5.0 Class Guides/ SWTOR

SWTOR 5.0 Vigilance Guardian PvE Guide by Rydarus

Rydarus 72 Comments Dec 30, 2016

SWTOR 5.0 Vigilance Guardian PvE Guide written by Rydarus

Hello everybody!

If you wanted the imp guide, dulfy didn’t get around to uploading it. Here it is though, https://www.docdroid.net/DK28Hso/50v…guide.pdf.html

As far as rotational stuff, never take Freezing Force again, just slash (force push > Slash with the blade storm talent for dummy parses).

Intro to 5.0 Vigilance Guardian

 

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Guide begins here.

Hello! Rydarus here. Once again, I will be writing the guide for the Vigilance Guardian for Knights of the Eternal Throne. This expansion brought several significant changes to the class as we know it, and as such many players will be almost completely relearning the spec. Throughout the guide, I would encourage the reader, whether they have played this spec before or not, to keep an open mind towards new ideas regarding the class.

I’ve designed this guide to adhere to a raid realistic rotation and outlook, as well as to be cognizant of potential future changes to the class. What this means is that the builds and rotations used within the guide may not be fully optimal for say, dummy parsing, but will be designed for maximizing raid realistic damage, as well as minimize pain on the part of the reader if they happen to nerf or buff certain areas of the spec. Without further ado, let’s begin

Overview of Vigilance Guardian

The Vigilance Guardian has changed a lot from it’s 4.0 incarnation. Rather than the melee turret class that was hamstrung by its melee channel but compensated for this limitation with monstrous AoE, the 5.0 vigilance guardian is significantly different. The KOTET Vigilance Guardian is armed with even MORE AoE potential, the flexibility of added mobility and range, and overall versatility. However, it is currently limited by mediocre single target DPS (though it gains about 500-1000 DPS OR MORE on actual bosses due to certain utilities). Regardless, it can be a serviceable, even competitive discipline in the correct hands. Overall, it’s a significantly improved discipline, and has the best playstyle the class has seen in years.

Ratings: Note that these ratings themselves are somewhat arbitrary. They’re more of a way to rank how important each element is to the class on a 1-10 scale, not a comparison to other disciplines in the game. The ratings are based purely on how the spec performs in fights, not against stationary targets.

• Single Target DPS: 6/10
• AoE Damage: 10/10
• Group Utility:3/10
• Rotation Complexity (ease of understanding): 4/10
• Rotation Difficulty (execution): 6.5/10
• RNG Dependency: 2/10
• Burst: 6/10
• Execute: 2/10

Gearing and Equipment

Gearing in Eternal Throne has been changed significantly with Galactic Command, so it is no longer realistic to assume players can meet specific mod and enhancement targets while gearing due to the disparity in gear ratings. As such, I will outline rough statistical guidelines. Aside from logistical aspects of gearing, I will now be recommending a gear setup that is markedly different from what is mathematically ideal (Bant’s guide). This is due to the reality that extremely high percentages of alacrity may not be completely optimal in actual boss fights with mechanics. As such, these targets are guidelines, not hard rules.

• Versatile or Proficient Stim
• Attack Adrenals
• Versatile Hilt
• Versatile Armorings with the Weaponmaster Set Bonus
• All Lethal Mods (unlettered) for power
• Reach accuracy cap with Initiative enhancements and accuracy augment 45s. Do not go under 110% accuracy (737 rating) as missing an interrupt in a fight is worse than doing a slightly less amount of dps.
• Gun for 9-11% alacrity percentage. You CAN go higher but do so at your own risk. Reach this with Quick Savant Enhancements and Alacrity Augments.
• Gun for ~1700 critical rating. Reach this with Adept Enhancements and Critical Augments.
• Fill the remaining augment budget with Mastery Augments. In conversations with Bant we reached the conclusion that after a certain point mastery is a superior substitute to alacrity versus crit due to diminishing returns. At 242s with 9% alacrity it’s roughly 3 mastery augments and the mastery stim.

Utility Selection

This section will go over optimal utility selection. I will rate utilities using a 4-star system, with certain utilities changing their usefulness depending on the scenario. Parentheses indicate any situational changes in rating. All of the utilities listed are non PvP utilities, meaning a significant portion of them won’t even appear on the list. This is either because that utility is useless, or specific players might find them useful in situations others may not.

