Island_Jedi Posted May 29, 2016 Share Posted May 29, 2016 (edited) THE ART OF SORESU... The Immortal discipline is an engaging and rewarding tank class to play. Juggernauts have an extensive array of active defensive mitigations. They fall below the other two tanks classes in terms of passive mitigation, but its balanced from the options your cool downs give you. Defense is king on a juggernaut and many of your abilities enhance this further. Important Proc's and Skills Aegis assault - Increases your damage reduction and absorb by 3 percent and makes your "Crushing Blow" have AOE properties. Opening with this after the leap is great especially for adds. Quake - Makes your "Smash" and "Sweeping slash" capable of causing accuracy debuffs on enemies. Blade Barricade - Increases your defense chance by 5 percent when you use "Retaliation". Sonic Barrier - Causes your "Force scream" to generate a shield that absorbs a moderate amount. Defensive Slashes - Allows your "Ravage" to generate stacks that increase your defense up to 6 percent. Lets first talk about your highest threat generating abilities. Using these early in your rotation will help you with maintaining threat. Highest Threat Generators Saber Reflect Crushing Blow Ravage Back Hand Force Scream Ability Analysis Saber Reflect - When used in your opener it generates a crazy amount of threat. Using it to negate certain boss mechanics is great also. Crushing Blow - Very important to your threat, use very early in the rotation and keep it on cool down. Buffs your damage reduction. Retaliation - This ability is off the GCD which means you can spam it whenever it procs. It generates the important "Blade Barricade" Force Scream - Use this to help buffer high damage attacks the moderate shield it provides is helpful. Rotation The Immortal rotation is basically priority based. Keeping your buffs and debuffs up while inserting "Retaliation" every time it procs. Opener - (the opener is a string of abilities that you will use first, to make your Threat as high and efficient as possible) This opener allows you to have good burst. The Opening Rotation Force Charge Aegis Assault + Saber Reflect Crushing Blow Retaliation + Smash Force Scream Ravage Retaliation + Backhand Threatening Scream Alternate Opener Force Charge + Enrage Crushing Blow Retaliation + Backhand Force Scream Saber Reflect + Vicious Throw Smash + Taunt Aegis Assault Ravage Crushing Blow Retaliation + Force Scream Threatening Scream Mid Combat During an encounter you're most important concerns are maintaining your buffs once the initial threat is secured. Using your abilities on cool down will accomplish this and supply adequate threat. Sometimes an add will spawn to ensure you can beat the other DPS in terms of threat, time your "Crushing Blow" and "Ravage" so that its ready to use on the newly spawned add. Active Mitigation Juggernauts have the best active mitigations in the game. They can at will choose to completely shutdown incoming damage. Having these powerful cool downs if off set by weaker passive mitigation than the other two tanks. Using cool downs properly is key to playing a Juggernaut effectively. Using the correct cool down in the right situation will mean the difference between wiping and easily withstanding the onslaught of attacks bosses throw at you. Saber Ward This ability is the corner stone of your active mitigations it works on most of the attacks in the game. Melee and ranged damage is the most common type in the game and as such this ability will save you very often. Adds tend to have this damage type except force users. With the "Blade turning" talent you're completely immune to melee/ranged damage for 2 seconds and 5 with the set bonus. This ability however will not protect against force/tech attacks as well as "Invincible" and should be used primarily for what it was designed for namely ranged and melee attacks. Using this ability to avoid damage is much better than trying to use it when you're near death especially if you see your healers struggling to keep the other raid members healthy. It has a relatively long cool down and should not just be thrown out there frivolously. Invincible This ability reduces all incoming damage by 40 percent making it very powerful against force/tech users. Because force/tech attacks cannot be defended this ability will be your go to when dealing with heavy force/tech damage like "Arching Assault" from Brontes. Dread Palace is an operation where it is very heavy on force users meaning your defense will be much less effective along with cool downs that boost defense like "Saber Ward". If no force/tech attacks are common in the boss encounter you're facing simply use "Invincible" in a similar way you would use "Saber Ward". It also has a long cool down and should be used mainly to preempt a heavy damage phase or help healers catch up if your raid is getting smashed. Enraged Defense Can be triggered once you're health hits 70 percent or below. It operates on charges and heals everytime one of those charges is consumed. This ability is great for dealing with DOTS or a series of attacks whether M/R or F/T. It helps greatly in keeping you from being too spikey and it also has a shorter cool down than its two big brothers (If you spec into "Through Passion"). Make liberal use of this ability when ever you can to help smooth out the damage and take the edge off your healers. Endure Pain This ability