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Layenem

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  1. So, as it was first explained to me and then tested by myself and a few other number cruncher buddies with me (so I didn't have to do too much math... though there really wasn't much to do) Willpower will win vs Power every day with so long as they are within 5%... Willpower ONLY DR's it's crit component, it will never DR base damage. In my Shadow dps spec I have 1900+ willpower and it still gives .2 no matter what I do. ON TOP of this, we have a class buff (oh how quickly people forget) that increases your Willpower by 5%. So if there's an aug that has 20 willpower and another than has 22 power... Willpower will actually be at 24 with the buff. That's an additional 2 points of damage and the difference between power and willpower's application to base damage is minimal. Since the willpower and power augments are the same numbers, always willpower. Always. That's 21.6 willpower vs 18 power... the difference between gains is not enough that 3.6 willpower worth not having. Again, diminishing returns on willpower is ONLY for it's crit component, not for base damage. There is no diminishing returns on it.
  2. Just wanted to get a forum going to see what other shadow tanks are pushing and what their abilities are doing. This is only a 2 minute fight though the longest fight I've been in is 5 minutes and it pretty much evens out after the first minute. http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb334/voobi/TankParse-624282.jpg I can't seem to get photobucket links to work in any of the SWTOR forums. Sorry for having to redirect off the page... Basically: 624 DPS 282.5 HPS
  3. So, as I said on another post to people who don't pay attention, you do understand that even though Shadow abilities didn't get altered our dps went up with the stat caps going up right? Like this wasn't totally lost on you? Because I've seen a lot of people who aren't quite grasping that an increase in stats = an increase in dps...
  4. Be careful! I eluded the the dps melee increase and someone said I was no longer credible hahahaha... noobs!!!
  5. Is there a separate site for Shadow Tanks? I'm trying to figure out what the new diminishing returns are, if there are any. I know BioWare said they were changing a few things that didn't take in 1.2...
  6. I don't know what his timer is but each time we had him at 20% around the three minute mark (we used Inspiration as a timer like we do on Ops) and he just went crazy. I even bring the adds in to the boss so the gunslinger can AE the melee adds then he tosses two quick ae's at the ranged mobs and they are dead so no lost dps there. Apparently others are having the same inconsistencies and some are having them when the fight begins.
  7. Okay for those of you that have beat the boss: When he gets below 25-20% hp do all the lava grates become active for you with 1second in between each reapplication and do the static balls come out faster and full blown?
  8. So I found a link someone posted of their LR-5 site from yesterday (April 12). I took 4 guys (Gunslinger, Shadow Tank, Commando Healer, and Sentinel) in there with all being Rakata geared and Columi Augmented gear. These same players where a part of the progression crew that cleared both KP and EV HM so they can play. Though admittedly there are portions of both zones where the strats aren't near as important as the gear, yet I could give the same gear to noobs and they'd lose their minds. Moving on, I found a video of a group who ran HM Lost Island and their fight with LR-5 was COMPLETELY different then our fight when the mob got down to 20% health. In this video the lava remains consistent (random locations, not the entire floor) and the energy balls remain consistent (hit a small area and expand in distance and damage). HOWEVER, when I ran this for 5 and a half hours yesterday once LR-5 was down to 20% (roughly, might have been 25%) ALL lava grates where activated with a 1 second space between reactivation making it impossible to move without damage and the electric fields hit the ground fully expanded, doing max damage and stunning whoever was in it. Here's their video: Now... people don't make this kind of stuff up. The closest we got to killing LR-5 was just under 4k and when people say to me "Oh he was easy" I say "Show me a vid or ****" because I don't believe it... and this is the second video where he didn't go bat crazy at that magical 25-20% mark... Well no dagon wonder you found it so easy! If you can manage the first 25% you can manage the whole dagon fight! Now I don't know if we got bugged or if others just aren't getting the fight to happen the way it is supposed to but I'm not too excited about it right this second. Are there any Devs that can clear up the information on this at all? How is the fight SUPPOSED to go? We have two different methods, one that's easy for the hard core player and a challenge to the causal (which is how it should be) and one that is near impossible to beat. This entire issue with LR-5 is why I'm standing firm to 1.2 being the downfall of SWTOR. If we had a bugged zone awesome, how do we fix it and let's move on. If that's how the fight is supposed to go (I'll post the video later this evening so you guys can see I'm not making this up) then how is the casual player supposed to have any fun playing this game? Trolls: I could care less about your perfect worlds. If you never had any issues with bugs great go buy a lottery ticket. You're just as annoying as the grammar nazis. No one cares that you never have any bugs. Eat a cookie and go play more hello kittie online.
