One suggestion, change the format from 3 questions and 3 responses to actual discourse. I think there's a big difference between Rep: There's an issue with shadow tanks.. Dev: our metrics say otherwise And Rep: There's an issue with shadow tank. Dev: our metrics say otherwise Rep: Shadow tanks are experiencing something different Dev: What are they experiencing? .... I think an actual discourse would require more but would also be more useful for both parties. Give them a stickied thread to discuss the issues, just devs and rep, it would let the devs express their standpoint without being mobbed by the foaming-at-the-mouth populace that is gamers.

If I'm understanding this correctly, it's effectively a DR/armor buff being called a different name (especially if it's scaling with hit size). I very much agree with your determination of the problem, but it sounds like a complicated way to buff DR.

I really don't PvP much anymore, so I can't say much in that regard. As for PvE, inferior and unusable are different. In end game content, they do alright but there are better. For shadow tanks, damage tends to come in large spikes so healers need to be attentive to the tank's health. There are some issues in NiM with such heavy damage spikes that it requires the healer to perform near perfectly to keep the tank alive and there is a lot less room for error in general with a shadow. When compared to a guardian or vanguard, there aren't the same tight tolerances for healer performance. I've spent a lot of time lately healing with the current state of shadows and I really kinda hate the guardian gameplay, but from what I've experienced in healing, there just has to be more healer attention given to a shadow tank to account for the short reaction time allowed with shadows, guardians and vanguards don't require the same attention. As for dps, shadows are coming in lower on parsers than other dps classes. That's not to say that you can't clear content with them, but they aren't putting out the same numbers. And there are little utility things you get with a shadow, but at the end of the day, dps is there to kill things.

There's a quote I heard attributed to Einstein regarding modeling any situation "The model should be as simple as it can be, but no simpler". Saying that "roll this many time and this many strings in a row = death" is too simple a model, sorry. You're oversimplifying the model, which means you don't have justification for what you're saying (don't worry,devs have been doing the same thing). And even according to your over simplified model, you're still slated to have uncontrollable tank death once every boss fight when using a shadow (and the claim of "use your cd" neglected that cd's are used to preemptively, not reactively). Other tanks don't have to deal with random deaths, so even the bad models still show that the system is broken.

I do have the rez ability on one of my side bars so I can target from the raid frame and hit the ability as opposed to having to click on their corpse. Otherwise, yeah, stealth rez can be kind of tricky.

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure what the scalar multiplier is for threat drop, but after a quick Back of the Envelope calculation (arbitrarily used 0.9 for multiplier, for some reason my head is telling me that's the number), yeah, even burning both taunts I would still end up relying on the forced aggro of the taunt to keep something on me. I guess I'll just have to get decent gear or a healer that isn't in the same boat. Thanks again.

I don't think shadows are so bad that they can't be run, but they are at a disadvantage under certain situations. Shadows have lower base damage reduction than the other two tanks but good shield based mitigation and the self heal, we also have some really solid cds. (For low level shadow tanks, before you get any mitgation stats things can be difficult too). This means for moderate amounts of damage over long time scales, shadows do very well (don't take a lot of damage and self healing recovers a decent amount). If you properly use your def cds, you can prevent/ reduce a lot of damage. The problems come in the current design of end game content. To make content challenging there are many encounters with high levels of damage coming very quickly. With so much of shadow's damage mitgation tied up in the shield roll, if a tank hit a bad streak of luck (3-4 big hits without shielding anything) then they're dead really quickly. There are also some big single hit attacks that will do the same thing. This falls on the healers to keep the tank and full health and be ready in case the tank has a streak of bad luck so as not to lose the tank. In comparison to the other tank classes where they have higher damage reduction from armor rating, they would require more healing with a moderate incoming damage profile, but they take bad luck and bursts a lot better than shadows do. This gives more room for error for the healers. From what I understand, shadows can do the end game content, but it requires a better healer and gives them less room for mistakes than the other tank classes. Gear and skill being equal for a shadow and another tank, a healer will have an easier time with the other tank (unless you're over geared). And there's a good chance Kitru or KBN will comment (if they haven't during while I'm writing), they will probably give a better run down that I did.

