As the title implies, it seems to me that BW has decided that tanks should not be rewarded for progressing. Instead, they apparently feel its better to take away endurance when facing content that hits harder? I don't understand it. If BW doesn't want to increase endurance for tanks on higher gear, fine, but why lower it? Wouldn't it make more sense to keep the tank's endurance levels the same?

I would think that comms gear, which is the source of B-mods, and therefore much easier to achieve would be the floor for a certain tier of content (SM/HM/NiM) with the Unassembled drops giving gear with increased def/shield/absorb while maintaining the endurance levels of B-mods, or atleast keeping them close enough so as to not feel like being nerfed for earning the "better" gear.

I just don't get it. What's the logic here?

224 token gear which is only kind for 224 is for max mitigation, which can be argue by nim people is what is better then have endure. depend on who you talk to what type take

Though I think min max DPS should not have more HP/ENDURE then a tank EVEN IF they are all in 224 gear. then again I also think the amount HP/ENDURE put in gear is getting ridiculous Next cap raise will probably see 100k base hp on everything...

And logic being IT BW/EA logic which to say which to say it based of there "metrics" there statically "numbers" and not actual playing of game

Higher quality gear would include higher damage mitigation, Defense, Absorb mods, not higher Endurance.

Having higher HP is not what is desired but the ability to block damage is.

Try tor-tank.com for min/maxing gear.

Higher quality gear would include higher damage mitigation, Defense, Absorb mods, not higher Endurance.

 

Having higher HP is not what is desired but the ability to block damage is.

 

Try tor-tank.com for min/maxing gear.

Nothing I said argues that. I'm saying that higher mitigation for ops gear shouldn't be penalized with lowered endurance. Endurance should remain the ~same with comms gear and still have the higher mitigation.

There are 3 problems with tank gearing. First is no endurance on tank relics which is utter bull****. Partially compensated by using Mk-26s.

Second is no Mk-2 224s, which makes it somewhat a pain to get multiple dps sets (too much accuracy and crit enhancements) and makes BiS tank gear unobtainable. At least using dps/mk-26 relics gives some reasoning to use 224 enhancements, otherwise all 224 is just pointless and even people maining tanks shouldn't spend a single 224 token on em.

Third is absurd spikes met in hm/nim content, which used to be features to select bosses distinguishing them and giving some room for changing gear sets between fights for best performance, but now it's all just damn same.

Having less than 80k hp as tank is not viable in NiMs period.

Not a single competent enough healer gives a slight hint of **** if you take 3k or 4k dtps as long as you survive spikes. Even going full b-mods and high-end enhs won't make you that squishy btw.

Raptus (HM, because NiM is a joke even when you have 2 failed dps challenges and enrage on top) hits sin for ~63k (unless baddie loses stacks) with driving/rising, basic attack is about 10k per hit afair. Unlucky mitigation rolls -> you're pretty much globalled in high miti profile and no healers won't have a single second between hits to react.

Stormcaller, over 80% internal damage, suuuuure, mitigation gonna help a lot.

Cartel Warlords, sitting at 95%+ internal damage (tanking Vilus for 2 phases) when I don't slack. Very artificial example, just felt like putting it in.

Brontes, hands slam up to 47k and yes it hits like a truck even if you play "hybrid" and yes often healer just don't have time for you.

Bestia, dat sweet 40k+ x2 cleave by monsters. What are assassins sitting at with max mitigation currently, 78k?

Calphayus because endurance is better when you are ignored by healer because he needs to dps add.

Council while kiting Bestia far away from raid since there are like 1.5 tanks left that can kite her without making healers a violent bloodthirsty psychopaths only wanting to learn where that tank lives.

Masterblaster because scaling something to do 200% more damage while hp pool grew about 60% is so bioware.

Also pretty much every boss in EC; Thrasher, The Terror, Corruptor.

