The class story is the strongest point of TOR by a country mile. The weak points are the PvP and the endgame PvE.

If you were on at that time also, which one are you? Sick kid or no life guy?

Pretty sure this isn't actually a bug, it's a method of preventing the loot chests from being exploited. Not a great method - why not just tie the loot in the chest to the previous boss and get rid of the chest itself? - but it does indeed prevent exploitation. That said, I agree with the thread subject overall. Karagga's was less buggy than EV, and Denova was less buggy than KP, so there's been progress but still, we ain't there yet.

1. How do you think your Guardian spec is perceived by other classes? I play a 2/32/7 Vigilance spec, and while I personally haven't been "discriminated" (drama much?) against because of my spec, people are often surprised by my damage and I still see people in channels completely discounting the class as DPS viable. I think there's a lot of misinformation about the spec. 2. How do you perceive your own spec? For raw DPS, I put out good numbers as a Vigilance Guard. Always within 5% of the highest performing Sentinels, Slingers and Mandos in my raid, and often at the top. However, I still think that Sentinels are a better choice in general because of Inspiration - the amount of burst that ability provides a raid is immense. Secondly, while I have a Taunt and can sometimes save the raid after a tank death, my cooldowns aren't up to prolonged tanking - Focused Defense is a theat drop in itself and Saber Ward doesn't work to full effect against all enemies. Enure is often more a hindrance than a help, as healers often don't top you off if you look in better shape than you are, and once the health disappears you can be dangerously low. Sentinels have much better defensive cooldowns, and while that fact is visible in PvE in PvP it's right in your face. On top of this, I think Vigilance Guardians are one of the classes that requires greater effort and thought in stat optimisation in order to get good results, and I believe that to be one of the main reasons that many DPS Guardians feel the class underperforms. The unoptimised Rakata sets in particular were awful until you switched all the mods out, and the Black Hole/Campaign stuff is also really badly itemised.

The highest damage put forth so far is the 4 rotation cluster (already shown earlier in the thread). Each is 3 GCDs (4.5) seconds long except for the opener, and are on a priority system. Opener: Saber Throw > Force Leap > Sunder > Master Strike. Priority one - get MS on cooldown. Use when MS is ready. Sunder > Master Strike Priority two - Apply DoTs and reset MS. Use when MS isn't ready and Plasma Brand is ready. Sunder > Plasma Brand > Overhead Slash Priority three - Filler. Use when both Master Strike and Plasma Brand are on cooldown. Sunder > Saber Throw (or Strike if it's on cooldown or you don't have 4 piece) > Bladestorm. If you need Focus (you probably won't) and Combat Focus is on CD you can: Sunder > Saber Throw/Strike > Force Sweep At 30% hit Dispatch every cooldown while Force Rush is up. There's a couple of things you can do within this to squeeze a little more DPS out of it but it's a good place to start and once you know it you'll probably be able to see the areas where you can occasionally skip a step to get a bit more damage out. -------------------------------------------------------- If that seems too complicated, you can organise abilities into a priority system that will give a very similar order of abilities as the above rotations: Sundering Strike Dispatch (with Force Rush) Master Strike Plasma Brand Overhead Slash Blade Storm (with Force Rush) Saber Throw or Strike The thing I've found with the priority system, though, is that there are times when your Focus is just a couple of points off being able to hit your next priority ability. The rotation cluster never seems to run into that problem, at least not before 30% and you start with Dispatch. So I definitely prefer the cluster system for that reason, but this works too.

Well, Force Sweep is a Force Attack so 6% extra crit on that isn't too bad and it also counts (I believe, judging from parses) that it counts for not just Plasma Brand's initial attack, but also the DoT. That's my main justification, though I'm a big fan of Commanding Awe too. I did have it 2/2 but needed to take Accuracy up to 3/3 after swapping some gear around, and that's where it came from.

Yeah, sorry, it did get a bit off track there. Just to answer the other questions the OP asked: Yes Plasma Brand is great. If you're specced Vigilance I can't see any reason not to take it. It's up to you on swapping classes. I'm around the same level as the Sentinels in my op group in terms of damage, I'm consistently in the top 3 on our parses, but that said the Sentinels bring Inspiration and better defensive cooldowns to the table (yeah I know that's backwards). Sentinels aren't quite as reliant on itemization either - Guardians seem very dependent on specific gear setups that is a pain and can be costly to mod (because our base sets are loaded with useless stats). It's an MMO though, the top dogs one month will be gimped the next. Swings and roundabouts, though if you just wanna play FotM go nuts.

