Hi, I have a Jugg tank in 19/22 hybrid spec, currently in mostly 61's with some 63's. My buffed stats right now are as follows:

28.66% Defense

50.80% Shield

50.17% Absorb

My guild is a little behind right now and doesn't really run HM TFB yet, so I usually have to pug it or find crafters to get BiS 63's. I've been holding several stabilizers now but want to know what to do to improve my tank next. Do I need to move some shield/absorb out for more defense? Swap some mods for B versions for the endo? I remember reading the thread over at mmomechanics that says stacking defense is best for juggs, but I just dont like the spikiness it ends up doing, so to be nice to my healers I've been getting relatively high shield/absorb.

I realize this is more of an open ended question as there doesn't seem to be a definitive 'best' way to gear any tank, but just wanted to get some opinions preferably of those that are working on the latest end game or are already farming it. If it helps here's my setup:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/18132395-baf7-4303-b4b3-f967638286f5

Hi, I have a Jugg tank in 19/22 hybrid spec, currently in mostly 61's with some 63's. My buffed stats right now are as follows:

 

28.66% Defense

50.80% Shield

50.17% Absorb

 

My guild is a little behind right now and doesn't really run HM TFB yet, so I usually have to pug it or find crafters to get BiS 63's. I've been holding several stabilizers now but want to know what to do to improve my tank next. Do I need to move some shield/absorb out for more defense? Swap some mods for B versions for the endo? I remember reading the thread over at mmomechanics that says stacking defense is best for juggs, but I just dont like the spikiness it ends up doing, so to be nice to my healers I've been getting relatively high shield/absorb.

 

I realize this is more of an open ended question as there doesn't seem to be a definitive 'best' way to gear any tank, but just wanted to get some opinions preferably of those that are working on the latest end game or are already farming it. If it helps here's my setup:

 

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/18132395-baf7-4303-b4b3-f967638286f5

I have 30.1k hp with 30% def 52% shield with 42% absorb. The additional defense ratings provided you use your Blate Storm + Riposte often will provide pretty handy defense rating that will work superior in contrast to having 10% more absorb. Do not forget that Absorb is also tied to Shield, first you need to shield the ability and then there is a % chance to absorb the said ability. It's just not as good as Defense Rating for Juggs. You can stack as much as 35% def rating, and you will still have about 51% shield with 40% ish absorb and you will do just fine in around 31k hp.

But I believe there is not a single way to do things, 25 50 50 is still viable -- if you have already achieved 25 50 50 and do not want to deviate from it much try t stack up on additional defense to bring it closer to 30% mark. Good luck!!!

Do not forget that Absorb is also tied to Shield, first you need to shield the ability and then there is a % chance to absorb the said ability.

I'm sorry but what? That is not at all how shield and absorb work. Shield refers to the %chance of shielding an attack and absorb is the amount of that attack that will be absorbed.

So if you have 50 shield and 60 absorbtion then you have a 50% chance of reducing the damage of the attack by 60%

I have 30.1k hp with 30% def 52% shield with 42% absorb. The additional defense ratings provided you use your Blate Storm + Riposte often will provide pretty handy defense rating that will work superior in contrast to having 10% more absorb. Do not forget that Absorb is also tied to Shield, first you need to shield the ability and then there is a % chance to absorb the said ability. It's just not as good as Defense Rating for Juggs. You can stack as much as 35% def rating, and you will still have about 51% shield with 40% ish absorb and you will do just fine in around 31k hp.

 

But I believe there is not a single way to do things, 25 50 50 is still viable -- if you have already achieved 25 50 50 and do not want to deviate from it much try t stack up on additional defense to bring it closer to 30% mark. Good luck!!!

Thanks! wow 30k hp, thats super high for juggs, thats more like sin hp pool isnt it? Is your hp spiky at all with 52/42 shield/absorb? Might actually give that a try, with riposte and quake thats a pretty decent chance of complete avoidance

I'm sorry but what? That is not at all how shield and absorb work. Shield refers to the %chance of shielding an attack and absorb is the amount of that attack that will be absorbed.