Allocate your utilities in either: 3/2/1/2, 3/3/0/2, 4/2/0/2, or 4/3/0/1

**** Mandatory

*** Useful

** Situationally useful on several fights

* Extremely Situational, not very useful / very useful on one or two fights

Skillful: Take 3-4

Name/Icon	Rating	When?
Battlefield Command	Mandatory****	Useful on all fights. Basically every fight that matters you’re going to have to leap, reducing the cooldown is really important.
Narrowed Focus	Mandatory****	Useful on all fights. Pretty much every fight has some degree of AoE hitting you.
Trailblazer	Mandatory****	Useful on all fights. Anything that buffs your aoe is worth it and even on single target fights there isn’t another utility really worth respeccing for.
Defiance	Extremely Situational*	Useful when you have a spare slot, but generally you’ll cap out focus so much it won’t be worth it. Even in places where it’s useful you probably won’t take it.

Masterful: Take 2-3

Purifying Sweep	Mandatory****	Useful on all fights, applies an extra armor debuff. Even in non AoE fights higher armor debuff uptime is a plus.
Unremitting	Situational** (**** on certain fights)	A controversial pick, this utility nevertheless does a lot for the specialization, allowing it to cheese certain knockback mechanics. Useful in fights like Revan, Kephess (TFB), Brontes, etc. I personally take it for every fight simply because there’s just not that many amazing utilities in this tier, plus deflecting knockbacks is always nice.
Gather Strength	Situational* (**** on one fight)	An essential utility for Underlurker HM, absolute trash for pretty much anything else. Increases your damage dealt when you are slowed.

Masterful: Take 0-1

Peaceful Focus	Situational** (**** on fights with cleansable debuffs)	An essential utility for fights like Dread Council or Hateful Entity, this utility allows a Jedi Guardian to self cleanse debuffs using Enure. Only take for select fights.
Through Peace	** (*** on certain fights where other utilities are not superior, use personal discretion.)	Take this when not taking other situational utilities / you need to compensate for incoming damage that the healers cannot carry you through. Lowers the cooldown on Focused Defense.

Legendary: Take 1-2

Persistent Chill	Mandatory**** (A REQUIRED pick for rotational reasons)	Makes Freezing Force do a substantial amount of damage and allows it to become a single target filler and AoE splash move. Must take.
Daunting Presence	Great*** (**** for any fight with reflectable damage)	A very good utility to generally be in, and an AMAZING utility for the fights listed in the REFLECTODEX. See Saber Reflect and REFLECTODEX.
Unyielding Justice	Very Situational*(** for fights with reduced uptime)	Really only useful for fights where you get ranged a lot, even then in a situation where you need to Blade Storm from 30 meters, 9 times out of 10 you can leap. Not recommended.

Abilities

Defensive Abilities

The Vigilance Guardian has a variety of Defensive Cooldowns that serve a multitude of disparate purposes. Each cooldown has uses in many different scenarios. It is the job of a good DPS player to minimize total DTPS to the maximum extent with movement and proper cooldown usage while maintaining as close of an approximation to ideal DPS as possible.

	Cooldown: 45 seconds Range: 20 meters	Blade Blitz Increases your Defense and Resist chance by 100% and dashes you forward 20 meters, dealing minor damage to everyone in your path. Sends you where your body is facing, not where your camera is facing.
	Duration:10 seconds Cooldown: 1 minute	Enure Increases total health pool by 30% and heals you temporarily for 30%. When the duration of the cooldown is over the health is lost. Increases damage reduction by 15%.
	Duration: 12 seconds Cooldown: 3 minutes Blade Turning: Duration: 2 seconds	Saber Ward Increases Melee/Ranged Defense Chance by 50%. In addition, for the first 2 seconds you receive Blade Turning, granting the player immunity to all ranged and melee attacks. Saber Ward also grants a 25% damage reduction to Force and Tech attacks.
	Duration: 3 seconds Cooldown: 1 minute Damage Cap: 45k With Daunting Presence Duration: 5 seconds	Saber Reflect (SEE REFLECTODEX) Redirects all single target ranged, force, tech direct damage back at the target, causing you to take no damage and deal a significant amount. Due to Bioware’s incompetence in raid design, Saber Reflect is an integral part of the Guardian’s DPS and mitigation. A crucial part of the guide will be covering what situations are ideal for the utilization of Saber Reflect.
	Cooldown: 20 seconds Range: 0-30 Meters Targeted to friendlies On the GCD	Guardian Leap Grants your target damage reduction and decreases their threat by a significant amount. Leaps you at the target. DO NOT USE ON THE TANK. Situational.
	Cooldown: 45 seconds Duration: 15 seconds	Challenging Call Grants the user 60% AoE Damage Reduction and decreases threat by a small amount. Lasts 15 seconds. One of your most useful DCDs and good in a pinch.
	Application Range: 0-30 meters Effect Range: infinite Targeted to friendlies On the GCD	Guard Grants an ally of your choice 5% damage reduction and a 25% reduction to threat generation until either you or the target dies, or you disable it manually. Use at raid leader’s discretion.
	Lasts 15 seconds Grants 12 stacks 2 minute cooldown With Through Peace 1 minute 30 second cooldown	Focused Defense Heals you for 12 times on damage taken. Each tick hits for roughly 6.5-10k. Can crit.

