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Tanking question


JcPogi

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Hi there. I've been playing a Shadow ever since.. but I am still clueless about some things and I need your opinion on this one.

 

If you are in tank spec and tank gear, is it better to have endurance augments or go with the Defense rating augments?

 

Thank you :)

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If you are in tank spec and tank gear, is it better to have endurance augments or go with the Defense rating augments?

 

Mitigation augments are always better than Endurance augments. In fact, until you get into full DG gear, mitigation is always better than Endurance and, even then, it's a break even and so depends upon your personal preference.

 

As to which mitigation augments you want, it depends. You want to get to ~30/65/60 for you listed chances. If you're shy Defense, you want to use Defense augs. If you're shy Absorb, you want to use Abs augs. You should *never* be short Shield, so you shouldn't ever use Shield augs.

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Hi there. I've been playing a Shadow ever since.. but I am still clueless about some things and I need your opinion on this one.

 

If you are in tank spec and tank gear, is it better to have endurance augments or go with the Defense rating augments?

 

Thank you :)

 

 

Endurance is among a tank's primary stat so fortitude 22 augments are the way to go. The other stats are obtained via mods and enhancements. My two cents, people may disagree and there is no one way of doing your toon. There are many ways of making a tank and being successful. I do not agree with kitru that you need 60 absorb. 50-55 is enough as long as you got 30% defence and hit high on the HP pool.

 

 

There are attacks that are not mittigated at all so a 26k tank vs a 31k tank will behave differently. While the healers are happy with the former, takes shorter to top up, the raid will benefit more from the latter as it will have more flexibility in these cases.

 

 

There are some BEST IN SLOT mods and enhancements. The first one that comes to mind is the 27B which is a must for a shadow tank.

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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There are attacks that are not mittigated at all so a 26k tank vs a 31k tank like will behave differently.

 

The only way that a 31k tank behaves differently compared to a 26k tank is that the 31k tank 31k tank gives their healers a couple extra seconds over the already impressive 15-20 second reaction windows that 26k hp provides. All you're doing by stacking that extra 5k hp instead of 5% absorb is, in those scant situations where you're dealing with large amounts of unmitigatable damage (re: Kephess the Undying, T&Z, twin tanks), providing your healers with a redundantly larger window. If the existing 15 seconds that you can manage with 25k hp isn't enough to keep you alive, it's because your healers are bad.

 

Endurance does nothing to make it easier to heal you. All it does is make it so that bad healers seem less bad because they can stand around doing nothing for 10 seconds before they realize they need to actually toss some love your way.

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The only way that a 31k tank behaves differently compared to a 26k tank is that the 31k tank 31k tank gives their healers a couple extra seconds over the already impressive 15-20 second reaction windows that 26k hp provides. All you're doing by stacking that extra 5k hp instead of 5% absorb is, in those scant situations where you're dealing with large amounts of unmitigatable damage (re: Kephess the Undying, T&Z, twin tanks), providing your healers with a redundantly larger window. If the existing 15 seconds that you can manage with 25k hp isn't enough to keep you alive, it's because your healers are bad.

 

Endurance does nothing to make it easier to heal you. All it does is make it so that bad healers seem less bad because they can stand around doing nothing for 10 seconds before they realize they need to actually toss some love your way.

 

 

 

Thanks for your valuable input. What you call redundant window I like to call pro-active behaviour to help out our healers whenever you can. You call them bad, it is your prerogative as much as it is mine to opt for a configuration that suits me and my raid.

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I am not a number wizard like keyboardninja or have KItru's experiance with a geared 50 in every AC.

I still preach the balance approach of stacking some HP with defenses. I can understand I'risa's point of the extra HP, the light armour has several disatvantages. Sure we can mitigate more on firebrand than any other tank, but incinerate still hurts. And Kitru's idea boils down to being healed less with I'risa's being able to not need healing longer. Both tanks understand the healer has other people to heal besides them. This is the stumbling block in the two schools of shadow thought. This is my statement I hope kephas doesn't crit on me or im dead at full health with 27k hp in denova NM:)

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The only way that a 31k tank behaves differently compared to a 26k tank is that the 31k tank 31k tank gives their healers a couple extra seconds over the already impressive 15-20 second reaction windows that 26k hp provides.

