Blame the trolls. Edited March 30, 2013 by FelixGoldenHeart
removed due to trolling.

Have your cake and eat it too. I've decided to go ahead and put together a guide of sorts for ALL players of any skill level to follow. Bare with me please, and if you have anything to add please do!

 

 

Tanks: The damage sponge.

 

Your role is a few things, none too difficult.

 

Skills you must know:

Your Guard: it goes on the healer in most cases, but sometimes goes on DPS if they do so much damage they pull agro off you.

Taunts: use them ONLY when your party members pull agro off you, and in the start of a fight.

Your stance/charge etc: Guardian/Juggernaut: Soresu. Assassin/Shadow: Dark Charge/Combat Technique. Vanguard/Powertech: Ion Cell/Ion Gas Cylinder. USE THESE OR you won't hold agro and will die very quickly. IT IS NOT THE HEALERS FAULT YOU DIE if you don't have this on.

 

Stats to stack:

Obviously you need ENDURANCE. However your main stacking should consist of SHIELD rating and ABSORPTION rating. Only then do you stack defense. Defense chance is like evasion, and is more important for sneaky dps. YOU MUST use a SHIELD as your offhand or you will NOT be able to tank regardless of whatever stance you're in.

 

 

 

Endurance will come with your gear, should be clear that it is never a good idea to stack endurance through augments or other such upgrades, as there is no point in having extra health if you have no defenses to keep it.

 

Also, Shield and Absorb are good, Depending on the tank, Defense chance is important. DPS should NEVER use defense chance. Guardian tanks/Shadow Tanks, and their imperial counterparts, should have 25-26% defense chance, Vanguard/Powertechs cannot stack defense nearly as well, so theirs will probably be somewhere around 10-15%.

Endurance will come with your gear, should be clear that it is never a good idea to stack endurance through augments or other such upgrades, as there is no point in having extra health if you have no defenses to keep it.

 

Also, Shield and Absorb are good, Depending on the tank, Defense chance is important. DPS should NEVER use defense chance. Guardian tanks/Shadow Tanks, and their imperial counterparts, should have 25-26% defense chance, Vanguard/Powertechs cannot stack defense nearly as well, so theirs will probably be somewhere around 10-15%.

 

 

Sniper/gunslinger could benefit from it. They have a passive 5% chance plus an added 20% while in cover, meaning stacking more leads to better damage avoidance while in cover. The 20% adds on after and is not affected by diminishing returns. This could lead to ~55% defense chance for snipers/gunslingers at all times. Not bad I say!

Sniper/gunslinger could benefit from it. They have a passive 5% chance plus an added 20% while in cover, meaning stacking more leads to better damage avoidance while in cover. The 20% adds on after and is not affected by diminishing returns. This could lead to ~55% defense chance for snipers/gunslingers at all times. Not bad I say!

 

No, they can't. Not only is it impossible to get so much from defense rating that you'd hit that, it's also incredible stupid since you should never be taking any significant damage since the tank has the aggro.

Stacking defense comes at the cost of not stacking power and crit, which is what a DPS SHOULD stack.

 

All in all, this guide has many serious flaws and is very inaccurate, but I'm on my phone atm so I can't make any lengthy posts about why.

Tank:

- Purpose: keep all the mobs on himself, position them, and soak up their damage.

- Needs to know the bosses / mobs / etc and what they will do once attacked.

- Needs to mark the targets with various icons to indicate the kill order.

- Typically controls the group / pace of the group / leads the group.

 

Healer:

- Purpose: keep the tank healed, keep the other group members healed.

- Needs to know how big his heals are and when to apply them so they're effective.

- Needs to manage his resource to avoid running out of juice for the heals even if the fight takes a long time.

- Typically the tank will listen to the healer requests to hold on, attack a different way, and/or kick people from group.

 

DPS:

- Purpose: to apply damage to the targets being held by the tank.

- Needs to know his attack rotations to apply maximum damage.

- Needs to attack the correct targets so that they don't peel off the tank and cause havoc.

- Needs to step out of AoE / fire / death targeting reticules on the ground, to minimize damage to self cause the healer may be too busy with the tank.

- Typically a good DPS will make the group a pleasure to be in by killing things efficiently and before the healer / tank run out of energy.

 

CC (Crowd Control):

- Purpose: to freeze, sleep, root, or otherwise keep a target inactive until later in the fight.

- Needs to coordinate with the tank and group, so that sleeped targets are away from the rest of the pack, and thus out of range of DPS AoE.

- Needs to know which targets to sleep; sometimes this is marked by the tank but not always.

- Typically a lot of classes have CC abilities, and it's a matter of using them appropriately to make the fight easier.

This is interesting because I read somewhere that DPS does not attack the enemy tank fights but the others around him.