Procs and Passive Effects

Before you as the player can understand how to play the class, you must understand a few crucial elements of the class. For a full scope on why the class is played how it is, please examine the skill tree.

	Force Rush: Grants a 50% critical chance increase to Blade Storm. Stacks twice to a maximum critical chance increase of 100%. Force Rush is generated via Vigilant Thrust, Overhead Slash, Plasma Brand, and Whirling Blade. Key part of your rotation.
	Zen Strike: Plasma Brand resets the cooldown on Blade Barrage. Key part of your rotation.
	Keening: Burning effects and Blade Barrage have a 30% chance to enable Whirling Blade to be used for free and at any health level. The buff lasts for 15 seconds and is NOT affected by alacrity, however the internal cooldown is 20 seconds and IS affected by alacrity. Key part of your rotation.
	Shien Form: Increases your damage dealt by 6% and increases your movement speed by 15%. Also decreases all focus costs by 1. In addition, certain abilities like Whirling Blade and Vigilant Thrust will actually generate one focus due to Shien Form.
	Burning Storm: Cyclone Slash deals 25% more damage to targets that are burning. This talent is important as it’s a crucial part of your AoE rotation.

Offensive Abilities

The Vigilance Guardian has many abilities that they must become familiar with before the actual rotation can be learned. The below abilities are NOT ordered by priority. All of these abilities are instant. I am assuming 0% alacrity for all cooldowns for the sake of readability, however actual cooldowns will be shorter due to alacrity.

