Enjoy skanking... while you can

I think any spec or ability that gives a passive resistance shouldn't be a way to "fix" a spec. As much as I hate RA you still have the opinion to not waste stuns when its up. But being able to passively resist something is a whole different story. Just imagine this, you are literally giving tanks the passive ability to resist force/tech hardstuns/mezzes; you could be trying to set up a kill by CCing a tank and it just gets randomly resisted. And unlike RA you cannot tell when something like this could happen or avoid CCing at a certain time. In a way its worse then a DCD with resist chance.That is just as broken as anything else you guys talk about in here.

If you want tank stats to work better in pvp just give them a stat that reduces incoming yellow damage not completely deletes it out of the game.

Maul is used forward with regular damage on sin tank

flame burst inflicts trauma and flame sweep

rail shot is an aoe that reduces accuracy by 5%

Zero reason to play a DPS Jugg when a Mara is just plain better in that role.( Damage,Mobility,even Survival )

After this skank nerf ,all you will see is 10x the Mara numbers. Then que the Mara nerf threads.

WoW! you so smart! should Open a College "SWTOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE"

There are 2 things BW should do about tanks. First the reason many (ok almost all) went shank in the first place is because the dps specs of that class suck. They only exception being sin (and they aren't great). But PT and Juggs dps specs are laughable compared to the other dps classes. I'm not saying a Vengence jugg (for example) should ever out dps a mara, but ****, that jugg should at least be able to hold his own.


You should want to roll tank because you want to pvp as a tank. That is not possible now. DPS of a straight up tank in pvp is worse then a lightning sorc (and they are bad ATM). So yeah, you''d stay up a bit longer but you wouldn't kill anything.So I'm hoping BW understands this. But I have my doubts.

The second thins is nerf the dps gear. Not the gear directly, but if a tank wears it it take a dps hit or a defense hit. Either one.

I am writing this post from ranked PvP player point of view.

I am very skeptical about how Bioware intends to nerf skanks. On the other side, the game IS better for rankeds thank it used to be. Classes are more interesting, there is almost no completely useless class so there is still hope.

The problem with skanks is twofold. Weak mitigation and dps requirement.
As everybody knows, the defensive stats are bypassed by certain attacks thus making the mitigation very weak and unreliable, up to a point of damage mitigation difference between dps and tanking gear being very barely noticable.
Making defensives worthwile addresses only one part of the problem: Defensive stat usefulness.
But what about the other part? The team having enough damage to land a kill? Sure, there are highly skilled players who can do a proper hardswap, but you'll generally find them at 1500+ rating. If Bioware only boosts defensives it will just lead to a standstill until acid. Tank damage is what tips the scales.

So in solving the puzzle Bioware needs to address not only the broken mitigation issue but also how will teams score kills.

Tank's dilemma: To throw in a rough comparison, you can either have 20% more survivability or do two or three times the dps and top the chart. Considering your contribution to the team as a whole, the fact that healers can now roughly outheal two dps, the choice is clear. Going full tank is seen as gimping your team these days.

Okay, to not only state the obvious but to also address the problem in a constructive way... Solution:
The way would be to add healing debuff percentage increase on every tanking (armoring), mod and enhancement. If full tanks would decrease healing done of affected targets by a total of 50%, it might be interesting. Let's say 1% for each piece. The damage would stay low(er) as is appropriate for full tank but the contribution to the win and kill would be roughly the same as dps gear.
I understand that this may be seen as nerfing healers but they would pull usual numbers against targets that have not been debuffed by the tank. I don't play PvE so I don't know how would this change affect raids and such.
Technically this could be done by assigning mods and enhancements a hidden set bonus that would increase the debuff by 1% for each piece.
Thinking about it, the better way would be to actually make a compulsory bonus: all or nothing on it. You would have to have all mods with tank stats in order to get 15% healing debuff. Same with mods - all needed to be tank in order to get another 15%. Or you can change the ratio to better represent number of mods vs number of enhancements. This would also remove speculations of of many debuff pieces vs dps pieces are optimal.

Also, remove guard for non-tank specs.

This post got way longer that originally intended... O.o

The DPS of Vengeance (and both PT DPS specs for that matter, and Rage) is fine. The problem is cooldown uptime and "haha I'm invincible" cooldowns, both areas these classes lack in.

For Sin, they're the best of a mediocre bunch because they do have vanish which can be extremely clutch in solo ranked but less useful in group ranked, and Shroud which doesn't last very long but is pretty good. Deflection and their other passive DR buffs can all mostly be worked around, and the self heals of Hatred are only useful in games without a healer, they won't save you from dedicated focus fire.

For Jugg, Saber Ward is decent but you'll get to use it at most once in most ranked games and after that, almost nothing left. Saber Reflect can be played around with AOE and melee damage, the other passive DR boosts like from Endure Pain aren't enough to stop focus fire, and ED is again nice in games without healer, but useless against focus fire.

For PT, same issues basically, their shield is decent but you'll get to use it at most twice in most games, Kolto Overload isn't enough to save you, and that's basically it.

I guess the question then is, are these classes balanced properly, and Merc reflect and Ruthless Aggressor are the broken abilities? Or is everyone supposed to be like that, and the DPS specs from the tank AC's are underperforming in survivability?

Saber reflect should be something that really reflect everything and also have a 15 sec CD and heal for 10-20% of HP. In this case we become opers/scoundrels.

I assume that skanking is something that can only be done without bolster, even at level 70, because bolster will always assign the shield and defense stats to anyone playing a tank class even if the tank equips a bunch of 230 damage gear.

It would seem that a simple adjustment to how bolster deals with tanks could easily be done to make them competitive if they decide that utilizing the shield and defense stats in PVP is not something they want to do.

If you only need their damage they won't be able to hold threat and you'll break pve, you'd have to up their threat generation to counterbalance the damage nerf.