Keyboard, do you have a guide like this for Powertech tanking?

Not sure if you're following this guide still since you were looking for a PT one..but, if you are, check out this recently posted guide on SWTORBoard

Minor nitpick, and I know this is not for top level 'sin/Shadows so I'm not hitting the wasted 3 Recklessness/Force Potency:

If you are procing defensive force regen, you should always be thrashing before a force lightning if your stacks wont fall off, which is nearly every cycle (especially those rotations without discharge) or if you know an attack wont hit you during the time before you finish your channel, so that you start with an energized shock (I really should know the Shadow names for these considering I have one...) rather than a regular shock.

Otherwise, the static rotation to keep Protection maxed is good. Hopefully the general Sin/Shadow population learns to maintain them so people can find some more neat tricks.

If you are procing defensive force regen, you should always be thrashing before a force lightning if your stacks wont fall off, which is nearly every cycle (especially those rotations without discharge) or if you know an attack wont hit you during the time before you finish your channel, so that you start with an energized shock (I really should know the Shadow names for these considering I have one...) rather than a regular shock.

The shadow name is pretty lame: accelerated project. Just say energized shock; we all know what you mean. :-)

Using gcd4 on Thrash (or Maul) is definitely a good idea, not just for the extra Particle Acceleration/Energize proc, but also because it allows you to open the next block with Project/Shock rather than Slow Time/Wither.

Regarding the triple Recklessness/Force Potency, see the note in my article addressed specifically to you. :-) It's a noticeable DPS gain to do what you recommend, but you have to play with fire on your stacks to pull it off since you need both gcd4 and gcd5. On top of that, it's a bit RNG-dependent. I think it's something I would do if the enrage timer on a fight was tight enough that 12-17 DPS would make a difference, but it's just not worth the effort or risk in most cases.

The shadow name is pretty lame: accelerated project. Just say energized shock; we all know what you mean. :-)

 

Using gcd4 on Thrash (or Maul) is definitely a good idea, not just for the extra Particle Acceleration/Energize proc, but also because it allows you to open the next block with Project/Shock rather than Slow Time/Wither.

 

Regarding the triple Recklessness/Force Potency, see the note in my article addressed specifically to you. :-) It's a noticeable DPS gain to do what you recommend, but you have to play with fire on your stacks to pull it off since you need both gcd4 and gcd5. On top of that, it's a bit RNG-dependent. I think it's something I would do if the enrage timer on a fight was tight enough that 12-17 DPS would make a difference, but it's just not worth the effort or risk in most cases.

That's why I didn't discuss it, though this simple rotation actually does allow for the double proc if you get a proc off the thrash/maul before FL and have already triggered it on the previous run through. Also, I would thrash over maul even with a proc immediately preceding FL since you have a 49% chance to trigger shock opposed to the 30% a maul grants (conceding you get more DPS out of mauling). Just makes stack maintainance easier, and I usually do that during farm since I tab out and such.

Anywayyyyyy, beyond the scope of this thread. Good stuff.

It's a bit unhinging to hear about assassin/shadow rotation about tanking. Powertech/Vanguard tanks have rotation, shadow/assassin don't.

First and mostly - this is a class with no diminishing returns in resource so the below X force should be ignored.

Main agro generators:

Slow Time/Wither

Force Breach/Discharge

Secondary agro generator:

Project/Shock

These should be used on cooldown if DPS are on the target you are attacking, especially on aoe tanking.

Priority for procs:

Particle acceleration/Energize should be used as priority before Shadow Wrap/Conspirator's Cloak since Shadow strike/Moul could proc Shadow Wrap/ Conspirator's Cloak.

Shadow/Assassin tanks should always engage a fight with an absorb adrenal,

Force Pull should be used if possible upon tank switch, pulling a boss and/or add targets so that a taunt can be used for mechanics control.

Telekinetic Throw/Force lightning should be used on cooldown if there are 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness and if you have less than 4 stacks of shadow protection/dark protection it should be used if you're not expected to move.

If DPS are burning down on the above, and if tactics allow it, target should be taunted/aoe taunted prior to Telekinetic Throw/Lightning Strike

Most fights have high damage attacks - they should be reseliesed.

It's a bit unhinging to hear about assassin/shadow rotation about tanking. Powertech/Vanguard tanks have rotation, shadow/assassin don't.

Um, what? Without sounding elitist, I really think you should do some more research on both powertech and assassin tanking. The powertech "rotation" is a lot more of a proc dependent priority queue than the assassin rotation is, since only Rail Shot retains a fixed cooldown.

First and mostly - this is a class with no diminishing returns in resource so the below X force should be ignored.