Well, difficulty is subjective. I would definitely call HM Flashpoints easy mode. As far as Ops go, my point was that you should do something beyond story mode, where DPS starts to get important, and if you don't do enough, you notice. What are you talking about? Insight? I have 3 points in Insight too, but 6% extra Force Crit chance doesn't mean anything when Master Strike is doing twice as much damage as the skills that get use from that Crit chance. There's really not that many enemies that knock you back. Yeah there's some in the heroic in Black Hole, and there's some trash in Karagga's Palace toward the end and some in Denova. But we already established DPS isn't an issue in Black Hole and it's not an issue on Operation Trash either. None of that stuff has an actual timer before it enrages. I use a completely different rotation on trash and world groups than what we're discussing here, but the reason I'm not bringing that into it is because most people are clear that when we're talking about DPS, we're generally talking single target Operation boss. Here's my full opening rotation: Saber Throw > Force Leap > Sunder > Master Strike > Sunder > Plasma Brand > Overhead Slash From that point on, whenever Master Strike is off cooldown, I will: Sunder > Master Strike When it is on cooldown I will: Sunder > Plasma Brand > Overhead Slash When both Master Strike and Plasma Brand are on cooldown (which happens when neither Plasma Brand nor Overhead Slash proc Zen Strike) I will: Sunder > Saber Throw (or use Strike if you don't have the 4 piece set bonus) > Bladestorm Obviously weave in Dispatch when it becomes available. It's really that simple. Focus isn't an issue and you get maximum DPS. This rotation is no secret, it's been around in some form for weeks now, since the Master Strike changes in 1.2. Alright, look. I've logged my DPS since the parsers launched. I'm not just going off gut feeling like you are, I'm telling you flat out that not using Master Strike at the first opportunity is a DPS loss. If you weren't so stubborn you'd see that purely from the napkin math presented above. If you weren't so unsure of yourself you'd go and log your own damage and present that as evidence. At this stage there's no point discussing it further, we've both made our case and hopefully anybody nerdy enough to be reading it has been able to make up their own minds based on the evidence provided. Here's the real beauty of my rotation though - I'm never "trying to build focus back up". Ever. It starts high and on the rare occasion it gets low (Cyclone Slash drains it fast and when Dispatch comes available it can get out of synch occasionally) I have Combat Focus. If that's on CD and I'm still in need of Focus (Super rare!) then there's a 4.5 second rotation that sorts it right out (Sunder > Throw (or Strike if on CD/no 4pc) > Force Sweep (with Effluence). I'm running 2/32/7. I know you have Momentum (wasted points at Ops level) and it sounds like you have Insight (which I have). Here's my build: http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#5000MZGMZcGMRMudduR.2 It's pretty standard honestly, nothing flashy about it. Some people take Gather Strength instead of Unremitting, and I can see the arguments for that. I think it's a great talent in PvP (but then, they both are) I just like the damage reduction of Unremitting and don't see all that many times Gather Strength is applicable.

See, this is the problem entirely. You are hung up on easy content. What you do when you do your dailies is irrelevant, and if you do the same thing you do while doing dailies while in an Operation, then you'll be doing substandard damage. Soloing easy mobs in the open world is nothing like focusing on maximizing your damage in an operation, and the fact that you think they're the same thing exposes your inexperience. That's why people get so frustrated with you on these boards - we're all talking about DPS and how to optimize it in a 3-6 minute long boss fight and you're talking about killing Strongs in Black Hole. While you're correct that Bladestorm is an automatic crit (or close enough), you're wrong about total damage numbers. You said it yourself in the last post - think of the DoTs as extensions of the ability. Well, Bladestorm will crit for 3.5k, but Overhead Slash does 3k when it doesn't crit (over 4k when it does). But look at the extra damage both DoTs are doing... Overhead Slash does more. And with OS, you get the added incentive of proccing Zen Strike. Again, nobody cares about Black Hole mobs. You could literally kill everything in Black Hole just by spamming Strike. I get what you're saying but it's irrelevant, and besides which we're Guardians. We have a zero cost interrupt that's off the GCD and doesn't interfere with our DPS rotation. The stun on Bladestorm doesn't mean a thing outside of an operation, nevermind inside one. Well it's because I don't care too much about Bladestorm. I use Bladestorm only when both Master Strike and Plasma Brand are on cooldown, which is very rare. Force Rush is up 100% of the time anyway, and Overhead Strike does overall more damage than Bladestorm and procs Zen Strike. The only relevant type of target is an Operations target. Again, this is why people get frustrated with your logic. Nobody cares about what rotations you use on normal mobs because you can spam Strike and they die. It does critical. I gave you the damage numbers it will do when it does critical, all based off the logs I've got of my damage. If you refer back to the example, you'll see that even when the DoT hits critted, the damage was still 66% of the Master Strike opener. But... that works both ways? Let me be clear: You do realize that immediately after my Master Strike is Plasma Brand... the damage numbers wouldn't change at all because my DoTs would now be active from that point until the very end of the encounter. If you don't understand that then I don't know how to make it any clearer - when you finally get around to using Master Strike, I'm not sat there doing nothing and saying "Okay, I'm done, hurray!" I'm putting my DoTs up. You will get exactly two ticks of Plasma Brand's DoT before my own DoT is active, and will do between 1k and 1.6k damage in total with those ticks. The only difference now is I already have a huge headstart on you in terms of damage done, my Focus is higher and my Master Strike might be off cooldown and ready for round two. No you won't. My DoTs go up exactly 4.5 seconds after yours. Once my DoTs are up, they stay up because my rotation is optimized. So our DoT DPS is exactly the same. The situation never flips, I'm simply ahead for the entire fight because I had a better start. Well, that's not how DPS is measured, for a start. Of course DPS fluctuates - it doesn't matter. What matters is the total damage done over the course of a fight (mine will be higher) and the DPS derived from that by dividing it by number of seconds. You won't, trust me. This has all been tested. Nobody woke up one day and said "I know! This is how it's done!" It's kind of ludicrous that you believe that. Both methods were tested extensively by multiple people and the evidence is right there. Unless you've got some logs to back up your claims it isn't really any wonder that people get annoyed by your anecdotal evidence - that's actually based on doing dailies. I don't care what you use in Black Hole mate, really I don't. It doesn't matter what you use there. When I talk about Master Strike and its application in an optimal DPS rotation I'm not talking about dailies, not ever. You need to understand that when we're talking about PvE DPS, most people are talking about operations. Well, that's fair enough. But unless you're actually going to log these things or run an operation above story mode you're never going to know for sure. I've done these things and it's not even an argument - the differences are clear.

