As a long time MMO - tank I am usually firmly in the camp of "mitigation trumps all" and not a fan of "damage sponges" for all games I play. We all know the disadvantages a low mitigation tank brings with it, so this is not about gearing into maximum hitpoints.

But as there are certain bosses that do produce big damage spikes and have a high ratio of undefendable and unshieldable attacks, I think for this raid tier with current gear levels to have a certain HP cushion has its merits.

I did see the discussion about it pop up here and there and would like to gather opinions of experienced tanks here in this thread to get a feeling what a good compromise in gearing between having enough HP for damage spikes and still having enough mitigation to not be a drag to the healers would be.

Please share your opinions / experiences

PS: My raid group will just start to tackle content in February, so I have nothing to share yet. I will try to be prepared as good as possible, though.

Lond time ago a guy im my very old imp guild told me if he meets tank with endurance augments he quits that fp or ops. I always get augments with tank stats and atm my hp is around 50k in 192 bis gear. My tank is guardian so no real endurance passive skills in my tree. It was higher in vendor gear around 52k or so, but vendor gear has endurance heavy gear. Anyway, healers in my guild always say that tank with lets say 60k hp now, is hard to heal because they have minimum of proper tank stats and therefor are very squishy and hard to heal. I'd say that tank with ops gear and with hp over 50k is good enough hp.

SM, this is true.

In HM, people are recommending 55k HP. Don't be afraid to use B-mods to get there - A B-mod + A sturdiness/immunity enhancement gives more health and more defstats than an Unlettered Mod + Bulwark/Bastion enhancement, and thats what tanks had to run with pre 3.0 (unless they were in 156s or 162s - though 162s needed ranked gear)

I would agree that somewhere around 54k to 56k there is some kind of magical breakpoint at which I started to die far less to the spikier hm bosses like torque, blaster and revan. (have no info on coratanni as my raid focuses on revan instead)

My current adivce is to go full B Mods and 1-3 comm/random drop implants and earpieces as they have the best exchange rates for hp : defensive stats. Enhancements have the worst of all, so even exchange augments before them, if you want even more HP.

on torque though you could argue that it's mostly avoidable dmg that kills you, but honestly I don't think it's possible to always avoid getting more than 1 hit from the fire. And even if you only get hit by it twice once it can already kill you if he hit's you with his big ~22k hit as you rarely ever are at 100% in this fight with all the stuff that's going on.

On Blaster 50k -52k health requires your healers to be always on top of their game (especially in phase 2) as the grenade + knockback + beiing out of healrange for a short peroid of time (even if they run after you) is dangerous enough that a single mistake will kill you outside of a major cooldown (which have to be balanced between theese spikes, masters stacking laser and them beeing available again for the final burnphase).

On revan mean mitigation means very little to begin with as ~80% of post mitigation dmg is I/E and therefore unavoidable. Especially during the HK phase dmg is really high as well and you have to try and live untill the next recovery phase (droids spawning). On top of that ~56k health give you at least a chance to survive an accidental exploit vulnerability while still figuering out optimal positioning and movement while learning the fight or at 3rd floor while trying to look at the anommalies or if your cotank dies in an unexpected moment.

I would be extremely uncomfortable on HM revan and coratanni with less than ~54k. Although it's doable (our first revan clear had our tanks at ~52k hp) having more is more forgiving. As others have said, those bosses in particular favor larger hp pools. Assuming that's still a while away, though, I'd say 50-52k is plenty for at least 7/10 in HM. Almost certainly by the time you start working on blaster/coratanni/revan you'll have more than that. In general if you're in B mods and low endurance enhancements with comm ear/implants and you upgrade in that same style you'll have plenty of HP to survive when you're learning the fights (assuming mostly 186s for story mode or 192s for hard mode).

This isn't to say you can't kill bosses in unlettered mods and token ear/implants. Up to and including 8/10 in HMs your HP isn't a big concern, as long as you aren't more than a tier of gear below the recommended item level, and you will take slightly less damage using the low endurance versions of everything. The biggest difference B mods make is it means your healers can leave you alone for a bit longer and heal up people who make mistakes in these fights without needing to top you up just in case you don't mitigate the next 30k hit.

the amount of health and general stat levels recommended highly depend on the level of content you are doing.

Theese numbers assume that you also have a reasonable defensive stat pool as well (read: you didn't stack endurance above everything else)

If you are just leveling you don't need to really worry about any gear requirements, as you can do about any quest (except group quests) even in pretty horrible gear anyways.

Back in the day at lvl 50 I remember the suggested health levels to be around 24k - 28k for Asation hm and Denova nim (assasins were a bit higher back then I think).

For 55 hm fps above 30k was usually enough if you knew what you are doing, otherwise more might be needed.

For 55 sm ops 31-32k was enough in most cases for somewhat experienced players, other probably needed more.

For Asation and Darvannis hm you probably should have had at least around 35-36k health and ~38k for nim

For Fortress and Palace hm ~38k and at least 41k for Fortress nim and 43-44k for Palace nim.

the amount of health and general stat levels recommended highly depend on the level of content you are doing.

Theese numbers assume that you also have a reasonable defensive stat pool as well (read: you didn't stack endurance above everything else)

 

If you are just leveling you don't need to really worry about any gear requirements, as you can do about any quest (except group quests) even in pretty horrible gear anyways.

 

Back in the day at lvl 50 I remember the suggested health levels to be around 24k - 28k for Asation hm and Denova nim (assasins were a bit higher back then I think).

 

For 55 hm fps above 30k was usually enough if you knew what you are doing, otherwise more might be needed.

For 55 sm ops 31-32k was enough in most cases for somewhat experienced players, other probably needed more.