So if you have 50 shield and 60 absorbtion then you have a 50% chance of reducing the damage of the attack by 60%

To my knowledge ephesia is correct. It first rolls accuracy vs defense, if that fails then it rolls shield chance, IF your shield succeeds then you absorb the % you have. There's also tons of other factors like crit etc that fits into the first roll I believe, but dont remember the specifics. There's data for it all over you can just google it

Lol, If I get a queue with a 30k tank I just laugh and leave. At least you have the defensive stats to support it but most 26k+ tanks have rubbish defensive stats and just melt so healing them is a waste of time and resources.

My aim for Jugg is 30%, 50%, 50%.

To my knowledge ephesia is correct. It first rolls accuracy vs defense, if that fails then it rolls shield chance, IF your shield succeeds then you absorb the % you have. There's also tons of other factors like crit etc that fits into the first roll I believe, but dont remember the specifics. There's data for it all over you can just google it

Read what he said. I was saying the same thing as you and he was saying that there is a %chance that an ability will be shielded and if it is shielded there is a %chance it will be absorbed and do no damage

Thanks! wow 30k hp, thats super high for juggs, thats more like sin hp pool isnt it?

Yeah, it's TOO high.

If your HP is that high, it means your mitigation stats are much lower then they could have been. He should be dropping endurance to stack more absorb until he hits at least 50% for it, after that the diminishing returns are pretty heavy so it can be argued, but personally I'd still continue stacking as much mitigation as possible, even if the return is very small. Very little extra mitigation is more then no extra miigation, and mitigating that damage is the entire reason for having the tank there.

Shield/absorb works exactly like Cisme described it, you have <shield chance>% chance to reduce the damage done to you by <absorb>%. It's very easy to tell if you just have a look at your logs, you'll find some misses, somehigh hits and some low hits from the same ability, and if you do the math on the low hits, you'll find that they're <absorb>% lower then the high ones.

Read what he said. I was saying the same thing as you and he was saying that there is a %chance that an ability will be shielded and if it is shielded there is a %chance it will be absorbed and do no damage

You are definitely not saying the same thing as he did, but I might be wrong I won't argue about something I am not 100% sure.

About 30k HP OMGZORZ too high you suck argument, if you have 30k HP like I do and you have below 30% def, below 50% shield and below about 40% absorb yeah good point. Otherwise there is nothing really wrong with having more hp. If I'm close to 63 naturally I'll have health like that. Check the best guilds in the game you will see that their guardian tanks, like me, have 30k'ish HP.

About 30k HP OMGZORZ too high you suck argument, if you have 30k HP like I do and you have below 30% def, below 50% shield and below about 40% absorb yeah good point. Otherwise there is nothing really wrong with having more hp. If I'm close to 63 naturally I'll have health like that. Check the best guilds in the game you will see that their guardian tanks, like me, have 30k'ish HP.

No, that absorb is still too low. Get it to 50% and you may have a point (even though I still prefer even more mitigation after that, even though it's tiny), but 40% means you're only shielding 20% of the damage that gets trough your defense rather than 25% like you do with 50% absorb. That's 6.7% more damage taken.

Our jugg tanks are at about 27.5k HP with 30/50/50, and IMO even that is a bit high since looking at their gear, I could squeeze out yet another few % damage reduction by dropping an another 2k or so HP.

Our jugg tanks are at about 27.5k HP with 30/50/50, and IMO even that is a bit high since looking at their gear, I could squeeze out yet another few % damage reduction by dropping an another 2k or so HP.

Just because you can squeeze out another percent or two doesn't mean that you should. If a tank can take two 15k hits without being healed, he's got more survivability than a tank who can only take one. If a tank can take three 10k hits without being healed, he's got more survivability than a tank who can only take two.

The RNG is not always in your favor, and you very well could eat a whole series of hits.

At the top end of the spectrum, the extra health is beneficial, especially if the mitigation numbers are already high (I have nothing good to say for tanks who stack things like accuracy). Yes, you need mitigation, but more health takes stress off of your healers.

Because there are always situations where your snipers are lounging in goo and your marauders are on fire ("Why are the marauders on fire again?") and time-to-kill is the most important metric for a tank. And you maximize time-to-kill by making intelligent choices about mitigation and high endurance. And that means stacking endurance once mitigation has gone asymptotic.

