Okay:

I am a Jedi Shadow tank. I was in a warzone with two Jedi Guardian DPS PuGs, and two healers. Both Guardian DPSers did very respectably on the damage charts, but we lost due to focus fire on our healers, who I guarded when I was around them, but as the only stealth class, I spent much time solo defending/solo attacking a node to divert enemy forces.

Healers are of the opinion that the Guardians should have gone Soresu and Guarded them. One of the healers has a Guardian. I am solidly of the stance that, just looking at your trees, a DPS doing that is massively crippling their own damage for not a large upswing in durability.

Curious: Who is correct?

survivability without soresu is so low that I'm fairly certain most dps guardians don't use their dps stances anyway, heh.

in the long run, i dont think its a good idea to tie guard to defensive stances in general, for this reason.

What were the last three players on your team?

Were the guardians at least keeping taunt on cd?

imo you need one good tank at each cap. Doing the "tank job"

The answer depends on how the guardians were specced. If they were all-out focus DPS, your instinct is correct, they're better off doing their job and killing things. Depending on their build, the difference could frankly be devastating. It's 6% off the top, plus -20% armor penetration, 3 extra seconds on cooldowns, plus a huge penalty to their focus generation (because they won't have specced to deal with Soresu).

If they're tank specced, they're obviously awful.

Anyway, I obviously respect your desire to use your stealth to your advantage, but AstralFire, if you're tank specced, and your team need someone to tank....

As a fully specced DPS guardian I do quite a bit of stance dancing in matches.

Obviously when DPS specced you're not gonna make guarding your bread and butter in a wz but it should be used in certain situations. Namely slapping it on a ball carrier heh. Then there's taunting ofc. You don't need to guard and give up your dps stance to be able to drasticaly lower the damage your healers take and more often than not divert atleast some of the attention away from them.

With a bit of situational play like that you can easily add 50-100k protection to your 300k+ damage per WZ as a focus guardian. Anything under 10 medals in this spec is a bad day at the office, and that's all medals you get for constructive teamplay.

So I guess both are right in a way. Going in full support mode all the time is not the right answer. Then again just having a one tracked mind of deeps deeps deeps isn't the best use of what's available to the class either.

Okay:

 

I am a Jedi Shadow tank. I was in a warzone with two Jedi Guardian DPS PuGs, and two healers. Both Guardian DPSers did very respectably on the damage charts, but we lost due to focus fire on our healers, who I guarded when I was around them, but as the only stealth class, I spent much time solo defending/solo attacking a node to divert enemy forces.

 

Healers are of the opinion that the Guardians should have gone Soresu and Guarded them. One of the healers has a Guardian. I am solidly of the stance that, just looking at your trees, a DPS doing that is massively crippling their own damage for not a large upswing in durability.

 

Curious: Who is correct?

As someone who plays and Assassin tank: The issue was that you weren't doing your job, honestly. As a tank, you need to be protecting the healer(s) because they're not going to be able to do a heck of a lot on their own. Otherwise, you've left them as a team of 2 healers, 2 DPS - very squishy. If you want to tank, tank.

As someone who plays and Assassin tank: The issue was that you weren't doing your job, honestly. As a tank, you need to be protecting the healer(s) because they're not going to be able to do a heck of a lot on their own. Otherwise, you've left them as a team of 2 healers, 2 DPS - very squishy. If you want to tank, tank.

I'll grant you that it is certainly a possibility, but I saw chances to stealth cap doors when we weren't breaking through them, and I frequently found myself as the only person with any offensive capability able to respond to a door callout when on defense.

Try not to armchair quarterback too much when you weren't in the game, please. I won't say it was my best play day, but I can only accomplish so much at once.

Regarding the other more detailed questions: I don't know the answers to just about any of them. I didn't know the PuG Guardians whatsoever and I didn't pay attention enough to see what types of Guardians they were.

