So many people were looking forward to 1.2. What could bioware be cooking now? New and exciting worlds? More fun things to do? New features that we didn't expect? When 1.2 finally hit with Legacy, I feel as though it was met with a huge "Oh... So THAT'S the direction this game is going," and people started dropping like flies. The amount of emphasis placed on Legacy is absolutely absurd for the amount of playtime / enjoyment it brings to players. Myself, and everyone else in my guild, opened the Legacy tab on the first day of 1.2, made our family trees then never touched that screen again. I'm talking about months upon months of hard work by the Devs.... for what? 5 minutes of gameplay met with an overwhelming "Meh"? Legacy itself isn't a "bad" idea, but IMO it's what is killing the game. It sounded cool before, but once the man behind the curtain was revealed, it's evident that Legacy doesn't provide any meaningful content at end-game. What bioware needs to do is put in time wasters that don't feel like time wasters. This doesn't have to be world pvp. It can be as simple as adding a dueling area to each major city, or re-working crafting so that it's not just afk farming after clicking one button (who the hell thought of that?). In WoW, players spent ungodly amounts of time exploring the vast world looking for herbs, mines, and the like. Every game has issues and everyone complains about having more things to do, but these activities that actually do benefit your character, even in a small way, allow players to feel like their time isn't wasted when they're online. I'm in Black Hole/Rakata, have every slot augmented, including bracers and belt, and the only upgrades I can get now are in the Ops we run two days a week. Aside from those, there is nothing for me to do in the game. No farming, aside from tedious dailies, no point in running flashpoints, and PVP is an unattractive zergy grindfest. I actually haven't unsubbed, but may do so depending on how fun D3 is, and definitely will once GW2 comes out.

1. Server Populations I was on a very lowly populated server before I transferred to Ajunta Pall. Groups were impossible to find for flashpoints, no one ran ops except for a single guild which had trouble filling their spots and it was near-impossible to sell items because no one was looking at the GTN. The problem is that everything in the game - crafting, ops, flashpoints, groups, grouped pvp, GTN, guilds - require one thing in common. PEOPLE. Even on my server which is in the top 10 most populated servers, it has been increasingly difficult to find groups for things. 2. Lack of "Just-For-Fun" Things to do I may be flamed for this, but I'm going to go ahead and bring up WoW. This game is so incredibly similar to WoW, it's hard not to draw comparisons. In WoW, there were many things in the game that could be done whenever, and wherever, just for fun. Things like raiding towns, dueling outside of ironforge or stormwind, and the like. I remember, at any time of the day I could go outside of Ironforge and have fun dueling people for hours on end. Even if there was a lack of end game content, or a lack of character building things to do at the time, they were things like this to do to mask it. It's called user generated content, and this game has none of it. 3. Very Poor Optimization I can play SC2 on Ultra Settings. I can play Diablo 3 on High with no FPS issues. So why do I get 25 FPS when I play Swtor on low settings? These complains have been voiced since launch, and unfortunately it seems like it's a problem with the engine and won't be going away any time soon. A lot of people can't even do 16man raids simply because it lags too much. 4. Lack of End Game Raiding Support A REAL Combat log? Damage meters? Ready-check? Unless I download another program, it's impossible to tell how much damage I am really doing, and even then, I can't compare myself to others. 5. Legacy The Legacy system is a feature that encourages single-player gameplay. Go level alts. Go level more alts. Go quest on planets. This is an MMO, not a single player game. It's a fun feature to have, and it's fun knowing that your characters are "officially" related, but it's really just a single player feature that hurts the community of the server. We need more things that encourage player interaction and give incentives to work together, and Legacy does the opposite.

I've wondered the same thing. Our gunslingers do pretty much the same damage as our sentinels and do it from afar, taking little to no damage. Our commandos do a little less, but they not only take less damage, they can also offheal in dire situations. Melee dps are poo and heal sponges.

I just went with a full augmented orange set with rakata and black hole mods. I like me some raw stats.

I use it as a last resort while tanking, and only if both taunts are up. Let's say I'm at 20% health with no cooldowns up. I use Focused Defense, pop Combat Focus, wait 2-3 seconds then taunt. This keeps the boss on me still, while healing me every time he attacks. At the end of the duration, if needed, I challenging call and continue tanking, and now my taunt is cooled down as well. Doing this, I successfully heal myself for a high amount over the duration of Focused Defense while maintaining aggro. I've tanked every boss in the game and am currently tanking EC HM.

I personally like generating focus. It lets me use abilities.

I stand corrected! I don't usually have issues holding aggro though and we're in HM EC. I save both my taunts for tank swaps / getting aggro back if I do lose it momentarily.

