A quick word about who I am so you know the experience my advice is based on. I've been PT tanking for the last 7 months or so, and in that time I've tanked all the content in the game. My guild and I clear out all HM content each week, so the strategies I'm relaying are at least good enough to do all current content.

Spec:

Click Here for My Spec

Fairly self-explanatory for the most part. I take the full accuracy boost from AP because it's the largest dps boost for dps classes, and thus I assume the same for me. I take Hot Iron from AP over Advanced Tools because Flame Engine from the ST tree resets the cooldown on Flamethrower all the time, so in between those procs and regular ones I'm FTing really often. The last three points in AP though are what I consider my dump points, and I'm sure you could move them anywhere and make it work. There are some people advocating the endurance increase in pyrotech tree, and there's an argument to be made that it is an increase in survivability. I am of the opinion that the increase is too small to warrant 3 talent points, and I instead prefer to increase threat. However, YMMV.

Stat Targets:

Click Here for Ideal Stats Threat

Credit, of course, goes to KeyboardNinja for his excellent work. In that thread, scroll down until you see the spoiler tag underneath Vanguard, which is our Pub counterpart. That will bring up a list. The first number you read on the far left of each row is your total defensive stat budget, and the numbers that follow are your optimal stat ratings for defense, shield, and absorb. To calculate you defensive stat budget, open up your character sheet and mouse over defense chance, shield chance, and absorption, and add up the rating (green number in the hundreds) for each. Yes, your defense is supposed to be that high. Follow that stat budget as closely as you can for whatever row of total defensive stats you are closest to.

Gearing:

- You want to max out your defensive stats at the cost of endurance. Yes, this does mean that you'll end up with lower health, but you'll last longer with your improved mitigation. My PT is just about completely optimized and only has ~32.4k unstimmed hp in nearly full 72's and I tank all the content currently in the game quite successfully.

- Purchase or craft the level 55 Veracity Experimental Response Implant x2, and the Veracity Advanced Cosmic Combat Module, and do not replace them with token or commendation gear. They are lower endurance by a fair bit, but they are much higher defensive stats and that's more important.

- Always use the 4-piece set bonus, even if that means you need to use Dreadguard/Campaign armorings until you get 4-piece Arkanian/Underworld. The 2% defense boost is more mitigation than you'll get from upgraded armorings. EDIT: This may fall to preference, I'm having difficulty locating a definitive source on this. I did not upgrade until I had 4 pieces, and I was able to clear HM SnV with old armorings.

- Replace high Endurance mods or enhancements as quickly as you can in favor of their high defensive stat equivalent. Ideally you'll never use a lettered mod; always use an Advanced Deflecting Mod 31 over a 31A or 31B for instance. For enhancements use only Bulwark and Bastion, the other ones are high Endurance and suboptimal. The ideal ones are only obtainable from Arkanian/Underworld token drops, and you'll need several extra pieces to fully optimize so you can get by with the Elite/Ultimate comm pieces in the meantime.

- Never ever take alacrity or accuracy for any reason on any piece of gear. These are dps stats, not tanking stats. Taunt never misses and no amount of accuracy or alacrity will make you tankier.

- Your best relics are Fortunate Redoubt (Defense Proc) and the old PvP War Hero/Elite War Hero (shield rating). If you do not have an old PvP trinket, your next best bet is the Shrouded Crusader (on-use Shield/Absorb).

- If you are going to use defensive adrenals, use the old exotech ones that boost armor rating instead of the new ones that boost shield/absorb. The armor boost is better by a fair margin.

- Augments are critical for tanks, so upgrade asap and use the augments to try and hit the stat budget as per the previous section of this guide. You will likely end up almost completely in defense augments, so make friends with a synthweaver.

Rotation:

Single Target:

- Never taunt at the start of a pull unless someone else has aggro, and then yell at them for pulling instead of waiting for you. The longer you wait to taunt the more effective it is, and in a perfect world you would delay taunting until just before you lose aggro. If you taunt from further away than 4m you get extra aggro, but it's not worth running around to get it. However, if you end up away from the boss it is worthwhile taunting THEN closing the gap as opposed to doing it the other way around.

