So anyone who's checked out the PTS talent trees so far probably noticed most of the tank classes recieved some pretty big changes, guardian / juggernaut in particular got a bunch of new talents, and Vanguard/ Powertech isn't too far behind.

 

You can see all the PTS Talent Trees here, please note this does have some errors, for instance when you max out Single Saber Mastery for the juggernaut/guardian it reads as it increasing melee/force defense by 30%, which obviously can't be right. Despite this though there are some very neat changes, some new possibilites for Shadow/Assasin, a whole bunch of utility goodies for jugg/guardian, including a damage absorbing shield to every group member in range when they AoE taunt, interesting changes to Sunder and C Blow/G Slash, including doubling the number of targets the aoe on G Slash/ C Blow can hit. Also, interesting procs for force leap and guard.

 

Vanguard/ PT are also getting some new goodies, including a VERY interesting proc for pulse cannon/ flamethrower, which when 2 points are spent, gives direct damage attacks a 15% chance to- finish their cooldown, make the next one free, and make them cast and tick twice as fast. (can occur once every 12 seconds with 2 points). Also getting a SELF HEAL from the shoulder cannon/whatever the BH equivalent is, probably jetpack missile. Also, buffs to defense rating, a change to power screen/ flame screen, which is now no longer granted by ion pulse/ BH equivalent but instead simply by shielding, stacks up to 3 times, and enables the use of energy blast/ flame burst at 3 stacks, which when used will consume the stacks and increase absorb by 25% for 6 seconds.

 

All these changes look pretty cool to me and I think this will make VG/PT and Jugg/Guard tanks a lot more interesting to play. Thoughts?

Jugg here, I'm not a big fan of the changes. Seems there is more group protection at the cost of self preservation. There is increased threat, with damage increases but I really didn't have an issue prior to 2.0. My mitigation mods that worked so hard for ie Defense went from 34% to 19% now. *** so far not a big fan as my toon now gets chopped down to 25% health on trash mobs pretty quickly. I'll just have to get my defensive rotations down but until then seems like the healers will be busy with me. HAHA Edited February 22, 2013 by joshuatalmadge

Yea, the changes to stats are weird, it will be interesting to see how these new talents work once we get our stats back up to where they were. Edited February 22, 2013 by Taleek

[PVP]

I think Vang tank still much worse than guards or shadows - still lack of utility and still lack of def cooldowns, just little better "2.0" stats plus new Hold the line and Shoulder cannon.

 

Pure meatshield with average dps.

You forgot to mention the absolute best of all of those changes: Shield generators now work against *all* attacks that deal K/E damage, not just M/R attacks. Shields and tank stats (other than Defense) are actually going to matter in PvP and on K/E damage bosses.

 

As to the actual changes to the class trees:

 

Shadow tanks were largely unchanged, with only a few minor tweaks (Kinetic Bulwark assuaging high attack/sec scenarios by providing abs as KW stacks are lost; loss of 20% increase to armor, which isn't really important since we still get 115% from CT; Shadow Wrap to encourage Shadow Strike and DS use which I'm doubtful whether it will have a major impact upon actual play since DS sees such negligible use). A majority of what occurred was reordering and reprioritization of talents.

 

Guardian tanks got some *major* damage and threat increases through talents: Guardian Slash hits more targets, deals more damage outright while requiring the now single application of Sundering to auto-cleave, provides a 3% DR buff, costs less than it does now, and activates Riposte; Riposte itself is now on a shorter CD and has a higher crit chance; the talents have provided Guardian tanks with more passive mitigation by increasing armor as well as a shorter CD on Saber Ward. The absolute best, however, is that Guardians are getting a tweaked version of the Shadow's Resilience, Saber Reflect: it's on the same CD (1 min) with the same duration (3 into 5 seconds through talent) while it affects ranged attacks as well as F/T attacks and actually reflects said attacks back; the only thing that makes it "worse" is that it doesn't work on AoEs and Shadows are going to use Resilience a bit more often because of Elusiveness (which, with the tweak to Shield generators working on F/T K/E attacks as well means that Elusiveness is going to reduce it by a lot more).

