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PvP Tanking for Dummies (5.7)


kissingaiur

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Hey guys, Hottie here @SS. I decided to pick up tanking recently and am lucky enough to know some accomplished solo and team ranked tanks who I could turn to for advice. I realized, however, that there are very few resources out there for those who want to learn more about tanking. This prompted me to collaborate with them on this guide.

 

I hope it’ll be useful to beginners and more seasoned players alike: not only to tanks but those who play with and against them.

 

The guide gives an overview of stats and gearing and covers the fundamentals of guarding and taunting, CCs, basic rotations, DCD usage and utilities.

 

It’s important to me to put out good, well-researched information. If there are any errors or omissions, please let me know.

 

Enjoy :).

Edited by kissingaiur
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Couple of things

First of all you CAN in fact shield and defend damage taken through guard, as long as the original attack is shieldable/defendable, the game keeps track of what damage you're intercepting through guard, so if a Marksmanship sniper is tunneling your guarded target and you're low on health, Saber Ward or Deflection is going to help you a lot more than Invincible or Overcharge Saber.

Secondly Energy Shield does not reduce all damage taken by 25%, it increases your damage reduction by 25%, which is a fundamentally different thing.

Lastly the Juggernaut utility setup is outdated, some of the utilities listed do not exist anymore. Also, though is more of a preference, I really recommend taking Unshackling Rage as a Juggernaut as it is a ridiculously good movement utility that way outshines a cooldown reduction on one hardstun.

 

EDIT: This one is reaching a bit, but the 5% reduced damage taken from guard is in fact applied in PvP too, so theoretically if you're the only person with a guard leaving guard on when you go away does have some slight use, although it's nearly negligible.

Edited by AdjeYo
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Lastly the Juggernaut utility setup is outdated, some of the utilities listed do not exist anymore. Also, though is more of a preference, I really recommend taking Unshackling Rage as a Juggernaut as it is a ridiculously good movement utility that way outshines a cooldown reduction on one hardstun.

 

I noticed this too. It looks like she updated it though. I do tend to take the reduced CD on force stasis though it's hardly mandatory. Basically I'm the same as her for the first tier, for the second tier I take unremitting (the push pull immunity for 4s). Since she changed it, we have the same third tier. For the last tier, again we both take the reflect but different secondaries. But neither is really a mandatory, so meh.

 

We also disagree on what is mandatory. While I agree the 30s reduction on focused/enraged defense is, I would include the reflect length increase as well. Sure it's a bigger deal in PvE, where it's an exceptional threat tool with that point, but especially with all the mercs around reflecting. At least in regs, ours tends to get ignored and is very useful.

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Couple of things

First of all you CAN in fact shield and defend damage taken through guard, as long as the original attack is shieldable/defendable, the game keeps track of what damage you're intercepting through guard, so if a Marksmanship sniper is tunneling your guarded target and you're low on health, Saber Ward or Deflection is going to help you a lot more than Invincible or Overcharge Saber.

 

Need to double check this with some people.

 

Secondly Energy Shield does not reduce all damage taken by 25%, it increases your damage reduction by 25%, which is a fundamentally different thing.

 

Is this a way of just saying it's additive not multiplicative? Regardless, this was something I was not aware of and it was also brought up by another player on reddit. It's on my to-do-list to be adjusted to reflect this information (if this is what you meant).

 

Lastly the Juggernaut utility setup is outdated, some of the utilities listed do not exist anymore. Also, though is more of a preference, I really recommend taking Unshackling Rage as a Juggernaut as it is a ridiculously good movement utility that way outshines a cooldown reduction on one hardstun.

 

Editted already, it was an oversight, whoops.

 

EDIT: This one is reaching a bit, but the 5% reduced damage taken from guard is in fact applied in PvP too, so theoretically if you're the only person with a guard leaving guard on when you go away does have some slight use, although it's nearly negligible.

 

This is something I actually was not aware of. I want to go and test this to make sure. Since guard functions differently in pvp to pve it's worth double checking. Ill get back to you on this but if it is correct I will make sure the guide reflects this once my editor is awake.

 

Good stuff. Thanks for the feedback :).

Edited by kissingaiur
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Is this a way of just saying it's additive not multiplicative? Regardless, this was something I was not aware of and it was also brought up by another player on reddit. It's on my to-do-list to be adjusted to reflect this information (if this is what you meant).

Yes Energy Shield and the likes add to your existing damage reduction additively So say at 50% DR with energy shield up you'll have 75% DR and thus recieve only 1-0.75=0.25 of all damage.

