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What is the most usefull tank?


wingzyeah

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Hello boys and girls, and srry for my eng. I wanna be a tank. I cant decide which one(guard or vanguard) is for me .Which one is the most usefull at the endgame?( btw is it hard to find a group for operations and wb?) I dont like easy characters, i have a lot of experience in another mmorpg. I want to choose rly interesting class.
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I prefer the Vanguard/Bounty Hunter tank class, but many people seem to think it is a rather easy class to play. If you are looking fir diffuculty then I would suggest you try a Shadow/Assassin. They require quite a bit more concentration due to the various defensive cooldowns and such.

 

Guardian/Juggernaut are in a pretty strong place right now from what I understand. They are also the inbetween tank class. They are more passively survivable than Shadows/Assassins, but require more maintenance than the Vanguard/Bounty Hunter.

 

My personal preference would be to go either Assassin, or Bounty Hunter ... but thats just me, I never really got the feel for Juggernauts.

 

"What is the most useful tank?"

 

To be honest a player who takes the time and perfects their game will be equally useful no matter which tank class they pick. I would suggest starting with whichever one looks the more attractive to you and get them to the end of chapter 2. If you are not diggin the playstyle, pick a different one.

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I cant decide which one(guard or vanguard) is for me

 

First off, it's important to remember that there are 3 tank capable ACs in the game: Shadows, Guardians, and Vanguards. Ignoring Shadows is going to put a serious damper on your options, especially if you're looking for high performance and interesting.

 

The primary differences between the tanks can be summed up relatively easily.

 

Vanguards are the simple tanks. They were explicitly designed as such. They have the fewest CDs, fewest attacks that they have to use, the simplest priority (it's pretty much Stockstrike else HiB else if Ammo 11-12 Ion Pulse else Hammer Shot while using Energy Blast on CD), and negligible active survivability contributions. If you're looking for complex or interesting beyond the basics of tank play, the VG is not for you. I start to yawn when I play my VG as opposed to my other tanks because he's so simple and boring.

 

Shadows are the fight knowledge and buff watching tanks. They require the most fight knowledge because of how they were designed: lots of self heals and specialized CDs. They require that you watch your buff bar more than any other tank because you have to watch for HS stacks, PA proc activation, and KW charges. They've also got CDs that really should be used and abused as much as possible thanks to their amazingly low CDs. The skill requirement to maintain threat is pretty low, whereas the skill requirement to stay alive is the highest of the tanks, however, they have the highest skill ceiling of all of the tanks, especially when you're using your CDs to optimal effect. A bad Shadow is going to die before any other tank and look bad doing it, but a great Shadow is going to survive situations that no other tank could.

 

Guardians are the reactive and resource management tanks. Their resource is both the most complex and least forgiving of all of the tanks. Until you learn exactly how, why, and when to play with your resource, you're gonna have a bad time of it. Their survivability is largely passive, though a decent enough portion of it relies in upon using Blade Storm on CD (and Riposte spamming) that they have an appreciable active component. A small reliance on active mitigation means that there is a decent skill ceiling, but not one as high as Shadows get. Unlike a bad Shadow, which is going to get threat and then die, a bad Guardian will simply lose threat all the time.

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So there is no best tank for fp/wb/ops? Maybe u can describe few minuses of each tanks?

 

All of the tanks are perfectly functional with no major gaps, aside from potential PvP discrepancies (VGs are generally viewed as the worst PvP tanks because of their lack of survivability CDs, lack of utility, and lackluster ability to deal with F/T attacks). If there are appreciable cons attached to each tank class when properly played, it generally breaks down into how I described them before:

 

VGs have no real glaring problems aside from the fact that there isn't much that they can do to eke out superior performance; the only difference between a decent VG and a bad VG is that the bad VG is going to bottom out their ammo and constantly drop off their Ion Screen stacks but there isn't really much difference between a decent VG and a great VG. Their one major weakness, if it can be called such in the confines of PvE tanking, is their lack of strong utility functionality. Guardians have stuns and slows aplenty, and Shadows have CC, stealth, stuns, slows, and more in their utility belt. VGs really just have their pull, their leap, and a couple short duration, ammo eating stuns (barring the selection of some of the very, very bad slow talents in their skill tree that almost no one actually takes, that I know of). In summation, their weakness is their primary strength: they're simple so they don't have the same breadth of tools that can allow a well played tank to do truly amazing things.

