Edit: Ugh. I never intended to start a flame war or anything; I just wanted to point out that a game mechanic was often not being used correctly. As it appears some have posted without reading the whole thread, here's my reply on page 3:

After thinking about it some more (I wrote the post at 2 am) and looking back at the thread, I realize that my main problem with putting Guard on healers isn't so much that they don't need it, it's that some tanks seem to think that Guard is a substitute for actual tanking. I should have emphasized the point: "every enemy in a pull must be controlled, either by someone hitting it (preferably the tank) or crowd control. Anything that is not controlled is likely to go after the healer, and Guard will not prevent that." I've seen too many tanks go into pulls as if they were fighting solo. This is especially a problem with pulls that have more than one boss or elite.

 

Anyway, thanks for the feedback everyone. It still annoys me, but I'll try not to complain about Guard so much if no one else needs it.

Since then, I've also come to realize (partly from this thread, and partly from tanking in SWTOR) that flashpoints are not quite like dungeons in that other MMO. I know that should be obvious, but many of us have seen that this game resembles WoW in so many ways that we assume flashpoints are the same too. I admit I'm as guilty of that as anyone else. In WoW, the tank is usually supposed to pick up everything and hold it in place while the dps burns them down. This was especially true in Wrath where nearly every pull was made for AoE. But SWTOR pulls aren't built that way: for one, the mobs tend to be more spread out, there are more of them, and tanks here seem to have fewer tools to grab aggro on multiple targets (my tank is nowhere near 50, so correct me if I'm wrong on this.) Second, there's a much greater spread of effective levels in each pull. WoW pulls are typically a few elites at or near the same level, but SWTOR pulls can have gold elites, silver elites, normals and weaks all mixed together, with the occasional mini-boss level thrown in. From what I've learned so far, not only is it very difficult for a tank to hold aggro on all that, they aren't supposed to. The tank grabs the silvers and elites while the dps takes out the little ones first, then goes after what the tank is holding. It sounds counter-intuitive to WoW players, but it works, and it actually makes healing easier since the tank isn't taking a huge hit up front.

It's about 8 months into the game, we've mostly settled in, and for most of you my post is probably old news. But if you've read this far, thank you for indulging a bitter old healer. I know tanking can be stressful; I've always thought tanking was harder than healing (tho' for some reason healers seem to get blamed more when things go south.) Anyway, original post follows:

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It's pointless. First of all, it does not reduce the healer's threat. Yes, I know it says it reduces threat generated, but it does nothing to prevent uncontrolled enemies from going after the healer. If a healer has 100% threat on something, there is nothing to reduce. It goes like this: every enemy in a pull must be controlled, either by someone hitting it (preferably the tank) or crowd control. Anything that is not controlled is likely to go after the healer, and Guard will not prevent that. Besides, it only works on players within 15 yards, and healers are often outside that which also makes it useless for damage reduction. Trust me, Guard works far better on a melee dps that is likely to pull threat.

I'm not trying to slag off tanks here - I know it can be difficult with all the stuff you have to keep track of. I've been a tank myself. But it's really frustrating when tanks refuse to put Guard on anyone else no matter how I try to explain it. I even saw one ragequit after saying nothing more than "Guard works better on dps that pull threat." Another tried to tell me it was "healer aggro." Listen, there's only one thing you need to know about healer aggro in this game: it doesn't exist. It never did. Kindly remove that phrase from your vocabulary.

TL;DR: the only way for a tank to prevent uncontrolled enemies from swarming the healer is to hit them. Put Guard on the highest threat dps. Your healer will thank you for it.

F.Y.I:

Guard:

• Reduces threat: No range limit (as long as someone else has plucked some threat - this will help, if not: it's as you say).
  
• Reduces damage taken: 5% at all times, no range limit.
  
• Shifts damage from target to tank - has a range limit.
  

Anyone to get a guard should be people wanted kept alive.. may be healers, may be DPS.. these things vary, but its a very nice buff I'd say ;-)

Actually there is a range, 15m. Try being guarded once, walk out of range and you will see an icon on your buffbar saying something like "Guard out of range"

As for the tank taking that 50% dmg, it works only in PvP

Well allright I'll give in on the taking damage, but threat and damage should not have the range limit of 15m... Else they've made grammar mistakes in the tooltip:

While active, the guarded player takes 5% less damage and generates 25% less threat. In addition, so long as you remain within 15 meters of the guarded player, 50% of all incoming damage from enemy players is transferred back to you. Requires Soresu Form.

Ofcourse.. Nobody said this is currently working as intended...

