You know how those other games you've tanked in (most likely) had classes that were referred to as "avoidance tanks"? Often the word "tank" would be in irony quotes, and or nasty things are being said about them. A so-called "avoidance tank" is a tank that takes its damage reduction by avoiding some hits entirely. This is opposed to your traditional "mitigation" tank, who gets his damage reduction by only taking a reduced amount of damage each hit. On paper it might look like you can make both types equally effective. The problem is that the mitigation approach reduces a nice reliable amount of damage every hit, while the avoidance method is hair-raisingly erratic. If you avoid 60% of all hits, then for any two hits in a row, there's a 25% chance you'll take full damage from both. The 60% pure mitigation tank would instead have taken only 40% damage from those two attacks, no matter what. To be fair, there's also a chance that the avoidance tank will take no damage. But there are some fights where a boss may do more than a tank's entire HP pool in 2 hits. So, in a fight where a tank death means a wipe, and the boss may hit that "hard hit" mechanic twice in the fight, which type of tank would you rather have: The one who will come through those two hard hits with a bit under 40% of his heath intact (before heals), or the one who has a 25% chance of dying every time? Now shadow tanks aren't pure "avoidance tanks", but they do rely more on avoidance. The other two tanking classes have more damage reduction than shadow tanks do. So rather than just say they are "avoidance tanks", which they aren't quite, we say they are "spiky".

While I entirely sympathize with the desire to vent our collective spleen, I don't much see the use in it. Not when there are clearly actual unanswered questions. I'd much rather see a question be something along the lines of, "Are you aware of all the voluminous research that has been done by the community at (insert URL here), and if so, why was it not heeded?" After that, perhaps a sentence or two of spleen-venting could be added (if it isn't too distracting), but I'd really like to see that question answered. As for Devs playing Shadows, I don't see that as a panacea. If anything, it might make our point better if they instead all do a stint as healers for random FP's and Ops. When they aren't disappointed to have pulled a shadow tank to heal, then their job is done.

... where X is at least enough to knock the hardest two lucky hits in a row from any boss down to less HP than a fully-geared tank would sport. Anything less that that, and survival is just a matter of luck. I might as well be playing Chutes-and-Ladders.

Ah yes, that's almost certainly it. Which means that something simple like double-strike or project could even hit 3 times, for 15K damage to me. That explains a lot.

Ah yes. I'll go back and fix that. OK, I can try that. Are you sure the two are tied? Eventually (after about the 10th wipe last night) I got into a rhythm where I could predict very roughly when the jump was imminent, but that was entirely based on the DPS others were putting out. With a different group the timing would probably not be the same. Still, the solution I eventually hit on was just not attacking with anything other than force breach, and slow time after the first half of the DPS cycle on him, for safety's sake.

I've tried tanking EC on my shadow a couple of times now, and frankly I'm finding the mechanic on Zorn completely unreasonable. What it looks like happens is that with no apparent warning (other than the rough health level of the mob I'm tanking), Toth does the jump, I get the debuff, and I die all pretty much simultaneously. After about the 5th instadeath, I did manage to figure out that just spamming skills on Zorn is Bad. If I do that, I'll often see the switch happening in the middle of an attack, but be powerless to stop the next attack I already have queued up. Bam! ... instadeath. OK. So no more spamming skills on Zorn. Slow and deliberate. But it doesn't really help much. You see, as a shadow here's my typical skill menu: Double-Strike (2 hits over about a 1s animation) Project (1 or 2 hits over about 0.5s) Saber Strike (3 hits over 1.5s) Force breach (1 hit at about 0.5s. 15s cooldown) TK Throw (5 hits over 3 seconds) Slow Time (2 hits over 1s. Why 2? beats me.) Notice anything interesting? I only have 1 skill in there that does only a single hit. The instant I get debuffed, I take a bit under 5K damage for each hit, of course. I also only have one skill (fortunately the same one) that doesn't give Zorn an entire second to debuf me after I initiate it. That's also the only skill that doesn't inflict the big hurt on me multiple times if it happens. So I can stop attacking the instant the jump happens, and I'm still quite likely to die. I had at least one death where I was watching Toth closely, but he jumped while my finger was going down on an attack. Zap, dead. So the only way I've found to deal with Zorn is, after the first few seconds, just stand there like a punching bag. If I'm feeling lucky I can put on a force breach every 15s. This mechanic is so completely unreasonable that I'm thinking I must be doing something way wrong. How do other shadow/assassin tanks deal with this?

Can we please get an update regarding the status of pre-release promised content of same-gender romances and/or flirts?