23/0/18 = http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801GRGb0oroMZZbIbbdh.1 8/2/31 = http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801hMhZ0MZfhrbdGhMs.1 Hayduke Smith INFANTRY Adjunta Pall

I guess what I'm saying is that you either go 18 in assault and run around with HTL or Storm or you go 31 points in Assault. I tried the 25 assault builds where you can pick up Gut or spread out the points and get Steely resolve and Blaster Augs and Frontline Offense. I missed AP. I think the real decision is whether you spend your 10 points on BlasterAugs and Frontline Offense or just go with Steely Resolve. I'm rolling with Steely resolve - sure I have 3 percent less crit but I have about 4 percent more damage and some additional crit from the 9 percent increase in Aim. Hayduke INFANTRY ADJUNTA PALL

This guy is totally right. You can go 31 points assault and lose like 4% flat mitigation and the tiniest bit of utility in exchange you become possibly the best burster in the game. My Assault Plastique crits on Sorc's for 4,000-4,500. Sure Smug's and Op's burst better and have stealth but they look squishy, have no utility and they get focused. You look like a tank and with heavy armor you actually are fairly durable. When you come up on center at the beginning of Alderaan, pop battle focus and relic, tab target, IR, AP, HIB, IP/SS, HIB (AP Goes off), IP - the target is dead about half the time. How long did that take? 9 Seconds. When did the target realize they were taking serious damage - 4.5 seconds in. When did the healers realize the target was taking serious damage - maybe 6 seconds in. By the time the team realizes that you aren't a tank just plinking away at them with 2,000-2,500 crits the guy you tab targeted has less than 3,000 health. Also, killing other players, as opposed to surviving and fighting them for a long time is so much more important to node capture in alderaan and attacking in voidstar. I admit I really miss being 23/0/18, or even heavy tactics when I'm in hutball. Hayduke Smith INFANTRY Adjunta Pall

Man Taugrim - all these accolades. But ya know - if you write guides and post videos all that happens is you get your face sat on by the enemy team in every match. If I have a hutball against Taugrim - what am I gonna do - I'm gonna make a beeline for him every match. When we seem Rome-Fu - what do we do? We sit on him the entire match. He's got a sticky on the pvp forums, he's probably a bioware employee or something, so he deserves to be wrecked every time we see him, right? ... I noticed he's tank spec'ed now too. Hayduke Smith Adjunta Pall INFANTRY

Assault Plastique is absolutely essential for pvp. It is burst damage. I'm running 8/2/31. I have the 9% increased Aim. I've read that at end game 9% aim will add about 3-4% damage. I don't know if that is accurate or not; however, when you start hitting diminishing returns on crit and surge you are still probably far away from diminishing returns on the way aim adds to your crit and damage. By speccing 8/2/31 I give up some damage on ion pulse and 3% crit. However, I don't really care about buffing Ion Pulse damage by itself - why - because ion pulse is not my burst damage. I want my burst damage to be stronger. Crit + Surge + Assault Plastique = like 1.5k more burst to a target. Why would I want to have stickynade - which will break cc and not hit as hard. Why would I want Gut - it's a huge ammo hog and it isn't burst. One of the earlier posters had it totally right - we are a burst class - you pop your relic and battle focus you start with IR then AP then HIB then Stockstrike (AP goes off) then IP or HIB. If you crit more than 50 percent of those attacks (which you should) you just did 10k damage to the target in 3 seconds.

I tried this build. I didn't like it. I like having 2 percent mitigation in shield tree and 2 percent mitigation in the tactics tree. I generally agree that 2 seconds off riot strike cd is great. That said, I feel like it is way less damage than 23/0/18 or 21/2/18. You have nothing good to use when you are further than 10m away. You get a bit more mitigation with 25/14/2 - 2 percent more, but you give up way too much. If you go 18 into assault you have to waste some points buffing plasma cell but you get a ranged attack that prevents node caps for 15 seconds and allows you to use HIB. You also get free HIB's that will hit for 3k or more. The biggest problem with tactics is that Gut is so meh... I'm 8/2/31 right now. My highest hit in every warzone is 4,000 to 4,500. Often times an Assault Plastique will crit at the same time as a Stockstrike or a High Impact Bolt. If those things occur at the same time you can literally do 10k damage in 2 seconds. I'm finding there are few players/characters that burst well in this game. Operatives/Scoundrels can and we can. We have way more utility and survive better. I rolling with only 16k health right now because I've been pulling crit/surge enhancements out of champion pieces and putting them in my combat tech set. However, I still feel like I'm contributing more because I'm the guy that can actually kill a healer. Always appreciate your work Taugrim. I tried this spec out and it wasn't for me. Battlemaster Hayduke Smith INFANTRY Adjunta Pall

