Zintair
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Posts posted by Zintair
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The only abilities that the Shadow tank needs accuracy for is Saber Strike, Double Strike and Spinning Strike.
Running with max geared DPS if I were to use multiple spams of either Double Strike or Saber Strike when I am not force starved is going to guarantee me losing the aggro.
Accuracy?
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I won't pretend a hybrid isn't possible. I just think it limits the purpose of the class which is to self-heal as a form of DR.
Slow Time is just so nice. It's how I've saw and played the class since launch.
It is personal preference till the Devs stamp the hybrid out or the content becomes too difficult.
Sadly the content probably won't scale until Nightmare. Until then I dare say it doesn't matter because we haven't seen the hardest this game has to offer.
For someone who has done server first up until 1.4, I am more disappointed in lack of Nightmare content to really push everything to its limit. But alas another debate for another forum.
EDIT: Always open up with Force Pull. This is where I put the calc down and rely on what you know and feel in the instance. I have run with some impressive DPSers and our raid group has been Sentinels and Troopers/Sages so they have had the opportunity to yank aggro. When I open up with Force pull and then my rotation followed by Taunt they have never been able to pull aggro off me much to their ego shot.
My 2 cents
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The only fights that I could possibly affect Shadow Tank Resilience use are Toth and Zorn and Twin Tanks. For my guild, the tank swapping takes place pretty quickly and I actually tend to use Resilience on Toth's reticule phases sometimes as well, so I don't see that as a nerf. On Twin Tanks, the swapping happens very similarly, and I only have to use Resilience very rarely when I'm running back to tanks after a defensive systems. Either way, the only fights wherein it would be a potential "nerf" are fights where you have to tank swap between an m/r heavy boss (which would drop the CD hard and fast thanks to their attack rates) and an F/T *exclusive* boss. The reduction in CD is quite easily offset or ignored by the fact that you're vacillating between virtually no F/T and completely F/T. On Kephess and/or Vorgath, I see the changes on both of these fights as reasonable buffs (especially if you're ground tank during minesweeper and/or like to use Resilience to each eat reticules during Kephess) since those fights operates with primary m/r and occasional, very hard hitting F/T.
Whether the new tier of content follows suite with similar boss designs, we can't really know which might make some people reserve judgment. At worst, we'll still have Resilience on a 60 second CD on F/T fights and get a hefty chunk more Force during m/r fights. In my opinion, the fights are probably going to favor the changes to this a bit since I only see the developers tossing out F/T exclusive bosses when tank swaps are required because of all of the complaints most of us tank have posited about dealing with the bosses in the T1 Ops content that did so.
Considering how T and Z become MORE challenging the better your DPS (at least for tanks) I always recommend running out of the Berserker jump.
You have enough time to get some distance as the warning comes up and then enough time to get back into position so that the person can place the reticle.
Just my 2 cents
@OP - I'd like to agree Kit hahaha. Those of us who took the changes on the chin and still made Shadows look overpowered. This is definitely a nice little gem for PvP as well although toned down of course since people rarely run 31/0/10.
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What I know is that at the end of the day, on all 4 fights of HM EC, when factoring out a Sins self healing from the Total Healing taken, an Endurance Sin takes less healing from the healers.
Deeper health pool... less mitigation...
But your healers are going to heal you less? Even after you said they could keep up with the higher needs because its 16 man content and therefore easier, at least according to the DEVs because it requires more people organizational skills?
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Great thread and I really have nothing else to add except that I actually find Toth to be the easier of the two to tank on either Story or Hard mode, but I don't know if he hits a ton harder in 16 man. But then I'm very mitigation heavy atm (30% Defense, 62% Shield with KW, 55% Absorb) so I feel like alot of his attacks just kinda go away.
Yeah if you use your cooldowns properly and swap tanks on T and Z you can mitigate him to worthlessness on each most swaps. I pop my relic for Shield absorb when I swap over to Toth and when he leaps to go berserk I run outta the stomp range and then pop Deflection and LOL at his damage until we swap back to Zorn with Resilience ready.
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I stacked mitigation since I have been playing this game. I've always been a fan of the Endurance armorings with the heavy mitigation mods and enhancements. The reality is this.
I EZ moded HM EC when I was in Rakata. Sure maybe not my first attempt but once I was able to determine my guilds DPS patterns in conjunction with the bosses DPS mechanics (ie when Force/Tech attacks come) I was able to EZ mode the entire zone in a matter of a few attempts. But there are 7 other people in the raid and the entirety of our progression on server first was mechanical or DPS related.
