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Fixing Shadow Tank Spikiness


Kitru

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So, as everyone and their cousin knows, right now, Shadows are almost painfully spiky right now, *way* above the Guardians and VGs. There are only 2 ways to really fix the spikiness: increase DR (which would necessitate losing some degree of our mitigation stats) or provide some effect that either provides a cushion before or after the damage arrives (i.e. an absorb shield of some kind that only triggers on big damage attacks or something that turns some portion of incoming damage into a DoT so that the same amount of damage is taken but it's not taken immediately).

 

I'm not sure how viable the second portion of those options are since some of them represent some non-trivial programming and design obstacles, but I think I figured out a decent compromise that allows for the first without having a major impact on the fundamental Shadow playstyle: change the 5% accuracy debuff that Shadows apply through Force Breach into a 5% DR buff that lasts the same amount of time (kinda like what Guardian Slash does). We'll still be the spiky tanks, but swapping out 5% functional defense for 5% DR at our levels of Defense would keep the mitigation roughly the same (it could be tweaked down to 4% DR if necessary to account for the comparative value of DR to Defense, but that's just semantics and a bit of balancing). It'll also go a fair ways to making Shadows more viable tanks at low levels.

 

Those are my ideas. I'm kinda curious what everyone else's are.

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I had an idea once, but I kept convincing myself it sounds bit OP :p

It's about Kinetic Ward - successful shielding would additionaly trigger combat technique effect on the attacker (on a separate x-seconds cooldown maybe).

That way shadows get a nice to boost to their self healing (which could be nice for trash tanking, since they tend to eat shadows in seconds), and threat generation, which is allready great.

 

I'd also consider restoring 20% armor buff on Martial Prowess talent.

Edited by Dispersion
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All I truly want is another cooldown, or a reduction in timer of some of the others. If you're going quickly through trash packs, deflection and battle readiness aren't back fast enough (for me) to go into the third pack confidently. I've taken to bringing along an old campaign defense clicky relic to get a pseudo-third trash-entry cooldown to prevent too much spikiness.

 

Does anybody else have troubles like these, or do I just race through my FPs too much?

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Well, that's kind, but it ultimately does not change the play-based reality that my vanguard and my powertech can jump into trash mobs and barely have to bat an eyelash, and my shadow needs to pop a cooldown the instant I enter it so I don't immediately drop to 20%. I think that's the root of what we're all getting at - cooldowns are an "oh no!" button for other tanks, and they're a requirement of standard play for shadows.
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It's about Kinetic Ward - successful shielding would additionaly trigger combat technique effect on the attacker (on a separate x-seconds cooldown maybe).

 

The problem is that your idea doesn't fix the *spikiness* issue. High spikiness occurs when you rely too much on the very chance based mitigation mechanisms that you're recommending be improved. This would actually *increase* spikiness by shifting more of our survivability onto our chance based mitigation mechanisms.

 

I'd also consider restoring 20% armor buff on Martial Prowess talent.

 

The 20% increase to armor isn't really going to do much. It'll amount to all of 1-2% total DR. Considering the difference between the passive DR of Guardian/VGs and Shadows is roughly 20%(Shadows top out at ~35%, VG/Guards top out at ~55%) and how *likely* attacks are to punch right through out chance based mitigation (~34% chance for an M/R attack, ~45% chance for an F/T attack), our incoming damage is *ridiculously* spiky, especially on F/T where we either take amount the same amount of damage as a VG/Guard or we take 45% more.

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What about tying a battle readiness' CD reduction into the parried, shielded, deflected bit in the same way that force resilience can have its CD reduced. Or just a one minute CD would be nice.

 

I actually kind of like this idea. The developers already see Shadows as, explicitly, *the* skill tank so planning on us use our CDs as a fundamental part of the Shadow tank playstyle would make a fair bit of sense. It also allows us to remain spiky while simultaneously giving us the tools to mitigate the spikiness at certain intervals.

 

Another option might be the reset of Battle Readiness and/or Deflection when we exit combat or enter stealth, like how Vigi Guards get Force Leap, Combat Focus, and Saber Throw reset or Infil Shadows get Blackout back. It would allow us to start fights with one or both of our major CDs *always* available, so as to mitigate the biggest source of disadvantageous spikiness: the alpha strike.

