Its definitely changed how I play 1 v 1's versus other tank assassins who are actually 'good'. Its never made a difference in node defense as I just don't let it come down to project to save the day. Anyhow in dueling assassins who are actually good at their class, it causes a problem when accelerated project procs and I use my relic, force potency, and adrenal. It gives them an extra second or so window to put up their immunity. A second that I don't have when they use theirs, since shock is instant. Thus I have to fake them out, or I don't get my burst, whereas they do unless I have the reflexes of Charlie Sheen.

Well I found a robe that can be crafted which looks good. Problem is that there are no AUGMENTED versions of it on the auction house on my server. Its hooded and a sort of black/grey color which looks good on Shadows in my opinion: http://www.torhead.com/item/hgLsEXW/consulars-vestments Matches with these pants: http://www.torhead.com/item/bDXLDRu/consulars-lower-robe However, I've yet to see an augmented version of it on the auction house on Port Nowhere. A single guy seems to make a ton of them to sell, but can't locate him either to ask. Can anyone confirm that an augmented version is available before I set my guys on endless crafting missions to find the recipe?

Not exactly. If they blow their immunity then all dirty fighting DoTs will be gone and that's where most resist messages come from. That's the trick, getting them to blow it early so you can reapply them. Its 100% resist during that, and can't be overcome. However keep in mind that white attacks still hit them. As does leg shot(Always fun to leg shot an immune assassin in the fire in Huttball)

Alright folks. I'm having a little trouble on my server finding augmented armor that actually looks decent. Most of custom looks that Synthweavers can make just don't match up to the best looking options out there for us. I have settled on the Jedi Initiate's robe for now for my War Hero mods to sit in, but I'm really looking for an option with a hood that looks similar. Ideally it would look like the Ancient Battlemind Robe, but I can't find a shot of it on the web offhand. Anyone out there got some ideas for piecing together a decent looking set?

You're taking my post out of context. What I'm asking for are dual rulesets for PvE and PvP. If a tank wants to gimp themselves in PvE wearing DPS gear instead of respeccing waiting for dual specs, knock themselves out. Tank gear is useful is enough already there. I'm asking that when fighting players alone, that +power has no effect in the respective tank stances. Given that, do you still think my changes are terrible suggestions?

No. And I'm sorry that you feel that way. The spec is specifically built for tanking, and tanking utility. Darkness and Kinetic Combat both. And its exceptionally good at it. It was never meant to supplant Deception or Infiltration as the PvP spec of choice for damage, nor Madness/Balance. That's the point. You're meant to play those specs if you want to do damage in PvP. The damage in kinetic combat and darkness is not overly bursty except when you pop all cooldowns, but its too good in DPS gear as a sustained DPS with our survivability tools. I don't want those tools nerfed, I want the people who want to DPS, to actually play DPS specs. Do you know how many tanking assassins or shadows there were in PvP on average prior to the dark charge in Deception/Combat Trance in Infiltration nerf? Not very many. But now everyone is playing Kinetic Combat or Darkness as the Flavor of the Month spec. And guess what? Most people are terrible at it, but their survivability puts them far above what other classes can do in their lifespan. No, I'm not going to stay silent and say that I should be able to do amazing DPS and have some of the best survivability in the game. I care about the game, and I care about actual balance. I want tank gear to be useful and balanced in PvP, and I want tank specs to be just that, actual tanks that are worthwhile in PvP. I want the DPS specs to all be worth playing, and don't want any of them to feel like a third wheel when rated come around, Operatives/Scoundrels, Combat Sentinels/Carnage Marauders, Gunslingers/Snipers, and Shadow/Assassin Infiltration/Deception/Balance/Madness all need help. Some specs are addressed in the next patch, but most aren't. And if we let this continue then the problem will only get worse. Tanks should not be something you should stack in rated for their DAMAGE, they should be utilized for their utility, guard/taunt and objective oriented capabilities. So again I implore the developers, look into making tanking stats actually useful in PvP since most classes utilize yellow tech/force damage. Look into making DPS gear less powerful while in tanking stances. If you care about this game, its balance, and having longevity, then it needs to be done, and soon.