 

The VG tank changes aren't really all that massive: their mitigation stats got normalized a bit (they now get 4% Defense but their Absorb increase was reduced from 12% to 7%; Energy Blast is getting kind of strange because it now provides 25% Absorb for 6 seconds, but that can't be permanent thanks to CD restrictions), the sources and interactions of their attacks got tweaked a bit (Power Screen is now passive and relies on successful defend/shield/resist), and they got Pulse Engine, which is amazing (15% chance on direct damage attacks to reset Pulse Cannon, make it free, and channel twice as fast every 18 seconds), and they got a nice self heal (Shoulder Cannon heals 5% of total hp with each shot). The biggest changes were to their CDs: Smoke Grenade is now location targeted and applies both a large slow *and* a bigger acc debuff than it used to, Adrenaline Rush got changed to be an emergency heal while still fulfilling it's existing role for VG tanks, and Reactive Shield got a longer duration and has some nice AoE utility.

 

Overall, every tank class got some substantial buffs (Guardians actually end up with more Focus over time because of cost reductions even though some people are screaming bloody murder about the Sundering Strike change). Guardians made out especially well.

To add to the Guardian changes, while they get less overall Defense from their skill tree now (Riposte up to 5% from 3% but removal of 6% talent = net loss of 4%), Riposte's bonus actually applies to Resistance as well. So Guardians will now essentially have a permanent 5% Resist chance, which will be higher than either a Vanguard or Shadow gets.

Yes they did. And I forgot to include the change to shield, that will be great. Vanguard's going to have an easier time managing ammo now that its 100pt and also we no longer need ion pulse for much of anything besides the debuff. I'm glad to see guardian get the huge buffs it deserved finally, personally. Moderate buff to vanguard, minor changes to Shadow, seems pretty good overall to me.

Riposte's bonus actually applies to Resistance as well. So Guardians will now essentially have a permanent 5% Resist chance, which will be higher than either a Vanguard or Shadow gets.

 

My *guess* is that it was either unintended or was intended to make up for Guardians having lower Shield and Absorb compared to Shadows and VGs (though the state of VG Absorb w/ Energy Blast active combined with their already impressive Shield and Absorb give me serious pause concerning their potential mitigation; unless the Absorb curve is substantially different, VGs could get up to ~100% Absorb while EB is active and with potentially 66% uptime).

Edited February 22, 2013 by Kitru

Just perusing through the armor on the PTS. What is up with the alacrity on the war leader gear? Does alacrity do something for Jugg tanks now? Also, now that s/a seems to be the premium tank stats, I was looking for the sturdiness enhancement and didn't see it on any of the jugg gear. Anything on the BH/Sin gear?

Does alacrity do something for Jugg tanks now?

 

They're changing alacrity to be useful for everyone: it reduces the GCD and, for classes other than Knights, it increases resource regeneration.

Its a bit of a bummer with alacrity, they are making it an attractive stat at the same time as making shield rating even more attractive. I'm not sure if trading shield for alacrity would be worth it, unless they have done something crazy to cap the returns you can get from shield rating (I doubt that).

 

Its really funny to see it on the stock tank arkanian gear, along with accuracy.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Marb

Having had a look at the new talent trees, I strongly doubt that Assassins and Juggernauts will be viable anymore regarding the massive buffs that Powertechs are receiving. Assassins have always had the lowest armor and no longer receive the 20% bonus armor from their skill tree as of no, while Juggernauts lose a bunch of defense but they also get some armor rating which is nice.

 

Powertechs however are totally through the roof though. Self heals, better cooldowns (Kolto OVerload, Oil Slick, Energy Shield all improved in some way) and a crazy ability that grants 25% shield absorption most of the time are just insane - especially since they are considered the best tanks already.

 

Too bad I prefer lightsabre tanking. :/

Having had a look at the new talent trees, I strongly doubt that Assassins and Juggernauts will be viable anymore regarding the massive buffs that Powertechs are receiving. Assassins have always had the lowest armor and no longer receive the 20% bonus armor from their skill tree as of no, while Juggernauts lose a bunch of defense but they also get some armor rating which is nice.