 

The primary weakness of Guardians, once you've learned to play one, is that they have the longest recharge on their CDs, oftentimes forcing the Guardian to go through a burst DPS phase without a CD because they already used their CDs or expect a more pressing need somewhere further down the line. In a 6.5 minute fight, you can expect to be able to use your survivability CDs 1-2 times each whereas, thanks to the shorter CDs, a VG or Shadow could expect to use it 2-4 times. This can become something of a liability when a screw up in the middle of the fight that forces the tank to burn a CD ends up wiping the group because the Guardian didn't have their CD up during a high incoming damage phase. They've also got the worst threat generation and damage of all the tanks, and they lack the much desired and often lauded pull that VGs and Shadows get (though Leap>Push>Leap accomplishes something similar though takes 3-4 times as long and isn't as simple to execute). It's also important to note that Guardians make the worst off tanks: a lot of their Focus generation is dependent on being attacked and they rely upon Riposte for a not-insubstantial portion of their damage (5-10%), which can only be used after successfully defending against an attack. As off tanks, they're not going to be attacked that often and end up doing a lot worse in the role than either Shadows or VGs.

 

The major weakness of Shadows, assuming they're played properly and fight knowledge is present, is their hp variance. Because of their self healing and reliance upon active mitigation mechanisms coupled with high defense/shield/abs, as opposed to the strong passive DR that Guardians and VGs have, the health bar for a Shadow is going to bounce around a *lot* more than than of the other tanks. Once you're used to it, it's just part of the scenery, but many inexperienced healers get frazzled by it and aren't able to cope with it effectively, either dumping lots of overhealing on the Shadow in a waste of resources or underhealing in a waste of Shadow. This selfsame reliance def/shield/abs as opposed to DR also makes Shadows the worst tanks for fights that revolve around a lot of F/T attacks that deal K/E damage (since they have the lowest K/E DR and F/T attacks ignore def/shield/abs; for F/T I/E fights, on the other hand, Shadows are actually the best because of their self heals, Resilience, and the fact that they have the highest I/E DR). Also, Shadows do poorly in fights with a lot of attacks being directed at them in a short interval because of their reliance upon Kinetic Ward, which only provides the 15/20% bonus Shield chance against 8 attacks every 12 seconds. In general, this on affects trash fights (wherein 4-5 enemies attack them all at once, quickly depleting the charges, often in the opening alpha strike), which don't really mean much to most tanks, but it matters against bosses and fight phases with very high attacks per second (TfB tentacles and Foreman Crusher are the two that stick out in my mind as the only real offenders).

 

All of the tank classes have their little weaknesses and the answer as to which has the least weaknesses depends upon the fights in question, the player in control of said tank, and the group that they're running with. The Shadow weaknesses can be addressed pretty easily with an experienced player and healer (the KW "problem" isn't a major issue and the hp variance is more of a healer perception problem that is best dealt with through experience anyways), and the VG problems only really rear their head when you're attempting to push the limits (since neither a lack of utility nor the presence of a comparatively low skill ceiling is really going to hurt the average tank). Even the Guardian inability to offtank very well doesn't mean much since it's not like you bring a tank around expecting them to offtank as an important function (the only fights in the current top tier of content that really require an explicit MT/OT setup as opposed to tanks swapping or working together are the puzzle fights of which there isn't really high demand on tanks in the first place). A good raid leader will tweak who is tanking what based on the weaknesses inherent in the classes, but player skill matters more, honestly. The relative weaknesses don't really mean all that much in the hands of a tank who is good at their class.

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Kitru mentioned everything amazingly clear. It depends on what do you expect from your tank. In my pov Vang is the least hectic and all-around-good tank. Though he lacks active cd's you can negate that by using active relic( DG ones are very good). On the other hand it's simple mechanic makes tanking a bit boring for me sometimes. Also, as Kitru mentioned, Vang is a bit weak in PvP due to lack of cc and defensive cd's. Guardian on the other hand is a bit too hectic sometimes. Especially if you are running ful defensive build, which is good for packs, but horrible for single target tanking. Along with that having several cd's doesn't mean guard is better than vang, It just means he has to know the fight very well to use them in time. I have the same problem as you do. I still can't decide between two of them. Guard scares me using hybrid build which makes my mind crazy. Vang makes me feel a bit more heal dependent than guard. Especially I'm interested in 2 things. 1) which tank requires less healing 2) which tank takes less damage overall. Since I'm horible with numbers, I expect a skilled person to clear this for me.
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1) which tank requires less healing 2) which tank takes less damage overall.

