ive read a few of these types of posts, on several games, and very rarely comment, in most cases i disagree with whats being said because its wrong, or i think its wrong, but in this case im disagreeing with something i know should be right and isnt, " tanks control the pace" they should, but they dont, its the crazy dps shouting go go, charging of ahead, the bane of every tanks life, that ruin the game for us, then sit there after a wipe saying ***, pug dps can make or break a group, and any dps with a modicum of skill( =common sense) have been snapped up by guilds as a responsible dps is a far rarer thing than available tanks in 55hms, if your a go go dps reading this look in the mirror, then slap yourself,

I've never played DPS. I have around 12 characters half healers and half tanks.

Healers are boring in most situations since you don't see the fight if there is some challenge (your looking at bars) and if there is none, you could just sit and do nothing.

Tanks are fun to play and I don't think you should have to get to the headache when doing FPs.

I did a lot of FP's to get my 6 tanks to the 50's levels. Now I just do some with my main for the weekly 3 FPs.

I use mostly the group finder and if in a group there is a dps that is too painful to manage, I tell him once what I'm expecting him to do. Second time I let him die. Third time I ask for a kick out and if I don't get it, I leave.

If I'm tired after a hard work day, I just leave without saying anything.

After that, I put every dumb DPS in my ignore list.

Now if you think about it, you can leave and find quickly another group because there is a lack of tanks.

Since there is a lack of tanks, if many tanks put the dumb DPS into ignore list, those DPS will just never find any group for FP.

That's just like natural selection : dumb DPS won't do FPs in the end.

If you want to TRULY tank, grab a Jugg/Guardian. maxed out the tank tree for it. If you die, outside of PVP or an HM on occasion, I'll be shocked. My Juggernaut went from being a single warrior proving himself, to the emperors wrath without ever dying a single time. Outside of a PVP and an HM of course.

If you're tanking and you grab a tank/defense spec, you'll excell greatly.

Also, the Shadow/Assassin are HORRIBLE tanks! They are as useless as tanks as Mercs/Commandos are as healers. Don't do it!

And the reason why tanks are fewer and fewer in the higher ranks now, is because of idiots who grab them for DPS specs. Which makes them useless as tanks, go figure. A Jugg that is DPS spec, going up against another jugg but is tank spec, the DPS spec will get wiped to the curb. It's the reason they are all glass when you DPS spec them.

Long-term in usefulness, as defense/tank specced tank, you'll do perfectly fine. And in fact, you'll do much better than you would otherwise. If you want a DPS spec, grab a non-tank for it. Assassins are great middle levels between the Jugg and Marauder. But only real strength is found via DPS specced. They make disgusting tanks.

Vanguard/Powertech specced out in DPS is decent, but a Vanguard/Powertech in shield specced, is near God mode. Takes forever to kill anything, but quite honestly, I laugh more seeing these players or NPCs trying to solo you, and you blast them away and shrug off the blows and go on to the next target.

The lack of tanks is not caused by clueless DPS. The lack of tanks is caused by the fact that most people don't find it fun.

I enjoy tanking, but if I could, I would probably do nothing but ranged DPS and healing. I mostly play my tank because that's what people need. If a guildie wants to queue for a flashpoint, the queue pops faster if I'm on my tank as opposed to my healer or DPS character, and I'm very impatient. Full guild flashpoints, operations, etc., are usually short on tanks so I need to bring my tank character to those rather than one of my other characters.

No worries, I like helping.

Weird thing is, I revel in extra chaos when I'm with guildies. Heck, it's not unusual to see healers start a fight with a face-pull or even a direct attack (and that includes boss fights, mind you). We routinely do stupid things during flashpoints (and sometimes even operations) just for the fun of it; chaos makes me happy. What's weird about that is that when I'm in a PUG, I can be one of those control freaks, mostly because I've run into those "hey, I think I'll pull a different group" players, and so I've become paranoid and overly meticulous in flashpoint PUGs. I do LOS pull unnecessarily, sometimes to round things up for AoE, but mostly because I'm terrified someone will start pulling other things after the fight starts, and that PUG healer may or may not be geared enough to cope with things like that.

Then again, maybe it's just because I'm a fastidious SOB.

Tanking isn't fun? My dear fellow, nothing in this game comes half as close to the fun I get out of tanking. I was one of the very first to heal with a Scoundrel before it became FOTM and that was challenging, but when they boosted them to where they are in patches I had to abandon ship to avoid playing Health Bar Whack-A-Mole. That was how I found tanking, and I will NEVER go back. You can things quick? Opps, watch out for those attacks taking chunks of your healthbar. Me? I'm not backing down from that frontal cleave you got BossMan, bring it and everyone else can watch as I pro-kite Kephess around and win the Final phase of ECHM for ya.