- If you are having problems keeping aggro in the early part of a fight, weave your taunts together by which I mean use the opener below (which has a taunt in it), then use AoE taunt about 6 seconds (4 global cooldowns) afterwards, then use regular taunt again about 6 seconds after that. This will generate an incredible amount of threat.

- Otherwise save your AoE taunt for use as an emergency taunt.

- Load up Shoulder Cannon early, and map it to a button you can press in tandem with other buttons. Shoulder Cannon is not linked to the global cooldown of your other abilities, so you can use it right overtop of anything except a channelled ability like flamethrower.

- Your opener is Explosive Fuel -> Jet Charge -> Rocket Punch -> Rail Shot -> Flame Burst x2 -> Flame Sweep x2 while spamming Shoulder Cannon on top of those moves. Taunt, then Flamethrower (which will probably be the quick flamethrower from Flame Engine Proc).

- Your rotation from then on is a priority based on what you have available:

1. Heat Blast: Map this to a key you can occasionally spam while pressing other keys. I put mine on F and spam it by instinct whenever I Flame Burst because you want to use this asap every time it's up.

2. Death From Above if the boss has a large hitbox or you are comfortable aiming it close to yourself. Skip it or become better at aiming it if you find it takes more than 1 second or so to get into position properly.

3. Flamethrower (regular or Flame Engine proc)

4. Rocket Punch

5. Rail Shot

6. Flame Burst

7. Rapid Shots if your heat is too high.

AOE:

- I can't give you a set rotation for AoE situations because each one is different and very dynamic. I'll instead try to give you some general tips.

- Generally speaking, it's better to Jet Charge a ranged mob as opposed to a melee one. The ranged mobs don't move, but the melee will come to you so long as you have aggro. Charging a ranged makes it easier to gather up the baddies.

- If you team is laying down AoE damage (orbitals especially), make an effort to tank inside their effect (even if you have to move slightly) unless you have to stay out of it (e.g. enemy aoe is there). It's very frustrating for a dps to spend the time/resources to put down a field of death only to have the tank haul the mobs out of it.

- The most important thing about AoE tanking is to go in with a plan of action. Look at the distribution of enemies and figure out how you're going to hold onto different mobs. This may seem like a lot of time to spend, but it becomes much faster as you get used to what your abilities do.

- Generally speaking, you'll want to open with a Death From Above on the largest number of targets you can hit with it.

- Explosive Dart will CC any normal mobs for a few seconds and is a decent aoe punch regardless. I sometimes use it as a very mini Death From Above to generate AoE threat on a group that isn't hit by my DFA. So I'll DFA, ED, the Jet Charge in and start my AoE tanking.

- Jet Charge a central target, grapple a far/problematic target next to you, and flame sweep.

- Flamethrower if you can hit most targets with it. If you back against a wall you'll hit more, if you back into a corner you'll do even better. Try to limit the amount of space around you that mobs can spread out in if you can, but I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time moving.

- Try to watch the group of enemies to see which way they are facing. If you see a mob stop attacking and change the way it's facing, you've lost aggro and that's an ideal time to aoe taunt.

Ranged:

- It's not often you'll have to tank from range, and it's not where you'll generate optimal, or even really acceptable threat. However, sometimes you will find it beneficial to tank from range (for instance kiting the bubble from the large "domed" robots during the puzzle boss in SnV).

- You'll be using DFA, Unload, Grapple, Rapid Shots, and Explosive Dart when possible, and taunting on cooldown. You may be able to hold aggro by staggering regular/aoe taunts by 6 seconds and then taunting on cooldown, but it will be difficult.

Yes, your defense is supposed to be that high. Follow that stat budget as closely as you can for whatever row of total defensive stats you are closest to.

Hard work done, but still the fuzz about defence. It's only supposed if one follows the theorycrafting without taking some common sense into it.

I'm not following the defence advice at all, instead I'm focsuing on getting high shield + absorb and it works pretty well in all 16M HC. Your healers will thank you for doing so because they don't get this scary moments when rng works against you.

Hard work done, but still the fuzz about defence. It's only supposed if one follows the theorycrafting without taking some common sense into it.