 

For all intents and purposes, those 2 questions are functionally asking the same thing (which tank requires the least healing over the course of a fight), though there is a bit of a semantic differentiation. To answer them explicitly, Shadows require the least healing but take the most damage overall while Guardians simply take the least damage. The reason that Shadows take the most damage but require the least healing is because they pack a goodly portion of consistent self healing; without it factored in, they have the lowest mitigation, but, with it, they have the best (which means that the least amount of damage gets through to them that needs to be healed by outside sources). Guardians get around this by having an absorb barrier that simply prevents them from taking damage, though it operates in much the same way. In addition, Shadows also have the best CDs (as described by survivability contribution normalized by uptime), so, if they use them properly, they'll take even less damage compared to the other tanks.

 

It's also important to remember that "damage that needs to be healed" isn't the only important metric by which to gauge a tank, especially since the non-CD mitigation of each tank is within a 1% margin of error (Shadows push something like 77% mitigation w/ their self heals factored in, Guardians 76% with Blade Barrier, and VGs 75%). The other side of the coin is in the predictability of needed heals, i.e. how "bouncy" the hp pool tends to be. VGs have the most stable hp pool, thanks almost entirely to the fact that they have the highest K/E DR by a significant factor. No attack gets around DR and a vast majority of incoming damage is K/E, so, in pretty much every fight you're gonna see, VGs are going to have a more stable incoming damage profile. Guardians are marginally worse, thanks to their lower K/E DR, and Shadows have it outright worst. Guardians and Shadows, of course, make up for their lower K/E DR by having significantly higher Defense Chance, which means that, just as they're likely to get a string of hits that unluckily penetrates their mitigation chances, they're also just as likely to get a string of hits that gets completely ignored thanks to their high mitigation chances. It's a give and take, but it also means that they're less predictable overall.

Edited by Kitru
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What's your tank of choice and why?

 

I've got all 3 tanks and play them all regularly, but my main (and thus preferred tank) is my Shadow. I like it so much because it requires I pay attention and learn fights and rewards me for it, not to mention that it has a great toolbox for pretty much everything a tank could desire. It's an active tank that isn't absurdly chaotic (which is how I feel about my Guardian tank).

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Tbh I've never had a desire to play a shadow tank :D I can't explain it, but it's totally not my class. As a former WoW player I really liked pally-like vanguard and warrior-like guard, though imo guardian is weaker than warr in wow. Anyway, Kitru mentioned that the gap in passive mitigation as about 1-2%. Since I completely dislike playing hybrid and being full-def I have troubles with aggro, I decided to stay on vanguard (though I'd like it to be a bit more rewarding for skilled players).

 

P.S. I don't want to start a new thread, but what do you, guys, think about the new relics? I intend to change the absorb proc one on my Vang, but can't understand which is better- the clicquie shi+abs one (nice additional CD for vang) or the absorb proc ( I have 60% sheild rating so my current one use to proc rather often, but I doubt it's better than the clicqie one)

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So there is no best tank for fp/wb/ops? Maybe u can describe few minuses of each tanks?

 

 

Vanguard: More HP. Heavy Armor. Less Defensive CD's. It's an "sponge tank" --> "Hit me!! I have 35k HP!"

 

Guardian: Less HP. Heavy Armor. Lots of defensive CD's. It's an "autobuff tank" -->This attack gives u more defense, this attack gives u a 3 seconds bubble, this attack makes ur enemy aim 5% lower.

 

Shadow: Less HP than Vanguard, More HP than Guardian. Light Armor (but he has a buff to have 60% more armor) . Have good Defensive CD's (more than vanguard, less than Guardian). He is the "autohealing tank"-------> "Every time I deal damage I heal myself"

 

 

I'm not 100% sure about the shadow but I remember it was like this.

