Play a mage. your rotation is arcane blast, arcane blast, arcane blast, and even with stacked haste, your still sitting still for 1 second or more.

almost every other MMO i've played had you rooted to use abilties... So i'm not sure what exactly the issue is..

If BR still boosts the healing values by 300%, and increases the chance for it to proc by 33% (3 seconds compared to 4.5 seconds) then its a pretty massive buff. Especially if CT scales properly, and will amount to more then 49hp a proc at level 50 (im thinking something like 200hp/proc would be best)

Let figure out if your 8hp/second is a viable estimate, as i know how you got that number, but i want to see if its actually viable. 4.3k incoming DPS via boss damage, 25% defense, 50% shield block for 30% absorb, 40% Innate kinetic/energy damage reduction via armor, and 21% innate Internal/Elemental damage reduction via buffs/talents. with 16k hp, CT provides 38hp/second. TK Thrust provides 64hp/second, and BR provides 13.33hp/second, for a total of 115.33 hp/second healing base. with 18k hp CT provides 38hp/second. TK Thrust provides 72hhp/second, and BR provides 15hp/second, for a total of 125hp/second healing base. Now, a good safe assumption is 50/50 damage split on range/melee damage, and 75/25 split on Kinetic/energy:internal/elemental damage, so lets break down the 4300 DPS. 2150 melee/range damage 2150 * .75(defense chance) * .85(block chance) = 1370.63 damage after defense and block 1370.63 * .75(kinetic/energy) = 1027.97 1027.97 * .6(kinetic/energy resistance) = 616.78 total Kinetic/energy damage 1370.63 * .25(internal/elemental) = 342.66 342.66 * .79(internal/elemental resistance) = 270.70 total kinetic/energy damage 2150 Force/tech damage 2150 * .98(resistance chance) = 2107 after force/tech resistance 2107 * .75(kinetic/energy) = 1580.25 1580.25 * .6(kinetic/energy resistance) = 948.15 total kinetic/energy damage 2107 * .25(internal/elemental) = 526.75 526.75 * .79(internal/elemental resistance) = 416.13 total interal/elemental damage Total damage after factoring in defense/innate resistance mitigation = 2251.76 DPS So using the 16k hitpoints your time until death would be (16,000 / (2251.76 - 115.33)) or about 7.49 seconds. Using 18k hit points, your time until death would be (18,000 / (2251.76 - 125)) or about 8.46 seconds. Increasing your endurance by 200, adds nearly 1 whole second unto your lifespan after you factor in other mitigation values. .97 second increase in life span translates into a 11.4% increase in life expectancy. Now, unless that 26.7DPS increase from 200 willpower is going to increase your overall DPS by 11.4% or lower the entire fights duration by 11.4% i really think the 200 endurance is the better bang for the buck, regardless if you think 'time until death' is a good metric, as adding nearly a full second to a healers reaction time is really the best option. Its actually closer to a full 10hp/second increase, vs 26.7DPS, but you have to think of it in percentages. You can see that 10hp/second amounts to nearly a 11.4% increase in lifespan, and unless your doing 234.21 or less DPS then the 26.7DPS increase isn't going to benefit you as much. If the boss has 1 million HP, and you increase your overall DPS by 26.7 it would depend entirely on how much DPS you did before. Assuming 1 million HP, and a fight duration of 5 minutes, that means that your party combined did 3,333.33DPS. adding 26.7DPS would be an .008%. While the difference would be extremely minor either way, looking at the amount of DPS 200 willpower gives you (26.7) vs the amount of mitigation 200 endurance gives you (10hp/second, and 11.4% increase on your lifespan) its pretty plain to see which is going to benefit you more in the long run.