So I finished leveling my guardian for tanking purposes (RIP Chapulin, may a shadow fix come soon). Being woefully undergeared (largely 58 from planetary comms), I'm still coming across some issues with survival and some with threat. One trick I've been trying lately is popping focused defense followed closely by a taunt (aoe for trash). I guess the question is, I know the threat loss is bad but is it going to be prohibitive as I get further along? It's not something I would ever consider using without a taunt, but I'm curious if even with the taunt if it's just a bad idea. Thoughts?

I tank lvl 55 content on my shadow and I frequently heal my buddy on his shadow. Like Kitru said, the problem right now is how spiky our damage profiles are and what that means for a healer. When I've healed my buddy, I have literally been able to stop healing the guy on some fp bosses. There are also time where I'm putting out all the healing I can because he's just lost 50+% of his hp in a matter of seconds. The net healing requirement is mathematically lower, but the problem is that you can't predict when that will happen, so you always have to be vigilant with heals on the shadow. When you're healing a VG or a guardian, it's a different story. Their incoming damage profile is much smoother, so they rarely take a huge damage spike, and when they do it's not most of their hp and their not going to die unless they have heals now. So yes, we do require less external healing in easy situations, but in more difficult content, healers have to keep us topped off which largely negates any advantage we would have had. And healing decent guardians and VG is just easier in current end game content.

Regarding the pre-HoTing discussion. First of all, I agree there are general rules for MMOs, but the thing about general rules is, they're general and case specific rules always trump general rules when applicable. EQ is not WoW is not SWTOR. That being said, there are also varying circumstances which have to be considered. I run my shadow tank with a scoundrel healer friend of mine. Shadows take a nasty amount of alpha strike damage on trash pulls, so the healer needs to get as much healing going for those first GCDs as he can, those HoTs are important for heals and UH. If a guardian is running with a sage, then pre-hots would be silly, not nearly the same alpha strike and sages heal differently. And from my experience, a good tank can usually generate enough threat to get the aggro back off of the healer with their AoE attacks. Most dps are more of an aggro liability than a little pre-HoT.

So there are certain situations where shadows really do shine and others where they fall very flat. A buddy and I have been running my commando healer alt with his shadow tank, we made it to the council fight in Mando Raiders before I had to use anything beyond hammershot (he went below 50% maybe twice) and there have also been fights where I can stop healing him altogether and we're both in mostly Black Market gear. Shadow do really well under certain conditions, under others (serious end game content), they come up fairly short.

So, as I read through all the posts, I'm becoming more and more convinced the best solution is up DR from armor, nerf self heals. Making that change reduces the skill requirement for shadows, so I think it's fair to increase our required external healing, but it seems to me like one of the few effective solutions that should be fairly easy to change in the code (changing a few values). There are a lot of more elegant ideas out there that would make for more interesting mechanics, but it would take a long while to write the code and another year to debug it after it went live. My $0.02.

I would say his logic is "Not announcing new content in a forum prime for publishers to announce content = maybe no new content to announce?". Sound logic? Maybe not. But I also think there are a lot of other factors, not mentioned, that would lead one to believe that this may be the case.

I once made it an entire no plant voidstar without healing someone just because I don't like the guy. I used to save my "dirty kick" for Threid when I would go up against an ASB premade. I once put myself further in the corner than I felt was proper in NC because someone had just corner capped us.

I'm one of those who flame at Arroca for corner capping. I don't think I've seen him/her (character is female, assume player is a guy based on demography) make a cap without exploiting. Yes, Arroca. You're cool. You do things that bother people. Congratulations.

It doesn't bother me that EA/BW isn't saying anything at E3, it's that they're trying to make CM market packs into content. Yes, they're spending time giving things a new look, fine, but that doesn't forward the game at all, it doesn't improve it at all. There are still a lot of bugs that need to be addressed, there are exploits that they don't seem to care about fixing. It's like they're just trying distract us from some more outstanding problems. Shoot, I don't mind the fluff, as long as there's more, but I'm losing faith we'll ever getting anything more.

I wouldn't worry much about no content announcements if they didn't put so much hype on releasing fluff. I don't see CM content as substantive content, it's more about getting people to spend money, not having a healthy game. Couple that with EA/BW's attitude toward things like player feedback and bug fixes does make me concerned about the game ever really getting any substantive love.