Edited by Royox
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General consensus would lead you to believe that Guardians are easy to play and Shadows are hard to play, when in reality (and as someone who plays both) it's the other way around

 

I've got no idea where you get your "general consensus" because that's pretty much the explicit opposite of everything I've experienced. I even expressly stated that Guardians are and were the most difficult to learn to play effectively in my first post of this thread. Of course, once you've learned the basics of Guardian tanking, it's not that difficult to achieve functionally optimal performance out of it. Shadows, on the other hand, require the most skill to eke every last bit out of the class as possible but have a substantially lower (compared to Guardians) skill requirement to play at a reasonable level.

 

The issue that many people get hung up on is that there are different types of difficulty and different parts of the class that the difficulty applies to. Shadows have amazingly simple threat generation and resource management; easily the easiest of all of the tank classes: you don't have to worry about variable resource regeneration and, if you run out of Force, you just wait a few seconds and you're back up. Guardians, for threat generation and resource management, are the exact opposite of this: their resource management is notoriously unforgiving and they have known issues with threat generation compared to the other tanks because of their resource generation problems. It takes a lot more skill to learn to generate and maintain threat on a Guardian than it does on a Shadow.

 

*However*, threat generation and resource management are not the only metric by which tank skill requirement is measured. Shadows have the, de facto, highest amount of skill required to remain effective and survivable tanks. After all, if you can't survive getting punched in the face, it doesn't matter how much aggro you can generate. Maintaining KW stacks, generating HS stacks, making sure you're not knocked back in the middle of a TkT channel, maintaining buffs, and proper use of CDs that are specific to attack types all combine to make Shadows the hardest tanks to play, from a survivability standpoint. Guardians simply have to use Riposte on CD (which they should be doing anyways since it's a great and cheap source of threat and damage) and Blade Storm on CD (which they should be doing since it's their hardest hitting attack, barring hybrid w/ Overhead) to maximize their survivability through playstyle. Even their CDs are simple because they are global. The only "difficulty" within their use is their 3 min CDs.

 

Furthermore, it takes the most skill to play a Shadow optimally as opposed to a Guardian. Once you've learned how to generate threat and maintain your resources as a Guardian, most of the work is done. As a Shadow, you have to learn more about every fight than any of the other tanks (specifically, which attacks are F/T and which are M/R, coupled with specific rates of use on them to get the most out of your various CDs, coupled with movement and KB phases where it's unwise to use TkT). Guardians and VGs really have no major issues like this, not to mention that there are all kinds of debates as to what the most effective way to play a Shadow from either a threat or survivability standpoint are whereas the proper priorities and attack strings for VGs and Guardians are well established (generally because there isn't a lot of major interaction between their attack strings and their survivability).

 

For threat, the simplest to most complex is definitely VG->Shadow->Guardian. For survivability, it's VG->Guardian->Shadow.

 

As to specific quality of tanking overall at various skill levels, a bad VG trumps either a bad Shadow or a bad Guardian (whether the bad Guardian is worse or better than the bad Shadow depends on whether you think a tank that never gets aggro but doesn't die is worse than a tank that gets aggro and almost immediately dies). At average levels of skill, all of the tanks are pretty much equal. At the absolute top tier of performance, an amazing Shadow will trump an amazing Guardian which will trump an amazing VG.

 

The variability in skill and skill ceiling is one of the reasons why it's so hard to decisively say which tank is "best". When pugging, the VG is going to be the safest bet, since they're so hard to screw up. This is one of the reasons why they have such an amazing reputation on most servers: since it's hard to screw up a VG tank, even a bad VG is going to finish out an instance without any major problems whereas a bad Guardian or Shadow is going to have plenty of them. Because people remember success and failure moreso than quality of job done, when people think back and don't remember having problems with VG tanks in the past (or, at the least, having as many problems as was had with the other tank ACs), they arrive at the natural heuristic that VGs are the better tanks, when, in reality, they're just so simple that they're hard to screw up. Of course, once you get to the point where you start doing Ops and tank quality becomes a more important factor in success, especially when doing progression content, the heuristic changes.

 

I can honestly say that I've never met a truly amazing VG, or, at the least, one that amazed me with its performance. There just isn't enough skill derived variability in its performance to allow for it. This creates a heuristic that describes VGs as functional but not substantially differentiated: a VG tank is a VG tank is a VG tank. Guardians tend to either be good or bad: the skill requirement for entry into the "decent" category is high enough that some people can't hack it, but there isn't enough variability in performance between "amazing" and "decent" to justify a separate heuristic categorization. This means, to me, that there are good Guardians and bad Guardians: good Guardians are those that can keep threat and bad Guardians are those that cannot. Shadows run the full gamut of terrible to amazing, which makes it difficult to create a decent heuristic. As such, unless I specifically know a Shadow tank, I'm very wary because I know how bad they can be, which is how most of the people I deal with operate.