 

Also, as amount of selfhealing (TkT) depend on HP, 31k HP will give you 400 more selfheals...

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Also, as amount of selfhealing (TkT) depend on HP, 31k HP will give you 400 more selfheals...

 

Another aspect I had in mind when I opted for this configuration. When I put the dreadguard healer relic the self-heals are going off the charts. Battle readiness instantly heals you for 10% of your HP if memory serves. So, when I pop it I receive around 3100 green hugs from my tank not the healer.

 

 

I am not a number wizard like keyboardninja or have KItru's experiance with a geared 50 in every AC.

I still preach the balance approach of stacking some HP with defenses. I can understand I'risa's point of the extra HP, the light armour has several disatvantages. Sure we can mitigate more on firebrand than any other tank, but incinerate still hurts. And Kitru's idea boils down to being healed less with I'risa's being able to not need healing longer. Both tanks understand the healer has other people to heal besides them. This is the stumbling block in the two schools of shadow thought. This is my statement I hope kephas doesn't crit on me or im dead at full health with 27k hp in denova NM:)

 

 

 

A very excellent post and shows the beauty of this game where one can adapt to suit the needs of his raid. I have never questioned Kitru's contributions and valuable input. I just disagree sometimes with the one way approach. The whole picture is often worth seeing. I just want to be prepared for the rare cases when my healer will tell me on mumble that he has no ammo/energy/force or when he is overwhelmed. While rare these occasions, any healer will appreciate when you tell him on mumble 'don't heal me, prioritize and recover your resources'. Another example where my raid benefited greatly from my configuration was in the first phase TFB HM. One of our acid kiters made a mistake and died. The other healer was low on resources because of some aggro issues, his part of the raid took damage, and was very focused to keep people alive. I told my healer to go and res, this group will be fine. He was reluctant and I told him to relax. My dps did not take dmg aggro issues are rare on a shadow and I did not need heals for a good period of time. He got in range, gave the res and came back. I was at 18k hp from my self heals and other shadow perks. Took a few of these 'rare' situations for my healers to trust me and realize that while spiky, when needed, my shadow will stay alive beautifully.

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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Also, as amount of selfhealing (TkT) depend on HP, 31k HP will give you 400 more selfheals...

 

The difference between 31k hp self healing via TkT (2480 hp) and 26k hp via self healing (2080 hp) is actually not all that impressive. Using the optimal sustainable rotation, you'll manage to use TkT every 15 seconds or so, which means that you're either getting ~165 hp/sec or ~138 hp/sec, purely from TkT. Factor in the additional ~42 hp/sec you get from Combat Technique and the ~22 hp/sec you get from the self heal relic, and you're talking about the difference between 229 hp/sec and 202 hp/sec, which is all of 13% better self heals. For that same investment (more than 400 Endurance is the difference we're talking about here; even at a bad conversion rate, that's going to count for a lot of your mitigation budget), you're going to get a better survivability payout just going with mitigation except for Kephess the Undying (and Stormcaller if your group doesn't use the swap strategy and you're on that tank rather than Firebrand).

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Took a few of these 'rare' situations for my healers to trust me and realize that while spiky, when needed, my shadow will stay alive beautifully.

 

That's not really due entirely to your higher hp though. Pretty much any Shadow can do the same, regardless of gear preferences as long as they know what they're doing. At 31k hp v. 26k, you're getting ~3800 hp out of Battle Readiness when it's providing 3300 to someone with lower hp. That's all of 500 hp extra every 2 minutes, which isn't really going to amount to much and isn't really going to save your life (unless you regularly get precision killed by non-instagib mechanics which would just be strange).

