Swtor Useful Trooper Datacrons Guide

Aim / Endurance / Matrix Crystal Shards / Cunning* / Presence*

*You will notice that I also added cunning datacrons. These are not a necessity, but they add some Tech Damage Bonus and Tech Crit Chance to a few of our skills.

*Presence is useful with your companions. It makes them heal better, do more damage, and it increases their health.

The planets are ordered based on when you get there. Such as Ord Mantell datacrons being first and Ilum being last. I also put Tython in here so that will be right after Ord Mantell datacrons if you want to go there.

Planet :

Ord Mantell:

• Aim +2
• Prescence +2

Tython:

• Endurance +2

Courscant:

• Prescence +2
• Endurance +2
• Cunning +2

Taris:

• Aim +2
• Cunning +2

Nar Shaddaa:

• Aim +3
• Presence +3
• Cunning +3

Tatooine:

• Cunning +3
• Aim +3

Alderaan:

• Aim +4
• Presence +3
• Endurance +3

Balmorra:

• Aim +4
• Cunning +2

Quesh:

• Cunning +4
• Endurance +4

Hoth:

• Presence +4
• Endurance +4
• Cunning +4

Belsavis:

• Aim +4
• Presence +4
• Endurance +3

Voss:

• Presence +4
• Endurance +4
• Cunning +4

Corellia:

• Presence +4
• Aim +4
• Cunning +4

Ilum:

• Aim +4
• Endurance +4

Alright now that you have your extra stats lets get into making some Matrix Cubes(Relics). If you come from playing Wow like me the easiest way to think of Relics is that they are trinkets. You click them and they give a boost for a couple of seconds. Below I will show you what shards you need to make these Matrix Cubes and where you can get them. There are 4 levels of cubes that you can make that start at level 15 and of course end at 50.

Once you have all your shards follow this guide to assemble your Matrix Cube.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70x0X…eature=related

Shard types:
R = Red
Y = Yellow
G = Green
B = Blue


Level 15:

RBG= 15 Aim / 10 Endurance

Here is where to get the Matrix Shards:
R: http://youtu.be/D04jBtT4EJc?hd=1 – Ord Mantell
B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPr_gkYPY5o – Tython
G: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqtwocSaQHw – Taris

Level 24:

BYY = 19 Aim / 24 Endurance
You should already have 1xBluefrom Tython. Others Needed:
Y: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qka_tTrGyq0 – Coruscant
Y: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL7b3Vm1oD0 – Nar Shaddaa

GBB = 28 Aim / 14 Endurance
You should have the 1xBluefrom Tython and the 1xGreen from Taris. You will need one more Blue and you can find that below:
B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPSLYV8hS2U – Tatooine


Level 32:

GRR = +39 Aim / +23 Endurance
For this one you already have 1xGreen from Taris and 1xRed from Ord Mantell. You will need one more Red and you can find that here:
R: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srHrVGdPQTk – Hoth

BGG = +29 Aim / +33 Endurance
You already have 1xBlue and 1xGreen from Taris, that means you need 1 more Green. Find it right here:
G: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG958zSZUQo&feature=fvst – Belsavis (Read the description)

Level 50:

3x Blue Shards: Matrix Cube = +58 Aim / +50 Endurance / +24 Crit
3x Yellow Shards: Matrix Cube = +52 Aim / +60 Endurance / +18 Defense

Here is how you get each shard:

• Tatooine Blue Matrix Shard Datacron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPSLYV8hS2U
• Corellia Blue Matrix Shard Datacron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdVI_N96NZw
• Tython Blue Matrix Shard Datacron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPr_gkYPY5o
• Coruscant Yellow Matrix Shard Datacron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qka_tTrGyq0
• Nar Shaddaa Yellow Matrix Shard Datacron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL7b3Vm1oD0
• Ilum Yellow Matrix Shard Datacron: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTWplCqQacU

Thanks for reading the guide and if you have anything that I missed or need to improve on please let me know.

Incoming search terms:

• aim datacron belsavis

Swtor Commando Combat Medic Guide

Introduction

Do you like really big guns? Does laying down a lethal storm of fire and then healing any of your allies dumb enough to step in front of a lightsaber sound like fun? Well then, the Combat medic may just be the AC for you.

One of the things they did really well in this game was to allow you to heal without sacrificing too much dps. None of the Trooper trees, Vanguard or Commando, has any talents to boost the damage of our AoE abilities. That means you, as a healer, can lay down just as much AoE damage as anyone else, and Troopers are the kings of AoE.

This ability to put out huge AOE damage, and decent single target damage, makes leveling a Combat Medic so much more fun than the pain we are used to seeing with leveling healers. We also have a new resource mechanic that is more interesting than the standard, tired, giant mana pool mechanic we are all used to from every game before.

I’ve seen a lot of questions in general and guild chat, and no sticky post with answers, so I figured it was about time we started getting one together. This guide endeavors to answer most standard questions and help a new Combat Medic get off to a good start.

This is a living document and will likely remain a work-in-progress for quite a while. It will also, hopefully, be a community project and resource. If you see errors, please politely point them out. If you have suggestions, make them. If you see areas where something is debatable…debate it. If a consensus is reached, I’ll update it to reflect that. If no consensus can be found, I will add the competing camps to the section and let the reader decide for themselves.

Finally, I don’t PvP. If someone wants to contribute some info about differences in PvP, I will gladly add that in and provide credit.

Table of Contents

1. Abbreviations
2. Ammo
3. Abilities
4. Skill Tree Builds
5. Stats
6. Stat Priorities
7. Alacrity
8. Gear
9. Rotations and Strategies
10. FAQs
11. Links
12. Contributors
13. Professions
14. Companions (Coming Soonish)
15. Theorycrafting
16. Stat Calculator

Abbreviations

• CM: Combat Medic
• AP: Advanced Medical Probe
• MP: Medical Probe
• SCC: Supercharge Cells
• CSC: Combat Support Cells
• BI: Bacta Infusion
• KB: Kolto Bomb
• TP: Trauma Probe
• HS: Hammer Shot
• CB: Charged Bolt
• HIB: High Impact Bolt
• FA: Full Auto
• RC: Recharge Cells
• ARPS: Ammo Regenerated Per Second (gained)
• APS: Ammo Per Second (spent)

Ammo

Ammo is our resource mechanic, and deserves a section to discuss how it works. You have 12 ammo, and using most abilities costs some ammo. A few are free. Ammo regenerates on its own, at a rate tied to how much ammo you already have. The more ammo you have, the faster it regenerates. This means you generally want to stay as conservative as possible to stay in the high regen range.

Very Slow: 0-3 Ammo. 0.24 ARPS
Moderate: 3-8 Ammo. 0.36 ARPS
Fast: 8-12 Ammo. 0.60 ARPS

We do have a couple of abilities to help with this.
[*]Recharge Cells: Instant. 2 minute cooldown. Restores 6 ammo over 3 seconds. When talented, 2 additional cells recharge instantly. I have not yet tested to know if this means you get 8 total from the ability, or just that 2 of them instantly are given to you while the others regen over 3 seconds.
[*]Supercharge Cells: Instant. 1.50 seconds. Among its other effects, instantly recharges 2 cells. Requires 30 charges of Combat Support Cell.

Abilities

Medical Probe: 3 Ammo. 2 second cast. Standard Heal.

Advanced Medical Probe: 2 Ammo. 1.5 second cast. 9 second cooldown. This heal is slightly weaker than MP, but it is your core heal. Once talented it not only heals, it also increases the target’s armor, adds our only HoT, and reduces the cost of the next MP to only 1 Ammo. That means for 3 Ammo (the same cost as MP) and a slightly longer cast time, you get the heal from AP, the heal from MP, the heal from the HoT, and the decreased damage intake from the armor boost. Not a bad deal.

Bacta Infusion: Free. Instant. 21 second cooldown. Huge free heal limited only by its cooldown. 21 seconds is pretty short. Use it early, use it often!

Trauma Probe: Free. Instant. No Cooldown. Free reactive heal. This puts 10 charges of a shield on a target, and every time the target takes damage they get healed. It isn’t a large heal per charge, but it’s free and it adds up substantially over time.

Kolto Bomb: 2 Ammo. Instant. 6 second cooldown. Our only AoE heal. Limited to only heal 3 targets, but has a low cooldown. Talented, it also provides a 5% buff to healing received.

Hammer Shot: Free. Instant. No cooldown. When using Combat Support Cells as your ammo type, you can use this to target people as a very small heal while letting ammo regen.

Skill Tree Builds

SWTOR skill trees are all pretty straightforward, without a lot in the way of options, so this build shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Zero Alacrity PVE Build. Use 86-190 Alacrity Rating
Low Alacrity PvE Build Use 150-250 Alacrity Rating.
High Alacrity PvE BuildDo not exceed 40 Alacrity Rating.
Alternate Build *Lileth argues that the Kolto Residue buff is unreliable, and prefers the increased self-healing to decrease how often you have to heal yourself. A dead healer does no healing.
*

In light of the Alacrity data in a later section, I had to revise the recommended PvE build.

Optional Skills in the PvE build above:

• Psych Aid. There are not currently many Force debuffs to remove, and the base cost is cheap enough, and cleansing on bosses is rare enough, that this may not be needed. If you have a spare point, though, it never hurts.
• Muzzle Fluting. If everyone is topped off before SCC runs out, lets you cast CB for free so you can help DPS while still regenning as much Ammo as possible. Great for leveling, great for solo questing, great any time you don’t find yourself constantly healing. Highly recommended even though it is clearly a DPS skill.
• Cell Capacitor. The extra 1-2 Ammo are nice, but its a long cooldown ability.
• Treated Wound Dressings. The less damage you take, the less you or another healer has to heal you. A dead heal saves no one.
• Med Zone. viable alternative to Treated Wound Dressings. Increased self-heals when you need them most.
• Combat Shield. Great for PvP, but more importantly makes sure you get that self-heal off when you really need it. I don’t put points here, but it is a good alternative to Treated Wound Dressings, or Muzzle Fluting if you don’t ever DPS.

There is a lot of hate towards Kolto Bomb, and some of it is warranted. It is the most limited AoE heal in the game, healing the fewest number of people, smallest radius, and it has an Ammo Cost and a cooldown. That said, it can be cast on the run, provides a buff to healing received, and, if it heals 3 people, it is highly efficient. Of course, getting it to heal 3 is tricky, especially considering it currently is not a “smart heal.” Kolto Bomb heals the three people closest to the center when it lands, not the three most in need of healing. We are hoping this will be corrected soon.

Stats

The only stats you should be concerned with are Aim, Surge, Critical, Power, and Alacrity. Endurance comes for free, so don’t worry about it, and the other stats are for other classes.

Aim: Provides increases to ranged damage and critical chance, tech damage and critical chance, and healing power and critical chance. Note healing critical change IS tech critical chance. Simply stated twice to make it clear Aim increases healing critical chance.

Critical Rating increases the chance you will have a critical effect from damage or healing abilities. This increases the effect by 50% plus the bonus from your Surge rating.

Surge rating increases the bonus on critical effects.

Power increases the base damage/healing of your abilities.

Alacrity makes cast times faster. Cast time abilities cast faster. Channeled abilities take less total time, with the ticks coming faster. HoTs and DoTs tick faster. Unlike in some other games, this does not increase the number of ticks of any HoT/DoT abilities. This also is the only stat with negatives associated, specifically it makes abilities more expensive. See below for more info.

Stat Priorities

I created a calculator, hosted on Google Code, for calculating stat weights and comparing upgrades.

It only takes a minute to download it and plug in your own values. More explanation is in post #3.

One thing that the program does not convey well is the value of Alacrity. See the next Section.

I have done a great deal of work examining Alacrity for Combat Medics. In the end, I realized that our maximum benefit with Alacrity would correspond to our maximum usage of the only abilities that used it, AP and MP. Due to poor scaling, fitting in extra HS does not add enough HPS to offset the opportunity cost (HS scales at 1 * Bonus Healing, compared to 2.72 for MP).

I have been doing a lot of work trying to model Alacrity and how it benefits us. I eventually had to convert the Stat Calculator spreadsheet into the C++ version linked above so I could run multiple iterations. I am fairly confident of the results, but please, if you can point out problems, do so (politely) so we can get the best data possible.

The short version is you should aim for 5-7% Alacrity, total, from both stats and skills. Try not to exceed 8.5%. For the long version, see this thread.

Gear
Obviously, I’m not going to make a Best in Slot list, as those are annoying to keep up.

However, crafted gear is worth addressing. When you RE green crafted gear, it can gain one of three prefixes: Redoubt (+defense), Critical (+crit) or Overkill (+power). If you RE those blues, they can gain one of five second stats: Presence, Shield, Alacrity, Surge, and Accuracy. Presence only boosts your companions, and is useless in group play. Based on the above stat priorities, it can be seen that only two combinations are of any value.

Expert Gear: Power + Surge
Endowment Gear: Critical + Surge

Since the power vs crit debate is still open and will likely be a matter of preference even after the math is in, I’m not going to make a call about which of those two to us, but obviously there is better synergy with the Endowment gear. Take whichever works better for you.

Rotations and Strategies

When healing as a Trooper, you should always have CSC as your active ammo type. You also want to stay at 30 charges whenever possible for the 3% healing boost and the ability to pop SCC. You can preload CSC charges by firing hammer shot on the run at friendly targets, even out of combat. Always keep Trauma Probe on the tank. (Note: You may want to have Trauma Probe on yourself during pulls, and then cast it on the tank once he has aggro. It’s free, so the repeat cast won’t hurt you, and the initial heal when the tank first takes damage can sometimes make adds target you.)

Single Target
Currently the consensus is that this is where we shine best, and we are likely to be one of the most popular dedicated tank healers in this game.

Most of the time keeping Trauma Probe (TP) on the tank and using an AP/MP combo every time AP comes off of cooldown should be sufficient. Pre-tossing a Kolto Bomb (KB) for the 5% buff is easy if it looks like they took a little more damage in since the last AP/MP cycle than your AP/MP combo heals for. While waiting on cooldown, toss out some hammer shots as either heals or damage, or weave in a Full Auto or Charged Bolt cast if you are fine on ammo.

In high-burst damage situations, it is time to break out the SCC. You still want to keep TP on the tank, and the KB buff. Lay down a AP/MP combo followed by a full price MP. If that isn’t enough, pop SCC which will refund 2 of your ammo (making that last MP essentially only cost 1). Now AP has no cooldown for the duration and KB places a shield on targets. MP is still your most powerful heal, and AP/MP combo costs 3 Ammo vs 4 Ammo for a double AP cast. The cast time of MP also allows the AP HoT time to tick, so avoid the temptation to just spam AP when you pop SCC. Use the lack of cooldown to power as many AP/MP combos as you can.

If the high-burst phase isn’t over before SCC expires, spam MP as needed to get back up to 30 charges, weaving in AP when its off cooldown of course, then pop Recharge Cells (RC), followed by SCC and another round of burst AP/MP combos. Try not to use Hammer Shot for healing while SCC is active, unless everyone is at or near full health. If you are low on ammo after SCC, toss some Hammer Shots after it expires.

When the high-burst phase is over, use hammer shot and AP/MP combos to do light healing while you regen Ammo and build up charges.

AoE Healing
We are a bit weaker here than some other classes, but we aren’t worthless. Obviously Kolto Bomb (KB) is our go-to ability. The cooldown is only 6 seconds, and the 2 Ammo cost is low, making this ability spammable. You will recharge more in those 6 seconds than the cost, so if you aren’t casting anything else you could toss KBs all day.

KB has two major downsides. First, it only heals 3 targets, which means someone in a flashpoint group is getting healed, or in an Operation it means we heal one fewer than a Scoundrel and 5-13 fewer than a Sage (I could be wrong here, but it is my understanding that the Sage AoE heal has no limit number of characters healed.) Second, the radius is only 8 yards, so those being healed have to be quite close together. This is made harder by the fact that the current SWTOR AoE targeting indicators don’t actual show the size of the area the ability affects.

That said, KB is basically a MP, spread over 3 targets for 1/3 of an MP each in healing. There is a good chance that if your group is taking AoE damage, it is coming in faster and harder than that. So what do you do?

Well, luckily, our AP/MP combo isn’t tied to one target. Casting AP puts a buff on us reducing the cost of MP, not a buff on the target, so we can cast that MP on someone else. An AP/MP. So toss a KB out, drop AP on one of the targets, then drop MP on another, and Hammer Shot (HS) or Bacta Infusion (BI) the final one. Going through this rotation of those three abilities with a free cast is Ammo neutral or very very close, so you should be able to keep that up all day.

For High-Burst AoE, once again SCC comes to the rescue. KB now applies a shield. When in SCC mode during high-burst, you want to keep your rotation basically the same. If you are still in high-burst when SCC expires drop a second full cost MP instead of HS in the rotation to build charges quickly, and then use Recharge Cells. KB doesn’t generate CSC charges, so it can take a little longer to get back up to 30. Plan accordingly.

I converted the original Google Docs spreadsheet to C++ and put it up on Google Code. I will try and post in this thread as I make updates to the program.

The original form of this calculator was this spreadsheet. I am no longer updating it, but it is left up for reference and interest.

Enter your stats, important skill choices, and buffs at the top. Then there are 3 buttons of importance.

Stat Weights

1. Click the Calculate Stat Weights button

Upgrade Comparison

1. Enter the NET changes of 1-2 peices of gear in the Upgrade Calculator Section of the “Stats” Sheet
2. If the HPS increases, that item is an upgrade over your current gear.
3. If you entered two items, a field will display which produces the larger HPS increase.

Rotational Adjustments

1. Adjust the thresholds for when you use Recharge Cells and Full Price (3 Ammo) Medical Probe, and Adv. Probe during SCC.
2. These changes apply to all calculations.

What do the weights mean?
Power is the only stat that doesn’t have diminishing returns, so all stats are given a value relative to Power (PPE, points power equivalent). If something has a value greater than one, that means it is better than power. If it is less than 1, it is worse than power.

Sometime alacrity might go negative due to strange interactions with alacrity and the rotations. See additional discussion on alacrity.

if you choose to use the Upgrade Calculator, you never need to look at these values, but many people prefer to have an idea of their stat weights, for which the PPE values are the most useful.

What are the assumptions?
This assumes an intensive healing situation where you use SCC whenever you can, and spam AP/MP while SCC is up, assuming you have the ammo for it. The minimum ammo for casting AP during SCC is adjustable. Outside of SCC, Priority is AP>BI>MP(with buff)>MP(unbuffed with ammo above adjustable threshold)>HS. Recharge Cells is used whenever it is off of cooldown and you have less than or equal to an adjustable amount of Ammo.

PVP

I don’t PvP. Ever, really. So, on that note, I am going to include here advice from other posters.

By Dashall:

By Lileth:
PVP as a commando (Rank 55) I never use hammer shot to heal anyone. Ever. Use Bacta, Kolto while on the run. And hammer shot the enemies, which iscreases your damage numbers / kills for more medals.

– Getting attacked by a operative from stealth. As soon as my face hits the pavement, I start spamming Concussive Charge. Consussive Charge down, use Cyro Grenade. (Don’t be a keyboard turner you have to face them fast)Then Bacta while on the run AWAY from them followed by Kolto Bomb. Start strafe kitting them and laugh. Finish up with a Stock Strike to their face for the killing blow. I tend to Stock Strike kill allot of people because It makes me laugh.

Incoming search terms:

• swtor sorcerer skill tree

Swtor Operative Leveling Guide

Introduction

At the time of posting this thread I am currently a level 44 operative, so I hope you can take what I’m about to say as something reasonably valuable coming from someone with a decent amount of game experience. The two major problems I see people talking about on this forum about leveling the operative are as follows:

1. The Operative heals are clunky and require too much energy.

2. The Operative does not do enough damage.

I too ran across these issues when leveling my Operative, but after a bit of tweaking (and leveling), I believe I have found a sweat spot. Unfortunately there is a downside: the following strategy only becomes effective between levels 25-27, and much more after that.

Step 1: The Basic Concept

The most important part of this guide/build is Kolto Probe and Medical Engineering, you will need both skills maxed out. How you go about maxing these skills out is up to you. I personally recommend spec’ing straight into healing to get them maxed by level 27.

The basic idea here is that you want to have 4 Kolto Probes active at ALL TIMES. Two on you and two on your companion. With Medical Engineering fully spec’d, Kolto Probe has a 30% chance to active TA every 4.5 seconds. With 4 probes active, the probability of getting a TA to activate every 4.5 seconds is pretty damn high. At this point you have done two important things:

1. You are keeping consistent heals on yourself and your companion, regardless of whether you think you need them.

2. You are keeping TA active/usable

Step 2: Bringing it together

With consistent heals and a nearly permanent TA, your next job is to work in your other skills. The minute you have one TA to spare, always activate Stim Boost, whether you’re at fully energy or not. With 4 Kolto Probes activating TA, you should almost always have Stim Boost active at all times.