 

In short, for pugging, which is what most people are referring to when discussing quality of the different tank classes (since, for guild content, the player is consistent and therefore more important than the class in question, especially since a player that enjoys playing their class is going to perform much better than one that dislikes their class but is playing it purely because of their group's insistence), VGs are considered the best, Guardians are somewhere in the middle, and Shadows are often feared, for the previously outlines reasons.

 

Of course, the lot of this depends on the individual experiences of the player in question. I've met some players that have only ever had good experiences with Shadow tanks; as such, they laud Shadow tanks because their experiences have only shown them the upper end of the Shadow quality spectrum. Of course, I've met some players wherein I've been their first and *only* good experience with a Shadow tank, such that they ask me what exactly I'm doing that no one else does.

 

If you're trying to figure out which tank to start leveling or which type of tank to invite to your guild for progression raiding, it's more important to find a tank that you enjoy playing (for the former) or that knows his class (for the latter). Properly played, all of the tanks are perfectly functional. Tank problems in TOR are pebkac.

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I'm not 100% sure about the shadow but I remember it was like this.

 

You're not even really correct on any of those assertions, but the Shadow is especially wrong.

 

VGs are not "sponge tanks", nor do they even *want* to stack HP whatsoever. In fact, they get the least out of hp stacking compared to the other tanks because they get the least benefit from it (thanks to having only a single especially mediocre self-heal as the only ability that has *anything* to do with their HP), not to mention having the least *need* for it because they have the most stable incoming damage profile (thanks to high shield/abs and high passive DR). Shadows get some benefit from HP stacking because a majority of their self healing is based on percentage of max hp and Guardians get more out of Enure with higher hp, but, honestly, no tank should ever *want* to stack their hp whatsoever. Mitigation is king, hands down.

 

Guardians don't have appreciably more survivability CDs than Shadows. In fact, they're going to use their CDs less than a Shadow because of the long CDs (90 sec, 180 sec, and 180 sec compared to 120 sec, 120 sec, and 30-40 sec). Focused Defense can be interpreted as one, especially if you're a hybrid tank, but it creates some rather substantial threat generation problems since it's a threat dump and resource consumer as well as a self-heal. Most Guardian tanks don't even use it and, even if they do, it's as an absolute last resort, rather than something you'd want to use on the 45 second CD. A CD that eats up resources and drops threat on the tank that has the tightest resource management and worst threat generation isn't really an optimally effective CD (though it can be effective at specific times). As to the autobuffing, Guardians also pack less of this than Shadows do and the same amount as VGs. VGs have Smoke Grenade, Ion Screen, and Static Field (which is the exact same amount as Guardians get). Shadows have Particle Acceleration, Harnessed Shadows, Slow Time, and Force Breach.

 

As to Shadows, yes, they are the self-healing tanks, but it's not nearly as extreme as you seem to make it out to be, nor is it "healed off of every attack" (CT procs for 247 hp with an ICD of 4.5 seconds, which means the actual proc rate is closer to 6 seconds; the major component of self-healing is derived from HSx3 TkT, which is 8% of max hp every ~12-15 seconds or so). The self healing provides roughly 5% of their total mitigation. The more important distinction is that Shadows rely on active mitigation (via self healing and CD ab/use) as well as def/shield/abs as opposed to pure DR. Mentioning the lower DR (which is what I interpret your "Heavy Armor" "Heavy Armor" "Light Armor" comments were intended to express, though you didn't mention that VGs have "better" "Heavy Armor" than Guardians do by virtue of numerous talents that directly increase armor and outright DR; also, all of the tank stances increase armor some amount; VGs and Guardians both get 60% whereas Shadows get 115% because of their Light Armor, which still isn't enough to bring them up to the same level as Guardian and VG tanks; it really just lets them largely break even with/get slightly better than untank-stance heavy armor) without also mentioning the superior def/shield/abs is simply being disingenuous.