No, it shouldn't be ignored. Even on classes with linear energy return, abilities still have costs. You need to make sure that you have the resources to use your high priority abilities when they come off cooldown. Waiting to regenerate resources from an empty pool may not kill your energy like it will with a powertech, but it will cause you to delay your heavy hitters, which is both a threat and a mitigation loss.

Main agro generators:

Slow Time/Wither

Force Breach/Discharge

 

Secondary agro generator:

Project/Shock

No and no. Slow Time does do the most threat of those three, but Force Breach does the least by far. Force Breach does only slightly more threat than Double Strike. Project does almost as much as Slow Time, and it is used far more frequently.

These should be used on cooldown if DPS are on the target you are attacking, especially on aoe tanking.

As mentioned, Force Breach barely tickles. It should be used on cooldown if AoE tanking, but otherwise it is only useful for refreshing the accuracy debuff.

Priority for procs:

 

Particle acceleration/Energize should be used as priority before Shadow Wrap/Conspirator's Cloak since Shadow strike/Moul could proc Shadow Wrap/ Conspirator's Cloak.

Yes, Project has priority, but that is not why. Project has priority because it procs Harnessed Shadows.

Shadow/Assassin tanks should always engage a fight with an absorb adrenal,

Absolutely not. At the start of the fight, you have all your health, the healers have all their resources and their cool downs, and the boss is generally not doing that much damage (depends a bit on the fight, but in general). You're just wasting your adrenal if you open with it.

Force Pull should be used if possible upon tank switch, pulling a boss and/or add targets so that a taunt can be used for mechanics control.

Yes, but you're not going to be able to force a tank swap with just Force Pull. Force Pull does slightly more threat than a non-crit Slow Time. That's about it.

Telekinetic Throw/Force lightning should be used on cooldown if there are 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness and if you have less than 4 stacks of shadow protection/dark protection it should be used if you're not expected to move.

Use it even if you already have 4 stacks of protection. It refreshes the buff, and that way the buff never falls off.

If DPS are burning down on the above, and if tactics allow it, target should be taunted/aoe taunted prior to Telekinetic Throw/Lightning Strike

 

Most fights have high damage attacks - they should be reseliesed.

And the majority of damage in a fight cannot be resilienced. You need to be pretty strategic about what you resilience and what you don't, because it's worthless on a lot of attacks.

Most of this is untrue. You do not need to stare or even look at your buff bar for any Shadow/Sin-specific reason and the rotation is simple. The effective rotation for Sins is literally just hitting Shock, Wither, and Discharge on cooldown and using Force Lightning at 3 HS stacks (right after your 2nd Shock). Fill in the gaps with Thrash and that's it. Dark Ward is not part of your "rotation", but you can safely use it on cooldown as well without harming your survivability significantly. Even if the player makes a big mistake with the rotation or there is a large gap of time where you cannot build stacks, you can stealth out to regain them every 2 minutes. The other tanks don't have this option and instead must rebuild their defensive buffs.

 

The opener for Sins is also the simplest among all the tanks as it's just their normal rotation with Force Pull at the very beginning, taunts sprinkled throughout, and Recklessness popped after the 2nd Shock.

Lots of stuff that's simply inaccurate here.

Discharge is worthless is in single-target fights and should only be used to refresh the accuracy debuff. You will be better off using Thrash to fish for Shock-procks. And of course, procced Maul is higher in priority than Thrash, and Assassinate is even higher than proc-Maul (I guess this is debatable, Assassinate costs slightly more, but deals more damage and thus threat). Shock and Wither on cooldown, and Force Lightning is self-explanatory.

And using Dark Ward on cooldown is a mitigation drop, you should always refresh it when it drops instead, for extra Dark Bulwark duration. It's not like it's hard to keep track of.

I'm then just going to copy paste a few things I'm not sure why you're not aware of:

Force Breach

Instant:

Force Technique: Deals 1471 periodic kinetic damage over 18 seconds.

Combat Technique: Strikes up to 5 nearby enemies, dealing 377 - 441 internal damage and decreasing the targets' melee and ranged accuracy by 5% for the next 30 seconds. Generates a high amount of threat. Puts Force Breach on cooldown for

Slow Time

Instant:

Slows the passage of time for up to 5 targets, dealing 1269 - 1811 kinetic damage, decreasing the damage all targets deal by 5%, and slowing the movement speed of all targets by 30%. Does not damage sleeping, lifted, or incapacitated enemies. This ability generates a high amount of threat. Lasts 15 seconds.

As a tank you have 30% more threat from Bombardment when Using project. Project is a vital rotation component since it's your highest damage skill, especially when proced.

The pull is an addition, If you are at a distance and you need to tank swap you taunt and then pull (not sharing the same cooldown) and will give you a good amount of free threat.

Resilience should be used on attacks like force exaustion, bronthases' voley and so on. These are strong attacks.

