The damage transfer only works in PvP, you'll still be blocking 5% of their damage just from applying guard.

Yes, it affects anything that says "weapon damage" on the tooltip (or doesn't specify). The tooltip has just never been updated.

I was looking at "effective uptime" so I subtracted 1 GCD from the 6 seconds, since you have to proc for it to happen, the next attack won't be landing immediately which means you lose effective uptime. There are circumstances where attacks are happening faster than once every 1.5 seconds, but in general I found it was a good average to use for comparison. Bumping it up those extra points didn't affect any calculations more than 0.5% - if you rate it higher, swapping out an absorb augment for a defense augment equalizes the equation. Unfortunately you can't write an equation around that, so you have to average out the actual usefulness of the relic. Actually shield is the most useless stat out of all of them for basically every class except vanguard who could benefit from a higher shield rating only due to their absorb bonus increase. If you have that kind of stat distribution you don't have a mediocre stat budget at all, you have a top end stat budget. Top end on gear budget wise is ~1360 not including relics. You are saying you have a 1644 budget, which means top end fully augmented gear with two War Hero relics. So maybe you can tell me what kind of gear you are actually wearing to think that you're "mediocre". In comparison Rakata budget is like 677 + augments (420). That is exactly what optimal means, my spreadsheets are sitting with the gear layout and when I make changes it shows what the up and down values were for each change and if overall that was better or worse to the final stats. Only for Vanguards was shield rated higher than absorb in some cases.

Diminishing returns begin after 1 point is invested in a talent. The only exceptions to this are Endurance (health) and Expertise. You can see the diminishing returns graphs here for defensive skills: http://www.tankingtor.com/2012/02/guides-shield-versus-defense.html Stims are affected by diminishing returns, so the higher your stats are the less effect you will receive from them. The Absorb relic basically hard caps your absorb around 70% while active. End Game PvE you'll probably end up with around 28% defense and 50/50 shield/absorb. PVP is closer to ~24% defense and 45/45 shield/absorb.

This might help with deciding how to gear out - it's more in depth but will give you an idea for gear percentages and what to aim for. http://www.tankingtor.com/2012/07/swtor-optimal-tanking-gear-guide.html In short: you're pretty good on defense, bringing shield up will see a larger overall benefit.

I'm glad we were on the same page then. Good luck with your raiding, you should gear out in no time. Thank you, I'm glad you found some useful stuff in there. It seems for the most part, that keeping shield and absorb percentages even gives the best results. Your ratios would be more accurate than mine if you don't take the relic proc chance and talented in combat shield absorb boost in to account. Since those two things boost your absorb significantly investing more heavily in shield appears to yield better results. There isn't really a wrong way to do it, since everything is sitting on base end game stats anyway and we're talking augments, if it works for you that's great. Because of how Battlemaster gear was itemized I used Vindicator belt, bracers and 2 weaponmaster implants to get the small boost to crit and surge that I wanted without compromising too much of set bonus or defensive rating. In War Leader they completely messed around with the itemization so I'll probably be going back to 95% defensive gear. This is what I'm looking at currently http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/34b3c417-e6d5-4b57-acf1-4778b053af08 (hit "Wish List") and making up for stuff with augments.

Hey Val, Sorry I had a busy weekend and haven't been back on the forums. I see where all your shield rating is coming from, I hadn't put on any relics when I ran through my testing. Your best bet for a defensive relic will be a Battlemaster (or war hero) one. If you can't or won't pvp even picking up a champion one for credits will help level your stats out a bit. I'd actually pick up one or the other relatively soon, I would imagine the damage decrease will be noticeable. Other then that, you'll just have to wait for your gear sets to merge together. You're kind of heavy in shield right now because gear is made to be worn as a set and if you only have a few mixed and matched pieces you'll be heavier on one stat than others due to the change in stats across gear sets.

I did a quite in depth write-up of this that's actually stickied at the top of the forum. http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=494715 If you were interested.

The only reason I wouldn't recommend this is partially because the set bonuses aren't complete garbage, and partially because it's costly unless you're not planning to run ops and upgrade any time soon. Its really fast to move up from Tionese, and not much slower to move in to Rakata after that if you're in a guild that does Ops. If you just want a particular look swap out the chest piece and match your gear to it - unless the sets are completely different there won't be much overall change by swapping in the secondary pieces. I don't know, a 20% increase on (5% of your max health) absorbed every 12 seconds doesn't seem like a wasted bonus to me.