 

I kind of doubt adding another one minute CD would be viable though I think it would be interesting if we got something like Dodge (60 sec CD, 3 sec duration, 100% defense increase): short duration, short CD, high effect. To normalize it, it could be designed to only apply to single target attacks, like Saber Reflect does, or apply a 100% increase to Shield chance, rather than Defense chance, so that you'll still be taking damage while it's active, just not a coin flip for "dead or tolerable". Conversely, something like Defense Screen (45 sec CD, 15 sec duration, creates an absorb shield for a moderate amount) would be pretty useful: being able to apply a Force Shield to *ourselves* would provide us with a measure of burst mitigation. Yet another option would be giving us a copy of Endure Pain: 30% extra hp for a short period of time offsets the spikiness by providing us with a larger damage cushion and a bit more self healing (but not really all that much).

 

There are a *bunch* of things that could be done, and it's not like it's not a problem. Guardians and VGs use their CDs like CDs. Shadows have to use our CDs as a fundamental part of our playstyle because, when we don't, healers can't predict how much healing we'll need so they'll either end up not healing us enough and ending up with a spike that destroys us or dump in *way* more healing than we actually *need* (and more than the other tanks need) and waste most of it on overheal to offset the likelihood that there will be a window of time where we just took damage like we're a DPS rather than a tank.

Edited by Kitru
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Honestly, it's not a problem. If it were anyone other than Kitru complaining, I'd be pulling out a "L2P" right now. Maybe I just have good healers, but they certainly aren't complaining.

 

Normally, I would be pulling out an L2P as well, and I actually *did* when we were testing this stuff on the PTS, but it's become apparent to me the more I play my Shadow tank that it *is* a problem. If a Guardian or VG in my level of gear runs into an FP, there isn't a single time where they actually *need* to burn a CD in order to survive (Guardians will often burn Saber Reflect but that's more for the threat generation than for the actual mitigation). There is at least 1 pull in *every* Hm FP (and often 2-3+) where, if I don't start off or use Deflection or Battle Readiness almost immediately after the fight starts, I stand a *very* good chance of dying. I dramatically overgear the content and yet, because of the spikiness, I can still die. That's a problem.

 

I shouldn't *have* to burn a CD to survive a trash pack when I'm tanking a piece of content I overgear while running with a healer that's appropriately geared, and, yet, I am. It's either burn the CD or stand a *damned* good chance of dying (seriously, in my experience, it's something like a 50+% chance on some of those dog packs) because I'm gonna get my face beat in by the world's most vicious alpha strike. I've learned enough about tanking the HM FPs as a Shadow that I use my CDs and don't experience any problems, but tank CDs aren't supposed to be for getting you through trash; they're for getting you through high damage boss phases or times when the healer dies or something similar. Being forced to use them for trash packs in standard scenarios is completely counter to their actual intent.

 

In ops, it's generally not as big of a problem because you don't have major alpha strikes and, if the Shadow dies due to a massive spike (this has happened to me more often that I care to admit), there is a second tank to cover while they get a brez. It's still a problem however. The best example is, and I'm going to bring this up a lot in any discussion of spikiness, Operations Chief Terminate: it'll hit a VG/Guard for 22k and a Shadow for 32.5k. Vacillation between incoming damage on that scale for big attacks like that is just *not* something that should happen.

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You're right, it does suck having to burn a cooldown to survive a trash mob. But I guess I've come to accept that shadow tanking means taking the good with the bad, and part of the bad is active and strategic use of cooldowns, rather than using them as "oh s**t" buttons. The good is plentiful, the bad requires skill to contend with. If anything, I like that there is no such thing as an "OK" shadow tank. There are good shadow tanks, and there are dead shadow tanks. Not much in between.

 

Also you mention the Operations Chief's terminate as an example where shadows get owned. What about huge grenade on Titan? I can resilience it every time, taking no damage whatsoever. What can VG's and Guardians do that comes even close to that? I was pretty discouraged when I first heard about the 2.0 changes. I had two full dread guard tanks that had both cleared Kephess NiM, a shadow and a VG. Thought at first I'd be using primarily the VG, but not so. My shadow is my preferred tank by a long shot.

Edited by Jimvinny
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There are good shadow tanks, and there are dead shadow tanks. Not much in between.

 

The problem I have is that sometimes good Shadow tanks still die to stupid stuff because of massive spikiness. You'll pretty much never see a Guardian or VG die to similar circumstances.

 

Also you mention the Operations Chief's terminate as an example where shadows get owned. What about huge grenade on Titan? I can resilience it every time, taking no damage whatsoever. What can VG's and Guardians do that comes even close to that?