 

Powertechs however are totally through the roof though. Self heals, better cooldowns (Kolto OVerload, Oil Slick, Energy Shield all improved in some way) and a crazy ability that grants 25% shield absorption most of the time are just insane - especially since they are considered the best tanks already.

 

Too bad I prefer lightsabre tanking. :/

 

I'm unsure whether the change to Kolto Overload is a buff or not.

 

It makes for a great *emergency* cooldown, but as something that won't trigger unless you drop below 30% health, it's not going to make a healer's job easier unless something goes seriously wrong. Beforehand, it was essentially free healing for 15% of your health on cooldown, which was less work for the healer.

 

Oil Slick - again, not sure if that's a buff or not. On the one hand, it'll now apply to any mob that pulls into the area after it's used. On the other hand, it *won't* apply to a mob that has moved out of the area after it casts, and it used to stay on them.

 

I do like the new Heat Blast and the change to how Heat Screen is granted. Heat Screen now only stacks to 3 instead of 4, though, and you can't put a 2nd skill point into it to provide 2% absorb per stack instead of 1%.

 

The change to Heat Blast is certainly a mitigation increase, but it also puts Vanguards more in line with other tanks - periodic mitigation buffs instead of a smooth, continual mitigation once 4 stacks are up.

Guys what do you think will happen to stats now? Are stats 30/50/50 still goal for jugg or not?

Assassins have always had the lowest armor and no longer receive the 20% bonus armor from their skill tree as of no

 

The loss of 20% armor when you're already packing 115% from tanking stance doesn't really do much. Stasis accounts for all of 1-2% K/E DR so it's not much of a loss, especially when you compare it to the Shield changes and Kinetic Bulwark. As such, you might interpret the loss of the additional armor as a nerf, but, in reality, the changes as a whole are a pretty substantial buff.

 

, while Juggernauts lose a bunch of defense but they also get some armor rating which is nice.

 

Once again, you're overstating the value of that armor buff. It's nice, but the bigger changes are the changes to outright damage reduction (Guard Slash is going to provide a 3% DR buff) and threat generation (*way* more Riposte, better Focus management, better damage on Guard Slash), not to mention Guard/Juggs getting Saber Reflect which is going to be *amazing*.

 

I'm actually starting to get worried about a lot of the Guardian changes. They're getting substantial reductions to their CDs (180 seconds down to 150 seconds for both Warding Call and Saber Ward), and a number of previously specific buffs to mitigation stats are becoming global: Blade Barricade is now being added to both Defense and Resistance chances and Guardian Slash is being applied to K/E and I/E DR (Inner Peace is also being improved substantially). As such, if these changes are left alone, Guardians will have a 5% Resistance chance compared to 2% for the other tanks and 25% I/E D/R compared to 23% for Shadows and 20% for VGs.

 

Powertechs however are totally through the roof though. Self heals, better cooldowns (Kolto OVerload, Oil Slick, Energy Shield all improved in some way) and a crazy ability that grants 25% shield absorption most of the time are just insane - especially since they are considered the best tanks already.

 

The primary weakness of VG/PT tanks has *always* been that they have bad CDs. The changes are simply modifying that so that they're more useful now, which is perfectly acceptable as I see it. The Oil Slick change is a bit too strong, imo, but I have a feel that the fact that it's a location ability now rather than a static debuff is going to impede its usefulness substantially, not to mention that it only affects M/R attacks. I strongly suspect that F/T K/E attacks are going to be *way* more common nowadays thanks to the change to shield generators.

 

The addition of a 25% increase to Abs from Energy Blast is one of the two things that I'm worried about. The uptime ratio on it coupled with the massive size of that buff honestly makes me think that the number is going to be reduced significantly by the time the patch/xpac is released. The second is that VG tanks, since they rely so little on Defense and have so much Shield/Abs and passive DR, might become *way* too powerful in any tanking situation that doesn't involve I/E damage: they have the best K/E DR by a pretty substantial margin *and* are pretty much tied with Shadows on the amount of Shield and Absorb they pack. As such, with the shield changes, they're getting the best of both world with regards to K/E attacks: the best DR *and* amazing Shield/Abs.

