Tanks: That which will kill SWTOR PVP.

I had to say - I found this thread pretty funny As an Assasin that freely spams Taunt and AoE taunts in warzones, as well as using Guard on the "main" healer, I can honestly tell you that truly focused DPS will struggle like hell to kill either of you. But only if there's no counter CC.

Sure, Tanks are hard as nails to kill with a pocket healer (isn't that the point?). But even a healer alone can be very difficult to kill. It's never impossible though. With correct use of CC, stun and interupts even the best healer / tank combo will break.

Most DPS players skip the important interupts to break the healing combination. Too busy trying to do "epix dps", while completely ignoring the healing cycles. Even good players interupt the wrong skill occasionally = healers main heal is often left open because a DPS was trigger happy on the shorter induction lesser heals.

I'm not saying its easy to kill the combination - but its not a situation that requires BW level nerfing (poor OPs). Drop the damage reduction of taunt to 25%, or make chain healing in PvP slightly more difficult sure, but nerf? Really?

CC the healer noob.

I'll get right on that, Jimbob.

I mean, its not as if one whirlwind fills an entire resolve bar, people have CC breaks, other healers have dispel, or the rest of their group can cc YOU until it disspiates or anything.

Thank you for enlightening me. I will go completely revise my PVP strategy to encompass this mysterious and unknown method now.

(PS i'm tired and going to bed. Will re-bump this in the morning for more input)

This.

The commando video really drives a point home. Healers in this game can heal very quickly, and damage for obscene amounts provided they know what they're doing. If they're substantially well geared they can tank well as well. Tanks by contrast can take hits better than a pure DPS but have almost no way to self heal and will fall under constant DPS fairly quickly with no healing backup.

This is a problem of PVE vs PVP balance though. Hard modes practically require that level of speed healing at certain points. Healing is balanced to counteract the damage a hard mode boss can dish out. DPS is balanced only as far as to be able to kill a hard mode boss before the rage timer hits.

I'd say this is not an issue of dps being insufficient, or tanks and healers being too much. It's a classic example of expecting apples to taste like oranges. MMO developers and players should have realized by now that you can't balance PVP on the same level as PVE and expect things to turn out perfectly fine.

This game is a role reversal from others in who provides the damage mitigation for players. In other games this is a healer function, in swtor it is a tank function. I don't really see the problem. Any PVP where that just amounts to a gib fest is really dumb. Is it too easy to taunt and guard? That is another topic entirely because it applies to too many things in swtor pvp.

Take a deep breath, get rid of your tunnel vision and stop focusing the healer. Have you asked yourself why Taunt and Guard have been implemented in the game?

Do you think that an tanks role is to be ignored till all his mates are dead while he hits people for 700 dmg and sometimes choke someone? would that be fun?

What s the point of having good defensiv stats when noone is targeting you. That s why the guard mechanic is a great improvement to competitiv PVP and games that didn t implement it barely had a spot for defensiv Tanks in PVP. It s one of the best mechanics to stop the brainless assist train. Tanks doing their job right will reduce the dmg inflicted to the guarded person to 16% so stop trying to kill the dmn healer.

A Tank and healer combo is a tuff duo, but if you re doing it right you can get them down. It requieres some target swaping but it can be done and as a pyrotech with help of another DD i ve got all the tools to put some hurt on them. interupt and cc the healer whenever needed, hit him with the high dmg skills that the tank could mitigate and concetrate all your armorpenetrating, Force / elemental dmg on the Tank. A tank wont taunt as often if both are hitting him and just swaping to the healer to cc/interupt him.
You might not believe it but AE dmg will speed things up.

I hope this helps relieve the world of some stuborn ignorance.
Kind regards

It turns out that you start needing to switch targets at this point. However these battles do end, and the more skilled side tends to win them.

I know it is shocking to WoW PvPers that having larger numbers doesn't instantly guarantee a win, but you'll have to get used to it. Working. As. Intended. Tanks actually make SWTOR PvP way more interesting than it has any right to be.

Guard is really not that powerful. Let's say tank mitigates 40% and the guarded healer mitigates 20%, and both have 15K HP. Since the tank has superior mitigation, every 30K damage done to the healer has to result in the healer healing at least 4500 more damage than he otherwise would have to just make up for the fact that the tank is taking elevated damage compared to his mitigation. However, if you have 2 DPS on a healer (the minimum reasonable situation for a 2 on 2), it's actually not very hard to lock up a healer to make sure he gets no meainingful heals and neutralize the Guard.

The problem breaks down when you guard a Merc healer, who has 30% base mitigation from heavy armor + 10% from Tracer Missile. Thus, the tank guarding him is not suffering any penalty because his guarded target has almost as good mitigation as he does, so it's a pure win there for the guarded pair.

So first of all, if a premade is going to have your comp... so will other premades so I don't see what the problem is.

Honestly premades are going to need tanks. What's your point?

Also... what class has aoe fear?

The only thing I found ridiculous about that was how much DPS this 31/0/0 MEDIC was capable of putting out. I can't even hit a 4k Crit and I'm a Sentinel!