For Asation and Darvannis hm you probably should have had at least around 35-36k health and ~38k for nim

For Fortress and Palace hm ~38k and at least 41k for Fortress nim and 43-44k for Palace nim.

So I'm ~4-10k health low depending on what I'm doing?

EDIT: For reference here's a more complete picture of my stats. I went and picked up ~1200 HP in the form of updated armorings.

pic for reference.

This is an age old debate. There is no "correct" answer, albeit there are traditionally many misconceptions. There are different ways you can approach tanking damage profiles, these different flavors come with pros/cons. What is best for you, your raid group, and content, will depend.

RE: a tank with high endurance is hard to heal because they have minimum of proper tank stats and therefore are very squishy and hard to heal.

You may hear this argument a lot, but it lacks any real foundation.

First let's look at a full 198 Vanguard tank set that is maxed out on EK/FT mitigation:

End: 3746 Def: 167 Shi: 1928 Abs: 1890

You're at 52198 health, 11.27% defense, 50.25% shield, 55.22% absorb. That equates to roughly 65.63% static mean mitigation on EK/FT damage. Without heals, a boss that does 10k EK/FT DPS will kill you in 15.19 seconds.

Now let's look at a full 198 Vanguard tank set that is maxed out on EK/FT survivability:

End: 5142 Def: 167 Shi: 1151 Abs: 1317

You're at 67002 health, 11.27% defense, 41.58% shield, 48.73% absorb. That equates to roughly 62.07% static mean mitigation on EK/FT damage. Without heals, a boss that does 10k EK/FT DPS will kill you in 17.66 seconds.

So, the difference in these sets is between taking 3.56% more damage overall throughout a fight to have 28.36% more health for increased time to live. A tank using the second set isn't suddenly much harder to heal and very squishy, in fact that tank outlives the mitigation set. Yes, that tank will take a small bit of extra damage through the course of the fight, but what you get is extra breathing room to compensate for human error or issues that take the healer off the tank for a moment.

Both of these sets are fine. Saying one is extremely gimped and much harder to heal is far from the truth. What set works best for you and your play style? That's in the eyes of the beholder, so, whatever you want. Obviously, all the bosses in a raid zone aren't easily broken down into one simple profile. Start throwing IE/FT damage in the mix and suddenly that second tank set becomes even more attractive.

Remember: mitigation needs endurance to work. It's not really pick one or the other, it's how do you balance the two, and would you favor more mitigation with less time to live or the opposite. Either way, the differences aren't going to be huge as you see above.

PvP question:

What is the optimal tank stat distribution for shadow tank under the following assumptions:

Damage profile (playing vs. double hatred assa + pt tank):

25% melee/ranged,

30% force/tech kinetic/energy

45% Internal/elemental

Further assumption: Tank never gets tunneled but only takes indirect dmg via aoe, dots and guard.

In order to maximise time to kill, is it optimal to go full mitigation or stack endurance augments because of high internal/elemental ratio?

Any input welcome

PvP question:

What is the optimal tank stat distribution for shadow tank under the following assumptions:

If you're trying to maximize your time to live, you forgo gearing for highest mitigation since you're not interested in lowering the overall damage taken ratio. So, in your scenario, you'd generally gear for very high endurance itemization with a focus on shield and absorb when you need to decide on a mitigation stat, ignoring defense rating when possible. You're basically going to get the highest survivability for your damage profile this way. Hope this helps.

For pvp, crit (as far as I know, I could be wrong) bypasses shield/absorb/defense so the only way to survive is to have a larger health pool. Yes it is harder to heal if you are getting focused (and it does happen in regs and ranked) but when you aren't you are "sharing" your health with the guarded target and more health helps your healer focus on the target being tunneled. Also each tank has a survival tool that is a percentage of your health (sholder cannon, overcharge saber and endure pain) which is useful with more health. Every full tank I have played against that was geared with mitigation in mind was a lot less effective than the full endurance tanks. And on a personal note I like having 10k+ more health than my teammates.

For pve, my healers prefer me having slightly more health with all B mods and min/max enhancements than less health and unlettered mods. They say I'm easier to heal.

For pvp, crit (as far as I know, I could be wrong) bypasses shield/absorb/defense so the only way to survive is to have a larger health pool. Yes it is harder to heal if you are getting focused (and it does happen in regs and ranked) but when you aren't you are "sharing" your health with the guarded target and more health helps your healer focus on the target being tunneled. Also each tank has a survival tool that is a percentage of your health (sholder cannon, overcharge saber and endure pain) which is useful with more health. Every full tank I have played against that was geared with mitigation in mind was a lot less effective than the full endurance tanks. And on a personal note I like having 10k+ more health than my teammates.

For pve, my healers prefer me having slightly more health with all B mods and min/max enhancements than less health and unlettered mods. They say I'm easier to heal.

Crit does not bypass defense. The chance to hit or miss is calculated first.

SW:ToR uses a two-roll system to determine attacks. The first roll determines hit or miss (or dodge/parry/resist, which are effectively just different names for miss).

Crit only "bypasses" shield in that a critical hit cannot be shielded. However, this does not negate the usefulness of shield rating in PvP.

From Dulfy:

In the event that Critical Chance plus Shield Chance is greater than 100%, Critical Chance will override the Shield Chance. For example, if Critical Chance was 50% and Shield Chance was 60%, Shield Chance would effectively be reduced to 50%. Notice there is no opportunity for a normal hit in this scenario.

In other words, if you have high shield rating you will still be hit by large unshielded crits, but all of the non-crit attacks will be shielded, thus your incoming damage will still be lowered substantially.

The relative usefulness of endurance over mitigation in PvP has more to do with the large percentage of Force/Tech Internal/Elemental damage going out, which does entirely bypass Defense and Shield.