  9. lol for those of you who haven't played the new content yet by all means put yourselves on ignore The tank is more than capable and well geared, as stated, so the individual that said undergeared or sucked is beyond way off I will gladly post 4 hours of wipe on one boss to show you that the ability of the group is not lacking and that everyone easily did their part. If you can find, across ANY MMO, another time that I "QQ"d please feel free. For those that said they have cleared it, show me or shut up. We had a guild claim they beat the new HM FP last night and when I told them to show me just the fight they couldn't. Really? You can't tell me what it drops? I mean you can look that up and tell me what it drops on the final boss and you failed like that? Get out of here. Those of you calling this a QQ post have either not played the new content or... no you just haven't played the new content. I spent more than ample time in the new content yesterday and the items I was expecting to see that was brought up by the Devs at the guild summit where maybe half there. And dude that said, lol, that my statement about the dps going up lost all credibility for the post either has no clue how to play dps or rolls with dps classes that can't play hahaha So lets see all these hot shots post some videos of your walk through the new content!!! I can't wait!
  10. So you buff up dps classes generally by about 15-30%... Awesome. BUT you nerf all tank classes ability to maintain agro EXCEPT the Shadow... Fail. You increase Scoundrel's ability to heal... Awesome. You KILL the Commando and Sage healers for anything harder than normal mode flashpoints... Fail. What exactly was the thought process in the nerfs? Sages have no way to regain lost force and you took away their only ability to do so (yes you can spec down to 13% health vs 15% to regain but the sage now has to spend more time OFF of the tank...) The commando's ammo regen is dead. On top of that you killed their ability to remove debuffs effectively by removing the 2 second spec they could knock off of it. I'm running full Rakata+ (Columi gear with augment slots) in a raid force and I'd call us pretty dagon functional. Yet we can't even kill LR-5 in HM Lost Island. I've got plenty of video that can show we are taking full advantage of the setup but this boss goes beyond nuts when <20-25% (I won't even get in to it). We are the third best raid force on our server (which isn't saying much do to population) but when the best raid forces can't even manage to get this LR-5 down there's a huge issue. Closest we got was just below 4k health left. This is ridiculous. I just got the in game mail for a free 30 days... big whoop. I can't tell you how much I hate WoW but it's the only viable game to play now and it's BORING. But hey, at least you can kill stuff in that game. Oh and "story mode meant for the casual raid guild to see raid content..." is at best a bold faced lie and at worst either a showing of stupidity on the people who lead the development teams and their inability to ensure quality control OR you thought the PTS results where too "good" so you made it impossible. Last I checked you did flashpoint type zones to prepare for raids not the other way around... It's disgusting. Oh and I won't even get in to the failed legacy... you know all that stuff you said we'd have that are now under the "soon to come" menu... PLUS the "you can buy these things with your legacy levels OR credits" but that's a fail because it's requirements PLUS credits... Stupid.