Fight should be engaged with a stim because you don't have your kenetic/Dark bullwark stacks at all and the boss is not debuffed and hots and healer ramp-up hasn't started. You have plenty of cooldowns as a shadow/assassin to use untill it's off cooldown.

Overall - please people, figure it out for yourselves. Don't take tanking as a thing about rotations, it's about skill.

I'm then just going to copy paste a few things I'm not sure why you're not aware of:

 

Force Breach

Instant:

 

Force Technique: Deals 1471 periodic kinetic damage over 18 seconds.

Combat Technique: Strikes up to 5 nearby enemies, dealing 377 - 441 internal damage and decreasing the targets' melee and ranged accuracy by 5% for the next 30 seconds. Generates a high amount of threat. Puts Force Breach on cooldown for

 

Slow Time

Instant:

 

 

Slows the passage of time for up to 5 targets, dealing 1269 - 1811 kinetic damage, decreasing the damage all targets deal by 5%, and slowing the movement speed of all targets by 30%. Does not damage sleeping, lifted, or incapacitated enemies. This ability generates a high amount of threat. Lasts 15 seconds.

 

As a tank you have 30% more threat from Bombardment when Using project. Project is a vital rotation component since it's your highest damage skill, especially when proced.

 

The pull is an addition, If you are at a distance and you need to tank swap you taunt and then pull (not sharing the same cooldown) and will give you a good amount of free threat.

 

Resilience should be used on attacks like force exaustion, bronthases' voley and so on. These are strong attacks.

 

Fight should be engaged with a stim because you don't have your kenetic/Dark bullwark stacks at all and the boss is not debuffed and hots and healer ramp-up hasn't started. You have plenty of cooldowns as a shadow/assassin to use untill it's off cooldown.

 

 

Overall - please people, figure it out for yourselves. Don't take tanking as a thing about rotations, it's about skill.

High amount of threat just means the attack has a higher threat modifier then 1,0. As Slow Time/Wither deals a lot more damage then Force Breach it also deals a lot more threat (as tehy have the same threat modifier).

Also its incorrect to taunt and pull. You have to do that the other way round (pull and then taunt) as taunt is a threat Multiplier.

Fight should never (never never never....) be engaged with a stim. You continously lose Dark Bulwark stacks (always when you reapply darkward). With the healer things it's completely the other way round:

At the beginning of the fight every competent healer will have hots/shields on you, the whole raid will be at 100% health,...

Using a defensive cooldown at the beginning of a fight is the worst point a tank can possibly use a cooldown.

Dark Ward is not part of your "rotation", but you can safely use it on cooldown as well without harming your survivability significantly.

Just a note, Dark Ward on cooldown is not optimal though

Also its incorrect to taunt and pull. You have to do that the other way round (pull and then taunt) as taunt is a threat Multiplier.

I believe what he said was meant for tank swaps. There it is reasonable use taunt+pull, since you probably won't be high enough in the other targets threat table to make a difference with the pull.

Lots of stuff that's simply inaccurate here.

 

Discharge is worthless is in single-target fights and should only be used to refresh the accuracy debuff. You will be better off using Thrash to fish for Shock-procks. And of course, procced Maul is higher in priority than Thrash, and Assassinate is even higher than proc-Maul (I guess this is debatable, Assassinate costs slightly more, but deals more damage and thus threat). Shock and Wither on cooldown, and Force Lightning is self-explanatory.

 

And using Dark Ward on cooldown is a mitigation drop, you should always refresh it when it drops instead, for extra Dark Bulwark duration. It's not like it's hard to keep track of.

Everything I said was completely accurate. I quoted myself below and bolded some words that some people apparently missed.

The effective rotation for Sins is literally just hitting Shock, Wither, and Discharge on cooldown and using Force Lightning at 3 HS stacks (right after your 2nd Shock).

As I stated, the effective rotation for Assassins does use Discharge on cooldown; this is not the optimal rotation. Using Thrash more often, using Maul, and using Assassinate only increases your threat (which does not matter past the opener, especially for an Assassin) and your damage (only good when you know the fight and your class well). When you are teaching new players how to play a class, you always go with the basics and never tell them about how to play optimally until they are very comfortable with the class. Risking the Accuracy debuff's loss on a 6% chance to Resist hurts the player's survivability significantly and so Discharge should be used on cooldown (with lower priority only for Shock, Wither, and Force Lightning at 3 HS stacks) for new players. Only players who have significant experience on their Assassin as a tank or have another tank applying the Accuracy debuff should even think about delaying Discharge. Remember that your two highest priorities as a tank are to hold aggro and stay alive and new players especially should focus solely on those aspects.

Going with a multi-page post on a rotation that can easily be explained in one average length sentence only makes it harder on new players. The effective rotation for Assassins in my first post is what most players should be using. Once you are very comfortable with your rotation and in fights, you can start delaying Discharge to add in more Thrashes, replace Thrash with a Maul when you have the proc, replace Thrash with an Assassinate once the enemy reaches below 30% health, and so on.