Whereas things like Invincible provide a separate reduction layer. So with 50% DR and Invincible you'll take

(1-0.5)*(1-0.4)=0.3 of all damage.

Edited by AdjeYo
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I believe he's right here. Consider how squishy a dps guard is vs a tank guard.

 

I’m still double checking it just for completeness sake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“but-but dps Guarding are OP!!11!1!! NERF GUARD.” /endsarcasm

Edited by kissingaiur
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Yes Energy Shield and the likes add to your existing damage reduction additively So say at 50% DR with energy shield up you'll have 75% DR and thus recieve only 1-0.75=0.25 of all damage.

Whereas things like Invincible provide a separate reduction layer. So with 50% DR and Invincible you'll take

(1-0.5)*(1-0.4)=0.3 of all damage.

 

Yup it makes sense, if it was the other way around for immortal it would make their damage reduction huge, possibility class tuning is why it’s like this.

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Couple of things

 

EDIT: This one is reaching a bit, but the 5% reduced damage taken from guard is in fact applied in PvP too, so theoretically if you're the only person with a guard leaving guard on when you go away does have some slight use, although it's nearly negligible.

 

I would like to know for sure about this, since I've always wondered for along time whether that 5% still worked out of guards initial damage redirection range. Like if I put guard on a player and he ends up going halfway across the map and I'm at the spawn, does the 5% still actually work? I remember combing websites and the forums a few years back and never finding an answer for this.

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Nice work!

 

Just a few comments on the assassin section, though:

  • Since this is a guide for dummies, you might want to mention how to use dark ward and how it works.
  • Versus a mob of heavy armors or tanks, you might prefer to use recklessness on a procced discharge instead of wither (because it bypasses armor and shield).
  • The opener seems to depend on shock proccing but the proc of shock is totally random (though lacks any rate limit. In other words, you might get 3 auto-crits in 6 gcds in a row, and you might get none.

 

More about the shock proc: the shock proc has a chance to happen in each strike of thrash separately (resulting in 0.51% chance to proc), but same goes for each target hit by lacerate. Therefore, combined with the fact that lacerate traumatizes all targets, then unless you are finishing someone off you probably better prefer lacerate over thrash (deals same damage, 1 more trauma, and same chance for shock proc). When fighting versus even more people, the shock has (1-0.7^n) chance to proc (n = number of attacked players). Here is a breakdown by number of targets: 3 targets = 0.657 chance. 4 = 0.7599 chance. 5 = 0.83193 chance. 6 = 0.882351 chance. 7 = 0.9156457 chance. 8 = 0.94235199 chance. Therefore above 3 targets I would suggest removing maul from the rotation and lacerating unless you have a better AoE, a shock or depredating volts. It is very likely shock will proc for each lacerate (worst case - lacerate again. Never was unlucky enough to lacerate 4 people twice without getting a proc) and don't forget that this proc resets the cooldown too.

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I would like to know for sure about this, since I've always wondered for along time whether that 5% still worked out of guards initial damage redirection range. Like if I put guard on a player and he ends up going halfway across the map and I'm at the spawn, does the 5% still actually work? I remember combing websites and the forums a few years back and never finding an answer for this.

 

A good friend of mine told me that he remembers seeing a specific developer vod a while back which basically said that 5% only works in PvE and the 50% only works for PvP.

 

I have a lot of conflicting statements that it works and doesn't work. That's why today I am going to makes sure to thoroughly investigate and figure out if it's true or not.

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I would like to know for sure about this, since I've always wondered for along time whether that 5% still worked out of guards initial damage redirection range. Like if I put guard on a player and he ends up going halfway across the map and I'm at the spawn, does the 5% still actually work? I remember combing websites and the forums a few years back and never finding an answer for this.

 

This thread is the best one on the topic I could find, it evens answers the question of whether taunt affects redirected damage. It is pretty old, but I don't think anything really changed in this department, so it should still hold up, although more testing is of course never a bad thing.

Edited by AdjeYo
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A good friend of mine told me that he remembers seeing a specific developer vod a while back which basically said that 5% only works in PvE and the 50% only works for PvP.

 

I have a lot of conflicting statements that it works and doesn't work. That's why today I am going to makes sure to thoroughly investigate and figure out if it's true or not.

 

Nice, keep us posted, really would like to know for an absolute certain xD thanks for the time you put in to test some of these mechanics.

 

 

This thread is the best one on the topic I could find, it evens answers the question of whether taunt affects redirected damage. It is pretty old, but I don't think anything really changed in this department, so it should still hold up, although more testing is of course never a bad thing.

 

Nice find, didn't see that thread when I tried looking some years back. I will read that thread when I get home from work.

