If you are going to be doing flashpoints, I would not recommend doing skank tank. First, you won't do as much damage as you would in a straight dps spec. When doing group content you should try to perform your role the best you can. Secondly, many of your abilties have threat multipliers when in Immortal spec, which could lead to aggro issues with the person actually tanking. So you may pull threat while not doing great damage, which would be really annoying. Outside of group content like that, if you are soloing stuff and prefer being immortal in dps gear, fill your boots.

PVP - if survivability is your thing and you still want to do damage, go skank tank. That means Immortal spec with DPS gear on. Immortal spec does very good damage due to all the inherent crit/dmg bonuses built into the spec. Use a shield OH with DPS mods in it. PVE- I mean if you are just doing solo stuff and like Veng, just go Veng. As far as survivability when soloing, more dps is better survivability. The longer an encounter goes on, the more likely you are to die. Veng Juggs have amazing AOE dps with the Cut To Pieces tactical, so you can kill small adds fast, especially with Shatter Burst talent. You have great defensive cooldowns as well. This set up would allow you to focus on just getting your dps gear, which is optimal. You should focus on 1 gear set at a time, as if you mix between getting tank and dps gear, it just means you won't be good at any one thing for longer. Since your focus is on solo content, tanking gear won't be very useful to you anyway, For stats, you want to get to 110% accuracy first and foremost, that's 2694. Then you want 7.15% alacrity which is 2054 for the 1.4 GCD. You may want to get an extra alacrity augment or two to go over the 7.15% cap to smooth out your GCDs and then dump the rest into crit.

If you check Parsely, Annihilation has a top 5 parse on every apex boss in every Op (I did not check R4) except Brontes, where Pyro PT's dominate, but PT's have always excelled on that fight. It has the top parse on Apex Vanguard. The reason it may not parse as well as other specs is that it is a rage intensive spec and you don't get the passive rage generated as you do in actual combat with outgoing damage and get no benefits from cloak of pain. TL;DR The spec is fine.

Looking to get back into raiding., so thought I would post up and see what the options are. Have lots of Legacy NiM / Hardmare experience. Limited experience in Gods (but would like to clear in NiM) and was working on Trandoshans NiM before the raid team fell apart. Would prefer to DPS on my Jugg, but I am willing to heal for the right team.

I refuse to believe this is not a troll post.

Good Day, Welcome back, recently returning myself. My recommendation would be to search through the posts in this forum, there are several guilds recruiting, and find one that looks like a good fit. Since you seem to be flexible on Imp/Pub, it gives you lots of options. All that is really happening on either side these days, outside of guild groups, is people doing EV Farm, and TC. If you wish to run something beyond that, you would be best off getting yourself in a guild that runs Ops. Yes, people run the old raids, there are really not that many Ops in total to choose from, so you are bound to hit them all. As far as class, play what you have fun with. Guardian/Juggs are fine, and It really only matters in NiM/MM what you are playing, and even then, it is negligible. If the content you will be playing is SM/HM Ops and Flashpoints, etc, every class is fine for that. Don't let yourself get wrapped up in the BS where people in general chat on Fleet will say this class or that class is terrible. Most of them don't know how to play the game anyways, it is just chatter.

I have 100% seen it from Mando Raiders, somewhat recently.

This passive actually leads to a DPS increase for this ability. It takes 1/3 less time to channel and only does 1/4 less damage, which is a DPS increase. If you want to say that Madness needs a buff (or Force Lightning in particular) that's one thing, but it's not this ability in the tree that is what would fix it. (Enjoy the spec myself and would love to see the spec get buffed) I do get though that it is not sexy to read your tree and see an ability that starts with "decreases damage by 25%" of a key ability. It's bad optics.

While not sure exactly what you mean, I am guessing because there is no set bonus that names Madness specific abilities in it such as "Increases Death Field damage by x amount" or Force Leech. However, Gathering Storm is the recommended set, and the 4 pc turns Force Speed into an offensive cooldown that has a 15 second cooldown, and gives a significant damage boost while Polarity Shift is active to ALL your abilities. The 6pc extends the duration of Polarity Shift and using Force Speed reduces it's cooldown. It's a pretty good deal.

