If in need of a guardian, hit me up in game. Name's Decka I run a vig/def hybrid.

More detail on f2p access over sub. http://www.swtor.com/FREE/features

Great write up, really helpful.

Only problem JK's have with threat is in AOE dps situation imo. I've tanked all of the HM Flashpoints in a 14/27/0 spec without any serious problems. It would have been nice to have an extra threat generating ability from Hilt Strike but you can honestly do just fine without it. Only problems is sometimes keeping AOE threat but honestly in those situations just cc a strong mob and focus single targets instead of trying to AOE the crap out of everything, it will cause less headaches. Save your AOE taunts for those sticky situations. The regular taunt ability is on a low enough cool down. Also if you're defense specced there should be zero problems keeping mobs off your dps especially since you have so many CC abilities which are not channeled and do no break on damage and will work on elite and lower mobs.

Except the Focus build for Guardians/Juggs that allows for these sort of crits is not tank oriented. Basically have to forego your defensive skills for burst damage. It's a - jump in deal damage, jump out - build. Can't hang in the middle of a fight. They go down super fast.

Yes, gaining positional advantage is stupid.... Spamming one button and eating a sandwich while a melee is in your face trying whittle away at your shields and the only disadvantage to the ranged player is that the melee can actually land a hit. - I suppose that's not stupid that's skill.

Currently ranged classes can avoid melee damage while still dealing damage to melee. Why is it so mind boggling that a melee class who first has to weave and dodge, use los to get into melee range then can also avoid range damage while being able to deal their damage of their own? If melee class has to use movement and positioning skills to close gaps how come it's so outrageous that a ranged class has to be asked to use movement and evasive skills of their own to reset the gap and gain advantage? A lazy player will always be lazy. The responses to the mere suggestion of LOS is telling of a lot of one button warriors in this game. Unfortunately collision is not a viable solution for this game, there are too many choke points where this would be very problematic ie. Void Star. Without collision you can't really have LOS for range because the clipping system completely breaks it.

The guardian/jugg specced stun on leap does give resolve and will fill up the bar if it's near the top when leapt to. The default version of Force Leap has an imobilize effect which lasts 2 seconds by default and does not affect resolve and will imobilize resolve capped players.

Playing a Guardian I'm a bit torn about this subject. On one hand one of my biggest annoyances in this game is being knocked back thus filling my resolve to full in some instances and then realizing that I'm also rooted in place...now that shiny full resolve bar is completely useless because it does not affect root/snare CC's. So while I stand there being useless my resolve bar is slowly going down to the point where as I'm out of that root, I can be stunned again. On the other hand if snares were to also affect resolve meters my chilling force ability will become useless as it's AOE snare will just give the enemy team full resolve very fast and allow them to move around freely not worrying about CC at all and marginalizing my role in group pvp even more. The chilling force is an essential skill for guard/juggs as it's the main tool for keeping in range once you've gained position. Making snares affect resolve will completely render it useless in PVP and it already has little to no use in PVE.

Roots are the most op cc in game right now for a melee class. They don't affect resolve and render a melee character completely useless for their duration. They should at least break on damage like mezzes.

Playing guardian and just reaching 50 I feel pretty good about the class personally. I haven't found any of the pve class stuff too difficult I've even been able to beat champion mobs of similar level with doc as my companion while leveling the class. My concern though is with the survivability of the class in pvp especially when Defense spec. Most of the other classes deal damage that bypasses our shields making absorption and shield ratings useless and pvp gear with those stas equally useless. I'm better off going dps spec now for pvp because I'll have more or less same survivability as I do in defense spec currently. Basically anything that is not weapon damage our shields will not mitigate.

The re-stealth ability make the op partially easy mode. A hit hard/die fast class should have to pick their battles and circumstances before exposing their cards. That's pretty much where the 'skill' is for classes like that comes from. Anyone can set up a 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - WIN rotation on their bar. But you have to know when to pick your battles. In the case of the Operative if you open up but see your target has a cc break and is coming after you...well you can just re-stealth wait a bit and come back to a situation where you KNOW their CC break is down. For a class that can dish out that amount of damage in that short of a time frame there is way too much room for error with a get out of jail card. It should be a high risk/reward character but as it stands the risk is much lower than the reward.

I'm still mid 40's so I'm rolling with a Defence build right now for leveling. I'll say this... Defensive Guardian has more than enough CC's. 2 stuns - Hilt Strike and Force Stasis (Feated for instant stun) these DO NOT break on damage. 1 Knockback (Force Push) a spammable AOE slow, and another 6m AOE Mezz that breaks on damage (AWE)...and also force leap that is also feated for a 2sec stun. The Guardian class is a late bloomer, granted I don't do very much DPS as a defensive build in PVP but I am annoying as hell for healers and long cast classes I can put out OK damage if left alone by stacking armor debuffs but I'm mostly there to guard my team mates, keep people off objectives and just be a pest for some of the other classes. Though I'll admit certain builds of BH and Inquisitor will just melt my face and I feel completely useless against.

I mean I guess to be fair I can see a reward system in opvp that is based on valor and not any sort of gear rewards being a decent addition to the game. Something along the lines of players gaining valor from killing others with a diminishing return to 0 after a certain amount of kills and the initial amount being dependent on level of the player killed. Perhaps also a notoriety system where a bounty gets placed and your name exposed once you accumulate a certain amount of Valor or if you've pk'd a bunch of lower level players. If you get pk'd with a bounty on you, then you lose valor and the other player gets extra valor. This way you can still progress in rank but any of the pvp gear will still need to be earned via commendations merc or wz. The commendation system as is makes sense to me as I see it you're getting paid for participating in a battle as a mercenary. I dunno something simple and maybe not too game breaking. Just throwing out ideas since everyone else seems to just be arguing.

So did everyone here who's campaigning for opvp rewards really join a pvp server to chase a loot carrot? I think you're all being exposed without knowing it.