If somebody takes unnecessary damage, or you're all in tight burst check, or one of healers died you are getting very little heals if any at all. You goal is to survive this, and it just happens that mathematically mitigation is the worst form of survivability. Speaking simply, without healing you'll survive much longer with high endurance than with high mitigation, on average. Then we have lucky mitigation rolls streaks which make both profile almost same. But, most importantly, bad luck. If your healer was unlucky and derped and died, what makes you think YOU will have more luck? Worst case scenario, high mitigation profile is basically a dps in terms of squishiness, while mid/high endurance doesn't give a **** about shield/defense rolls in most cases. Yes your healers will have to do more work once disaster is rolled back into "impending" state from "already happening" state, but at least they will have something to heal and not rez.

Minmaxing tank to minimize dtps is plain wrong, and what bioware did to our gear is just ludicrous. Even worse, nothing can be done really because the issue in the very basis (tank gear has much less endurance by design due to augments) and last time we saw balance was in 2.x -- which was achieved by... max mitigation enhancements being unavailable!

Tl;dr: do not seek reason, gearing (tanks, at least) is done without any thoughts or logic put into it, in the most blunt way possible, and only difference between what we had before is that ones responsible for it did that **** without any particular goal in mind, apparently but hey that's like the diagnosis for the whole game now

Higher quality gear would include higher damage mitigation, Defense, Absorb mods, not higher Endurance.

 

Having higher HP is not what is desired but the ability to block damage is.

Why do people still say this?

Blocking, or more precisely, mitigating damage is meaningless if you cannot survive the spikes. At some point you take 2-3 hits in a row. The damage profiles of many NM encounters - and a couple HM ones - in no way align with, as you say, min-max gear.

And, frankly, on the others it doesn't matter.

Tanks that are actually killing difficult content do not gear for highest possible mitigation -- or they wouldn't be killing it.

Why do people still say this?

 

Blocking, or more precisely, mitigating damage is meaningless if you cannot survive the spikes. At some point you take 2-3 hits in a row. The damage profiles of many NM encounters - and a couple HM ones - in no way align with, as you say, min-max gear.

 

And, frankly, on the others it doesn't matter.

 

Tanks that are actually killing difficult content do not gear for highest possible mitigation -- or they wouldn't be killing it.

Even if I agree that surviving spikes is better, I know 2 tanks from one of my guild that are geared in max mitigation. And you can't really say they've much trouble since they've cleared everything except Revan HM, Brontes NiM and Styrak NiM.

Even if I agree that surviving spikes is better, I know 2 tanks from one of my guild that are geared in max mitigation. And you can't really say they've much trouble since they've cleared everything except Revan HM, Brontes NiM and Styrak NiM.

Dude its math. Ok your tanks are pros and they have great healers. grats. They are still doing it sub optimally. Its like a healer who specs 10% accuracy ok? cos he likes to dps in the down times. Now maybe hes a demi-god healer, hes healed all the nims, he can solo heal any hm op in the game. You know the ones, you bring them to hm EV's when its prioty week and you want to 6 man run the 16m mode for more loot. He doesn't need that alacrity or crit so he grabs some accuracy on his gear and dps's adds and keeps his dots on the boss to make things go faster.

Is he doing it wrong? for him no.

Is he gearing sub optimally for his role as a healer? yes

Should people be posting on forums and in general/guild chat to newbie healers telling them to adopt his gearing strategy that works for him? ABSOLUTELY NOT AND YOUR TROLLING THEM IF YOU DO.

Math is math. Choosing to lose 4k health to go from 29.6% defense to 29.7% defense directly hurts the amount of damage you can take in a boss fight and increases the total healing you need while making you more vulnerable to RNG heavy damage. Its sub-optimal play and we should never be advising new tanks to gear that way.

Dude it's math

Choosing to lose 4k health to go from 29.6% defense to 29.7% defense directly hurts the amount of damage you can take in a boss fight and increases the total healing you need while making you more vulnerable to RNG heavy damage.

That's straight up false, more mitigation will lead to lower expected damage taken, yes you're more vulnerable to burst, but you need less healing overall, that's just a fact. I'm not saying wether or not you should go for max mitigation, but that's just bull.

Where exactly is your math showing that:

 

That's straight up false, more mitigation will lead to lower expected damage taken, yes you're more vulnerable to burst, but you need less healing overall, that's just a fact. I'm not saying wether or not you should go for max mitigation, but that's just bull.