 

In the same way that Isotope Release on Golden Fury can be laughed at by a Shadow but actually affects Guardians and VGs: it does a lot of damage but nothing like Terminate (atm, Terminate is the biggest single hit in the game). The attacks are intended to be big but not "coin flip: shield or dead!". A Shadow getting to ignore an attack that deals a lot of damage by using Resilience intelligently when you can still survive it fine by *not* using Resilience is a bit different than an attack that has a pretty decent chance of outright one shotting you while not being all that big of a deal to a VG or Guardian. The higher DR has a pretty substantial impact on how dangerous an attack like that is.

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I have to agree with Kitru's ideas...

 

I feel very inferior now... Saber reflect I feel its a little o/p, maybe its just me. It changes the entire balance between tanks

 

I know a Guardian tank who tanked endgame content with nothing but full 63 gear. Try getting a Shadow tank to do the same *sigh*

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<realizes what he just said and hangs head in shame>

 

That's actually what Jesse Sky told me. Because, you know, Shadows should have to stack Endurance rather than mitigation stats when Guardians and VGs can go full bore max mainstat and mitigation (re: what I did pre-2.0) without *any* negative effects. I kinda had to facepalm a bit at that. My hope is that Peckenpaugh realizes that it's a problem since he's the class numbers guy.

Edited by Kitru
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I have to disagree. Shadows in 2.0 are much spikier than the other tanks and it's not a problem. 2.0 Assassins just need to adjust to the fact that they have real trade-offs that are appropriate for their style of tanking. Pre-2.0, Assassins were pretty much superior to other tanks 90-95% of the time and it's simply not the case anymore. Personally, I have both an Assassin and Juggernaut tank that are geared roughly the same and there are clear advantages and disadvantages to both of them now.
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Personally, I have both an Assassin and Juggernaut tank that are geared roughly the same and there are clear advantages and disadvantages to both of them now.

 

The only advantage that Shadows have at the moment are the few occasions where Resilience allows you to ignore an attack that Saber Reflect doesn't. There aren't really all that many of those.

 

In *every* other situation, Shadows are noticeably sub par thanks to their spikiness. Before, it wasn't as big of an issue because it wasn't as likely to happen because Shield chances and Absorb values were higher and there weren't *nearly* the same number of massive hits in the game. Now that we can expect giant hits as routine parts of Ops, it's both more common *and* a bigger deal.

 

It's important to mention that Shadows are *explicitly* designed to be the skill tanks. Skill tanks are *supposed* to have a higher top end functionality because their performance is dependent upon the skill of the player. It's why Shadows were allowed to be more survivable than the other tanks. The Guardian tank buffs have made it so that Guardians, which are *incredibly* easy to play now and have almost no actual skill interaction for their survivability (re: spam Blade Storm and Guardian Slash which is what everyone does anyways), have almost identical top end survivability, better CDs (CD reduction on Saber Ward and Warding Call, Endure Pain, *and* Saber Reflect), and the exact same standard spikiness as a VG.

 

The way it's currently, VGs are just simple tanks that don't really have anything going for them, Guardians are the tanks with the best of pretty much *everything*, and Shadows are high average survivability with an incoming damage profile so spiky that it functionally invalidates the high average survivability because it requires either stacking an obscene level of Endurance (which *lowers* your mitigation), massive spam overhealing from healers (which is against the entire *point* of having high mitigation), or using their CDs as part of their standard rotation (which no other tank has to do). Shadows are a skill tank where high levels of skill allow you to break even in general. High skill level on a skill tank should allow you to be *noticeably* better. That's the point of a skill tank.

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The only advantage that Shadows have at the moment are the few occasions where Resilience allows you to ignore an attack that Saber Reflect doesn't. There aren't really all that many of those.

 

So you completely disregard Phase Walk (up to 7% extra healing) along with the ability to teleport? The ability to go into stealth, which allows you to CC, cheese certain mechanics, res people in the middle of combat, and use medpacs multiple times (great if you are Biochem) in a single fight? They have a pull over Juggernauts/Guardians, much better self-healing than any other tank, the best set bonuses, and constant damage + accuracy debuffs.

 

In *every* other situation, Shadows are noticeably sub par thanks to their spikiness. Before, it wasn't as big of an issue because it wasn't as likely to happen because Shield chances and Absorb values were higher and there weren't *nearly* the same number of massive hits in the game. Now that we can expect giant hits as routine parts of Ops, it's both more common *and* a bigger deal.

 

This is a good thing. Regardless, as stats get higher in future tiers of gear, Assassins/Shadows will get the most benefit from it as they get an absolutely massive amount of free stats from their skill tree and abilities. This will help smooth out their spikiness as well.