Good, single target tanking isn't difficult when mixing in taunts. I'm kind of confused with the responses, so I'll just try to outline for you the best way to tank trash (from my experience). First I want to say: Your AOE taunt is a last resort when fighting a spread out group of mobs. It should only be used after your group begins to do AOE damage. If you use it prior to your group outputting aoe damage you've basically wasted it - this is because the threat levels on thos mobs are so minimal you could have swapped to them and hit your free attack to aggro them instead. Basing your issue with fighting groups of mobs on the fact that your AOE taunt will not reach them all means you're working in the wrong order. I just wanted to get that up front here first since it was the first thing you said. ***************** Now to the core of it ... This is how a fight should go -> Optional- CC high level targets, prioritize champion > elite > strong 1- Tank marks primary target for all DPS to focus on, this should be a "normal" target (or lowest in terms of strength based on the enemy group composition). 2- Tank marks secondardy targets (this is necessary for some groups) and outlines the kill order. Kill order should be weak > standard > strong > elite > champion 3- Tank jumps in, gets all initial aggro. (You can sub this with using an AOE attack like mortar volley to begin - as a Vanguard you will have two options, start with an AOE, or jump in and use your free explosive surge). 4- Tank uses some type of AOE attack hitting as many mobs as possible (adjust this if you are CCing so that your AOE is out of range of CC'd mobs). 5- Tank taunts primary target (this can be skipped if the mob is going to die very fast) 6- Tank swaps to secondary targets that were missed with the first AOE and hits them, either with a second aoe or single target attack (this can be your free attack, you're ranged you don't even have to move), prioritize champion > elite > strong targets for this aggro gain. You have 6 seconds of the other target being glued to you before you lose control of it to accomplish this. ** Any time a mob makes a bee line for your healer swap targets and hit it, if no one else has hit that mob it should swap back to you immediately ** 7- Your primary target should be dead or close to dead unless it was a champion type. If it is not close to dead swap back and stun/cc it. This gives you another 4 seconds. If your DPS have not killed this mob in ~12 seconds since this fight began you should have CC'd everything else because they're all champions. 8- begin single target damaging your secondary target in preparion for DPS switching to it 9- use AOE's to maintain threat on the rest of the mobs surrounding you, pull in outlying mobs if possible so they are being hit with your aoe. 10- When a mob is close to death (~15%) swap to the next target, at this point if your DPS pull it away from you it will only be for a few seconds, and you're better served gaining threat on the next mob up the line. 11- Rinse and repeat step 10 until everything is dead. ****************** General Tips: If at any point your DPS has began to AOE the mobs and they are peeling away from you, use your AOE taunt. Once that runs out if they are still not dead just make sure none of them attack your healer and do your best to pull them back. This is accomplished by selecting the one with high health (or one of the elites) and hitting him until he turns back to look at you. If necessary use single target taunt, but you're better using that on the bad guy with second most health (or the one attacking your healer) to snap him right around and just focus on the one guy with damage. Knocking back and/or snaring mobs is an effective way to buy time before they reach DPS and do damage. It is also an effective way to deal with too much aggro on yourself when you're getting low on health. I'll frequently push a champion type (Melee DPS only) mob away from me to buy a few extra seconds. Make sure you recognise which mobs are melee and which ones are ranged in a group. Don't jump to a melee mob, make him run to you for the AOE. Always jump in at a ranged mob since they're harder to position. Never let your DPS or Healer start a fight with a CC, always be the first one in. It's way harder to collect everything when they're running toward your party member instead of you. If during the fight after using a free attack on mobs they eventually peel away from you, just swap and hit them again, that should be enough to bring them back, if it isn't use a higher damage move, higher threat move or CC to keep them busy. As long as your DPS is following instructions and killing the right stuff you won't have any problems holding threat on everything.

Actually if the attack can't be dodged it can't be shielded either. Mitigation works or it doesn't, there aren't some attacks that bypass defense and still get caught by shield. If you mean that the attacks you -don't- (not can't) dodge can be shielded then yes, that's exactly what I said. BH Implants and earpieces are the single best way to increase your shield stats, they are super awesomely itemized, so keep saving. I threw together a quick Columi gear paper doll and came up with 16% Def, 33% Shield 40% absorb. I'm not sure exactly where you're maxing out so high on your shield rating. If anything, Columi gear is heavy on Absorb over shield. Accuracy is a little high, getting those BH implants will help a lot. Have you looked for level 24/25 enhancements or mods on the GTN? There should be some floating around. 24 is columi, 25 is Rakata. Again I can't really see a good way to re-itemize the gear, there aren't a lot of options at the 24/25 level because most of the gear is stacked with accuracy. Your next real upgrade should be to move in to Rakata, which is still poorly itemized with extra accuracy but will raise your overall stats significantly. Gearing out in Full rakata if your guild clears EV and KP weekly will take 2 or 3 weeks at most. Depending on how many people need gear and how lucky you are with drops. If you don't want to wait the extra time, based on the stats that I'm looking at, I'd recommend you augment out with shield augments until your shield passes your absorb rating by ~3%, then invest in a couple redoubt augments and even out from there. If you can give me a better look at your gear I can try to help you out some more, but your approximate stats are way off what I'm seeing from the gear.

Yeah it was unfortunate that I couldn't even trust the game designer to give me the right answers. I've had this come up repeatedly since and I've written back for clarification but never heard anything out of it. At this point I don't think they'll get back to me. I'm going to see if I can put together some more questions and do another interview (if they'll let me) and slide this one in under the radar or something.

I'm currently running at 90% due to campaign gear having no extra accuracy. I haven't noticed a problem. I do see a parry or miss now and then, but overall the increase of secondary defensive stats far outweighs the infrequent miss in terms of tanking ability.

I just finished an game optimal gear guide, it's in the tanking area and can be found here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=4846727 For end game gear the math supports leaving the mods and using augments to even out the stats you're lacking on.

Thank you, it's good to know that people are getting something out of it. The math supports the use of defense over absorb for added survivability. Just because you will get .5% defense and 1% absorb does not mean that the absorb will give you more survivability than the .5% defense. Larger percentage increases are actually meaningless because of how the starts interplay together. The reason that defense gives a higher benefit with lower increase is because it avoids 100% of the incoming damage when it procs. When we average things out with equations that usually means that defense is weighted higher than shield/absorb because of the amount of damage that it avoids. Defense also pushes down shield/absorb usefulness because any defended attack happens before shield check, so the more you defend the less active your shield rating will be. If you are having issues with spiky damage and your healers can't keep up then yes, swapping out some defense for shield stats might be helpful - but it won't be "optimal". Things like this are why I said there isn't a single "best" way to gear up, everything depends on what is going on around you - not just with the enemies, but with your own group.