 

If you feel like responding to a question that has already been answered in rather explicit detail, at least have the decency to get your information correct.

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Kitru already did a wonderful job of explaining things from the tank perspective, but I'll give my opinion from the healing/dps side: shadow. period.

 

First is their utility, as shadows allow many trash mobs to be skipped with their stealth CC. They also have an easier time grouping lone trash mobs for AoEs with their pull. And they can reposition themselves and/or bosses quickly when required (e.g, EC T&Z) with force speed.

 

None of which would matter if they couldn't stand up to a boss, but they don't really give up much (if anything) here. It is REALLY hard to pull threat from a shadow. And as long as they have cooldowns up, they can survive in boss fights the longest without outside healing, making recovery from "oops" moments more plausible.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I am very cruious why people think tanks should stack their stats above the diminishing returns, you wouldnt give pointer to dps classes to have 100% surge when only they only need 75%.

 

I stack HP after having 15% defensve, and 55% sheild and absob, 9k armoing. Tank great with 31.5k hp as a vanguard.

 

i see no need to max out my defensive and sheild so mitigate.001 percentage more dmg on a 1k hit, no thanks ill stack an extra 6,000 hit points. (exagerating)

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I am very cruious why people think tanks should stack their stats above the diminishing returns, you wouldnt give pointer to dps classes to have 100% surge when only they only need 75%.

 

I stack HP after having 15% defensve, and 55% sheild and absob, 9k armoing. Tank great with 31.5k hp as a vanguard.

 

i see no need to max out my defensive and sheild so mitigate.001 percentage more dmg on a 1k hit, no thanks ill stack an extra 6,000 hit points. (exagerating)

 

The reason for stacking mitigation above diminishing returns is because it means less healing for your healers. It's as simple as that. You need enough HP to survive long enough for your healer to be able to heal you and the rest of the group. Any HP you stack above that is HP you really don't need to survive. If you don't need the HP to survive, you can go above diminishing returns and reduce the amount of healing your healer needs to do.

The reason dps and healers don't like to stack surge is because they can get better use out of a different stat (I think there are times they end up above those caps, I'm not to that point on my dps so I don't worry too much about the stat itemization). You have an argument for stacking damage stats to help increase damage output/ threat, but having more HP than you need is kind of a waste of stats that could go elsewhere.

 

-Chapulin

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I am very cruious why people think tanks should stack their stats above the diminishing returns, you wouldnt give pointer to dps classes to have 100% surge when only they only need 75%.

 

There isn't a single point of diminishing returns. It's a curve. If you're choosing a specific point to call "diminishing returns", it's based upon arbitrary assignation you've chosen.

 

There are only 2 times that you can say that it's better to stack Endurance than it is to stack mitigation: the first is when your HP is too low to provide your healers with a large enough window to keep you alive (this is ~24-25k hp for 8man and 26-27k hp in 16m), and the second is when you're a Shadow and you've stacked so friggin' much mitigation already that the minute increases to your self healing gained by increasing your max hp actually approach the contributions from further mitigation stacking and that only happens if you stack a metric buttload of mitigation.

 

As a Vanguard, you get *absolutely nothing* out of stacking Endurance. All you're doing by increasing your hp is making your healers dump more healing into you. The fact that you can clear content is less a tribute to your own gearing mentality and more the skill of your healers to continually dump enough heals into you that the fact that you take substantially more damage than other tanks that stack mitigation would doesn't matter.

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Kit, you seem very insestant that it is hurting for a tank to have 30-32k hps. Lets not forget that all the survivabilty stats have met and exceeded their diminishing return values.

 

Your defensive response to vanguards having high hitpoints sounds like your jealous that if shadows stacks endurance its very noticable that they wear light armor (ie. the dmg you take is very fickle and can spike)

 

I have encountered 2 tanks that rotate out raiding with in my guild.

 

1.) Vanguard tank: he takes these posts to heart and has a bit more defense than me, while i still have more shield and absorb than him.... also 6k more hps. How is this my fault i have better gear and can afford hp augs?

 

2.) Shadow tank:much higher defense than myself, not near on absorb and dmg reduction......... i parsed more dps and took less dmg than him in tbf. He told me the same thing u are trying to say about stacking mitigation DRand factual parsing eveidence be damned

 

 

Fact is, the classes were built differently a reason, play style, usefulness, overall feel.

