Hey all. To start with, I'd prefer responses from people with legitimate endgame PvE tanking experience. My question goes to the importance of endurance. I've read several tanking guides and endurance is looked upon as a primary stat and not weighed against the "secondary" stats in terms of value and import. However, with the new augment kits its going to become widespread that you'll have to choose between endurance or a secondary tanking stat. So here's my question:

 

How important is endurance? My Vanguard is going to be hitting level cap in the next few days and I have choices between Rakata/Columi pieces with high endurance pools but horrible defensive stats or 47-49 purples with lower endurance pools but superb defensive stats. Then there's how to choose your augments. So since endurance doesn't actually increase your survivability, only the length of time you have before you die without a healer, how much health do you need to survive PvE content.

 

This also goes to the value of "Soldier's Endurance" from the Assault tree (giving only 69 END for 3 talent points at 2300 endurance) which in my experience in other MMOs should have an extremely low value of stats and would be better spent on utility like Defensive Measures and Neural Overload. I'm interested in everyone's thoughts and comments.

Here is my experience before I even get into anything:

 

I am currently one of the tanks for Methodical, we have cleared all of the content this game has to offer.

Here is my current gear: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/b37979e0-8387-4ee0-b281-35d549e02fd8

 

The honest answer is it depends on what you are currently working on. Some bosses do very painful unmitigatable damage (Stormcaller and Kephess's bleed) so higher hps are wanted to tank them, but most bosses you can mitigate a good chunk of their damage. I personally focus on endurance first then i try and balance out my shield/absorb. I avoid defense like the plague simply because it is better suited for other tanks and I enjoy having a high ammo regen (hate working taunt into my rotation and our guilds DPS is silly good).

 

Our guild runs a shadow tank, guardian tank, and vanguard tank. We all are free to focus on different niches and all of us have found it is better to stack endurance. Our healers love us for it as well because they know the tanks won't be going down quite as fast as if we were running higher RNG mitigation and less hps.

Edited July 6, 2012 by Rivalxl

all of us have found it is better to stack endurance

^ ditto

Both Shadow and Guardian tanks in our raid are currently at about 27k with all applicable raid buffs.

Thanks for the link. Really let's me see where the stat allocations are going. So if the mitigation stats are taking a backseat to endurance healers must be able to efficiently and quickly cap your health irrespective of boss damage output. That answers a friend of mine's question as well. Edited July 6, 2012 by Russlem

here is my tanking experience: done all end game content on all difficulties (sadly i havent tanked all of lowlevel )

 

Cleared denova with full rakata and no campaign or blackhole items thus obsessing on gear isnt important. But most ppl love min maxing stats, thus in my experience and oppinion in every choice you can pick endurance over anything else (money, candy, shield rating) you should always pick endurance, ALWAYS, EVER!

 

Why endurance:

You are easier to heal.

You have a bigger error margin in terms of managing cooldowns.

You cant mitigate via defences a lot of the damage, soa attacks for example.

Secondary stats suck.

Taking less damage wont keep you alive, staying alive to receive a heal will.

So it's effective health theory vs avoidance gearing all over again? Interesting.

I don't have hard data to contribute here but I will say generally speaking, tanking in many games over the years, that I have been most successful as a tank (read: longer survivability) gearing up for avoidance/mitigation first and higher health second.

 

I like to think of my stats as avoidance (Defense) > mitigation (Armor, Shield & Absorption) > health pool. despite this preference I think you have to find the right balance as too high avoidance makes you spikey to heal, and low health makes everyone nervous. Healers like high health and consistent damage.

 

There is nothing better in my tanking world than to be down to 25% health and feel perfectly safe in a fight against multiple mobs. This to me is real tanking and in most games you can build this way as a choice. I love it.

 

But in SWTOR we have a poorly-designed combat system that tosses this typical formula out the window, as mitigation has zero effectiveness against certain attack types, and therefore we all must default to the 'Big 'Ol Bag O' Health model, which is just stupid-tanking in my opinion. Good tanking means being tough, not fat, and this game just does not support that.

 

Anyway my 2 cents.

Seems like Assassins and PTs get more from their shields then juggernauts, but for us it's basically Defense first until you're around 30% buffed, then Shield/Absorb in roughly equal measures until you approach 50/50 for each. Endurance comes next, and you should avoid secondary stats like accuracy entirely. Much more involved/math-skilled people then me have figured this out, and I'm relying upon their work (which isn't hard to find). Using this method, I'm going to cap out, with buffs, at somewhere between 25.5 and 26.5k in health.