Edited by DenariusJay
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If anyone is interested in understand how mitigation works in this game, Mostly Harmless wrote a guide explaining it.

 

It's worth to quote him in this thread:

 

How Mitigation Works

 

SW:ToR has formidably logical and sane damage type && mitigation system. All attacks are 2-type system, and every time something hits something 2-roll mitigation check occurs.

 

Attack type: can be either Melee/Ranged, or Force/Tech. While there are quite some differences in certain cases, from assassin tank point of view, melee and ranged attacks directed at us behave exactly same 100% of the time, obviously rifle shot is ranged and saber swing is melee but it’s just flavour making no difference. Same with Force/Tech, essentially same thing. Difference between Melee/Ranged (MR) and Force/Tech (FT) is big, though. Simplifying, one can say that MR are “weapon” attacks, while FT are “special” attacks.

 

Damage type: can be either Kinetic/Energy (KE) or Internal/Elemental (IE). Behaviour same as with attack type: pairs are different, but just a matter of flavour within pairs.

 

FT attacks can be either KE, or IE, while MR attacks are always KE.

 

Two-roll mitigation system works like that:

 

First roll: check if attack hits. Accuracy vs Defense roll for MR attacks, Special accuracy vs Resist for FT attacks.

If you have any reflect effect, it happens after defense/resist check, only if attack passes. You cannot reflect what you have resisted, unless resist is caused by reflect ability.

Second roll: check if attack crits. Critical chance vs Shield chance (if Crit + Shield is over 100%, Shield is effectively reduced by their delta).

All multiplicative bonuses are applied at this step, all damage buffs and debuffs, armour, shield and crit multipliers.

On final step, absorb shields come in effect if any are present, further reducing damage.

NB: parry/dodge/deflect are all just flavour text notifying about successful (for tank) defense vs accuracy check.

 

NB: defense chance on MR attacks is ignored while you are incapacitated (any stun/sleep/etc effect), but chance to hit is still checked as accuracy vs 0% defense.

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Nice work!

 

Just a few comments on the assassin section, though:

  • Since this is a guide for dummies, you might want to mention how to use dark ward and how it works.
  • Versus a mob of heavy armors or tanks, you might prefer to use recklessness on a procced discharge instead of wither (because it bypasses armor and shield).
  • The opener seems to depend on shock proccing but the proc of shock is totally random (though lacks any rate limit. In other words, you might get 3 auto-crits in 6 gcds in a row, and you might get none.

 

More about the shock proc: the shock proc has a chance to happen in each strike of thrash separately (resulting in 0.51% chance to proc), but same goes for each target hit by lacerate. Therefore, combined with the fact that lacerate traumatizes all targets, then unless you are finishing someone off you probably better prefer lacerate over thrash (deals same damage, 1 more trauma, and same chance for shock proc). When fighting versus even more people, the shock has (1-0.7^n) chance to proc (n = number of attacked players). Here is a breakdown by number of targets: 3 targets = 0.657 chance. 4 = 0.7599 chance. 5 = 0.83193 chance. 6 = 0.882351 chance. 7 = 0.9156457 chance. 8 = 0.94235199 chance. Therefore above 3 targets I would suggest removing maul from the rotation and lacerating unless you have a better AoE, a shock or depredating volts. It is very likely shock will proc for each lacerate (worst case - lacerate again. Never was unlucky enough to lacerate 4 people twice without getting a proc) and don't forget that this proc resets the cooldown too.

 

Your analysis is correct. I think though this comes down to a lot of situational awareness and thinking by the part of the assassin/shadow player. I'll have to figure out, if i even can, to try to simplifying this in a way a new player wouldn't be overwhelmed. This is getting really into the nitty-gritty of the rotation/priority system for min/maxing your dps. This also depends if the player is also choosing to wear the DPS set-bonus or the tanking one. Have to think about this.

 

Thank you for your feedback.

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Thanks for this guide. I'm a dummy tank, so I find it useful. :p

 

Minor point, though. In your guide you have...

 

It’s easy to accidentally double-click Guard: activating Guard is on the GCD but deactivating it is off the GCD.

 

I'm not sure this is true. I have, many times on my DPS sin, struggled with trying to quickly deactivate a guard while at the same time continuing to attack. I always seem to have to wait for the GCD to get it to turn off. So I experimented with it today with my kinetic combat shadow (in spawn, waiting for matches to start... just in case it's different there or something).

