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Guardian Tank DPS/Threat


Master-Jerico

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I've been seeing some discussion here about Vanguard and Shadow tanking DPS. I haven't seen much in regards to Guardian tank DPS. I did a dummy run a few months back where the highest I hit on my best parse was something like 800 DPS. Then I'm seeing here Shadows like KBN are hitting 1.3k DPS and holding 3.7k threat on average. Just blows my mind. So -

 

What sort of DPS is practical for a Guardian Tank post 2.5?

What are people achieving atm?

Are we in a good or bad position and can it be improved?

 

Additional to this, I raid with a Shadow, who admittedly is a better tank than me in my opinion, and flogs me in all areas - especially threat. I can never steal it back without taunting, as far as I've noticed. I still just don't quite understand how our threat has been balanced out, because in my experience - it has definitely improved, but not to the ability I thought it was explained. Just to be clear, I don't think I'm bad - I just don't think it's good enough.

 

It's almost certainly my fault of course, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong - thus I can't fix it. Perhaps others are experiencing something similar? For reference, Gralleh's Guide to Guardian Tanking is my bible.

 

Cheers.

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I measured my dps on only one boss - first TFB NiM. I did 12xx DPS as vanguard, my co-tank, guardian - between 10xx and 11xx, on that run (that was first time we were doing it and we were checking if our DPS is good enough for whole run).

 

So, yes, you should be doing more then that. How, that I don't know, I got guardian tank, but doing only HM FPs with him.

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A lot of resource generation is tied to taking damage, or mitigating damage, so dummy runs are awful. Even off tanking won't give good numbers. Nefra is probably the best example to compare you with your co-tank since you take equal hits.

 

Gear will have an effect too. Endurance heavy 'B' mods also come with lower main stat and a full set of def/abs augments add a lot of power. So make sure you're comparing apples to apples first.

 

Other more credible folks have claimed guardians all else being equal will be 100-200 or so dps lower than shadow/vanguard.

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I haven't dummy parsed in a while. I'm absolutely certain I couldn't hit 1.3k DPS on a dummy. Given some of my results dummy parsing in the past, I'd probably sit between 1k and 1.1k. The resource generation from being hit is absolutely crucial.

 

On the subject of comparing apples to apples, it's important to remember that I have a 78 off-hand, full 78 mods (mostly low-endurance), full augments, four 78 armorings and Kell Dragon implants, so I may have a higher damage stat budget than the OP.

Edited by KeyboardNinja
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A lot of resource generation is tied to taking damage, or mitigating damage, so dummy runs are awful. Even off tanking won't give good numbers. Nefra is probably the best example to compare you with your co-tank since you take equal hits.

 

Gear will have an effect too. Endurance heavy 'B' mods also come with lower main stat and a full set of def/abs augments add a lot of power. So make sure you're comparing apples to apples first.

 

Other more credible folks have claimed guardians all else being equal will be 100-200 or so dps lower than shadow/vanguard.

 

Very much this. Even more so for guardians since Riposte is such a very important skill for both threat and DPS since it can't miss. But on a dummy you can only use it after guardian slash. When you're tanking you can use it on cooldown a lot of the time. On something like Tu'chuk, when you pop saber ward, the cooldown goes to 1.5s and you can use it everytime it's up which will shoot your DPS and Threat through the roof (relatively speaking). All of that also made possible with the aforementioned much better focus generation when you're actually taking damage.

 

Parse on some bosses and see what the actual DPS is. Keep in mind times you're tanking the boss vs when you aren't when comparing to other tanks. For example, on Writhing Horror or TFB, you'll do a lot less damage, and generate a lot less threat, when you aren't a main threat target for all the reasons your dummy parses will suck out loud.

 

Now I'm not saying suddenly you'll shoot to 1600 DPS on a boss clearly, and KBN's point about his gear is very well taken (plus in general KBN is a pretty good player and is maximizing his threat, part of which includes having as high damage as he can within the constraints of being a tank). That being said, much more than any DPS, a dummy parse is super misleading for any tank.

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A good place to practice rotations as a tank is the Quesh world boss. It's not a totally realistic DPS number, since the armor is low and your attacks will never miss, but you can compare to yourself from pull to pull. It has enough HP that it should take you quite a while to get it down, and the respawn is fairly short (alternatively, /stuck or evade). You can compare your DPS from pull to pull to see when you're improving, optimize your rotation and improve your muscle memory. You can also compare DPS between tanks to get an idea of relative balance, though you would need to find three tanks who have the exact same gear and all play at optimal skill levels.