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Lets not forget that all the survivabilty stats have met and exceeded their diminishing return values.

 

First off, I'm not being defensive. I don't need to defend my position because the math and the facts support it already. I'm also not jealous. If I *wanted* to have a massive amount of hp, I could easily do that. It's not like it's *hard* to aug for full Endurance, stack all B type mods, and use Steadfast instead of Bastion enhancements. There's nothing to be jealous *about*.

 

Secondly, if you've got better gear *and* you're fully aug'd, *of course* you're going to take less damage than someone without. You're comparing apples and oranges, especially when dealing with a class that explicitly uses armor as the biggest factor in its survivability (VGs have the absolute highest contribution to mitigation based upon armor thanks to their armor talents as well as their stance). If you really want to make a point, switch out your gear from Endurance stacked to mitigation stacked and *then* compare the two parses: the only difference will be specific gearing (rather than differences in playstyle, not to mention primary v. OT preferencing) making the difference in damage dealt and damage taken.

 

Third, and I feel kind of strange having to reiterate this, there isn't a specific point of diminishing returns, which you somehow keep referencing. DR exists on a curve. If you've discovered a point, you've arrived at it completely arbitrarily, especially since the only point where you could explicitly say that Endurance is better than any specific point of mitigation amounts to 3 separate points for stacking each different type of rating *and*, even then, it only applies to Shadows because neither Guardians nor VGs get any actual mitigation benefits from Endurance. The DR point that you seem to have stumbled upon (and I honestly have to wonder where you came up with it, since I'm used to seeing 18/60/60 for VGs even for the hp stackers, not the 15/50/50 you seem to be using) represents not an actual point where it is mathematically more valuable to stack Endurance rather than a specific mitigation stat (unless you're using a metric like eHP or TtK, neither of which is actually a useful metric of tank survivability because nothing hits hard enough to justify a pool of hp beyond 27k, even in 16m, within such a short time frame unless you're doing something wrong or your healers have terrible reaction speed but amazing overall throughput) but rather the point where you have personally decided, based on an arbitrary assignment, most likely derived from vague intuition and epeen desire, that you don't need to stack your mitigation any more. It's not supported by anything other than your own abstraction and certification that "it's best because I can do content with it!" (which actually means nothing because optimization is not a binary attribute wherein "I win" is the only condition required; there were people at the release of the game, using Rakata with the full slew of Accuracy in there, that honestly believed that they were optimally geared for threat and mitigation simply because they passed a given piece of content, which is just laughable).

 

The thing that bothers me, wherein I draw my indignation from, is your assertion that you have the optimal stat allocation simply because you have cleared a piece of content, even though it flies completely against basic logic (mitigation = less damage taken; hp = able to take more damage; higher hp != less damage taken) as well as every bit of math that has actually been done to determine optimal stat allocation. You can clear content in full PvP gear; that doesn't mean that it's the best loadout to use. You're providing flawed logic and incorrect information to people asking for legitimate answers to the question "what is the best way to allocate my stats to maximize survivability?": hp stacking is *not* the best way to do that.

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Larzi, put take the situation from a healer's perspective (with back of the envelope numbers)

40K incoming at 70% total mitigation leaves 12K to be healed

40K incoming at 75% total mitigation leaves 10K to be healed.

Take that over a few hits, nobody's dying yet. With 30K HP and 70% mitigation, you're at 18K HP and your healer is left healing 12K HP. With 25K HP and 75% mitigation, you're at 15K HP and your healer has to heal 10K. In both situations you're still safely alive, but with more mitigation, your healer has 2K (17%) less healing to worry about.

That's why people like mitigation over endurance, because tanks love their healers.

 

-Chapulin

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I understand what you are saying, but as you put it, it is optimal for my class and content. Even on the curve of DR you are better off having a larger pool as opposed to the minimal dmg reduction from stacking more and more defensive stats.

 

I am not saying i stack mainly HP, i mean with full 63 mods and set bonuses, i was able to find a very viable set up

15% def, 55% sheild/absorb, and 54 dmg reduction. while kicking 31k hps.

 

the math does not support the minimal survivability from gaining 5% more in each defensive stat, all while loosing 6k hps? 6k hps is enough to save a raid have a mistake during trash pulls or drop an extra AoE heal on the raid during bosses.