	Cooldown: 9 seconds Requires: 4 Focus Consumes: 3 Focus Range: 0-4M	Overhead Slash: Does high Melee Kinetic damage with a 6 second Force Elemental DoT that does moderate damage. This DoT effect can be spread by Vigilant Thrust. Generates one stack of Force Rush on activation. Each tick of the DoT effect has a 30 percent to generate Keening. Additionally, with the Weaponmaster’s 6 pc set bonus, Blade Storm grants Overhead Slash a 100% chance to critically hit every minute.
	Cooldown: 12 seconds Requires: 5 Focus Consumes: 1 Focus Range: 0-4M	Plasma Brand: Does high Force Elemental damage on hit and applies a powerful Force Elemental DoT effect for 12 seconds. This DoT effect can be spread by Vigilant Thrust. Generates one stack of Force Rush on activation. The DoT effect has a 30% chance to proc keening.
	Cooldown: 9 seconds Requires: 4 Focus Consumes: 3 Focus Range: 0-10M	Blade Storm: Does high Force Energy damage on hit and applies a small Force Elemental DoT effect for 6 seconds. This DoT effect can be spread by Vigilant Thrust. Blade Storm also has a 100% critical chance with two stacks of Force Rush. With the 6pc Weaponmaster Set Bonus, Blade Storm grants Overhead Slash an automatic critical hit once every minute.
	Normal: Cooldown: 18 seconds Activation Range: 0-4M With Plasma Brand proper usage Cooldown: 12s	Blade Barrage: Unleashes a flurry of strikes that do moderate Melee Kinetic damage. Plasma Brand resets the cooldown of Blade Barrage. As such, the cooldown of Blade Barrage is directly gated by Plasma Brand. NOTE THAT IN 5.0 BLADE BARRAGE WAS RENAMED FROM BLADE DANCE/MASTER STRIKE AND IS NOW INSTANT
	Focus Gain: 1 Focus Cooldown: 9 seconds Target Maximum: 8 AOE type: 360 degrees Radius: 5 meters	Vigilant Thrust: Is your primary AoE and part of your single target rotation. It is HIGHLY damaging, doing almost as much damage as Dispatch! Due to Burning Storm, Vigilant Thrust can be used to spread your DoT effects to multiple targets. When specced into Purifying Sweep, Vigilant Thrust applies an armor debuff to its victims.
	General: Range: 0-30M Cooldown: 9 seconds Without Keening: Requires: 3 Consumes: 2 With Keening: Focus Gain: 1 Focus ICD: 20 seconds Duration: 15 seconds Requirements: N/A	Whirling Blade: Hurls your Lightsaber at your target from afar, dealing high Melee Kinetic damage.
	Requires: 2 Focus Consumes: 1 Focus Duration: 8 seconds Target Maximum: 8 AOE type: 360 degrees Radius: 8 meters	Freezing Force: With the mandatory talent Piercing Chill, Freezing Force applies a Force Elemental AoE damage effect for 8 seconds to surrounding targets. High damage filler.
	Focus Gain: 7 Focus Range: 0-4 meters Cooldown: 12 seconds	Sundering Strike: Your primary focus generator, Sundering Strike also procs your 2pc Weaponmaster Set Bonus, increasing your damage dealt by 2% for 15 seconds. This effect can only occur every 30 seconds.
	Focus Gain: 6 Focus Cooldown: 45 seconds Off GCD	Combat Focus: Off the GCD, this is a key ability in your arsenal and your main short offensive cooldown. Your only way of generating Focus off the GCD.
	Focus Gain: 3 Focus Range: 0-30 Meters Cooldown: 30 seconds	Saber Throw: Throws your saber at the target and does mediocre damage. Sparingly used filler when others are not available or you have been ranged.
	Requires: 3 Focus Consumes: 2 Focus Radius: 5 Meters Target Maximum: 8 AoE type: 180 Degrees	Cyclone Slash: An important AoE ability, you cleave everyone in a 180 degrees arc within 5 meters away from you. If any of the cleaved are on fire, they take 25% more damage due to Burning Storm. If specced into Trailblazer, as you should be, it will also do ANOTHER 25% more damage.
	Requires: 3 Focus Consumes: 2 Focus Range: 0-4 Meters	Slash: A rarely used filler, only used when you have too much focus, and either Freezing Force’s DoT is already present or won’t be fully utilized by the time the target is dead.
	Focus Gain: 3 Focus Stuns for 4 seconds Range: 0-10 meters	Force Stasis: Emergency ranged filler. Almost never used. Does some damage.
	Knockback 10 meters Range: 0-10 meters	Force Push: Emergency ranged filler. Almost never used. Some damage.

Rotation and Priority

Opener

Vigilance is not a complex specialization to understand, instead it is about the basics, done well. No Vigilance player is ever going to claim this is the hardest specialization in the world, however playing the specialization effectively requires a good knowledge of the guiding principles of the class. Knowledge is power.

The Vigilance rotation centers around a single common static rotation with slots that allow for the drifting of certain abilities. My opener is specifically designed in order to facilitate an optimal rotation following it. No other opener is technically optimal unless it mimics the ability spacing, because the GCD spacing between the utilization of each ability is what allows the rotation to instantaneously flow, a crucial aspect towards learning the specialization.

Note that if you do not want to open with Saber Throw -> Force Leap, you can also utilize any focus generating ability set that leaves you with 6 focus before you begin the opener in earnest (ex: Sundering Strike -> Freezing Force -> Combat Focus = 6 net focus) However, the actual placement of every ability past Combat Focus is absolutely vital for correct execution of the rotation.

A note on triple dot openers: I am philosophically averse to them, and I do believe that a triple dot opener is not a significant difference, negative or otherwise.

After the opener, you then flow into the main rotation, which can be defined with multiple hard rules in a strict priority system. When done properly, the rotation should have a flow to it, it should feel natural, like art. When taken as a whole, the rotation fits together like the solution to a complex puzzle, a solution that suddenly explains that the puzzle is simple after all.