I think the issue with guard is how many people think of it as a "set and forget" sort of skill. It's WAY more useful if you are paying attention and switching it dependent on situation, IMO.

I'll guard a healer by default, then swap it over to a DPS if someone is consistently pulling aggro. Certain fights other DPS might pull more, or the healer may genuinely need it in the fight. On fights that trade aggro, I sometimes even put it on the other tank when I pull. Keeping an eye on what's going on gets me much more mileage from the skill.

I always pick the best melee dps to guard. I never lose threat to healers and I figure the melee will be close enough to benefit from guard.

However, if damage sharing is pvp only, and the other benefits of guard are not limited by range (as the tooltip suggests) then you should just guard the best dps, regardless of where they stand.

Can anyone confirm this logic and whether it is supported by how the mechanics of guard currently work?

Actually its completely up to the tank who they decide to guard. If dps is constantly pulling, then dps. If there is a lot of AoE going on in melee, then melee. If there are random AoEs being dropped everywhere, then the healer is best. If there are many mobs that spawn after a pull, healer again is best.

I run almost exclusively with guard on my healer. Why? Remember when you said that if you're healing and no one hits the mob? What about when I hit the mobbut it's still too far for me to Agro with my main skills AND taunt is down? This actually happens a lot, especially during speed runs. Sure I have all the main mobs on me but if dps is slacking and not picking up the little guys, that is going to kill you with spell knock back. With guard up, a simple hammer shot (no resource cost) will pluck the enemy off you. Without guard? Most likely 2-3 hammer shots, possibly an ion pulse, or maybe even a stockstrike / high impact bolt.

As a tank, I know the people who pull Agro the most and take the most damage in an encounter. It's not always the dps, it's almost always the healer.

Why? Because when dps attack, unless they AoE, they pull 0 Agro on additional mobs. Healers however constantly Agro ALL mobs. This is a major issue, specifically in situations with mass - spread out weak mobs.

That's why tanks put guard on healers. Dps just don't need it anymore.

If you mean FPs, I only guard healers if they comfortably outgear the dps, because undergeared dps aren't pulling anything off of me. Otherwise, yes, you're right, you always guard your strong melee since he's hopefully off killing the stragglers.

Alternatively, in OPs I always guard the healer no matter what, since they hit harder and because many pulls are a potential wipe if he drops as opposed one of your dps.

Then again, your thread is probably falling on deaf ears since the people who take time to read forums are probably already paying attention to how the game works best...

Here's my process for determining who I guard:

1. Is one of my group exceptionally squishy? Guard that guy regardless of role.

2. Does one of my DPS pull aggro at awkward times? Guard that guy

3. Guard melee DPS, because the 5% damage reduction probably helps them more than anyone else

Guess I misread the tooltip. I thought it all had a 15 meter range.

With guard up, a simple hammer shot (no resource cost) will pluck the enemy off you. Without guard? Most likely 2-3 hammer shots, possibly an ion pulse, or maybe even a stockstrike / high impact bolt.

Does it really take that much, even after 1.3? To be fair, I don't have a trooper/BH at 50 yet, so I'm not sure how easy it is for them to grab things.

After thinking about it some more (I wrote the post at 2 am) and looking back at the thread, I realize that my main problem with putting Guard on healers isn't so much that they don't need it, it's that some tanks seem to think that Guard is a substitute for actual tanking. I should have emphasized the point: "every enemy in a pull must be controlled, either by someone hitting it (preferably the tank) or crowd control. Anything that is not controlled is likely to go after the healer, and Guard will not prevent that." I've seen too many tanks go into pulls as if they were fighting solo. This is especially a problem with pulls that have more than one boss or elite.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback everyone. It still annoys me, but I'll try not to complain about Guard so much if no one else needs it.

I had figured the issue stemmed from that on my healer (lvl 23 smuggler) I noticed a lot of te low level tanks doing that...

Even with the boost to threat in 1.3 hammer shot is a hair too weak after a big heal or if the healer has a lot of hots up. If the healer is guarded its enough to pull off almost immediately, small difference but sometimes there are situations this can create an issue.

Honestly though it's only ever been an issue with bad dps. So if you roll exclusively with guild runs of hm flashpoints or only run ops you'll never encounter a situation to guard a healer (within reason).

If a DPS is ripping agro from me I guard them.

If not, why not guard the healer? Reducing their chance to pull agro from a lightly controlled mob (a mob I may have some threat on but am not focusing on at this point or one the DPS will get to in another few seconds) seems like a decent enough reason.

