You do realize that after every sentence explaining how Guardians aren't a problem, you then went on to describe how Guardians were a problem? If a class is much easier to play, it's unbalanced. That's the problem. And do you know why it's easier? Because it has the utility and the Guardian doesnt. Note to all you people who are talking about single target tanking: Any fool can tank single target. That is not the definition of where tanking skill comes into play. The skill is being able to manage threat against multiple targets while staying alive. Guardians lack specifically in that area.

Guardians are broken, and the L2P crowd is just trying to put a band-aid on the class by saying that you can work around it. Of course you can work around it with gear and keybindings and overthinking pulls. This is an MMO. There is only thing that MMO players do consistently. They put forth the least amount of effort to get the biggest rewards. If you put in a system that's tougher or more complicated but offers no real reward? The MMO playerbase will not do it. This method brunts no argument. Sure a small amount will try, but it will never be adopted. If it's the only option for success, they will quit. Having one tank be good at bosses, but not being able to AE tank will mean that everyone will default to the AE tanks. Why? Because the time saved on being able to blast through trash or deal with a boss that summons adds far outweight the survivability of a "boss tank" when you factor in gear progression. The JK Guardian is not a good threat generator, period. In fact, if you follow the primary defense tree, you'll hamstring yourself because the abilities at the top are high cost with high cooldowns. All in all, the ability cooldowns of the Guardian are so ridiculous that you will absolutely have to rely on the coordination of your group members to overcome the classes shortcomings. This is simply not the case with an equally geared Vanguard. You can say things are fine for you, and maybe they are. Maybe you are a great player. If so, pat yourself on the back with your keybindings. For a mass market MMO, yours is not the playertype they should be gunning for. They need to make the tanking class attractive for the player who wants to play with his friends. They need to make tanking less of a headache for the people that want to lead a group.

Per request, to update my "No, as of this weekend": I posted a thread about it in the Hard Mode section of the forums. Basically I tried to get a group together to do a hard mode and got crushed by the last boss's insta-kill mechanics. He would double shot people with lightsaber throws, and there was nothing we could do. He would drop purple circles on the ground and people would get hit by them 3 yards outside the circle. They were running out and still getting one-shot. I couldn't tell if it was lag or the effect not matching the spell area, but it looked bad. The group wiped 7 more times before we gave up since it was costing us about 100k in credits. Add into the fact that I'm JK tank, and I find tanking in this game to be waaaaay too difficult without better AE management tools and indicators on threat generation. There are times when I can't figure out who or what has aggro without a mob's target indicator, nor do I understand which abilities in the defense tree are appropriate for my threat generation. The vigilance tree seems to hold aggro better than Defense. This seems backwards. Bear in mind I lead as a warrior RL in WoW from Vanilla to Wrath, and this game frustrated me in tanking. It just makes no sense to me.

It basically broke the camel's back for me. I don't tolerate these kind of mechanics in what are supposed to be approachable content before even raids, made even moreso by the fact they don't work correctly. I noted this in my exit interview while I run out the clock. I will resub if things get more updated, fixed, and corrected but I just can't have fun like this.

No, as of this weekend.

I'll start by saying I've run this instance successfully 5 times before this weekend. However, this weekend I went into the place with 3 people and absolutely could not beat the last boss. Why? 1 - 4 times he targetted our healer with the saber throw hitting him with both shots. That instantly killed him. 2 - The rest of the time, he'd one shot people with the stuff on the ground. Normally this is L2P territory. Except as I watched one of our ranged die 3 yards away from the edge of the circle, I realized that the something else was at play. We couldn't get out of it. Unless people just ran around contantly, you were going to die. He also would force choke me, drop the circle under me as a tank, and insta-kill me. Stuff like this in hardmodes makes them not fun. Insta-kill mechanics or lag or bugs if that's what they are, make them not fun. I don't like seeing "do or die" stuff in hard mode dungeons simply because the unforgiving aspect of these mechanics don't play nice with latency or server timing issues.

I wish I could demand that Bioware replace all their development team and accuse anyone who defies my wishes as part of the problem. That would be a great dark side character roleplaying choice. In the meantime, might I suggest you change your tone? Flies, honey, etc.

I play SWTOR for the hot chicks. Nothing like walking into a bar, siddling up to a 10 who is shunning other advances and drop the knowledge that I have a Master Jedi on Hyperspace Cannon. Works every time. Thanks Billy Dee!

In an effort to make this thread positive, I suggest we list all the things we want from the game! 1 - Real Estate on Hoth. In the white neighborhood. 2 - An Ortolan sidekick that DWs lightsabers 3 - The ability to repeatedly kill my ship droid 4 - Mailboxes on my ship. Also a subscription to hawt twilek weekly delivered to said mailbox. 5 - The ability to gamble on pvp matches.

How do you feel about threat generation mechanics across all tanks so far? Do you think they are comparable across all classes, or do you feel that threat is lacking in any areas? Also, do you feel that area of effect threat is sufficient for tanking in hard mode encounters and ambushes, or are there any changes coming to those mechanics for the classes?

Depends on the content. I might be there but you don't have to enjoy it if you don't want to. I personally don't do a lot of pvp even though it's there because I think it's simply a numbers game with only a few minor skills involved. The rest is simply communication or the lack thereof. That being said, I would complain about the lack of content if I'd completed the end of the PvE stuff and the next patch only contained pvp options.

You played this game for the wrong reason.

If you aren't watching the Super Bowl on Sunday there are probably a few reasons: 1 - You live in another country. 2 - You don't have friends. 3 - You were knocked out in the hospital. 4 - You are one of those odd people who doesn't own a TV in 2012. 5 - You are giving birth. 6 - You died between the time you read this and 6PM Sunday. 7 - You were beat up in high school by jocks. 8 - You only know what a ****** looks like due to ****. 9 - You hate America. 10 - The terrorists won.

Easy is relative. Initial tanks by nature are going to be the more confident players. Here is a scenario. Let's say I'm in the middle of attacking and I have three mobs involved. DPS is hammering on the one I'm on. Now early after the AE taunt goes off and I grab them, the healing aggro crits and one of the mobs gets itchy for the healer. I taunt this guy back, but the dps that's hammering gets back on the elite that was focus #1. So now, you have no cooldown, the mob is turned on the dps for 10 more seconds, and everyone is wondering why you are just standing there. Are there ways around this? Sure. For one, I think that healing aggro is a bit too strong in the AE scenario. YMMV on that one, but it's been discussed with my group as a possible issue. Second, even though you know your melee dps is guarded, that may or may not generate the threat you want, nor does it refresh your taunt when or if he pulls aggro. Simple changes such as making guard refresh the taunt or having a taunt cooldown talented would go a long way in taking the bricks out of the briefcase.

The point isn't so much that taunt does or doesn't add aggro to the target, which I believe it does. The point was that a 15s cooldown on taunt, with the other option being a 45s AE taunt, your options get limited. This problem comes into play when you are faced with the "add rush" bosses, of which there are more than a few in the flashpoints. Can you blame DPS? Sure. Let's be honest about the job, though. Tanking is unpopular enough without making the people doing it even more frustrated.