Why do I recommend a near infinite loop of Stim Boost when Kolto Probe doesn’t cost much energy? Simple, because when you start engaging mobs, you’re going to start chaining more expensive energy costing skills. As a result, having Stim Boost permanently active helps keep your energy high throughout fights, which should for most mobs mean you are never scrambling for energy.

As for the rest of your spec, it’s completely up to you. The only other recommendation I will insist upon is spec’ing fully into Slip Away. I have come to believe this skill is an absolute must for every Operative in every situation (PvE/PvP). I find it best to spec entirely into DPS once you have maxed out Medical Engineering, as it will help you kill mobs/bosses quicker.

Step 3: Combat

Again, I don’t really have many specific instructions on how to go about combat. Whether you want to utilize Stealth and CC your mobs or try to AoE your mobs is up to you. I would note, however, using AoE’s like grenades will tax your energy more. There have been plenty of threads about how to stack your abilities, so I’ll refer you to them.

The most important things about combat are as follows:

1. Remember to ALWAYS keep Kolto Probe (preferably more than 1) and Stim Boost active.

2. When your TA is low/running out, Shiv to replenish it.

3. Try not to spend your last TA unless absolutely needed or you can’t replenish it with Shiv.

4. Corrosive Dart should be active on all Strong/Elite/Champions at all times.

This is really all I want to say on combat, if people would like more elaboration on how to deal with difficult Elites or whatever, I will expand on this later.

Step 4: Gear, Stats, and Crits

Again, I’m not going to get too specific in this section. The basic idea with your gear/stats is to increase your Cunning (obviously) and your Crit%. By keeping your Crit% high, you not only have a greater chance at doing more damage with your attacks, but each Kolto Probe tick has a greater chance of healing for more life. More life = less dying. Imagine a crit’ing Kolto Probe tick healing ~500 health. Yea, that’s pretty good.

One last thing on gear and stats. Personally, I’m unsure of how much importance an Operative should place on Surge. Perhaps someone can give their thoughts in the comments?

Step 5: Putting it all Together

There you have it. At this point you should have a permanent set of heals on yourself and your companion, always have Stim Boost active, and hopefully have a TA active at all times. What this build allows you to do is enter (most) combat without having to worry about activating Kolto Injection or Infusion. Obviously, when things get dicy, you will definitely need to use both those skills. However, the constant Kolto Probe + Stim Boost should keep you at high life + high energy for most mobs. Additionally, the constant TA means you’re always dealing an extra 2% damage. Combine even more Crits for damage and healing, and you should be well on your way to owning mobs and leveling with ease.

In Conclusion

I’d like to reiterate this guide/build only really becomes effective at level 27+ (assuming you spec straight into healing) and slit spec’ing DPS + Healing will never work once you finish leveling. I’d also like to reiterate that this guide is from my own personal experience and the reason I’m leaving so much up in the air is to allow you to play with different variations of the general concept of this build. Am I doing this wrong? Maybe. But I’ve found the following build extremely effective in my leveling process. At my current level (44), I can pretty much run through all normal mobs without breaking a sweat and even Strong mobs with the right CCs aren’t too bad either.

Thanks to all those who read this far, and I hope someone out there found this guide helpful. Happy leveling!

TL;DR: Kolto Probe + Medical Engineering + TA + Stim Boost + other skills = good times leveling

Incoming search terms:

• dps scoundrel pve

SWTOR Commando Skills Guide

This is a guide on the skills for Commando, specifically the Combat Medic and Gunnery Trees.
I did it with a rating system, this is my personal opinion and does not reflect any absolute truth. If you disagree it would be great if you could say so and post why.

SWTOR Commando Skills Guide – Index

1. Active Skills
1.1 Trooper
1.2 Commando

2. Passive Skills
2.1 Commando
2.2 Combat Healing
2.3 Gunnery

1. ACTIVE SKILLS

1.1 SWTOR Commando Skills Guide – TROOPER:

Hammer Shot:
Basic Attack, needs to be part of every chain, whether healing or doing damage,
in order to keep ammo up.Should be used often enough to keep ammo reg above 80% ideally or 60%
when having to burst a bit more.
Rating: 10/10

Fortification:
Self and Group Buff for 5% more Endurance.
Make it a habit to ALWAYS buff the team when entering instances, when a team mate was rezzed or
during reg times in flashpoints so it does not run out.
Rating:
10/10

Explosive Round:
Sometimes nice to set up a normal mob for High Powered Shot to finish them quickly, or to finish
up a low health mob after Mortar. Though both combos should not be used in longe encounters as
it is not ammo efficient.
Pretty much useless at higher levels.
Rating:
3/10

Stockstrike:
I really like that ability, it can crit for very decent damage and is the only melee ability we can use
without preconditions having to be met.
I got it on a mouse button and use it frequently to finish off mobs that get to close.
You can get along without ever using it but lets face it, its fun to bash things with
a huge gun. Swings the Gun in front of you.
Note: Stock Strike has a speccable knockback to it, which can be used to interrupt mobs casting. (Thanks Mujrim for pointing that out)
Rating:
5/10 for Utility
9/10 for coolness

Full Auto:
Bread and Butter, you enter a stance to brace yourself against the knockback of the gun and let off
a hail of bullets.
Even if you are Healing Commando you should never take this off your hotbar. In my build i still
have the crit strength passive skilled for this.(Deadly Cannon)
The good thing is that you practically regen back the cost while the animation runs.
If you went Gunnery you should always skill “Curtain of Fire” to have FA up as often as possible.
Rating:
10/10 Damage is great all the way to 50, crits will make you smile.

Plasma Cell:
I cant really comment on this ability to much, as the synergies for this are all in the Assault
Specialist tree, which i never really tried out. Pre 50 and in the case of Gunnery, pre “Cell Charger”
it is the ammo of choice for levelling when not healing.
Rating:
8/10 for Gunnery pre Cell Charger and 10/10 for Combat Medic if not healing or soloing tough mob with tank companion. (I prefer Combat Support Cells in that case)

Sticky Grenade:
Nice Ability for three reasons, it does decent aoe damage, which always helps as there is rarely fights
against a single target. It knocks back normal targets and sets them up for a finish wit High Powered
Shot. And most of all it takes one normal out of the fight as they will be frantically trying to get
the sticky off instead of fighting back.
You can use Sticky + Mortar to get rid of packs of ranged normal mobs.
Rating:
8/10 when soloing, not strictly necessary.
4/10 when in group as normal mobs die to fast for
it to go off. In rare cases can be used to quickly take one normal mob out of the fight that shoots the healer etc.

High Impact Bolt:
Another Bread and Butter Skill. As a Combat Medic there is no synergy for this skill, it still does
decent damage though and the prerequisites are easily fulfilled.
If going Full Gunnery or Gunnery Hybrid, then Grav Round will leave a mob vulnerable to Bolt.
A maximum of 5 vortex stacks can be used to increase Bolt damage.
Among the conditions that enable Bolt are Vortex from Grav Round, burning from Plasma Grenade or
Plasma Cells, the stun from Full Auto, Cryo Grenade and all knockdowns.
Rating:
7/10 for Combat Medic
10/10 for Gunery/Assault

Pulse Cannon:
You fire a cone of lightning from your bfg.
With no other ability do i have such a love/hate relationship.
It is easily interrupted and if you move an inch after activation it will do nothing and go on cooldown.
Mobs pretty much have to be stationary for it to reach full potential.
On the upside it does great damage to all targets in its very respectable cone area and if you
start a few crits you will see damage numbers in the thousands fill your screen.
If you are a Combat Medic and always stay back and lets the DDs do all the work
then this is not for you. That would really waste potential though.
Edit:
If you are surrounded by mobs you will usually hit a max of 2 targets with this, which makes it painful to use for Vanguards and limits use when having agro.
(Credits to LordKivlov)
Rating:
8/10 because of its “issues”

Tenacity:
Removes all incapacitating and movement impairing effects. (does not seem to work for snares though)
Great Skill that will save your group from wipes in difficult encounters, shines in pvp of course
but definately also a great pve skill.
Though rarely used in normal encounters, it can make a huge difference in boss encounters.
Rating:
10/10 when you need it, though it may not be often

Mortar Volley:
Ahhh, my favourite skill for the past 50 level.
I know many hate it, Bounty Hunter has better activation times bla bla. For PVE that doesn’t matter.
The damage at 50 is still good against groups of normal targets. For me it crits for 1200+ each impact.
So against groups of 3+ you can easily reach 8k-10k damage. Not bad for the time invested.
The best part tough is that it has a 8m range and knockdown against normal targets.
In Hard mode even the normal mobs hurt, beeing able to eliminate any incoming damage from them is
very nice.
I usually use it after Tank aoe taunt, when groups of normals spawn in predesigned spaces, such
as from doors in FPs or to start off a fight when soloing.
Sometimes i get higher up before using it to watch the mortars fly their arc of doom ;.)
I dont want to spoiler here but some FP Bosses have add waves where mortar can shine.
Rating:
10/10 when solo
10/10 for Fun Factor
8/10 in group if tank can aoe taunt or you have another DD to finish mobs off quickly.

Cryo Grenade:
Our only real stun. As a Combat Medic i usually use it to mitigate damage in case i or one of the DDs
gets agro from some random and Sticky wont help as they are Hard+
When soloing just use when opportune.
Rating:
9/10 when solo
7/10 in group as DDs/Tanks already interrupt and Concussive Round is the superior CC.

Reactive Shield:
Reduces all damage taken by 25% for 12 seconds.
A lifesaving ability, wont let you tank anything but survive random agro or fights gone wrong when solo
Has two synergies in Combat Medic tree of which only Combat Shield is really worth it imho.
Cannot comment on the Assault synergy from Reflexive Shield as i never used it.
Rating:
10/10 Even the no synergy basic 25% damage reduce is awesome for any class.

No Retreat:
You and Companion recover some Health and Cryo Grenade cooldown is finished.
Oh crap button for soloing. Will rarely save you if things go so wrong that you need an oh crap
button but there it is, i rarely ever used it as Comba Medic. As Gunnery i find myself using it more
for the instant availability of Cryo Grenade.
Rating:
4/10 for Combat Medic, just not needed
8/10 for Gunnery as Healing/CC always helps DDs

Adrenaline Rush:
Restores 15% hp over 10 seconds.
Rarely ever use it in pve as a Combat Medic, Gunnery Spec i used it every fight it came
off cooldown.
Assault specs can reduce the cd via crits with “Adrealine fueled”
Rating:
1/10 for Combat Medic. It is instant and free but one Kolto will heal nearly as much, + my companion
9/10 for Gunnery. Free Heal is free heal, could use lower cd though.

Blitz:
Meh, i was looking forward to this ability but it turned out to be pretty much useless due to its
prerequisite.
A melee attack only usable on incapacitated targets.If i cryo something up close i already have High Powered Bolt.
Was hoping for a better version of Stockstrike. As is, i dont even have it in my quickslots for pve.
Rating:
2/10 Running in close to do this is a waste of time and damage. If something comes to you, you still have the
prereq.Useless imho.

Stealth Scan:
Instantly deploys drones to uncover any stealthed npcs/chars in its smallish area of effect.
pve i think i used it once for the giggles, pretty much a pvp only skill as far as i can tell.
Rating:
0/10 as the guide covers pve

Reserve Powercell:
Next abilities Energy cost are reduced to 0.
What is not to love.CD is 2 minutes which is still ok.I sometimes use it with Tech Override to get
an instant/costfree Plasma Grenade for some nice aoe damage, also enabling High Powered Bolt.
Rating:
10/10

1.2 SWTOR Commando Skills Guide – COMMANDO:

Trauma Probe:
Fire and Forget reactive heal. Puts 20 charges on a singe group member. Whenever he/she is hit, a small
heal is fired off and a charge is lost. Needs 21 points in Combat Medic.
Right now it seems the charges are not correctly deducted, nevertheless a great tool that should
always be up on the tank at least before a pull. Heals seem to crit for 400-700, which is definately
helping out.
Rating:
10/10

Supercharge Cells:
Bread and Butter for any Healer. Let me rephrase it, if you try and heal without this you will
make your life significantly harder or fail right out.
30 charges must be build up before it can be used, one Hammer Shot will build up 3.(dont have game open,
hope its not 2 o.0)
The medical Drones also build charges. So you can use Hammer Shot on the tank before a fight, while running through
FPs/Instances and enter the fight with the 30 charges already up.
Once you use the supecharge you recover 2 ammo, increase healing by 10%, Kolto get a Shield with 10% damage reduce,
Full Auto cost is reduced by 1 and most importantly, Advanced Medical Probe cd is reduced by 100%

That means that with Field Triage skilled, you can use Advanced Drone + Drone for 3 ammo
repeatedly during 10 seconds, at which point the supercharge will stop.
That time is your best burst healing if you used Kolto for the 5% buff right before. It will not
go any higher then that.
Rating:
11/10 for Combat Medics

Grav Round:
Many people seem to dislike the animation/sound on this, i actually think it fits quiet well. Replaces Charged Rounds.
Fires a stream at a target where it turns into a swirl.
Does great single target damage and debuffs armor for the rest of the team as well.
I got this on my hybrid spec to have one heavy hitter.
Gunnery tree builds up on this ability.Even if you do not skill any synergies in the Gunnery tree,
the armor debuffs on the target (max. 5, 4% armor debuff each) will also increase High Impact Bolt
damage.
Most important thing to remember when getting this is to not spam it.
Always remember to use Hammer Shots and of course Full Auto, especially when Gunnery Tree specced,
because of higher FA damage buffs and the chance for no cd.
Keep that ammo regen high. For ammo reasons needs the Gunnery passive “Muzzle Fluting” to lower cost.
Rating:
10/10 for Hybrid specs
11/10 for Gunnery

Kolto Bomb:
Targetted aoe heal, max 3 targets. Needs 11 points in Combat Medic.
Kolto crits for around 2k now for me, usually it is much closer to 1k though. That is not a lot
but cd is only 6 seconds and you can use it while moving. Also our only Group Heal.
Mobility while healing is low for Commandos, for many Boss Encounters Kolto will save Group Members.
In normal fights i use it for the 5% increased healing on targetsfrom Kolto Residue and to top off people
on the way to the next mobgroup.
Rating:
7(10)/10, max 3 targets and low healing values. Unfortunately it is the only group heal we get and as such
a must have. So 10/10 for that and 7/10 because i feel it should do more.

Bacta Infusion:
Only instant single target heal Commandos get.As with Kolto Bomb the big advantage here is mobility.
I used it while our tank was not so well equipped, now that he can take more of a beating and we
coordinate better i specced out of it to get Grav Round.
For me, it is a nice to have, the other tools you have should be enough to get the job done though and the added dps from Grav really helps in a few encounters where damage is more important then healing.
I would reconsider if cooldown and healing would be increased. A 2 or 3 min cd tank superheal. The way it is it can be skipped.
Rating:
5/10

Incendiary Round:
Assault tree, all i can say is that i found the ability itself to be underwhelming.
Needed for Ionic Accelerator though, which gives Full Auto a chance to finish cd on Impact Bolt.
Rating:
none

Charged Rounds:
Grav Rounds for the poor. Basically if you go all the way up the Combat Medic tree, then this will be
your single target heavy hitter.You will still be able to get Muzzle Fluting for a cost reduce.
No added debuff though. Base Damage is shown as higher but imho it hits for less.
Could be because of armor debuff by Grav Rounds or because Grav has a different damage type.
Rating:
9/10 before Grav Round
0/10 after Grav Round

Medical Probe:
Finally we talk real healing
This baby crits for up to 5k for me. Has an ammo cost of 3, so spamming it will make you run out of ammo
in no time, so it needs a few things to complete you as the best single target healer.
I would seriously recommend taking all passives, cd reduce, healing improvements and of course have
Combat Support Cells active at all times.
At first i went all out crit/surge. But i realized that enough alacrity to get down cast time for drone
to 1.5 sec is pretty much needed. Especially when skipping Bacta Infusion.
So i will redo my equipment to fit that.
Can be used with Tech Override for a fake instant heal.
Rating:
10/10 for Combat Medic
4/10 for Gunnery as it is simply to expensive, unless used with Reserve Powercell.

Hail of Bolts:
To be honest, i only used that once when i got it. Has some Synergy in the Assault tree to do higher
damage on burning targets.
Cannot give a rating on this, maybe i will try it again someday. If anyone uses it with success then
it would be great if you could say so.
Rating:
none

Armor-piercing Cell:
This is the Ammo of choice for Full Gunnery Specs. Crits with rounds and Full Auto return one ammo.
(max every 3 sec) Imho a must have passive, as anything that regens ammo is a blessing.
Rating:
10/10 for Gunnery

Combat Support Cell:
The Ammo of choice for Combat Medics, see also “Supercharge Cells”
Hammer Shot now heals friendly targets. Crits quiet often for somewhere in the 200s.
Builds up charges for Supercharge.
Rating:
10/10 for Combat Medic

Concussion Charge:
Pbaoe Knockback that affects a maximum of 5 targets and also slows them. Deals damage though i never thought of using it
for that. Cracks the Earth under your feet, which is a cool effect.
Uses are pushing enemies down cliffs etc., push back melee attackers, push mobs into aoes or closer to tank.
Incredibly funny and useful in pvp so i wont go into that here.
Rating:
10/10

Advanced Medical Probe:
The box of tools heal. If you skilled all passives, then it will lower the cost of Medical Probe to 1 ammo,
put a HoT on the target and raise armor by 10% for 9 seconds.
Its cooldown is 0 while Supercharge is active.
Rating:
10/10 for Combat Medic
8/10 for Gunnery as it is only 2 ammo and faster cast time.

Plasma Grenade:
Engulfing 3 enemies into flames, fun times. May not be a flamethrower but can be used from a safe distance.
Because of the rather heavy ammo cost of 4, i tend to use it with Reserve Powercell.
The other good thing about it is that the dot does its damage over only 6 seconds, which is acceptable.
Rating:
7/10 Could use a 1 ammo cost reduce or at least a cast time of 0.

Concussive Round:
Knocks out a target for 60 seconds. Must have and must use utility skill, period.
Knock out the elite/hard, clear the trash, kill the elite/hard without his backup.
Works on humanoids and droids.
Has some charge up time but can also be used to take out targets midfight or renew the knock out on a
target if more mobs added. Breaks on damage so any kind of voice communication works wonders with this skill.
At least you should always agree on someone to mark targets.
Rating:
10/10

Field Aid:
Outside of pvp i found it pretty unnecessary until higher levels.Then it starts becoming important in pve.
I have it on mouse wheel down now. It is instant cast and with the synergy skilled (Psych Aid)
it only costs 1 ammo and heals mental, tech and physical effects.
Use it for those pesky dot bosses.
Rating: 10/10 Not needed often but when you need it you need it now. So make it accessible.

Diversion:
Agro reduce instant cast, nice to have.
Rating:
10/10 I rarely use it though, might be more important in pugs.

Tech Override:
I mainly use this for three abilities: Plasma Grenade, Medical Probe and Concussive Round for in instant knockout.
Makes the next ability with activation time an instant.Lasts up to 15 sec.
First i had it on my taskbar but didnt really use it, now its one of my regular skills.
See how it works for you.
Rating:
10/10

2. PASSIVE SKILLS

2.1 Commando

2.2 Combat Medic

Field Training:
A no brainer, +6% ranged and tech crit chance. I would not dream of putting any less then 3 points in here.
Rating:
10/10 Should be your skill of choice for investing points after Quick Thinking

Quick Thinking:
Reduces activation time of MP and cooldown of AMP. Definately worth 2 points.
You want AMP to be up as often as possible and the activation reduce for MP means you will need to invest less in alacrity to get it to 1.5 seconds later.
Rating:
10/10 Should be your first two skillpoints

Cell Capacitator:
Recharge Cells gives 1/2 additional cells. This is a tough one. If you use Recharge Cells when you are about 20% or 25% then you are back in the 4 pip regen area anyhow.
But more ammo is never bad.
The higher your alacrity, the faster you burn through it.
I would first try without it in favor of other skills, if you later on think you need it you can respec into it.
Rating:
7/10 Nice to have but points are scarce and those two can be used to get Supercharge Cells asap and start in the Gunnery Tree.