Allow me to respond to your feedback. The comment on gap closer relates more to if they choose to keep DPS sins/shadows at the same level of damage resistance as an option and involves making the 20 second force speed movement breaker, 5 second resilience and force pull as base skills to add utility. Obviously this is not ideal, but I'm offering an alternative. To respond to the comment on this solely belonging to shadows as having an easy time against the aforementioned classes. Not so. All tanks with defensive stats take infinitely longer to bring down by a Gunslinger which I play as my primary alternate. Their problem may relate to inherently lower DPS which prolongs their fight against them and the lack of ability to always close the gap. But most of the good players of these classes do not consider white damage DPSers a threat. This holds consistent due to their base armor, mitigation, defense, shield and absorption.

I don't hate the main villain enough.

I won't claim to know the motivations of the developers here. All I know is that in order for PvP and PvE to remain healthy, then they need to be treated as two seperate animals, with two seperate rulesets. This will alleviate player concerns by making nerfs to PvE not affect PvP, and vice versa. It makes class balance so much easier since you're not making considerations for both. Damage values, healing values, and effects of abilities, and talents should be entirely seperate on players in PvP combat(Or if that's too hard, in PvP open world zones/warzones), and on PvE creatures. It will also allow them to create a wider variety of gear. For example, you could have a lightsaber with an amazing PvE effect, but no effect on players, or a lesser/different effect on players. Or passive armor bonuses which function only in each setting. Dual talent functionalities. Dual ability functionalities. Different rulesets for stats like the above for tanks in PvP. Yes it will be a lot of work to implement, but make it happen and you'll promote a healthy environment for class balance in the years to come.

Trooper has an excellent story for most of chapter 1 which is kind of muted for the rest of it(Though it does have some good choices along the way in chapter 2 and 3) It definitely lets you see more of the down and dirty side of Republic politics and military. For the smuggler. What can I say? The story has hilarious, whoever wrote it had some serious jokes. My only problem with it is the same problem I have with most other stories.

When fighting an equally skilled Tank Assassin, I'm a bit tired of them having an advantage. Now you may think its not a big deal, but due to the animation difference they're able to track when I'm popping all my cooldowns for Particle Acceleration and get their immunity shield up in time. Due to the animation difference they have about a 2.5-3.0 second window, which is all the time in the world. For me, I have a 1 second window when my opponent does the same using Shock. It needs to be fixed.

At the guild summit. The combat designers stated unequivocally that they believe that tanks on rated teams will not continue to wear DPS gear and will switch to tanking gear, since it makes them vulnerable to the highest damage classes in this game. This is quite simply, not true. As a tank shadow since day 1, I will say that my least feared class are these so called high damage classes reliant mostly on a great deal of 'white' damage ex. Sharpshooter/Saboteur Gunslinger, Marksman/Engineering Sniper, and Combat Sentinel/Carnage Marauder. Simply put, I have enough base defense against their class that the drop in shield/defense/absorb is worth it in PvP. And I'm certain that most other tank classes will agree with me. The primary stat in PvP is our damage resistance, and since armor is the same across the board in our DPS gear set with our tank gear set, many of us do not wear our tank gear, and will continue to do so in rated. The only thing we lose is around 3k HP, give or take, for a major increase in damage potential. So what do we do to fix it? We take away the benefit to wearing DPS gear in our respective tank stances, while buffing the benefit of shield/defense/absorb. But how? In combat trance/dark charge, soresu form, and Ion cell/Gas cylinder, we modify the coefficient to +power to make its benefit minimal. Now I know all of you people out there are crying foul, so hear me out for a moment. In order to buff shield/defense/absorb, we make it so it has benefit against yellow damage classes but at half value. For example, a tank shadow with 30% defense, 40% shield percent, and 40% shield absorb would have a 15% chance to deflect yellow damage attacks, a 20% chance to shield against yellow damage attacks, and when an attack is shielded, 20% damage absorption. This would apply to white damage classes too, allowing a passive buff to 'white' damage classes by halving our current defense against their most effective abilities. If you feel this would make defense too powerful in PvP, then modify it so its slightly less than a half, down to perhaps even one third of its PvE percentage, so that shield and absorb will remain useful stats. In return, I feel that Deception/Infiltration/Balance/Madness shadows/assassins should gain enough benefit to put their armor on par with DPS heavy armor classes, or if not that, then some of the gap closers, and defensive cooldowns 'upgrades' that their tanking counterparts get. Similar benefits need to be given to Scoundrels/Operatives as well, in their DPS specs. Just please, fix this. I want to feel like an actual tank. My DPS in tanking gear was already at the point where I felt like it was more than adequate for this game. The current situation is absurd, and people who want to be DPS in PvP ought to be speccing DPS.