The reality is we built our strategies around the powerful cooldowns of the Shadow.
Personally I don't think either camp is wrong. I do know what works for me and my play style. I see the Shadow as a Light Armor tank. Well a tank like that would I rather eat damage through HP and self heals or would I want to avoid the attack all together or have it cripple against a shield. Choicey wording I know but since the nerf I'm not sure the Endurance side has enough sway.
Have we done the math on .12 TKT heals, I forget what I was parsing it may have been in the 200HPS region pre-nerf.
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Added the new section for Augments. Going to be updating it progressively over the coming days.
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- EC. Encounters are symetrical with generous doses of High Impact Physical/Energy attacks. Here you will feel the nerf on armor. So you have to balance it by the extra Shield/Absorption Mitigation, particularly important on Kephess as due to the high mobility involved your regen windows are reduced and, specially on HM, he hits like a truck and most his attacks can be shielded from. Try to aim to something close to Defense (28-29%), Shield 50% and absorption... As much as you can (You have to try to reach a minimum of 50%+, with 55%+ prefered). You can let your HP pool around 25k (Enough to eat 2 unshielded hits of Kephess HM). Commendation BH gear will not help you much here if you are migrating from Rakata as it will nerf your Defense with a lot of Shield rating (Depends also on which Implants you may get your hands into... As the good ones are MK2+) so when migrating all your armorings to 61 do not loose sight of how enhancements will be overloading you with Shield Rating and get extra pieces to convert them back to absorption & defense (use mods also to assist you here).
I couldn't agree more here. Especially having the Campaign Shield and Absorb and the Campaign Passive Absorb is critical if you want to progress in HM EC and not get owned by Kephess in his last phases.
He hits HARD but cooldowns make him bearable if you time them properly.
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I haven't tanked, but shouldn't it be far better to go with extra mitigation? Larger health pool is nice but it is only a buffer for the damage that your healer(s) still needs to heal you through. If you have larger mitigation you simply aren't taking as much damage and it puts less strain on your healer(s).
This was in part proven in the case of Willpower vs Endurance a long time ago. However, these newer encounters feature bosses which do not operate on the Kinetic Energy damage table. They are purely internal or elemental Force/Tech Attacks. Shield/Defense/Absorb/Armor do nothing to these.
Shadow and Assassin have the highest in this form of mitigation also with Resilience cooldown which can be timed to make the Shadow >>> the other two tanks. I have no idea how you show this in metrics but an example would be.
EC HM 8man the content I raid server first and World 6th just for "context".
On StormCaller and Firebrand.
I start out on Firebrand. Easily able to mitigate through his damage with Kinetic Ward, my Campaign Shield and Absorb relic and a natural 28% chance to Defend (Parry/Dodge/Deflect).
Incinerate Armor Casts and we swap tanks. The Vanguard (our 2nd tank) charges over to Firebrand and I Force Speed onto StormCaller. I let the boss hit me once and then immediately pop Resilience right before the next "shock" or Stormcallers basic attacks hits. 5 seconds of 100% Resistance. Another 5 seconds of taking hits. Defensive systems starts.
I leap off the tank and begin kiting. I pop Deflection after the first missile lands on "offensive systems" during the Shield phase. It's basically LOL I kite without taking damage and may swing by my healers if needed usually not.
By the time kiting phase is over I'm getting into position and start tanking Storm Caller again. If I'm low health Resilience is back up to give my Healer time to catch up and heal me.
Rinse repeat. With Resolve 22 Augs I will also have higher Willpower to drop those adds in the Shield quicker. I'm over 400 bonus damage now not sure where everyone else is sitting.
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Funny you say that; my first instinct was to go with Resolve 22 all around for primary stat + endurance (mainly because I can make them, and I already have a nearly full set anyhow). But then I thought, you're not Infiltration any more, your primary stat is now Endurance, not Willpower. Does Willpower buff the "large amount of threat" generated by abilities like Force Breach and Slow Time; or is it solely for increasing threat created through raw DPS?
Threat through Raw DPS. But Willpower > Power
12 x 14 = 168 Endurance or Power
18 x 14 = 252 Willpower or Endurance
252-168 = 84 or 840 Health difference. I would rather add DPS and threat (in the form of Willpower which increases Crit as well)
I am still curious how a Surge Augment would hold up too. Between Particle Acceleration and Force Potency we have many opportunities throughout the fight to benefit from a High Crit multiplier.