Fill in the gaps with Thrash and that's it. Dark Ward is not part of your "rotation", but you can safely use it on cooldown as well without harming your survivability significantly.

As stated, using Dark Ward on cooldown does not harm your survivability significantly. Using it as it expires is optimal, but the difference between optimal and effective play is miniscule at best. I think I figured it was about a 2% loss in mitigation in a previous post, but it's actually much less than even that. If the player is hit by a strong attack that they didn't shield because they waited a fraction of a second too long to refresh Dark Ward, he/she has hurt their survivability significantly. It means that the player has taken a bigger hit to his/her survivability in that one blow than the optimal use of Dark Ward would benefit him/herself throughout the entire fight. For anyone who is not heavily experienced in Assassin tanking, just use Dark Ward on cooldown for the best results.

Just a note, Dark Ward on cooldown is not optimal though

See the above comments, Board.

Point taken.

My personal opinion is, though, that learning a tanking skillset that is too simplified can be harmful for the player in question, as assuming a set behaviour can be an obstacle when trying to improve.

See the above comments, Board.

I never said it will impact your survivability significantly. I just said its not optimal.

Anyway KBN i've updated the Assassin tank page and added the Darkswell build (if anyone would like to scrutinize it) and also.. Aero regarding Dark Ward my answer is also there.

http://swtorboard.org/2014/02/01/swtor-assassin-tank-guide/

There's so much "I really hope" theory crafting here that it's ridiculous.

There's a reason why Slow Time/Wither and Force Breach/Discharge are you main agro generators - go on a dummy or do it during a fight with a mob. Check the amount of threat certain skills do and stop lying to people.

Taunt levels you out with the highest threat, it doesn't give you a heavenly amount of threat. Taunt levels you out + pull you start building ahead in the threat table. Pull + taunt = wasted pull.

At certain fights you're doing focused DPS, so you dismiss mitigation, you dismiss some agro building, but if we're talking about "rotation in tanking" this is as starter friendly I can make it.

I'm against calling shadow/assassin tanking a rotation - there's a lot of situational fights where you just need to learn and check what you can do with your cooldowns, since bioware decided to make us cooldown addicted.

To the guy above disputing that Vanguard is the most rotation type tank - I have them all. As a vanguard/powertech you have 1 skill that procs. Vent heat and he ammo vanguard thingy is always ready, so you use it on cooldown.

There's so much "I really hope" theory crafting here that it's ridiculous.

 

There's a reason why Slow Time/Wither and Force Breach/Discharge are you main agro generators - go on a dummy or do it during a fight with a mob. Check the amount of threat certain skills do and stop lying to people.

 

Taunt levels you out with the highest threat, it doesn't give you a heavenly amount of threat. Taunt levels you out + pull you start building ahead in the threat table. Pull + taunt = wasted pull.

 

At certain fights you're doing focused DPS, so you dismiss mitigation, you dismiss some agro building, but if we're talking about "rotation in tanking" this is as starter friendly I can make it.

 

I'm against calling shadow/assassin tanking a rotation - there's a lot of situational fights where you just need to learn and check what you can do with your cooldowns, since bioware decided to make us cooldown addicted.

 

To the guy above disputing that Vanguard is the most rotation type tank - I have them all. As a vanguard/powertech you have 1 skill that procs. Vent heat and he ammo vanguard thingy is always ready, so you use it on cooldown.

Example

For reference, here's the parse on my log of when a guildie and I took down the Tunnel Lurker during the event. I would have opened with a pull, but he literally spawned in my face (as in: he spawned overlapping with my character).

If we ignore the taunt jumping I got bored and did, we can see that Project was my highest threat ability, followed by Telekinetic Throw, with Slow Time lagging way behind. Force Breach didn't even generate 15% of the threat that Project did overall, and on a per hit basis, generates an average of ~47% less threat. In fact, Saber Strike, Double Strike, Combat Technique and Mind Snap are the only moves that, on a per hit basis, generate less threat. If we then consider that Saber Strike hits 3 times and Double Strike hits twice, only Combat Technique and Mind Snap generate less threat per use. When you consider that you can't control Combat Technique procs, that leaves just Mind Snap. So that puts Force Breach at the lowest threat generating, damaging move in our list of moves we use while tanking. At least it beats a no damage interrupt, right? Breach is not one of the main aggro generators. Project and Slow Time are, and Telekinetic Throw when you can use it. I did what you asked, and here are the results. KBN wasn't lying to anyone. He was quite right.

On another note, taunting doesn't level you out with the highest threat, it puts your threat at 110% of the highest threat if you're in melee range, and 130% of the highest threat when you're further away than 4 meters. So later in a boss fight, it will give you a ludicrous amount of threat.