 

Remember, the changes we're currently seeing are still in the testing phase. They're subject to change, especially if we poke holes in them.

Once again, you're overstating the value of that armor buff. It's nice, but the bigger changes are the changes to outright damage reduction (Guard Slash is going to provide a 3% DR buff) and threat generation (*way* more Riposte, better Focus management, better damage on Guard Slash), not to mention Guard/Juggs getting Saber Reflect which is going to be *amazing*.

 

I'm actually starting to get worried about a lot of the Guardian changes. They're getting substantial reductions to their CDs (180 seconds down to 150 seconds for both Warding Call and Saber Ward), and a number of previously specific buffs to mitigation stats are becoming global: Blade Barricade is now being added to both Defense and Resistance chances and Guardian Slash is being applied to K/E and I/E DR (Inner Peace is also being improved substantially). As such, if these changes are left alone, Guardians will have a 5% Resistance chance compared to 2% for the other tanks and 25% I/E D/R compared to 23% for Shadows and 20% for VGs.

 

Yea, I think now that this changes are going to push guardian tanks to the top of the heap. They now beat out shadows for best CDs - saber reflect is going to be at worse slightly worse than resilience, and the combined lowered cooldowns to their existing CDs beat out deflection. Also, just cursory looking at the new stats formulas suggests that defense is going to give much better point for point return on mitigation compared to live, which also benefits guardian tanks.

 

The primary weakness of VG/PT tanks has *always* been that they have bad CDs. The changes are simply modifying that so that they're more useful now, which is perfectly acceptable as I see it. The Oil Slick change is a bit too strong, imo, but I have a feel that the fact that it's a location ability now rather than a static debuff is going to impede its usefulness substantially, not to mention that it only affects M/R attacks. I strongly suspect that F/T K/E attacks are going to be *way* more common nowadays thanks to the change to shield generators.

 

The addition of a 25% increase to Abs from Energy Blast is one of the two things that I'm worried about. The uptime ratio on it coupled with the massive size of that buff honestly makes me think that the number is going to be reduced significantly by the time the patch/xpac is released. The second is that VG tanks, since they rely so little on Defense and have so much Shield/Abs and passive DR, might become *way* too powerful in any tanking situation that doesn't involve I/E damage: they have the best K/E DR by a pretty substantial margin *and* are pretty much tied with Shadows on the amount of Shield and Absorb they pack. As such, with the shield changes, they're getting the best of both world with regards to K/E attacks: the best DR *and* amazing Shield/Abs.

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I'm not so certain about this to be honest. The smoke grenade / riot gas buff isn't as great as it seems with the duration decreasing from 18s to 15s and with it being bound to a location. On the passive mitigation front, Vanguards lost the 6% shield chance, 8% permanent power screen, in exchange for 4% defense and 25% absorb with 50% uptime (and nearly 50% uptime on a 3% absorb). This averages out to roughly +4% defense, -6% shield, and +7.5% absorb. This looks like a net gain, but as I mentioned, I think shield / absorb are getting nerfed relative to defense for pure weapon damage. There can be some pretty amazing uses with timing this with the absorb proc relic and oil slick for maximum gain, however.

Went and did a HM FP on the PTS, the amount of healing required has increased substantially, which is expected since the healers can heal more as well.

 

The biggest issue is mobs with small, multiple attacks as oppose to those with single big hits. Your dark ward can disappear very quickly, so you're effective at 40% shield most of the fight. This is where I think Bioware messed up : since you cannot absorb unless you shield, it will not save you from unmitigated attacks. Losing 10% from defense makes you take a lot more unmitigated attacks.

 

Even in HM FPs, get used to kiting. It'll be the best mitigation strategy by far.

Yea, I think now that this changes are going to push guardian tanks to the top of the heap. They now beat out shadows for best CDs - saber reflect is going to be at worse slightly worse than resilience, and the combined lowered cooldowns to their existing CDs beat out deflection. Also, just cursory looking at the new stats formulas suggests that defense is going to give much better point for point return on mitigation compared to live, which also benefits guardian tanks.

