Skype is awesome for competitive pvp. If you guys have a problem with heavy breathing on mics like some say, then you can't even program your mics properly, you won't ever have the brainpower to be competitive at pvp. In wow, alot of top level, HIGHLY competitive teams use skype, when they have access to TS, ventrillo, whatever also. Using push to talk is a hinderance in competitive pvp. It lowers response time and having another key to click is stupid, if you can avoid it.

He said in his initial post, that he is 31 ST because he raids also and doesn't want to respec everytime he does a warzone. His question was is tanking any good in pvp and how to handle dps and healers. The answer is that tanking tree (31 ST, and other hybrid specs) ARE extremely good in pvp, if you like that playstyle, and even as dps you will have a hard time killing good healers, and killing healers isn't the job of a pvp tank anyway. Against dps you shouldn't have much problems as either 31 shield or 21 hybrid.

As a 31ST tank, you're HIB will ignore 60% of armour too, with most normal specs. I'm not saying you're wrong, you're right in everything you say, but 21/2/18 also has some wasted points. The point i'm making is that people are saying 21/2/18 is the greatest pvp tank spec ever and slate 31ST as useless, when that is FAR from the case. Both specs have advantages and disadvantages over eachother, you have to play both and find out which compromise you want to make, dps or defence. For some players 21/2/18 is the best, for some 31 ST is the best given different priorities. Some people say Counterattack (+shield chance) is wasted points, but fail to recognise that 31 ST penetrates 60% armour with HIB with 3 talent points. 21/2/18 takes 7 points to get 70%. So basically you're spending 4 points for 10% increase in HIB armour pen, which is a very small damage increase, if it even gets through defenses. In total 21/2/18 spends 13 points on raising the damage of a ONE, PHYSICAL ability (High Impact Bolt) which is over 20% of your total talent points. HIB gets checked by absolutely every defense skill ingame. Also, your defending the turret scenarios is plausible given the 6+ aren't good players, but if they have a brain, they won't let you dot them all. In which case having the extra defense to allow backup to arrive, might be better, but that's wildly speculative and we could argue all day about combat scenarios.

This is where you have to decided. The guy above obvious values medals above ALL, so he goes dps spec. I value WINS above all, so I go tank spec.] Once you get to rank 60, you won't care about medals, all that matters is wins for your dailies. Before rank 60, I would average 9-10 medals a game, even in losing games. Now I average 6-7. Not because i'm not trying anymore, but because i'm trying everything to WIN now, and medals mean nothing. As tank spec with my gear, I can EASILY get 2.5k medal in the first minute of any game. That only leaves 300k medal that is hard to get. Being full tank and winning more matches on average, you get less medals per match, but overall you will get more valor etc per hour than being a dps with maybe 1 extra medal every so often.

People cry too much about tanking gear. I find it the best for most scenarios in warzones atm. Between dps gear and tank gear, I notice my survivability increase pretty dramatically, which allows you to stay alive to do your job. A tanks job on WZs isn't to do crazy dps, once people get that into their head, they'll start being more effective. Full tank spec has drawbacks, but so does hybrid specs. 21/2/18 focuses on optimizing High Impact Bolt, well guess what. HIB is physical damage, so it is one of those skills that has to go through armour and all defenses. So basically 31 ST is situational in that it decreases damage FROM certain abilities/classes. 21/2/18 is situational in that it increases damage TO certain classes. You have to decide, that to acheive your role, do you need to be able to stay alive longer on average, or do slightly more dps on average. Both specs have their advantages and disadvantages, but neither are lightyears ahead of eachother, and both excel at different things.

Actually with tank spec you can get very high stockstrike crits. With some dps gear as 31 ST I can get 3k+ stockstike crits with adrenal + trinket. 2.5k+ crits are common without buffs.

I have about 4 full sets of champ gear on companions now.

Against healing classes 1v1 you will have a hard time, but so will they. If you get the right interrupts they will be under pressure to keep healing and they will do minimal damage to you. Your heal pots/heal over time skill is enough to keep you up versus healers. Killing a healer 1v1 is hard for ANY class, as a tank in a warzones, 1v1ing a healing, even if you don't kill him, is a win. You're stopping him from doing his job (healing others) Against DPS class. I don't have much problems at all, but I have very good gear. I'm not going to go into how to kill each class, as no one way works, but needless to say, if you're in trouble just pop your defensive and offensive CDs (use double dps trinkets always in pvp), hit the right interrupts, and it's not that hard. Operatives (even after nerfs) are still the hardest, but you will kill them more than they kill you. In general in warzones however, I would not get preoccupied with 1v1 encounters. It's all about the WIN. If that's what matters to you, then PT/VG is one of the best classes, even and especially with shield spec. In my opinion shield spec is the best pvp spec for vanguard/ powertch period. The other spec that people are citing (21/18/2) has better dps, but 31 ST you will take less damage from certain players. People like to yell out that defensive stats suck in pvp, but infact they don't. Alot of classes still do physical damage etc. So it's more of a compromise which spec you like the best, and not an outright advantage.

Tanks are the longest survival classes against a sizeable attack on a base, particularly range tanks. Sure a stealth class can interrupt indefinitely against 1 player. A healer can last long versus 1-2 players. When there's 3+ players instantly attacking a node, only a tank is guaranteed to last long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Stealth classes etc can do it, "sometimes", but you're counting on the attacking players being *******. Any class 1v1 should be able to defend a node 1v1 until reinforcements arrive, unless they suck.

Far from the worst pvp tank, and if you can't play well with 31 st, then going 21, you'll still have the same problems. It's not a huge difference.

I was 2nd or 3rd to get Battlemaster on TOFN republic side and tbh I spend as little time in Ilum as I can at the moment. I was rank 63 when Ilum hit, I grinded to 65 in ilum for mount and since i've only entered ilum to complete my dailies/weeklies. Maybe if you actually did a few warzones, you would see what well played classes are capable of doing.

All my advice above is applicable to random warzones, where you're not in a team. I basically assume in any random warzone matches, that I have to win the match myself, as I can't rely on any other team member to do the right thing at any one time. I believe the shield spec vanguard/powertech is the most powerful class that can influence the outcome of random warzones, as long as you're switched on 100% of the time and you're a good player. What I mean by your job to win is: In Alderaan, when you get both bases you should be in a position to see attacks on both bases all of the time, without having to rely on randoms calling for help. In voidstar, you should have the mentality, that you're the only 1 guarding both doors, when you commit overly to 1 side, they will cap the other door. In huttball, you're the one that has to score, and stop the enemy team from scoring. Once you realise that this is what you have to do to win, and you have the skills to use your class to acheive these goals, then you start winning alot more random warzones.

Log on to Tomb of Freedon Nadd (EU), charachter Xbuzz after servers come up, and i'll show you my gear. It might burst your bubble though. Also I never said I had 20 BM tokens before the patch. I had around 8.

I'd say you're the one who is likely pretending. There are dozens of dps powertech/mercenaries with good gear on every server. I play on the highest population and the most pvp competitive european server, and there's very few properly geared pvp tanks. So it would be only fair to assume, that i've fought more well geared dps pts/mercs, than you have well geared vg tanks.

I had 4/5 bm tank gear, bm tank weapon, bm dps weapon even before the ilum patch hit. When the patch hit, I got a good few BM commendations from BM duplicate items (6 I think), and yes i've been getting a decent drop rate on BM commendations too.