Going to link the guide done by Endonae on Vulkk's site. All credit goes to Endonae, it is not my work. https://vulkk.com/2020/01/11/swtor-6-0-madness-sorcerer-pve-guide-by-endonae/ In it you will find a rotation if you do not want a rotation that involves clipping your dots. I believe the author does state that not clipping your dots will lead to delaying some abilites in a single target setting, but the choice is yours. The AOE rotation very specifically states to not clip your dots because Death Field does not refresh dots. Anyways feel free to have a look and decide for yourself. I enjoyed reading Endonae's work and use the rotations listed within myself with success.

You will only get better at the game by playing it, so keep at it. You are going to run into impatient, toxic morons while pugging runs, so don't sweat it. They all cry that there are no tanks in the game, they get somebody in there trying to learn who may want to tank future content for them, and instead of taking a minute to be cordial and helpful, just feel it better to dump on them to make sure they never want to tank again. Smart. The biggest key to being a good tank, as you seem to be aware, is getting to know the instances. You have to know when the adds are going to spawn, and make sure you have your AOE threat generators off CD when that happens. (Force Sweep/Guardian Slash/AOE Taunt/Saber Reflect, etc) Have a Focus pool built up for it as well, so you can use all of those abilities in quick succession and then cap it off with a couple Cyclone Slashes. That is the biggest mistake beginner tanks make, is that they use all their abilties off cooldown on the boss, and have nothing up to deal with adds when they spawn. Dealing as much damage to the boss as you can is important, but not as important as having the tools you need to deal with a situation when it happens.This will come through time and practice. Also, do not fall into the trap mindset of taunt solves everything. It will put you on top of the threat meter for 6 seconds, but if you have done nothing much to generate threat on those mobs in those 6 seconds, they will go right back to their previous target.To be honest once you get far enough in your journey as a tank, you won't really need taunt that much. Also you can coach your healer a bit as well, the tendency for most beginning healers is to stand as far away from the boss as their range allows. When I am healing, I stand close to my tank (obviously behind the boss, you don't want to be eating cleaves), when adds spawn, they are going to run right for me. I can make my tank and DPS's life as easy as possible by standing close to the tank and boss, and that way the adds run right to where we want them as a group with little to no effort on the groups part. If I am standing way the hell out if BFE when adds spawn, then I am making it as hard as possible for my tank to get those adds grouped up under the boss. Specifically for the instances you mentioned, for that first boss in Mando Raiders, the dogs are not really tauntable, that is the mechanic of that fight. As the tank you should take the boss to the side of the room away from the group, and just tank him there and do nothing with the dogs. The boss will freeze you occasionally, but your taunt will be up for every one, so once the freeze wears off, taunt him back to you. When the boss gets close to the dogs he buffs them, your DPS and healer have to deal with the dogs, focus fire one of them down first, and then the next one, then they help you with the boss. The dogs getting on the healer throughout that fight is a reality they have to deal with, and a healer getting mad at you because he has to use a DCD or kite a little because a dog is on him, doesn't understand that fight. As the tank just put a kill marker on a dog and then pull the fight and take the boss to the side of the room. For the first droid boss, when the adds spawn I would use AOE taunt right away to make sure everything groups around you (do this on top of the boss to maximize splash damage), as soon as the adds are clustered, I would do a Force Sweep / Saber Reflect (if up) / Guardian Slash *with Warding Strike buff active) / and then Cyclone Slash 2 or 3 times. No way anyone should be pulling those off you. I would not normally recommend AOE taunt as the first global to use, but in that situation, I believe the adds are a little spread out, so starting with AOE attack abilities is likely to miss one or two as they will be out of range, The priority there is to get them grouped up around you. One more note about that robot boss in Korriban Incursion, I believe he does have an autocannon channeled ability where he will turn to a random party member and fire, that you cannot taunt back or interrupt. All you can do in that situation is Guardian Leap to the target and guard swap to them. This will give them 25% damage reduction. Keep at it, the game needs good tanks, and you are well on your way. Interest and dedication is the key to a good tank, the rest of it comes off the back of that.