 

It's important to mention that Shadows are *explicitly* designed to be the skill tanks. Skill tanks are *supposed* to have a higher top end functionality because their performance is dependent upon the skill of the player. It's why Shadows were allowed to be more survivable than the other tanks. The Guardian tank buffs have made it so that Guardians, which are *incredibly* easy to play now and have almost no actual skill interaction for their survivability (re: spam Blade Storm and Guardian Slash which is what everyone does anyways), have almost identical top end survivability, better CDs (CD reduction on Saber Ward and Warding Call, Endure Pain, *and* Saber Reflect), and the exact same standard spikiness as a VG.

 

I'm not sure why you think Shadows were designed to be the skill tanks. I assume a developer mentioned this at some point. Even if that were true in theory, they were certainly not in practice pre-2.0 as they were extremely easy to play effectively while Guardians took by far the most skill to be effective. After 2.0, Shadows take the most skill of any tank to play effectively, which is how it should be if they are the skill tanks as you say. Whether pre-2.0 and after, though, Guardians/Juggernauts have the highest skill ceiling to be played optimally.

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I'm not sure why you think Shadows were designed to be the skill tanks. I assume a developer mentioned this at some point. Even if that were true in theory, they were certainly not in practice pre-2.0 as they were extremely easy to play effectively while Guardians took by far the most skill to be effective. After 2.0, Shadows take the most skill of any tank to play effectively, which is how it should be if they are the skill tanks as you say. Whether pre-2.0 and after, though, Guardians/Juggernauts have the highest skill ceiling to be played optimally.

 

Even pre-2.0 Guardians could be played extremely badly, and it would only make minimal difference to their survivability. You just sucked at holding aggro if you played them badly.

Yes, especially pre-2.0, Guardians/Juggernauts were the most difficult to hold aggro with, while shadows/assassins were the easiest, but this does not make guardians/juggernauts skill tanks.

 

The definition of a skill tank is not the tank that takes the most skill to produce high DPS/threat.

 

The definition of a skill tank is the tank for which that how well they are played makes the biggest difference to their survivability.

 

As such shadows/assassins are, and always have been, the tank that fits best to the definition.

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So you completely disregard Phase Walk (up to 7% extra healing) along with the ability to teleport?

 

Phase Walk is functionally worthless in PvE: it can only be placed under your own feet (which, as a tank, means that the healers aren't going to get the benefit of it beyond the first cycle and, only then, if they're willing to not move), it has a cast time to reapply it (which means losing over 1 GCD since you're going to get punched in the face and lose time based off of that), and it has a 45 second downtime regardless of how it falls off so the best uptime you can ever hope for is 72%.

 

You're also doing the math wrong. Shadow's Shelter provides 2% healing received as a passive bonus which is multiplicative with the 5% increased healing done by standing near a Shadow tank's active Phase Walk patch (but you're actually getting less than that because the bonus healing received is additive with the 1% that everyone gets and the multiplicative is additive with any +healing buffs the target might get through stuff like UH or CSC).

 

Phase Walk is *not* a useful ability in PvE with its current implementation. In PvP, it's decent for node defense, but, in PvE, it's pretty much a waste in its entirety. If it gets changed so that the patch, at least, can be maintained permanently and is instant and off the GCD so it can be applied without impinging on the rest of the stuff a tank is doing, it'll be useful but still not all that impressive.

 

The ability to go into stealth, which allows you to CC, cheese certain mechanics, res people in the middle of combat, and use medpacs multiple times (great if you are Biochem) in a single fight? They have a pull over Juggernauts/Guardians, much better self-healing than any other tank, the best set bonuses, and constant damage + accuracy debuffs.

 

Stealth isn't a particularly useful utility in PvE, especially for a tank. The mechanics that you used to be able to cheese (implantation on Writhing Horror being the only one you could cheese with stealth that I recall) got fixed with 2.0 (the implantation forces you back into combat immediately and the adds will spawn regardless) and stealth rezing doesn't really work for someone who is supposed to keep aggro constantly.

 

As to the pull, self healing, set bonuses, and damage/acc debuffs, those are all already factored in to general utility. If you want to bring up the pull, Guardians have the Leap *and* the push *and* the taunt shield. In PvP, the best that Force Pull is good for is generating some threat at 30m since everything that matters is immune to physics; for that, tank spec Saber Reflect is *way* better since it's an AoE and generates more threat in practice. Self healing is factored into total mitigation and has been pretty much since release, and the acc debuff and damage debuff are standard effects (and they're also factored into the fundamental Shadow mitigation stuff so they're not "utility"): Guardians get the acc debuff and VGs and Watchman Sents get the damage debuff. Since they don't stack, it's just as likely that the debuffs will be redundant since those class/specs provide the same (plus, since VGs, Guardians, and Watchman Sents all get their debuffs through their optimal rotation whereas Force Breach is only useful for Shadows in AoE situations so, if you don't have to use Force Breach, you're better off).