I'm all for large scale free flight space PvP. Add guild capital ships with a set number of support fighters. Guildies can pilot fighters, operate turrets, command from bridge (a la Battlefield 2142), etc. Then put it over a planet with a resource to motivate guilds to fight over it (access to an operation, surface access for mats collection, etc.) That's all probably wishful thinking and more than the game engine can handle, but I think it would be pretty sweet.

I think the one place we fundamentally disagree is on the problem with damage spikes. I'm of the opinion that the problem isn't huge damage spikes, but that there is such a huge propensity for RNG based death. I think the solution is more one of finding a way reduce the occurrence of uncontrollable death. That being said, I think you're right in that an extra life type mechanic may be a bad approach and would awful for PvP balance. And an on use ability wouldn't really be much of a solution either, it just wouldn't get the job done. What about just tuning the base armor levels and self heals? I don't imagine it would be very hard to balance the two values.

Yeah, I was referring the construct involving stack maintenance. Mostly another reason I didn't think it was a solution to the identified problems. In my mind I saw it coming into play any time your hp dropped below a certain point but it also preventing death. So, if you're at 50% and take a terminal hit, proc goes off in the interim, procs the cd and you're still alive, but in 5-10 seconds that hp is gone (kind of similar mechanistically to the dot bubble idea, but using less new code). I suspect the trick in the coding would be in interrupting the kill. Then again, I usually take a good second or two between running out of hp and actually being dead, so maybe they can utilize some of that delay time...

A few thoughts. First, adding a mitigation proc with a controllable mitigation effect doesn't do much to solve the issue of alpha strike damage unless it's being carried over from the previous fight (unless there was an out of combat generation mechanism). Secondly, I know the thread is about reducing shadow spikiness, but are you looking at the right problem? Yes, spikiness makes a healer's life more difficult, but we also also do require less overall healing than other tank classes. The problem really comes in taking such large hits that there isn't enough time to recover. I like the idea of a self heal that procs when we hit a certain point, or to build upon that idea, an auto proc with an effect like enure. Give us a stack of health to buy the healers some time, but leave the total damage value the same.

Yeah, I'll take those three bets at 100K a pop, but I'm gonna cap it there before I'm pocket healing for stim creds.

I'm willing to wager 100K cred (I'm kinda poor) this thread is derailed and deleted within a week. Any takers? (And for the sake of fairness, I'm not going to instigate any activity to get it deleted).

This seems like a worthwhile endeavor. Characters: Moco (scoundrel), Chapulin (shadow), Azucena (vanguard), Cagafuego (commando), Anolya (sorc) Guild: Eternal Guardians / Dark Covenant Position: Officer (Raid, help with one, co-lead another) Allegiance: Republic (I have an imp that collects dust) Mottos: "My awesomeness is only limited by the mediocrity of others." "I may not be very good, but at least I'm pretty." Enjoyment: Our guild is just an enjoyable group of people. It's good to run flashpoints, ops and other dailies with guildies. I also frequent PUG PvP quite a bit and love a marauder or two in my face. I tank ops on my shadow and heal PvP on my scoundrel and break out my troopers every once in a while when needed. Where to find me: I'm usually around on fleet early evening (5-11 PM PST) when I'm on or in a PUG. I don't venture out onto planets very often unless something I'm doing calls for it. Skills: nunchuk skills, bo staff skills, computer hacking skills. Also decent at PvE. Scoundrel healers are too OP for me to be able to chalk that up to skill though. Scamper and HoTs FTW!!!

So, how well would a buff to mental fortitude solve the issue of spikiness? It sounds like the main issue isn't that we get hit with damage spikes, but that they're so large we can't survive. If mental fortitude provided a rather healthy endurance buff (double or triple what it is now), our self heal really doesn't go up *that* much but it would help reduce the problem with damage spikes (alpha strike damage would still be a problem, but healers would get a little more response time). I think it would need to include something to mitigate the advantage in PvP for balance's sake (I'm thinking expertise reduction with endurance buff to compensate for the higher HP), but it should make for a reasonable solution without greatly diminishing the fundamentals of shadow tanks, being higher overall mitigation but spikier.