 

You're making a *lot* of claims about how amazing higher hp is when those claims have little to nothing to do with your actual higher hp being made useful. If your TfB tanking situation, any Shadow tank could have done that just as well: if you're already low, you blow a CD; if you're not you just tank it because it's not like the tentacles hit especially hard. A high mitigation tank would simply take less damage and see the same result. I know because I do this regularly. I even do it on my other tanks because every tank can handle not being healed for a reasonable period of time, more if they burn a CD.

 

The *only* way that higher hp is going to have been the defining factor in your survivability is if you're hit by an attack or attacks that deal in excess of 26k damage (or whatever arbitrary hp assignment you want to use as the "mitigation stacking" hp) in a time frame before your healers are able to react. Nothing in the game hits this hard at this time. In fact, even if you plan for the absolute worst case of a chain of attacks getting through defense and shield, you have to arrive at something like 9 consecutive unmitigated heavy hitting ops boss attacks to actually kill a tank from full health. Nothing hits that hard on a regular, fast enough basis to actually make this a concern; you *can* plan for it, but it's like planning for a volcanic eruption in Kansas or a nuclear strike on the continental US: it's possible, but it's just not really likely to happen (especially since that's 9 consecutive unmitigated attacks without receiving any healing; you've got the have the superstorm of bad healer *and* bad luck *and* no CDs).

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1. 30% Defence Chance, 50% Absorb

2. 25% Defence Chance, 60% Absorb

 

It depends on what your Shield chance is. Assuming it's not below 50% (where the two equations break even) the higher Absorb is better; with a 65% Shield chance (which is pretty much standard for top geared Shadows), the first loadout equates to 52.75% mitigation whereas the second equates to 54.25% mitigation.

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In terms of stacking HP vs stacking mitigation I'd like to reference this post:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=548875

 

Tam and I did some analysis of how likely you are to actually see a string of 9 unmitigated attacks, the death point for a Shadow using average numbers. The probability for a 61 geared Shadow tank stacking mitigation (aka, the lowest possible probability for a Shadow) is a whopping 4% each fight. That means if you clear NiM EC, HM TFB and NMP each week, one shotting every boss, you'll see it about once every fortnight. Using Tam's average numbers it also takes 20 seconds for this to occur.

 

Now assuming no one is standing in the stupid and you aren't ignoring mechanics, that extra HP isn't helping. Arguably, more mitigation is actually better if people are standing in stupid because it gives the healer more time to recover while you require less healing. Alternatively, you can pop a CD for a bit and the entire debate becomes irrelevant.

 

Now, if you are solely tanking SC, stack HP all you want since mitigation does next to nothing in that circumstance.

 

Finally Leafy, you've mentioned your healers going OOM which supports they are bad as Kitru said. It's fine if your gearing helps cover their weaknesses and plays to their strengths, it's even encouraged. However, it doesn't make your way the best way. The best way is the way that works with your healer. If you ignore the healers input, it is mitigation hands down.

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the first loadout equates to 52.75% mitigation whereas the second equates to 54.25%

 

 

...1.5 % difference when my relic does not proc is not a do or wipe scenario.

 

 

We have a few excellent theorycrafters in this game and happy to see they do this work for us. I have run multiple setups on my shadow, even the magic (30 def 65 shield chance and 60 absorb with 26k hp) , and I chose to go with something else. Without further ado, Merry Christmas and my contribution to this forum stops now.

Edited by Leafy_Bug
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Shocking how often the people presenting "best" practices based on gut feel and anecdotes peace out when people with data show up.

 

Any strategy that leads to consistent success is viable, and is worth considering. The ones backed by data as optimal are usually the best starting point, and then one can adjust from there to account for objective reality.

 

Astoundingly, this is exactly what most math crafters say, and seat-of-the-pants fliers consistently find this message offensive.

 

Realistically, a sub-optimal setup is not so bad that it is easy to cost-justify a total overhaul. Once already geared, it's probably easiest to sit on the non-optimal setup until an upgrade opportunity comes along unless money is no object.

 

All that said, I would not recommend an END-biased build to a newly gearing Shadow/Sin. Start from mitigation and go from there.

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