There's so much "I really hope" theory crafting here that it's ridiculous.

Example? Thus far, very little of what you have said has been true. In fact, almost everything you have said is falsified within a few moments of actual experimentation.

There's a reason why Slow Time/Wither and Force Breach/Discharge are you main agro generators - go on a dummy or do it during a fight with a mob. Check the amount of threat certain skills do and stop lying to people.

I'm just going to leave this right here:

http://www.torparse.com/a/558821/1/0/Threat

1. Telekinetic Throw (average threat x4): 11136.08
   
2. Slow Time (average threat): 4821.6
   
3. Project (average threat x1.3): 4686.721
   
4. Double Strike (average threat x2): 3174.94
   
5. Force Breach (average threat): 1756.72
   

If you're going to come on the forums and call someone a liar, be sure you have your facts straight. Force Breach is the worst threat generator on this list by a factor of two.

Taunt levels you out with the highest threat, it doesn't give you a heavenly amount of threat. Taunt levels you out + pull you start building ahead in the threat table. Pull + taunt = wasted pull.

As was said, Taunt gives you the highest threat multiplied by either 1.1 or 1.3, depending on whether or not you are currently in melee range. Take your own advice and try it out on a dummy.

To the guy above disputing that Vanguard is the most rotation type tank - I have them all. As a vanguard/powertech you have 1 skill that procs. Vent heat and he ammo vanguard thingy is always ready, so you use it on cooldown.

• Pulse Cannon
  
• Energy Blast
  
• Stockstrike
  

I count three procs, each of them cooldown-affecting.

As stated, using Dark Ward on cooldown does not harm your survivability significantly. Using it as it expires is optimal, but the difference between optimal and effective play is miniscule at best. I think I figured it was about a 2% loss in mitigation in a previous post, but it's actually much less than even that. If the player is hit by a strong attack that they didn't shield because they waited a fraction of a second too long to refresh Dark Ward, he/she has hurt their survivability significantly. It means that the player has taken a bigger hit to his/her survivability in that one blow than the optimal use of Dark Ward would benefit him/herself throughout the entire fight. For anyone who is not heavily experienced in Assassin tanking, just use Dark Ward on cooldown for the best results.

(double-posting because different sub-topic)

Regarding Kinetic Bulwark and refreshing Kinetic Bulwark on cooldown, I'm pretty sure that the simulation-derived value that we've been using for Kinetic Bulwark has been wrong for quite a while. The oft-cited value is 5.56%, but every time I try to mathematically verify this result, I keep coming up with a value which is substantially higher. Based on spending quite a bit of time in the past few weeks gazing at my Kinetic Bulwark stacks to try to get an idea of what the average is really like, I'm pretty convinced that the simulation was just incorrect.

Basing the new calculation on the following math:

Seeds := { shld -> 0.5907, def -> 0.2152 }
KineticBulwark := Expectation[if[x>8,0.08,0.01 x],x \[Distributed] BinomialDistribution[Round[(0.7 (1-(def+ 0.05 +0.05))+0.3) (0.966 k)],shld]]/. {k->20} /. Seeds

This isn't anything weird. It's just the expected value of Kinetic Bulwark under the assumption of a binomial distribution on shield trials (which is valid, given the independence of each shield event). We're starting out with an assumed shield chance of 59.07% with Kinetic Ward and a base defense chance of 21.52% (almost BiS 78s) with 5% accuracy debuff and 50% of all damage being counted as a "basic" attack. The 0.966 value is the swing timer on K/E attacks in the Dread Masters, which is a fairly average fight for the current content, while the 0.7 and 0.3 values are the M/R vs F/T ratios within the K/E subgroup in Dread Palace.

This yields a value for Kinetic Bulwark which is precisely 7.60173%. If I switch Kinetic Ward use from optimal to "on cooldown", we get a value of 6.36128%, which is quite a drop. In fact, that diminishes the value of the proc by a full 16.32%. If we look at how this factors into mean survivability in full BiS (with gear itemization adjusted for each case), we have the following:

• Optimal: 73.5960%
  
• KW on CD: 73.3244%
  

That doesn't look like a large change. In fact, the difference is precisely 0.369%. On Nefra, you're talking about a difference in DtPS of about 7.76, with a difference of about 5.5 DtPS on most fights.

Ok, that doesn't sound like much, but let's consider another situation for comparison. I think we would all consider a shadow tank to be "fairly bad" if they are channeling only once every 16 seconds on HM Nefra (a fight where you should have perfect stack uptime). If I assume an 16 second channel period, we have to drop the value of the DR buff to the following:

(12 * 0.04 + 1 * 0 + 0.01 + 0.02 + 0.03) / 16 = 3.375%

That gives us an overall survivability of 73.3059%, which is only slightly worse than what happens with sub-optimal Kinetic Bulwark usage! And that's with a full second where we have no Shadow Protection stacks whatsoever.