For 16m man ops and above stacking end to 29-30k-ish is the way to go. This is because you take, say 1.5x damage of 8 man but have 2x the heals so being able give healers time to get an extra heal off is more likely to save you than def or shield. Also, the largest hits you take are not dodgeable or shieldable (TFB's scream, Kephess' Mortars, Dreadtooth's Rock Toss).

For 8m you can/should go mitigation or I would argue, compromise between the 2 (most easily by switching to the high end mods and Dread Guard relics).

Just because you can squeeze out another percent or two doesn't mean that you should. If a tank can take two 15k hits without being healed, he's got more survivability than a tank who can only take one. If a tank can take three 10k hits without being healed, he's got more survivability than a tank who can only take two.

If you're gonna cherry-pick edge-case survivability numbers, at least do it without being so obvious. Neither of the tank stat allotments you mentioned is going to be able to survive 2 20k hits or 3 12k hits in a row, so why don't you completely abandon all mitigation and try for 36k hp? /sarc

TTK isn't an effective metric in TOR because the hits that could actually bury you within a few GCDs don't occur back to back as constant effects. They're either interspersed throughout the fight (such as 1 big hit every 30 seconds or what have you) or they occur during a well known and predictable burst damage phase (wherein you blow a CD and, guess what, you can eat that damage no problem). If you're dying to burst it's not because you needed a better stat distribution: it's because you did something you weren't supposed to and got killed for it, whether that be not standing in bad stuff or not blowing a CD when you were supposed to.

Stacking up to 30k hp isn't going to be useful in a fight unless you actually drop to the 1-3k hp range. Nothing in the game hits hard enough to do that unless you done screwed up, not to mention that building your stats around an arbitrary expectation that a consecutive series of unmitigated hits that deal sufficient damage to kill you within a comparative small margin of error is actually something of a self fulfilling prophecy (by increasing Endurance at the cost of defense and shield, you're increasing the likelihood of said events happening in the first place). By dropping absorb, you're simply expecting your healers to dump more healing into you for the rest of the fight, which also increases the chance of the edge case scenario when you shield a couple hits, but they still end up dealing enough damage to kill you.

The only time a tank should aim for more than 24-25k hp is if they are in a 16m raid, wherein 26-27k is more than enough (you take more damage, but also have more healers so reaction time is more important; you actually don't need more than 2-3k additional hp to provide a large enough reaction time cushion to provide your healers with all they need). Anything beyond that is wasted. If your healers are good enough, anything above 20k is generally redundant as well so you're already devoting nearly 25% of your hp to redundancy in case of an edge case scenario.

Going for more hp than I just recommended is like buying earthquake insurance for a house in Kansas: sure, it's *possible*, but it's so monumentally unlikely that you're ending up costing yourself more than you're getting out of it. First consider that, with 30% defense and 50% shield, you have a 65% chance of mitigating a given attack (.3 + (1-.3) * .5). To get to a 5% edge case (1 in 20% chance of happening; this is, from a scientific standpoint, the weakest acceptable statistically provable likelihood of not being wrong), it would take 7 (6.954, to be entirely accurate) consecutive unmitigated attacks to arrive at said edge case. Next, let's assume that your healer isn't an idiot and is providing at least some modicum of healing, and I'm defining modicum as "way less than you *should* be getting considering the gear levels we're talking about" at 1k hp/sec. To die from the 5% edge case, at 25k hp, with a standard swing rate of 1 attack every 1.5 seconds, you would need to take 5.1k damage from each hit *after damage reduction* (which, as a Guardian, should be roughly 50%, so you're really taking a series of 10.2k damage attacks consecutively). Nothing in game hits that hard on a continual basis *and that's assuming a very likely edge case*.

Stacking hp just doesn't have an appreciable effect on your survivability. It's stacked *purely* as an arbitrary and, comically enough, detractive (since you end up taking more damage and require more healing and make the edge cases you're supposedly building against more likely to occur) bit of e peen. Getting to 30k hp isn't going to make you a hardier tank. It's just going to make you *think* you are while, in reality, doing a worse job than the tank you look down upon who's packing on 24-25k but has *substantially* better mitigation.

