I am thinking to switch most of my DPS toons to either tank or heal, as I do not enjoy the waiting time in the queue

I do have a Sorc healer as main on Imp side and a Guardian tank as main on Rep side and did run the FPs many times, so neither the tanking or healing mechanics are new to me and I do know the FPs.

What I am worrying now is gearing up for the tanks. With healers it is mostly taking out accuracy for alacrity and be good to go, but tanks do need a complete different itemization than DPS. I do have all crafting professions though and could craft a full set of blue lvl 66 gear for starters. Would you consider this adequate for 55 HMs? (it should be as the GF says required item lvl is 148, which is 66 blue)

I am wary to go for 50s HM because I made quite a long brake in the game before 2.0 and started to do group content only recently which means I am only familiar with the 55 FPs but not so with the 50s. And a tank that doesn't know the FP is a pain I would like to spare the groups I would be running with.

How would you approach it?

I would personally just stack on endurance. Defense, dodge, and absorb/shield all have one major drawback: they only protect from kinetic and energy damage. Bosses like firebrand + Stormcaller, Zorn, TFB, etc. and PvP deal internal/elemental damage, which is unprotected. More health makes you endure longer.

However, this will also be helpful to know:

Shielding is helpful for Vanguards/power techs.

Defense is helpful for Guardians/Juggernauts.

Dodge and especially high endurance is helpful for shadows/assassins.

But remember: in the tanking of today, MORE HP = MORE GOOD!

I would personally just stack on endurance. Defense, dodge, and absorb/shield all have one major drawback: they only protect from kinetic and energy damage. Bosses like firebrand + Stormcaller, Zorn, TFB, etc. and PvP deal internal/elemental damage, which is unprotected. More health makes you endure longer.

However, this will also be helpful to know:

Shielding is helpful for Vanguards/power techs.

Defense is helpful for Guardians/Juggernauts.

Dodge and especially high endurance is helpful for shadows/assassins.

But remember: in the tanking of today, MORE HP = MORE GOOD!

Oh gods... That person really does not know what he is talking about.

Um, when gearing up I actually intend to follow the advise in the tank gearing thread here, which is definitely not to stack endurance.

My question was (put in more technical terms): is the stat budget of full blue 66 items enough to go for 55 HMs if followed the ideal stat distribution as layed out by KBN and Dipstick in their thread?

I would guess it is, but I wanted to hear some opinions, especially in the light of running with PUGs only and their possible stance on being with a tank that is clad in only blues.

I do have all crafting professions though and could craft a full set of blue lvl 66 gear for starters. Would you consider this adequate for 55 HMs? (it should be as the GF says required item lvl is 148, which is 66 blue)

While it is good enough, why would you stop there? You can take it one step beyond and craft 66 purples, and you should do this, especially with enhancements since crafted 66 enhancement will be better than any of the 69 stuff you buy with elite commendations since most of the stuff you buy with commendations is so massively endurance heavy they have less defense/absorb than some of the stuff several levels lower (and more endurance certainly is not better if it comes at the cost of mitigation).

Also if you have any classic commendations just buy some of the campaign gear (especially those pieces that give set bonus are well worth getting), since while purple 61s are perhaps slightly worse in comparison blue 66 with same type of mod and enhancement, the difference is very small, hardly noticeable (and if you get your hands on any purple 63s those are better than 66 blues).

Maybe just add few crafted 66 purples to the mix and you have way better than what is necessary for the 55 flashpoints.

I would guess it is, but I wanted to hear some opinions, especially in the light of running with PUGs only and their possible stance on being with a tank that is clad in only blues.

It is, as long as you're following the basic rules of tank stat assignment, namely, Accuracy and Alacrity are terrible and you want to minimize Endurance while maximizing mitigation. A great place to start is to pick up the crafted 28 Immunity and Sturdiness enhs: they're the second best tanking enhs in the game and they can be crafted for pretty cheap (they were going for ~45k each last I checked on Pot5, and you only need 7 of them; that's 315k for enhs that are going to last you for a *long* time). Another good thing to do would be to pick up 4 pieces of the Campaign set armor with your Basic comms: with the 4 piece, you'll manage better Shield chance *and* better outright damage reduction than you would with straight up BM gear. With those, you just need to wait until you get multiple pieces of the Arkanian/Underworld set pieces to start replacing them for an actual upgrade. If you have shells that you like, as well, you'll want to work on getting your augs in place: a full set of augs will make up 20-30% of your total mitigation itemization budget (depending on gear level; at entry level HM FPs, it's closer to 30% whereas at top tier, it's ~20%), so it's a great way to crank the living hell out of your mitigation stats without setting foot in any HM FPs yet.