I'm not following the defence advice at all, instead I'm focsuing on getting high shield + absorb and it works pretty well in all 16M HC. Your healers will thank you for doing so because they don't get this scary moments when rng works against you.

I have had excellent results following KBN's numbers. I won't say that you can't be successful following your strategy, as your experience shows you can. However, I've read his thread and I follow his logic about taking the best points available at each budget level. As anecdotal evidence that his numbers are solid, I am able to tank 8-man HM Tu'chukk to ~16 stacks (which is when we kill him) without a tank swap and without ever falling below half health. Finally, the high defense has excellent synergy with our Oil Slick ability and with it being up for just over 25% of the time that is worth mentioning.

I have had excellent results following KBN's numbers. I won't say that you can't be successful following your strategy, as your experience shows you can. However, I've read his thread and I follow his logic about taking the best points available at each budget level. As anecdotal evidence that his numbers are solid, I am able to tank 8-man HM Tu'chukk to ~16 stacks (which is when we kill him) without a tank swap and without ever falling below half health. Finally, the high defense has excellent synergy with our Oil Slick ability and with it being up for just over 25% of the time that is worth mentioning.

Oil slick by itself is an excellent cooldown and don't necessarily have to be combined with defence at all. Tu'chuk is an good example I have done similar in 16M way back once the equip of our DPS and mine was way more worse then now. I will upload to torparse next time I tank him again.

You defence fanatics still seems to forget how our tank tree is called - shield tech and that's for a reason. Btw. skilling Hot Iron for increased Flame Burst damage makes sense following that logic, because higher def and lower shield means lower chance to reset Rocket Punch.

This damage increasing skills are debatable anyways because of the IGC nerf from 2.0.

Out of curiosity, why would you take the 6% damage increase on flame burst rather than the 8% damage increase on rocket punch, which I believe (I'm not at my comp at the moment, or I'd check) hits harder than flame burst anyway and frequently resets upon shielding attacks? RP is one of your hardest-hitting attacks and best threat-improvement mechanisms (both due to damage and to it proccing ion cell for a rail shot), so I'm curious how often you're spamming flame burst and if it really equates to higher damage output than the 8% boost to RP.

I was going to ask him much the same why he chose not to take the 8% increase to RP as well. I personally only invest 1 point into the +accuracy/+armor penetration for Rail Shot talent instead of the full 3 points. This allows me to put 2 points into the RP talent and keep the rest of the the AP build as is.

Many issues with a lot of the advice given here.

Spec:

Click Here for My Spec

The 3% Endurance boost is starting to become quite substantial and is free HP at a minimal threat cost. It's at least worth mentioning you can move some AP points that just increase damage into the Endurance talent.

Click Here for Ideal Stats Threat

Credit, of course, goes to KeyboardNinja for his excellent work.... Yes, your defense is supposed to be that high.

Your defense may not necessarily need to be that high. The given stats assume a specific damage profile, and if you drop defense to pick up Shield and Absorb you'll play more into your tank tree talents AND have your mitigation optimized, albeit for a different damage profile.

- You want to max out your defensive stats at the cost of endurance. Yes, this does mean that you'll end up with lower health, but you'll last longer with your improved mitigation. My PT is just about completely optimized and only has ~32.4k unstimmed hp in nearly full 72's and I tank all the content currently in the game quite successfully

 

- Purchase or craft the level 55 Veracity Experimental Response Implant x2, and the Veracity Advanced Cosmic Combat Module, and do not replace them with token or commendation gear. They are lower endurance by a fair bit, but they are much higher defensive stats and that's more important.

That is woefully low health. I'm all for maximizing mitigation, but at some point you have to ask yourself how low you want to take your health bar. You sound fine dropping below 35k health to pick up more mitigation. Are you ok with dropping below 30k health? 25k health? If you take B lettered mods and Veracity Ear/Implants you gain a significant amount of health while still sitting at a large mitigation pool.

- Always use the 4-piece set bonus, even if that means you need to use Dreadguard/Campaign armorings until you get 4-piece Arkanian/Underworld. The 2% defense boost is more mitigation than you'll get from upgraded armorings.