 

The CD changes aren't perturbing me as much as they *should*, probably because Battle Readiness is turning into the king of all CDs: 25% additive DR, 15% heal, 35% increased proc chance (meaning 100% with CT while it's active), and 100% increase healing and damage from Techniques for 15 seconds. It's going to provide the same survivability contributions as Reactive Shield or Warding Call *and* it increases healing *and* damage.

 

My primary worry is that the combination of the shorter recharge times on the already impressive Guardian CDs combined with a potentially *stronger* version of Resilience (since it affects ranged as well as F/T attacks and reflects the damage back with a similar CD) is going to eke some of the uniqueness of the Shadow away (while also being potentially overpowered because of all of the other various surv and threat buffs): Shadows were always the CD based tanks; Saber Reflect + shorter CDs starts to impede on that role while still maintaining the Guardian uniqueness.

 

On the passive mitigation front, Vanguards lost the 6% shield chance, 8% permanent power screen, in exchange for 4% defense and 25% absorb with 50% uptime (and nearly 50% uptime on a 3% absorb)

 

Power Screen should *easily* be able to be managed at 3 stacks with more than 50% uptime unless the EB buff specifically prevents the Power Screen stacks from being generated (which isn't mentioned anywhere so I doubt it): since Power Screen activates every time you dodge, parry, or shield (and, remember, the only stuff that can't be shielded is I/E damage attacks and DoTs), you should be able to regenerate the 3 stacks of Power Screen plenty fast enough to maintain more than a 50% uptime (I expect EB to be on a roughly 10 sec use cycle thanks to Power Screen procs, which means you'll average 1.5% abs from Power screen for ~7 seconds and 3% for 3 more seconds is going to average out to roughly ~2% absorb over time).

 

Either way, Power Screen isn't really what I'm worried about; it's Energy Blast: an Absorb buff of that size with such an impressive uptime combined with the already impressive shield, absorb, and passive K/E DR of a VG have the potential to be pretty overpowered, especially considering the buffs to Shield Generators.

The CD changes aren't perturbing me as much as they *should*, probably because Battle Readiness is turning into the king of all CDs: 25% additive DR, 15% heal, 35% increased proc chance (meaning 100% with CT while it's active), and 100% increase healing and damage from Techniques for 15 seconds. It's going to provide the same survivability contributions as Reactive Shield or Warding Call *and* it increases healing *and* damage.

 

My primary worry is that the combination of the shorter recharge times on the already impressive Guardian CDs combined with a potentially *stronger* version of Resilience (since it affects ranged as well as F/T attacks and reflects the damage back with a similar CD) is going to eke some of the uniqueness of the Shadow away (while also being potentially overpowered because of all of the other various surv and threat buffs): Shadows were always the CD based tanks; Saber Reflect + shorter CDs starts to impede on that role while still maintaining the Guardian uniqueness.

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You are right - I completely forgot about the battle readiness change. I disagree however about saber reflect being stronger than Resilience as a PvE talent. The ranged dmg reflect is going to rarely come into play, since it overlaps with saber ward / deflection, and should never be used for that purpose. It also does not work on AoE or dots, and does not cleanse existing negative effects, and is thus inferior as a pure survivability cooldown.

Edited February 24, 2013 by periphelion

I disagree however about saber reflect being stronger than Resilience as a PvE talent. The ranged dmg reflect is going to rarely come into play, since it overlaps with saber ward / deflection, and should never be used for that purpose. It also does not work on AoE or dots, and does not cleanse existing negative effects, and is thus inferior as a pure survivability cooldown.

 

Overlap within CDs isn't really a big deal, since you can just make sure you don't use them simultaneously. Complaining about overlap would be like complaining that you get 2 copies of Resilience instead of just 1: they're *both* useful, even if they're not useful simultaneously.