In other words, optimizing your Kinetic Bulwark stacks is more important than channeling Telekinetic Throw precisely every 12 seconds. It's more important even than channeling every 15 seconds. Only when your delay reaches 16 seconds and beyond does the loss of Shadow Protection exceed the loss from hitting Kinetic Ward exactly on cooldown.

Let's try another example. Base survivability for guardians in average content is 72.6425%. A drop in mitigation equivalent to sub-optimal use of Kinetic Bulwark would put survivability at 72.3744%. That is almost precisely equivalent to what your survivability (as a full-defense guardian) would be if you delayed every Blade Storm by 6 seconds. So rather than using it every 12 seconds, you used it every 18. No one is going to argue that this kind of delay on Blade Storm is an "insignificant" loss of mitigation. Using Kinetic Ward on cooldown is almost exactly the same relative loss.

What I'm saying here is that you shouldn't underestimate the mitigation value of optimally using Kinetic Ward. Hitting it early is bad. Very bad. Claiming otherwise is like saying that you may as well not bother upgrading your mods or enhancements from 75 to 78 grade, since the mitigation increase is marginal. Coincidentally, the increase from upgrading all mods and enhancements from 75s to 78s is only slightly more of an increase than optimal vs "on cooldown" Kinetic Ward usage. You get the idea though.

tl;dr: Don't use Kinetic Ward on cooldown. Wait until the stacks are about to drop off. You're missing a lot more mitigation than you think you are.

Well since you asked nicely here's the ACTUAL log pulled via parsec:

Project/Shock

12:18:36.798 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Project for 1 585 kinetic damage (3 646 threat)

(the bombardment crit) 12:21:47.276 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Project for 2 380* kinetic damage (5 476 threat)

Slow time/Wither

12:19:49.897 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Slow Time for 1 381 kinetic damage (4 143 threat)

Force Breach/Discharge

12:20:16.462 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Force Breach for 1 154 internal damage (3 463 threat)

Double Strike: (it needs to be noted that this is just ONE hit of the 2 double strike hits. It's a melee attack and as a tank you decide how lucky you are to keep hitting and critting)

(crit)12:20:47.009 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Double Strike for 1 197* energy damage (2 394 threat)

(no crit)12:24:50.629 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Double Strike for 751 energy damage (1 502 threat)

Shadow Strike/Maul

(shadow strike proc + crit)12:22:21.730 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Shadow Strike for 3 239* energy damage (6 479 threat)

(shadow strike proc, no crit)12:23:06.473 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Shadow Strike for 2 273 energy damage (4 546 threat)

Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

TT with 3 stacks HS:

12:26:20.267 You gain Shadow Protection

12:26:20.268 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:26:20.268 You gain Unshakable

12:26:21.305 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Combat Technique for 298 internal damage (596 threat)

12:26:21.306 Combat Technique causes your threat on Operations Training Target MK-5 to change by 171

12:26:21.306 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:26:22.313 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:26:23.271 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:26:23.273 You lose Harnessed Shadows effect

With FP:

12:32:03.223 You activate Force Potency

12:32:03.223 You gain Force Potency

12:32:03.529 You activate Telekinetic Throw

12:32:03.529 You spend 30 Force

12:32:03.530 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Combat Technique for 298 internal damage (596 threat)

12:32:03.530 Combat Technique causes your threat on Operations Training Target MK-5 to change by 171

12:32:03.530 You gain Shadow Protection

12:32:03.531 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 787* kinetic damage (3 574 threat)

12:32:03.531 You gain Unshakable

12:32:04.622 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:32:05.627 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:32:06.633 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 183 kinetic damage (2 367 threat)

12:32:06.634 You lose Harnessed Shadows effect

Without 3 stacks (this isn't supposed to happen, but here's the effect anyway):

12:27:37.481 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 676 kinetic damage (1 352 threat)

12:27:38.543 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 1 021* kinetic damage (2 042 threat)

12:27:39.549 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 676 kinetic damage (1 352 threat)

12:27:40.547 You hit Operations Training Target MK-5 with Telekinetic Throw for 676 kinetic damage (1 352 threat)

Here's the Force Pull:

12:28:56.921 You activate Force Pull

12:28:56.921 You lose Sprint effect

12:28:57.486 Force Pull causes your threat on Operations Training Target MK-5 to change by 8 592

This makes apparent than pound for pound Force Breach/Discharge is still your main unproced threat generator. It is not a waste and it's certainly more viable applying it than spamming double strike. I agree completely that having full 8 stacks of Kenetic/Dark Bulwark you should not reapply the ward and instead pop an absorb adrenal when the sith hits the fan.