 

On the subject of general tank DPS, I find that tanks who have serious DPS alts (or even mains) do dramatically better in terms of damage and threat. I know that my DPS as a tank jumped by over 15% when I got serious about my sentinel a year ago, and threat became commensurately easier. In general, if you treat your tanking rotation as a DPS would – maximizing every GCD, avoiding cast gaps, never losing uptime, and perfectly executing every proc – you will find your damage and threat will be noticeably better.

Edited by KeyboardNinja
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I've been seeing some discussion here about Vanguard and Shadow tanking DPS. I haven't seen much in regards to Guardian tank DPS. I did a dummy run a few months back where the highest I hit on my best parse was something like 800 DPS. Then I'm seeing here Shadows like KBN are hitting 1.3k DPS and holding 3.7k threat on average. Just blows my mind. So -

 

What sort of DPS is practical for a Guardian Tank post 2.5?

What are people achieving atm?

Are we in a good or bad position and can it be improved?

 

Additional to this, I raid with a Shadow, who admittedly is a better tank than me in my opinion, and flogs me in all areas - especially threat. I can never steal it back without taunting, as far as I've noticed. I still just don't quite understand how our threat has been balanced out, because in my experience - it has definitely improved, but not to the ability I thought it was explained. Just to be clear, I don't think I'm bad - I just don't think it's good enough.

 

It's almost certainly my fault of course, but I don't know what I'm doing wrong - thus I can't fix it. Perhaps others are experiencing something similar? For reference, Gralleh's Guide to Guardian Tanking is my bible.

 

Cheers.

 

It's important to remember that he said he did 1.3k-1.4k DPS while tanking the entire time and presumably not moving around too much. In that kind of ideal scenario (the tank equivalent of a dummy parse), Juggernaughts will do the same DPS as an Assassin. Pre-2.4, my Juggernaught was doing 1.2k DPS on NiM TFB's Withering Horror and that's after the drop-off that occurs due to yellow circles being up. The Withering Horror is a pretty fair example of single target DPS as a tank due to the fact that the tanks swap fairly evenly and there is a decent amount of downtime for each. The only issue of equality in this fight is that Juggernaughts get a bit more free DPS if they time Saber Reflect on every Nasty Bite they can and being able to immediately jump to the Withering Horror.

 

On fights where there is more movement needed and/or tanks need to kite, Guardian/Juggernaught tank DPS is hurt the most due to their heavier reliance of melee range attacks. Also, our DPS drops the most when not tanking due to the fact that we rely heavily on Riposte/Retaliation for DPS, which is normally our highest DPS skill. Currently, I'm doing almost the same DPS as pre-2.4 just because the new fights aren't mastered yet, but most likely, I expect to gain about 100 DPS once that's over.

 

In general, Guardian DPS is in a good place. You just have a lot more skills than the other tanks to maximize and resource generation is critical to doing extra damage, but you can do the same DPS with practice. I did a quick 5 minute parse on the dummy here with my normal tank gear and did 1002 DPS by just doing my basic rotation. You can also utilize Saber Throw and Force Leap to gain a bunch of extra Focus/Rage, but that's not practical on many bosses so I didn't do that for this parse. My gear is roughly equivalent to KeyboardNinja's with a 72 mainhand and 78 off-hand.

 

The main differences in a real fight is that my number of Slashes are low due to having very little focus and my number of Riposte/Retaliations are low due to not getting hit. After your opening rotation to maximize threat, you spread out Force Sweep and Blade Storm so that you use 2-3 Courage stacks to make them cost 0-1 Focus, use Combat Focus almost on cooldown (unless you need it for a burn phase) to gain extra Focus, and pour all your extra Focus into extra Slashes when possible. There are other minor things you can do to improve your DPS, but you should focus on it later.

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I did about 1.4k DPS on my juggernaut tank on TfB Kephess NiM which involves tanking switching / running orbs in BiS 72s.

 

On Trasher HM where I stayed on Trasher all the time, I did 1.6k.

 

Thrasher is giving the current tank a buff which increases his damage. So, if you stay at Thrasher all the time you will have amazing dps (my record, although with 78 gear is very close to 2k :))

Edited by THoK-Zeus
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  • 2 weeks later...

Below I linked a few older logs from my Guardian--full mitigation, all 72's (Veracity Implants & Ear) for comparison.

 

I might suggest digging around some on TORParse; although, finding logs from tanks and knowing how they were geared might be a bit challenging. Maybe search for the names of tanks you know, and ask them about their gear.

Edited by Joel_Eisenlipz
clarification
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