I'm a level 26 vanguard, and I like to think I'm not a horrible player, but... my survivability sucks. On most of my other characters, especially my consular, I can easily survive 3 strongs, or two elites, and do most herioc 2+ missions. On my vanguard I just seem to die alot more, even in solo missions. From what I can see, we have no heal, and a crappy reactive shield on 2min cooldown. I'm tactics/shield spec hybrid, but I'm not that far up in shield, so maybe that's why...

 

In PvP as well, I'm usually fine 1v1, but any more than that, and I'm instantly dead. I'm trying to interrupt, taunt and shield when I can, but this class so far just feels squishy. A vanguard is supposed to be a tank, but right now it just feels like a crappy DPS class. My armour isn't fantastic, but it's definitely not bad. Am I doing something wrong, or is it normal for this class?

 

Pleas try to give me good advice, not just tell me I suck, or to 'L2P'. Thanks =D

Basically the key to living is Ion Cell. Personally I love it and I can do a good bit of damage using that ability even thou it is the "tank spec" if you gear yourself right (hint: DPS stats) you can wreck face.

Hmmk. I am using ion cell, but I haven't gone into shield spec much yet, so that probably factors in. My gear could probably use upgrading too. What companion should I be using for survivability? I'm currently using M1-4X just cause he's cool, but maybe I should be with a healer companion? I absolutely hate Elara though... she's a *****.

It's hard to help you without knowing what your spec is, what gear you are wearing and what your rotation is. I'll tell you up front that Vanguards can get through a lot of content solo that most other classes can't. You can solo almost any Heroic 2, kill almost any Champion your 3-4 levels below you, and even handle Heroic 4 content if your 4-5 levels above it. I can't say the same with my Sentinel, Gunslinger, or Sage.

 

First thing is you need to not only get good gear for yourself but your companions as well. If you plan to solo Heroics, Elara needs to be just as geared as you are. Unlike other tanks, Vanguards mitigation is spread across several abilities. You need to rotate through those abilities often to stay alive. Defensive Field, Cryo Grenade, the Static Field debuff, Riot Strike, Smoke Grenade even Storm are key to survival. Also remember to take advantage of your AE's, group mobs together and Ion Pulse/Sticky Grenade.

Thanks for the reply. I'm only level 26, and not far into the shield tree, so I don't have all the abilities and talents you speak of, but maybe I should consider using Elara as a companion, and I definitely will upgrade mine and her gear. My gear is basically the level 20 PvP gear, with a few better items. My spec is tactics up to Gut, with the rest in shield. My rotation is usually: Start with Mortar Volley, throw a sticky and maybe a cryo, then run up or harpoon the enemies, and spam stockstrick, ion pulse and gut until they die.

Hmm, well I don't know anything about Tactics since I'm primarily a Tank (Shield Spec) so I have no clue what your secondary tree should be. Honestly though, at lvl 26, I wasn't even thinking about putting any points outside of my primary tree because I wanted to max out the top tier talents as quick as possible. My route of leveling usually consists of doing every FP my level 2-3 times for gear and completing every quest (including heroics) on each planet before moving on. This has probably helped me and my companions a lot in the long run as I breeze through content with no issues. I don't know much about going the PvP route as I don't PvP so hopefully someone that knows more about that can help you out.

Hmm ok. I usually skip heriocs and only occasionally do flashpoints, because PvP levels me up too fast. I still want content to be challenging, so I don't want to out level content, but right now I'm getting facerolled. I'll take your advice and update my gear, and maybe even respec to full shield, at least until a higher level. Thanks.

Hmm ok. I usually skip heriocs and only occasionally do flashpoints, because PvP levels me up too fast. I still want content to be challenging, so I don't want to out level content, but right now I'm getting facerolled. I'll take your advice and update my gear, and maybe even respec to full shield, at least until a higher level. Thanks.

For PvE, if you're getting facerolled, there's two options.