Please don't be a torparse warrior and read your actual logs. I'm taking the time to write this not to prove you wrong and make you look bad, but to actually make sure people are not getting lied to. Your "assassin/shadow rotation" should work in average groups, since the assassin/shadow tank has the best agro ark out of the 3. Props for taking time to write this, but if you're wrong, please correct yourself. Stubbornly denying the numbers will only cause people to do this themselves and you'll turn out to be full of sith

And since I got the impression you have no idea how taunt works, I'd be happy to teach you.

Here's how taunt works:

The group has a shared threat pool that everybody builds with stuff. A taunt doesn't give you a bucket of free threat. When you taunt, you gain threat as the highest threat in the group and gain advantage of 2(two) threat over the said undisciplined DPS. This is apparent by the following logs:

Straight from out of combat:

12:35:58.717 You enter combat

12:35:58.754 You activate Mind Control

12:35:58.754 You lose Sprint effect

12:35:58.755 Operations Training Target MK-5 gains Taunt

12:35:58.755 You taunt Operations Training Target MK-5 (3 threat)

12:35:59.188 Mind Control causes your threat on Operations Training Target MK-5 to change by 2

With a DPS buddy going all out on the dummy and me just autoattacking:

12:55:03.720 Operations Training Target MK-5 gains Taunt

12:55:03.720 You taunt Operations Training Target MK-5 (94 749 threat)

12:55:04.178 Mind Control causes your threat on Operations Training Target MK-5 to change by 2

With the DPS (unguarded) and me doing a rotation(slacking a bit so he gets more threat than me):

12:59:19.666 You activate Mind Control

12:59:19.666 Operations Training Target MK-5 gains Taunt

12:59:19.667 You taunt Operations Training Target MK-5 (8 504 threat)

12:59:20.132 Mind Control causes your threat on Operations Training Target MK-5 to change by 2

12:59:25.763 Operations Training Target MK-5 loses your Taunt effect

This means that if lets say on a tank switch you pull and then taunt - you waste your pull (and a GC). If you taunt and THEN pull you get 8k+ threat over the rest of the group. Same goes for taunting before the DPS agro dump and hitting the thingy with TT or your backstab or w/e strongest agro generator.

@NickAlexander:

First part:

You forget that double strike (which consists of hits of 1,5 k threat each on your log uncritted) also has a 51% to proc a critical shock hit., which

a) allows more Shocks

b) allows shock to do 1800 more threat

c) allows faster Force Lightnings

Even if we wouldn't account, by just accounting b) you get 900*0,8 (because of 20% crit chance)= 720 more threat out of thrash.

That means 1500 + 1500 + 720 = 3720 > 3463

(with accounting a) aswell it's more like 4200 > 3400 but nevermind). With c) it's even more....

Spamming Double Strike is better threat wise, then spamming Discharge.

Your own numbers prove you wrong.

Second part: About Pull and Taunt: That's also wrong.

You will always "waste" 1 gcd, no matter if you taunt + pull or pull + taunt (logic anywhere ?)

The combat log is not telling you how much threat you actually gain from taunting (therefore just the 2 or 3 in the combat log)

He puts you to 110% (if you stand in melee range) or 130% of the threat of the current top target.

Taunt + Pull is just superior threat, when dps were already hitting that target for a longer period of time. If you want to grab a new spawning mob, you should always Pull + Taunt. If another tank had the mob before, threat won't matter anyway.

I have noticed no difference between using TORParse and Parsec, and if there's something I don't know about, I haven't noticed a significant difference in the way either parses the combat logs. The logs themselves are largely unreadable, as shown below:

I posted the numbers I get in my tank gear (a pretty balanced mix of Underworld and Dread Forged gear). For another example, I'll post a log from a fight against HM Raptus. Here it is. If you still have a problem accepting TORParse, please suggest somewhere else for me to upload my logs so everyone can view them.

Now, while it is certainly odd that the logs give a different value than the threat tab, Project and Slow Time still provide more threat per use than Breach does.

As for how taunts work, here's a shorter fight, where, if you look at the taunt tab, you can see the effect of the double taunt. At 56 seconds, I taunt off my co-tank. 2 seconds later (while Raptus still has the taunt debuff and nobody has more threat than me), I taunt a second time, boosting my threat by 18138 threat. I spoiler'd the log information for readability, but here it is.

If you look at my threat right before I taunted the second time, it just so happens to be 176988. The second taunt gave me an increase of 10.25% of my original threat, which is what I said it was at melee range. The move itself may only generate 2 threat (and the Mass Mind Control move itself doesn't build any threat), but the effect it adds to the boss raises your threat by rather a lot, especially with numerous tank swaps and later in the fight.