  11. To be perfectly honest, I think the one thing I highly disagree with is your priority of stacked attributes: You have Absorption over Shield over Defense chance The problem is that even in the Columi gear you're going to have the 30% plus you kinetic ward plus your armor bonus so you're going to be at the 50 point cap. I pushed all the shield chance out of my armor and I'm still just above 50 (something like 50.37 shield chance). It should be Absorption over Defense over Shield (and I don't even tell anyone to put shield on priority, so on my list it's completely knocked off since you can't mod it out of the ear, implants, wrist, or waist anyways)
  12. With no intention of going past Powerr's PvP tanking guide. Myself and several others who see the PvP portion don't even review it due to the fact that in almost any other game, the PvP vs PvE differences where enough to drive one mad (Personally I am horrible at PvP!!!) So as I near the end of my equipment grindage to full rakata gear (swapping for whatever columi crit crafter pieces I can get my hands on obviously… the combination of hereto referred to as “rakata+”) I have decided that I love my tank! As I came up through the levels I found that having a lot of defense was easier than finding a lot of shield chance or shield absorption… So I decided to make my own purple combines components using Artificing and it worked wonders. Even on a piece of garbage laptop that was about 4 years old and never capable of running a game more complex than solitaire, I was able to kill elite mobs 4 and 5 levels higher than myself only being able to look straight down at the ground (haha oh the joy!). I’m not a kid no mo though!!! I’s be grown up! A big ole level 50 raid tank! Currently I’m sitting in 2 pieces shy of full rakata+ gear and can easily out tank any other tank in my guild. Note that this has several factors to add in, one of which being understanding mechanics, another being play style, and of course the final that I’M FREAKING AWESOME!!! (O’DOYLE RULES!!!) Whoa… you can’t just let me go all crazy on you there geez! Reel me in people or this is going to take forever! Anywho! I’ve noticed quite a few horrible issues with the Shadow Tank though! So I’m going to address them, because so far as I can tell, not one issue is beyond pebcak (google it, I’m not going to ruin your fun!). Oh yes! I see you whiney little trolls trollollolin through the forums and complaining and crying that “shadows need this” and “shadows just aren’t capable of this” and blah blah blah… Allow me to speak on behalf of all shadow tanks who go out of their way to ignore you on the threads: *clears throat* Why are you even here??? Okay, my word isn’t enough? Fine. Let’s walk the line, shall we?... First off… How do you gear??? Oh the difficult question! Now currently, prior to 1.2, this is what I would consider THE ideal spec for a shadow tank with minor tweaks based on how you play. Keep in mind that when I say minor I literally mean MINOR as in “not a significant amount that I’m willing to waste days telling you the differences…” So turn off you /autodisagree command and come show me up bro (or sis… that’s right, I’m not sexist! Bring it you babes of battle!!!) Allow me to first say that while we use our shield heavily, I would never, ever, ever go out of my way for shield chance… It just happens to be on one or two of my rakata+ pieces and I can’t mod it out (meaning it’s on an ear, implant, wrist or waist piece). You’re going to have plenty of it through spec and gear set bonus that I am currently sitting JUST above 50 (diminished returns from 40-50 and a dead cap at 50) and I’d rather lose 1% in that than absorption or defense. I mean seriously, I sat at 23ish without the tionese+ gear… I didn’t need to find more. Then add the bonus to the gear sets and the Kinetic Ward love and I was at 43% before I even know what stats where important to obtain. Translation: I was good with shield chance. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, your actual damage reduction is going to come with higher grade gear. Until you hit tionese you can literally fill out all of your armor mods (armoring) with some nice stuff (126 I believe) at a rate of 2+ per day for 5 pieces of gear doing soloable dailies (this does not include the H2+s or H4s)… do the math. Three days and you’re good. Don’t focus too much on it past this because, to my knowledge, you can’t increase it through anything but armoring and all the purple gear comes with innate armoring that’s topnotch. Finally, for this topic, is defense chance and shield absorption. Shield absorption caps at 50%. Diminishing returns past 40 and stops being useful all together at 50 (these are pre 1.2 numbers) which means that when your shield hits you’ll be blocking approximately 80-90% of the damage. Currently I’m at a bit over 40% shield absorption and damage reduction which means approximately 80% damage absorbed all together when my shield procs (50% of the time that defense chance fails). Which leads me into defense chance. I do gear for this. This and shield absorption are the only true attributes I focus on. However, I do like absorption higher than defense chance. Personal preference but the change is not going to be a significant swing so I won’t even go in to it. For those wondering, the way I understand the imaginary dice roll is that all attacks look something like this: (For this example I’m going to use the following shorthands: Damage Reduction = DR; Defense Chance = DC; Shield Chance = SC; Shield Absorption = SA) Note: This has been posted in other forums, just recapping so those who have not seen do not need to go through several posts. We assume the following: Swing: 100 points of damage DR: 40 DC: 30 SC: 50 SA: 40 1. Swing minus DR (cannot fail) === “100 minus 40 = 60” 2. Remaining from #1 vs DC === “60 vs 30% DC” a. IF DC WINS: i. 0 Damage, swing is over b. IF DC LOSES: i. Move on to step 3 3. Remaining from #1 vs SC: === “60 vs 50% SA” a. IF SC WINS: i. Swing minus SA === “60 minus 40 = 20” (Absorption compared to original value of the swing: 100) b. IF SC LOSES: i. Remaining value hits: 60 points of damage taken 4. Attack is over Second… Can We Tank??? Personally speaking, I sure as hell can tank! Although there are several factors that play in to this, the most prevalent are your playability! Basically: Do you suck? Cause I don’t care what class you play, if you suck you suck! I’m a very blunt person, so don’t expect roses from me! The second important issue in this would be do you have the gear and support to do so? Does your healer have the gear to heal you? Does your dps have the gear to drop the mob? You, as the tank, need to have good gear to tank good mobs but it’s not all on your shoulders… just don’t be “that guy” who blames it on everyone else because then you do suck! I don’t care how well you play, lack of responsibility is a trait you should keep to yourself if you wanna do Ops… because the Op is about the whole! The final portion is agro control. No tank can tank if they aren’t controlling agro! If you’re healers are getting beat on we have a huge issue! Though I’ve found that in this game, since we don’t have “Target of Target” or any ability to set up macro’s for an assist key, the dps tends to be very selfish. You can have 4 and 5 targets and both dps are beating on separate targets. While that’s cool and all that, the jerks should be smarter than the tank and, oh I don’t know, maybe attack the same mob? Now this can be resolved by assigning one of your dps to set the target marker and the other to follow the marked mobs while you’re fighting, then your shield goes on the only one who might give you an issue, and bam! Truth be told… I usually don’t cast shield on anyone until I see if the dps is pulling agro and who is pulling agro, which is rare, but the ae commando’s tend to like to slap everything they can lol… Aside from that, I would easily argue that Shadow Tanks are the best tanks in house! We can go circles among circles talking about why Shadow Tanks are not the best but I like actions over words and I’ve made some pretty astounding actions that say we are! I tank hard mode operations without concern and am constantly running the “new to 50s” through hard mode flashpoints to get them some gear love and teach them the finer portions of their roles in flashpoints and operations… I have yet to see another tank who can ae tank like us or flex up to a mob like us! Oh yes… I’ve played dps on many of a run so that the newer tanks can get some learning going!!! Meh… Again, may just be playstyle. Might be that I have yet to come across another tank class that I saw do a better job or had less complaints from healers. Generally though, aside from my personal bias and preference, I generally ask my healers how it feels healing other tank types with the same gear and the answer always makes me happy in the force. Now… this isn’t a tank fight remember, this is a “So you wanna tank…” type of thread. I’m sure some loyalist vanguard is doing to start throwing