No it's not. For Ranged/Melee damage the 2% Defense Chance is almost exactly the same mitigation as the 1.06% Damage Reduction you gain from going between 4 Dread Guard armorings and 4 Black Market armorings. However, dropping your Damage Reduction for a Defense Chance increase will leave you hurting against Force/Tech damage. Overall it's better to upgrade your armorings to 69s or 72s when you can until you get the 69/72 level set bonus.

If you taunt from further away than 4m you get extra aggro, but it's not worth running around to get it.

You get that extra aggro by moving 2 meters away from the boss. That's very doable on most bosses. The humanoid melee bosses like to keep you at something like 1.7 meters. It's the massive hit box bosses that can be troublesome.

- Your opener is Jet Charge -> Rocket Punch -> Rail Shot -> Flame Burst x2 -> Flame Sweep x2 while spamming Shoulder Cannon on top of those moves. Taunt, then Flamethrower (which will probably be the quick flamethrower from Flame Engine Proc).

You use Flamethrower IMMEDIATELY after you proc the Flame Engine. The double tick flame thrower is your highest threat per GCD ability by far.

- Your rotation from then on is a priority based on what you have available:

1. Heat Blast: Map this to a key you can occasionally spam while pressing other keys. I put mine on F and spam it by instinct whenever I Flame Burst because you want to use this asap every time it's up.

2. Death From Above if the boss has a large hitbox or you are comfortable aiming it close to yourself. Skip it or become better at aiming it if you find it takes more than 1 second or so to get into position properly.

3. Flamethrower (regular or Flame Engine proc)

Flamethrower is usually not worth using without the Flame Engine proc. With the Flame Engine proc Flamethrower comes second in priority only to Heat Blast. If you're using Flamethrower when it procs it will be your second highest damaging ability over the course of a fight.

- You'll be using DFA, Unload, and Explosive Dart when possible, and taunting on cooldown. You may be able to hold aggro by staggering regular/aoe taunts by 6 seconds and then taunting on cooldown, but it will be difficult.

Don't forget Grapple and Rapid Shots.

Re: Hot Iron vs. Iron Fist vs. Puncture: I flame burst a lot, especially on the move, and a lot of fights have movement mechanics. Like I have said though, this is preference and not math, so it's entirely possible that Iron Fist pulls ahead. My talks with our dps has led me to believe it's not worth sacrificing accuracy (and rail shot penetration) to pick up rocket punch damage. To them, accuracy is top priority until capped, so I assume it's the same for my dps. I would rather remove Hot Iron to pick it up if I made the switch.

Re: 3% Stamina Boost: At my level of endurance, stimmed, I would be spending 1 talent point for just under 300 health. Even if you gear more for endurance, your gains won't get appreciably higher. 300 health is, in my opinion, much too small a benefit in survivability to merit the expenditure of a talent point, and taking it three times is just three mistakes. That being said, I'm sure you can successfully tank with it taken, your threat will just be slightly worse. On most pulls, taunts fix that.

Re: Defense vs. shield/absorb: If you disagree, I recommend reading the first 15 pages or so of the ideal stats thread wherein the difference between good points vs. best points is discussed. Is it impossible to do well if you stack shield/absorb? Absolutely not, and for certain damage profiles you will actually do better (which was the thrust of your argument I admit). However, over the course of an entire op, you'll take more damage. I prefer, and thus recommend, maximum all-around mitigation which has KBN's math to back it up and my anecdotal success. If parses prove that mitigation is maximized with another gearing strategy, I will happily update the OP.

Re: Total Health: Stimmed I hit a bit over 34k health. With a mix of high end and low end itemization you are likely stimming to ~36-37k depending on how heavily you are leaning on endurance. That's a difference of 10% or less. Now, in the middle of a fight, would your healers rather have you at 90% health and higher mitigation or 100% health and lower mitigation, because that's basically what the choice boils down to. So long as I can survive a few hits I ALWAYS prefer mitigation over health. Part of this is advice I have found on the forums and cannot locate again quickly (I tried) that says for Vanguards/PT's in particular mitigation > health. Part of it is years of playing a healer in MMOs and the type of tanks I like to heal. I would absolutely be comfortable dropping under 25k health if my survivability was rising enough to warrant that, and my healers would likely thank me for it. That is, of course, impossible in this game, but I will always take fewer/smaller hits over more damage taken to a larger pool. Especially when the difference between high hp and low hp is 10% or less.