 

Regardless, as stats get higher in future tiers of gear, Assassins/Shadows will get the most benefit from it as they get an absolutely massive amount of free stats from their skill tree and abilities. This will help smooth out their spikiness as well.

 

It's not going to be as big of an impact as you might think. First off, Shadows get the absolute least contribution out of improved armor rating amongst the tanks. Even if they get more contribution out of higher mitigation stats, it's not enough to offset the lower gains from armor rating.

 

As to smoothing out spikiness, it's not going to be like it used to be. Shadows aren't going to be sitting at passive mitigation values of 30/65/60. We're at ~20/55/45 right now and, at best, we can figure on 5% more in each of those 3 tiers from now. That's not even getting into the fact that our DR is *way* lower than it used to be and will continue to be low: we're pulling 35% at best right now and that'll only push up to ~38-39% when we were managing 42% before.

 

The fact that we're so mitigation focused rather than DR focused is a *weakness*. Because of the new DR curves and the massive difference between our DR and the other tanks, Shadows are going to *remain* painfully spiky and it's not going to improve appreciably unless something is explicitly done about it.

 

I'm not sure why you think Shadows were designed to be the skill tanks. I assume a developer mentioned this at some point.

 

It's been explicitly mentioned multiple times by multiple devs. It's not even a question at this point.

 

Even if that were true in theory, they were certainly not in practice pre-2.0 as they were extremely easy to play effectively while Guardians took by far the most skill to be effective. After 2.0, Shadows take the most skill of any tank to play effectively, which is how it should be if they are the skill tanks as you say. Whether pre-2.0 and after, though, Guardians/Juggernauts have the highest skill ceiling to be played optimally.

 

You're confusing something about the term "skill tank". It doesn't refer to the amount of skill required to generate threat or manage your resources, which was the *only* difficult thing about Guardians pre-1.7. It refers to the level of impact a player's skill has on the tank's survivability.

 

Once you learned the rotation for a Guardian, you were pretty much done since almost nothing you did as part of your rotation actually had much impact on your survivability (Blade Storm was about it and you should've been spamming that on CD anyways b/c of the damage/threat). The skill was based entirely upon just learning to play the class and, with 2.0, that was almost completely removed since resource management was made way easier and CD cycling was made into a joke since the cooldown on your attacks was standardized to 12 seconds for everything.

 

Shadows, on the other hand, require you maintain and watch buffs and debuffs and use your attacks and cooldowns in a timely and specific manner. Guardian CDs are universally applicable. Only one of the Shadow CDs is (and that's brand spanking new). Shadows have to watch and maintain KW while maximizing the value of Kinetic Bulwark. Guardians have Riposte and that's just "use it whenever it comes up for extra damage and threat!". Shadows have to vary their attack string based upon multiple procs (PA as well as Shadow Wrap) while also watching for 3 stacks of HS and knowing the fights well enough to knock be forced to move or get knocked back while using the 3 second channel that provides a majority of their self healing.

 

Guardians *never* had the highest optimal skill ceiling. They had the highest *entry level* skill requirement, but that's not the same thing. Once you've learned how to play a Guardian (which, guess what, is now on par with playing a VG tank with a couple extra CDs), there wasn't much room for improvement. Shadows *always* had a major difference between a good Shadow and a great Shadow. The same could never be said about a Guardian.

 

Right now, it takes a incredible amount of skill for a Shadow to perform at the top tier and, if you do it right *and* get lucky in the process, you'll just *barely* edge out a Guardian tank, which can, now, be played in an almost faceroll manner (keep your 4 12 sec CDs on CD, use Strike and Slash when you get bored) without any of the threat problems that plagued it in the past (in fact, AoE threat is as simple as pressing a single button).

 

Shadows *are* the skill tank: skill is single largest variable in a Shadow tank's performance, second only to the RNG (which is just wrong). Guardians are not, nor have they *ever* been, skill tanks. Pre-1.7, they were a compromise between the simplicity of the VG and the complexity of the Shadow; now they're just as faceroll as VGs with a bigger, more effective toolbox.