First Responder:
I did not take this at first but as i meantioned earlier, i think it important to get MP to 1.5 seconds activation time and this helps. May be skippable if you can reach that mark with equipment but at first i would take it.
Rating:
7/10 Not strictly necessary but at lower to mid levels your heals can seem quiet slow as tanks tend to take more damage. You can skip it at first and decide at mid 30s if you want it.

Steady Hands:
Pushback is lame and agro reduce is always a good thing to have. Maybe not needed if you never get agro in your premade, for others i would take it.
Not much else to say.
Rating:
8/10

Field Medicine:
Increases Healing of MP/AMP and charges of MP for Combat Support Cell.
Both things are definately a treat. Would recommend taking this asap, again, i cant stress how important it is to build Supercharge as fast as possible.
Rating:
10/10

Kolto Residue:
I really want to like it, 5% buff to healing sounds great, it isnt though.
It only holds 15 seconds, so to keep it up you need to reapply Kolto.
But mostly the tank takes damage. Kolto Bomb is 2 ammo. So even if i do heal 5 or 6 times and add in the Kolto Bomb heal itself, i will get about the same figure i get from one good MP.
For 3 ammo i get AMP+MP. Much more healing and no buff to keep up via an active skill.
If you go pure healing, take it, otherwise use those 2 points on something else.
Rating:
8/10 for pure Healers
3/10 if you want to heal when actually needed and help with damage otherwise

Combat Shield:
Further reduces pushback and makes immune to interrupt.
I have to admit i only took this for pvp. If you only PVE then you might be better off investing that point into something else.
Rating:
3/10 in pve

Efficient Conversions
Reduces cost of Concussion Charge, Concussive Round and Cryo Grenade by 1.
I personally love this, ammo reduction skills are gold, a cryo can mitigate more damage then a heal and anything it costs less is more i have for other stuff (that was totally obvious but i just felt like writing that down)
Rating:
9/10 Can be skipped in favor of other things, little things add up though.

Med Zone:
Increases all self healing by 20% while Reactive Shield is active.
I skipped that, in theory any skill that improves your self heals would be great. A half dead medic is often worse then a half dead tank.
But points are scarce and Shield isnt always ready, all in all i prefer my points in skills that are less situational.
2/10 for pve

Field Triage:
AMP has a 50%/100% chance to reduce cost of next MP by 2.
Congratulations, you are now a true Combat Medic !!
If you do not take this you might as well respec to Gunnery.
Now you can pop supercharge and use AMP+MP/AMP+MP/AMP+MP and so on for 3 ammo each combo. This makes you the best tank healer ingame imho.
Just make sure to not overheal by the thousands in all the excitement.
Rating:
12/10

Treated Wound Dressings:
Up to 4% reduce from all damage taken.
I took that to advance to the next tier of skills, a 4% damage reduce is something tanks would kill for. We arent tanks of course, no where close in fact, but every bit helps and this helps every time you get damage, no precondition.
I would rather have something else that helps me heal better but choices are limited.
Rating:
4/10 but on that tier the better of two evils.

Armor Screen:
Gives AMP a 10% Armor buff on target. 10% more armor is nothing to sneeze at and in theory you can keep this up near constantly if you cast AMP every time it is up.
Were it a seperate skill i would rate it lower but we cast AMP anyhow so not taking this would need a very good reason.
Rating:
9/10

Psych Aid:
Reduces Field Aid cost by 1 and now also heals mental effects.
Field Aid is an easily overlooked skill but in many encounters it can make all the difference.
Cost reduction is al always awesome and the ability to purge mental effects will make those looney tanks happy.
Rating:
10/10

Potent Medicine:
I skipped this in favor of dipping deeper into Gunnery. If you play a pure Combat Medic you will need to take this anyhow to get to Bacta Infusion.
Critical Bonus increase on healing of up to 15%. This is not higher base crit chance, which i would take anytime. As is, if you do not want Bacta it isnt worth the 5 points imho.
My crit values went down a bit but the “normal” heals stay the same, which is what you have to do your math with, crits are a bonus. Nothing more.
Rating:
3/10 If you go for Bacta you will have to take it anyhow

2.3 Gunnery

Ironsights:
Increases Aim by up to 9%
Its a % based bonus on your main stat that governs nearly everything. No-brainer.
Rating:
10/10

Advanced Tech:
Increases healing done and received by up to 2%.
If you totally want to min max then go for it. I do not think it is worth it, i rather take something higher up to help out in dps races against the enrage clock. My healing is already sufficient as should yours be without the 2%.
Rating:
2/10

Havoc Round:
Increases damage done by Rounds and Charged Bolts by 6% and healing from Kolto Bomb by 20%.
Damage done by rounds also increases healing done by Hammer Shots and more healing for Kolto to make it at least decent is always welcome.
At tier 1 it is decent.
8/10

Heavy Trooper:
Increases Endurance by up to 2% and Healing received by up to 6%.
For pve i would skip this skill, you already have a decent healthpool and healing to yourself, while nice should not take priority over passives that help your entire team.
Rating:
4/10 in pve

Special Munitions:
Increases effects of cells while they are active.
For pure Gunnery, who most likely take Armor piercing it will reduce the cost of high impact bolt by 1, for the other two the crit chance for tech goes up 3%.
3% more tech crit for 1 point is totally worth it.
Rating:
9/10

Muzzle Fluting:
Reduces the cost of Charged Bolts and Grav Round by 1 ammo.
If you take grav round you pretty much have to take this. If you go pure healer you might be able to skip it if you do not dps much in your group.
Rating:
10/10 for Gunnery or Hybrids with Grav
4/10 for Combat Medics

Steadied Aim:
Pushback on attack skills is still lame and i still needed 3 points invested to get Grav Round at this point.
Rating:
9/10

Deadly Cannon:
Increases crit bonus of Full Auto and Demo Round by up to 30%.
For full Gunnery this is candy on a stick. For Hybrids i would either chose this or Concussive Force. (see next passive in the list)
Rating:
10/10 for full Gunnery
5/10 for Hybrid

Concussive Force:
Strockstrike get an up to 100% chance of knockback and knockback on Concussion Charge is improved by 2 meters.
For Hybrids i would always recommend this, full Gunnery will take it anyhow.
You can protect yourself and team mates against melees etc etc
I did not take this at first but now i would not be without it.
Rating:
10/10

Charged Barrier:
Charged Bolts and Grav Round build Barriers of max stack size 5, giving 2% damage redux each. Combat Medic Hybrid will most likely have no points left over for this.
For Gunnery i would recommend taking it. 10% damage redux is awesome and you can easily keep them up during a fight.
Besides, the way the Gunnery tree is set up, when having all “necessary” skills, you will be left with the option of either taking this or Tenacious Defense (see next) to be able to advance in the tree.
Rating:
10/10 if you solo a lot.
5/10 if you group a lot as pure DD

Tenacious Defense:
Imho a pvp skill. In pve Concussion Charge and Tenacity are usually not used enough to warrant the 2 points for the 5, respectively 15 sec cd reduction. Might be worth it if you group a lot for hard modes and want Tenacity up asap.
Rating:
1/10 if you solo a lot
8/10 if you group a lot in tough instances

Gravity Surge:
No-brainer for Full Gunnery, builds Gravity Vortices faster. Needed to get the damage increase passive on high damage bolt.
Rating:
10/10

Cell Charger:
One of the main reasons Gunnery uses Armor-piercing ammo.
Returns 1 ammo on crits with Full Auto or Rounds, can happen every 3 seconds.
If it happened all the time then Emperors with Unlimited Powaaaa would cry at watching us hand out carnage.
Rating:
10/10

Kolto Recharge:
Regenerates 7% Health over 10 sec when using Recharge Cells.
Can be taken if you need to invest 1 more point for Demolition Round and you have nothing else to skill, though i would rather get 1% more endurance over this.
7% Health every 2 minutes or so is nothing game changing and if you group a lot you should have a healer anyhow. Quiet underwhelming.
Rating:
2/10

Charged Barrel:
Builds up stacks that increase the damage of your next High Impact Bolt by 6%, stacks 5 times. HIB is one of your main damage skills and one of the few good instant skills.
Rating:
10/10

Rotary Cannon:
Increases the damage of FA by 33%. So now awesome becomes awesome + 33% !
Rating:
10/10

Cover Fire:
Gives your FA a 50%/100% chance to snare the enemy for 2 seconds.
If you solo a lot this is quiet nice. In group not really needed but most probably you will have to take it anyhow if you want Demolition Round.
Edit:
The snare refreshes timer instead of stacking and all three hits from full auto are in the last 1.5 seconds of the channel so you only get 3.5 seconds of snare
(Credits to LordKivlov. I havent confirmed the numbers personally)
Rating:
8/10 when solo
2/10 in group

Curtain of Fire:
Up to 20% chance to finish cd of FA when using Grav Round. (I dont mention Charged Bolts because frankly, if you are this far in Gunnery you should never use Charged Bolts anymore.) After finishing cd on FA, the next FA will also do 25% more damage.
Yes, i know, i also get glazy eyes right now.
Rating:
10/10 It improves FA, what did you think ?

Reserve Round:
Reduces cd of Concussive Round by up to 15 seconds and Reserve Powercell by 30 seconds.
Concussive is our best cc and makes life easier, Reserve Powercell is a regular for me, so this makes this skill a “want to have”
Rating:
7/10 You could do without it but you will most likely have to take it anyhow to get your last tier and frankly, you could be worse off.

I hope that helps a bit for people deciding if they want a Commando, or people new to them.
It would be great if you could give some input and even greater if you could post your own guides

SWTOR Commando Skills Guide by choboon

Incoming search terms:

• grav round old ammo cost
• swtor 2 1 trooper pvp build
• swtor gunnery build
• swtor gunnery rotation priority
• swtor how does commando diversion work
• swtor number one with a bullet pyrotech

SWTOR Commando General Guide

Building a repository of Commando knowledge, if you notice any missing information please do not hesitate to ask for it, as my busy schedule sometimes causes me to forget some items here and there.

Contents

1- Vocab
2 – Mechanics
3 – Basics Stats

• Major
• Minor
• Advanced

4 – Commando Skills/Roles/Builds

a) Roles

• Combat Medic
• Gunnery
• Assault Specialist

b) Builds

5 – Rotations/Priorities

• Combat Medic
• Gunnery

6 – Companions (In order received)

1. Aric Jorgan
2. Elana Dorne
3. M1-4X
4. Tanno Vik
5. Yuun

7 – PvP

• Builds

1 – Swtor Commando General Guide – Vocab

Some common things used in others’ posts and in my own.

- AMP : Advanced Medical Probe
- CB: Charged Bolts
- CM: Combat Medic
- CSC: Combat Support Cell
- CoF: Curtain of Fire
- DR: Demo Round
- FA: Full Auto
- GR: Grav Round
- HIB: High Impact Bolt
- HS: Hammer Shot
- KB: Kolto Bomb
- MP: Medical Probe
- SC: Supercharge Cells
- TP: Trauma Probe

2 – Swtor Commando General Guide – Mechanics

4 – Swtor Commando General Guide – Commando Skills/Skills/Builds

5 – Swtor Commando General Guide – Commando Rotations/Priority Lists

Notes on Rotations:

Just because “Rotation” is put next to something doesn’t mean you must strictly follow them, many other posts have shown that knowing the effects of your abilities and considering what buffs and debuffs are active is a necessity to “play” properly.

Rotations are just a suggestion, and the “rotations” I have included here try to take into account priorities caused by in game effects, eg. ammo constraints, debuffs on target, buffs on yourself, etc.

In other words, I use the term “rotation” very loosely

-Combat Medic

Great explaination to avoid getting complacent or locking one self down into one rotation to heal. If is great to see that basic roatationdeveloped for those times when you do have to fall back on somethign you know keeps ammo use in the high regen rate when you run into a bind. Gives sort of an instinctive responce when you run into a paniced position.

I wouldn’t say it is being done wrong sticking to a rotation all the time, but you are definately aren’t doing yourself a favour for a worst case situation if you dont allow yourself to break a perscribed rotation, which I am all sure we will encounter in the months to come. Best to know something that has worked, but always take the boss fight or pull into account.

Just last night on the Final boss of Taral V I encoured this becasue it had to cleanse a debuff quite frequently and it changed the ammo consumbtion of my ammo and changed how I would approach healing in a normal situation.

If you need to heal groups a good approachg is:

Pop Supercharge
Kolto Bomb
AMP / MP whoever is worst off
Then spam AMP followed by MP until all are about 80%
Kolto again

-Gunnery

Some one pointed out the more or less gospel version of a Gunnery rotation:

Ammo isnt everything when it comes down to DPS, however, this is something I have found works to help keep your ammo regeneration stay relatively high:

FA > GR x 3 (5 Vortex if talented) > CoF (if proc’d) > HS > Demo Round > GR x2 (Complete Charged Barrel stacks) > HIB > HS

Alternatively, to the quoted rotation, ArchangelLBC has suggested that the following rotation works better to allow for the best use of the Charged Barrel buff, and frankly I agree:

FA > GR x3 > CoF FA if its up > Demo Round > Grav Round x2 > HiB

Notes on “Rotations”

Seems that the use of ratation seems to cause people to worry, I would hope that when someone sees “rotation” that they do not mindless zombie themselves into doing only what is perscribed

Suggested priorities are taken into account for Gunnery, and are as follows:

Point on Groups

-Assault Specialist

6 – Swtor Commando General Guide – Companions

Incoming search terms:

• pictures of trooper gear swtor
• old republic commando pve build
• swtor best commando leveling spec
• swtor commando makes instant cast
• swtor commando medic rotations
• SWTOR Hammer Assault

SWTOR Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide

Introduction

Jedi Shadows tanking spec has been recently upgraded by BioWare into being a full decked out beast. We now have an AOE snare that does nice damage on an 8 second cooldown and stacks an 5% damage debuff on all targets. This ability is also great because it does not put resolve on your target.

Commentary Walkthrough
Latest Tanking Video w/ commentary
Kinetic Spec Walkthrough

Video Guides w/ commentary
Video of each class talking specifics about their specs, rotations, and need to know cooldowns.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=353901

Pre-Requisites for Maximum Burst

Use Warzone Expertise pot over the Power Adrenal because it will both do more damage than the power adrenal would do, and it also benefits you with 15% more defense from the added expertise.

-Overcharge Consumable(15% Expertise bonus for 25 seconds.)
-Power Relic
-Power Adrenal
-Force Potency
-Battle Readiness
-if your character like mine hits Diminishing Returns on your Surge, swap your relic to Power.

Note that.. popping a warzone expertise pot while you have a red damage buff will WASTE your expertise pot and result in a 3 minute wasted cooldown. (It refreshes the red buff not technically waste).

What I did was put it on a separate q-bind than my other pre-requisites.

Swtor Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide – Tanking Damage rotation

The rotation in the tanking stance goes as follows:

(Pre-pop Kinetic Ward, you can use it in stealth along with any buffs)
-Open with Spinning Kick (uses 1 bar of resolve on target)
-Double strike until you get Particle Acceleration procced
-Pop Requisites listed above
-Project
-Slow Time
-Should have some stacks of Harnessed Shadows
-Telekinesis Throw (should be in time to get your last stack of potency used up)
-Repeat rotation, or if you like shadow strike, be my guest
-Execute!

**note that slow time should be used off the gcd, but! is much like force breach in the sense that you need to use it directly after project for maximum burst.

Abilities off the GCD

-Kinetic Ward
-Taunt
-AOE Taunt
-Interrupt
-Sap (Mind Maze)

Swtor Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide – Team Play

Remember that you can be doing multiple things at once in this spec. I normally peel while keeping my enemies taunted, debuffed, and snared.

With the new re-vamp on Guard, it makes it much easier to quickswap guard to focus fired targets. Take advantage of that, don’t be the tank that is predictable. There is nothing more annoying than running around with a tank train and every target you attack is guarded as soon as you get on it. If the other team is not assisting, pick their best dps player, and detaunt him the entire game and keep slow time up. Keep snares up on the entire team if possible. Lastly, clear off your healer!!! You need him/her.

The most important things you need to do as a tank is peel off your healer, suppress their top dpsers, and assist burst when needed.

If your team is all dead and you are last alive, use it to your advantage, vanish and pop cooldowns to hold your point for as long as you can via sap, slow time, survivability.

Video Demonstration
Tank Vid w/ Commentary[watch in HD]

Swtor Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide – Ideal Gear

I’ve done some digging and testing for group play and I’ve found it to be quite difficult to judge what the best template is for your shadow. I’ve been a firm believer that higher dps>more wins in warzones. Reason being, you wipe them fast enough, you get the point no questions asked. On top of that the Jedi Shadow really excels as a DPS character. We are the higher DPS of the tanks, while being a bit more squishy. We do however not have great sustainable AOE dps like say the vanguard/powertech.

What I have found to be best is to use mostly stalker gear with a 2 piece set bonus survivor set for the decreased cooldown on Spinning Kick.

This however depends on who you are playing with. If your team has lots of stuns and interrupts then you can sacrifice that survivor gear for more damage. The more stalker gear, the significant increase in damage you will receive. As most of our force attacks are not affected by tanks defense, you will truly see some nice numbers in tank spec.

I would however change this up if you plan to solo in WZs, as having the extra survivability without a reliable healer can truly keep you in the game and more successful.

My best advice (it’s not absolute) would be to play your first life in what you think would work best. When you die quickly make adjustments during the match.

Ask yourself, could I have killed that person if I had more damage?
Ask yourself, does my team have lots of DPS?
Ask yourself, is my team heal heavy?
Ask yourself, do we need to better protect the objectives?
Ask yourself, are players getting off too many casts I could have interrupted?

These are things I think about as I play and adjust accordingly. People are always asking me what spec I am playing/gear using because I am CONSTANTLY changing it up situationally.

Glory says, “The best defense is a good offense”. and it generally doesn’t let me down too often.

Swtor Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide

Incoming search terms:

• kinetic ward pvp
• shadow guide expertise
• swtor pvp tanking with dps gear

SWTOR Guardian Tanking Beginner’s Guide

This is, in for all intents and purposes, meant as an introductory guide for non-tanks and those with limited experience. This guide may also be an informative read for those looking to play SWTOR who do not have much MMORPG experience but are playing solely due to their interest in Star Wars Universe. For the experienced raid tanks interested in the mechanics and numbers behind each of the tank types. Phottek suggests reading this resource posted by Gangstah.. Great read and very informative.

There is some MMO terms throughout the guide, so if you are new to these types of games or you see a foreign word there will be a glossary in the beginning that you can go back to, to reference Due to the length of the guide the sections have links to make navigating your way around much more efficient.

As those who have gamed with me in the past and read some of my guides will know, I always preface my material with… “This guide, with the exception of those sources noted within, is entirely my work and the sole property of myself. As such it is not to be reproduced or distributed without my prior express consent. Thank you”

Now let’s get to it…

Swtor Guardian Tanking Beginner’s Guide
****************Contents****************

This section is if you are completely new to the MMORPG genre and want to know what tanking is all about and how rewarding it can be.

1.0 What is a Tank?

2.0 How Tanks Work
*****2.1 Balance
*****2.2 Aggro/Threat
*****2.3 Damage Soak/Mitigation/Avoidance
*****2.4 Cooldowns
*****2.5 Off Tanking
*****2.6 Organization and Communication

This section is for when you get more accustomed to the genre or want Jedi Knight specifics such as talents, abilities and rotations. Jedi Knight Companions are also here along with basic tank stats and setup.

3.0 Setting Up Your Jedi Knight Tank
*****3.1 Knight Basics
*****3.2 Advanced Class
*****3.3 Knight Attributes
*****3.4 Gearing up
*****3.5 Item Enhancements
*****3.6 Consumables
*****3.7 Macros/Scripting
*****3.8 Companions
*****3.9 Crew Skills

4.0 Jedi Knight Specifics
*****4.1 Jedi Knight Abilities
*****4.2 Jedi Knight Tanking Rotations and Builds
*****4.3 Jedi Knight Talents
*****4.4 Tanking Formulas

This section is if you want to know the ins and outs of tanking techniques such as the different ways of pulling mobs, NPC positioning, the use of Focus Fire and Crowd Control, or the preparation stage of a run.

5.0 Before the pull
*****5.1 Buffs
*****5.2 Target Designation
*****5.3 Communication

6.0 Pulling Mobs
*****6.1 Straight Pulls
*****6.2 Line of Sight Pulling
*****6.3 Crowd Control and Focused Fire
*****6.4 Positioning
*****6.5 Taunting

7.0 How to hone your skills
*****7.1 Leveling as a tank
*****7.2 PVP
*****7.3 Rotation Practice

This section explains he tanks role in Flashpoints, Operations, and PVP head here. There are also links to video guides to the Republic flashpoints.