On another note, I had to play healer in Black Talon because our healer disconnected. Our group was 2 tanks (level 8 and level 12) and me as a merc. I think my only healing activity was rapid scan. anyway we managed to win but it was awful for me as I had to heal them without a break (except times where I was overheated). so I can totally understand if there is a shortage of healers out there

Edited March 29, 2013 by tanerb

No, they can't. Not only is it impossible to get so much from defense rating that you'd hit that, it's also incredible stupid since you should never be taking any significant damage since the tank has the aggro.

Stacking defense comes at the cost of not stacking power and crit, which is what a DPS SHOULD stack.

 

All in all, this guide has many serious flaws and is very inaccurate, but I'm on my phone atm so I can't make any lengthy posts about why.

 

Not to be rude... but no it's not impossible and if you have a better guide I'd like to see you write one out. I wrote this as a help guide for people since it's what I've been doing from day 1 of this game and it always works out just fine if everyone follows what I said about your role in the group. So please, if you think you could add to it and fix the "flaws" please do.

Not to be rude... but no it's not impossible

 

Yes it is impossible. Seriously try to get a clue about the basics of game mechanics.

 

Now granted the theoretical maximum amount of defense chance gained from defense rating stat is 30% and yes 5+20+30=55, but even then there is a huge flaw in your thinking.

 

Getting 30% defense from defense rating stat would require literally infinite amount of defense rating stat. You can't have gear with infinite amount of stats. Even getting close to it like 29% would need so high amounts of stats it is impossible.

 

Even bis endgame geared tanks currently, even if they have over 30% total defense chance, do only get something around 15% defense from the defense rating stat on their gear. Even if they switched to non-optimal stat distribution and stacked only defense rating (and no absorption at all) to every piece of gear, they still would not get much higher than somewhere around 20% gained from defense rating stat, even with the highest grade gear currently available.

 

In any case, using defense rating gear on a pure dps class like sniper is a stupid idea.

Edited March 29, 2013 by Eternalnight

Yes it is impossible. Seriously try to get a clue about the basics of game mechanics.

 

Now granted the theoretical maximum amount of defense chance gained from defense rating stat is 30% and yes 5+20+30=55, but even then there is a huge flaw in your thinking.

 

Getting 30% defense from defense rating stat would require literally infinite amount of defense rating stat. You can't have gear with infinite amount of stats. Even getting close to it like 29% would need so high amounts of stats it is impossible.

 

Even bis endgame geared tanks currently, even if they have over 30% total defense chance, do only get something around 15% defense from the defense rating stat on their gear. Even if they switched to non-optimal stat distribution and stacked only defense rating (and no absorption at all) to every piece of gear, they still would not get much higher than somewhere around 20% gained from defense rating stat, even with the highest grade gear currently available.

 

In any case, using defense rating gear on a pure dps class like sniper is a stupid idea.

 

Ok so 45% sorry. You're harping on the teeniest little thing in the guide. They told Thomas Edison his ideas for a lightbulb were stupid too. Have you tried it? No? Then don't assume anything. If you can dodge 45% of all attacks thrown at you, then you can pump out more damage, for instance in pvp. If they only have 90% due to having no accuracy rating at all then they only hit you 45% of the time. That's a small number meaning you'd last longer and get off more skill casts before you died.

 

I'm not going to argue this point any longer. I'm dropping it here and if you insist on continuing it on my help thread then be my guest, I will ignore you.

Edited March 30, 2013 by FelixGoldenHeart

Ok so 45% sorry.

Wrong again!

They can't really get 45% either without massively gimping themselves in other ways too.

 

First of all even for a tank class getting 20% from defense rating stat alone would require full grade 27 (63) PvE gear with defense rating in every single mod, enhancement and augment.

Now there are already some huge problems there.

1. There are no high grade mods available with cunning and defense rating (you might find some low level junk items with cunning and defense rating but certainly not in the higher gear tiers) meaning you would have to use mods with main stats that are intended for other classes.

2. This would be even bigger loss in implants and earpieces where you don't have separate mods.

3. For enhancements even though lower grade enhancements may be found with any stat combination you can ever imagine, the only stat combinations with defense you find at higher gear tiers are defense+shield rating and defense+accuracy rating. Now shield rating is of course completely useless to a sniper. Accuracy, while useful to a dps to an extent, having it in every enhancement in every piece of gear, would mean having too much of it, and the excess accuracy is also useless.

 

So not only are you loosing dps stats for the part of your stat budget that the defense rating itself takes, but you also will have to stack lots of other useless stats to get that much of it.

 

 

If you can dodge 45% of all attacks thrown at you, then you can pump out more damage, for instance in pvp.

WRONG!

 

Now even if you did stack so much defense (despite the problems I just mentioned above which makes it completely unviable) you would still not avoid 45% of all attacks.

 

First of all: Defense rating (and the base chance) work only against melee and ranged attacks (and I'm not talking about the actual range from which you can use an attack, but the ability type) meaning it does not protect at all against force and tech attacks.