 

There is good reason why skill tanks should be the best tanks: it's a design based around rewarding a higher level of skill and punishing lower levels of skill. Right now, because of the massive impact of RNG and the massive buffs to Guardians, it's not really true. Guardians get to break even with Shadows with a *modicum* of the skill required, and the case could *easily* be made that they are better because, unlike Shadows, RNG isn't a major deciding factor in whether you live or die.

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I don't think that the spikiness on assassins is a game breaking concern.

Yes, we can take enormous amounts of damage if we do not mitigate it, and I would like Thrasher to have his attacks split into multiple components, or just the Swipe. But that's part of the challenge and it can be overcome by cooldowns on both the tank and healer side.

 

You mention Terminate in particular, but I cannot see how assassins have problems there, with or without the best gear. You have 4 cooldowns to use: Rakata Medpack (15% health), Rakata Absorb Adrenal (10% DR), Force Shroud (100% DR) but it can bug and not resist and Overcharge Saber (25% DR), between those 4, possible armor increase from Mercenary Healers, possible Bubble from Sorcerers and the natural tank switch for every 2nd flashbang cc on tank, you should not die, even with 30k health.

 

Flashpoints, well, pushing an extra button isn't game breaking and I'd rather have this than how lvl 50 FP's were with Dreadguard gear.

 

The only problems which can occur in the future is if "harder" content will be based on increasing the damage which tanks take on single hits rather than increasing raid damage or the difficulty on current or new mechanics. But we'll see on the nightmare versions.

 

We're not in an optimal situation but it's also not impossible to run two assassin tanks, every second you spend not tanking the major damage dealer makes your cooldowns worth more, this does lead to a lot of tank switching which the other two classes can ignore. Phase Walk should be used before a major damage phase, examples are Titan VI soft enrage, Thrasher at any health % and the resurrected Kell Dragon on Styrak, it does not have a very big uptime and its use must be planned before since you need two things: 1) Being in a position to move where your raid will stand for the burn phase and 2) the burn phase must start within 120 seconds after you put it down, if it ends within those 120 seconds it's even better but it's not required.

Edited by Panzerfire
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What about tying a battle readiness' CD reduction into the parried, shielded, deflected bit in the same way that force resilience can have its CD reduced. Or just a one minute CD would be nice.

 

I like this idea too. it gives you more flexibility in using those CD's that shadows apparently need to deal with the Alpha situations.

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Quoting your entire post is going to make this unreasonably long so I'm just going to reply to your points and explain why you and the guy who posted before you have a fundamental misunderstanding on what optimal play is for a tank.

 

Saying Phase Walk is functionally worthless is incorrect and if you choose not to maximize the use of it, that's on you as a player. If you want to play optimally (I'll get to this later), you should be using it as much as possible on most fights as there are plenty of opportunities to do so especially since tank swaps are a very common mechanic in the new operations.

 

There were many instances of being able to cheese mechanics like on Xeno (where Shadows could completely ignore a tank swap), on Firebrand (cancelling Incinerate), and so on. While they have fixed most of them, there will undoubtedly more found in the future. Also, you can definitely still stealth res as a tank. While not possible on every fight, you can do so on most of them (I know because I've done it many times) that only require one boss to be tanked at a time. It's not exactly hard to call for a tank swap so you can res someone on your team since all the new ops want 2 tanks. So unless you found some amazing way to solo tank all the content and/or you have no faith in your co-tank to do his/her job, it's a great option that only Shadows get.

 

All those skills have their equivalents for Shadows and pulling is generally much better as a tool for managing adds in boss fights than a push will ever be. Saber Reflect is pretty ridiculous as a threat generating skill so I can't argue with that, but it does have a 45 second cooldown.

 

Now, we're onto optimal playing as a tank. I don't know where you guys get this idea that as a tank, the only element of skill you care about is your survivability. It's an overly simplistic assertion that ignores a lot of important factors. Based on your sole highly flawed goal as a tank, a Juggernaut using his AoE taunt to shield his team means absolutely nothing, using Intercede to shield a teammate, and so on don't count as skill and is a waste of time. I can see where you get this idea, due to your definition of skill tank, but it's completely wrong.

 

The point of a tank is to help protect his/her team from damage and support their team's abilities. Survivability is very important because you have to stay alive in order to protect your team from attacks, but being able to hold aggro, do damage, and help your team in other ways like holding the boss and adds together to maximize your team's DPS are all elements of skill.

 

The last argument I'll go over is this bizarre idea that Guardian tanking is so easy that the difference between an average and an optimal one is minimal. Anybody who thinks this is either nowhere close to being a good Guardian tank (if they even have one) and/or has little understanding on Guardian play. Guardians have far more skills *and* depth in using those abilities both offensively and defensively to play optimally compared to Shadows.