 

It seems a bit weird. I would throw guard on someone. Then use whirling blow to activate the GCD. Then try to remove guard, and it would never work before the GCD with just a single activation. What it would do is seem to sort of cancel the GCD. That is, the little line that moves down your ability icons would vanish and they would all "turn on" again - but they were not actually ready. I could not, for example, use WB then try to remove guard and then use WB again really fast to get 2 WB before the GCD expired.

 

However if I did the remove guard twice in a row really fast, then it would work before the GCD. But not using it just once.

 

And I tried exactly what you warn about, tapping my keybind to turn ON guard, but tapping it twice really fast, so that if the 2nd one registered it would effectively deactivate guard. But it didn't do that. It always left the guard going.

 

Well, that's a lot of complication for a pretty minor point. But there it is anyway. :D

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First of all, nice guide Hottie (as usual from you ;)).

 

I'm not sure this is true. I have, many times on my DPS sin, struggled with trying to quickly deactivate a guard while at the same time continuing to attack. I always seem to have to wait for the GCD to get it to turn off. So I experimented with it today with my kinetic combat shadow (in spawn, waiting for matches to start... just in case it's different there or something).

 

I'm not sure if it's a bug or an intended GCD mechanic (I'd vote for the former, but who knows), but I've noticed this "cancel the GCD" effect in another case too. I think this would deserve some exploration, as it's a quite important thing when using off-the-GCD abilities.

 

And once again, nice guide.

Edited by Schoock
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After testing, 5% damage reduction even when your out of range does still apply to the player in PvP. We did a test on Ilum and in a warzone, it indeed works.

 

It's very odd it works like this. But since it's correct I will be updating my guide with the new information.

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Thanks for this guide. I'm a dummy tank, so I find it useful. :p

 

Minor point, though. In your guide you have...

 

It’s easy to accidentally double-click Guard: activating Guard is on the GCD but deactivating it is off the GCD.

 

I'm not sure this is true. I have, many times on my DPS sin, struggled with trying to quickly deactivate a guard while at the same time continuing to attack. I always seem to have to wait for the GCD to get it to turn off. So I experimented with it today with my kinetic combat shadow (in spawn, waiting for matches to start... just in case it's different there or something).

 

It seems a bit weird. I would throw guard on someone. Then use whirling blow to activate the GCD. Then try to remove guard, and it would never work before the GCD with just a single activation. What it would do is seem to sort of cancel the GCD. That is, the little line that moves down your ability icons would vanish and they would all "turn on" again - but they were not actually ready. I could not, for example, use WB then try to remove guard and then use WB again really fast to get 2 WB before the GCD expired.

 

However if I did the remove guard twice in a row really fast, then it would work before the GCD. But not using it just once.

 

And I tried exactly what you warn about, tapping my keybind to turn ON guard, but tapping it twice really fast, so that if the 2nd one registered it would effectively deactivate guard. But it didn't do that. It always left the guard going.

 

Well, that's a lot of complication for a pretty minor point. But there it is anyway. :D

 

I just tested this with my friend. He guarded me, then he lacerated/removed guard in the next GCD at the same time. This was with a 0 ability action queue. It doesn't look like it's bugged to me.

 

I think there might be an issue with you queuing multiple abilities in the ability queue or not clicking fast enough?

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After testing, 5% damage reduction even when your out of range does still apply to the player in PvP. We did a test on Ilum and in a warzone, it indeed works.

 

It's very odd it works like this. But since it's correct I will be updating my guide with the new information.

The tooltip is pretty ambiguous. I wasn't sure of this either before I tested it with a guildie a few years ago. Not a big DR boost, but the ability could be described better in game...

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The tooltip is pretty ambiguous. I wasn't sure of this either before I tested it with a guildie a few years ago. Not a big DR boost, but the ability could be described better in game...

 

Yeah it makes no sense. It actually was a surprise to me that it works this way. It's not intuitive at all, the only way to know how it works if by literally testing.

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I just tested this with my friend. He guarded me, then he lacerated/removed guard in the next GCD at the same time. This was with a 0 ability action queue. It doesn't look like it's bugged to me.

 

I think there might be an issue with you queuing multiple abilities in the ability queue or not clicking fast enough?

 

Ah, I saw that I have a .5 queue time set. Maybe that is it. I'll adjust and try again next time I'm in the game. Thanks!

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.5 is *really* high for PvP. I would suggest .25.

 

I think .5 must be the default, because I never even knew this setting existing until you mentioned it a couple posts ago. I'm now going to go blame all my suckiness on it. :p Actually, with my old-person reflexes, I'm not sure making it lower is better. I'm never going to be changing what I'm doing at the last second anyway. So I might as well let it queue. :o On the other hand, if it fixes the problem I have removing guard "on the fly", then I'll give it a try.

 

Thanks!

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