 

This metric is thrown out the window for a few bosses who do non-defensible/shieldable/mitigatible [sic] damage ON A REGULAR BASIS. However, that is a very, very small percentage of the game's content. BUT, that small percentage happens to be really important for end game raiding! Soa, Kephess, and Stormcaller. There's no good solution except to have two sets of gear, which is impractical given the acquisition costs/time involved. And even for those bosses, you're going to get damage that IS defensible mixed in with unavoidable internal/elemental BOHICAs.

 

I've tried to strike a balance by giving up mitigation in favor of END for all the enhancements I'm using along with several of my ancillary pieces like module, implant, shield, etc. (although now that you can augment these items, the mitigation loss is less noticeable).

Edited July 6, 2012 by Powerrmongerr

I tend to dump endurance for mitigation every chance I can, and it's working fine. There aren't any situations where you will be getting burst down from full health before the healer gets a chance to restore some of it (barring enrages or serious mistakes).

 

I agree that relying on dodge% is scary (which is why I like my Vanguard tank over the other two kinds) but you can gain a lot of effective HP out of a small investment in it....don't disregard it entirely.

Literally just did this post in another thread, but oh well here goes again. I've tanked all content in the game so far successfully. All noted content is the 8 man (thus harder) version, as well as 16 man nightmare pilgrim. Yata yata yata, blah blah blah.

 

I prefer avoidance > HP. It is more friendly on healers entirely.

 

That's not saying that stacking HP is not workable, in point of fact, look at this thread for examples there of. I've never run into a situation yet where my HP was the cause of any wipe, and or heart attack.

just me personally i balanced out the two have 55% base shield, 62% base absorb with about 24.4k hp still working to get rid of a my defense chance so after i work some mods around might increase my hp up a bit but i found this setup to work really well

just me personally i balanced out the two have 55% base shield, 62% base absorb with about 24.4k hp still working to get rid of a my defense chance so after i work some mods around might increase my hp up a bit but i found this setup to work really well

 

Tbh, its not balancing imo. Not saying you're doing anything wrong, but 24.4k is low for a tank and I'd call it stacking mitigation.

 

For the other end of the spectrum, just tanked HM kephess with my alt yesterday without any issues at all as vanguard: 30k hp, 52.6% shield, 57.4% absorb (+8 with power screen) and whole 10% defence. I'll pbly try at some point what happens if I switch end augs to def ones.

Tbh, its not balancing imo. Not saying you're doing anything wrong, but 24.4k is low for a tank and I'd call it stacking mitigation.

 

For the other end of the spectrum, just tanked HM kephess with my alt yesterday without any issues at all as vanguard: 30k hp, 52.6% shield, 57.4% absorb (+8 with power screen) and whole 10% defence. I'll pbly try at some point what happens if I switch end augs to def ones.

 

I'd like to see that gear and spec

Here's the thing about endurance. It does not help you take damage at all in PvE. Its only real purpose is to give you room to soak up spike damage, and to give your healers a little room for error.

 

I'll elaborate. Endurance increases your max health. In PvP or solo PvE (questing etc.), this is an important defensive boost because it greatly increases your survival time. You're taking very little damage per second, so 1k more health is several seconds longer that you live.

 

However, in group PvE, you're taking massive amounts of damage every second. On your own, you're only going to survive for a few seconds on any boss. Your survival depends on the ratio of damage taken to healing received. If you are taking more damage than you're getting healed for, you're going to die (and in most cases, die quickly). If you're getting healed for more damage than you're taking, you can survive indefinitely.

 

Getting stats like Shield, Absorb, and Defense lowers your damage taken. This means that you can now survive things that would kill you before. Getting more Endurance means that if you're not getting healed for enough, you'll survive for a few seconds longer before you die.

 

I'll give an example. Let's say that you put an augment slot in every piece of your gear, and filled each slot with an Advanced Fortitude Augment 22. That would give you a total of 252 endurance, or 2.5k health. Foreman Crusher (KP 3rd boss) hits me for almost exactly 2.5k (unshielded, no CDs) when he's in a frenzy. So by stacking all endurance augments, you absorb one free hit. After that, the extra endurance does nothing for the rest of the fight. On the other hand, if you get Defense rate in 14 augments, you'll easily dodge multiple attacks that you wouldn't have dodged otherwise. They'll contribute far more to you surviving a fight than a larger health pool.