Single Target Priority

	1: Overhead Slash, Plasma Brand, Blade Storm, and Vigilant Thrust ALL on Cooldown ALL the time This is a hard rule, and the key to understanding how to play Vigilance can be summed up with this rule. All of these abilities MUST be used on cooldown the entire time, with no delays. Often for newcomers to the specialization, there is some difficulty wrapping the mind around this concept, but the fact is that it is very possible. If you are correctly performing the opener in that sequence at the proper speed and there are no delays, the rotation will line up so that after the opener none of these core 4 abilities will ever be delayed. The Vigilance Rotation is a 24 GCD rotation, or 36 seconds. Should you execute it correctly, you should have 3 GCDs consumed by Plasma Brand, 4 GCDs each by Overhead Slash, Blade Storm, and Vigilant Thrust. This leaves 9 GCDs for you to carry out the remaining rotational priorities.Of course, in actual boss fights this may not be possible, but for dummy practice to familiarize yourself with the rotation, you must be able to perform this. On actual boss fights, you should try to maintain this rule, but in the event of an interruption, assume the priority within the rule from top to bottom in order to realign the rotation. Every rotation cycle requires 7 focus, though some will consume more or less within the Plasma Brand window. However, the disparity in generation is less than previous expansions due to how Vigilant Thrust can now be used on cooldown, allowing a more stable focus generation. You should learn how to read the little tricks, for example, if you have a Plasma Brand off cooldown and you use it, and Overhead Slash is immediately subsequent, you only need 5 focus to utilize both. However the same cannot be said vice versa. Become familiar with the patterns of how Focus is utilized in the rotation, and how much you need for every scenario. However, I cannot stress this enough: You MUST learn to be able to use all of these core rotational abilities on cooldown. This allows for maximum rotational AoE, maximum single target damage with DoT uptime and Blade Barrage procs, maximum burst, and maximum Force Rush generation and consumption, simultaneously.
	2: Blade Barrage While the damage of Blade Barrage may not seem all that amazing, the fact remains that it still is free, and still does damage. As such, it is still a vital part of your rotation. As the cooldown is gated primarily by Plasma Brand, as long as you use it before your next Plasma Brand, you’re fine, so you should move it within your Plasma Brand windows as much as possible.However, UNLIKE in 4.0 and 3.0, Blade Barrage is not worth delaying Plasma Brand for. If Plasma Brand is already off cooldown due to downtime shenanigans, use Plasma Brand first. The exception to this rule is if the downtime is enough that you can apply your full opener. In that case, it is better to apply the full opener and realign the rotation, even if you delay DoTs.
	3: Whirling Blade (Keening Procced) When Keening procs, it has an ICD of 20 seconds but a duration of 15 seconds. This means that for 15 seconds after it procs Whirling Blade MUST be used. However, it should never delay any of the above abilities, so just use it as long as Whirling Blade does not interfere with the above, with the priority of keening shifting upwards the longer it goes without being used.
	4: Combat Focus + Freezing Force AND/OR Whirling Blow (in Execute) Combat Focus essentially replaces Sundering Strike (see below) when it’s off cooldown, affording you an extra filler slot, and letting you push your resource to a larger degree. You should be using Combat Focus close to on cooldown, as it gives you the extra resource to use one Freezing Force. In general, you should try to pair the two abilities in relative proximity, before the next Sundering StrikeIn execute phase, Whirling Blow is available. Vigilance now has a stronger execute, and you can replace your one Freezing Force with one Whirling Blow. On dummy, this practice is much harder to carry out due to the lack of extra focus generation, so it’s optional but on actual bosses it is fairly feasible. Advanced players with good knowledge of the spec should be able to pair one Freezing Force and one Whirling Blow together in the execute, however be sure that when pairing Combat Focus with Focus consuming abilities that you do not disrupt the primary rotation.
	5: Sundering Strike Sundering Strike is your highest priority filler outside of the Combat Focus combination blocks, as it generates the most focus you can possibly generate in a single GCD. Use it close to on cooldown, but not quite. Generally most players will use roughly once every ~13.5 seconds. You can cap focus with this, but generally try to avoid it for maximum DPS. On actual bosses, advanced players can decrease usage of this in favor of other fillers due to increased Focus generation.
	6: Freezing Force Due to the Piercing Chill utility, Freezing Force is now a part of the single target rotation. Use it as much as you can without delaying ANYTHING else. A common mistake is overestimating the damage of this ability, it does good damage, but not more than any ability in the core rotation, and as such you should not try to keep the DoT up permanently. Instead, use it when you have excess focus and you know you will not delay anything. BE SURE NOT TO OVERWRITE THE DoT, as doing so will decrease the damage dealt per activation significantly.Your goal when practicing is only to use this ability as necessary. You CAN get higher parses on dummy by spamming it in theory, taking up rotation slots held by vigilant thrust, but this is bad because on an actual boss your resource generation is much higher, giving you more filler slots. On actual bosses, you will be allowed to use Freezing Force more often, since you have significantly more filler slots, while maintaining the base rotation. However until you can perform the rotation and get good numbers on the dummy without spamming Freezing Force, you will not reach your full potential on the boss.
	7: Saber Throw A weaker filler, you generally only want to use this a few times in a fight, or when you’re being ranged. Most of the time you won’t use this outside of the opener in an actual boss fight, as Sundering Strike is a better filler.
	8: Whirling Blow (Execute) A good filler when Ranged, but on dummy should really only be paired with Combat Focus (see above). On actual bosses, you can sort of fudge it a bit, but the line is not simple, use personal discretion and always follow the above rules before experimenting with stuff like this. Close to the bottom of the priority for a reason.
	9: Slash Rarely used, Freezing Force is basically better in every way. However, certain situations may occur where you must use this ability. For example, a target may die before Freezing Force gets its full utilization, and your Whirling Blow might not be off cooldown. In this event, Slash. Alternatively, if you have excess Focus and there’s still a Freezing Force ticking, Slash.