As someone who plays and Assassin tank: The issue was that you weren't doing your job, honestly. As a tank, you need to be protecting the healer(s) because they're not going to be able to do a heck of a lot on their own. Otherwise, you've left them as a team of 2 healers, 2 DPS - very squishy. If you want to tank, tank.

Not just any dps.. dps that have tank stances, guard, and taunts....

As a shadow tank sometimes I do just babysit healers and caps. But other times I have to go solo the lone defender and cap a point because I am the only one who can... Heck sometimes I lead half the other team on a merry chase so its 7v4 for the rest of my team.

In this situation I dont see why one of the guardians couldn't def/guard or at least both spam taunt.

My dps vanguard plus 1 healer can defend vs 6 for about a minute... If one of those guards had switched to soresu...? Just sayin

As a fully specced DPS guardian I do quite a bit of stance dancing in matches

I lol seeimg this from guardians.

Since it was guardians and juggs do vigorously defending biowares nerf of shadow stance changing...

Seriously makes me hope you get nerfed so bad that no one plays a guardian.

Okay that was a bit harsh iMad

I've played all 3 specs in PVE and PVP for a long time and I can say outright (It's pretty obvious too) that a vigilance guardian is severely hampering themselves in soresu unless they're only goal is to guard/survive/be a walking target with a newspaper for a weapon.

Focus generation is the worst of worst in this set up, which means so is your damage, which doesn't make up for the fact. I generally use soresu only to help someone live that little longer or if it annoys the enemy team by me being alive and using CC abilities rather than stabby stabby abilities.

In focus I'd soresu 24/7 in pvp unless we had some really good healers and I could switch out.

I've only ever had one person ask me to guard them in PvP, it was a DPS Trooper.

He didn't quite understand that I'm no longer playing a tank and want to kill things faster than it'd take to see the next Halley's Comet. Maybe he should've rolled a vanguard.

Any Guardian who doesn't run around in Soresu form gets **** on.

WRONG!

A focus guardian can **** on most classes faster than they can **** on the focus guardian.

I went right on civil war soloed 2 decently geared mercs (both about 16k hp) on my focus guardian... you just need to be smart with your ccs, interrupts and have enough burst to kill one quickly.

It's still wise to stance dance if your opponents are focusing your healer, but once your healer has a good amount of hp, switch back to dps stance quickly and faceroll the people trying to kill your healer.

I lol seeimg this from guardians.

 

Since it was guardians and juggs do vigorously defending biowares nerf of shadow stance changing...

 

Seriously makes me hope you get nerfed so bad that no one plays a guardian.

 

 

 

 

Okay that was a bit harsh iMad

When I swap stances I loose all my focus. But lets not go down that path again eh heh.

I lol seeimg this from guardians.

 

Since it was guardians and juggs do vigorously defending biowares nerf of shadow stance changing...

 

Seriously makes me hope you get nerfed so bad that no one plays a guardian.

 

 

 

 

Okay that was a bit harsh iMad

Don't feed him... Guardians cannot stance dance without losing all of their focus. On top of that, if they're spec'ed for DPS, switching stances gimps their focus generation, thus limiting their DPS even more. Only in a few rare occasions is it worth it to chance stances (ie, throwing guard on the ball carrier in hutt ball).

Not just any dps.. dps that have tank stances, guard, and taunts....

 

As a shadow tank sometimes I do just babysit healers and caps. But other times I have to go solo the lone defender and cap a point because I am the only one who can... Heck sometimes I lead half the other team on a merry chase so its 7v4 for the rest of my team.

 

In this situation I dont see why one of the guardians couldn't def/guard or at least both spam taunt.

 

My dps vanguard plus 1 healer can defend vs 6 for about a minute... If one of those guards had switched to soresu...? Just sayin

They're not tanks because they're not specced for it. They can switch into the stance, but it will not bring them anywhere good. The Vanguard may have a little more forgiveness on this than the others, but Guardians and Shadows don't at all.