I would personally just stack on endurance. Defense, dodge, and absorb/shield all have one major drawback: they only protect from kinetic and energy damage. Bosses like firebrand + Stormcaller, Zorn, TFB, etc. and PvP deal internal/elemental damage, which is unprotected. More health makes you endure longer.

Just to elaborate on how epically bad this advice is, I/E damage (which is the primary justification the poster is using for "omg, moar hp!") is actually *incredibly* uncommon in the current ops: S&V has almost none and neither does TfB. The only I/E damage the Terror deals is the patch of goo, which, if you're not an idiot, you're not going to take any damage from. Zorn and Stormcaller are from *old* ops content, so they're not even relevant (even then, you didn't want to stack hp because those bosses didn't even deal enough damage to make you worry).

Shielding is helpful for Vanguards/power techs.

Defense is helpful for Guardians/Juggernauts.

Dodge and especially high endurance is helpful for shadows/assassins.

But remember: in the tanking of today, MORE HP = MORE GOOD!

Furthermore, all of this advice except for the bit about Guardians is blatantly untrue. First off, Dodge isn't a stat and, even if you were confusing it with Defense (which increases your Defense chance which, in the combat logs, is described as a "dodge", though, if you were using that, I would assume you would have used the same term for both Guardians and Shadows).

Secondly, Vanguards actually want to stack a lot of *Defense* and Shadows want to stack the living hell out of *Absorb*, and *no one* wants to stack hp. More HP != more good. In fact, more hp almost always means *less* good, because you're going to have an hp pool that is only slightly larger than that of someone who is mitigation stacked, but you're going to end up taking *gobs* more damage and requiring *loads* more healing. The fact that a good portion of a Shadow's self healing is based off of percent of max hp does not mean that Endurance is an amazing survivability stat for them. As it stands, the conversion rate between Endurance and a single point of a mitigation stat is something like 2.5:1, meaning that, unless the gain is Endurance is 250% of the loss in mitigation stats, you're making yourself *less* survivable by swapping that gear.

Endurance is *not* a useful stat. You'll get all of the Endurance you need tangentially while maximizing your mitigation stats. Anyone that tells you that hp is the mark of a good tank has *no* idea what they're doing.

I wouldn't be going to OPs anyway with these toons, I just would want to run HM FPs for fun. As I said my mains are Guardian tank and Sorc heal, which I have geared up mostly and would run OPs with.

As for equipping crafted purples maybe I'm going for the enhancements as they are better itemization wise, but my point is that these would be alts I wouldn't want to spend a long time gearing them up before going into the FPs. So any extensive crafting or collecting commendations is out of reach for my time budget for these toons. Giving them a full, properly itemized set of blues would be easily done and I was wondering if this would be sufficient for the occassional run through an FP without being a liability for my group.

66 blues are somewhere between 61 purples and 63 purples.

The 55 hm flashpoints are pretty easily doable even with 61s

Having geared my previously-DPS guardian for tanking in the past two weeks, I can probably offer some advice.

I too highly recommend re'ing up to the purples, at least for the enhancements. These high-mitigation enhancements will serve you for a good long time. Augments and armorings can be blues without sacrificing too much, imo. But I just re'd all the armorings, mods, and augments to purples to make a full set.

I wouldn't be too wary of the 50 FPs. Outside of Directive 7 and Lost Island, there are really not any mechanics that you would need to worry about before going in. And they are far far easier than the 55s...tanks are completely optional for the most part. In fact, I wouldn't even worry about gear for these...equip a shield, change stance, maybe a minor respec, and you are fine. And since they give basic comms, they are a good way to grind for tanking relics.