leveling. Hell if you are talking PVP, the BM gear is just lousy with accuracy, to the point my melee is at 105%, force attacks are at 111% or something absurd like that.

They apply always. And frankly, for tanking having the incoming heal buff and increased health is better than 1% accuracy.

You need to purchase the War hero gear by trading in BM(can't be the BM shells bought from crafters) gear from the vendor to get the bonuses.

Actually the bonus is for having a melee tank companion maxed out in terms of conversations. It applies regardless of which companion you have out. Bonuses from each companion archetype are RDPS: +1% Crit MDPS: +1% Surge MT: +1% Accuracy RT: +Health Healer: +Inc Heals These can only apply once per legacy, so having 2 Melee tanks maxed out does not give +2%.

Interesting, I tested on a dummy as well and found that over 4 minutes hitting smash on CD vs Hitting ravage on CD i got 2.5 times more damage from ravage vs hitting smash. I Would say that adding a fudge factor that takes into account that the third hit of ravage wont hit every time in PVP and you will get multiple hits from each Smash, I would call it a wash in real pvp. Also I tested hitting Crushing Blow on CD, which i do in PVP, I got about 1.75 times the damage i was getting from smash on CD, Ravage: 52K (1754 avg tick, 3681 max) Crushing Blow: 37.5K ( 2355 avg, 3402max) Smash: 22K (1232 avg 1810max) All hits with 5 sunders up. Also, when I asked about heavy hitters, this is what I meant, what ability could you possibly have that could hit as hard as CB early in a fight? Yes Vicious throw can hit that hard, but it is a finisher.

I believe it is a multiplicative stacking, not additive. Also guard transfers 50% of damage by players to your guarded target, not a flat 5%. The 5% is for PVE. It "should" work like this: A 1000 pt hit is reduced by 30% by taunt, so It now strikes for 700. That strike is against a target that has been interceded to. The 700 damage is now 560. The target is also guarded, so half of that damage is transferred to you. The player being hit sees a 280 pop above their head, and so do you. There are other ways to reduce the damage further, if you were guarding a tank that shielded, PT have outgoing damage debuffs in their tank tree, for example. But since the only thing I have ever hit for 10 damage is a marauder, I am fairly certain the damage reductions don't stack additively.

Well that makes sense. Sadly.

At the moment, no I don't think so, since it is a drop, and you can't RE orange drops for schematics. I can't confirm for this particular one since my Jugg is Biochem. But for the cool look, I will sacrifice the 30 stats from the augment.

I found clipping issues when i wore the BM headgear with a hood up armor. The top of the helmet pokes through and ruins the amazeballs look. http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/screenshot2012042123371.jpg/ The chest piece is a reward from the Heroic in the Black Hole, everything else is BM. It's the same model you get from Darth Malgus on story mode but with a much cooler color imo.

I use the Champion/BM weaponmaster earpiece for PVP