SW:ToR Tanking and the Assassin

What We Know About Threat
1) All damage has a threat rating of 1.
2) All healing has a threat rating of 0.5.
3) All abilities listed as "does additional threat" have a threat increase of 0.5.
4) Tank stances increase all threat ratings by 0.5.
5) In order for aggro to change targets from melee range, the aggressors threat pool has to be trumped by a rating of 1.1.
6) In order for aggro to change targets from range, the aggressors threat pool has ...

I know I said this post would be up sooner than now, but the holidays and the push to 50 have gotten in my way. In no way will I take credit for the majority of the information contained within this post as I am no mathematician - most of this information was found over at www.sithwarrior.com. All of the information pertained herein came from a primer by Gankstah that I will attempt to put into "plain english", but some of it was copied directly to save time (why reword something that's ...

I've encountered this question a lot, and what seems like an easy answer is actually a complicated series of concepts. I will list everything, in no particular order, that I believe makes a good tank. To some this may be common knowledge, but to an aspiring first-time tank it might be enlightening.

1. Gear - a good tank always needs to stay on top of their gear. Unlike dps (or to a lesser extent healers), a tank can't just slide by with mediocre gear. Our entire usefulness is ...

Disclaimer: Min/maxing ahead.

There has been a hot mess of a debate going on in the Rift warrior forums over here regarding post-patch 1.1 damage specs. I managed to slog through the entirety of that monster of a post and, sadly, come up with very few competitive dps specs. Even after the nerf to BM, it still looks like having a pet is mandatory for pulling the best dps, but 1 or 2 other specs may be close.
(note: BM gains a lot of buffs by itself that other specs only obtain ...

I've heard a lot of people complain "Oh my god, I have so many abilities that I don't know what to use and when!" Considering that your average spec has approximately 20-30 abilities that can be used (note that I don't say should be used), managing them can become a problem. Luckily for us, Trion included a built-in macro feature much like WoW's to help us out. At the end of the combat macros section I will post a few other useful macros that everyone should check out.

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