temporarily boosts your health pool by 30 percent. This can allow you to escape certain death by buying your healers time to get you out of the danger zone. Another way to use it is to use it at near full health to give you a much larger health pool if your raid is hurting. Allowing the healers some precious GCDs to get the raid up knowing your nice and safe with your padded health. Combining "Endure Pain" with other cool downs will only increase its effectiveness allowing you to become a brick wall to damage. Good communication is needed when using this ability as the health gain is temporary and will fall off. If your healers don't catch you before it ends you can take a huge spike in health which can in some cases result in your demise. Saber Reflect This ability functions as a great way to counter specific attacks. Many bosses have casted and channeled abilities that can be completely negated by this cool down. The game continually changes how effective this cool down is though by changing the way boss attacks are classed as. This ability only reflects single target ranged, force, and tech attacks. Virtually useless against melee enemies unless they use force and tech attacks. Holding ranged adds is also much easier to do once you have gained they're initial threat. Not only do you mitigate a ton of damage you generate insane threat this cool down works great on packs of ranged adds including force users. Passive Mitigation Juggernauts tanks have the lowest of the three tanks in terms of passive mitigation especially with shield and absorb. Defense is competitive with other tanks due to "Blade Barricade" and "Defensive Slashes". Juggernauts naturally excel at tackling enemies that deal melee/ranged damage and less so with enemies that deal force/tech. Juggernauts are great for picking up adds as adds usually deal almost exclusively melee and ranged damage. Defense is also an all or nothing stat it has a lower chance to proc than shield and absorb, but potentially mitigates much more damage. The higher your health pool the more chances your defense rolls will have to activate. Using powerful cool downs like "Saber ward" and "Invincible" with a high health pool will increase the effectiveness of these considerably. Higher health also directly correlates to the effectiveness of "Endure Pain". Due to Juggernauts having overall lower passive mitigation using cool downs incorrectly is felt more keenly than other tanks. A Juggernaut tank is kind of the opposite of a Powertech tank you have to closely monitor your cool down usage to compete or surpass a Powertech tank. Maintaining the buffs from your rotation aside from your major cool downs is important as well to give a competent performance. When its possible allowing an Assassin or Powertech to take force/tech heavy bosses is advisable. Though you will really shine against melee/ranged heavy bosses it will vary encounter to encounter. Utility Juggernauts have "Mad Dash" which can function as a pseudo cool down if a lot of movement is not required. In most boss fights though you will use this to quickly move to a location. Juggernauts also have "Intercede" which can function as an extra taunt as it displaces the threat of a team member to a large degree. This ability can also be used as an alternative to "Force Charge" if no enemies are present to leap to. Without the leap and dash Juggernauts do struggle with more movement issues than the other tanks. Utility Skillset Skillful Warmonger Path Carver Deadly Reprisal Unshackling Rage Masterful Sonic Wall Skillful Through Passion Intimidating Presence Gearing Optimal gearing will depend on the fight your doing. Juggernauts have an overarching theme in that they gear for defense. Defense and Endurance complement each other well allowing you more chances at defending attacks. Gearing for heavy shield and absorb is an uphill battle on a Juggernaut and should only be done when a specific fight demands it. When Juggs are dealing with very heavy force and tech attacks adding shield and absorb is recommended. Having a high health pool with liberal amounts of defense will allow you to handle melee/ranged encounters with ease. The idea with gearing is you want the greatest return point for point for every piece of gear. Armoring's Very straight forward simply take the armoring's with the highest endurance. Gear Advanced Resistive Armoring. Mods It might be tempting to take the mods with the highest mitigation but point for point B mods will net you an overall greater return. Juggernauts also benefit from the greater health pool. Gear Advanced Warding B Mods Enhancements The comm enhancements are not optimal for gearing. Token pieces and drops net you more mitigation focused pieces which you need. Gear Advanced Bulwark and Sturdiness Enhancements Implants and Earpieces Sacrificing some mitigation here in favor of more endurance will help reach the desired health pool on a Juggernaut. Gear MK4 appropriate Implants and Earpieces Augments These will mainly complement your build with either shield, absorb, or endurance. having a set of gear with endurance and a set with shield and absorb will allow you the versatility to optimally tank any fight. Gear Endurance, Absorb, or Shield Augments based on whether its melee/ranged set or force/tech set Edited June 6, 2016 by Island_Jedi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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