Jump to content

I know that you guys probably despise this question, but....


Penchante

Recommended Posts

Assassins/Shadows have more hitpoints than the other two tanks, and the best Shield/Absorb rates.

 

HOWEVER...

 

Shield and Absorb is useless in many fights. Soa for example will never cause your Shield Chance to proc and reduce damage.

 

 

Assassins/Shadows have the lowest damage reduction from what I've noticed. I have a 50 Jug and 50 Assassin, both similarly geared in Rakata and Columi, and my Reduction is in the mid 50% on the Jug and only mid 40% on the Assassin.

 

 

 

As someone else stated, all Tanks can do the job. But in Ops, I think against Bosses, Juggernauts/Guardians have the advantage, while against trash, Assassins/Shadows shine more. I do think Powertechs/Vanguards have the best of both worlds though, and are probably the slightly superior tanks (only slightly though).

 

You do realize that most of Soa's damage is elemental and as a result Assassin tanks are best suited for this fight, Elemental damage is not mitigated by armor only Kinetic/Energy damage is mitigated by armor. Assassins have the highest inherent damage reduction for elemental damage attacks therefore your logic is incorrect. In addition Asssassins can use their Force Shroud on a 45 sec CD to negate all of Soa's damage for 5 secs. This works great for eating ball lightning or if you think you will get hit by the dropping pylons when tanking Soa on P3. I dont disagree with the fact that shield can be useless in certain situations like on Soa, but that doesnt necessarily mean that taking a different tanking class is a better choice.

 

I also dont understand what would make you think Assassins are good on trash pulls. I dont think you have played as an Assassin. The nature of Dark Ward makes us probably the worst trash tanks. We are okay with AOE threat, but our damage mitigation can be an issue if Dark Ward drops off.

Edited by Dukibritches
Link to comment
Share on other sites

First off, Guard/Juggs are actually the tanks with the highest Defense and the greatest desire for it. Shad/Sins start off with 10% defense and get 4% more from talents. Guard/Juggs start off with 5% and get 10% with talents. Without factoring in gear, Guard/Juggs actually have higher defense chance (by 1%).

 

It's hard to define which class is the "Avoidance" class largely because of the difficulty in exactly defining "avoidance". Traditionally, avoidance tanks had lower outright damage reduction and made up for it with higher chance based mechanisms to avoid the damage. In this sense, Shad/Sins *are* the Avoidance tanks of TOR: they have the lowest K/E damage reduction of any tank class (~40% for a Shad/Sin tank, 50% for a Guard/Jugg tank, and 53% for a VG/PT tank). Since Shad/Sins are roughly tied for the highest defense chance, have the outright highest shield chance, and the outright lowest damage reduction, it's pretty easy to arrive at the conclusion that Shad/Sins are the designed "Avoidance" tanks of TOR. Of course, since all of the tanks use all of the available tanking mechanisms (Defense, Shield + Absorb, Damage Reduction, Self Heals/Damage Shields), the claim that there *isn't* an Avoidance tank in game is just as legitimate: it depends on whether you place more value upon assignment of a binary trait (Avoidance tanking is either true or false) or prefer to treat it as a sliding scale (VG/PTs are the 40% Avoidance based; Guard/Juggs are 45% Avoidance based; Shad/Sins are 65% Avoidance based).

 

Either way, it doesn't really matter: all of the TOR tanks are like themselves more than they are like any class from previous games. Determining which class is more like another class is less important than simply figuring out which one you enjoy playing the most.

 

Precisely what I was getting at. Unfortunately, I'm not as good at walls of text as you are Kitru. You are always informative though, even if I dont necessarily agree everything you say, lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Range != Radius.

 

Slow Time/Wither and Force Breach/Discharge have radii of 5m and a range of 10m. If you use Slow Time/With on a target 10m away from you, it won't hit a target that is standing on top of you because the radius of the effect is only 5m.

 

Where did you get a 5 meter radius from?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You do realize that most of Soa's damage is elemental and as a result Assassin tanks are best suited for this fight, Elemental damage is not mitigated by armor only Kinetic/Energy damage is mitigated by armor. Assassins have the highest inherent damage reduction for elemental damage attacks therefore your logic is incorrect. In addition Asssassins can use their Force Shroud on a 45 sec CD to negate all of Soa's damage for 5 secs. This works great for eating ball lightning or if you think you will get hit by the dropping pylons when tanking Soa on P3. I dont disagree with the fact that shield can be useless in certain situations like on Soa, but that doesnt necessarily mean that taking a different tanking class is a better choice.

