So I finally got my first (and probably only) lvl 50 char and was curious about tabking with my shadow starting out. I got my tionese set and some extra gear with it, and currently my stats are as follow:

 

19k health

25.4% defense

40% shield ( before KW, so 60% after)

42% absorb

 

my biggest question is am i ready to tank some hard mode FP's right now, or is it imperitive i try to hit the 25/50/50 threshhold for stats to tank?

I just hit 50 on my pt tank and I got my tio set with recruit in the place of the stuff I didn't get and I have been able to do foundry and battle of ilum hm and each time had a sorc healer with the same tier of gear as me and we did wipe a few times due to mechanics (enraged a few times since we had a full group of fresh 50s but once we got a Mara in bh we destroyed it) so yes you shouldn't have to many problems especially if you have a healer in at least a few prices of columi. Edited February 23, 2013 by yoyodar
Grammar

am i ready to tank some hard mode FP's right now

 

Yes, you're ready to tank some hard modes. I wouldn't start working on HM LI until you get some better gear and/or learn the strats though: LI is very mechanically intensive and most people don't want to teach someone the instance through group finder.

 

is it imperitive i try to hit the 25/50/50 threshhold for stats to tank?

 

There isn't a magical 25/50/50 threshold for tanks. First off, the optimal distribution is different for all tanks, and, secondly, that "threshold" is painfully low in the first place.

 

Honestly, the optimal distribution doesn't matter until you actually get into top end gearing. Right now, just focus on getting *better* gear rather than trying to figure out how to best distribute your current gear. When you do finally get into full BH/Camp/DG/Hazmat gear, as a Shadow tank, you want to strive for 30/65/60 (with KW up). There is some variance in there depending on what relics you choose to use (heal proc relic, abs proc relic, PvP defense relic, defense use relic), but, for Shadows, 30/65/60 is the baseline for top end gearing.

awesome, guess i should get out of the mindset then, tyvm for the help

Yes well that 25/50/50 sounds like something that came from Noxxic.com.

 

Just to point out Noxxic.com is very bad website full of completely false information. Please stay away from that site and don't listen to anyone else who gets their information from there.

 

And yes, somewhere 30/45/60 which is 30/65/60 with KW up is much more what you ultimately try to go for, with the best currently available gear.

I'm curious about something, I have a mix of Rakata and BH gear, with my stats sitting at 23k/6k/25/45/50 roughly. Yet struggle to tank in EC HM, seems I take a huge amount of damage from non-weapon attacks and the healer struggles to keep me alive.

 

Am I missing something?

23k/6k/25/45/50 roughly.

 

The 23k is your hp, and the 25/45/50 is your Def/Shield/Abs, but what's that 6k after your hp? I can't think of anything that should be 6k on a tank.

 

Yet struggle to tank in EC HM, seems I take a huge amount of damage from non-weapon attacks and the healer struggles to keep me alive.

 

If you're talking about Zorn or Stormcaller, there isn't anything you can do to decrease the incoming damage because they both deal I/E damage exclusively through F/T attacks. If you're dying, it's because your healer isn't doing something s/he should be doing. If you're dying on Zorn, make sure you're getting cleansed of the DoT and saving Resilience for Toth's jump and/or Zorn's channel stun. If you're dying on Stormcaller and not during or soon after Defensive Systems, it's a problem with your healer. If you're dying during Defensive Systems, make sure you don't break LoS with your healer and stay within range of them while you're kiting the rods and make sure your healer actually knows to heal you; you should be the only person taking appreciable damage during that phase so it should be relatively obvious. If you're dying just after Defensive Systems ends, it's generally because your healer is having to run to get back onto the tank while you're tanking the boss to the face and most healers (esp Sages) don't have particularly stellar mobile healing and often end up breaking LoS on you when they're jumping up. The solution I've found is to use Resilience after jumping back up on the tank: 5 seconds of immunity to all of Stormcaller's damage is a great way to buy your healer a window of time to get back on the tank and resume healing.

 

If you're having a rough time with Kephess, that's pretty much par for the course considering your gear. When you're actually tanking Kephess, it's important for your healers to know that pretty much the only person that's going to be taking appreciable amounts of damage is the tank currently tanking Kephess and they're going to be taking *a lot*. It's important they know this because, rather than just topping the tank off and looking elsewhere, they need to actually chain heal into the tank: even if the tank is fully healed *now*, by the time their heal finishes casting, the tank is likely to be at 50% hp. Kephess just swings and hits that hard. On your end, as a tank, it's important to learn when Kephess is going to drop his DoT on you and use Resilience to avoid it. The DoT *can* be healed through, but it's not necessary nor is it recommended, especially since you can just ignore it with Resilience.

Edited March 20, 2013 by Kitru

Thanks for the feedback, the 6k is armor rating, wasn't sure how relevant that was in the calculation.

 

It was against Toth and Zorn, we tried several times and got one down a few times, it just never quite happened. The rest of the raid had done it all before, I was the new one there, so assumed I was still under geared for it.

Thanks for the feedback, the 6k is armor rating, wasn't sure how relevant that was in the calculation.

 

Armor rating isn't really a valuable number to include because it's pretty much a flat value based upon item level. Just stating "Rak/BH gear" says enough about armor rating that there's no real point to including that number.