This link shows driving thrust hitting for 87k. Granted it's on marauder so on tank it will probably be ~75k.

This link shows driving thrust hitting for 87k. Granted it's on marauder so on tank it will probably be ~75k.

Again, I'm not arguing either way on the max mitigation/endu heavy debate. However saying that max mitigation needs more total healing, is simply false. That's the main drawback of endu heavy, higher dtps.

Again, I'm not arguing either way on the max mitigation/endu heavy debate. However saying that max mitigation needs more total healing, is simply false. That's the main drawback of endu heavy, higher dtps.

Sure, most tanks gear for max mitigation AFTER they have enough endurence to make sure they won't be one hitted

That's straight up false, more mitigation will lead to lower expected damage taken, yes you're more vulnerable to burst, but you need less healing overall, that's just a fact. I'm not saying wether or not you should go for max mitigation, but that's just bull.

It's probably a terribly constructed sentence, and he meant typical "less healing, but vulnerable to spikes".

However, it's really hard to argue "directly hurts the amount of damage you can take in a boss fight". Out of context for the sake of sarcasm: really, you can't take much damage from the boss if you die to spike 30 seconds in

DTPS is highly overrated metric, and "sub-optimal" gearing effect on it is almost always hyperbolized to just hilarious numbers. I have a sort of drinking game especially for that, except it's not about drinking. When wiping heavily on some boss cept select few most hard hitting ones (tfb, brontes, dg, bestia), replace 1 piece of tank gear with dps one every 2-3 wipes. See if your healers will notice something is wrong before you get to offhand

Playing the 3 Roles tanks from the beginning, there are few things which came back on top problems for us

First, the fact that they give importance to Defense, is completely in opposition to the mitigation and the gameplay :

Shadow tanks and Vanguard have their gameplay based on the shield which increase their absorption.

by giving importance to def, they lower the block rate and the absorption gained

It s even fatal to the mitigation tank gameplay

Secondly, the critical cap up from 25% to 37% (like in the 2.0).

It was the same problem therefore, Critical which override precision and shield

Example :

a 50%crit dps vs 55% shield tank will end like this :

your shield will be downgrade to 50% (to match with the 50% crit against you and obtain 100%)

Moreover, that make you block all uncritical hit and take only crits....

And no matter your defense rate because Crit override precision and cannot be blocked

This was the 2.0 logical from a dev team which has been replaced by another who finally repeat the same patterns ... but later xD

It's probably a terribly constructed sentence, and he meant typical "less healing, but vulnerable to spikes".

 

However, it's really hard to argue "directly hurts the amount of damage you can take in a boss fight". Out of context for the sake of sarcasm: really, you can't take much damage from the boss if you die to spike 30 seconds in

 

DTPS is highly overrated metric, and "sub-optimal" gearing effect on it is almost always hyperbolized to just hilarious numbers. I have a sort of drinking game especially for that, except it's not about drinking. When wiping heavily on some boss cept select few most hard hitting ones (tfb, brontes, dg, bestia), replace 1 piece of tank gear with dps one every 2-3 wipes. See if your healers will notice something is wrong before you get to offhand

Well, dtps will easy up the work for healers anyways, and cooldowns exist for the sole purpose of mitigating burst. I can see the value of going for more endurance, especially for assassins, considering they have pretty low DR. But in the end, 220 endu heavy mods and 224 optimized ones won't make an extreme difference in hp either.

The real problem is non tanks have too much hp and too many damage reducing cooldowns and shields. But this dev team seriously wastes too much damn time on nerfing and buffing and balance. We could of had an expansion with 8 class stories again long ago if they would stop wasting time pissing people off with this ****.

If TEC is to prepare people for group content dont be surprised if they do away with the trinity.

Well, dtps will easy up the work for healers anyways, and cooldowns exist for the sole purpose of mitigating burst. I can see the value of going for more endurance, especially for assassins, considering they have pretty low DR. But in the end, 220 endu heavy mods and 224 optimized ones won't make an extreme difference in hp either.