Nothing like tanking bud.

Weird thing is, I revel in extra chaos when I'm with guildies. Heck, it's not unusual to see healers start a fight with a face-pull or even a direct attack (and that includes boss fights, mind you). We routinely do stupid things during flashpoints (and sometimes even operations) just for the fun of it; chaos makes me happy. What's weird about that is that when I'm in a PUG, I can be one of those control freaks, mostly because I've run into those "hey, I think I'll pull a different group" players, and so I've become paranoid and overly meticulous in flashpoint PUGs. I do LOS pull unnecessarily, sometimes to round things up for AoE, but mostly because I'm terrified someone will start pulling other things after the fight starts, and that PUG healer may or may not be geared enough to cope with things like that.

This x1000. I remember the other day I was in an Athiss and got to the room with the 3 champs + 2 pat Champs. I said on vent "Pulling" and little did my guildies realize what I should have said was "Pulling everything I can reach." I didn't think twice about it though because I knew a couple things: 1) My guildie healer could handle it 2) the DPS would work out interrupts on the casters and 3) we pull crap like this on each other all the time. The next day I was tanking for two of the same guildies but we'd pugged the second DPS in queue. I wasn't thinking about the PuG so I did the same and it was not nearly as smooth because the PuG didn't touch the casters. I'm a bit controlling in PuGs because you cannot trust them to remember to breath let alone what targets need to get burned down first or what needs to be interrupted.

Something really tells me that the OP has had a wee bit too many tanks that dont taunt in their rotation...

I don't taunt in order to make tanking at least somewhat challenging in HM 55 FP's. Operations see me taunt on boss swaps and excrement hitting the fan situations. I've seen way too many tanks open up with a taunt only to lose aggro 4 seconds later when the Sent unleashes his combo. We can argue that both of them are doing it wrong but opening with a taunt is just insane.

Weird thing is, I revel in extra chaos when I'm with guildies. Heck, it's not unusual to see healers start a fight with a face-pull or even a direct attack (and that includes boss fights, mind you). We routinely do stupid things during flashpoints (and sometimes even operations) just for the fun of it; chaos makes me happy.

That's what I love about guild runs the most, too. Well, that and being able to troll people without them raging and calling me names; guildies troll back and it's all in good fun.

Oddly enough I find myself doing guild runs with my dps and GF runs with my tank.

Many in the guild have a tank alt they want to try out / practice on but don't want to be rushed by everyone else.

As a tank it's usually an insta-pop for flashpoints.

What really annoys me, however, is the amount of effort I have to put in for even the slightest upgrade.

my Tank is mostly 72, with a few 69 pieces (mostly for set bonus). To get an upgrade of 30 points in my defense budget I need to spend 500 ultimate commendations. (only counting shield, absorbtion and defense)

I'm sure I could get a few more than 30 points by fiddling with the augments, but the point is, my slightly worse geared vanguard dps (2600 aim. 1350 - 1600 dps 850 bonus, unbuffed, unstimmed, mostly 72, some 69) gets a lot more bang for the proverbial buck because the mods and enhancements are not lettered.

Now either the community as a whole does something vastly different than intended by the devs for gearing up their tanks or there's a point to an increased difficulty / amount of effort required to gear up.

If there is a point to it, I don't see it. My guild usually has a problem with not killing things fast enough, as we either run out of time in a timed phase (i.e. Operator IX) or generally run into the enrage timer.

I've stopped concerning myself with lettered mods, BiS and set bonuses a long time ago. It just wasn't worth the effort.

So how do you upgrade your gear then?

Oddly enough doing guild runs with my dps and GF runs with my tank.

Many in the guild have a tank alt they want to try out / practice on but don't want to be rushed by everyone else.

 

As a tank it's usually an insta-pop for flashpoints.

 

What really annoys me, however, is the amount of effort I have to put in for even the slightest upgrade.

my Tank is mostly 72, with a few 69 pieces (mostly for set bonus). To get an upgrade of 30 points in my defense budget I need to spend 500 ultimate commendations. (only counting shield, absorbtion and defense)

 

I'm sure I could get a few more than 30 points by fiddling with the augments, but the point is, my slightly worse geared vanguard dps (2600 aim. 1350 - 1600 dps 850 bonus, unbuffed, unstimmed, mostly 72, some 69) gets a lot more bang for the proverbial buck because the mods and enhancements are not lettered.

 

Now either the community as a whole does something vastly different than intended by the devs for gearing up their tanks or there's a point to an increased difficulty / amount of effort required to gear up.

 

If there is a point to it, I don't see it. My guild usually has a problem with not killing things fast enough, as we either run out of time in a timed phase (i.e. Operator IX) or generally run into the enrage timer.