Use the stats that Kendra posts for you, but as a summary: Guardian tanks have historically wanted about a 50/50 split on shield chance and absorb, with a slight lean to shield chance. (52/48, roughly) You don't want any accuracy, as when you are in tank form, it baseline gives you 10% extra accuracy, so puts you at the cap without having to gear for it. You do not want any Alacrity or Crit chance. Crit/Alacrity/Accuracy all share the same spot on enhancements as Shield Chance and Absorb, which means in order to get some of those offensive stats, you would have to give up some of the defensive stats, which is no bueno. Also, as a Guradian, you get a lot of extra crit chance on your big hitters passively through your skill tree, so you are set up pretty well there. As Kendra suggests, you want to use the B mods. You get all the defense you will need from your enhancements, and as stated, there Is a cap on how much defense will actually help you, and past that point, you are far better off putting the points somewhere else. Your two best options are B mods (which replaces the defence chance for extra endurance and power) and if you want the tanky tank, this is what you should be going for. The extra endurance is an obvious help, and the extra power helps keep aggro, and you also do more DPS, which can mean the difference between your team making a DPS check or not. Every DPS point counts, and as a tank if you can do what you are supposed to do and contribute a decent amount of extra DPS, your team will be a happy. Your other option would be to go unlettered mods (which is more power and less endurance) as a trade off for defense, and this is if your team needs a little more dps out of your position and the healers don't mind. I have played both healer and tank through all kinds of content, and what your healers want is not a tank that takes no damage, they want a tank that takes steady, PREDICTABLE damage. As a healer you are going to be spending a lot of time on your tank, regardless of the gear they have. What you want as a healer is to be able to go away from your tank for a little bit to get your DPS topped up, without your tank getting chunked. Spikey damage patterns are the bane of healers, not the lots of incoming damage in a manageable, predictable spread. Get your defence from enhancements, use B mods, and get a roughly 52/48 split on shield/absorb, and you will be your healers friend. Note this was all for PVE, PVP is a different ball of wax and bears no resemblance for what you want as a PVP tank.

Good Day, I am not sure if trash free FPs are the way to go, I think making the trash mobs more interesting and engaging should be the plan. I would love to see this game take a page from the WoW book and institute a Mythic+ type system to get people interested in flashpoints. For those that don't know, the trash mobs in the dungeons have a lot of mechanics in WoW and the consequences for not dealing with or "trying to burn through them" usually means a wipe. The problem with SWTOR trash mobs for the most part is they don't have any mechanics or interrupts that really matter, it is just a bunch of stuff you have to AOE down endlessly to get to a boss, with no real consequences, in other words, boring. There is a timer on the WoW dungeon, and beating the timer grants you a key that you can insert at the beginning of the next dungeon which increases the mobs and bosses health/dmg and there are certain mechanic affixes that gets added the higher key you go. When the key gets high enough, it I actually a relief to get to the boss at times, because the trash mobs have so many mechanics and interrupts that HAVE to happen. Maybe they don't need to take it to that extreme, and use the opportunity to improve somewhat on that system, but none the less, I think the ticket is to make the game more interesting and engaging, rather than taking out things. The other nice part to being able to increase the difficulty of the flashpoint, is that you can give decent gear rewards. I am a little out of touch with the gearing system in this game, however, in WoW you can get heroic level gear from dungeons, and a weekly piece from your cache that will be mythic (NiM level). The other major issue with flashpoints in this game is the rewards have always been garbage, often not even dropping gear that is the same item level as the level suggested that you need to run the flashpoint. Once you get 100% completion on a flashpoint, is there ever any need to ever run it again without a reward? Make them not boring and rewarding, and people will queue.

IIRC, they fixed it years ago to prevent Scoundrel/Operative healers in warzones from using Take Cover to prevent being leapt to or pulled. That class already had lots of tools to get away in PVP, and with them also being able to use Take Cover, it was too much. Also as mentioned above, there are just some mob abilities that are coded differently and will go through Hunker Down, even basic open world mobs. "Fall of the Locust" Heroic on Taris, when you blast the gunship there is a mob that spawns that throws a flash grenade at you, and you get blinded regardless if Hunker Down is up or not, but you would not be blinded in PVP by a Scoundrel/Operative using their flash grenade if Hunker Down is up. /shrug

I don't know why anyone would pretend that not liking how something looks in this game is not a valid reason to dislike it. This game has been re-skinning items in the Cartel Market since it's inception, and 99% of the population in this game are here to play Space Barbie. This game has zilch for an end game progression scene, this game is being floated entirely by looks, and how much people enjoy those looks. There is an endgame NIM changes thread that has 17,000 views. Weird People You Meet in Groupfinder thread has 2.6 million views. That's 0.65%. Think there are far, far less people that care about functionality in this game than you may think, and if the people that care about how things look go away, so does this game.