 

If you have Endurance past 20k (which is really easy to get) I wouldn't worry about it at all. That's enough of a health pool to allow for some error. If you were running around with 5k health, the healers would have to be 100% perfect. If they get stunned or lose LoS or run out of resource for half a second, you'd die. However, with 20k health, you can survive for long enough on your own for the healers to get back into the fight and keep you up. I don't think you'll ever run into a situation where 2.5k health helped you more than 5-10% shield, absorb, or defense.

Edited July 9, 2012 by Philosomanic

Tbh, its not balancing imo. Not saying you're doing anything wrong, but 24.4k is low for a tank and I'd call it stacking mitigation.

 

For the other end of the spectrum, just tanked HM kephess with my alt yesterday without any issues at all as vanguard: 30k hp, 52.6% shield, 57.4% absorb (+8 with power screen) and whole 10% defence. I'll pbly try at some point what happens if I switch end augs to def ones.

 

Back to the first end of the spectrum, I tanked HM Kephess just fine last night. 24,118 HP (includes exo stim), 14.52% dodge (plus stim brings it to about 15.5%), 59.44% shield, 61.14% absorb (69.14% w/ power screen).

Edited July 9, 2012 by CitizenFry

So far i prefer mitigation > endurance. But that may change later on down the road. Only time will tell.

 

Currently i only have 3 BH pieces but i have been lucky in getting a few 61 mod drops tossed my way. As it stands i sit at 53% dmg reduction, 58% shield, 58% absorb (66% with power screen) and off the top of my head 23.7k hps. As a VG i have found defense to be rather useless so i don't pay much attention to that ( 11% ) and any mod with accuracy on it gets tossed out real fast.

 

Tanking HM EC isn't a problem with this setup and even though i run with a 25.5k shadow tank when the fight comes down to the wire the healers want me holding onto the boss in those last few seconds every time.

 

Once i am able to complete my ideal setup i believe my hps should be within the 24k to 25k range. As another poster said having an extra 2k hps would be nice but in a prolonged boss fight that equals to soaking up 1 extra hit as opposed to mitigating a lot more total dps over the course of the encounter.

 

I suppose the only exception would be if i was like that one guy who has 30k hps. That is such a high amount that it would take some number crunching for sure to figure out which way would be the preferred choice. However if your looking at your total hps being around the mid 20k mark i think mitigation is the better way to go.

The fact is the more endurance you have the more you drain your healers. Forget mitigation for a minute, if I have 23k buffed health and you have 31kbuffed health for you to be at your top game a healer needs to hit you for 8k more than they need to hit me.

 

This means for an endurance focused tank, healers will always spend more resources than on a mitigation based tank. Even on encounters with tons of unavoidable damage, there is still damage that can be avoided. An endurance based tank may be able to survive more full sized hits at once, but a mitigation tank isn't taking the additional damage.

The fact is the more endurance you have the more you drain your healers. Forget mitigation for a minute, if I have 23k buffed health and you have 31kbuffed health for you to be at your top game a healer needs to hit you for 8k more than they need to hit me.

 

This means for an endurance focused tank, healers will always spend more resources than on a mitigation based tank. Even on encounters with tons of unavoidable damage, there is still damage that can be avoided. An endurance based tank may be able to survive more full sized hits at once, but a mitigation tank isn't taking the additional damage.

 

I came in here to point this out. Not only does this mean that healers need to heal you for more, but it means that they'll be spending more global cooldowns on you thus they have fewer to spend on the rest of the team. Essentially it makes you a sponge, whereas mitigation stacking means you can take the same hits and receive less damage. You want your effective health to be high, which means mitigation over health pool. The only time health stacking is really useful is in bleeding edge content where your team is undergeared due to it being fresh and having not yet gotten the new gear available.

 

Our guild downed Hard Kephess in mid-May (basically the last time I played the game excluding transferring my characters) and I tanked with ~22.5-23k hp as memory serves. Our shadow tank only had ~24k at the time too. We were both mitigation stacking (heavy absorb). We did it with double smugg heals, for what it's worth.

Limited PvE experience...KP HM and Denova SM.