 

Offensively, Shadows optimally only use 6 skills (7 if you count Force Pull, 8 if off-tanking) in their rotation on 95% of boss fights. They are restricted to a fixed rotation that is both optimized for damage and survivability for the vast majority of every fight. Watching for one proc and one debuff is a joke. Juggernauts use 14 skills (15 if you count Saber Reflect) and their skills vary greatly in timing due to Revenge stacks and if you want more damage/threat up-front or survivability.

 

Defensively, Shadows optimally use 4 cool downs for themselves (including the Ward) and 1 skill that benefits their team (Phase Walk). Juggernauts use 5 for themselves and 2 for their team (Intercede and AoE taunt). Any decent Shadow knows how to use their defensive cooldowns and this makes up the majority of the difficulty of playing one. How many Guardians know how to maximize their defensive cooldowns (especially Enraged Defense) and protect their team with Intercede and AoE taunt? Very few and that is one of the big differences between a decent Guardian and an optimally played one.

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I'll try not to get into an argument about which is the most complex class, and I don't own a jugg nor do I have a reliable comparison since nobody plays a "perfect" jugg, or any tanking class for that matter and all we can do is approximate the perfect tanking setups. Assassins have to watch for 2 procs: shock and maul, the accuracy debuf and the time left on dark ward. The accuracy debuff is almost impossible to follow on 16 man so it's usually better to time it and just expect it to hit instead of looking at the boss for it.

 

The main argument in this thread is that assassins have to work harder and be more aware of all the fight mechanics in order to reach the survivability of juggs and PT's, and that it doesn't seem like we can go much higher than them. In addition, our spikiness negates any positive effects of reduced damage taken because healers have to be ready to heal a string of unmitigated attacks which threatens to kill us, where the same string of attacks would not threaten juggs and PT's. I disagree that it's this bad, although less spikiness would be nice.

 

As for suggestions, what about some form of kolto overload coupled with an armor increase if we take more than 50-70% of our health in 1 hit? With an internal cooldown of course.

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I don't think that the spikiness on assassins is a game breaking concern.

 

Here's where we're going to disagree. It's not a concern that prevents me from doing content, so it might not be game breaking in *that* sense. However, it's a drastic disadvantage that isn't really present in any of the other tanks, and the disadvantage doesn't even offer a commensurate gain elsewhere.

 

It's not a question of Shadows being *incapable* of doing content. It's a question of it being such a major disadvantage when *doing* such content, such that, even when you factor in the advantages that Shadows *do* get (short CDs, Resilience, self healing, better average survivability), Shadows are *still* at a disadvantage from a functional standpoint.

 

Having to use tank CDs as a fundamental aspect of play when the other tanks only have to use them for emergencies isn't balanced.

 

Supposedly having the best average survivability but requiring the *most* healing, a lot of which is wasted as overhealing, to deal with the massive spikes in incoming damage while the other tanks just sit there and take everything constantly isn't balanced.

 

You bring up how Shadows can get around Terminate by using CDs and consumables (not *everyone* is a Biochem and has the reusables, so isn't something that the content or the class is developed around), which is funny because *the other tanks don't have to*.

 

I have *never* said that Shadow tanks cannot do content. I have *always* said that Shadow tanks are at a major disadvantage compared to the other tanks specifically *because* of the spikiness issue. It doesn't matter how many workarounds using our CDs, consumables, tank swaps, or whatever else because it's still stuff *we* have to do as a matter of survival that the other tanks *don't*, and we're not even compensated for it in any other appreciable way. Before Saber Reflect was added, you could make the claim that Resilience was our compensation, but now Guardians have something that's either commensurate or better (depending on how much you value the reflect/threat generation/affecting ranged attacks) so that's no longer true. Hell, our short CDs mean less than they used to now that the Guardian CDs are at 150 secs rather than 180.

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Offensively, Shadows optimally only use 6 skills (7 if you count Force Pull, 8 if off-tanking) in their rotation on 95% of boss fights. They are restricted to a fixed rotation that is both optimized for damage and survivability for the vast majority of every fight. Watching for one proc and one debuff is a joke. Juggernauts use 14 skills (15 if you count Saber Reflect) and their skills vary greatly in timing due to Revenge stacks and if you want more damage/threat up-front or survivability.