Single Target Rotation

In isolation, the priority system forces you into a rotation that looks like this. The first cycle begins after the initial focus build in the Opener that culminates in 12 focus.

Cycle 1: x2 Overhead Slash

Overhead Slash -> Empty -> Vigilant Thrust -> Empty ->

Blade Storm -> Empty -> Overhead Slash -> Plasma Brand ->

Cycle 2: x2 Vigilant Thrust

Vigilant Thrust -> Empty -> Blade Storm -> Empty ->

Overhead Slash -> Empty -> Vigilant Thrust -> Plasma Brand ->

Cycle 3: x2 Blade Storm

Blade Storm -> Empty -> Overhead Slash -> Empty ->

Vigilant Thrust -> Empty -> Blade Storm -> Plasma Brand ->

All the “Empty” slots can be filled by any of the abilities that are not in the 1st priority bracket.

One Blade Barrage has to be in every single cycle, leaving 2 spare GCDs in every cycle. These GCDs could be taken up by the non core abilities that are outlined in the priority, Whirling Blade when it procs, Freezing Force if you have enough resource, a Combat Focus + Freezing Force replacing a Sundering Strike, maybe even a Saber Throw. However each block has an identical amount of potential openings for drifting abilities, upon which is up to the user. If you follow the opener and priority to the letter, everything naturally falls together like this. You will always know what block you are in because the first ability after Plasma Brand will tell you which Cycle you are in. On a boss, downtime may make it so that you are not in any of these cycles, but having uptime will naturally realign the rotation so that you follow one of these three cycles. Study these cycles well, as a complete understanding of the mechanics of each cycle leads to a complete understanding of Vigilance.

A note on alternative rotations: Advanced players will be able to fool around with the priority of abilities in Empty. Some will use Freezing Force instead of Blade Barrage. As long as the spacing of the abilities outside of empty looks like this, one can technically modify all other priorities. This should only be done by advanced players however.

AoE DPS (3+)

AOE in Vigilance is fairly simplistic, and contrary to popular belief, is NOT based on a priority system, but a set rotation of sorts that endlessly repeats. This system is designed to swap all damage towards AOE. The principle behind this is to increase your Cyclone Slash damage using your Burning DoTs, and keeping at least one DoT on all encountered enemies at once.

As Plasma Brand is your longest DoT, you use Plasma Brand to maintain the Cyclone Slash / Sweeping Slash Damage Buff. Alternate with Plasma Brand with Overhead Slash to maintain the debuff for as long as possible, using Vigilant Thrust on cooldown, and Cyclone spam for days. It’s important NOT to delay Vigilant Thrust for Plasma Brand, as this lowers your aoe, this is why you cycle Overhead Slash in to cover the alternate DoT cycle, because Vigilant Thrust does not actually refresh DoTs, only spreads them if they are not already present on ancillary targets.

While doing this, you will then cycle in Freezing Force as the DoT duration lasts, especially in scenarios where your Cyclone cannot cleave everyone, as Freezing Force has a larger radius. My favorite place to use Freezing Force is when my resource hits the 2 mark, as it’s enough to use Freezing Force but not enough to use Cyclone Slash.

On 8 targets, doing a rotation like this will allow you to hit upwards of 40k AOE DPS.

Parsing and Analysis

Parsing is an important but highly overrated tool for determining DPS. Don’t use it as an epeen barometer. It means very little when it comes to DPS on bosses. What it DOES do is help develop a form of muscle memory. In order to fully master a rotation, you must first figure out every possible way to mess it up on the dummy.