Re: Upgrading your armorings: If you can cite your source for the math I'll change the OP. It's entirely possible it's a wash either way, but that's the strategy I took and it was successful. I'm fairly sure that the value of each % of mitigation rises the higher the base is though, i.e. it is better going from 18-19% than it is going from 10-11%. WIth that in mind I prefer to keep high defense, and I think the mitigation from 2% defense is a moving target, but again, supply a source and I'll happily update the OP.

Re: Taunting from a distance: I was told the extra aggro happened with taunts outside 3.75m (I round to 4 to make it easy to gauge in the heat of the moment), which is hard to get with a mobile boss. If you have a definitive source for 2m, I'll update the OP to reflect that.

Re: Opening: I agree with Flame Engine proc being high priority. I like to have a short, set opener because it gives me ~10 seconds to get position and settle in mentally, during which I can tank on auto-pilot. Plus, if you channel flamethrower you cannot use shoulder cannon, which is amazing off the start given it's high damage, healing, and extra threat. Admittedly it's only for a GCD. However, I prefer not having to monitor to procs and also spamming shoulder cannon. Using the opener I posted I almost never have to taunt unless my smash Juggernaut crits 8-9k in the first 4 seconds. On TFB final fight, I frequently tank the tentacles in the initial phase without needing to taunt at all, and my dps are typically top tier marauder and sorc. So I feel very confident is saying my opener is simple and works well.

Re: Using FT without Flame Engine: Pre-2.0 I did the math and found that FT, even as a 2x GCD move, was higher damage/threat than 2 other moves that could be performed in the same time. Do you know for certain that has changed? I will look at it again tonight on a dummy and update OP as necessary.

Re: Ranged Tanking: I'll add Grapple and Rapid shots to the OP.

Re: 3% Stamina Boost:

Think of it this way. HP is a form of mitigation. What you're advocating is sacrificing mitigation for higher threat. Pre-2.0 Jugg tanks proved you could still tank and hold aggro even with pitifully low threat.

Re: Upgrading your armorings:

The difference in damage reductions was done with AskMrRobot. I kept the chest, belt, and bracers as 69 non-set bonus armoring and swapped the other four armorings between Dread Guard and 69 non-setbonus. As far as seeing whether 1.06% Damage Reduction is better or worse than 2% Defense Chance, I have a little calculator I grabbed long ago that I run these things with, and I don't really know how to easily export its results. You can pop over to the tanking subforum and grab the spreadsheet Denchet made and run the numbers yourself. I used 53.25% Damage Reduction (this includes your Flame Burst debuff) 19.5% Defense, 38.9% Shield, and 51% Absorb (average Heat Blast contribution being used).

Re: Taunting from a distance

I don't have a source for this. Someone told it to me once, so I tried it on my ship dummy and looked at logs and saw it was true. I encourage you to do the same.

I just tested Flamethrower vs Rocket Punch/Rail Shot combo on the ops dummy, and it is worthwhile to channel even a 3s FT.

RP+RS (full puncture) (no crit) = ~3-3.2k

FT (no crit) = ~3.6k

If you, like me, take the extra crit chance on fire effects from AP tree, then FT has, obviously, a better chance to crit as well.

I just tested Flamethrower vs Rocket Punch/Rail Shot combo on the ops dummy, and it is worthwhile to channel even a 3s FT.

 

RP+RS (full puncture) (no crit) = ~3-3.2k

FT (no crit) = ~3.6k

 

If you, like me, take the extra crit chance on fire effects from AP tree, then FT has, obviously, a better chance to crit as well.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind. Also on the subject of crit chance, you should mention popping Explosive Fuel right when you jump in on the pull.

Interesting. I'll keep that in mind. Also on the subject of crit chance, you should mention popping Explosive Fuel right when you jump in on the pull.

Will update OP, good call. I do that, I just don't think about it anymore heh. I also updated OP to reflect that new non-set armorings vs. old bonus may be preference. If conclusive math appears I will update.