Well, I don't know whether or not your computer genuinely can't handle logging - I'm happy to give you the benefit of the doubt on that. But neither my PC nor the one my missus uses is anything to shout about and combat logging has no effect whatsoever on game performance. But here's the problem. It's not "the middle of the engagement". Even during dailies, if your DoTs are doing most of your damage then I can only imagine how slow you're actually killing things. But more to the point, during an operation you have two choices at the start of the fight for your first two GCDs (after sunder). You can put up Plasma Brand, get Force Rush and crit Bladestorm, all for quite good damage, or you can hit Master Strike and do damage that outstrips Plasma Brand, Bladestorm and the DoT and then pull Master Strike off cooldown with your own Plasma Brand and Overhead Strike. Bladestorm is actually our most inefficient skill at the moment, even with Force Rush, and really should only be used as filler. Momentum is a good skill, but it's garbage for PvE. Why? Because Master Strike, Overhead Slash and Plasma Brand are all far better skills. In my rotation I simply don't need that free Bladestorm, even if I did want to use it as a go-to ability, because I've got plenty of Focus. I still spec into Momentum for PvP where I'm sometimes in Soresu, but for Shien PvE the points are better spent elsewhere. Yeah, Force Rush. It's a great skill, nobody is disputing that, but a critted Bladestorm is still a Bladestorm, and Bladestorm just ain't that great. Dispatch is where the value in this talent is. Plasma Brands cooldown is exactly 6 GCDs long. So between Plasma Brand you can fit two 3GCD rotations. My Plasma Brand rotation is Sunder > Plasma Brand > Overhead Slash. I use this to DoT the target as well as proc Force Rush (so that if I have to use BS it will crit) and Zen Strike (to get Master Strike off cooldown). Whether I use a Master Strike rotation (Sunder > Master Strike) or a filler rotation (Sunder > Saber Throw (or Force Sweep if you don't have the 4 piece set bonus) > Bladestorm) doesn't really matter, because Plasma Brand and Overhead Slash will both be off cooldown. Not really sure how this matters at all. Master Strike costs zero Focus. I throw for 3, leap for 3, sunder for 3, and then Master Strike. My next attack after Master Strike is another Sunder, so I'm at 12. I don't need that extra single Focus from Bladestorm. You do though, because you spend all of your Focus right away, while I set up Zen Strike and never have any Focus issues. But... you just messed up basic math. Here's the thing - your DoTs aren't ticking through my Master Strike, because my Master Strike is hitting while you're still applying those DoTs. You will get exactly 2 ticks of Plasma Brand's DoT (about 1000 total damage) in the time it takes me to apply my own Plasma Brand, except my own Plasma Brand is likely to proc Zen Strike (yours won't) and my Master Strike already did a tonne of up front damage to the enemy. I'm still way ahead. Still don't believe me? Add it up. Me: Master Strike. Two 2k ticks and one 4k tick. That's 8k. (2x3k+1x6k = 12k on a crit, usually somewhere inbetween as each tick crits seperately). You: Plasma Brand 2k (3k on a crit) + Bladestorm 3.5k (Always crits) + 2 ticks of Burning (Physical) 1k (no crits) - 1.6k (all ticks crit). In the first 3 seconds after Sunders I did between 8k and 12k. You did between 6.5k and 8k. I did (substantially) more damage, and I have 9 Focus, and I can go on to proc Zen Strike. You did less damage, have only 6 Focus (Throw 3, Leap 3, Sunder 3, PB -4, BS (with Momentum)+1) and cannot proc Zen Strike. Those damage numbers are based on my own damage for each ability. But I don't really know how to make it any clearer to you. Do the maths and it's pretty undeniable. Well, I agree with that, but I fail to see how it's relevant. See the maths above. I agree with you, and I'm not saying Plasma Brand is bad, in fact it's excellent (so is Overhead Slash). But Master Strike is the priority with this spec right now if you want to be optimal. It's not always necessarily been that way (pre 1.2 Master Strike was actually a DPS loss in some cases) and it's not necessarily always going to be that way. But right now it is. I'm sure you're right, but we're talking optimal. The Master Strike on cooldown approach is flat out better than anything that's been put forward by anyone else since 1.2. Can your methodology get you through dailies? Yes. Can it get you through ops? Yeah, it probably could. Is it optimal? No. It's fine to play how you want and use the abilities you want to use, but unfortunately, because this is a numbers game, there's always going to be a "best" way.

