Doing the dailys on belsavis and ilum would give enough mods and money to epic out your gear in 5 days. It is almost as good as champion gear except no expertise. With money you get you should be able to buy the modifiable gear if you do not have enough easily. Good luck and don't forget to interrupt should have at least two on every flashpoint in case one is down. Also watch some movies of eternity vault and get your butt in there some of those bosses are easier than the hardmode flash points, actually I think they are a lot easier or maybe less buggy. Edited January 19, 2012 by Reteric

Doing the dailys on belsavis and ilum would give enough mods and money to epic out your gear in 5 days. It is almost as good as champion gear except no expertise. With money you get you should be able to buy the modifiable gear if you do not have enough easily. Good luck and don't forget to interrupt should have at least two on every flashpoint in case one is down.

I am a Vanguard tank (Faison, Darth Malak) and I have none of the issues described in the OP. I'm part of a group that easily farms False Emperor, Maelstrom Prison, and Taral V daily and the only reason we are getting stuck occasionally on the more dps intensive fights in directive 7 and Esseles are because we cannot buy a dps drop to save our life. I have one or more columi tier pieces on 3 of my companions plus off spec for me while our poor dps have maybe gotten an upgrade or 2 each lol.

 

1.) Aggro for me is not an issue, I round up the elites/toughs that arn't CC'd and the two DPS obliterate any weak mobs. My aoe threat is fine. AoE stun, conical AoE, radial AoE. You name it, we got it. Don't burn your AoE taunt until all the mobs in the pull jet pack/add in unless you are familiar with the pull in order to limit mobs running around smacking people. Turn on the option that displays the tough or elite symbol on the mobs nameplates for you convenience. Many pulls provide opportunities for party members to punt one or more mobs off a cliff. Utilize these!

 

2.) As I mentioned briefly above and as others have also stated throughout this thread, one or more bosses in each instance have very strict enrage timers. If you cannot beat the droid boss in False Emperor (name redacted for spoiler purposes) cleanly before enrage you will have great difficulty clearing anything on hard mode. This is all up to the dps. Enraged bosses are untankable for the most part. Stim pack up and dont be shy with the cooldowns.

 

3.) Daily quest religiously. Everyone in your group has to. Don't expect to faceroll hard modes just because you have decent gear as a tank. An orange piece with full lvl 50 epic mods is as good if not better than their Tionese equivalents. Daily quests also provide an awesome stream of credits to fuel repairs and that sexy 1.5 million mount (got mine in like a week or so).

 

4.) Don't give up! While this game has its glaring issue and is quite buggy at times, I personally have not had this much fun tanking in an MMO since I first began years ago. Once you get into the rhythm of tanking the larger pulls it and start burning them down quickly it becomes a blast and the amount of time you spend in each instance plummets dramatically.

 

TLDR: Reflect on your play style and make sure you are using your abilities appropriately and efficiently. Hard modes have strict gear checks. Do your dailies, especially the heroics, just have your instance group tear through them before you get started. Study up on boss strats and no what you can and cannot do. It is tough without gearscore but if you are getting enraged on when the boss is still above 10%, move on/go to bed.

 

TLDR of the TLDR: Get better. I have faith in you.

Nope. We killed the last boss (which is incredibly easy in comparison) and tried him one more time but it would not let us back in after we died. We figured out that the spawns are on a timer and that you should spread them out if you can. Have the tank hold 2 of them while everyone else dps's the other and so on. Its pretty much a dps battle but we couldn't handle it with everyone geared to the max. We got him to about 33% when the second spawn came but our healer was out of focus. Someone who can cc robots and range dps would really help in this fight.

 

It's every minute, I think. We had considered just CC'ing the first three that spawn and trying to down him before they get back, but there's just no way since we'll see 3 to 4 spawns before he dies at the dps rate we had.

 

I did manage to taunt them and we could CC one or two but it just took too long to down them, the boss was already grappling us by the time we killed the last one. I may try it again with a slightly different party setup.

 

It was two hunters and two agents. I'm thinking bringing a sorc along would help for the buff and the bubble.

I got to point #1 in his post, and then decided that he's either never played swtor or is just trying to troll. Powertech complaining about lack of aoe threat.... lol

 

And then I read the start of his point #2, claiming to be the best geared on his server with 116 gear. Definitely a troll.

Edited January 19, 2012 by Lord_Of_Sith

It's every minute, I think. We had considered just CC'ing the first three that spawn and trying to down him before they get back, but there's just no way since we'll see 3 to 4 spawns before he dies at the dps rate we had.

 

I did manage to taunt them and we could CC one or two but it just took too long to down them, the boss was already grappling us by the time we killed the last one. I may try it again with a slightly different party setup.

 

It was two hunters and two agents. I'm thinking bringing a sorc along would help for the buff and the bubble.

 

Our strat with a Guardian, 2 Commandos (one was freshly 50) and a Sage healer:

 

DPS boss to 66%, first adds spawn. CC 2 adds, kill the third, then kill the other two one at a time, DPS boss to 33%, CC all of the adds, kill boss, kill adds one at a time. Wiped two or three times before we got it.

Alot of mixed replies. Some helpful and some not so very much.

Anyway, one thing to add: I have noticed that when I wipe its normally that the boss have enraged. BT is no different with the optional mech boss. As long as you hit him hard enough so he do not enrage its kind of an easy ride tanking him against the wall of the doorway he enters from.

Alot of mixed replies. Some helpful and some not so very much.

Anyway, one thing to add: I have noticed that when I wipe its normally that the boss have enraged. BT is no different with the optional mech boss. As long as you hit him hard enough so he do not enrage its kind of an easy ride tanking him against the wall of the doorway he enters from.

 

If you are hitting enrage timers...your tanking is not the issue.

 

2. Every piece of gear is +def and +shield

 

Found one problem. Get some absorption.