 

I also dont understand what would make you think Assassins are good on trash pulls. I dont think you have played as an Assassin. The nature of Dark Ward makes us probably the worst trash tanks. We are okay with AOE threat, but our damage mitigation can be an issue if Dark Ward drops off.

 

First off, I wasn't making a correlation that because our shields don't proc on Soa that we will tank it worse than Juggernauts. It was two separate thoughts if you noticed the large gap between me talking about Shield Chance and me talking about Damage reduction. Juggernauts DO have better damage reduction though. Even with our improved Damage reductions, they still mitigate better in most circumstances. This isn't a Soa thing, this is just Damage Reduction being weaker in general.

 

Secondly, Assassins DO make better AoE tanks. In fact they are practically designed for it. Jugs work better around CC, but less useful in trying to hold agro on multiple enemies. Assassins are the other way around, having many abilities that are not CC friendly. Dark Ward may drop fast, but that is 8 attacks of far less damage taken, which should be more than enough time to save some healing or drop some of the trash. Assassins can work within the confines of CCed encounters, but they have to use more finesse. Juggernauts can AoE tank, but requires the cooperation of all party/ops members in order to properly hold agro on everything.

 

 

Also, I am not bashing Assassins or Juggernauts. I have one of each, and have tanked on both. Both have Rakata gear and have been in 16m Nightmare. I prefer tanking on the Assassin, it fits my style of play better, but I can do equally well on either, though I don't even pretend to try and be a good AoE tank on the Jug. Once those DfA, Storms, and OSs start flying, I pretty much give up on holding agro on everything.

Edited by Toogeloo
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Avoidance - you don't take any damage what so ever from an attack. Your hitpoints do not reduce i.e dodge, parry, miss

 

Mitigation - you reduce x% of an incoming attacks damage. i.e blocking, shielding, armor, bubbles. A mitigated attack can be anywhere between 1 - 100 % damage reduction.

 

Healing - lost hitpoints are restored by x% i.e damage had to have occured in the first place. Any restored hitpoints >100% is over heal &/or an absorb applied to the next incoming damage attack.

There are of course a number of different factors and type of attack i.e physical, 'magical' , bleed DoT etc that will determine by how much any attack will be mitigated / reduced by.

 

Shielding is mitigation, not avoidance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First off, Guard/Juggs are actually the tanks with the highest Defense and the greatest desire for it. Shad/Sins start off with 10% defense and get 4% more from talents. Guard/Juggs start off with 5% and get 10% with talents. Without factoring in gear, Guard/Juggs actually have higher defense chance (by 1%).

 

It's hard to define which class is the "Avoidance" class largely because of the difficulty in exactly defining "avoidance". Traditionally, avoidance tanks had lower outright damage reduction and made up for it with higher chance based mechanisms to avoid the damage. In this sense, Shad/Sins *are* the Avoidance tanks of TOR: they have the lowest K/E damage reduction of any tank class (~40% for a Shad/Sin tank, 50% for a Guard/Jugg tank, and 53% for a VG/PT tank). Since Shad/Sins are roughly tied for the highest defense chance, have the outright highest shield chance, and the outright lowest damage reduction, it's pretty easy to arrive at the conclusion that Shad/Sins are the designed "Avoidance" tanks of TOR. Of course, since all of the tanks use all of the available tanking mechanisms (Defense, Shield + Absorb, Damage Reduction, Self Heals/Damage Shields), the claim that there *isn't* an Avoidance tank in game is just as legitimate: it depends on whether you place more value upon assignment of a binary trait (Avoidance tanking is either true or false) or prefer to treat it as a sliding scale (VG/PTs are the 40% Avoidance based; Guard/Juggs are 45% Avoidance based; Shad/Sins are 65% Avoidance based).

 

Either way, it doesn't really matter: all of the TOR tanks are like themselves more than they are like any class from previous games. Determining which class is more like another class is less important than simply figuring out which one you enjoy playing the most.

 

While I agree with most of what you said, don't sin/shadow tanks get 6% from talents? 4% from Lightning Reflexes + 2% from Premonition?

