Traducted from the "roles" french boards. The more tank players involved, the better, after all:

I readed again a realy interesting interview of Austin Peckenpaugh, combat designer, on the vision the developpers have of our role in warzones and noticed something that could change a lot of things for us if BW would take care of it:

Interviewer:

Many people seem confused as to what the vision was for Tanks in PvP. They rely completely on Guard and Taunts then spec to do as much damage as possible. Can you explain what function or role they were designed to fill in a GvG (Group V/S Group) setting? Is Guard and Taunt all that make a tank a tank?

 

Austin:

The vision for tanks is PVP is quite simple: protect allies and make yourself an unfortunate (possibly even annoying) target for the enemy. This is done with Guard and Taunt and increased control, but it’s not really possible without extra survivability. Guard is only a real threat when the one providing it is a nuisance to take down.

No real surprise, I'll say, but we all know that the guard, even if really useful, doesn't make us a target for players and that we are not so much a nuisance to take down.... anyway, at this point, the interview gave some more information about the guard and defensive abilities as they are intented to be:

Austin: When a player attacks an ally that you are guarding, that player’s attack is split. The damage dealt is halved, with one half going to you and the other half going to your guarded ally. These two attacks are treated separately and individually; each of you applies your own avoidance and mitigation to the incoming attack. This does include all available avenues of survivability, with shields being no exception.

Here is the main problem: many people suspected it, some probably verified it by themselves, and some people tested it extensively this week: This is not at all how it works currently!!!

The guard actually only applies damage reduction on our incoming half-attack, ignoring both defense and shields and making our survivability when using guard being inferior to what is normaly intented.

The worst case is the one of shaodw and assassins, but all the kind of tanks are currently penalized. Let's take as exemple a full war hero survival-geared shadow tank:

Damage Reduction 38.25%

Defense Chance 22.12%

Shield Chance 59.07%

Shield Absorption 52.88%

If things were working the way the combat designer decided, on each weapon attack targetting our protegee, we would recieve a corresponding attack with 50%, that our overall survivability mechanism would reduce to something like 16,535%.

Without defense nor shield, as currently, the shadow recieve instead 30,875%

To make it simple: shadows and assassins currently recieve almost twice more damage than intented when guarding someone against weapon attack!

(for the other tanks it is a bit less, but I'll be surprised if they receive less than 150% of the damage intented)

Seen like this, there is no surprise that the weapon user prefer to keep kitting our guarded healer than seek for us and try to take use down, since, as a matter of fact, they do as much damage on the tank by hitting the protegee than by hitting the said tank directly!

No surprise as well that lots of people don't understand the usefulness of the defensive pvp set, since we are not targetted, and that guard only count the armor rating as a survival mechanism...

Now, I can't help but imagine how our warzones could change if the guard was fixed to take account of all survivability mechanisms as intented...

I've had a few people tell me the same thing. I wrote back to Austin asking for some clarification - like if I was reading it wrong or if it was actually working as intended. I got an assurance that they would look in to the actual mechanics and make sure they were working properly - and if they had anything to tell me in the future about it they would.

I did see in a Q&A that someone mentioned possibly having tanks be able to shield force/tech attacks if necessary to increase their survivability to where it should be in PvP. I'll just wait and see what happens, it isn't as bad now as a lot of people seem to think it is.

Since you are in contact with Austin, I would like to know something:

Do you know if Austin is currently aware of the shadowsins players are worried about their self-healing abilities? And if they are currently looking at it as well?

In case you don't really know what is it about (would be surprising):

Actually Shadowsins are the worst tanks in 16 men hm operation for a simple reason: they are the only tanks that have a mechanics that counts into their overall survivavibility and that doesn't scale with the amount of damage recieved.

It means that more the incoming damage raise, the more a shadowsin tank need extra healing compared to other tanks to be kept alive.

Let's take a theorical exemple:

Two tanks are in an operation where the incoming damage is roughly 5.000 dps..

- The first one has an overall mitigation of 50% : he needs 2.500 hps of external healing to be kept alive

- The seconde one has an overall mitigation of 40% and 500hps of self healing: he need 2.500 hps of external healing as well to be kept alive

Now, the two tanks go in a 16-men hard mode operation with an incoming damage of 20.000 dps, together:

- the first one now needs 10.000 hps to be kept alive

- the second one now needs 11.500 hps to be kept alive

This is exactly (exact numbers set aside) what is happening to shadow/assassins tanks: even if they are balanced in 8-men story and even rougly balanced in 8-men hm, this balance just break when overall damage goes up in 16-men hm.

It is even more a worry for shadow/assassins tanks that they see that operations brings ennemies doing more and more damage with new patchs and they can foresee a day where they will be considered as "a really bad choice for a choice of tank in the brand new operation" because of it

Some players even are so worried about they would like it to be removed and some classic mitigation being added instead... honesly, I think it would be a loss, since it's part of our specific gameplay and originality as tanks... but it needs to be reshaped someway before we really really get screwed with it compared to other abilities that scales with damage no matter what.

Since you are in contact with Austin, I would like to know something:

 

Do you know if Austin is currently aware of the shadowsins players are worried about their self-healing abilities? And if they are currently looking at it as well?

I didn't mean to give the impression that he and I were buddies. The response I got wasn't from him, it was from one of the liasons. I don't have a direct line to send questions up to upper management. The only reason I got passed back and forth a bit with my question was because it related to an interview I'd already done.

TBH - I'm sure they know what your concerns are and have looked at them. If they see that Assassins aren't able to tank end game content I'm sure a change will be incoming. Currently I know many that are tanking end game content just fine, so it really isn't a "real world" problem currently.

Since you are in contact with Austin, I would like to know something:

 

Do you know if Austin is currently aware of the shadowsins players are worried about their self-healing abilities?

Apparently, due to the all nerfs, it would be fair to make some changes to the 3 stacks TTK healing mechanics..

It may remain channeled for the damage output, but selfhealing MUST be done instantly..

Alright, I just tested it myself and confirmed that you cannot shield or dodge/parry any damage received through guard. It did seem that my armor and/or expertise was taken into account, however, as I was taking far less damage than the person I was guarding.

I'd really like to get a response from Bioware on this, even if it's just to say that Austin was mistaken, but lord knows that won't happen.

5 months since I posted this and I didn't see any reactions from the devs.

We're currently to a point were most of players in PvP servers says that defensives stats in PvP are sub-optimal and that every tank should use a dps stuff.

Some love on defensive stats would help, and I do not think that fix this problem would unbalance the game. Healers get focused by armor-penetrating dps that can crush them in 4 GCD and the guard skill actually don't change that enough for high level teams to care to take one tank in your main attack force to guard them.

Why did you nerco this old thread?

Please go and read my post below stated PvP Guard Damage Mitagation. It was made 1 month or so ago, and several players conducted independant tests.

Guard damage applied to the tank is then mitagated by ALL TANK STATS and armor, including defense, shield and absorb.

Also, there are quite a few teams running around in RWZ with a fully defensive geared tank for warzones, and just about every good tank i know switches to 'Tank' gear for defense in voidstar and ball running in hutball.

I've not have been reading every post on every forum!

I'm raising the topic again because it has been talked about in about subforum.

I'll read your tests.

It feels weird however you suddently have different results than ones that many players found a few months ago when there is not line of update in patch notes since than that relates to this point.

Well, reading through this thread, i doubt anyone who said they tested it in here did it properly.

The thread was raised after a full thread about tests revolving around the guard wrote on the Jedi Shadow forum.

The thread was something 20 pages long, but is now more than 5 months old, so it is going to be hard to find back.