Secondly: Cover gives only defense against ranged (by ability type again) attacks, meaning it does not even protect against melee like defense rating does.

 

 

Not to mention the biggest problem of all, getting the highest possible defense rating would require PvE gear (since PvP gear has less secondary stat due to stat budget spent on expertise) for every slot (except maybe armorings and barrels) meaning you absolutely will suffer more damage due to lack of pvp damage reduction from expertise stat. Even with the lowest grade pvp gear with 0 defense rating you would stay alive longer.

 

Even if you tried getting pvp gear with defense rating (and while keeping other stats useful, it would be fairly small amount of defense rating in it due to limitations mentioned above) it would still not help very much due to the limited usefulness of defense rating in pvp since much of the damage you suffer would be force or tech attacks.

Edited March 30, 2013 by Eternalnight

on my help thread

 

You call this help thread?

 

As if the nonsense about stacking defense on dps classes wasn't bad enough, there are plenty of other things wrong here too.

 

Let's take just a few examples...

 

Your Guard: it goes on the healer in most cases, but sometimes goes on DPS if they do so much damage they pull agro off you.

In most cases in PvE there is no reason to ever guard a healer.

The threat reduction from guard does not really help healers. Healing threat is so much lower than everyone else's threat that healer will not ever pull aggro on anything that somebody else is generating threat by attacking it.

 

The only time healer will pull threat to himself is if nobody is attacking some mob you are in combat with. Then the threat reduction again does not help, since even with 25% less threat if you are the only person generating threat on that mob, you are still on the top of its threat list.

 

The 50% damage transfer will only work on PvP where you should of course always guard healers.

 

The 5% damage reduction, while kind of nice, is also more often than not wasted on the healer, since the healer should not be the person who gets attacked the second most often after the tank. Or if he is, then the tank and the dps are not doing their job right, and learning how to attack or control all the mobs you are in combat with would be the right solution, not putting guard on a healer.

 

 

Taunts: use them ONLY when your party members pull agro off you,

And this is even more wrong.

 

First of all taunting only when other party members pull off you is bad advice considering the way taunt mechanics work on swtor. Taunts generate threat in this game. When you taunt your threat is increased to 110% or 130% of the all threat gained so far of the current highest threat holder, even if that current highest threat holder is the same person who taunted. This means that using taunts even when you already have aggro on yourself is the most effective way to secure keeping that aggro on yourself.

Now granted a well geared tank with good attack rotation will hold aggro even without taunt spamming, but that does not change the fact that in many cases taunt spamming will help to keep aggro. It would be stupid to taunt only when you loose aggro, when by taunting when you have aggro will gain so much threat that you never will even risk loosing aggro in the first place.

 

Especially the for the new tanks, they should pretty much taunt as often as the taunt cooldown allows them, unless it is some fight with some special mechanic (tank switch or threat reset) that they need to save their taunt for. And even on fights with those kinds of mechanics since they have 2 taunts (single target and aoe) and the timer for the fight mechanic is often longer than the taunt cooldown, they can still use their taunts for aggro building for some extent.

 

and in the start of a fight.

And again even more wrong.

 

You should never open a fight with a taunt. You should always open up with a few damage dealing attacks (high threat ones if possible) and only taunt after that (unless somebody else attacked first).

 

As already explained, taunts generate threat based on a percentage of the threat already gained. That means that if you taunt at the start of the fight, the taunt generates 0 threat. If you taunt after hitting something with few other abilities then you multiply any threat gained from them by 1.1 or 1.3. And even though taunts do cause a debuff that forces the mob to attack the taunter for 6 sec regardless of how much threat anyone has, this is not needed until after the dps start attacking which they should do after the tank has used his first damaging attacks, which is also when you might want to taunt for the first (but not the only) time.

 

 

Well there is plenty more but can't spend the whole day on this.

Alright since the trolls seem insistant on flaming this thread, I'm removing what I posted here. Sorry a few bad apples spoiled the pie but it's getting annoying. All evidence pointed against this thread is circumstantial. Since I've played every class and this is a guide based on what I found WORKS, then I will just pass on knowledge within game. If a moderator could delete this thread I'd be grateful.

Alright since the trolls seem insistant on flaming this thread, I'm removing what I posted here. Sorry a few bad apples spoiled the pie but it's getting annoying. All evidence pointed against this thread is circumstantial. Since I've played every class and this is a guide based on what I found WORKS, then I will just pass on knowledge within game. If a moderator could delete this thread I'd be grateful.

 

It was based on what was good enough for the rest of the group to carry you trough it. The advice was terrible.

Thank the stars there are people out there willing to take the time to dispel all the bad information in this "guide". You've saved a lot of people a lot of grief. Learning to tank well is hard enough on its own. With the "assistance" of a whole bunch of bad advice, it would be impossible.