 

(Double-Bladed Saber Defense and Shadowsight for shadows)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While I agree with most of what you said, don't sin/shadow tanks get 6% from talents? 4% from Lightning Reflexes + 2% from Premonition?

 

Ya, you're right. I was doing it from memory and got the numbers wrong. DBSD/Lightning Reflexes grants 4%, not 2%, and Guardians get 6% from Guard Stance, not 4%. Guard/Juggs still have a 1% higher baseline of Defense chance than Shad/Sins do (I undervalued them both by 2% /facepalm).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Avoidance - you don't take any damage what so ever from an attack. Your hitpoints do not reduce i.e dodge, parry, miss

 

Mitigation - you reduce x% of an incoming attacks damage. i.e blocking, shielding, armor, bubbles. A mitigated attack can be anywhere between 1 - 100 % damage reduction.

 

Healing - lost hitpoints are restored by x% i.e damage had to have occured in the first place. Any restored hitpoints >100% is over heal &/or an absorb applied to the next incoming damage attack.

There are of course a number of different factors and type of attack i.e physical, 'magical' , bleed DoT etc that will determine by how much any attack will be mitigated / reduced by.

 

Shielding is mitigation, not avoidance.

 

Thank you for this useless post. We are all aware of the definitions of the terms avoidance and mitigation. We were simply trying to explain why the term "avoidance tank" is being used when speaking of Assassins. If you read one of my earlier posts you would have figured that out. Thanks for wasting your time posting this when the debate has never been about what avoidance or mitigation really means.

Edited by Dukibritches
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Aha finally a fellow death knight! We were so rare in cata.

 

In SWTOR, none of the classes really have the same self-healing or self-shielding mechanic that the death knight in WoW did. As such, none of them really use the same amount or style of severe micromanagement (if you raided on a DK you know what I mean) that the death knight did in terms of maximizing blood shield uptime and timing heals.

 

Tanking classes in SWTOR get a shield off-hand, which has a passive chance to absorb some incoming damage. In terms of which class played the most like a death knight, it would probably be like this: shadow -> guardian -> vanguard. Reason being shadow has the most self heals/proc management out of the three tanking ACs, therefor making them the most death knight like out of the classes.

 

I would akin guardian or juggernaut to a warrior, and after they get jet charge vanguard are more warrior like as well. Before that they seem more pally-ish to me imo. You would also want to roll Juggernaut if you wanted a more DK-ish feel. They're a sith warrior AC.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thank you for this useless post. We are all aware of the definitions of the terms avoidance and mitigation. We were simply trying to explain why the term "avoidance tank" is being used when speaking of Assassins. If you read one of my earlier posts you would have figured that out. Thanks for wasting your time posting this when the debate has never been about what avoidance or mitigation really means.

 

My goal was simply to correct your errors and educate you in the correct terminology young padiwan. We can see from your now defensive tone that goal has been achieved. I am glad you now comprehend....go forth & tank!

Edited by Lord_Galadrind
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, well, the DK would forgo a shield in favor of a larger two handed weapon. The tanking was based half on avoidance, and half on their shield mechanic. They had a self heal ability that activated a shield, and the trick was to have the shield up constantly, with the avoidance hopefully stepping in to handle any errant unshielded hits.

 

That wasn't untill at least an expansion down.

 

Dk tanking was alot more versatile initially, but got cut down with a weak excuse of 'spending too much time on them' by Blizz. which incidently left druids as the only class with more than 3 class specs.

 

DK tanking was based on managing cooldowns, at the bottom of it. The stuff you mentioned was just fluff added later on in an effort by blizz to keep things managble for them (aside from avoidance playing a big part for them throughout most of their tanking career, even the tanking specs that were the 'soak' specs).

 

In ToR I so far only have experience with tanking with a Juggernaut Immortal spec. It feels mostly like a warrior, but with some of the cooldown juggling of the cooldown juggling that was characteristic of the dk in wow, courtesy of multiple CDs that aren't too long before they are back up. I would still call it closer to a warrior than dk, though. So maybe one of the other tanking classes would fit your vision better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i have a a guardian and a shadow tank at level 50. comparing them to wow classes, i'd say the guardian plays a bit like a wow classic warrior with some elements of later warrior versions (wotlk mostly) mixed in.

 

the shadow feels like a mix of paladin/DK playstyles in wow wotlk.

 

can't comment on vanguard/PT- haven't played one yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...