8.0 Inside the Flashpoint
*****8.1 How ToR Flashpoints are Structured
*****8.2 Coordination and Leadership
*****8.3 Objectives and Ground Rules
*****8.4 Healers
*****8.5 Flashpoint Guides

9.0 Operations Tanking
*****9.1 Know your enemy
*****9.2 Teamwork
*****9.3 Loot

10.0 PVP
*****10.1 Tanks in duels/World PVP
*****10.2 The tanks role in Warzones

This section answers the Frequently Asked Questions that seem to crop up now and then about Jedi Knight Tanks such as how to AoE tank better, which companion to use, how the tanks compare etc. The appendixes and glossary are also located here.

11.0 Jedi Knight FAQs

12.0 Glossary

13.0 Contributors

14.0 Update and edit log

Well let’s start with a definition from Wikipedia “A tank (also known as a meat shield) is a style of character in gaming, often associated with a character class. A common convention in real-time strategy games, role-playing games, MMORPGs and MUDs, tanks redirect enemy attacks toward themselves in order to protect other characters or units. Since this role often requires them to suffer large amounts of damage, they rely on large amounts of health or armor, or alternatively evasiveness and misdirection.”

TLDR version “A Tank is designed to absorb damage whilst making enemies want to hit them more than they want to hit anyone else” Sounds fairly elementary but like all rewarding things there is more than meets the eye. You’ll find that as you level you will pick up certain characteristics that make you a better player. Once you reach 50 and beyond youll find you will have some of the following:

• A high degree of situational awareness

• The ability to react quickly to changes and modify their strategy to compensate

• The ability to multitask, monitoring multiple Characters, NPCs, Debuffs and Cooldowns simultaneously

• The ability to form and lead groups in combat

• The knowledge of the environment and layout of flashpoints in advance

• The ability to position yourself and enemies to reduce the incoming damage from NPC’s

• The ability to know most or all enemy and player abilities and how to best use them to achieve the groups objective

• The ability to know how to modify yourr tactics, abilities and setup to suit a particular fight

• The ability to effectively co-ordinate with other tanks

• The capability of explaining strategy and organizing other players in the group

• The ability to deal with pressure (Especially during progression fights or new content)

Some people might panic and think that “this sounds more like a job, not a game” or “I was drafted to serve justice to the Sith Empire with the tip of my lightsaber not be wailed on.” Well honestly, tanking can be hard work, but as I’ve said already it is quite rewarding. As a tank the rewards for your courageous efforts include being able to stand face to face with the toughest (most of the time ugliest) enemies in the game. You are right there in the trenches not safely tucked in a corner or smack the bosses butt from behind him. You will also have a higher chance of gearing up fairly quickly and with some of the best gear the game has to offer as tanks make up a smaller portion of any large group than any other roles in the group. At the end of the day, you’ll wipe your brow and know that your contribution, everything you had to offer to the group has not only made your play time fulfilling, but your entire teams time well spent..

One of the unseen responsibilities of a tank is maintaining the guilds reputation. Everything you do might be under a microscope, A tank especially as you become more popular as your gear and “fandom” grows, is seen by those outside of the guild as the quality and mindset of the guild you are in. Your guild leadership or officers may allow you invite others to apply to the guild and ensure the guild is held in high regard as you group with skilled players that seem to hold the same standards as your guild. A guild tank needs to take the higher moral ground and not be party to flaming or that may show up in party/general/pvp situations. I’m not saying not to speak or think that everything you say is wrong. Im just imploring you not only for your guild but for the tanking community not to resort to the petty things (i.e. rage quitting because a person went with a DS choice, etc). Always remember, Treat others as you would like to be treated. Your reputation and that of the guild lasts for a very, very long time. (see: Leeroy Jenkins)

2.1 Balance

When it comes to setting up your character tanks have to balance many different attributes to be at their most effective. Having twice the health of anyone your level is worthless as a tank if you do not have any avoidance and low mitigation. Similarly having very high health, avoidance and mitigation is useless if you can’t put out enough threat to get the NPCs interested in hitting you. A good tank will have an optimum balance of Threat, Health, Avoidance and Mitigation in order to perform at their best.

2.2 Treat em mean to keep em keen

Threat or “Aggro” generation is a primary concern of any tank and is essential before any other consideration. Threat at its most basic definition is getting the NPCs to want to focus their attacks on you more than anyone else. The tank does this by making use of special tank talents and abilities that enable them to do more threat per point of damage done than any other AC type in the game. For the Jedi Knight this is achieved primarily by the Soresu lightsaber form.

2.3 Give me your best shot

Once you have all the NPCs beating on you a tanks’ second primary attribute is the ability to soak up, mitigate and sometimes altogether avoid incoming damage, during which time the DPS and the tank eliminate the NPCs.

A tanks first way of soaking incoming damage from mobs is a having a high health pool. High health pools allow the tank to take much larger strikes than other ACs and give healers time to respond to incoming damage in a controlled manner. Cooldowns (explained in next paragraph) can also help a tank soak damage by temporarily granting extra health.

Mitigation is the tanks ability to reduce incoming damage below its regular level. This is achieved in several ways

• Armor : Static modifier that reduces the value of incoming melee and energy damage

• Resistance: Static modifier that reduces the value of incoming elemental and internal damage e.g Fire resistance

• Shield: A percentage based modifier that reduces the value of incoming melee and ranged damage with a random percent chance to activate

• Cooldowns: On use abilities that reduce damage by a certain amount or percentage, or increase resistance to certain types of damage

• Permanent abilities: Static modifiers that decreases damage taken (e.g. Soresu Form)

Avoidance is the tanks ability to completely avoid incoming damage. This is achieved by dodging, parrying, missing and deflecting incoming damage. Some Cooldowns may also be considered avoidance such as those that grant temporary immunity to damage (None yet confirmed ingame)

For a more advanced breakdown of these mechanics go to the Tanking Formulas section

2.4 “I win” buttons

Cooldowns are a key element in the tanks toolkit. Cooldowns in tanking circles are abilities that are on relatively long reactivation timers and that greatly increase a tanks primary attributes (Threat/Health/Avoidance/Mitigation). Understanding the mechanics of the flashpoint you are running and the main bosses’ abilities are vital in knowing the best time to make use of your defensive and offensive cooldowns. A well timed cooldown can often make the difference between a clear and a wipe. In progression raiding and with some of the harder bosses in game proper use of cooldowns is an essential to staying alive.

2.5 Not quite leading from the front

Often a second tank will be required to operate in an offtank role. An offtank can be needed for several reasons

• To tank multiple bosses at a time when encounters have more than one

• To pick up trash that are called in to aid the main boss (Confirmed boss ingame calls for reinforcements while moving to cover)

• To pick up stray trash while the Maintank concentrates on the primary raid target

• To swap threat between yourself and the main tank. An example would be that a particular boss or NPC has a stacking DoT that needs to be rotated between tanks to allow the DoT to expire and avoid stacking too high on any particular player. (If this sounds like gibberish don’t worry, by the time you have to do this, you’ll know exactly what it means )

2.6 Leadership

Tanks may and I repeat “MAY” be asked to be responsible for the setup and coordination of group runs and raids, especially in small flashpoints. This has come about as a result of the expectation that the tank knows the layout and tactics for the flashpoint about to be attempted. Getting groups together can be an arduous task and often requires a degree of patience. If you haven’t run with the particular players before always inquire as to their knowledge of the flashpoint before setting out (Often you will discover new strategies and knowledge about a flashpoint this way) Also you will often be responsible for forewarning other players of any important mob abilities and just generally setting the pace throughout the flashpoint. Try not to be an egomaniac about your position of responsibility and treat other players as you yourself would like to be.

That’s enough basic tank theory, now let’s get into the fun stuff!

3.1 Guardian Basics

Parent Class: Jedi Knight
Mirrored by: Sith Warrior
Primary Weapon: Single Blade Lightsaber, Vibroswords
Off-Hand Items: Shield Generator, Force Focus
Armor Class: Heavy
Primary Attributes: Strength, Endurance
Aesthetic Inspirations: Mace Windu, Obi-wan Kenobi
Skill Trees: Defense (Tank), Vigilance (Melee DPS), Focus (Shared Tree)
Resource: Focus (Max: 12; Combat Focus Recovery: 1 Pt / 6 Seconds in soresu form untalented)

A symbol of hope in dark times, the Jedi Knight stands for the legacy of the Jedi Order—more than twenty-thousand years of protecting the Republic and keeping the peace across the galaxy. Though Jedi Knights have served as generals, guerilla fighters, and warriors for generations, their legendary combat prowess faces its greatest test during this age.

Whether defending allies by deflecting a barrage of blaster-fire or charging in to challenge a Sith Lord, the Knight’s role is crucial in any conflict. The Jedi Knight enjoys the benefit of ancient teachings that have been passed down through hundreds of generations. Combining these time-tested maneuvers with the natural guidance of the Force, the Knight is capable of achieving extraordinary feats.

A wall between the good people of the Republic and their enemies, the Guardian stands firm in the face of overwhelming odds and dares opponents to attack. Perfect concentration and use of the Force allows smooth movement even in heavy armor–making the Guardian a hard target to take down. Leaders on and off the battlefield, Guardians are known for inspiring allies to amazing feats, making them invaluable for conflicts of any size.

Quoted from various areas of SWTOR Holonet

3.2 Advanced Class

The first step to tanking greatness is selecting the tanking AC, this can be done at level 10 at either the Republic Fleet: Carrick Station or Coruscant. The advanced class trainer is displayed as a quest giver located next to the class trainer. Once you have selected the Guardian AC you should start taking the appropriate abilities in the Defense tree. I’m sure Yoda would agree that “Heavy armor only, does not a tank make” The talent points to be selected are those within the tanking AC that increase your primary tanking statistics and abilities; Threat, Health, Mitigation and Avoidance with a lesser focus on other helpful tools such as increased movement speed and resistance to impairments such as stuns and slow. I have listed current builds from myself and others in section 4.2.

3.3 Knight Attributes

When prioritizing your character stats the primaries for tanking will be Endurance and Strength along with any straight modifiers to defensive capabilities such as defense, absorption. Remember that a good tank balances his stats and don’t fall into just stacking endurance
Currently the main tank stats do the following

Strength
* Melee Damage
* Melee Critical Chance
* Force Damage
* Force Critical Chance

Endurance
* Health
* Health Regeneration

Defense DFR
* Increases Avoidance (Deflection of ranged/Parry of melee)

Shield Absorption
* Increases the amount of damage absorbed when shielding an attack

Shield Chance
* Chance to block that an attack will have its damage reduced by your shield

Armor
* Increases baseline mitigation to physical and energy damage

For more detailed information of tanking stats go to the Tanking Formulas section

3.4 Gearing up

Choosing gear is easy for a tank. Make use of the GTN, crafters and quest rewards to accumulate a set of armor with defensive stats. If you regularly tank Flashpoints you will find yourself neck deep in appropriate tanking gear quickly. You do not however “need” to purchase or craft gear to keep your tank or your companion geared on your way to max level. Quest and Commendation rewards will keep you adequately geared throughout the leveling experience.

Two important notes with regards to gearing are 1; It doesn’t have to look good as long as it gets the job done, always take the ugly gear with the better attributes (with the following proviso) 2; Don’t take medium armor over heavy armor no matter how good the attributes look.

3.5 Item Enhancements

In SWTOR you have the ability to enhance your armor and weapons. Lightsabers have up to four modification slots (Hilt, Mod, Enhancement and Color Crystal). Armor modification slots vary from 2-3 depending on what is is. Always modify your armor and weapons with the best enhancements possible within your budget if you wish to boost your tanking performance. Enhancements to armor and weapons should boost your defensive and threat capabilities. The mods are sometimes given as quest rewards and can be purchased from vendors for both credits and commendations. Never fit a fancy looking lightsaber crystal over a tank specific one. What good is a cool looking weapon when it’s lying next to your corpse?

3.6 Consumables

Always keep your tank topped up on consumables. At current the confirmed consumables ingame are medpacks, cantina buffs, and adrenals.

Medkits restore health. Some versions restore health both to you and your companion.

Adrenals are 15 second very strong buffs on a 3 minute cooldown. They do not stack.

Stimulants take one character stat and boost its value for a set time (1hour adrenals). They do not stack with each other.

Cantina Buffs can either boost presence which improves your companions’ performance or increase out of combat regeneration.

Special Hint: Both Cantina buffs can be stacked with adrenals allowing all 3 types of long duration buff to run concurrently. Cantina buffs are cheap and very useful whilst leveling or grinding.

3.7 Macros/Scripting

Bioware has announced that Macros and Scripting is being developed. Macros are a set of commands that are a set of input commands that you map to an action button to achieve a set of output outcomes. These are written in a particular script (language) that is unique to the game. In layman’s terms, type a series of actions that you wish to be performed in sequence or together and bind them to a button on the GUI. When you press that button the macro runs, performing the actions where possible. An example would be.

/Target Imperial Slime [exists]
/use Thermal Grenade
/laugh

The script language here may be different from that in game but in this case your character upon pressing the button mapped to this macro would target Imperial Slime if there were any in range, throw a Thermal Grenade, and then laugh.

These macros can be invaluable to streamline your tanking experience. Common uses are to combine targeting and taunting, to combine defensive CDs, and to combine targeting and threat rotations.

3.8 Companions

Depending on the content you are completing you may have a companion with you. Companions can be set to operate in several different roles such as DPS, healing, and tanking. As a tank you will have to decide on which companion best suits your circumstances at the time. Having a DPS companion at you side will decrease the time taken to burn mobs down but at the expense of being healed. Whilst having a healer will make you more robust when facing harder NPCs, it will take more time to defeat them than if you had a DPS companion at your side. A companion in tank setup may be useful for swapping threat and bouncing a target between the two of you.

The Jedi Knight Companions and their roles are as follows. I have posted them in the order in which you unlock them. While I list the planets you can acquire them on, I don’t want to give away any of the story so Ive placed spoilers for all entries.

Tython

T7-01
Combat Type: Ranged Tank
Armor: Heavy
Weapon Types: Blaster Rifle
Crew Skills: +10 Bioanalysis Efficency, +2 Slicing Critical
Starting Kit: Grenade, Suppresion
Primary Stat: Aim
Secondary Stat: Endurance

Coruscant

Kira Carsen (Romance-able)
Combat Type: Melee Damage
Armor: Light
Weapon Types: Doublebladed Lightsaber
Crew Skills: +5 Synthweaving Critical, +1 Rescarch Critical
Special: AOE Sweep and AOE with a stun.
Primary Stat: Willpower
Secondary Stat: Endurance

Corellian Defender Starship

C2-N2
Role : Heals/ Ranged DPS
Armor : Droid
Crew Skill Bonuses: None
Preferred Gifts: None
Special : Your ship droid, comes unequipped but can be fitted out to enter combat.

Balmorra

Doc (Romance-able)
Combat Type: Ranged Healer
Armor: Medium
Weapon Types: Pistol
Crew Skills: +5 Underworld Trading Efficiency, +5 Biochem Critical
Starting Kit:
Special: Healing
Primary Stat: Cunning
Secondary Stat: Endurance

Hoth

Sargent Rusk
Combat Type: Ranged Tank
Armor: Heavy
Weapon Types: Sniper Rifle
Crew Skills: +10 Scavenging Efficiency, +10 Armstech Efficiency
Starting Kit: Med Pack
Special: AOE Barrage
Primary Stat: Aim
Secondary Stat: Endurance

After Hoth

Lord Scourge
Combat Type: Melee Damage and Tank
Armor: Heavy
Weapon Types: Lightsaber and Shield generator
Crew Skills: +10 Artifice Efficiency, +10 Archaeology Efficiency
Starting Kit:
Special: Tank
Primary Stat: Strength
Secondary Stat: Endurance

Special Hint:

The gear that the companions start with is at the level that Bioware “expects” you to acquire them. Doc for example comes with gear that is at approximately level 20 greens. Should you rush through the class quest on Balmorra and acquire him early at 15 or 16 he is extremely powerful as even though he is equal to your level his gear is not. At 15 to 16 his level 20 gear is like having full kitted purples. This is not optimal or easy but is possible.

3.9 Crew Skills

Every player has a choice of up to 3 crew skills. They are separated into 3 catagories, Crafting, Gathering, and Mission skills. You can have a maximum of 1 Crafting skill. For Force using tanks there are 3 primary crafting skills that I would recommend. Each of these has an associated gathering skill and at least 1 complimentary mission skill. Your crafting trainer will tell you which gathering and mission skills are needed when you pick up the craft.

I will only list the general outline of the recommended ones. I expect all 3 force crafting skills to be viable for tanks and all (some easier than others) should be able to make a good income.

Artifice

*This skill specializes in creating lightsaber modifications, enhancements, generators and focii – something Jedi will covet during their journeys. The item categories the Artifice skill can craft are: Color Crystals, Enhancements, Lightsaber Hilts, Focus, Generators, Shields and at lvl 400 actual lightsabers.

Artifice not only makes upgrades for yourself but other force users as well. A good example would be magenta lightsaber color crystal which are very rare ingame but may be crafted if you are lucky enough to get the recipe. The mods to go into armor and weapons will always be in high demand.

Synthweaving

*This skill specializes in creating armor, allowing a player to craft light, medium and heavy variations for force users.

Synthweaving is good at making armor both for yourself and your force using companions while you level and in preparation for operations once you hit maximum level.

Biochem

*Allows the creation of performance-enhancing serums and various implants. You can consider this the ‘potion maker’ of The Old Republic.

Biochem is good both as you level and for end game by allowing the use of “infinite use” adrenals and medikits. Meaning that every time you wipe you don’t need to waste money on replacements.

4.1 Jedi Knight Tanking Abilities

Here I will outline the abilities essential to a Jedi Knight tanks survival and threat generation. As there a quite a few I’ll separate them out into Offensive, Focus Builders, and Defensive Abilities to make it a little less overwhelming. Some abilities fall into 2 or more categories such as Force Stasis which can be used as a Single Target Ability, Focus Building Abilities, and Defensive Abilites.

Offensive

Blade Storm
Instant – 4 Focus
Cooldown: 12 seconds
Range: 10m
Uses the Force to project a wave of energy toward the target, dealing X kinetic damage. In addition, standard and weak enemies are knocked senseless, stunned for 4 seconds.
Combined with talents it grants a defensive shield and should be used every time it comes of CD. One of the Knights highest damage abilities.

Riposte
Instant – 3 Focus
Cooldown: 6 seconds
Ripostes a parried or deflected attack, striking back at the target for X weapon damage. Riposte can only be used after a successful melee or ranged defense and does not respect the global cooldown. Cannot miss, be parried or dodged. Should be used every time it comes off CD after level 22. Combined with talent in tier 3 it grants 2% to 6% defense for the duration of the CD.

Force Sweep
Instant – 3 Focus
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Strikes up to 5 enemies within 5 meters with the Force, dealing X kinetic damage. Also stuns weak and standard enemies for 1.5 seconds. Combined with tier one talent is a potent defensive ability, lowering multiple NPCs accuracy. Should be used every time it comes off cooldown if talented.

Guardian Slash
Instant – 4 Focus
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Strikes the target with a powerful blow, dealing X weapon damage and applying 3 stacks of armor reduction for 15 seconds. Targets affected by 5 stacks of your armor reduction suffer Y weapon damage instead.
31pt Defense Talent. Golden…. nuff said

Hilt Strike
Instant – 3 Focus
Cooldown: 1 minute
Bashes the target for X kinetic damage, stunning it for 4 seconds. This ability generates a high amount of threat.
Your go to threat ability, does good damage and great threat.

Master Strike
Channeled: 3 seconds – No cost
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Performs a series of lightsaber attacks that deal X weapon damage over 3 seconds. Standard and weak enemies are additionally stunned for the duration of the effect.
No Focus cost and good damage over 3 seconds. Due to channeled nature can be shortened by activating any other ability and is best used against when fighting single targets.

Slash
Instant – 3 Focus
Slashes the target for X damage. Attacks with both weapons if dual wielding.
This is your single target Focus dump ability. Has no CD and does moderate damage.

Force Push
Instant – No Cost
Cooldown: 1 minute
Range: 1m
Deals X kinetic damage, knocks the target back several meters, and knocks the target down for 2 seconds. Resets the Cooldown on Force Leap.
Position NPCs against a piece of environment before using to ensure they remain in melee range whilst prone.