I'd have to agree with the OP as well. My guild has cleared everything but HM EC, and we are started that this week. My character has the best gear possible at the moment not counting the gear from HM EC. There is no point in running HM's, doing dailies, or anything, because I already have the items. PVP is just a warzone pug grindfest, and sorry I don't enjoy leveling tons of alts and repeating the same content over and over. WoW had arenas, world pvp, more easily accessible world bosses, dueling areas. Anyone remember going outside of ironforge and stormwind to duel? I used to spend hours out there perfecting my dueling techniques and practicing for arenas. There is no such area in SW. They even create the zones to actually make it HARD to pvp. You have to go really, really out of your way to go find an imperial to fight. Anyone remember city raids? If the horde were attacking southshore, chat would blow up in ALL the major cities and hundreds of alliance players would rush to the aid of the town. That was fun. It's called user created content, which this game has none of. Once you've ridden all of the "rides," there's nothing left to do at the amusement park and it's time to go home.

There is no reason why you should be spamming taunt if you already have aggro. Your rotation seems pretty decent and similar to mine, yet I have few problems holding aggro. Sometimes in the beginning of the fight I'll lose it momentarily if a DPSer lays into the boss right away, but after about 30 seconds it's basically unheard of for someone to pull. Don't forget to stasis whenever you can (it's a great threat builder because it ticks while you are using other moves as well). Also always have the highest dps in your group guarded. usually my opener is Saber Throw > Focus > Leap > Guardian Strike > Sunder > Hilt Strike > Blade Storm > Sweet > Sunder > Stasis then just go into your regular rotation. I hate to ask, but do you have all of your abilities keybound? If you're not using your abilities as soon as possible on every global cooldown then you're losing both threat and damage by moving your mouse around and clicking slowly.

You seem to be under the impression that I've said that tanking as a hybrid is impossible. No, I'm sure you can do it just fine, and a good rotation helps alleviate the handicap of having worse focus generation. However, at end game it's all about optimization. Can you tank as a hybrid in end game? Sure. Is it the best spec for threat & focus generation? No. If you're willing to do that to the group you run with, then more power to you, but I'll do everything I can to optimize my performance for my group. Also, according to your uber leet rotation, you don't ever use riposte. That is one of the best tanking abilities we have for the focus cost, hands down. I suggest changing your rotation to accommodate riposte on cooldown.

The vast majority of your focus points go right into overhead slash because the rate at which you generate focus as hybrid spec is gimped severely without cyclonic sweeps. You get HALF the focus generation benefit from Soresu form that a defense specced guardian has. Overhead slash being on a 9 second cooldown doesn't have anything to do with focus generation. Please use another argument to defend hybrid spec. Holding aggro on multiple targets is going to be a pain regardless of your spec, but even here you're wrong again. More damage on force sweep doesn't make up for the extra cyclone sweeps a defense specced guardian will be doing due to their higher focus generation in soresu form. Free sweeps doesn't make up the difference. Even if it were true that aoe threat generation is better with hybrid spec (which it isn't), if you want to spec yourself for tanking trash mobs, have fun, I'll spec myself for tanking bosses. Blade Barrier is a skill that doesn't scale too well, true, but over a lengthy fight it is well worth it, as long as you are using blade storm often. As another poster mentioned above, the only time blade barrier is outperformed by hybrid's raw mitigation is when the tank is taking more than 20k damage per 12 seconds. Blade barrier out-performs in all other scenarios, ie. when the majority of an attack is mitigated by blade barrier (aoes, transition phases, other mechanics like the lightning balls on soa). TLDR: Threat & Focus generation are both better with a defensive spec. Mitigation is about the same.

Apologies - I actually forgot to mention that I saber throw and combat focus before leaping. I have a full focus bar ready before hitting the boss. Also, dust storm is an absolute must-have if you're a tank. Simply buy force sweeping and blade storming on cooldown you are mitigating a good amount of damage for your healers over time.

This was wiping us a lot. Everything is fine, the run is going perfect, doing everything right, the tank swaps are clean, no one pulls aggro, then bam, lightning spears inside the defense system on stormcaller, WHILE the tank is still kiting spears around. It just randomly stopped happening for us from time to time. We didn't change anything and just had to hope that random spears didnt wipe the group inside stormcaller's defensive system.

The first hit he does after coming down is pretty lethal, yes. One tank should stand near where he comes down and get aggro on him immediate. After he takes that initial 1 hit, the other tank taunts off of him, that way the damage is more spread out. Try to kite as much as possible, and keep his front side away from other people. I can personally tank him without moving, but my gear is also much better now than it was when we first killed Kephess. We did have to kite him a lot and bounce aggro back and forth for our first few kills. Tell your tanks to stack shield chance and absorption so that the hits that do land are mitigated as much as possible.

While many people like going overhead slash and claiming to build better threat via more damage, they often forget that without Cyclonic Sweeps at the top of the defense tree their focus generation in Soresu form is complete garbage. As defense, I can use focus dumps more often and use combat focus incredibly often as well. Not to mention Hilt Strike + Guardian Slash. Holding aggro post 1.2 as defense has not been a problem for me. Blade Barrier is really nice as well. Force Leap > Guardian Slash > Sunder > Hilt Strike > Blade Storm > Sweep > Sunder > Stasis is usually my opener, then I just do my rotation for the rest of the fight. edit: Here's my spec: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500uRGzudMdfzZcGZ0M.1