DPS don't die from random damage unless they do something phenomenally stupid or the healer just really doesn't want to heal them. 5% DR isn't exactly world beating and if it gets to the point where it would make a difference, the healer is already indifferent to them and they would die anyway. On the other hand, if I can reduce the amount of times my healer is annoyed by being attacked I'm all for it.

Now that's FP's. Ops are a different matter (more damage tossed around.)

Only the 50% damage transfer is range limited, and it is also only applicable in PvP. Thus, if you're in PvE, you can ignore the range of Guard altogether. Its effects are basically: 25% threat reduction and 5% damage taken reduction. My rule is basically the following…

If we're in a boss fight in an operation, the guard goes to the healers. I'm just using it for damage reduction in this case, since every little bit helps. I never lose agro on a boss (to any DPS), so threat is a non-issue. If I'm in a boss fight in a flashpoint, the guard *probably* goes to the healers unless it's a single-target boss (no adds), in which case I'll give it to the highest-damage melee DPS. For trash pulls in a flashpoint, it goes to the healer for omni-directional threat reduction, making it easier to hold the adds (yes, it does help). For trash pulls in an operation, it *might* go to the healer for threat reduction, but I'm more likely to give it to the highest-damage melee DPS for threat reduction.

I will also use guard dynamically if I'm having threat issues with a particular DPS (almost never happens these days), or to compensate for fight mechanics. For example, I guard the player with the bomber buff when fighting Kephess, since they're about to take an annoying amount of damage. Similarly, I try to guard one of the people grabbing their ball lightning when fighting Soa (this is less important than it was pre-1.2). When fighting Toth & Zorn, I will guard a melee DPS for damage reduction during the leap.

Swapping guard dynamically is a really important thing to be able to do, but it's worth noting that Guard is on the GCD, so you're trading threat, positioning and (for some classes) healing for a small threat and damage reduction on a new target. That's a tradeoff that is only worthwhile in a surprisingly narrow set of cases.

Since I've been doing HMs via the LFG-tool I noticed this too and they won't listen to you, you can ask them in chat all you want, they don't react.

I usually queue up with a healer so it's not that much of a problem but thanks to that I'm used to tanking HMs with my Sorc now.

I guard the player with the bomber buff when fighting Kephess, since they're about to take an annoying amount of damage.

Aside: if you have a Sage in your group, you can save a lot of that damage with a well-timed Rescue (as soon as the grappling hook goes up). But that is a good point, since you aren't doing anything else with your GCD at that moment anyway, might as well!

We guard melee DPS - not healers. You are correct, adds will always go against healers if no one attacks them.

This

My jaw hits the floor when I random queue for my daily hard modes and the healer tells me to put guard on him, I usually tell them they pvp to much cuz that's the only place they should see guard on them, seriously 2 nights ago I actually had to spend time arguing with a guy that doesn't play tanks .

I have a lvl 50 PT, lvl 50 jugg and a lvl 21 sin all tanks I think I know what I m doing.

I guard the healer just for the sake of having a guard or because I don't care. Due to how threat works, the healer will pull aggro from all undamaged or untaunted mobs. The threat reduction won't help.

Also, experienced DPS know to kill the weakest enemies to the strongest barring any mechanic check. Any adds or trash that the healer might aggro should be killed fast enough for the healer to not die. Also, the damage reduction is only 5%, meaning all enemies only have to do 5% more damage than they would to normally kill the healer. For moderate to heavy damage output mobs, that's usually just a hit considering that a healer with BIS everything and augments would have 20k health. This means the damage reduction only saves them from 1k of damage from what would normally kill them.

Therefore, my guard priority is always on the DPS. This is due to the fact that even if threat rates for tanks have doubled, it's still possible for well geared DPS to more than double the tank's damage output, most likely doing more sustained threat than the tank could. As for other DPS, I tell them to keep their threat dump on CD after 30 seconds into the fight.

And as a Jugg, I heavily suggest using Intercede as a total threat wipe for a teammate. With it, you could rip aggro off of an Infernal Council mob away from the person Interceded to, essentially meaning that nearly all of the player's threat was vaporized.

We guard melee DPS - not healers. You are correct, adds will always go against healers if no one attacks them.

This

My jaw hits the floor when I random queue for my daily hard modes and the healer tells me to put guard on him, I usually tell them they pvp to much cuz that's the only place they should see guard on them, seriously 2 nights ago I actually had to spend time arguing with a guy that doesn't play tanks .

I have a lvl 50 PT, lvl 50 jugg and a lvl 21 sin all tanks I think I know what I m doing.