 

As to the cleanse and work on DoTs, those aren't really a major concern in PvE since, honestly, most PvE DoTs aren't a big deal and, if you need a cleanse, you've got a healer to take care of that 99% of the time (as such, on T&Z, I'm not going to waste Resilience on the internal damage DoT because healers should take care of that; I'll save Resilience for the Scream and/or a red reticule that I need to eat while channeling TkT). Reflecting ranged damage, however, is going to be *amazingly* useful, especially since it's on a short CD; being able to ignore ranged attacks for the opening volley of a fight while simultaneously generating substantial threat, both at the moment of use as well as through reflected damage, is going to be incredibly useful. The only reason I vacillate as to whether Saber Reflect is explicitly and substantially stronger is because it only applies to ST attacks, wherein the value of it depends explicitly upon the development choices made as part of content design: if the big, nasty attacks that you have to avoid are AoE, then Saber Reflect isn't going to be all that valuable; if they're primarily ST, it'll be *disgustingly good*.

so what is the bottom line as the pts is right now? is the consensus that assassin tanks may not be viable?

 

as it was asking in general about jugg vs. assassin in fleet i got a lot of tells from healers who said they loathe healing assassin tanks. that's on live.

that's on live.

 

A bad Assassin/Shadow is going to be a *terrible* healing experience. A good Shad/Sin tank is going to be a healer's dream. Since a majority of people that play have no idea what they're doing, the average experience with a Shad/Sin tank tends to be the terrible. It's for a similar reason that VG tanks tend to have a very good reputation even though they're, mechanically, the weakest tanks: they're almost impossible to screw up and, as such, healers tend to think they're actually the best tank class.

 

From what I've seen of the changes, it looks like they're really trying to homogenize the tanks (which I find kind of strange since they were already *beautifully* balanced before while still maintaining discrete personality and functionality): they're bolstering VG CDs substantially and complicating their rotation a bit while adding some active mitigation, reducing Guardian CDs and bolstering their static mitigation and threat while simplifying their rotation, and normalizing Shadow incoming damage (Kinetic Bulwark to make up for KW dropping).

Overlap within CDs isn't really a big deal, since you can just make sure you don't use them simultaneously. Complaining about overlap would be like complaining that you get 2 copies of Resilience instead of just 1: they're *both* useful, even if they're not useful simultaneously.

 

I was referring to overlap in functionality, not in usage - since saber ward is already so amazing against weapon attacks, chances are that you will be using that and saving saber reflect for F/T situations - making the ranged portion of the cool down less important, though obviously still beneficial in specific circumstances.

Going through my tanking logs on the PTS, it can be that Dark Bulwark is not working properly if you lose them too quickly.

 

Not sure if it's a combat log bug, but when I lose my darkward, I only gain Dark Bulwark once? Furthermore, my force regen from lightning reflex is 6? (and sometimes 1?) Things don't quite add up.

 

http://www.torparse.com/a/142733/9/0/Log

 

If dark Bulwark only goes up by 1 when you lose dark ward charges too quickly, then the cause of the 'spikiness' may be explained. Will need someone to open up the character box while tanking to test it out.

I've tried out the Guardian changes on PTS and I must say, I'm really liking it.

 

Rotation feels much more normal with all the important abilities being on a 12s CD. Just like on Live though, it feels really clunky if you aren't being attacked and really fluid if you are. Threat is much better, especially AoE. The 1+4 Guardian Slash and cheaper Cyclonic Sweeps makes it a lot easier, plus Saber Reflect for those pesky ranged mobs.

 

Mitigation felt alright in S&V. All I did was pull accuracy and alacrity off my gear in favor of shield and I didn't feel at all squishy, admittedly I was using my CDs proactively which I'd gotten used to on my Shadow so that may have helped. I definitely felt like I had a CD available whenever I wanted one, not that any of the fights we cleared were overly demanding on a tank.

 

I think the biggest thing I can say about it is that its made me decide to pull my Guardian tank out of retirement. Until now my Shadow just had an easier time with everything. That said, I haven't had a chance to test out my Shadow tanking on PTS yet and my VG is currently Assault specced but I'll respec her and try out VG PTS tanking as well over the next few days.