Opportune Strike
Instant – No Cost
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Punches the target, dealing X kinetic damage to weak and standard targets, and X kinetic damage to strong targets. Only usable on slowed or immobilized targets.

Pommel Strike
Instant – No Cost
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Bashes the target, dealing X kinetic damage to weak and standard targets, and Y kinetic damage to strong targets. Only usable on incapacitated targets. Does great damage to standards and weak NPCs.

Cyclone Slash
Instant
Slashes up to 5 enemies in front of you for X weapon damage each.
Second AoE ability. Has low damage but no CD and can be used as an AoE Focus dump.

Focus Builders

Force Leap
Instant
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Range: 10-30m
Jumps to a distant target, dealing X damage with the main-hand weapon, immoblizing the target for 2 second and interrupting the target’s current action. Builds 3 Focus. Cannot be used against targets in cover.
Used to open when making a pull. Can be used during a pull as a Focus builder if you strafe out to 10m. Cooldown reset by using Force Push

Sundering Strike
Instant
Cooldown: 4.5 seconds
Strikes the target for X damage, and reduces the target’s armor by 4% for 15 second. Stacks up to 5 times. Builds 2 Focus.
Your number 1 low CD Focus builder. Can be talented to grant 2 Focus even in tank form.

Force Stasis
Channeled: 3 seconds
Cooldown: 1 minute
Range: 10m
Subdues the target, stunning it while the ability is channeled and dealing X kinetic damage every second. Builds 1 Focus per second.
Can be talented to remove channel, effectively doubling its DPS, as you can continue to use other abilities during that 3 seconds. Useable as a second interrupt on some NPCs.

Strike
Instant
Inflicts X damage with a series of quick melee attacks. Generates 2 Focus.
Focus builder with no CD. Only generates 1 Focus while in tanking lightsaber form.

Saber Throw
Instant
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Range: 30m
Throws the main-hand lightsaber at a distant target, inflicting X damage and building 3 Focus.

Combat Focus
Instant
Cooldown: 1 minute
Immediately generates 6 Focus.

Defensive and Utility Abilities

Taunt
Instant
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Range: 30m
Taunts the target, forcing it to attack the Knight for 6 seconds. Player targets deal 30% less damage when attacking anyone other than you. Lasts 6 seconds.
Prior to obtaining Challenging Call at level 30 if multiple party members have threat use based on priority. If the NPCs are all of equal difficulty always taunt off the healer first, then highest DPS, the second highest DPS etc. Great for PVP.

Challenging Call
Instant
Cooldown: 45 seconds
Taunts all enemies within 15 meters, forcing them to attack the Knight for 6 seconds. Player targets deal 30% less damage when attacking anyone other than you. Lasts 6 seconds. Another great ability for PVP.

Guard
Instant
Range: 30m
Guards the target while it remains within 15 meters. While active, the target takes 5% less damage and generates 25% less threat. In addition, 50% of all incoming damage from enemy players is transferred back to you. Requires Soresu Form.
Make sure this is applied to the healer or highest threat party member before commencing a pull. If using a companion apply it to them. A Great PVP ability.

Warding Call
Instant
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Reduces all damage taken by 40% for 10 seconds.

Saber Ward
Instant
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Raises a lightsaber ward, increasing melee and ranged defenses by 50% and reducing the damage taken from Force and tech attacks by 25%. Lasts 12 seconds.

Call on the Force
Instant
Cooldown: 20 minutes
Calls upon the Force to aid you and your companion, immediately finishing the cooldown on Saber Ward and restoring 2% of your maximum health every 3 seconds. Requires an active companion. Lasts 1 minute.

Enure
Instant
Cooldown: 1 minute
Temporarily increases maximum health by 30% for 10 seconds. Health is lost at effects end.
Good for boosting health when big boss abilities are about to land.

Force Kick
Instant – 1 Focus
Cooldown: 8 seconds
Kicks the target and interrupts its current action, preventing that ability from being used for the next 4 seconds.
Low Focus cost interrupt on all casting NPCs below boss level (And even some at boss level)

Resolute
Instant
Cooldown: 2 minutes
Breaks you free from all incapacitating and movement-impairing effects.
Standard CC breaker with no Focus cost

4.2 Tanking Rotations

A rotation is the sequence of abilities a tank uses to build threat and increase defense.
The Jedi Knight uses Focus to make special attacks and will start a pull with little to none of it initially. The Knight will then concentrate on building Focus using abilities such as Strike and the lightsaber form Soresu, then expending that Focus using a priority rotation. A priority rotation is where you rank your abilities from most to least effective and use the highest ranked ability you have resources for every time the GCD resets.

Depending on the number and difficulty of the NPCs being fought several varieties of a priority rotation may be used. When fighting single bosses or other NPCs a tank will use a set of abilities designed to do maximum damage to one mob. When pulling large groups the tank will concentrate on using AoE abilities to ensure they have threat on all the NPCs. Both during single target and AoE rotations a tank must decide on the proper threading of defensive cooldowns within their rotation. These abilities are generally on high CDs and must not be used rashly. A Jedi Knight blowing his 3 minute cooldown on “Warding Call” 10 seconds prior to a boss’s massive explosion ability will be something they quickly come to regret it.

Here is a breakdown for the Jedi Knight builds and matching single target rotation at various stages of the leveling process. I start at 14 as this is when you acquire your tanking lightsaber form. Prior to this you are a DPS in heavy armor despite having selected the Guardian AC. For multiple NPC target rotations always use Force Sweep immediately after Force Leap and Cyclonic Slash throughout the early stages of the pull while multiple targets are still active. Force Stasis is listed in Focus building priority and is situational.

You should always use Challenging Call, Force Sweep and Riposte whenever they are off cooldown (or close to it) above all other abilities. These three abilities are tied to defensive talents in the Defense tree and maximum uptime is essential. For the most common talent build progression Challenging Call grants a damage shield at level 31, Force Sweep applies an accuracy debuff from level 11, and Riposte grants a 6% defense increase from level 22

Talent Build 1 is what I run with. It concentrates on single target and AoE threat through Accuracy and with extra internal and elemental damage reduction with Inner Peace. More of a focused MT single target build.

Talent Build 2 is as suggested by Gankstah that contains a decrease on the CD of AoE taunt in Command and a Focus builder whenever the subject of CC with Defiance. More of an increased utility build and would work better than mine in flashpoints and with multi-target pulls.

Talent Build 3 is specifically designed for maximum DPS when leveling and sacrifices some damage reduction, especially at an early level. It makes cleaving through packs of quest mobs easy with big boosts to Force Sweep.

If you have a build you would like to recommend for PVE tanking, please PM me with a link and an explanation of its benefits and why you took the path you did. The more diverse opinions we can show in this thread the better. Once endgame has sorted itself out at launch I will label one build up as the “Cookie Cutter Spec”

Level 14-24 Rotation

Talent Build 1
Talent Build 2
Talent Build 3

Lead off with Force Leap and immediately Challenging Call and Force Sweep (Order dependent on single or AoE pull) followed by Sundering Strike. After that, use a priority rotation for both offensive abilities and Focus builders.
Offensive Priority: Challenging Call, Force Sweep, Riposte, Force Stasis, and Overhead Slash
Focus Build Priority: Sundering Strike, Strike

From 14 to 18 your single target threat is pretty good compared to the DPS classes as they have yet to sink many points into their trees. Your AoE is weak compared to classes such as Trooper, where Mortar Volley will rip threat off a mob even after 2 applications of Force Sweep. Use target priorities and ensure the hardest hitting NPC is aggroed to you. Most pulls contain 1 or 2 hard hitters or elites and 1 to 3 weaker NPCs. Get your sunder up to 5 stacks on the main target as soon as possible and once at full it is extremely difficult for any DPS to take threat. From around 19 onwards the DPS roles start getting more powerful and correct target selection becomes important as you will rarely have all the NPCs sticking to you.

Level 25-30 Rotation

Talent Build 1
Talent Build 2
Talent Build 3

Combat Focus first then lead off with Force Leap and immediately Challenging Call and Force Sweep (Order dependent on single or AoE pull) followed by Sundering Strike. After that, use a priority rotation for both offensive abilities and Focus builders.
Offensive Priority: Challenging Call, Force Sweep, Riposte, Pommel Strike, Master Strike, Force Push, Overhead Slash
Focus Build Priority: Sundering Strike, Force Stasis, Strike

Level 20 to 30 is probably your weakest stage as a tank. The DPS have been accumulating large amounts of damage boosting talents and you are yet to receive Hilt Strike for single target threat or Cyclone Slash as a second AoE. Your Focus depletion is decreasing through talents and your survivability is high. The real trick will be trying to get as many NPCs to stick to you as possible. Use target selection to prioritize the NPCs you want to ensure are not hitting the party. Taunting becomes easier when you are given your AoE taunt at level 30.

Level 30-39 Rotation

Talent Build 1
Talent Build 2
Talent Build 3

Combat Focus first then lead off with Force Leap and immediately Challenging Call and Force Sweep (Order dependent on single or AoE pull) followed by Hilt Strike and Sundering Strike. After that, use a priority rotation for both offensive abilities and Focus builders.
Offensive Priority: Challenging Call, Force Sweep, Riposte, Hilt Strike, Savage Kick, Pommel Strike, Master Strike, Force Push, Cyclone Slash, Overhead Slash
Focus Build Priority: Sundering Strike, Force Stasis, Saber Throw, Strike

At this stage you are almost fully developed, your Focus depletion is very low and your survivability and threat generation much improved. You will find yourself using Focus dumps (Overhead Slash and Cyclone Slash) much more often. Force Kick is acquired at level 34 and does high threat to targets under movement impairing effects or stuns.

Level 40-50 Rotation

Talent Build 1
Talent Build 2
Talent Build 3

Combat Focus first then lead off with Force Leap and immediately Challenging Call and Force Sweep (Order dependent on single or AoE pull) followed by Guardian Slash and Sundering Strike. After that, use a priority rotation for both offensive abilities and Focus builders.
Offensive Priority: Challenging Call, Force Sweep, Riposte, Guardian Slash, Hilt Strike, Savage Kick, Pommel Strike, Dispatch, Master Strike, Force Push, Cyclone Slash, Overhead Slash
Focus Build Priority: Sundering Strike, Force Stasis, Saber Throw, Strike

You are now tanking to your full capacity. Guardian Slash is your 31 point talent and becomes your top priority ability when off cooldown. Dispatch is your execute ability granted at level 46 and does good damage to targets below 20% health. From level 41 onwards you start sinking points into the Vigilance and Focus trees to further improve threat generation through such means as increased damage, a cooldown reduction on Force Sweep, and increased accuracy.

4.3 Jedi Knight Talents

The primary Jedi Knight Tanking talent tree is Defense and you will want to go the full 31 points up it. Lower level talents in the other trees tend to rely on the associated trees lightsaber form. What use is a great damage talent for a tank if you need to be in a DPS form to use it? I will outline all the talents in the Defense tree and my opinion of them, as well as those in the bottom 2 tiers of Vigilance and Focus you may wish to take to fill up your last 10 spots.

Please Note: My opinions of these talents is based on endgame single target tanking as a priority with the ability to tank flashpoints as being viable rather than primary. I am not focused on trash tanking or CC protection because to be quite honest there are far better AoE tanks out there. The Trooper Vanguard is an AoE monster and the Jedi Shadow Slow Time does more threat than Force Sweep. My focus is on improving the Jedi Knight’s strengths as I see them, single target threat and mitigation/avoidance. For diversity of opinion I have included the strengths of talents I would personally not take but are seen in many builds. You should try the various talents out and make up your own mind; it is certainly not for me to say which talents are best for you.

Swtor Guardian Tanking Beginner’s Guide

Tier 1

Momentum
3 Points
Passive
Force Leap and Zealous Leap have a 33/66/100% chance to make the next Blade Storm activated cost no Focus.
Good when leveling but not an endgame tanking talent imo. Force Leap gets used only once on most boss fights. In a 6 minute fight you are spending 3 talent points for 0.5 Focus points extra per minute. At the moment I add one point as a filler to get to tier 2, but if you like a free “storm” every charge then take all 3.

Victory Rush
2 Points
Passive
Sundering Strike has a 50/100% chance to build 1 additional Focus.
Good talent for generating more Focus from your primary Focus builder. Over every 13.5 seconds in combat using Sundering Strike every CD this talent will grant 3 extra Focus. That’s equal to the Focus benefit from Momentum for 3 points spent and over 15 seconds. Every fight that lasts longer than 18 seconds makes this talent all the more superior to Momentum.

Dust Storm
2 Points
Passive
Force Sweep has a 50/100% chance to lower the accuracy of affected targets by 5% for 18 seconds.
A must have for any tank. Lowers damage taken significantly. The more targets you engage the better it gets. NOTE: Due to the Force Sweep mechanics the debuff will not apply to more than 5 NPCs.

Tier 2

Guard Stance
3 Points
Passive
Increases your melee and ranged defense by 2/4/6% while in Soresu Form.
Another must have talent that grants non DR avoidance whenever you are in tanking form.

Lunge
2 Points
Passive
Reduces the Focus cost of Riposte by 1/2 while Soresu Form is active
Riposte is a priority ability to be used upon every CD as such this talent is a must for any tank and enables the use of Riposte more consistently.

Solidified Force
Passive
2 Points
Reduces the Focus cost of Freezing Force and Hilt Strike by 1.
Freezing Force is only of use for you to apply a Force Kick and both it and Hilt Strike are on long Cooldowns. This talent is more of a PVP orientated one imo but on the other hand, Hilt Strike is a great threat ability and some people will want to reduce its cost.

Tier 3

Blade Barricade
3 Points
Passive
Riposte now increases melee and ranged defenses by 2/4/6% for 1 second.
This talent is the primary reason that you spam Riposte upon CD. Another 6% of non DR avoidance. Take all 3 points.

Warding Call
1 Point
Instant
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Reduces all damage taken by 40% for 10 second.
Your first ability available through the Defense tree. Great damage reduction and an easy point spent.

Pacification
3 Points
Passive
Increases the damage dealt by Hilt Strike, Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash by 5%.
A nice damage and therefore threat increase to 2 primary and 1 situational ability. Take one point to get to Tier 4, one point when getting to Tier 5 and 6 to fill at level 34.

Profound Resolution
2 Points
Passive
Reduces the cooldown of Resolute by 15/30 seconds.
If being CCed worries you (And a lot of trash loves to CC you in ToR) look at taking this talent. When combined with Second Wind in the Focus tree Profound Resolution grants a potent self heal.

Tier 4

Courage
2 Points
Passive
While in Soresu Form, parrying, deflecting, shielding or resisting an attack has a 25/50% chance to grant Courage, reducing the Focus cost of your next Challenging Call or Force Sweep by 1. Lasts 10 seconds and stacks up to 3 times.
Focus reduction on 2 priority abilities that procs from avoidance. This talent should be filled and will help keep your Focus bar healthy at all times.

Shield Specialization
2 Points
Passive
Increases shield chance by 2/4%.
Adds to your passive ability to shield incoming blows. When you take this your shield chance will increase from 20 to 24%. Not on diminishing returns.

Command
2 Points
Passive
Reduces the cooldown of Challenging Call and Force Push by 7.5/15 seconds.
Both abilities are already on long cooldowns and not part of your primary rotation. However lots of people like this talent so check it out for yourself if you want to shorten the CD on your AoE taunt.

Tier 5

Hilt Strike
1 Point
Instant
Cooldown: 1 minute
Bashes the target for X kinetic damage, stunning it for 4 seconds. This ability generates a high amount of threat.
Your go to threat ability. Stuns almost anything and does really good damage even when untalented. A must have.

Blade Barrier
2 Points
Passive
Blade Storm has a 50/100% chance to grant Blade Barrier, which absorbs a moderate amount of damage. Lasts 10 seconds.
Turns one of your primary threat builders into a damage shield. Now you have even more reason to spam Blade Storm on CD. Take both points.

Stasis Mastery
1 Point
Passive
Force Stasis no longer needs to be channeled, applying its full effect over 3 seconds.
Effectively doubles the damage done over the 3 seconds of Force Stasis by enabling the use of other abilities. Allows the use of abilities such as Force Kick while the target is being held. Definitely worth the single point if you have one spare.

Force Clap
1 Point
Passive
Force Leap now stuns the target for 2 seconds.
A PVP Talent imo, anything you would want to avoid 2 seconds of damage from in PVE is immune to the stun anyway.

Tier 6

Sweeping Fury
3 Points
Passive
Increases the frequency at which Soresu Form can generate Focus by 1 second. In addition,
Cyclone Slash and Slash have a 33/66/100% chance to reduce the active cooldown of Combat Focus by 1 second.
Increased Focus = increased damage and threat. The proc from Cyclone Slash and Slash also reduces the long CD on Combat Focus which also grants 6 Focus. Take all 3 points.

Inner Peace
2 Points
Passive
Increases the duration of Enure Pain by 2.5 seconds. Increases elemental and internal damage reduction by 2%.
Increases the uptime of one of your defensive CDs and also helps reduce elemental damage, something which all tanks are weak at mitigating. Take both points.

Tier 7

Guardian Slash
1 Point
Instant
Cooldown: 15 seconds
Strikes the target with a powerful blow, dealing X (high) weapon damage and applying 3 stacks of armor reduction for 15 seconds. Targets affected by 5 stacks of your armor reduction suffer Y (very high) weapon damage instead.
Our 31 point talent and a very good PVE one at that. Gets your sunder up very quickly and does a good amount of threat. I shouldn’t even have to say “Take It”

Tier 1

Swelling Winds
3 Points
Passive
Increases the damage dealt by Force Sweep by 10/20/30% and lowers its cooldown by 3 second.
Good for adding AoE damage and threat. The cumulative effect of 30% damage increase and 3 seconds less CD is 61.5% more damage with Force Sweep over time. A well spent 3 points.

Improved Sundering Strike
2 Points
Passive
Sundering Strike has a 50/100% chance to apply one additional stack of sunder armor.
Getting to maximum stacks of Sunder quicker means more threat over time and easier recovery should you miss with a refresh and have to rebuild. Good 2 point filler to get to Tier 2.

Single Saber Mastery
3 Points
Passive
Increases melee damage by 2/4/6% while in Shien Form and Shii-cho Form.
Good damage increase… pity it’s to non-tanking lightsaber form. Don’t touch this talent.

Tier 2

Perseverance
2 Points
Passive
Increases total Strength by 3/6%.
A good threat and absorption increase. Worth 2 points if you have them spare.

Accuracy
3 Points
Passive
Increases the accuracy of melee and Force attacks by 1%
A flat out threat increase. We only have 90% accuracy with many attacks and this boosts it. Accuarcy is not something tanks look for as a primary stat on armor or weapons. Same as Perseverance, take it if you have the points and making sure every hit lands is your thing.

Defiance
2 Points
Passive
Generates 2/4 Focus when stunned, slept or knocked down.
Taken by many tanks due to the large amount of this type of CC in the PVE environment. Not essential, take if your personal preference.

Tier 1

Master Focus
2 Points
Passive
Reduces the cooldown of Master Strike by 1.5/3 seconds and Force Stasis by 5/10 seconds.
Master Strike is a medium damage attack but its need to be channeled is its downfall, however the CD reduction is welcome and will get use. Force Stasis does get used especially in conjunction with Savage Kick. Overall not a bad talent, take it if those abilities are important to you.

Insight
3 Points
Passive
Increases the critical strike chance of your Force attacks by 2/4/6%.
Increase to burst threat and damage. Works out to around 3% more damage and 5% more threat over time. Worth taking if you have the points.

Stagger
2 Points
Passive
Increases the duration of Force Leap’s Immobilize effect by 0.5/1 seconds.
Not worth it for the same reasons as Force Clap in the Defense tree.

Tier 2

Second Wind
2 Points
Passive
Resolute has a 50/100% chance to heal you for 10% of your maximum health.
Definitely worth picking up if you have taken Profound Resolution in the Defense tree. One for those who are finding themselves pinned by CC often.

Swift Slash
2 Points
Passive
Increases the critical strike chance of Slash by 7.5/15%.
Gives a healthy damage boost to your single target Focus dump which already does decent damage. Take for the same reasons you would Insight in Tier 1.

4.4 Tanking Formulas

All credit must go to Gankstah for compiling the following information, check out his Tanking Primer for more info.

