I have been thinking about this for a long long time and I just had enough of force using tanks who need to use "Shields" yes you heard me "Shields". Shields should be completely removed from the force user tank arsenal forever. Why? There's a few reasons.

 

1) They don't fit force users who often swing their lights sticks to deflect blaster bolts (at least in the movies).

 

2) Vanguards often want x type of gear which tends to be a Force User melee tank peace just so they can pull out some mod from it.

 

3) It just seems lame! So horribly... terribly lame.

 

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There is a simple solution to this situation.

 

- The Sith and Jedi should be the masters of defense. They should constantly deflect blaster bolts, but even deflecting them should hurt their HP. The statistic responsible for this should be called:

 

Basic Defense: Reduces damage taken from standard enemy assaults by X% (you know the very basic "auto attack" like attacks - hammer shot for example - the blaster bolts would be deflected, but the enemy your shooting would still take damage because even a Jedi would get tired of constantly having to deflecting all that blaster fire)

 

The second one should be:

 

Advanced Defense: That would reduce damage from more powerful attacks by X% amount that would come from both players in PvP and bosses.

 

And that should generally make Sith and Jedi Tanks benefit the most from defense so that they wouldn't use shields, but what's more important they would actually fight more like the characters from the movies.

 

Defense should both increase advanced and basic defense where basic defense would get a more of an increase (let's say your Defense is at 100 so your Basic Defense = 20% damage reduction - against standard attack only and your Advanced Defense = 10% damage reduction against advanced/special attack only).

 

- Vanguards/Powertechs on the other hand should be the ones who use shields. They should have their Basic defense set to 5% and still look as if they where dodging hits and such, but would still take damage from them. Yet their tanking effectiveness should come from:

 

Shield Absorption: before you start saying something like "Hey what about "Shield Chance?" let me explain. It's because a Vanguards/Powertechs shield should be on all the time and I mean ALL THE TIME reducing damage taken by X%. It shouldn't react based on a % chance just like Defense in it's current form. Everyone would prefer to have a simple statistic that would help soak a portion of damage rather then having just a chance for it to suddenly activate.

 

Now I know that energy shields where introduced in KOTOR and there is a simple solution to having none class specific shield available to all classes which would actually make more sense.

 

Implement consumable/craftable shields (with X amount of charges), usable by all classes which would share their CD with med-packs. Medical equipment has a chance to heal you from X to Y HP. Shields on the other hand should provide a stable X amount of damage they can absorb for a few seconds (let's say 15 for example) before they shut down. Certain Epic/Rakata shields could have unlimited charges and would make another crafting skill other then biochem more appealing for some players.

Edited January 29, 2012 by ZetsumeiKira

Occam's Razor.

 

You're overcomplicating things.

It's not over complicating. It's making things simple. Defense for Force Using tanks Shield for none force users. A stable damage soaking stat instead of some uber lucky X% to absorb or deflect. And instead of using hammer shot on some Sith and watching him run around like some stupid half brained force user who can't deflect anything I'd finally get to see some movie like moves. Just that he would still take damage migrated by Armor and Basic defense. Right now all the force users might as well be monkeys with sicks. They either run around with them getting hit by almost every single blaster bolt or hit you with them and that's that. Doesn't look like STAR WARS to me. Edited January 29, 2012 by ZetsumeiKira