The Pull -> Taunt people are talking about is referring to the optimal opener for a fight: pulling to get a bunch of threat, then taunting to increase it by a little more, though the taunt is best saved for when you've built up a little more threat.

@NickAlexander:

First part:

You forget that double strike (which consists of hits of 1,5 k threat each on your log uncritted) also has a 51% to proc a critical shock hit., which

a) allows more Shocks

b) allows shock to do 1800 more threat

c) allows faster Force Lightnings

 

Even if we wouldn't account, by just accounting b) you get 900*0,8 (because of 20% crit chance)= 720 more threat out of thrash.

 

That means 1500 + 1500 + 720 = 3720 > 3463

(with accounting a) aswell it's more like 4200 > 3400 but nevermind). With c) it's even more....

 

Spamming Double Strike is better threat wise, then spamming Discharge.

Your own numbers prove you wrong.

 

 

Second part: About Pull and Taunt: That's also wrong.

 

You will always "waste" 1 gcd, no matter if you taunt + pull or pull + taunt (logic anywhere ?)

 

The combat log is not telling you how much threat you actually gain from taunting (therefore just the 2 or 3 in the combat log)

 

He puts you to 110% (if you stand in melee range) or 130% of the threat of the current top target.

 

Taunt + Pull is just superior threat, when dps were already hitting that target for a longer period of time. If you want to grab a new spawning mob, you should always Pull + Taunt. If another tank had the mob before, threat won't matter anyway.

1. Force Breach/DIscharge is a force attack. Double strike is a melee attack. How much strength do you have because my numbers include full datacrons strength bonus. Your crit should be around 50-52% if you're geared enough, so you have a 50-52% chance to make it viable. No, the shock/project proc doesn't proc every time and the backstab proc is limited for a proc every 10 sec by default.

Let's make this clear. I'm not saying do NOT use double strike/thrash in your rotation - on the contrary - this is your bread and butter. But as is apparent in the logs I provided above, pound by pound it's one of your main threat generators and not just a debuf. You can go without of course, you're a shadow'/assassin, but we're talking about optimal stuff here, or am I mistaking.

Test it yourself with a buddy on a dummy. When you taunt, you level with his threat, regardless of your previous agro pool. If you waste a pull or w/e heavy threat move it's for nothing (unless you are harnessing the 3 stacks). Using a taunt + pull(just as an example) levels you with the top threat and then adds the 8k+ threat to your threat pool.

Wasting a GCD was meant to state you might as well do another move.

Oh, and: Taunts do not share the GCD ffs...

1. Force Breach/DIscharge is a force attack. Double strike is a melee attack. How much strength do you have because my numbers include full datacrons strength bonus. Your crit should be around 50-52% if you're geared enough, so you have a 50-52% chance to make it viable. No, the shock/project proc doesn't proc every time and the backstab proc is limited for a proc every 10 sec by default.

 

Let's make this clear. I'm not saying do NOT use double strike/thrash in your rotation - on the contrary - this is your bread and butter. But as is apparent in the logs I provided above, pound by pound it's one of your main threat generators and not just a debuf. You can go without of course, you're a shadow'/assassin, but we're talking about optimal stuff here, or am I mistaking.

 

Test it yourself with a buddy on a dummy. When you taunt, you level with his threat, regardless of your previous agro pool. If you waste a pull or w/e heavy threat move it's for nothing (unless you are harnessing the 3 stacks). Using a taunt + pull(just as an example) levels you with the top threat and then adds the 8k+ threat to your threat pool.

 

Wasting a GCD was meant to state you might as well do another move.

 

Oh, and: Taunts do not share the GCD ffs...

I suggest you reread your skill tree:

Hits from Double Strike (= 2 hits) have a 30% to finish the cooldown on Shock and make your next shock a critical hit. -> 51% Chance to get an auto crit shock -> on average a lot more threat from a Double Strike.

(Not even mentioning faster Force Lightnings + more Shocks....). And no, a normal tank has about a 20% critical Rating. You mistake crit with surge rating i guess...

And no, on an optimal scale Discharge does less threat then Thrash (as proven in the calculation above).

If you would account the faster rotation aswell, it would be even more (Thrash >> Discharge then), but i don't have any calculations about how much extra threat you generate when having more Shocks + faster force lightnings and i can't be bothered to make some, because the matter is already clear without accounting that.

... Taunt stuff:

You tell me that Pull + Taunt ( 1gcd) eats more global cooldowns then Taunt + Pull (1 gcd). I ask: Logic?

Taunt doesn't level you to the top threat. It levels you above the top threat! You will be at 110% or 130% depending on the range.

And as you generally have the top threat (or a very very Close amount of the top threat) on a spawning add Pull + Taunt is the superior move.

If you taunt of another tank you shouldn't waste the global cooldown of Force Pull anyway.