around the BS flag and I’m gonna let it sit on the ground. Mostly because I don’t touch poop with my hands but there’s also that whole “show me” thing. Argue with actions, not words. Bring it! Okay then! Let’s move on to what some of you want to see. Now I love the PvPers and how they throw the threads up about the PvP specs and what not, but I don’t even read them because I don’t PvP and I don’t want to waste my time finding out that a PvP based spec is crap for PvE. So for those of you in the same boat, here is the spec I use. Before I put it up let me say one thing: I don’t care what theorycrafting says! It’s theory! Theory is great to prepare but when you get in there and start punching mobs (and get t-bagged by robots… Yes it will happen… so strange BioWare lol) you will find out quick that theory belongs at the beginning and actual builds happen through experience. My build is based on how I play. I hold agro, I stay alive, and I never get yelled at by healers… Clearly, this build is my best fit based on my experience, and for the most part, I believe that any Shadow Tank can pick this up and play with it!!! Shadow Tank Build: Of course, the build is useless without some type of cast priority right? Right. So, while we don’t have any type of combat tracker threads to figure out what does the most threat and most dps, this is based on how I hold ae agro off of those jerk dpsers who don’t want to work together to down one target at a time. The only time I truly have issues in an Op is the first 15 seconds of the fight when my Gunnery Commandos and my overzealous Sage dps pop all of their dps cooldowns and adrenals and I have to use a snap (non-damage, 6 second target lock taunt) on the mob to remind it who it’s daddy is! You gamer girl tanks will be reminding it who it’s mommy is I guess… though that’s not as intimidating? (Maybe telling it who it’s daddy isn’t? We can work this out later lol)… … Yeah I know… awkward silence… I always do that /kicks floor http://i1200.photobucket.com/albums/bb334/voobi/STSpec.jpg I tried every link possible to post this as an actual image but I don't think these forums and photobucket get along just yet... I'm not a tech guy either so bleh Shadow Tank Ability Order/Priority 1. Kinetic Ward (before combat starts + global cooldown) 2. Force Potency (will give a chance to increase threat) 3. Slow Time (make sure all mobs are in range) (-5% damage to up to 5 mobs) 4. Force Breach (-5% accuracy for up to 5 mobs) 5. Spinning Kick 6. Spinning Strike (once mob is <30% health) Once these are cast: 7. Cycle “Double Strike” until you get the “Accelerated Project” proc 8. Project 9. Saber Strike to keep your Force ready for one of the first 4 (constantly above 20% is ideal) 10. Mind Control or Mass Mind Control as needed a. I make it a habit to not use these and rely on Slow Time and Project for most threat Miscellaneous: 11. Using stims/adrenals are a must! a. For tanking I prefer i. Rakata Fortitude Stim (If not biochem: Prototype Hyper-Battle Fortitude Stim) ii. Rakata Absorb Adrenal (If not biochem: Prototype Hyper-Battle Absorb Adrenal) Note: There are raid drop stims and adrenals that, IF YOU CAN FIND someone who has the schematic, can buy instead and are slightly better. Aside from all of this madness, I think the key to being a good tank is having a good core group of people to hang out with and have fun with. Let’s face it… all that work is useless if you’re not having fun! So get out there, kiss some hands and shake some babies, and go make a name for yourself! (Sadly I have no clue how to make those cool little pictures of my character with the server info at the bottom of the page in the signature box so I have nothing to place there lol...) Layenem Atyourfeet of Elysium Server of the Equilibrium Guild Disclaimer: Any names or likeness of any person(s) is on purpose and if they care then they shouldn't let a crazy old Marine have a computer...
  13. Shadow MT for HM Ops here... It aint the class.
  14. Remove 12 year olds from the keyboards. Then you lose the "complex" portion of the "behind the mob" requirement... This is the most ridiculous post ever lol... it's like WoW has overly nurtured it's gaming core and they are coming in to all games to make them simple... Personally, I wouldn't mind it a little tougher. Ween out the weak, give me those who can play a class that others are afraid of, because those are the ones who will stand with me in Nightmare modes until we down the final boss...
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