If the healers needed protection, it was the job that from all indications he took on - which means he was not available to do solo point caps and so on.

I'll grant you that it is certainly a possibility, but I saw chances to stealth cap doors when we weren't breaking through them, and I frequently found myself as the only person with any offensive capability able to respond to a door callout when on defense.

 

Try not to armchair quarterback too much when you weren't in the game, please. I won't say it was my best play day, but I can only accomplish so much at once.

 

Regarding the other more detailed questions: I don't know the answers to just about any of them. I didn't know the PuG Guardians whatsoever and I didn't pay attention enough to see what types of Guardians they were.

If you're going to take on a job, you do that job. If you're supporting a healer and then you go off to do something else, you've abandoned that job when you could have had them follow in after you and actually acted as a team.

Don't feed him... Guardians cannot stance dance without losing all of their focus. On top of that, if they're spec'ed for DPS, switching stances gimps their focus generation, thus limiting their DPS even more. Only in a few rare occasions is it worth it to chance stances (ie, throwing guard on the ball carrier in hutt ball).

It doesn't cost all your focus... You don't have to generate full focus to change... Oh and those "few" situations are the same ones shadows wish they could change for... But can't... We lose dps if not in intended stance as well.

It doesn't cost all your focus... You don't have to generate full focus to change... Oh and those "few" situations are the same ones shadows wish they could change for... But can't... We lose dps if not in intended stance as well.

It does cost all of your focus, as in, any that you have, I don't think he meant you had to generate full focus to change.

It's true that for a non-kinetic/whatever shadow they do lose DPS and all their resources (they actually probably lose more damage, lol)

It's situational imo. In some cases it's good to guard, in other cases it's unnecessary.

In addition with the level of focus damage going on, it sounds like it would have taken far more than one guardian guarding a single healer to turn that fight around. It sounds like there just wasn't much control or taunting or anything going on.

The only time I will use soresu form is when I'm playing defensive (guarding turret, door, huttball carrier, etc.) and need that few extra seconds of living for my team to reenforce. Other than that I run in my dps stance.

Obviously I spam taunts w/e I can, that's just common sense and gives easy free medals.

I have had to go Sorseu occassionally in PvE FP's and it extremely limits my offensive options, I even have no choice but to use AoE's sometimes cause I just am not generating enough focus for my main attacks.

I am built more defensively than a lot of DPS guardians, and I can understand why they were looking at you like you were crazy.

They don't have the defense and damage reductions in their gear that a Tank Guardian would have. They might not have even been equipped with a shield. If you needed them to guard the healer at that point, sounds like your team was in serious trouble.

I can briefly tank on things cause I set my gear up to have that option (you wouldn't believe how often the real tank can walk off a cliff)... However, it is very hard and I have to have a good healer or I'm in real trouble, plus a lot of my attacks can't be used as often as I would like.

If/when dual spec comes about that may be different for a lot of people, but as it stands currently it is rare for a DPS guardian to be able to suddenly switch to being an effective tank.

hmmm, this is why I don't group typically. Just because some players are playing their character the way they want to play, doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. And to be told so is just arrogant.

Having said that, you're certainly within rights to choose who you group with. Perhaps next time, find the players with the spec you need. Blame yourself for choosing your group mates poorly. Don't blame others for playing the game the way they want.

It doesn't cost all your focus...

I don't think that sentence means what you think it means.

hmmm, this is why I don't group typically. Just because some players are playing their character the way they want to play, doesn't mean they're doing anything wrong. And to be told so is just arrogant.

 

Having said that, you're certainly within rights to choose who you group with. Perhaps next time, find the players with the spec you need. Blame yourself for choosing your group mates poorly. Don't blame others for playing the game the way they want.

^This...

and why do rogues always complain about everyone elses game play.

This seems to be a universal truth in MMO's...

I guess when you sit in a match invisible you get to watch everyone else

a whole lot instead of playing your class and helping your team?