Comm gear enhancements are the high endurance variety for DPS as well, but they do at least get the good mods. Tank enhancements, unfortunately, do not come in the actual "low endurance" variety, only medium and high.

i agree that there seems to be a lack of tanks around. when doing groupfinder flashpoints, especially Hard Mode, with a Jug tank, i never have to wait long in the queue.

i think people are shying away from tanks for a few reasons I can identify:

1: it's the second most thankless job in the galaxy after healer. I've been yelled at by DPS more times than I can count on runs. Tanks tend to cop the blame for DPS stuffups. for this reason, i refuse point blank to 'Intercede' on a DPS. I'll intercede on my party healer the instant they pull big aggro (and healers can generate obscene aggro in milliseconds with a few crit heals) but the dps weenies can just go jump.

2: high-end gear is, seemingly, as rare as rocking-horse poop. for every 10 pieces of sweet DPS gear I 'greed' or 'pass' on, i might be lucky to see one half decent piece of tank kit which, it seems, everyone hits 'need' over (yeah, i'd like to gear Jaesa out in sweet purple willpower gear, but she's a 'greed', not a 'need'). I've been ninja'd on tank gear more times than I care to count.

3: in PvP, people are selfish. they want high damage to maximise their kill-count. a PvP tank's job is to annoy the hell out of the opposition, not score kills.

4: DPS weenies not dealing with adds in bossfights. this is my number one pet peeve as a tank, having to haul off the boss (who then goes after the healer in a big way) to do the DPS job for them.

i enjoy tanking, i think everyone should play as a tank for a little while at least. walk a mile in their shoes so to speak.

So how do you upgrade your gear then?

Ultimate comms and lucky wins on rolls just like everybody else. I just don't obsess about having the flavor of the month upgrade in every single slot. There are far better things I can spend my gaming time on.

3: in PvP, people are selfish. they want high damage to maximise their kill-count. a PvP tank's job is to annoy the hell out of the opposition, not score kills.

The achievement system isn't helping either. But, at the end of the day, the entire pvp was designed badly so no QQ there.

I like tanking (no pug tanking for sure), but I do not like the agro management in this game. Sriously, I feel like I am about to lose the agro every second. 100% threat on skills is not enough whan your dps is doing x3 your damage. It is a great pressure, especially in operations.

I'm not a fan of aggro management in the game because I find it terribly easy to keep aggro on me. Then again, I've been playing shadow tank almost exclusively.

I like tanking (no pug tanking for sure), but I do not like the agro management in this game. Sriously, I feel like I am about to lose the agro every second. 100% threat on skills is not enough whan your dps is doing x3 your damage. It is a great pressure, especially in operations.

They buffed tanks to 300% threat almost a year ago 0.o

I'm not a fan of aggro management in the game because I find it terribly easy to keep aggro on me. Then again, I've been playing shadow tank almost exclusively.

Shadows have better agro management. Way better than guardians. Maybe because half of your atacks deal force damage (force damage has higher dfault accuracy percentage), or maybe because the abilities that have higher threat % are on lower cooldown (Project vs Guardian Slash for example).

They buffed tanks to 300% threat almost a year ago 0.o

http://i.imgur.com/mSHJ2Y1.jpg what?

Yeah, stance only doubles the threat generation.

So against a 3000+ dps you can't hold aggro theoretically only with damage, you'll need to use taunts.

Of course, this happens rarely, more often dps pulls aggro with a series of crits, or in my case, I miss with an attack (at snap threat phase)

Yeah, stance only doubles the threat generation.

 

So against a 3000+ dps you can't hold aggro theoretically only with damage, you'll need to use taunts.

 

Of course, this happens rarely, more often dps pulls aggro with a series of crits, or in my case, I miss with an attack (at snap threat phase)

Most of the tanks have aggro bonuses on their most important attacks. If a sin tank deals 1,3k damage, discharge will do 300% threat, wither 300%, shock 230%. So 1,3k damage are (assuming shock does 30%, wither 10%, discharge 6%) are ~3k threat. Then you can add ~400 hps (selfhealing) and we have 3,4k dps.

Then add the 110%/130% threat swap cap. So mdps need ~3,8k sustained dps and rdps need 4,4k sustained dps to get aggro from a sin tank.

Dont have numbers for pt/juggs tough but i assume its the same there.

My only real beef with tanks in this game is the lack of hp, it bugs me that I have close to and some times more hp in my dps gear as I do in my tank gear. I know its not a big deal but something about it just bugs me.

Augments

For the love of everything that is holy; don't augment with endurance!

With a mix of 75 / 78s I'm sitting around 41k on my juggernaut tank.