 

Complexity isn't just a question of the number of abilities. It's the interaction *between* those attacks that's important. Guardians have everything on a standard CD. There isn't any appreciable variation in their attack string (I kinda laugh when you bring up Revenge stacks because those are an almost *laughably* minor consideration; you don't even have to pay attention to them to get the value out of them: just leave some time between Force Sweep and Blade Storm and, boom, taken care of without paying any attention *at all*; if you absolutely micromanage, at best, you'll get to replace a Strike with a Slash once every 20 seconds which isn't really a big deal). More buttons to push isn't complexity. It's just a more full ability bar. Hell, half of the attacks you're talking about are only used once per minute or only at the start of a fight. Your actual *rotation*, which is what you're talking about with the Shadow 6-8, is comprised of 7-8 attacks (Force Sweep, Blade Storm, Guardian Slash, Riposte, Sunder, Strike, Slash; Master Strike is on a long CD so it's kinda questionable) that you don't even really have to watch because they're all on a standard CD. The only "variable" one is Riposte and that's just "spam the living hell out of it". I've *got* a Guardian and routinely *deal* with Guardians. The Guardian rotation is a joke (and, yes, it's a rotation, not a priority string).

 

Now, I'm not saying that the Shadow priority is necessarily *hard*, but it's definitely more difficult than what Guardians have to "deal" with. Before, Guardians required some level of skill and practice to learn to attack with em, but, now... If you think it's even *remotely* hard or complex, you're doing it wrong.

 

Defensively, Shadows optimally use 4 cool downs for themselves (including the Ward) and 1 skill that benefits their team (Phase Walk). Juggernauts use 5 for themselves and 2 for their team (Intercede and AoE taunt). Any decent Shadow knows how to use their defensive cooldowns and this makes up the majority of the difficulty of playing one. How many Guardians know how to maximize their defensive cooldowns (especially Enraged Defense) and protect their team with Intercede and AoE taunt? Very few and that is one of the big differences between a decent Guardian and an optimally played one.

 

You're once again conflating the number of CDs with the complexity of those CDs. Shadow CDs require you actually *know* what the attacks are. With the exception of Battle Readiness (which is omg amazing), the Shadow CDs explicitly require you know what you're doing. Bringing up the fact that most Shadows already *know* how to use them because they've had gobloads of practice (especially us major Shadow advice givers) has nothing to do with it. It's "easy" because we've had practice, not because it's easy. Guardians have 5 CDs, only one of which requires any skill to use "properly" and that's not even a major contributor (Focused Defense is a minute amount of healing and chews through your resources while dropping your threat; talking about it like it should be used more than once in a blue moon is like referring to Phase Walk as an amazing tool of awesome usefulness), all of which are absolutely gobsmackingly easy to use because all but one is useful in all situations (Saber Ward applies to both Force and Tech, Warding Call reduces *all* damage multiplicatively by 40%, Endure Pain gives you 30% extra hp so, even if you're at full health, it's still useful). Saber Reflect is the only one that requires any knowledge of mechanics to use and that's just learning whether it's an AoE or melee attack (which tend to be pretty obvious; the wonky ones are attacks like Terminate that you have to figure out whether are ranged or F/T, which, guess what, Saber Reflect applies to either way), plus it's on a standard CD rather than a variable one like Resilience (at which point you also have to weigh the benefits of ignoring the attack or cleansing the debuffs).

 

As to the party assists, Guardian Leap is probably the *only* funky one, and that's more a question of "who do I leap to" rather than "how do I use this". Most Guardians have a problem using it less because it's hard to use and more because they don't have the modicum of practice from using it while solo to gain proficiency in it. The AoE taunt shield is almost painfully in how it's used (big damage to everyone coming? AoE taunt and tell the other tank to retaunt his target). Phase Walk, on the other hand, is both not really all that useful (5% additional healing output? that's... awesome... ish; it's slightly more than Commando and Scoundrel healers give themselves passively! Except that it's got a short duration, non-permanent uptime, and requires the tank to stop actually doing their job for an extended period of time to get anything out of it...) and requires loads more effort to actually get anything out of while also outright *doing* less. Man, we *really* got an awesome ability, totally more useful than Saber Reflect.

 

Guardians are *not* complex. They have more *buttons*, but that's not complexity. Complexity is having options that aren't just an automatic choice. Complexity is actually having to make a decision on the fly rather than just clicking one of a category of equally effective options. Complexity is an ability that you can't just use by clicking a single button to help out your group but, instead, requires you sacrifice time tanking to place or replace it (more than just the 1 GCD is you want to place it *effectively*) *and* forces you to choose between destroying it to fulfill the ability's normal purpose or having it behave purely as a party buff.

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