Happy Holidays! Guardian vs Vanguard revisited!

     Hello everyone!  It's been a tiring holiday for me.  I had a week off from work and had too much fun at my Christmas party.  I've been busy leveling also, though not what's expected.  On a whim, I decided to revisit the Jedi Guardian, but this time to level as a tanking spec.  Now the reasoning behind this was two fold:

1. I gave it quite a bit of thought and felt that perhaps that the Guardian would have better class synergy with the two people I would PvP with.
2. I wanted to try leveling as Defense spec with the Guardian.  The reason being, I enjoyed leveling as Shield much more than Tactics on my Vanguard so I wanted to compare apples to apples.

     So first off, to clarify on the class synergy issue, I should state that the two people I have PvP'ed with regularly since early WoW days do not play healers.  Thinking from an open world PvP or even if they implement some sort of arena system, I want to play what I feel is the most viable class for either one of them.  Right now, only one is playing SWTOR and he's been playing a Gunnery Commando.  I've been mainly thinking which of the two classes would fulfill the role better for setting up the Gunnery Commandos damage and provide peeling for him.
     If we look at the Vanguard and Guardian in a 2v2 scenario, I really believe the Vanguard shines when paired with a healer.  Not to bring up more comparisons with that other game, but I equate how the class would perform with WotLK's Protection Paladin.  Not much control but huge staying power and the ability to put out burst damage with cooldowns popped and under certain conditions.  Running with a healer and guard with a high shield chance, you can wear people down with Stockstrike cooldown resets and High Impact Bolt since no matter who they hit, you'll have a chance to proc the reset talent. But in all honesty, the class doesn't have the skills for super high burst damage and lockouts.  Also, since resources are in essence unlimited in this game, if the Vanguard get's in trouble, he has the ability to kite and still put out some damage pressure and snares to give his healer time to keep him up until they stabilize and go on the offensive again.  Or you can do root lockouts to buy the healer time to gain some breathing room also.
     So, if you consider that I will be mainly PvP'ing with a Gunnery Commando and look at the Guardian, it should be obvious why it's the better choice.  The Gunnery tree lacks interrupts and a good snare but has monster burst damage capability, armor reduction skills, knockbacks and huge AE damage ability.  The Defense Guardian provides a no cooldown, no resource cost AE snare, multiple stuns / CC's, armor reduction attacks, lots of survivability cooldowns and a knockback.  The basic gist of any fight would be to peel attackers off the Commando and then setup stuns and CC's to try and drop a target with stuns and burst damage or even massive AE damage.  If you combine this with even the limited amount of off-healing the Commando can provide, it's feasible to say with LOS'ing and AE snares this duo has huge killing power and decent survivability.  These two classes really seem to have a ton of synergy.
          So most importantly now, is the class fun?  So far so good, interestingly enough.  I have to say that early on, the DPS trees really feel lackluster.  You don't really get anything early on that feels impactful to your gameplay.  Cooldown reductions and some damage or crit chance increases don't really do much.  The defensive stances extra survivability added with the focus cost reduction early in the tanking tree however, does make the class feel "smoother" in leveling gameplay.  I would build the tree by maxing Momentum, Victory Rush and Lunge.  This leaves you with a very smooth rotation by the time you hit level 17.  In fact, this allows you to finish most encounters without ever needing to use the baseline strike.

Force Leap -> Sundering Strike -> Blade Storm -> Force Sweep -> Sundering Strike

If you're fighting silver elites or higher, I would then Master Strike -> Sundering Strike and then focus dump with Slash and Ripostes.  The lowered cost on Riposte also has a noticeable impact as it doesn't wipe out your Focus pool.

     So it seems for now, I'll be taking the Guardian to 50 first and PvP'ing with my Commando friend.  Obviously the topic of this blog will now be skewed towards the Guardian, though I would like to write more on PvP after I finish my grind and start doing more PvP again.  I have some Guardian PvE videos on my youtube channel for those that would like to check it out, most noticeably I keep reading about people having problems with the Valis fight at level 24.  I put up my kill for those that may be having problems as Defense spec.  Happy Holidays!