 

Dorne gives you endurance at the cost of speed. Most people turn her attacks off and have her focus on healing, which means that you can wear something down. It just takes time and having cover.

 

Or you can go with having more firepower on your end. That's Aric. Given, I'm Assault, not Shield so I tend to play the ranged DoT game rather than brute force. But it works well for someone who likes to kite mobs while Sgt. Catboy does the holepunching.

 

The biggest "I get smashed" problem I note in PvE is that people like to stand and deliver. Don't. You start getting too much attention, get into cover, buy some time for cooldowns, hit and circle around cover. Don't park your tail in the open soaking up blaster fire. If your companion draws heat, don't just sit there and let them die- Neural Jolt the trouble mob and get it away from them.

 

For PvP, I leave that to the pros like Taugrim. There's guides a-plenty.

I'm a level 26 vanguard, and I like to think I'm not a horrible player, but... my survivability sucks. On most of my other characters, especially my consular, I can easily survive 3 strongs, or two elites, and do most herioc 2+ missions. On my vanguard I just seem to die alot more, even in solo missions. From what I can see, we have no heal, and a crappy reactive shield on 2min cooldown. I'm tactics/shield spec hybrid, but I'm not that far up in shield, so maybe that's why...

 

In PvP as well, I'm usually fine 1v1, but any more than that, and I'm instantly dead. I'm trying to interrupt, taunt and shield when I can, but this class so far just feels squishy. A vanguard is supposed to be a tank, but right now it just feels like a crappy DPS class. My armour isn't fantastic, but it's definitely not bad. Am I doing something wrong, or is it normal for this class?

 

Pleas try to give me good advice, not just tell me I suck, or to 'L2P'. Thanks =D

 

To be honest I had same problem when leveling vanguard. If you want higher dps get crit higher with gear. Compared to Commando tree and talent tree, I think vanguard talent trees don't much guide you to do this.

 

If you roll Combat medic you get more crit just being healer and lot of abilities that add the damage nicely. With vanguard on lower tree most talents just add elemental damage or damage as a flat bonus but not overall chance to crit.

 

So gear up aggressively. Get pvp, flashpoint or whatever gear that adds aim/crit.

 

And like others said, its Ion Cell + shield that add survivability. I recommend using it while leveling even with dps trees. Vanguard has to be close to target so you will get hit often.

 

All that migrates damage is essential.

I'm 29 full tactics spec running ion cell. I use Elara in her dps stance. I am better geared than I should be since I outlvl the content by quite a bit.

 

Long story short VG is op. I can do anything without any careful planning. In wz's I running around # winning and /dancing corpses.

 

Id say update your gear. If youre not a full tank spec then definitely use elara. As full SS you might be able to get away with aric on non champs. Check out tangrims guide. Itgives both pve and pvp overviews with spec specific rotations

You have 3-4 times the survivability with elara as without, that Ive noticed. It took 10 min for a pair of strongs to kill me with her healing me, I just didn't have the dps to overcome their decent armor and healing.

Wow. You must have crappy gear or ... something... to die to a pair of strongs. Perhaps you don't have an offhand? Maybe you haven't upgraded the barrel of your blaster in ages? Are all your skills current?

Thanks for all the feedback guys. I've definitely noticed an improvement with Elara out, and I'm working on upgrading my gear, as I was still using some of the stuff I had at level 10-15. I'm finding survivability heaps better now. The reason I found I was dying to two strongs is that my gear was broken, and they were 3 levels higher than me =P

 

Partly a derp from me, but I definitely need to upgrade gear for both Elara and me. Thanks.

About using Elara-

 

If you are using her in healing stance her healing will go up _substantially_ if you turn off her cryo-freeze ability. It's a VERY noticeable difference, especially against elites.

 

My only real complaint about companion AI in SWTOR is that companions with mez abilities seem to use them preferentially over everything else...and sometimes on mobs your are fighting. If you want to use a companion mez, use it directly with the ctrl-# key, don't let the companion spam targets and waste energy/ammo/force power.