Eh. I play a Shadow tank as my main(And have since day 1) and a gunslinger as my alt main(In Battlemaster/Champion gear). I had the same problems coming up with a counter to them as a Sabslinger. Then I figured it out. While its reliant on team play, just stack armor debuffs on them. Sometimes I play with a team of 2-3 gunslinger. If we stack flourish shot on one tank assassin, then its pretty much GG. If I'm in vent in other classes I just ask them to fire off a couple of armor debuffs on them. The only thing that gets annoying is trying to trick them to use their resilience early, though that's not hard as most players of the class are terrible FOTM former deception assassins who only changed once using dark charge with deception was nerfed and use it at the first sign of trouble rather than when they really need it. Once I'm sure its gone, then sabotage charge with contingencies usually chews them up really good. I feel for you dirty fighting slingers though. But the nice part is that during resilience we're one of the only classes that can still do significant damage to them, since it does nothing against white damage from charged burst/aimed shot/trick shot, etc. 1v1 though, if they have all cooldowns up and ready to go, best thing to do is to kite them. Yeah they can break leg shot on a 20 second cooldown, but still putting distance between them is the best thing you can do. Getting back behind your lines and letting your teammates help in dealing with them. Or if you're up on the rails in Huttball, just knock them off and use it as a breather to put some hurt on them, most players don't know anything abuot positioning their class.

Dev posts are rarely grounded in reality. Now let's suppoose its a PvE boss, in which there are no mechanics that require movement for many of our specs. .....Maybe. But I'm still not seeing it. Up there? Sure. Best? No. Let's say its dirty fighting with all the mobility too? Still up there, but no. The usual litmus test that's brought up is the Infernal Council on Nightmare. Now again, this is all personal observations, but I've never seen a Gunslinger finish an Infernal Marauder first. In fact they usually are near last of the DPS if they're all in equivalent gear. The reason why they might shine though are the encounters which don't require much movement and are melee unfriendly. On those? Sure, they might just beat out the odd Mercenary/Commando, but I rather doubt that. In PvP there are rare occasions in which I've seen a gunslinger break 400k damage on games where they have 0 deaths(lol). But I've yet to see the 500, 600, 700k DPS that Sorcerors/Sages, Powertechs/Vanguards....et al. Can put out under similar circumstances. Most would cite survivability in the latter, and indeed, survivability is our primary problem, but I qualified it by saying it was the rare 0 death, 100% uptime on DPS warzone, which does happen on occasion. I'm not saying that the warzone boards are the best litmus test, given how DPS actually works, but its still a good qualifier. I'd like to challenge any of you to bring me a screenshot of a Gunslinger exceeding 500k, then ask that same Gunslinger how often it occurs. Again, this is all pure observation without any objective data outside of combat logs, but I really doubt every Gunslinger I've interacted with, including myself, is just that bad. I don't see us as being 5% higher in DPS than every other DPS class, but I do see us within the top 3-4 DPS consistently.

I'm fine with Upheavel being moved to a higher tier, so long as the threat from the Kinetic talent is upgraded to compensate. A change for PvP should not nerf our PvE threat.