That's the point, extra work for healers. Does. Not. Matter. I've seen tanks' combined dtps fluctuate by ~2k on certain fights between pulls (in same phases, ofc) and healer's were barely admitting a difference. If you survive spike, it is all that matters, extra lost hp can be easily recovered after. Healing in this game never was as overtuned as it is now. If you are not gearing for spike, you deny your healers a chance to heal someone else in dire need while you are at a brisk of death because of lacking hp and bad rolls.

Point about not making extreme difference is a lie. Up to a point of assassin being unable to survive one unmitigatied hit without b-mods or reliable cooldown.

That's the point, extra work for healers. Does. Not. Matter. I've seen tanks' combined dtps fluctuate by ~2k on certain fights between pulls (in same phases, ofc) and healer's were barely admitting a difference. If you survive spike, it is all that matters, extra lost hp can be easily recovered after. Healing in this game never was as overtuned as it is now. If you are not gearing for spike, you deny your healers a chance to heal someone else in dire need while you are at a brisk of death because of lacking hp and bad rolls.

 

Point about not making extreme difference is a lie. Up to a point of assassin being unable to survive one unmitigatied hit without b-mods or reliable cooldown.

Well Assassins are a seperate case, they get an endurance buff to compensate for their low DR, because this buff is based of your total endurance, each endurance point will contribute more to the total. Hence, more endurance is most beneficial for Assassin tanks.

I am trying to think of a time I died because the healer ran out of resources.

The only time I can even remember healers talking about resources were 3.x HM CM post cheese and late in P1 3.0 Cora when the bird would wreck people.

As stated above, killing a boss has nothing to do with "how hard a healer has to work". It's a meaningless metric. The only thing that matters is boss dead/alive. Who even looks at the efficiency of healers in groups killing difficult content?

It's like saying you aren't going to top off a tank because you don't want to overheal. It's just not how you play.

I can think of a number of +70k hits. People die on NM fights. Which do you think is more useful during enrage - a quarter % defense or 4k hp? I'll take the HP.

Not to even mention many of the seriously high DTPS fights have damage profiles that make stacking mitigation far, far worse than HP.

Bottom line is that fights without massive spikes or weird damage profiles can be tanked in 216 coms gear. So min/maxing is pointless.

For the more difficult fights, min/maxing will greatly increase odds of tank dying to spike.

Math is not required here.

I actually min/max mitigation up to a point where I think endurance levels are safe. I also have left side mk-4 ear/implants and a mk-26 relic in case more endurance is needed. But, I have yet to wear it because I haven't needed it. As for endurance, I run all 224 token gear except for the 220 B-mods on my Sin and PT (Juggs are a different animal altogether). I've found this to be a decent compromise. I'm not sure why one wouldn't gear all 224's except for B-mods. But, to each their own.

Aesthetically, it's odd that my heavy armor wearing PT tank has the lowest endurance pool in my raid group. But, we make it work...

Having less than 80k hp as tank is not viable in NiMs period.

I run both Juggs and PT's below 80k with no issues.

I run both Juggs and PT's below 80k with no issues.

Could not agree more. On Assassin it probably would be due to low DR, but on the others it's doable. On jugg I even go as far as to go full 224 to get the most out of scream shield and enraged defense. On pt I go for bmods tho. Can't speak for sin, haven't done NiMs on that, but on HMs bmods give enough endu.

I think the point to make here is that as a new tank, gearing for endurance over mitigation might be more beneficial. But, as you learn the mechanics and fights(and tricks), you'll realize that many of these massive spikes can be flat out avoided. Regardless, the days of gearing for hi/mid/low are gone. But, it's not a terrible idea to have some endurance gear in the inventory if you think you're getting spiked down too fast. That hasn't happened to me, but each group's composition and ability is different. There's nothing wrong with that...at all.

There is no catch-all "best" way to gear for Nim. Why? Because there's far too many human variables in play. And, in the end, it's fairly inconsequential. Nailing mechanics and avoiding "avoidable" damage is what makes a good Nim tank. Nim content can be cleared employing a variety of gearing methods. Nim content cannot be cleared unless you hit your marks.

Want to be a great Nim tank? Gear towards your group's strength's. Nail mechanics flawlessly until you're not only aware of the tank's job, but everyone else's. And, learn all the tricks. If there's any mantra to tanking, then that's it.