Yeah, agreeing 100% with Kitru. When they actually introduce fights with mechanics that have you take that much damage in such a short time you may have a point, but that just isn't the case atm.

At the top end of the spectrum, the extra health is beneficial, especially if the mitigation numbers are already high (I have nothing good to say for tanks who stack things like accuracy). Yes, you need mitigation, but more health takes stress off of your healers.

 

Because there are always situations where your snipers are lounging in goo and your marauders are on fire ("Why are the marauders on fire again?") and time-to-kill is the most important metric for a tank. And you maximize time-to-kill by making intelligent choices about mitigation and high endurance. And that means stacking endurance once mitigation has gone asymptotic.

I play a healer as well as a tank, and if we have snipers lounging in goo or marauders in fire I'd much rather have a high mitigation tank so I don't have to spend as much time on healing him, leaving me more time to heal the DPS.

If you're doing 16 man ops, sure, go ahead and get like 27k just to get that extra time for your healers considering the extra damage coming in, but after that it's back to stacking mitigation.

EDIT: One caveat on that: Assassins/shadows can be excused for stacking more endurance since it actually improves their self heal and thus helps their mitigation too. Not really sure how much of it though.

EDIT: One caveat on that: Assassins/shadows can be excused for stacking more endurance since it actually improves their self heal and thus helps their mitigation too. Not really sure how much of it though.

If you're in full DG with full mitigation stacked up for you, the hp/sec gained from increasing your hp is roughly equal to the contributions from your mitigation stats, but slightly behind (and this is factoring in the difference in F/T and M/R attacks and damage weighted). Shadow can be excused for stacking hp a bit higher, but not by that much. A Shadow with 30k hp is only a little bit worse off than a Guardian than does so, which means they'd both be better served by upping their mitigation.

For 16m man ops and above stacking end to 29-30k-ish is the way to go. This is because you take, say 1.5x damage of 8 man but have 2x the heals so being able give healers time to get an extra heal off is more likely to save you than def or shield. Also, the largest hits you take are not dodgeable or shieldable (TFB's scream, Kephess' Mortars, Dreadtooth's Rock Toss).

 

For 8m you can/should go mitigation or I would argue, compromise between the 2 (most easily by switching to the high end mods and Dread Guard relics).

I strongly disagree.

if you are taking 1.5 times the damage and have 2x heals, you NEED TO STACK MORE MITIGATION.

The extra HP is only useful in avoiding 1shot hits. with 2 heals, you will always have a dedicated healer on you and the best service a tank can do to a healer is to mitigate more damage. The more damage you mitigate, the easier it is for the healer, unless you are getting 2 shot, which is very rare if you are a decent tank. There are no 2 simultanious hit that will eat 25k HP unless you are doing something wrong(scream+ smash from TFB. Breath+empowered slash from NiM EC etc)

Also,

If you sniper is sitting in goo and mara is on fire, then THEY need to change the tactics. Asking a Tank to stack end because your mara cannot get out of red circles in toth and zorn is /facepalm

I wouldn't say that mitigation is always better than endurance or vice versa. The only general advice I can give is that you should gear to your level of progression. Analyze the specific fight your guild is progressing on to see if it benefits mitigation or endurance. Fights that are on farm are of really no concern to be optimised.

There are beginning to be cases where 30k+ hp is very useful. For example, Kephess the Undying can chain a wrist laser (~9k) into a power punch (~13.5k unshielded) back to back. This is for an assassin on 16-HM. That's 22.5k damage in a length of time that healer cannot react to (of course they may have a heal queued up). That means Kephess can kill a 25k hp assassin tank at any time if they fall below 90% hp. I would argue that in this case endurance stacking is the way to go.

Another is Stormcaller on 16-NM. Your health is on a roller-coaster for pretty much the whole fight. Giving your healers an extra few seconds to land a heal is crucial. Or even to ignore you for a few seconds and heal others. I guess I will see what the nerf did to the damage output this week.

All I wanted to say is that it's important to think about which approach is best for your current situation.