Character Stats• Armor Damage Reduction = AR/AR+(200*Level+800)• Deflection/Parry = (5% Base Chance) + 30*(1-(1-(0.01/0.3))^((DFR/Level)/0.55))• Shield Absorption = (GeneratorBonus) + 50*(1-(1-(0.01/0.5))^((AbsorbRating/Lvl)/0.18))• Shield Chance = (GeneratorBonus) + 50*(1-(1-(0.01/0.5))^((GlanceRating/Lvl)/0.32))• Accuracy = (90% Base Chance) + 30*(1-(1-(0.01/0.3))^((AccuracyRating/Lvl)/0.55))• Ability Tooltip Damage = x*MainHand + x*OffHand*0.3 + y*Bonus + zo x = weapon damage modifier for min and max values and all ranks of the abilityo y = force/tech/melee/ranged damage bonus modifier for min and max values and all ranks of the abilityo z = base damage, which can vary for the min and max values and varies for each rank of the ability• Crit% from Stats: 5+30*(1-(1-(0.01/0.3))^((Str/Lvl)/2.5))• All Primary stats yield +0.2 damage per point

- – Credit for the above calculations goes to LagunaD over at Sith Knight.
- Thanks to JDee and Freehugs for helping to maintain accuracy.

Resistance to Critical Hits
• Accuracy – (A)voidance = Hit%
• Hit% * (S)hield Chance = Window To Crit
• Window To Crit * (C)rit Chance = (O)dds of getting crit
Or
[(100-A)*S]*C=O
So to put that into context we will use the following values:
• (A)voidance: 50%
• (S)hield Chance: 50%
• (C)rit Chance: 30%
Plug it in and come up with:
[(1-0.5)*0.5]*.3=0.075
Or 7.5% chance to get crit i.e. 92.5% Crit Immunity.

Baseline DR/Shield/Avoidance

The provided calculations all assume Level 50 Premium armor values. The BAV (Base Armor Value) is representative of a full unmodded suit of armor.

Modified Armor Value (MAV)

(BAV Heavy 3601)*(Stance 1.6) or 3601*1.6 = 5761.6

Base Armor DR (BADR) = 34.78%

Modified Base Armor DR

TOR handles passive skill bonuses additively and NOT multiplicatively so let’s plug in current DR passive skills:

(BADR 34.78%) + (Stance 6%) = 40.78%

Resistance: Elemental/Internal DR

(Stance 6%) + (Inner Peace 4%) = 10%

Situational Modifiers

These are situational modifiers from abilities that directly affect DR or damage taken. The effects are longer or equal to the CD so they can be applied constantly but are situational as not ALL targets will be under their influence at ALL times.

For the Knight this is Blade Barrier and at present its value is unknown (TBA)

Shield Chance

(Premium Shield Base 20%) + (Stance 15%) + (Shield Specialization 4%) = 39%

Shield Absorption

For purposes of simplicity we are going to assume a AbsorptionRating of 0.

(Premium Shield Base 20%) = 20%

Avoidance: Ranged Deflection & Melee Parry

For simplicities sake we’re going to assume a base DFR of 100.

SW: (Base 5%) + (Guard Stance 6%) + (Blade Barricade 6%) =17% or 22% w/Force Sweep

Mean Mitigation

Mean Mitigation is the average mitigation you have after factoring DR, Avoidance and Shield Chance/Absorption. This gives you the average (or mean) mitigation you have. To find your Mean Mitigation use the following process:

A=Avoidance
B=Shield Chance
C=Shield Absorption
D=MBADR

{[((100-A)*B)*(1-C)]*(1-D)} + {[(100-A)-((100-A)*B)]*(1-D)} = T

100-T= Mean Mitigation
Example:
A= 22 <<– Do Not Decimal
B= 0.39
C= 0.2
D= 0.4078

{[((100-22)*0.39)*(1-0.2)]*(1-0.4078)} + {[(100-22)-((100-22)*0.39)]*(1-0.4078)} = 39.86

100-45.32= 54.68% Mean Mitigation Baseline

To give you an idea of comparison between the classes. the Shadow is 53.17% and the Vanguard is 55.99%. As Gangstah has said “We aren’t factoring in in-depth processing of Resistance or Criticals. This is only a generalization OR average. Specific parsings will yield + or – results. So don’t come back here saying, “DERP! I parsed at 84% against boss such-and-such! YARP! YARP!” before thoroughly researching the definition of average/mean.”

So you’ve specced into the tanking tree, gotten some gear, rounded up some friends. Now it’s time to zone into the flashpoint and start taking names. Before the first pull and for the pulls following there are a few things that need to be taken care of.

5.1 Buffs

First up you need to apply your tanking buffs such as guard and Soresu Form and take any consumables you have decided to use to increase your capability. Make sure that every class capable of applying a buff both to you and the rest of the party has done so and keep them up throughout the run.

5.2 Target Designation

If required designate the focus fire order for the mobs to be killed if needed. At times the use of focused dps to burn down specific targets can drastically lower incoming damage (As discussed in section 6.3). Right click a selected NPCs portrait and select the marking you want to apply. You may need to inform the group via text or teamspeak/ventrillo as to which mobs are priority burns. If crowd control is desired throughout the run inform the group of the targets before the pull and designate those responsible for maintaining the CC. I like to tell all the party members at the start of a run what the kill order is and which symbol means CC.

If macros make it into game I usually have this prepared

/p Hi everyone, lets have a good run Bullseye is first target, Flame second, Saber Third. Lightning is for CC. I’ll stop pulling if I see your resource get low heals. Lets buff up and start clearing when your all ready.

NOTE: Don’t mark more than you have to, it just slows runs down unnecessarily. If you can get away with 1 mark per pull then do it. I use “Lightning” for CC then mark “Bulls-eye” for FF, make the pull then mark another Bulls-eye as the first is about to die. At the end I change the Lightning target to Bulls-eye right as the second last mob is about to die.

5.3 Communication

Finally, if required issue any warnings on possible mob abilities that could wipe the group prior to pulling. Just because you know that the red glowing stuff at the bosses feet is fire, doesn’t mean the DPS do. Trash droids that self-destruct when defeated are a prime example of an ability that the others in the group should be made aware of.

It’s time to pull some mobs. A “pull” is the action of entering combat with previously neutral NPCs, accumulating threat on the NPC’s and positioning both them and yourself to best lower incoming damage. Pulling a single enemy is easy, just hit the NPC really hard and keep him in front of you while you and the DPS burn him down. When pulling groups of NPC’s with various abilities, there are several ways in which to pull them depending on the circumstances.

6.1 Straight Pulls

Straight pulls are used for melee and mixed ranged/melee packs where it is safe to engage the NPCs without pulling extras. A diagram of the standard pulls for a melee tank is as shown below. For ranged tanks ignore the tank movement arrows and stand in place at maximum range and commence attacking.

Straight Pull Image

The chronology of the all melee straight pull is simple.

1. Stand outside max range and check the composition of the group of NPC’s. Make sure that they are not likely to call for help or flee in the direction of other packs of mobs, and that there are no patrolling packs of NPC’s that will add to the pull if you charge into the first pack.

2. If you are a melee tank, jump in or throw a ranged ability at the lead NPC. As a ranged tank simple begin using ranged abilities on the lead NPC or if the NPCs are closely grouped throw a ranged AoE ability.

3. Follow immediately with an AoE attack to ensure that the healer does not draw threat from the non-lead NPCs whilst healing you.

4. Ensure that you are positioned with as many NPC’s in front of you with their back to your group to help you keep their directional aoe to only you and to help you see if they turn to attack a group member.

5. Continue to build threat on all targets, if you notice any of your group gain threat immediately taunt the NPC onto yourself and use your highest threat abilities to overtake your group members’ aggro before your taunt expires in six seconds.

Mixed Pull Image

The chronology of the mixed ranged/melee is similar with a little more complexity in the tank positioning required for melee tanks.

1. Stand outside max range and check the composition of the group of NPC’s. Make sure that they are not likely to call for help or flee in the direction of other packs of mobs, and that there are no patrolling packs of NPC’s that will add to the pull if you charge into the first pack.

2. If you are a melee tank, jump in or throw a ranged ability at the lead NPC. As a ranged tank simple begin using ranged abilities on the lead NPC or if the NPCs are closely grouped throw a ranged AoE ability.

3. As a melee tank if you have not used a range closing ability off CD, run towards the packs of NPCs and position yourself within melee range of the ranged NPCs. Position yourself behind the ranged mobs and turn 180 degrees in order to have all the melee and ranged mobs facing you.

4. Follow immediately with an AoE attack to ensure that the healer does not draw threat from the non-lead NPCs whilst healing you.

5. Continue to build threat on all targets, if you notice any of your group pull threat immediately taunt the NPC onto yourself and use your highest threat abilities to overtake your group members before your taunt expires in six seconds.

6.2 Line of Sight Pulling

LoS pulls are a way of pulling which uses a piece of the environment to break the NPCs line of sight to you and force them to move toward you to engage. Line of sight pulls are used to engage packs of NPC’s where there is a danger of aggroing another group of enemies should you use a standard pull. The first way in which this occurs is if you are pulling NPCs that flee when at low health and may run into other packs of NPCs in the vicinity. Another common way of pulling a second group of mobs accidently is if you have a second pack of NPCs that are patrolling whose aggro radius will overlap the position you wish to engage the first.

LoS pulls are performed in the same way whether you are a ranged or melee tank. They may be started either by yourself or by one of your party members using a ranged ability. If a party member is utilized to initiate the pull you will be required to aggro all the incoming mobs before they re-attain LoS with the party member. The party member method is used when you wish to position the NPCs prior to them reaching the object used to break LoS. A standard LoS pull is shown below.

LOS Pull Image

The chronology for a Tank initiated LoS pull is as follows.

1. Ascertain that a LoS pull is the preferred method of engaging the pack of NPCs. This can be done by identifying that there is a nearby patrolling pack of mobs that are likely to be aggroed during a standard pull, or that there is a high probability of extra NPCs being brought into the pull by the first group on mobs either fleeing or calling for help.

2. Position yourself beside an environmental obstacle that will act to break LoS with the NPCs, making sure you are outside of their aggro radius.

3. Attack any one of the mobs with a ranged ability and immediately strafe behind the obstacle. This will force the pack of NPCs to move to flank the obstacle in order to engage you. NOTE: Ranged mobs will move at a slower pace than melee and will arrive at your position at a later time.

4. Once the NPCs move around the obstacle to face you begin applying threat to them. If more than one enemy arrives at a time, commence by using AoE abilities to ensure the healer does not obtain threat.

5. Continue to build threat on all targets, if you notice any of your group pull threat immediately taunt the NPC onto yourself and use your highest threat abilities to overtake your group members before your taunt expires in six seconds.

For a LoS pull initiated by a team member the sequence remains the same, the only difference being that it is the party member who moves behind the obstacle whilst you may remain in front at the position you wish to fight the pack. You then begin applying threat to every NPC as they reach you. Do not allow them to move past you to the obstacle as they will attack the party member that initiated the pull.

6.3 Crowd Control and Focused Fire

The purpose of CC along with focused fire is to reduce the amount of incoming damage to yourself or the party by removing the ability of NPCs to attack your party members for a fixed time. Focused fire is the coordination of the party to concentrate their damage on a single target at a time. CC and focused fire are extremely effective at making harder level packs or mobs within them easier to handle.

Let’s look at a common scenario both with and without CC and focused fire.

You are in a 4 person flashpoint and about to pull 4 droids. Each droid has the same health does 100 damage per second and takes 1 minute for a single player to kill.

1. With no CC, and each of the 3 players dealing damage (Tank and 2 DPS) to different NPCs before finishing the final NPC together.
Length of combat : 1 minute and 20 second.
Damage Taken by tank: 26,000
Maximum damage per second taken by tank: 400
Time at maximum DPS taken by tank: 60 seconds

2. Using a 60 second duration CC, and each of the 3 players dealing damage to different NPCs before finishing the final NPC together.
Length of combat:1 minute and 20 seconds
Damage Taken by tank: 20,000
Maximum damage per second taken by tank: 300
Time at maximum DPS taken by tank: 60 seconds

3. Using a 60 second duration CC and all 3 players dealing damage focusing fire on the same target at all times.
Length of combat: 1 minute and 20 seconds
Damage Taken by tank: 14,000
Maximum damage per second taken by tank: 300
Time at maximum DPS taken by tank: 20 seconds

As you can see the differences in damage taken and time at maximum incoming damage between the examples is huge. This example was actually on the low side of reduced damage and time at max incoming DPS. Often the advantages of CC and FF are even greater if you are using your CC on mobs that do higher damage than the surrounding NPCs. FF works best on NPCs that have high damage to health ratios, allowing you to deal with the largest threat very quickly. High damage/ High health mobs and those that use certain special abilities such as stuns are the best to CC.

A common misconception with CC is that it slows down the running of a flashpoint. While it is true that CC does slow a pull if AoE abilities are used to damage whole packs, if single targets or limited cleave type abilities are used, the CC will not add to length of time required to complete a pull. Crowd control is usually coordinated by designating markings to place above the NPCs you wish to CC and informing the team member that each NPC marked with that symbol is to be CCed. You may wish to use Teamspeak/ventrillo or simply type your instructions on which mobs are to be controlled.

Focused Fire is also usually coordinated using designated markings above the NPCs however it can be coordinated easily without the use of marking if you simply instruct your DPS party members to always attack your current target.

6.4 Positioning

Whatever type of tactics you decide to use to pull packs of NPCs, positioning of yourself and the mobs you pull remains very important. Wherever possible always position yourself with any active mobs directly in front of you. Some types of tank avoidance such as dodge will not work if a mob is situated at your back and you will find yourself taking significantly higher damage over the course of a pull. NPCs at your back are also likely to receive a lot less damage from yourself and therefore threat.

Positioning yourself is often necessary to facilitate better damage by the DPS and lower damage to yourself. Wherever possible turn the NPCs so that their backs are facing the DPS as this means less avoidance of your parties’ damage by the mobs. When confronted by NPCs that have knockback abilities, try to position yourself in front of the mobs with your back to a wall or other structure.

Whenever CC is used make sure you position the other NPCs in the pull at a fair distance from the CCed mob. Most CC breaks upon the mob taking damage so you need to position the rest of the pull far enough away from the CCed mob so that AoE effects will not break the mob free.

6.5 Get over here!

One of the tanks greatest tools is the taunt. There are two kinds of taunt in the MMO world, forced attack and threat equalization. Thus far only the forced attack taunt has been confirmed as being in SWTOR so we won’t discuss equalization taunts yet.
Forced attack taunts literally force an NPC that is not currently targeting you to become the focus of your attacks for a fixed time frame. Forced attack taunts do not equalize your threat with that of its current target at the time you taunt it. With this in mind the correct way to taunt is as follows.

1. Spot other party members frame go red as they attract threat from one of the NPC’s in the pull

2. Identify which NPC is targeting the party member (Should be pretty obvious, it’s usually the crazed mob charging at them or shooting blaster bolts at their head )

3. Click on the NPC and activate your taunt button.

4. Starts hitting the NPC as soon as you can to have your threat overtake that of your party members before the taunt wears off.

At present taunt has a 6 second effect with a 15 second CD, so you’ll want to hit a taunted mob hard for that six seconds. You don’t want a hard hitting mob whaling on your healer for 9 seconds if you have failed to put threat on the mob during the taunts duration

There are many ways to increase your skills as a tank, both during the leveling process and when at max level. Making use of all of the following methods will make you a better tank and prepare you for the uncharted waters of progression tanking.

7.1 A Hero is born

At the moment Bioware has not stated whether it will be possible to change your AC throughout the game. However they have stated that the tanking ACs will be able to operate as viable DPS should they wish to select all of the talents within the tree which increase their damage output. However my suggestion to anyone seriously considering being a fulltime tank at endgame to start early and go down the tanking talent path from level 10 onwards and participate in flashpoints regularly as you go. Whilst your personal DPS may suffer slightly leveling as a tank has several benefits some of which will offset this.

* You learn to use your tanking abilities over time as they are unlocked and are not overwhelmed when trying to use them all at once if you were to switch to a tanking build at a higher level.

* Running Flashpoints regularly will ensure that your character is always in the best gear available for your level and help make up for any lost DPS

* You will be extremely hard to defeat in open world PVP by equal level characters

* You survivability against higher level mobs in heroic quests will be significantly higher than equal level DPS and Healers

* You will be more easily able to find groups for flashpoints than DPS ACs limiting downtime

7.2 PVP

Participating in PVP is one of the best ways to increase your tanking prowess. Unlike AI which is repetitive and predictable a human player will learn from their encounters with you and alter their strategies (See section 10.0-10.2 for more on tanks in PVP). Performing in PVP as a tank will help you to learn all of the best variations of your damage and defensive abilities as well as increase your skill in adapting to new situation when you are back in the PVE tanking sphere.

7.3 Practice makes perfect

Practicing your different threat and defensive rotations will make you a better tank. The ability to perform your primary rotations without thought will enable you to focus more on your situational awareness and concentrate more on your surroundings. Rotation practice can be achieved in several ways.

* Get a healing companion and find a high level mob. Fight till the healer is out of resources then run away until the NPC resets to its initial position (Rinse repeat)

* Find a mob at a much lower level than you that can only be defeated with the help of a quest item and don’t use the item, bring a healing companion with you. (E.g. Rogue droid need to have a restraining bolt fitted before you can best him. Get the quest and item. Destroy the item. Whale on Droid to your heart’s content)

* Practice targets (Yet to be confirmed ingame). Usually located in high traffic centers, a practice target is simply a pretend NPC that has infinite HP that you can bang away on.

8.1 How ToR Flashpoints are Structured

Flashpoints in ToR are structured in a similar way to the small group instances in other MMORPGs. The flashpoints in ToR are instanced multiplayer content involving high level difficulty NPCs and are accessible on Carrick Station at the Republic Fleet. They are designed to be run in most cases with 4 players, however the first 2 (Esseles and Hammer Station) have been tuned for as little as 2. While 4 players are advised you can often succeed at clearing a flashpoint with up to two companions.

One of the things that sets ToR flashpoints apart from other MMOs is the composition of the trash packs within them. In ToR many of the packs will contain a variety of NPC difficulty types. Most pulls contain one to two Elite level mobs and an assortment of weak, standard, and strong. As a tank you will need to prioritize the order in which the NPCs are killed and also which mobs are important to maintain threat on. Generally speaking in a pull with 2 elites, 2 strongs, and 1 standard mob you will want to hold threat on the 2 elites at all times. The preferred order of kill will be Weak then Strongs then Elites. NPC abilities may influence both threat and kill targets eg. Those with CC likely to effect the healer would be a priority. The highest damage mobs should be kept on you regardless of type.

Flashpoints award high level rewards such as armor, weapons, and mods. They provide good XP through their associated quests when leveling and help hone your tanking skills as you progress. They also help cement relationships with other players you may end up running with at endgame and are well worth the effort to complete.

8.2 Too Many Chiefs

Prior to endgame and perhaps even during it you may often find yourself as a tank being responsible for the coordination and leadership of the flashpoints you run. As a tank at an early level you will find yourself receiving tells from other players asking if you would be interested in running a particular flashpoint, or being asked if you would like to team up to achieve harder quest objectives. Once inside you will often be required to lead the team through and will be expected to know what you are doing. The logical extension of this is that often you will be required to lead other party members and coordinate strategy. Don’t be phased by this and simply do your best to communicate with the team. Try to avoid saying stuff like “**** NOOB! I TOLD YOU NOT TO STAND THERE!!!” It doesn’t help anyone and it makes you look like a big jerk.

8.3 Setting the Scene

One of the best ways to avoid disagreements within the group when running content is to be clear on your objectives and ground rules from the beginning. Things you will want to agree upon before starting a run may include:

* Will all party members be available for the entire run? (It’s no use starting a 90 minute run if your DPS needs to go in 30 minutes)

* Will we be completing bonus objectives?

* Will the party members be selecting lightside or darkside options? (e.g do they want to kill or spare the captain?)

* Does anyone want any particular pieces of loot (i.e. Will anyone else be rolling on tank loot, or does anyone else want the lightsaber that drops off the last boss)

8.4 Your Healer…Your Wingman

Always keep the lines of communication open with your healer. Ask him questions throughout the run to let them know their opinion is needed/valid. “How much resource do you want before i make every pull?”, “How do you think the DPS are doing?”, “Am I taking too much damage? Would you like some CC?” If you are new to a flashpoint let the healer know at the beginning in whisper and ask them to send you a tell if they see any pulls done incorrectly. Healers will often notice a lot more than you simply due to standing at the back watching what everyone else is doing. Lastly ALWAYS thank a good healer for a job well done at the end of a run. The DPS stroke their own “epeen” enough already without needing praise from you

8.5 Flashpoint Guides

Here is a series of links to video guides for the various flashpoints in TOR. These are not my work so please do not critique them in this thread. I have listed them in the order in which they are available and listed the recommended minimum level ranges. NOTE: Some of the guides are too long for my preference and I will be listing more succinct versions when they become available. I have not listed Hard Mode guides as this is a beginners guide to tanking but i have Hard Mode availability noted with a “!”.