I wish I had the chance to explore this option pre 1.3 because thinking back I could have made my Shadow a badboy for DPS as well as tanking. It certainly worked for PvP just look at all the poeple crying at Shadow Tank burst from Power and Surge.
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Since I first posted my thread, i've had more time to get use to my nerfed shadow tank. I've adapted a bit to help overcome the nerfing. I still feel the difference at the lost 1000 armor rating. I am full rakata with a BH mods in my gloves, chest, and legs. Too overcome the armor deficit i figured the best thing i could do was to increase my HP. Having augmented all my gear. My HP is now over 27,000 fully buffed with my rakata stim and trooper buff. Thanks about more 5000 more hp since i got nerfed on the release of 1.3. I was using resolve and fortiude stims. But after reading other post here, i may drop some of these resolve augs and put a few shield ones. My current shield absorption is only 38% it would nice to have that up to 50%
You want your shield at around 45% base so that it buffs well over the 60% mark with KW. Absorb as well around 50% to yield the highest potential mitigation based on the possible stats and gear that you could achieve.
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it has been conceeded by all that what shadows lack in mitigation they make up for in cooldown, self heals and health pools.
the arguments you make about threat and defense I consider to be largely moot in light of a) threat generation buff in 1.3 and b) that the squishiness etc. numbers posted take all this into account (even the buffs and debuffs)
As far as utility goes, yeah, the immune to everything for 5 seconds albility and the fact we can straight up cleanse ourselves and disappear is totally broken... prolly the two best abilities in the game.
The frsutration that I am trying to resonate with in this thread is twofold. one, as a new shadow tank I never got to play end game pre 1.3, which is good and bad. god because I never felt the nerf, and bad because i never got to be a competitive tank (according to the numbers I have been reading). two: my main is a sorc healer, so I know what a major nerf feels like, and healing shadow tanks is now a chore. I used to love being with shadow tanks, but now, even in FPz, they take way more damage and are just spikeier now. so much so that I would ather they not chain pull... which is the staple of an OP tank i think.
Well maybe at one point in time the Shadow was able to chain pull, definitely pre-1.3 but that only came after the buff to TKT to incorp a self heal component. The reality is the Shadow is not meant to tank like that. It's a finesse tank that requires the artful use of CC and it's cooldowns.
Our current mechanic make us the WEAKEST at mitigating AoE threat unless we use a cooldown. KW burns quickly and we suddenly become quite low in mitigation. However the Shadow has other methods to prevent damage including using CCs, Distancing themselves from mobs and having competent DPS that understand target priority.
Unfortunately other tanks may have it easier in FPs but I still feel we have the best 1 on 1 tanking ability taking EVERYTHING into account.
Would you rather be better at tanking FPs which constitute a small portion of the end game or Raiding which is THE REST of the endgame?
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I'm swapping to Resolve 22 Augments for this weeks HM EC clear and compare some numbers and see how it works.
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I went for Shield/Absorb and Defense Augments. With Resilience we have a way to mitigate for 5 seconds ALL damage in the form of tech which will not be mitigated by Shield and Defense.
Jarg hits with heavy Tech damage after Heatwave such as Flamethrower and that BH flying punch.
SoA is purely Force damage and the only real fight where Endurance IMO > Mitigation.
Zorn is purely Force but the way we down them I am able to use my cooldown every time I am able to swap back to him.
Stormcaller Tank is also purely Force damage but we again swap tanks so I am able to use my cooldown every interval for much smaller intervals making it VERY effective same as Zorn.
Those are really some of the bigger ones.
I remember back before Shadows had any channeled self-heals there was a long threaded debate over Endurance vs Willpower and I'm pretty sure most of the number crunchers sided with Willpower for improved DPS and threat.
Whether Endurance is better now seems much more difficult to tell but does it make sense that the lowest armor tank would want the highest HP (something a purely mitigation tank like the vanguard is would want?) or mitigation and avoidance, something that a lower armor tank would want?
Is 2520 HP worth the loss of 252 stat points in Shield/Defense and Absorb? Possibly personal preference.
I don't truly believe there is a right or wrong answer completely because my healers don't drop me so why do I need more Endurance other than to improve my self-heals.
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1. Other classes (and I would argue my fellow Shadows as well) have a very erroneous perception of the Shadow tank (balance/infiltration not so much). They largely believe the 1.3 adjustments are a crippling nerf but this is far from the truth. When you parse the numbers you see that 1) mitigation is comparable to the VG (the same kind of tank that we are) and 2) we have the best threat generation in the game. Though the other classes would not believe this. I would even go so far to suggest that we are the best tank spec in the game when you consider all factors (threat, mitigation, utility) but you would not believe this if you asked other classes (or those who have yet to run the numbers).