Think of it this way. HP is a form of mitigation. What you're advocating is sacrificing mitigation for higher threat. Pre-2.0 Jugg tanks proved you could still tank and hold aggro even with pitifully low threat.

You are undeniably correct. I still believe that it's too small a benefit and I'd rather have say, the extra crit on all my fire effects and extra damage somewhere else. However, that is admittedly my own preference, and I've updated the OP to reflect this.

You are undeniably correct. I still believe that it's too small a benefit and I'd rather have say, the extra crit on all my fire effects and extra damage somewhere else. However, that is admittedly my own preference, and I've updated the OP to reflect this.

Endurance is only a form of mitigation in the sense that it determines how much damage can be taken before death. With the endurance talent, you have effectively a "mitigation" of ~500 extra health that you could lose over the course of an entire fight while staying alive. Thus, in looking at events of an entire fight, that 500 health is so insignificant that it does not matter, especially given the fact that healers modify health bars by amounts in the thousands, and most would not consider 500 hp to be the minimum point where heals are absolutely necessary.

Secondly, the benefit of moving those points to a damage augmenting talent are not for the purpose of increasing threat, but increasing dps output, which is another form of "mitigation". By increasing one's dps, even slightly, the fight becomes shorter, meaning less damage received. I would believe that the damage received from any boss over a period of time that is the difference between kill times with and without the damage bonus talents is greater than the health gained from the endurance boosting talent.

Went and tested. A 38-6-2 (which I normally run) at my stat level (mix of BH for set bonus and BM, 30.7k HP, 2k stat budget) does 1400 on a normal rocket punch, 2100 on crits, and an extra 4-700 from ion cell ticks. Flame burst in the same spec does 1200 normal, 2000 crits.

For the alternative spec that stacks skills in AP, non-crit RP still does about 1300 and 2k crits, while FB moved up to 1300 non-crit, but stayed around 2k crit. In other words, equal damage, but with RP still getting ion cell ticks.

Seems mostly like personal choice and play style; if you spam flame burst, it's probably not a bad idea to spec a bit for AP, but for me, I spec hard into shield and make tons of use of Hydraulic Shield (the RP proc), so the added damage on RP base and crits seems useful to me. Don't forget, not only does Hydraulic Shield give 50% chance to proc, it also increases crit chance on it and flame sweep.

My two cents! Hope it helps clarify things.

Nice guide. Been looking for a reference for my PT which I'm working on gearing up for 2.0. I'll be using this and a lot of the advice offered.

Thx!!

Do you have any HM Op parses for your suggested build?

I've had much better success with 36/8/2. I usually upload my logs to Torparse so feel free to take a look (Welnem'i)

Logs after 5/16 are full 72 gear minus the barrel which unfortunately is still 66. We've also cleared all content to date so it's possible to pick specific boss fights. Mitigation break down {2148(1033/881/270)}

I've always felt the skills for ion cylinder were abysmal unless you're tanking 5 or more enemies...pretty hard to do in most PVE boss fights. Average hit for non-spec improved ion cylinder is only 194/hit. Adding 8% to that only nets an additional 16 damage per hit. 5 hits would be about 80 damage increase per hit with my current gear.

Adding 8% to RP yields an average hit of 1530. (8% adds about 110-115 damage per attack) Even with stacking high defense, I haven't had a problem with RP proc.

Adding 6% to hot iron also yields a damage boost of 85-100 damage per attack.

As I've said in the OP, the last three points I put into AP (Prototype Cylinders and Hot Iron) are the ones I consider optional. I really like the bottom row of AP personally, but I'm sure even that could be moved around. The reason I take Prototype Cylinders is that a) it's always ticking b) it's applied in an AoE with every rail shot c) IGC damage has extra threat built into it and d) it's only one point. The reason I take Hot Iron is that Flame Burst is a) yellow tech damage b) a big part of my rotation c) can be cast on the move (10m range), and d) benefits from the extra crit to fire effects from Prototype Burn Enhancers. That being said, I have no doubt that all of the alternatives posted here are viable choices, especially with alternate rotations or gear strategies.

I will upload a parse when my guild next runs HM SnV.