This means you go through with every parse you have regardless of mistakes to learn your rotation inside out. Vigilance is an easy to learn but hard to master spec, and the rotation SEEMS easy to pick up and understand but a single mistake can alter the entire flow of the spec.

When looking at your parse, you should always notice a few things:

• How close are my top priority abilities, Overhead Slash, Plasma Brand, Blade Storm, and Vigilant Thrust, to their minimum cooldowns?
• When looking at the order of the abilities, are Overhead Slash, Blade Storm, and Vigilant Thrust always spaced the same distance apart? Did I ever delay any one of them and alter the timing? How did I fix it? How can I avoid it?
• How many times did I Whirling Blade and Freezing Force?

Here is a sample parse of mine, following the general precepts of this guide (the first few GCDs are different but from Overhead Slash on it follows the opener of the guide).

 

9074 DPS on 1.5M dummy, Vigilance Guardian (242 Mainhand, 230 armorings, 240 enhancements, 240 mods.)

• http://parsely.io/parser/view/227725/0

8873 on 2.5M dummy, Vigilance Guardian (242 Mainhand, 230 armorings, 240 enhancements, 240 mods

• http://parsely.io/parser/view/227727/0

Notice the utilization of each ability, and how none are delayed farther than they need to be.

Application to the Boss

“You must unlearn what you have learned.”

– Master Yoda

Now that you’ve filled your mind with the semantics of the rotation in an idealized version of the rotation, you cannot be bound to it. The goal of the rotation in this guide is not to tell you how to play the class, but how to learn the class. The greatest strength of a Vigilance Guardian is that there’s very little that forces us to actually adhere to a true rotation like an IO merc. Instead, the rotation can be resolved and adjusted on the fly in pretty much any scenario.

This does not mean you can spam Strike and be a complete idiot to do amazing numbers, but it does mean that you must become comfortable resuming the rotation from every possible contingency. You must maintain APM and uptime by CONSTANTLY PRESSING BUTTONS. If this means adapting the rotation to create a combination of 3 abilities that you can use from 10 meters in order to do a mechanic, do it. Do not become bound to the rotation, instead use it as a framework that can be deviated from. Be aware of which of the three cycles you have been placed in, or whether you are in one of the three cycles at all.

Your goal on bosses is to stick to the first point in the priority as often as possible, and take advantage of the increased resource generation to utilize your focus consuming fillers, Freezing Force, Whirling Blade, and Slash as much as you can without disrupting the rotation. However without practicing the basic rotation that limits the utilization of filler, you will be incapable of correct execution on the boss.

Reflectodex

The REFLECTODEX™ (Saber Reflect Tips and Tricks). Credit to Torvai, Vaidinah, Gyrfalcon, and Daharel for discovering many of these I did not find myself.

Eternity Vault:

• Annihilation Droid: Stun + Group Cleave
• Gharj: None
• Pylons: Ew
• Infernal Council: Ew
• Soa: Blue Circles @ Floor 1

Karraga’s Palace:

• Bonethrasher: None
• J&S: Unload, direct attacks
• Foreman Crusher: Red Circles (don’t do it, accuracy debuff)
• Fire Droid thing: None
• Karraga: Asscleave Fire, Mouse Droids Exploding, Fire Puddles, BASICALLY ANYTHING FIRE.

Explosive Conflict:

• Zorn and Toth: All circles, including the red circle, and the following yellow circ le that turns purple. Fearful debuff also is reflectable, but be very careful when doing so.
• Firebrand and Stormcaller: Double Destruction, attacks from adds, Lightning Pylons
• Colonel Vorgath: Turrets
• Kephess: Damage dealt to Trenchcutters is redirected to you if they are under a warrior shield, if you pop saber reflect when the damage is redirected, the damage redirected to you is sent to the warrior himself. You can also damage the walker with Saber Reflect by standing under it WHILE IT IS “IMMUNE.”