That's Taugrim's spec. google it. That is not the best burst spec. The best burst spec must include Assault Plastique. When you are geared Assplaq will hit for almost 4k. It's on a delay so you can throw it, do a skill - like ion pulse, and then hit shockstrike and HiB in quick succession. The result if 5k damage in 3k seconds if you don't crit and about 8k damage if you crit. Hayduke Adjunta Pall

luv u taugrim. It's gonna be a damage race whenever I see you in warzones now. I like that you didn't pick up Gut with this spec. I think that's the right decision. That said, I think Assault Plastique when coupled with trinket, increased crit skill, and warzone expertise buff is an extremely valuable skill. I wouldn't trade assault plastique for 2 seconds off of riot strike. Incendiary round -> Assault Plastique -> HiB -> Shockstrike -> Ion Pulse Your "Assplaq" will crit for nearly 4k. If your HiB (3.5-4k) and Shockstrike (3k) crit you've suddenly done 8k damage in about 3 seconds. It's tough for the enemy to recover from that. Hayduke Adjunta Pall

Taugrim is the man. If you are going to go shield spec - only go 23 points in shield. Think hard about whether or not you want to wear supercommando gear. The benefit you get from the tank stats like absorbtion, shield and defense in pvp is not commensurate with the benefit you get in pve because of the amount of attacks you will receive that are not subject to defense or shield. If you go 23 points in shield you can then dump 18 points in either tactics or assault. I recommend assault because you can get Ionic Accelerator. Your shield gives you extra shockstrike and your shockstrike gives you extra high impact bolts. I get more medals when I'm spec'ed 23/0/18. Right now I'm spec'ed 7/3/31. I wear all combat tech gear with combat medic thrown in because of the additional crit and surge. I'm spec'ed this way because the large burst potential of having assault plastique, HIB and shockstrike going off about the same time. You can make these attacks subject to trinket and expertise potions. I've been very disappointed with the burst and damage by other repubs. So I decided I would play my tank as dps. I would say that we burst as well as anyone with a full assault spec. This is HAYDUKE Adjunta Pall So glad you're on my server Taugrim, really enjoyed your posts.

If you are going to run Ion Cell you need to run with a shield generator.

It's called ability delay/lag. There is something borked with their engine or animations that make certain abilities not go off. I spam the riot strike key until I see "interrupted" in the opponents cast bar. It seems like the game waits for some break in the existing animation before riot strike will actually go off.

I bought champion supercommando gear for my vanguard like a fool. Now I roll with a power generator instead of a shield generator and full combat tech gear - why? Why should I invest like 1/4 of the points available to me on gear in order to have a chance to avoid like 1/10th of the incoming attacks. Take your shield number times 10% that's probably the true amount of times your shield is going to go off in pvp. Also, you aren't going to shield any attacks from sages and sorcs. It's just a really dumb system.

I actually thought that the weird ability lag I would get while healing with my scoundrel went away after the last patch. Before I would see like .5 second delay after completing underworld medicine before the numbers would appear above the person I was healing - during that time I could not cast another ability. Now I can chain cast it pretty well. The game is still in general an unresponsive mess but it looks like they can improve it. For those of you that don't think this is a big deal or aren't experiencing it - I think you just don't get it. Lord of the Rings Online would've been huge if it had a responsive combat system, but it's combat was extremely unresponsive. Rift actually had combat that was almost as responsive as WoW and that's why a game with no real IP behind it has done so well ... well that and they launched really well and innovated with a lot of their systems.

I find that the only way I can get Riot Strike to work is if is just hit my hot key for it over and over again for about a half a second. If I hit it once it will usually not go off. I haven't had it cause my later abilities to not go off but I've had Riot Strike sometimes mess up the global cooldown - it's like if you case riot strike towards the end of the global cooldown on your earlier ability the game has to wait for the riot strike animation to show before you can use another ability. There is a huge thread in general about this and other issues. Ability Delay - they need to fix it - it is issue numero uno.

You need to read this thread and the others like it in the PVP forum. Then go test it yourself. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=158112 Your shield only works on a few attacks. Your shield and armor don't mitigate against Sorc attacks. There is basically little reason to buy pvp defense gear. Hayduke Smith Adjunta Pall INFANTRY