3% Increase in health is also a direct buff to your shoulder cannon heals, making it pretty much the only skill that you could spend those spare points in that increase your survivability. It is really going to come down to preference. Not only did pre-2.0 juggs prove you can tank with pathetic threat, but they don't have an endurance increase in their tree, showing just how trivial it is. There are more efficient ways to gain more health then dropping +% damage skills.

Also as far as raw threat goes, taking prototype cylinders and supercharged ion gas are the best bang for your buck for 2 skill points. Even with the pathetic damage, the threat modifier for them makes it worthwhile to take the flat % increases to their damage. Don't forget that railshot will trigger your ion gas cylinder even on a single target with supercharged ion gas, which will give you a guaranteed heat screen proc.

I've always felt the skills for ion cylinder were abysmal unless you're tanking 5 or more enemies...pretty hard to do in most PVE boss fights. Average hit for non-spec improved ion cylinder is only 194/hit. Adding 8% to that only nets an additional 16 damage per hit. 5 hits would be about 80 damage increase per hit with my current gear.

ICG ticks and procs seem underwhelming in terms of damage but they create huge amount of threat, 6-8 times the damage they deal. For example from my last Thrasher fight which i spend on the boss 95% of the time. Total TPS was 2736.13, tps from ICG 353,59 which amounts to 13% of all tps, highest value of all skill at my disposal. So adding talent points to it is by no means a must but thing worth considering tps-wise.

ICG ticks and procs seem underwhelming in terms of damage but they create huge amount of threat, 6-8 times the damage they deal. For example from my last Thrasher fight which i spend on the boss 95% of the time. Total TPS was 2736.13, tps from ICG 353,59 which amounts to 13% of all tps, highest value of all skill at my disposal. So adding talent points to it is by no means a must but thing worth considering tps-wise.

Probably should post a parse so we can see the nuances of the fight and see how much ICG really impacted total TPS.

Using the build I posted early which forgoes ICG in favor of HI and RP, my TPS was 8246.14 Granted this is HM where a tank swap is somewhat necessary when the other tank gets booted into the air during Thrashers roar phase. Flame burst accounted for 605 TPS in this parse. (Tanks are forced to move a lot during HM so FB/RS/RP tend to be used quite a bit)

DPS wise, I parsed 960dps in full tank gear. My biggest problem was the fight only lasted a little over 3min.

http://www.torparse.com/a/213217/11/0/Overview

edited to add this fight was with the current #2 (3179) and #4 (2920) DPS for Thrasher on torparse. We didn't have a problem holding threat even with their dps.

Also as far as raw threat goes, taking prototype cylinders and supercharged ion gas are the best bang for your buck for 2 skill points. Even with the pathetic damage, the threat modifier for them makes it worthwhile to take the flat % increases to their damage. Don't forget that railshot will trigger your ion gas cylinder even on a single target with supercharged ion gas, which will give you a guaranteed heat screen proc.

ICG spelled doom if you happened to tank EC HM/NiM. Having ICG hit a trenchcutter under the shield meant you died. I just haven't really looked back since. It does help they fixed ICG from breaking CC's...this was also an early spec killer.

From a threat perspective, almost all of the bosses require a tank swap of some kind. This alone is the biggest TPS gain. Most fights in S&V HM and all the fights in HM TFB are tank swaps.

I understand ICG when mob tanking and even while running HMFPs.....no doubt this helps but I'm not sold on operations boss fights in current content. I would almost always vote DPS gain on Ops Boss vs Threat gain knowing a tank swap and taunts are used.

I'll run ICG this week and compare to parses from last week. The only way to prove any theory is with real world results.

Before 2.0, I think most pt's would agree with the reasons for not taking super charged ion gas, with hm / nightmare making the talent a liability. After 2.0, the guaranteed IGC proc builds a heatscreen stack and reduces the cooldown of heatblast, this is what really sells it as a must have.

If your speccing right, you wont be in a position where you are deciding between dps vs threat anyway, unless you put that one point into hot iron instead of proto cylinders. I agree that the point in proto cylidners can be moved around with little consequence, but supercharged ion charged gas is very compelling with the changes to heatscreen / heatblast, the threat is a bonus. Its a very strong skill all round now.