I would like to thank all contributors for their opinions and facts they have shared in this thread. I might agree with something said, also disagree with certain points. Nevertheless, it has been an enlighting series of posts which I am grateful for. I wish you all happy gaming

This is entirely correct. My mistake forgetting about the initial healing needed to initiate the proc. Thank you for correcting me. I can see the math, but it is based on analysis of average numbers and absolutely does not reflect critical points/mechanics of various fights. Again, theory based on average numbers is irrelevant. It can be enough for you, I call it simplifying the actual reality. I just don't accept this terminology, no matter how widely it is used. But that does not matter much. I still pursue the quest to get my actual mitigation (that means defense rating, passive damage reduction, shield chance and absorption in my terminology) as close to Vanguards and Guardians as possible. I treat healing as an extra mechanic shadow has to close the gap between our damage taken and other tanks' damage taken. Saying we take more damage, we will just accept it and heal through it by getting a healing relic is not how it works in the real situations. Because at the end of the day, you don't make life easier for healers, you just get slightly higher HPS in the final analysis which tells you nothing about its actual impact on the whole fight. Again, if it is enough for you, fine by me. Just don't try to persuade me with such a shallow approach.

No. I am saying the amount of additional self-heal you gain via heal relic is negligible and cannot be relied on. It doesn't mean healers can heal you less. They will still use the exact same abilities which result into overheal done by them or your self-heal. I have reached the point now where I simply don't believe there are ultimately 2 particular BiS relics for every possible circumstance. You were referring to DtPS and HPS. But the reality is single hits are usually coming in certain time frames providing 1-4 second pauses of no damage taken. Healers also don't heal you via flowing heals all the time (except for abilitites such as Healing Trance or Kolto Cloud) but also either 3 sec ticking HoT or 1.5-3 second cast heal. So DtPS and HPS is fine to get an idea of what is happening overall but is not entirely real. For example, in TFB the last boss: your average DtPS after the fight would be 1000 (made up number), yet, you are not tanking the boss in the second phase for like 30-45 seconds. So, there is a time where your DtPS is let's say 2000 for 45 seconds and then 0 for another 45 seconds. How does the self-heal or HPS fit into that? Same for Kephess tank switch or Kephess the Undying second phase etc etc. To comment on the 'doing something wrong'.. Almost every fight provides periods of time (longer or shorter) where you effectively don't tank (EC NiM: Sonic Paralysis, tanking Zorn while he does Baradium Toss, Defensive Systems on TT, Shield phase on Firebrand side, Vorgath field clicker, Probe tank when probe is not active, Kephess in between phases, when the other tank tanks the Bomber etc etc). Again, DtPS and HPS does not give you answer to anything in terms of certain parts of the fight. Consider Sage HPS, the amount of HPS they get via Salvation. Very relevant huh Healers can't control this effectively. They can crit + there is some RNG to healing numbers as well based on the min and max possible. This is just a funny thing to me. So, what you're saying is that the HPS you provide yourself is mitigation? That's new terminology to me, but ok. Another thing. The self healing you do should make up for the additional damage you take because of lower armor rating. In ideal world maybe of course, but according to various logs of various people, it pretty much reflects this basic idea (factors such as having a competent player squeezing the most of their tank take place here and are very variable again). Let me ask you one thing. The healing proc relic doesn't provide any additional benefit to a Shadow tank. So you consider it as BiS for every single tanking class? This is just your statement based on your perception and it is incorrect. I am fairly aware of all the attack types of all the bosses and know it plays a huge role in learning how to tank different content effectively. Actually, this is the most important thing for a Shadow tank considering the nature of our cooldowns I have never mathematically proved WH passive relic is BiS and never even tried to. Neither have you proven that heal proc relic is BiS - mathematically.