The Esseles “!”
Recommended Minimum Level 10-12

Guide Video Link

Hammer Station
Recommended Minimum Level 16-19

Guide Video Link

Athiss
Recommended Minimum Level 19-22

Guide Video Link

Mandalorian Raiders
Recommended Minimum Level 24-26

Guide Video Link

Cademinu
Recommended Minimum Level 26-28

Guide Video Link

Taral V “!”
Recommended Minimum Level 31-33

Guide Video Link

Maelstrom “!”
(you must complete Taral V before being able to do this in normal mode)
Recommended Minimum Level 34-36

Guide Video Link

Colicoid War Games
Recommended Minimum Level 40-42

Guide Video Link

Red Reaper
Recommended Minimum Level 44-46

Guide Video Link

Directive 7 “!”
Recommended Minimum Level 50

Guide Video Link

The Battle of Ilum
Recommended Minimum Level 50

Guide Video Link

False Emperor “!”
Recommended Minimum Level 50

Guide Video Link

Kaon Under Siege “!”
Recommended Minimum Level 50

HardMode Guide Video Link
(sorry cant find a normal mode yet… ill have to record one myself i guess =P )

9.1 Know Your Enemy

Operation mobs have significantly more health and hit harder than regular flashpoint mobs. Trash pulls in raids can have many more mobs than flashpoints and the bosses can have quite interesting threat mechanics and abilities. For these reasons and others, when preparing to raid any instance for the first time prior research is of the utmost importance. Not only should you read the strategies posted on the guild forums and other prominent tanking websites, you should also endeavor to watch (where possible) video guides posted for the boss encounters. You may be required to explain the fight to the OT/DPS/Healers and video guides will assist you by showing you raid placement, the length of the various phases, and healing priority. A tank who doesn’t know the fights in an operation can quickly cause a wipe and most likely will not remain in the group very long.

9.2 There’s no I in Team

Always work hard with your other tanks in raid to support each other. Tanking is not a competition with each other. If you are an OT and the MT only selects a target for themselves, pick another target and hold aggro on it while the raid burns the primary. Ask if they would like to give you an assist to mark the secondary. As an OT you should always be on the lookout for mobs that add to the pull or split from the pack to run towards dps and taunting them (except for the primary) The MT is concentrating on keeping his TPS above the best single target dps in the raid on the primary target and will not often pick up these adds in time to stop a dps from death. NEVER taunt off the MT unless asked to do so (having your taunt button spaced away from your primary tank rotation, whilst still within reach is advised) If you are given an assist, never run organizational functions unless asked. Allow the Operation leaders to do their job. If the Ops Leader forgets an important part of any encounter always wait for them to finish explaining the fight before adding anything. Constant interjection during instructions to raid is not good raid etiquette.

9.3 Raid Lewtz

Loot systems and rules in Operations are often not the same as in 4 mans. In almost any heroic raid a Master Looter system will be set (Not yet confirmed ingame). This is done to stop ninjas or misloots of high quality and rare items. If you are in a pug always ask at the beginning what the loot rules are so that misunderstandings and nerd rage can be avoided. If you don’t like the pugs loot rules then leave in a nonchalant manner and no harm has been done.

NOTE: You should always check with the guild leader/officers to determine what content can be pugged. Having yourself saved to an Operations when the guild needs you is definitely not cool.
If you are running with a guild, loot will often be distributed based on raid/guild needs rather than a simple all main sets roll system. As with pure pugs when you are participating in a raid made up mostly of members of a particular guild always ask about loot rules prior to commencement.
Please Note: This section will be clarified when I have more first-hand information on endgame content.

Just because a tank is considered a primarily a PVE class doesn’t mean you can’t kick butt and take names in PVP. Tanks when properly geared and played can have great success in all forms of PVP, and fill some specialty PVP roles as good as or better than any other.

When in PVP you will notice that some classes do far more damage to you than others. This is due to the type of damage they are putting out.There are four damage types in TOR. Kinetic, Energy, Internal and Elemental. There are three important things to note about damage types:
• Force powers and Tech powers, unless otherwise listed, are considered Kinetic damage.
• Armor increases DR to Kinetic and Energy damage only.
• Some skills/equipment/abilities increase specific types of damage (i.e. Inner Peace in the Defense tree).
What does this mean? This means that certain trees will have a DPS advantage vs. tanks. Trees with a high yield of Elemental and Internal damage which bypasses our high armor rating. Examples would be Lethality for Agents (Elemental), Madness for SI’s (Internal) and Advanced Prototypes for BH’s (combination of both).

Credit to Gankstah for this info

10.1 Mano a Mano

In one on one combat a tank must make use of all of their abilities to survive. Having a large health pool and high avoidance will not guarantee victory. The use of your CC is essential in order to burn down both DPS and Healing classes. One of the toughest matchups for tanks is when facing a healer. The best strategy to defeat a healer is to work their health down below 50% while building your resources up. Once they are below 50% immediately use CC to stun or prevent casting and use all of your highest damage abilities to burst DPS the healer down. The longer a fight with a healer continues the less your chances of winning get. No matter what class you are fighting, remember to make use of your defensive and offensive CDs.

10.2 The Tanks Role in Warzones

Tanks can fulfill many important roles in warzones better than any other AC. Depending on the objectives of the warzone in which you are participating some of the tasks to which you are best suited are.

• Damage Soak Assist. Your guard ability as well as your taunts allows you to soak up and reduce damage to other players on your team. You can transfer damage to yourself using guard as well as reduce the damage done to a team member using taunt. In ToR these are the tanks greatest PVP tools.

• Holding a strategic point. A tank and healer can hold off strong zerging groups of opposition for long periods while help arrives. (No 1 priority is protecting the healer. Use CC and interrupts on those focusing on the healer)

• Ball Running. Your high health and avoidance makes it easier for you to absorb the focused damage of large groups of republic scum

• Baiting. When a strategic point needs to be taken from the enemy, run in (preferably with a healer in tow) and try to draw off as many enemies as possible. This allows your teammates to swarm in after you and capture the now less secure point.

• DPS. Tanks in ToR can do a surprising amount of damage (some more than others). Don’t overextend yourself and fight within the group and you can often see yourself doing a decent chunk of a warzones damage.

Here is a excerpt from an interesting post by Tersidre on Sith Warriors on tanking in PVP. He describes the use of the defensive abilities in the PVP context that really make the Tanking Classes shine.

Which is the “best” tank class?

In truth there is no overall “best” tank. Each of the 3 tank classes has their strengths and weaknesses. The Guardian is best at single target threat and avoidance, while the Trooper excels at AoE threat and shielding and the Shadow is in the middle of both. What’s important is which style of play you prefer and to a lesser extent that classes story. If you are finding the lack of AoE threat on your Guardian to be a big issue there are steps you can take to help minimize this. See later question in the FAQs with regards to this issue.

Is it better to level Defense?

If you wish to be at your maximum tanking potential during the leveling process then Defense is where you will want to sink all your points. However, just because you want to end up a tank doesn’t mean you need to always be one. You may find the leveling process easier by going down the DPS Guardian path and switching at a later date. You may also choose to sink points into the other trees earlier that level 40 in order to boost your DPS while at a low level. Build 3 in the rotations section is a good example of this.

Should I always use Soresu form during leveling?

Almost always “Yes” if you are running a Defense tree build. What you sacrifice in order to get the extra few % damage in other forms does not outweigh the benefits you receive from your tanking form as a Defense tank.

I can’t seem to hold threat on multiple NPCs, what am I doing wrong?

The Guardian tank is the weakest of all 3 tanks when it comes to AoE threat. Some classes with high damage AoE attacks can regularly pull mobs off you during a pull. What the Guardian excels at is single target threat, which you can use to ensure that the most damaging mobs in every pull are firmly stuck to you. My strategies to help deal with threat during trash pulls is to:

• Take all 3 points in Swelling Winds from level 10 to 12. 30% more damage to Force Sweep and a 3 second reduction to the cooldown will greatly increase your threat on packs prior to obtaining Cyclone Slash at 32.

• Take all three points in Pacification. Another 15% damage to both Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash.

• Use target marking to help keep the dps focused on your primary target. As the great single target threat tanks we are, it will be very hard for any class to continually take threat on a target we have marked and are focusing on.

• Prioritize your targets. E.G. If there are 4 NPCs in a pull (2 Elites and 2 Strongs) make sure that you are applying threat to the 2 elites with your single target abilities and taunt. If the 2 strong NPCs go astray don’t waste the time to try and pull them all back together on you. It is elite and champion difficulty NPCs that must be tanked, the strong, normal and weak NPCs are easily handled by DPS

• Switch your threat target early. In a pull with 2 elite class NPCs, switch your target when the first is down to 10% HP. This allows you to gain a handy lead on the second NPC when all the DPS switch over a few seconds later.

• Use CC and learn the range of your Force Sweep. Mark one elite on the side of the pack as a CC target with lightning icon, then Leap in to the far side of the pack, FS on the primary target, strafe out to beyond the range of Force Sweep on the CCed mob whilst still covering the other NPCs with it.

• Save your taunt for priority NPCs. Don’t waste a taunt on a strong/normal NPC unless it is absolutely essential. Using a taunt on a strong NPC headed towards a Trooper DPS only to have an elite NPC make a B-line for the healer 3 seconds later is a daunting experience.

Who should I use my guard ability on?

When solo always put it on your companion unless you like sharing the threat and damage of NPCs around.

When in a party use guard on the highest threat DPS. I start a run with it on the healer and watch to see which DPS (if any) are pulling threat. If one particular player is regularly taking aggro from NPCs then ensure that it is always applied to them.

Note: Guard has a 30 meter range. Other players who fall behind, most often to collect gathering nodes, will have guard “fall off” (as in not recieving the benefit) them before making their way back to the party for the next pull. Make a habit of often checking that the target is in range.

Which companion is best for a tank?

There are 2 schools of thought on this and it all depends on personal preference.

Option 1. DPS Companion.

You get the extra damage to burn through targets very quickly but miss out on having a pocket healer. This option works very well if you have taken Biochem and have been crafting infinite use medipacks as you level. At level 24 the infinite use pack will heal half your health every 90 seconds helping make the loss of healing from your companion less noticeable. If you go the DPS companion route then pick whoevers personality appeals to you. Kira is very powerful and can be a blast to have around (Watching 2 Jedi deliver swift justice through a pack of hoodlums certainly feels heroic.)

Option 2. Healing Companion.

The healing you get from Doc or C2N2 is not insubstantial. The sacrifice for this is greatly decreased DPS. One good tactic is to set the Healing companion to DPS mode on their cast bar. This increases the cooldown on their healing abilities but brings their DPS up to close that of a pure DPS companion. Just as with the DPS option, take the companion whose personality appeals to you most.

When will I start seeing tanking specific gear?

In the mid 20’s you will start seeing gear with defense on it. This will happen sporadically at first but at around level 30 it becomes more common. Stats such as Shield absorb are seen a little later. Defense should be your primary concern as we have a relatively low shield % to begin with.

Which crafting skill best complements a Guardian tank?

Whichever you prefer. Biochem, Synthweaving, Artifice and Cybertech can all be rewarding. I will make special mention of Biochem and Cybertech with regards to leveling.

Biochem enables you to make infinite use Meds,Adrenals and Stims. This is invaluable to the SW as we do not have our own in combat heal. The crafted meds heal a lot more than a regular and having a 50% heal every few pulls can speed things up a great deal.

Cybertech is good for leveling and beyond due to the mods it allows you to create for armor and weapons. As armor with mod slots derives pretty much all of its power from the mods you can run with the same armor for 40 levels should you keep its mods regularly updated. Making your own mods allows you to keep your gear at the cutting edge throughout the leveling process.

Why are people taking the Dust Storm talent?

Provided you have less than 5 targets at a time and you are applying Force Sweep once every 15 seconds then 5% lowering of the accuracy on NPCs is the same as 5% avoidance. For 2 points this is a great talent both during leveling whist taking on large packs and during endgame when you have to deal with hard hitters.

Is Master Strike a good skill?

Early on Master Strike is a good skill but as you gain more skills you will find yourself using it less and less. Master Strike has 3 negatives. Firstly its channeled nature makes it easy for you to inadvertently interrupt by hitting another ability. Secondly, the first negative is compounded by the fact that most of Master Strike’s damage is back ended and occurs in the last second. Thirdly, it just takes ages to use. At high levels when trying to keep up you Sunder stacks, FS shield, Force Sweep debuff and Riposte buff a 4.5 second lockout while you go through the Master Strike animation is a long time.

Do I have to be a leader in flashpoints and raids?

A tank does technically “lead” solely because they are the first to initiate every pull during a run. This however is as far as the tanks leadership needs to go. If you don’t want to organize a run, designate target, explain fights and tell people when they DIAF, then you don’t have to. You are paying to play, and playing to have fun. If leading drains the fun out of your run then just don’t do it.

I was rejected from a group because of my class. Are Guardians underpowered?

First off, no person should be prevented from joining a group because people don’t think their class is good enough. If this happens to you take some comfort in knowing you wouldn’t want to run with that type of person anyway.

With regards to Guardians being underpowered, yes they are some ways while in others they are definitely not. Overall the class is well designed but may be due a little tweaking (especially during the leveling process)James Olhen has stated that the Guardian is likely to receive some attention in an upcoming patch but I wouldn’t hold out for some magical cure all if you have a particular problem with the class. I would say that every tank class has its advantages and disadvantages and the Guardian in its current state is certainly viable if played to its strengths.

That being said, all tanks need to invest heavily in their associated tank tree before they can adequately reduce incoming damage. You will not feel particularly tankish until the late 20’s if not later. Some tank classes have the advantage of high AoE damage from an early level to help make threat on large packs easier to handle. Prior to level 32 the Guardian can be seen as an inferior tank by some due to their lackluster AoE threat. Due to Focus mechanic we are not heavy front loaders. This can exacerbate the perceived threat problems of the class.

All I can say is that if you love the playstyle of the Guardian tank then stick with it. At higher levels and especially in raids and heroic flashpoints where very hard hitting single target encounters are common, the Guardian tank is second to none.
Back to Contents

AC- Advanced Class. Selected at level 10, allows the selection of talents pertaining to a particular class role or playstyle

AoE- Area of Effect. Abilities that effect a large area or multiple targets.

Aggro- Another term for threat.

Avoidance- Avoidance is the negation of all damage from an individual attack via in game mechanics such as Parrying or Deflection.

Buff- An ability that increases a Player or NPC statistics for a fixed period of time

CC- Crowd Control. Removing the ability of NPCs to attack or move for a fixed time

CD- Cooldown. The period of time before an ability or attack can be reactivated

Clear- When a group or player successfully completes a flashpoint or encounter

DR- Damage Resistance, This is the % that incoming damage is reduced by. If your DR is 50% and you are hit by a 100 dmg blast you only suffer 50 points of dmg. DR can also refer to Diminishing Returns (See next entry)

DR- Diminishing Returns, In a more basic way this means that as you accumulate a high amount of a particular stat is effectiveness is decreased above a certain level. In ToR this only applies to secondary attributes such as Defense and Critical Chance. Endurance and Strength are exempt.

DFR- Defense Rating, This is a stat found on tanking armor and directly effects your Parry/Deflection on a 10:1 scale. That is to say, for every 10 points of of DFR you gain 1% Parry/Deflection.

Debuff-An ability that decreases a Player or NPC statistics for a fixed period of time

DoT- Damage over Time. An ability that is applied to a player or NPC that does a set amount of damage over a fixed time period.

DPS- Damage per second. Refers to either damage being done or the advanced classes of player that specialize in doing damage.

Epeen- Slang for Electronic ego

FF- Focused Fire. Concentrating all damage on a particular target.

GUI- Graphical User Interface. What you interact with to control the game

LoS- Line of Sight. Using a piece of the environment to break a player or NPCs line of sight to you

Mob- Refers to an enemy non player character

MT- Main Tank. The primary tank (You may also see this in chat channels when someone makes a miss-tell)

NPC- Non Player Character

OT- Off Tank. A secondary Tank

Pug- Pick up group. A group of players assembled at random

PVE- Player versus Environment

PVP- Player versus Player

RL- Raid Leader

JK- Jedi Knight

Threat- A measure of how much a NPC wants to attack you

Toon- A players character

TPS- Threat per Second

Trash- NPCs within a flashpoint that are not bosses and easy to defeat

Wipe- When all characters attempting an objective die

Zerging- Rushing in or attacking with all available forces

Swtor Guardian Tanking Beginner’s Guide

SWTOR Speeding Up Windows 7 Guide

Important please read:

Preface:

Win 7 is Engineered for speed. It might not seem like it to some people, but believe it or not, considerable attention has been given by Microsoft to making Win 7 faster than any other Microsoft OS. It is faster than Vista, and MUCH faster than Win xp, but on a basic install and day to day use, most people dont see it.

This guide is designed for you to achieve faster Boot times, faster read/write times, and generally to give you a much faster and smoother experience with Windows 7, allowing your system to use the extra resources to power your games.

I can personally guarantee that if you follow this and implement the recommendations on your PC, you will see a performance gain. Before you do however, please read the guide in full and make sure you understand it before you attempt any configuration changes.

All information in this guide is devised from the Microsoft developers network (MSDN) and support Knowledgebase and from my own experience. Any resemblance to any other guides is purely coincidental. For more information, feel free to check out Microsofts Support for yourself

Min requirements for Win 7

• 1GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
• 1GB of main memory
• 16GB of available disk space
• Support for DX9 graphics with 128MB of memory (for the Aero interface)
• A DVD – R/W drive

Notice how it states a DX 9 Graphics card.. Please note that you dont need a DX9 or above card for this guide, as our aim is to achieve performance, and not the sparkly effects. Also note, that after you complete the implementations in this guide, you can always turn on the effects you like, but at a performance loss.

Index

Disable Search Feature
Disable Aero Theme
Disable Extra Effects
Disable Extra Services
Disable User Account Control
Disable Unused Features
Disable Sidebar/Gadgets
Changing the Power Plan
Recommended Software

MISCELLANEOUS TWEAKS

Speed up System Boot time
Troubleshooting : Change no. of processors used at boot.
Speed up the Menu Show Delay time
Speed up system shutdown

Important: Before you perform any of the steps in this guide, please make sure you create a system restore point; so if you get any negative results, you can easily ‘rewind’ your computer to how it was before.

Now on with the guide!

Disabling the Search Indexing Feature in win7

The majority of win 7 users do a very low amount of searches in their system. The Search Indexing Service (SIS) keeps track of files, so that you can find them quickly when you perform a query on your system.

This feature is only useful if you perform frequent searches on your system.

For people who rarely or dont use the search feature, the SIS is a HUGE resource eater. It still uses resources on your machine, even if you are not using it.

To disable this feature:

• Right click the “My Computer” Icon on your desktop and select the option called “MANAGE”
• On the left hand side of the windows, you will see a pane titled “Computer Management”. Click the plus symbol next to “Services and applications” in this window.
• Now click on “Services” and wait for the new pane to load.
• You will see a lot of services that windows uses in this new pane. Scroll through these services, until you come to a service called “Windows Search”
• Right click on the “Windows Search” Service in the list, and choose “Properties”.
• A window called “Window Search Properties” should pop up. Where it says STARTUP type, click on the dropdown menu and choose “Disabled”

Now click Apply, then OK and youre done. The SIS is now disabled.

Disabling the Aero Theme

Oh boy. While this feature of Win 7 certainly looks pretty and eye catching, it is a major resource hog, both in terms of base system resources and on your Graphics card. For those on low power systems, or if youre like me, you just want a blazing fast PC, it is a VERY good idea to disable it. If you are unsure, just check the memory consumption when it is turned off and on.

To disable Aero:

• Right click on any blank space on your desktop and select “Personalize”.
• In the new window you will see a lot of themes. Scroll down to the bottom until you reach “Basic and High Contrast Themes”
• Choose Windows Classic, and wait for your system to be updated to the new theme.

You can now close this window. Aero is turned off and you have the fastest theme on your system.

Disabling extra effects in win 7 to gain more free resources.

So now you have turned off Aero, there will still be many unwanted visual effects that eat up your system memory, such as sliding menu effects, or sliding window effects.