Please take anything Garfield says on Vigilance Guardians with a grain of salt - his experience comes from doing dailies and a couple of story mode EV runs and he's unwilling to upload any logs to validate his out of date claims. If you want to do optimal damage in an operation you'll be using Master Strike on cooldown and resetting it with PB/OS. While doing dailies it really doesn't matter what you use, nobody cares.

Back at home now so able to check in. First thing - you were right, not sure where I got 2011 from. My buffed strength (no stims) is 1997, though I was only 14 out so not too bad. Buffed (on hyper-battle stims - another mistake, not sure why I said Rakata, I'm not a biochem but it was late and I'm not a fan of hotels) my strength is 2112. Am also able to give a full account of my (stim) buffed stats: Damage: 934-1096 Bonus: 609.7 Accuracy: 99.70% Crit Chance: 30.76% Surge: 78.34 Here's my AskMrRobot "armoury" page: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/5720bb3a-6536-4bb3-85ca-66f0f82eee61 Nice feature. Wonder if we'll ever get one that updates automagically. Couldn't find stims under the buffs section though - did I miss it? One question I do have, is are we sure about the DR on strength? I incrementally removed Strength mods from 2100-2000, and then again from 2000-1900 and saw no difference in how it affected damage or crit chance. I swapped out one 18 strength for an 18 power augment and saw the following changes: + .2 Bonus Damage (609.7>>>609.9) - .0.9% Crit Chance (30.76%>>>30.67%) Does that seem right to you guys? Seems like an awfully small gain in damage.

Nothing fishy, I assure you. One of the things I forgot to mention was my belt and bracers are of the variety that have armouring and mod slots, but the armourings for both of them I know are both 58s and when I switched from the campaign pieces I already had I didn't notice much of a stat increase. I'll get the full list for you tomorrow when I get to my PC but yeah, I don't use the Exotech stims, I mainly stick with Rakata because they're cheaper, and even with that my strength is over 2100.

It's all PvE gear. That's what the thread is about. I'll have a look at the character builder on askmrrobot soon as I get home tomorrow. But off the top of my head I have 2 Campaign Armourings (chest and legs, both in Augmented (Strength) shells, though I may switch those to Power after reading some of the posts on here), the Campaign weapon hilt in an augmented saber, Black Hole boots Armouring in augmented shell, Black Hole gloves and head Armourings in (unaugmented) Rakata shells, Black Hole Implants/Ear/Offhand, matrix cube and campaign relic (augmented proc relic or unaugmented clicky, proc is standard). All of my gear is heavily modded though, mainly with 61s but there's still some 58s in there. Have all the datacrons too. My strength buffed (no stims) is 2011 (I think).

Hi, sorry I didn't get back to you yet. I'm Jubei, or I was, until transfers made me change my name. Currently - all unbuffed, I'm at the following stats: Damage: 854-1016 Bonus Damage: 529.7 (Power 645) Accuracy: 99.70% (I hate that it's below 100% too, just testing to see if the power gain is worth it) Crit: 24.79% Surge: 78.34% Buffed with all the class buffs (unstimmed though), I'm at: Damage: 899-1061 Bonus Damage: 575.1 Accuracy: 99.70% (argh) Crit: 30.22% Surge: 78.34% I've been trying to get my crit down to around 30% (buffed) for a while now, going to see how it goes tonight in Story Denova.