 

Classes were not mean to be fully optimized, its impossible (if it were possible gunslingers would tank) My point is that you seem very biased and strong willed for all tanks to stack as much mitigation stats as possible.... because your class as a shadow requires it. That is just not true, only my opinion of coruse and i mean no disrespect.

 

i just feel there is a bad rumor about HP augs concerning tanks, has there every been a game in MMO history that HP was "bad" for a tank? Granted im saying to stack hp after your core defensive stats. So kids of all ages, feel free to stack hp augs and still be a viable contender as a tank! :rak_04:

 

Shadows can have higher hps than vanguards, but they do not because their dmg is far too drmatic when they take it, my buddy reauged after a raid once and shot up to 34kish. that build did not however work for his class.

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More HP isn't bad. But it is arguably worse than more mitigation no mater how small that mitigation amount is (barring shadows who can eventually get more mitigation through self heals via HP than straight mitigation). In most cases you are probably better off stacking more in some kind of threat stat than HP if your already at severe diminishing returns for all your mitigation stats.

 

Now that is only relevant when being healed however. For times when you solo (dailies etc, with a DPS companion for speed) there is a point by which you will get more survival time from HP than from mitigation. So long as you are being healed though the more mitigation you have the less pressed the healers will be so long as you have enough HP to survive until heals come in.

 

In other words, how often have you actually dipped below 6K HP in a fight? Those are the only times those extra HP meant anything.

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More HP isn't bad. But it is arguably worse than more mitigation no mater how small that mitigation amount is (barring shadows who can eventually get more mitigation through self heals via HP than straight mitigation). In most cases you are probably better off stacking more in some kind of threat stat than HP if your already at severe diminishing returns for all your mitigation stats.

 

Now that is only relevant when being healed however. For times when you solo (dailies etc, with a DPS companion for speed) there is a point by which you will get more survival time from HP than from mitigation. So long as you are being healed though the more mitigation you have the less pressed the healers will be so long as you have enough HP to survive until heals come in.

 

In other words, how often have you actually dipped below 6K HP in a fight? Those are the only times those extra HP meant anything.

 

Not only that but leaving a higher mitigation means that you will not dip beyond x hp as much. Here's a simple way to test it. Get yourself a max mitigation set. Do the same content and inspect ur parse. Overall u will take less damage. A 2% mitigation at 25k is 500 hp. Inc damage is 1 k. For ur mitigation to be better than ur end(say 3k more hp) u need more than 151 k inc damage. That's a 151 sec fight. Any op boss will hit more than that and fights are longer.

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Hello boys and girls, and srry for my eng. I wanna be a tank. I cant decide which one(guard or vanguard) is for me .Which one is the most usefull at the endgame?( btw is it hard to find a group for operations and wb?) I dont like easy characters, i have a lot of experience in another mmorpg. I want to choose rly interesting class.

 

You're going to get all kinds of responses, breakdowns, math, diminishing returns, and nit picky arguments over what theory is best and who knows more, which tanks is better because he as a .0002 better base mitigation etc. Might even get some spread sheets.

 

I've been tanking for years, doing bleeding edge content, different games. Done the min maxing thing too. Its fun, and I don't blame people for doing that because it is a fun part of the game, but the bottom line for me is the tank that is most intuitive, takes the least amount of nit-picky play or buff and rotation watching. I used to fight in competition. When I did I never went in thinking, Ok, move my right arm, now my left....oh, can't toss that kick because I need to first use a two punch combination. LOL I don't want that in a video game. Some people do, and that's good for them. I want my tank to feel natural and flowing.

 

I play a Powertech because it works for me. There is no situation where I do not have something to through out there, something to use, and I am well prepared for every situation be that ranged, close in, groups, singles, survivability, threat. People may argue that this makes it "easy", but I argue that it makes it less tedious and artificial. I want to tank. I want my char able to tank. I want to focus on situations and how to counter them, not what moving my left foot then my right.

 

If I come back to the game I'm going to start a Vanguard. If he plays as well as my PT, I'll enjoy him also. Bottom line here OP is to find the tank that fits our style, not the one that does "X" better. You can do "X" just as well if you have mastered your tank and excel because playing him is second nature. So I guess the most "useful" tank is the one with a guy behind the keyboard that is a solid player.

 

My opinion anyway.

Edited by Blackardin
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