This

My jaw hits the floor when I random queue for my daily hard modes and the healer tells me to put guard on him, I usually tell them they pvp to much cuz that's the only place they should see guard on them, seriously 2 nights ago I actually had to spend time arguing with a guy that doesn't play tanks .

I have a lvl 50 PT, lvl 50 jugg and a lvl 21 sin all tanks I think I know what I m doing.

Now I agree it's up to the tank to decide who gets guarded, what I disagree on is your mentality. You're being stubborn, as an endgame PVE player I know for a fact there are fewer reasons now to guard a dps than a healer.

Let's break it down.

Boss fights: Dps is guarded, generally the top dps. Why? The way threat mechanics work you're blowing tons of potential threat! Remember our taunts boost us anywhere from 110%-130% threat. That dps going crazy fuels your threat higher. Nerf their threat and you Nerf your own.

Trash pulls: Dps is guarded and attacking weakest mobs. Great. Until a pat walks into your healer / a random AoE unfortunately knocks player x into mobs. Guess who gets lots of Agro? Not the dps. It all goes to the healer, Sonia you have to snap enough threat on all of them. What if your taunts are on cd? It won't be easy pulling threat off of massive AoE heals or large single crits.

What happens when a dps pulls threat? Nothing. I've never had a wipe because dps kept pulling threat. I have seen many times where I am ammo starved trying to pull every mob off the healer because they are too spread out / ranged for AoE threat and I have to ion pulse each mob.

I'm a full Rakata / BH Vanguard and I've cleared all the content in the game except 16 man content. Guarding dps is a waste of threat and nothing else. The only time it's needed is when they outgear you.

So how often does this random healer gets kb on a random group of mobs? I m sorry but that is bad positioning by your healer or maybe he wasn't aware those mobs can kb then that means we got a new comer. But any how did a mob get pass the tank and dps???? If your healer pulls threat off your doing it wrong ow and in case nobody hit a target and it is going for the healer no big deal there are threat dart, its on cd? Grapple, your a jugg intercede, that on cd too then throw a stun, your on skype or teamspeak or what ever tell the dps to stun that target or tell the healer to kb the target all this just to buy time for cd, play smart.

And I fail to see how my guard keeps the healer alive (5% dmg red)in your scenario if(ever) it happens I would throw aoe threat skill or jump in there and aoe stun then hiting them with aoe to keep threat and yes using defensive cds

If we wiped cuz of 2 packs of mobs how is that my fault that 1 of the members had bad positioning why wasn't he at 20-30meters

Maybe I failed to explain my points so I'll boil it down to the essence.

Why do you guard dps? Do they pull Agro on random mobs? Do you ever need to pull off a dps? No. You taunt off a dps because that gives you an Agro lead. Dps can handle damage from bosses let alone a champion in a flashpoint. Healers can't heal as efficiently the second 1 ranged mob starts to hit them. Dps will encounter no issues.

The healer should be guarded at all times because if for any reason there are any errors the healer will be the first to Agro. If you can't understand why that's important than clearly you aren't understanding the issue. A healer that has been guarded can easily have threat ripped off them, in your world of perfection that wouldn't be an issue but after having pugged 100+ hms I can tell you right now that never works out. Healers need the 5% damage reduction and the 25% threat reduction. You said 5% is useless? What about when they pop CDs? Definsive buffs stack together to make incoming damage a joke.

Let me remind you of something. As a tank, endurance is your best bet when you want to increase time to live. Shield, defense, nothing adds more to you time to live than endurance. Until you add in heals. At that point as long as hps=dps-mps you will = alive. The healer is the most crucial component to your team, without one you can't win.

Let me try to sum this up for you: guard a dps - you lose threat and the gain 5% dr. Guard a healer - they lose threat and gain 5% dr.

If that still doesn't make sense to you, then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Clearly you have threat issues with Dps and I don't, so why would I ever guard a dps when it's the healers life that determines whether or not the group succeeds.

Sorry that got a bit ranty, my phone is annoying to type on.

Sorry that got a bit ranty, my phone is annoying to type on.

For what its worth, I've fought this fight before and I agree with you.

If all else is equal, guard the healer. If your DPS continues to pull agro off of you, guard the DPS. If you're in a HM FP, 5% DR won't matter to a DPS because the healer was never going to heal them anyway. If you're in an HM OP where 5% DR might make a difference between life and death for a DPS, guard the DPS.

But default should be the healer for every reason you've explained. Anyone saying there is a one-size fits all answer (always guard the healer or always guard the DPS) is just blowing hot air.