This isn't correct, because this math is based on theoretical assumptions which are not ultimately correct and vary each fight. The numbers simply differ all the time to some extent. Saying you need slightly less external healing while you take slightly more damage is just ill thinking when you are a tank. If I exaggerate, you could extend this thought into saying one of the healers can dps every 5th ability they cast instead of healing, because the tank heals himself enough. Why would you try to do something other player is supposed to when the outcome will be just overhealing at certain points? Or are you trying to tell me that DG geared healers rely on you doing 25 more hps otherwise they would not keep you alive? Not to mention that these small chunks of heals are coming at irrelevant points and do not solve spikes. It is just a bonus which looks good on the final summary. By the way, how much of the final self-healing is actually overhealing? It may as well proc when you get topped to 100% and it is just absolutely wasted proc. This is not included in your calculations. You might be surprised how bad the relic turns out to be when you discover half of those procs are never any actual healing. Again, all I'm saying is that you try to prove something based on hard facts, but the hard facts are not correct. Each log is different, procs are random and you can't simply say this is how it stands. PS: When you mention Kephess, I want to see the difference between damage mitigated by parrying Trandoshan attacks and the self-healing done without the passive defense boost. What if you don't have any hard AoE stun? What if they (don't) miss because of gunslingers debuff? Too many random things absolutely screwing all the ideal theory based on numbers.

Atm, I'm using DG absorb proc relic and WH passive defense (don't pvp much to get EWH). I disagree with the heal proc relic for tanking though. I'm out there to mitigate, not heal myself. Had various discussions on this topic and I have never been convinced by anyone that the healing proc is better than approximately 2% of defense rating. It is the critical time when you drop low on hp, pop Deflection and you absolutely need to parry. 78% vs 80% can make the difference. And at that point, it could be dying vs healing myself for 500. Plus, the amount of overhealing healers provide pretty much counters any need for extra self-healing done by tanks - methinks. You would need to do like 30 parses on all the bosses out there to at least slightly counter the RNG of actually getting the shield proc, defense proc - considering different mechanics for each boss, use of cds at the proper time, damage done by the dps (longer time equals more dmg taken etc etc). The damage I take - from the same boss, with the same ops group, using the same cd rotation at the same specific times - sometimes differs even by 40k. I believe one can't simply say they get better results with such or such when there are so many relevant factors in play - some of which we can't even affect ourselves as tanks. Your response is much appreciated, Kitru. And don't get me wrong: Saying you can't easily give me a proof that heal proc relic is BiS, I can't easily prove it isn't. I'm always open for further discussion

Greetings everyone. Two months ago, I have decided to start a blog about shadow tanking since I was quite frustrated by the lack of relevant information regarding this tanking class in PvE. http://squishyshadowtank.blogspot.cz/ It is a mixture of guide, random information and my personal opinions and experience. I will leave it up to you if it is worth reading or not. Any comments and insights are, of course, always welcome. Take care everyone

I know this must have been posted multiple times but I believe this to be an important thing! As many people have already stated at some point, the world feels dead since there are no weather changes - rain, storm, day/night. At least the day/night thing should be implemented because otherwise it's just weird I don't think it is that difficult to have that in an mmo and it will improve the game a lot, in my opinion. I would like to see twin suns on Tatooine, the desert during the night, snowing/blizzard on Hoth/Ilum..etc

good point there I definitely am grateful to BW for their effort, some steps just doesn't seem to be the best resolution.. ppl who have around 1-2 hours per day to play basically won't play for few days now, which is sad

I think there should either be a quick resolution or free transfer allowed... To speak for myself, I will surely cancel my subscription if this problem persists for few more weeks. No reason to pay for queues.

No, seriously. The problem is.. They allowed plenty of peeps to play before the official launch - good. They stuffed them all into few servers - not good. They allow even more ppl to come into already full servers - sad, very sad! So those, who were allowed to play early are basically not allowed to play now.. Not everyone can afford to wait 1+ hour to get into the game.. Seriously, think ppl, especially those, who think it is not a problem.

I second that. This is a serious problem and BioWare needs to do something about that! ONE BIG NEGATIVE