 

Health pools are never a bad thing. All my augments are endurance, never had a problem.

 

Here's a haiku i wrote about PvE gearing.

 

 

Since we love our gear

Us vanguards, we tend to fear.

Fret not, endurance.

 

 

 

that is all.

here is my tanking experience: done all end game content on all difficulties (sadly i havent tanked all of lowlevel )

 

Cleared denova with full rakata and no campaign or blackhole items thus obsessing on gear isnt important. But most ppl love min maxing stats, thus in my experience and oppinion in every choice you can pick endurance over anything else (money, candy, shield rating) you should always pick endurance, ALWAYS, EVER!

 

Why endurance:

You are easier to heal.

You have a bigger error margin in terms of managing cooldowns.

You cant mitigate via defences a lot of the damage, soa attacks for example.

Secondary stats suck.

Taking less damage wont keep you alive, staying alive to receive a heal will.

 

Friend pointed me at this thread. I'd just like to point out, as a healer with similar experience as yours, but on the healing side, you are full of it. You can mitigate most of the attacks, sure not all of them, but most. You may have a huge stack of health, sure, but in all reality you are over working you healers. Our tank mitigates most of the damage coming at him and I don't have to even worry about him, at all, 50-75% of most fights. Leaving me to keep others up as well. You on the other hand are constantly taking hits, and lots of boss hits are nasty, very nasty.

 

In short Taking less damage through mitigation keeps you alive much more easily then having full stacked health. I don't care how much health you have, It's not enough to make your healers job easier then mitigating 80% of the damage coming at you. You'd at that point have to have enough health to take those hits as well, over and above a tank stacking mitigation with endurance as a backup, reaches over 20,000 health.

 

Lets run some math. in a five minute boss fight I can easily say that you will be taking about 5000 damage every couple seconds. Some hit harder some hit less hard, I'm doing a rough average for that. That comes out to roughly 750000 damage hitting your health pool over the fight. With good mitigation that number drops to 150000. The idea that 750000 damage coming onto you is easier to heal then 150000. That's simply laughable.

 

Also, if your team over all had full Rakata and Black Hole gear, you shouldn't have any problem with any PvE in game.

Re-looked this up for the OP

 

http://www.tankingtor.com/2012/07/swtor-optimal-tanking-gear-guide.html

I can't remember where I first read it but there seems even in this thread to be a trend that endurance gearing is favoured more often by tanks clearing EC HM 16-man. In 8-man defensive statting seems more popular.

 

It was thought that with the resource pools of four healers it was better to gear for spike survival rather than efficiency.

 

Edit: Found it. Justcae's post in the other thread.

Edited July 15, 2012 by _gideon

As a healer for a sort-of progression raiding guild, I prefer that my tanks stack mitigation over endurance.

 

If you can't mitigate, your incoming damage gets very spiky. You could go from full health to dead before I can heal you enough to counter the damage. This is especially true if it happens during an AOE phase of a fight whenI have to worry about the rest of the raid too.

 

Also, if you are weak at mitigation, you're essentially transferring your healers' healing resource, whatever it is, into your health. Your raid will then only be as successful as your healers' ability to manage their focus or energy or whatever they use.

 

I haven't examined my guild's good tanks in detail so I don't know exactly how they're stacking mitigation.You'd have to ask them that. But I do know that is far, far superior to stacking health for "challenging" PvE content.

I prefer avoidance > HP. It is more friendly on healers entirely.

 

Yeah. You need a good health pool to start with, but you're easier to heal when you take less damage.

 

Compare...

a) someone that has 25,000 health and takes 25 times 1,000 damage (out of 30 attacks)

b) someone that has 20,000 health and takes 20 times 1,000 damage (out of 30 attacks)

 

It will be easier to heal person b).

 

And I'm not even talking about...

c) someone that has 20,000 health and takes 20 times 900 damage (out of 30 attacks)

i gave up 1% dodge, 2% sheild, 3% absorb and gained 3000 HP. With the way dmg goes out in the current fights, it doesnt much matter. If the next teir of content's damadge goes up even slightly, the increased Endurance will help more then the miniscule benefits you get from those small percentages of mitigation. The avoidance i really hated giving up, however, as a vanguard tank, Dodgeing is less important.

 

I say, hit the platue of about 50 on sheild/absorb and then its a toss up as to how your healers react and personal taste.