To disable extra effects:

• Right Click on My Computer, either on your desktop or in your start menu and click Properties.
• Click on “Advanced System Settings” on the left side of this window to bring up the “System Properties” window.
• Choose the tab labelled “Advanced”. Now under “Performace” (it’s at the top), click the “settings” button. Choose the option called “Custom”.
• Now the trick here to to strip everything that the system really doesnt need. So that means unchecking every single box. The only boxes that should be checked are “Smooth Edges of Screen fonts”, “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop” and “Use Visual Styles on Windows and Buttons”.
• Click “Apply” or “OK”

To make sure these settings stick, simply log out of your user account and log back in, or restart your system.

Sidenote: You can enable and disable whichever features you like from the performance tab. My recommendations simply give you the fastest performance.

You should already notice a bit of a speed difference compared to before.

Here comes the big one!

Disabling every extra service in Windows 7 that you do not need.

This part of the guide alone should free up a good majority of your tied system resources. One good side effect of this is it will speed up your system boot time, and thats always a good thing.

Many services that run in windows 7 are simply not needed by the average user. There are some exceptional cases, such as the Service called “Print Spooler”. It is only needed when you use a printer. If you use a printer occasionaly, or never at all, you can turn it off and turn it back on only when you need to print something.

Warning: Some of these services MIGHT have an adverse effect on your system. Disable at your own risk.

Lets do this!

• Right click the “My Computer” Icon on your desktop and select the option called “MANAGE”
• On the left hand side of the windows, you will see a pane titled “Computer Management”. Click the plus symbol next to “Services and applications” in this window.
• Now click on “Services” and wait for the new pane to load.

You will see a lot of services that windows uses in this new pane. Scroll through these services, until you come to each of the services listed below. As you did before with the “SIS” service, repeat what you did, and disable the following services.

• Application Experience
• Computer Browser*(If your PC does not connect to any network)
• Desktop*Window Manager Session Manager*(If you don’t want the aero effects)
• Diagnostic Policy Service
• Distributed Link Tracking Client
• IP Helper
• Offline Files
• Portable Device Enumerator Service
• Print*Spooler*(If you do not use a Printer)
• Protected Storage
• Remote Registry*(You can safely disable it for more Security)
• Secondary Logon
• Security Center
• Server*(If*your*computer*is not connect with any network)
• Tablet PC Input Service
• TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
• Themes
• Windows Error*Reporting*Service
• Windows Media Center Service Launcher
• Windows*Search*(If you rarely use Windows Search feature )
• Windows Time*(If you do not want to synchronize system time with*internet*time automatically. This is recommended to be disabled, as it is only useful if your system battery is dying or your country is about to switch to DST).

After you have disabled each of these, click apply/OK, then restart your computer.

Disable the User Account Control feature (UAC)

The UAC can be annoying, even though it says it is a security feature. However, if you use a firewall and anti-virus (Which you should be doing), this feature will annoy you more than being a help.

PLEASE NOTE: This is an advanced feature. If you are unsure of your system or AV/firewall, please keep this enabled.

To disable UAC:

• From the Control Panel open the ” User Accounts and Family Safety ” > User Account.
• Click the*User*Account*Control settings link.
• Now just Drag the Slider towards “Never Notify”.
• Click “OK” and Reboot your system.

Turn off unused Win7 Features

There are some features in win 7 that we usually do not use. Disabling these can help to speed win7 up.

PLEASE NOTE: This is an advanced feature. Only peform this part of the guide if you are confident in what you are doing.

Open up ” Programs and Features ” from Control Panel.
Click the ” Turn Windows features on or off ” from the left pane.
Now uncheck all the Feature that you don’t use in Windows 7 and restart the system for the changes to take effect.

As a guide to which options to check/uncheck, the following are what I have checked. Everything else is unchecked.

• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1
• Remote Differential Compression
• Windows Search

You can check/uncheck what you like, but my previous warnings apply.

Disable the sidebar/Gadgets

Windows Sidebar actually takes up a good chunk of resources and increases your system boot time. I always disable this on any installation I have as I find this feature completely unnecessary.

To disable Sidebar/Gadgets

• Right click on the sidebar and select “Properties”.
• On the properties windows, untick the check box showing “Start sidebar when Windows Starts”

Reboot your system and sidebar will no longer start up.

SWTOR Pillars and Soa Hardmode Guide

**First and foremost I want to acknowledge the bugs. I am not saying these encounters are not buggy, nor that they shouldn’t be fixed. I am simply providing work arounds for many of the common issues everyone seems to be facing. Please do not complain about the bugs. If you have a bug I haven’t listed and want to see if there is a workaround for it the go ahead and fire away. But we have enough complaining on these forums, this is a place of action.

The most common complaints I see in this section of the forums are related to these two bosses. I’m no elitist, I’m not here to call you all noobs, and I lead a raid for a surprisingly casual group of regular folks. We have jobs, kids, and real lives as most of you do but we manage to effectively down the most “difficult” encounters this game has to offer. Not to say we are better then you, no, not at all. Simply trying to put into perspective that we are normal people and just about anyone can do what we do. Now, onto the subject.

Hard Mode Pillars – NOT bugged.
Well…not in the sense most believe anyways. I find it hard to believe the devs designed an encounter where if you fail it that you have to reset the entire instance and reclear trash without any explanation other then “You have a bad feeling.” But, then again there was Mt. Hyjal which was far more punishing so who knows their real intentions.

Anyways I’m here to guarantee that you will never fail this encounter ever again. In normal mode it doesn’t matter what you do, solve the puzzle in whatever order at your leisure and just don’t get over run by the mobs. Simple enough. In Hard Mode it is an actual puzzle that has to be done in a timely and simultaneous manner.

Now I have solved it without locking up in just about every combination imaginable but if you want to GUARANTEE that you never fail the encounter then you follow the below instructions:

1) The first row doesn’t matter, you can’t fail it and lock up the encounter. Use it to figure out the color pattern so you know what rotations you need to make. Also, believe it or not someone designed an app for the iPhone to tell you it based on the starting colors. Anyways just figure out the color pattern so you can set up your rotations.

2) Due to the recent buff to the encounter to where you have a limited time before being bombarded with elites you need to have 2 people who are doing the rotations. Best thing to do is assign one person on each side, North and South to call out rotations and they themselves initiating the “solving” rotation.

3) Once you get the puzzle into a place where one more rotation will solve it for your side stop, clear the current wave, ensure that both your “solvers” are ready and then solve at the same time.

4) If you do the encounter correctly it shouldn’t matter which side solves first, HOWEVER, for safety sake, ALWAYS solve the SOUTH side a second before the North. Easy thing to do is when you countdown (3,2,1) to solve at the same time your SOUTH player starts the cast on 2. That way he will solve slightly before the North pillar and well, it NEVER locks up if you do this. Ever.

If you do this quick enough it is possible to clear it before you even get to the double Elite wave spawn. It is an extremely easy encounter and although I will concede it is technically and partially bugged the encounter kinda makes sense, albeit a pain.

Hard Mode Soa – Less RNG, more execution
We all know the bug list for Soa is extremely long and ever expanding. At one point he will be completely ignoring the tank and one shotting your first born child because you didn’t run a lightning ball on the correct path. It happens. Now I can say that with VERY few exceptions almost all of his bugs can be counter acted with a solid strat. A lot of people will say just because you came up with a strat to counter the bugs doesn’t mean Bioware shouldn’t fix them. Well friends, after you read and execute my strategy hopefully you will see that some of these bugs may just be poor execution on your part. Now…onto the strat.

PHASE ONE
DPS…don’t die…navigate the platforms to phase 2. If you fail here…um…I can’t help you. Occasionally after a wipe platforms may be missing during any of the phases of the encounter. If this happens, everyone zone out, raid leader resets the operation, and when you go back in all of the platforms should be fixed. I’ve heard a couple occurrences of the reset not fixing this issue, my only recommendation is reset the operation again. Personally, I finally did experience this issue and a reset fixed it every time.

PHASE TWO
1) This phase is in my opinion the most difficult one and where most of the “bugs” start to kick in. Start off this phase by stacking in the middle, getting all of your players topped off, and ready to DPS Soa. When Soa becomes vulnerable give your tank a second to pick him up. If you don’t, well sorry to tell you but he MAY cyclone/mind trap your tank and GG. Last time I checked aggro mismanagement wasn’t a bug, it is user error. I haven’t seen a main tank get mind trapped or cycloned in P2 unless he lost aggro. IF this does happen you can have another player taunt the boss to prevent a despawn.

2) Now DPS prioritizes getting mind traps down and then focusing on Soa. When lightning balls spawn have someone calling them out and those players IMMEDIATELY run out of the raid, get topped off, get a shield, and run to their lightning ball. Run just enough to blow it up and then IMMEDIATELY run back to the group and restack. This allows the healers to keep everyone topped off much easier. **Pro Tip – Don’t shield people during this phase unless it is to blow up a lightning ball. You don’t want a person to have to blow it up and it be unavailable.

3) Lightning balls should be up for a matter of a few seconds, once exploded get those people topped off and restack. Sometimes a player make get lightning ball called out on them and promptly cycloned or mind trapped, this presents a problem as that lightning ball will go to wherever their position was before being cycloned/mind trapped. Move your group. If you reposition your group to another spot you avoid that issue entirely. The key is your players paying attention to lightning balls and calling out “hey, I got lightning balled by cycloned/mind trapped please move.” Your group moves as one to a slightly different position and when that player pops out you shield/top them off.

4) “But dude, I died to cyclone and there was nothing I could do.” **Pro Tip – If you are EVER below 50% during that fight use a medpac. “Why? I shouldn’t have to use consumables for a bug.” Sorry chief, but being topped off has always been a design for end game encounters in almost every MMO I have ever played. If you are below 50% HP you will likely die if you get cycloned. So…pop them medpacs and let your healers know how important it is to keep everyone topped off.

5) Believe it or not but some DPS classes have heals. *GASP* No way! So yeah, if one of your healers gets mind trapped or cycloned and you can see the raid is falling a bit behind on heals. Help a brother out. Use self DR/heal cooldowns, heal yourself, heal the guy next to you, whatever. I’m not saying you have to take the healers role but at least keep yourself up. The Enrage time is NOT that tight, you can afford to be spending one GCD on a heal.

6) “OMG I’M STUCK IN A MINDTRAP!” or “OMG SOA DROPPED ME FROM A MILLION FEET INTO THE AIR TO THE GROUND AND I DIED!” You mean you failed at timing your push into p3? I’m sorry but this one drives me insane. If you are too stupid to realize that pushing him under 30% while people are mind trapped or cycloned is a bad idea then you probably think that any mechanic leading to your wipe must be a bug. Would it be nice if Bioware designed it so that it placed you in a safe location promptly after pushing him into p3? Sure. It would, but it isn’t necessary. You are just impatient, lazy, stupid, or all of the above. Seriously, this is almost as bad as wondering why your tank got mind trapped. I’ll say it again, the Enrage timer is NOT that tight, you can afford to wait a few seconds to break out mind traps or wait for cyclone to finish.

Now sometimes he may mind trap OR cyclone someone after he pushes over and his shield goes up. The best way to counter act this is get him to 31%, stop DPS, let him cyclone someone and right before they are about to land push him over to the next phase. This way his cyclone cooldown is up and if he does anything to anyone, it will be a mind trap. Can this still propose an issue? Yes but your DPS should be good enough to break someone out of the mind trap and proceed to the platform phase. Mind traps ALWAYS spawn on the outer ring and the person will be broken out RIGHT on the edge of the platform. **Pro Tip – If you get mind trapped don’t move when you are broken out, be aware of your surroundings before you make a decision of what direction to move. This will prevent you from falling to an untimely death.

PHASE THREE
1) It is the same as phase 2 really, only instead of DPSing him the entire time you only have to worry about when he is vulnerable. The rest of the time can be dedicated to breaking out mind traps and managing the lightning balls. **Pro Tip – Stacking the raid underneath a pillar is um…well…F***ing retarded.

2) Your tank is the star in this phase, he needs to make sure he positions correctly, advises of when to DPS, etc. Even though he is invulnerable you can still stack debuffs on him prior to the shield breaking. So if you have a delayed DPS ability, an armor debuff, or whatever. Once all mind traps are down and a lightning ball isn’t on you feel free to prepare that for when Soa is about to break. It can give you the extra boost that you need.

IT IS possible for your tank to get mind trapped in this phase. I’ve read multiple threads on it and seen different point of views and believe this to be intended. I think bioware wants you to have 2 tanks for this phase of the fight. That DOES NOT mean you need to gimp your DPS, a player in full tank gear simply switching stances and taunting will suffice until you break your main tank out of the mind trap. Again a quick stance change and taunt can prevent a heartbreaking despawn.

3) Okay so you have managed to break his shield three times but that DPS just wasn’t good enough and you are about to get to your fourth one. I will absolutely concede a design flaw here…sometimes this fourth shield coincides with his enrage timer and if he hits that right as the pillar hits him the shield WILL NOT break. Sometimes it does, more often it seems it doesn’t. So my word of advice here is to try and kill him before the fourth shield break OR if you can try to survive till the fifth. If you get to six…welll…uh…you are both pro and bad at the same time, but either way I think I’d give you props.

Well folks I hope my guide was at least somewhat helpful to you and if you have any questions, comments, or concerns please let me know. I will do my best to address them in an appropriate and timely manner. Good hunting. Get it? I’m a bounty hunter? F*** it.

**HELPFUL TIPS** – I will try to list quick solutions to common bugs below so you don’t have to read the entire wall of text.

1) Hard Mode Soa has a lot of things that can bug permanently if you wipe. There is ZERO downside to simply resetting your raid after EVERY single attempt. This will prevent things such as bugged platforms and many other issues.
2) If your main tank gets mind trapped or cycloned have someone else immediately taunt him, this can prevent heart breaking despawns.
3) During the transition phase going to p2 sometimes his stacks will not fall off of him even after downing the ancient pylons. It stays at 3 and makes your phase 2 nearly impossible for your healers. I CAN NOT 100% confirm this but after experiencing this issue many times last night we made sure to reset after every attempt and wait a couple seconds after each pylon was targetable before bursting them down. After this change we never experienced it again.
4) I already said this but its important, solve south first for pylons, it won’t bug.
5) Prevent Soa despawning by having someone taunt him quickly if the tank gets cycloned/mind trapped.
6) Phase 2 is a marathon, not a sprint, focus on executing correctly and not tunnel visioning. Phase 3 is very similar and even AFTER enrage you still have plenty of time to kill him. I’ve seen people live long enough for 3 extra pillar drops after enrage.
7) I’m not saying these encounters aren’t bugged, but execution will trump them.

Incoming search terms:

• ancient pylon bug
• swtor hm soa phase 2 lightning balls
• swtor how to break lighting soa
• swtor how to solve kp puzzle
• swtor how to tank soa
• swtor hybrids hard mode
• swtor pillar puzzle
• swtor soa enrage timer
• swtor Soa hm droplist
• swtor soa how to locate the pillar

SWTOR Healer Abilities Guide

After browsing different sites and sources, I’ve comed up with a guide that shows how healing classes work in SWTOR.
Basically, there are three healing Advanced Classes in the game per faction:

Empire:
- Operative
- Sorcerer
- Mercenary

Republic:
- Scoundrel
- Sage
- Commando

My information was restricted to healers from the Empire side, but since the Republic mirror classes have the same stats and abilities, it should give you a fairly accurate knowledge base.

Imperial Agent / Smuggler

Advanced Classes: Operative / Scoundrel
Healing Talent Tree: Medicine / Sawbones
Primary Stat: Cunning
Armor: Medium
Unique Mechanic: Tactical Advantage

Talent Trees: Both Operatives and Scoundrels have two melee dps talent trees with stealth abilities and one healing talent tree.

Resource: The main resource of Imperial Agents and Smugglers is energy. Energy regeneration is incremental and it depends on your current ammount of energy. In other words, the higher your energy level, the higher your regeneration will be (so a good strategy would be to focus on having decent/high levels of energy to benefit from good regen).

Unique Mechanic: Some damage abilities, direct heals and HoTs (healing over time) provide each one point of Tactical Advantage. Similarly, the abilities that consume Tactical Advantage, will only consume one point. Since almost all abilities that use Tactical Advantage do not consume Energy, using TA abilities is crucial to maintaining high levels of Energy and Energy regen.

Common heals:
1. Kolto Injection: Direct heal (capable of generating TA through talents)
2. Kolto Probe: Instant Heal over Time (HoT), stackable,(capable of generating TA through talents)
3. Recuperative Nanotech: Instant Area of Effect (AoE) HoT, 12 seconds cooldown
4. Diagnostic Scan: (this is a minor channel heal,which can be improved from talents to restore energy when the ability crits)

Tactical Advantage based heals::
1. Kolto Infusion: consumes TA and Energy
2. Surgical Probe: Instant heal, consumes TA

Other healing abilities:
1. Resuscitation Probe: Combat resurection, cooldown 5 min.
2. Toxin Scan: Removes debuffs and can be improved to heal through talents
3. Stim Boost: Provides energy regeneration, uses TA (recommended to be kept active all the time).

Operatives and Scoundrels use HoTs more than other healing abilities, which easily allows them to keep players alive when the fight is not too demanding. Since HoTs give you TA points, this will help you rotate your direct heals (Kolto Infusion, Kolto Injection and Surgical Probe).

Bounty Hunter / Trooper

Advanced Classes: Mercenary / Commando
Healing Talent Tree: Bodyguard / Combat Medic
Primary Stat: Aim
Armor: Heavy
Unique Mechanic: Combat Support

Talent Trees: Mercenaries and Commandos have two dps talent trees and one healing tree. They are basically casters in heavy armors.

Resource: Bounty Hunter’s main resource is Heat (capped at 100) while Trooper uses Ammo (capped at 12). They both work on same principles as Energy (including regen).

Unique Mechanic: Your free healing abilities and cast heals (when improved through talents) will stack Combat Support, a buff that boosts your healing. When you reach the max stack limit of 30, you can use it to add a temporary bonus effect of 10 seconds to your abilities by venting Heat/restoring Ammo..

Common heals:
1. Rapid Shots: generates 3 Combat Support
2. Rapid Scan: generates 6 Combat Support through talents
3. Healing Scan: Castable heal with 12 seconds cooldown
4. Kolto Missile: Instant AoE heal with 6 seconds cooldown
5. Emergency Scan: Instant heal with 21 seconds cooldown

Other healing abilities:
1. Power Surge: Makes a castable ability instant
2. Cure: Removes debuffs and can be improved to heal through talents
3. Kolto Shell: A shield with 10 charges that heals the target when it suffers damage.
4. Vent Heat: Vents heat (similar to Trooper’s gain Ammo)
5. Supercharged Gas: Consumes all 30 stacks of Combat Support to provide 10 second bonus to abilities and boosts healing.

Mercenaries and Commandos are suitable for tank healing, due to HoT procs, damage reduction buff and access to instant heals.

Sith Inquisitor / Jedi Consular

Advanced Classes: Sith Sorceror / Jedi Sage
Healing Talent Tree: Corruption / Seer
Primary Stat: Willpower
Armor: Light
Unique Mechanic: Force Bending

Talent Trees: Sith Sorceror and Jedi Sage have two ranged dps talent trees and one for healing.

Resource: Sorcerors and Sages rely on Force as their main resource. Force regeneration is constant (8 Force/ second) and it’s capped (depending on talents) at 500/600.
Because unlike the previous healers, Sorcerors and Sages have the constant regen rate and are able to consume it to lower levels, their heals are more expensive.

Unique Mechanic: Force Bending has a chance of being provided by Resurgence and boosts the effect of your next heal.

Common heals:
1. Dark Heal: 1.5 seconds casting heal
2. Dark Infusion: 3 seconds casting heal
3. Innervate: Instant heal with a 3 second channelling
4. Resurgence: Instant heal and HoT with a 6 seconds cooldown
5. Revivification: AoE direct heal with AoE HoT, has 15 seconds

Other healing abilities:
1. Reanimation: Combat ressurection
2. Purge: Removes debuffs and can be improved to heal through talents
3. Static Barrier: Absorption shield
4. Extrication: Lowers target’s threat and pulls them to you
5. Consumption: Instantly regenerates Force at cost of life, also lowers Force regen rate temporarily

Sorceres and Sages will bring the greatest variety of heals and flexible play style. Force regen relies on Force Bending provided through Resurgence, as well as using Innervate.

Incoming search terms:

• best crew skills for scoundrel
• swtor sith sorcerer healer pvp gear
• swtor classes healer
• swtor force bending innervate
• swtor force-bending
• swtor heal gameplay
• swtor healer comparison 2012
• Swtor healer comparison commando sage scoundrel
• swtor healer force bending
• swtor healing as a marauder