Mitigation, the REAL problem. Also, operatives need a 2x dmg multiplier.

Well, lets count…classes that rely heavily on weapon damage:

Shadow/Assassin
Gunslinger/Sniper
Sentinel/Marauder
Guardian/Juggernaut

That's 4/8. Seriously, take all the weapon damage abilities off the bars of any of these classes and see how horribly gimped their damage is.

Of the remaining, Sage/Sorc tends to do a very normalized sort of damage that's easily disrupted. Probably, if Scoundrel/Operative and Commando/Mercenary just get their damage types tweaked a bit on a couple well targeted abilities, then things would probably be in a really good place and there would be no need to tweak tank mechanics themselves in PvP.

L2R tooltips.

Here's a breakdown on the type of attack you typically take from a Shadow/Assassin that I posted earlier in this thread already:

Clairvoyant Strike - Weapon Damage - (bread & butter ability that generates procs/stacks to use other stuff)
Shadow Strike - Weapon Damage - (hard hitting positional attack only used with a proc…unless you're bad)
Spinning Strike - Weapon Damage - (Execute ability)
Saber Strike - Weapon Damage - (free attack for when low on Force)
Project - Kinetic Damage - (6s CD, used with stacked buffs)
Force Breach - Internal Damage - (~15s CD, used with stacked buffs)
Shadow Technique (procs) - Internal Damage - (small passive damage)

Notice all the weapon damage??? Fully affected by Defense and Shield stats. Shadow/Assassin is not the only class where this is the case.

sorry to burst this but marauders and jugss that do DPS rely heavly on force attacks and asassins can go into madness to avoid tanks, the only ones affected are the ones that dont know the pvp spec tanks and snipers/gunslingers.

1. Why on earth would you still try to use that rotation against a tank? I play an assassin. When I come against a tank, I don't spam melee abilities. When project hits harder than the other attacks, why would you still use them as top priority?

2. There are two other trees that are less dependent on weapon damage. But, it was convenient for you to ignore them, wasn't it?

The fact is that you can still get around the tank stats. Yes, switching abilities costs you damage. So, the tank stats did accomplish it for the few weapon-damage classes with weapon-damage specs. However, they peak fast. It takes very little tank gear to push project to be a top priority ability. The same goes for other abilities that bypass tank stats. After that point, what good do the tank stats do? They'll help against some failures that don't know how to switch and the remaining weapon damage rotations. That's a really, really small amount. The tank stat allocation design is broken.

This thread explains a lot.. my kinetic shadow feels so very squishy in pvp.

I hoped SWTOR tanks could be compared to WAR tanks, with high mitigation and guard to make them very viable in pvp.. but alas

Guess I'll just go dps then

That's not true at all, I don't know where you got this idea. The vast majority of abilities deal damage that's hit by armor. Most classes get maybe 2 or 3 that aren't.