2. I believe Shadow tanks are in a really good spot right now. We are the #1 threat generators, and our survivability is in line with other tanks. I'd say we're in a perfect spot.
1. How do you think your Shadow spec is perceived by other classes?
With my very high mitigation numbers when the parser released it became obvious how powerful the Shadow tank was. Running the Shadow KC/Balance 31/0/10 with my guild showed them this and all will probably agree that the Shadow was the best tank pre-1.3
Post 1.3 I think everyone feels that the Shadow was nerfed but that the nerfs were either class breaking, which can be the vocal MINORITY. or necessary as I and a lot of others feel. I think most other tanks feel they are much more in line with the Shadow in terms of tanking.
2. How do you perceive your own spec?
I've played Kinetic Combat 31/0/10 since pre-release. Pre-1.3 we were definitely superior to the other tanks. I think the reductions made were fine and brought us in line with other tanks. The numbers are correct as Mavery above suggests. I still mitigate less damage than the other two but its the self-healing that really is the secret IMO. Damage Taken and Healing Done etc.
Mavery above was pretty much spot on in his assessment IMO. My only concern for the Shadow Tank at the moment is the mechanics of Kinetic Ward vs large packs of strong mobs. Our stacks get burned within a global cooldown and we are forced at times to use a cooldown. Understandable it seems but I'm curious how the metrics compare to my in game experiences. I raid Server First progression and maintain the guide on the Shadow forums. Like I said I don't mind the nerfs I think they were in line to balance the three tanks.
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Is Bioware ever going to release content faster than fiscal quarters in the year?
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Seems like a really nice build.
How is the Force Management and survivability of the spec? I know it's for Rated warzones just seems extremely squishy if you get caught in the open and they recognize it. I feel like a Powertech hard switching to this build would drop it in seconds.
I also wish I didn't buy all the Survivor gear sets making my Shadow totally worthless.
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This is what the scrubs on the PVP forums wanted. Shadows and Scoundrels//Assassins and Operatives to be garbage. And now they are.
PvP in this game is a joke though. I stopped right before 1.2 and haven't looked back. Probably why I am still playing the game.
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Augment Kits and Augments are going to be updated shortly.
I will be keeping a special section for them. I could use the help of some knowledgeable Infiltration and Balance Shadows to figure out the proper Augments for DPS.
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For Infilitration spec in PVE OPs/FPS, which relics should I be looking to use, I am currently using the Matrix cube and the Campaign relic of boundless ages.
Are those good or should I be looking at one of the proc Campaign relics?
You probably want the activated Campaign Power Relic and the Proc Internal or Elemental Damage Relic.
I believe the numbers were already "napkin math'd" out and if I recall correctly the Proc Passive relic comes out being higher at least in PVE.
So if your Crit and Surge is where you want it to be then I would take the Campaign Power Relic and the Passive Internal or Elemental damage one.
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I absolute hate my Shadow Tank in PVP. I'm so upset that the Guardian became the premiere Tanky tanky with all their utility. I don;t even play my Shadow in PVP anymore. Although I don;t even PvP anymore at 50 because it's so broken. One thing is a fact, Bioware has no concept of what PvP should be like.
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Yes it's broken.
2 its been known for quite some time and has been in my Guide for quite some time.
Bioware has about a 40% idea of what they are doing. They release content at a snails pace and it is usally riddled with bugs.
We were supposed to have Grey Alignment and all of these amazing customization options yet this is literally the LEAST customizable MMO and there has never been grey alignment or talk about it.
These are just things I can remember off the top of my head.
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The OP has been updated for information regarding 1.3
The skill trees have also been updated post the Torhead update which was causing the links to not function properly. Fixed a couple last spelling errors.
Please Sticky again! No reason it should have been unstickied!
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Hey,
It's in the "PvP Tank with DPS Gearing" section of KC -> Gearing
"I do not recommend equipping a Shield Generator in PvP; you'll be better off with a Power Generator."
(just above "PvP Tank High Protection Playstyle" )
Thank you!
Also this will be updated today with 1.3 information
Dynamite[R] looking for tank
in Guild Recruitment
Posted
Hey!
Just posted my app but wanted to pop in here to say hello!
Joriana - Jedi Guardian Tank