What you are describing is situational.

The 2 hits from Kephess going in Unmitigated at a time you are under 90% health, without overcharge saber or medpack and the heals more than 2 secs away is a very very low prob, low enough that it will not happen more than once per kill imo.

yes endurance stacking is helpful, but never at the cost of mitigation. For example. The lazer hits me for 7.x k. My mitigation, reduced the damage by 2k, or adds 2k to my health everytime it gets mitigated as compared to when it does not.

I still believe 28k is the max if you are running a 16m group, and for 2m, 25.4k HP that I run with is ample. NiM EC kephess is the only thing that makes me want to add more end for bleed

What you are describing is situational.

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

I disagree with you guys who think I am wrong, thankfully there isn't a one single absolute way to do things and I can prove my success from my fights. I like that diversity.

And thankfully I see more and more 30k hp'd tanks in my server who have very good progression statistics so I know I am not in the wrong. I am not saying you are wrong either, if it works for you that way, be my guest.

I can also attest that there are many 30k tanks starting to show up in the progression guilds on NA - The Shadowlands (East Coast). This can't be a fluke or everyone gearing wrong. There is something to what Epeshia is saying.

I know also that there are more Healing Operatives starting to show up at a similar rate.

My thoughts: The instant burst heals from Heal Ops would suit the gearing of the 30k tanks infinitely better than the Sorc or Merc healing styles.

I can also attest that there are many 30k tanks starting to show up in the progression guilds on NA - The Shadowlands (East Coast). This can't be a fluke or everyone gearing wrong. There is something to what Epeshia is saying.

A lot of it comes from people referring to information on largely outdated or misinformed sites. I checked Noxxic for what they believed the best Shadow tank setup was and a lot of the advice there was at least 6 months out of date, considering what is known now about optimal gear setup, spec, and rotation. I've seen a lot of people use that as their baseline for performance and, sadly enough, they take it as canon rather than trying to determine what is optimal.

Just because someone uses and succeeds with a specific gear setup does not mean that it is optimal. Many of the tanks I see stacking loads of HP stack it completely arbitrarily. Most of them have no idea what the actual DR curves are, nor do they actually understand that DR exists on a curve rather than having an explicit soft cap chosen by some random person online without showing any math where you want to get to and then ignore from that point on.

Many of them that, ironically enough, come to me asking for advice, largely looking to be told they're doing it right. I've been told more than once by someone that thought that NPCs had crit chances and that TOR used a 1 roll system where sufficient shield and defense chance was needed to push crit off of the probability table that I have no idea what I'm talking about *after* they came to me asking what they needed to do to become a better tank. Many people do research at a single site, without actually bothering to understand the underlying mechanics of the game, and a lot of those sites that aren't these forums generally consist of a single person's math using often outdated/misinformed math or biased metrics (like TtK or eHP, neither of which is of particular use in TOR).

There will *always* be people using and succeeding with sub-optimal load outs and rotations because the gear doesn't *require* optimal gearing to succeed at the hardest content. It just requires "good enough", which, oftentimes, hp stacking *is* even if it's not optimal or even close to it.

Today I am fully 63 geared except earpiece, when stimmed and buffed I get 31.2k HP with 30% def 50% shield and 45% absorption. I have thought long and hard about whether to accept the 2.5k - 3k ish hp loss to get the remaining 5% absorption rating and I have decided it's just not worth the investment I will make, despite what Kitru claims (the one and only optimal way of gearing), HP stacking has it's own advantages and I believe getting that 5% more absorption will have it's own advantages. Sometimes one will be better than the other in different fights.

Remember that when you HP stack it makes up for some healing errors or it allows your healer to heal other people for a limited amount of time before returning to you, it allows for more leeway, sometimes that extra 3k hp will save you more than the extra 5% absorb and sometimes it's the other way around. Of course both ways, are viable to clear all the current content has to offer. Let's also not forget that Trooper buff gives you more hp, medpac gives you more hp (15% hp bonus), and Enure gives you more hp.

I appreciate Kitru's knowledgable input, my only disagreement is at the thought that there can be only a single best way to gear up, it's just not true.