Terror from Beyond:

• Writhing Horror: None
• The Dread Guard: Doom (try to Blade Blitz instead of reflecting, use reflect as a backup cheese), Heirad’s Force Lightning
• Operator 9: Nothing important, misc add single target attacks perhaps
• Kephess the Undying: The red laser, the persistent raidwide AoE in burn phase
• Terror from Beyond: The slam. Occurs roughly every 10 swipes, count very accurately

Scum and Villainy:

• Dash’roode: Nothing important
• Titan 6: Add damage, nothing important
• Thrasher: Firebug’s AoE mostly
• Operations Chief: Terminate (if your tank wants you to take it, be sure to pop a second cooldown after, threat can very much be an issue with reflecting Terminate)
• Olok: Whatever
• Cartel Warlords: If you get fixated on by Sunder, you can reflect it. You should never get hit by Vilus’ stabbing spree (but it is reflectable), because you have unremitting. Just leap at Vilus every time he moves to stab somebody, it’s a better cheese than Sniper entrench.
• Styrak: His adds channel a Lightning Attack that is reflectable. In SM (story) and HM (veteran) , reflect that attack. In NiM (master), that reflect is a waste of DPS because your other DPS probably don’t have reflect so it doesn’t actually “speed up” the phase. However, when Styrak’s corporeal form does his lightning AoE and gives everyone the orange debuff, you can reflect your own debuff onto the Styrak boss himself. This actually contributes DPS that speeds up the encounter and is worth doing.

Ravagers:

• Sparky: Brutal Punch, Adds jump
• Bulo: Scatter Blast, Mass Barrage, Ore Carts, Pirates attacks
• Torque: Turrets, Fire Device, Shoots Lasers, Torque’s Knockback
• Master and Blaster: Rain of Pain
• Coratanni: Basically all of Cora and Ruugar’s attacks, Deck guns, Ruugar’s dots.

ToS:

• Malaphar: Spear Throw(red circle)
• Walkers: None
• Lurker: None
• Commanders: Kurse’s Smash
• Revan: Heave, Saber Overcharge (cleave), HK’s Mines(only if they’re cleansed, ie red circles), Middle Droid’s Attack, Core’s AoE (Essence Shear I believe, doesn’t prevent stacks)

Dread Fortress:

• Nefra: None
• Draxus: Subteroth Explosion, Draxus attacks excluding cleave, Guardian’s Thundering Blast, Force Lightning, Guardian’s Cleave
• Grob’thok: Raidwide Roar
• Corruptor Zero: Chest Laser, Missile Barrage, Ranged Adds attacks
• Brontes: Orbs

Dread Palace:

• Bestia: None
• Tyrans: Fire at the DOOR, NOT INFERNO
• Calphayus: None
• Raptus: Force Execution
• Council: Burn Phase AoE.

Toborro’s Courtyard:

• Purple Circle, attacks from adds

Colossal Monolith:

• Slam (Watch for the breathing animation for when he’s about to slam, with the lightning in his armpits.)
• Initial tick of Curse (Generates MASSIVE THREAT)

About the Author

f you don’t know who I am, I’m Rydarus. I’ve written the Vigilance and Vengeance guide for Dulfy since mid 2.0. I’ve perfected and tinkered my approach to Vig/Veng under the principles of DoT uptime, and I hope to spread the Way of Uptime to other players.

This guide has and will always be written about how I play this spec. I try to be as close to ideal as I can be, but I will at some point inevitably have minor disagreements on how to play the spec, especially as to whether or not something is actually ideal on a boss and not just for a dummy.

I’m also slow to read the comments section, if you have concerns or want immediate feedback, please post here:http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=780216

Additionally, if you appreciate the guide, please click my referral link!

http://www.swtor.com/r/7hfdTn

I’ve downed all the 8man content in the game pre 4.0, including 10/10 Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice on tier in 3.0.

In 4.0, I killed 5/5 HM ToS, 5/5 HM Ravagers, 4/5 Nightmare DF, 5/5 Nightmare DP, 5/5 Nightmare TFB, 4/4 NiM EC (Timed Run), and 7/7 NiM SnV, all in 4.0. You can find various kill videos on my Twitch, twitch.tv/rydarus.

In 5.0, I’ve been raiding casually, mostly queing PvP and grinding this stupidass Galactic Command System.

I’d like to thank many people for helping me write this guide, as well as helping me get where I am in progression today.

• Genji for being a better hero than Jedi Guardian
• She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, for carrying me (Those dank rescues in Core Phase, reminding me to respec utilities, you rock).
• Gyrfalcon, 3.0 Alacrity augs so gud
• Justin/ColonelPumpy of <Zorz>, for showing me what an actual good player is like. Otherwise we might think the dead game dickwad posers were good! THE HORROR!
• Mattmonkey, for inspiring me to write a guide all those years ago.
• Bioware, for making a game dead enough that I still get to write a guide.
• PVP, for teaching me to be a better DPS
• Training Dummies, for fluffing mah epeenz kappa keepo