So, the only situations where tank survivability is an issue are those where DPS values are that high, yet you go on to say that DPS values are not that high in flash point and raid content. Pretty sure its one or the other. And as a healer, and as a tank, I'd much rather have 10 seconds to react to incoming damage knowing my tank can survive that long by himself, then having 5 seconds to react to incoming damage. Your metric then isn't time until death (0 hit points) its time until 10% health, giving you enough time to actually save your tank. Your argument is then that extending that 'time until 10% health' metric is again useless because the healer should have enough time to react, regardless of how much time they actually have. If one tank goes from 100% hp to 10% in 2 seconds, your healer has 2 seconds to respond. If a different tank goes from 100% hp to 10% hp in 4 seconds, your healer has 4 seconds to respond, or double the first tanks time. Is that more or less your argument? In a flashpoint a healer has to worry about 4 different players (tank, 2 DPS, and themselves) if any of those 4 players go below your measurement of healing, then the healer has to react. If a massive AoE knocks the tank, and a melee DPS down to 20% hp, who do you heal first? The tank with innate resistance that could survive another 4 seconds by themselves, or the squishier melee DPS that can't survive one more hit? Its actually NOT that rare at all a situation. Things happen, and you only have so much time to react to them. Can you honestly tell me that every single raid you've been on, in every different game you've played that every single time there was a tank, and a healer that the tank got over 90% of the incoming healing? Because I've never seen that. 70%? yes, majority? Definitely. 90%? No. I only used 2 minutes as a means of time to better show the incoming self healing. If a fight lasts 10 minutes, and the boss's DPS is 2,000, wouldn't it make sense for the tank to take advantage of his self healing abilities to make the healers life easier? Especially if slotting for willpower gives a very minor boost in DPS? So, your saying that healers heal 1200% of a tanks hit points every 30 seconds (as 1% of 1200 is 12, and shadow tanks heal 12% every 30 seconds) meaning with 20k hp, your healer is doing 24,000,000 hit points over 30 seconds, or 400,000hp/second. I highly HIGHLY doubt those numbers to be correct. Let me be frank with you. Healer's heals are not Percentile based. They heal a flat amount, and hope that flat amount is enough to overcome the incoming DPS. Shadow tanks self healing, ARE percentile based. It doesn't matter what your incoming DPS in, your able to heal yourself for 12% of your max hp every 30 seconds, and another 10% of your max HP every 2 minutes. And heck, you could push the 12% heal to every 18 seconds, granted you'd burn yourself out of force faster then anything else you do, but it is entirely possible. Trash mobs are in flashpoints and Ops. Resources are limited. Time is also limited. If your tank can clear 3 groups of trash without needing a single heal, then you've just boosted your time until completion by a very large amount. Or heck, what if the healer gets stunned? or knocked on his butt? Resilience gives you immunity to any force/tech powers for 5 seconds, what if the power you just become immune to was a massive force push? Everyone else is knocked 50+meters away, and your the only thing standing, the healer won't be able to get to you for 5 seconds. Do you survive? You pop Force Speed to avoid a massive debuff, and run outta range of the healer. They will take 3 seconds to catch up to you. Do you survive? The healer has an add on him that you missed, they will be unable to successfully get a heal off for 2 seconds. Do you survive? The healer has been hit by a stun that lasts 8 seconds. Zero healing during that time. Do you survive? Exactly, your metric is a 'time until 10%' or something like that, giving the healers plenty of time to 'have your back' thus any number of hit points you have wont really matter as long as the healer has some time to react. I get that. What your not getting is that things happen that prevent the healer from being able to heal, and what happens when that occurs? Your math and my math don't line up, and they never really have. We seem to like to play with completely different numbers and then argue back and forth because the other is wrong. Look over my numbers and prove they are wrong, I used your numbers to come up with them. Your only taking half the equation into consideration (the amount heals between the different hit point pools) and not factoring in the other forms of mitigation you already have. I am. I'm merely aiming for a goal where I'm giving my healers more time to react when things go south. Your basically saying 'na, its good enough' and not accounting for all the bad things that could happen throughout a fight. Your math is showing that, not mine. We've had this go around before, with Mental Fortitude vs Elusiveness. After showing you to the numbers once, you went 'no your wrong' and then i finally showed them to you again using all the variable you picked, and you finally 'well, i guess you could be right.' I'm doing that same thing here. Show me variables, tell me what exactly your trying to do here, and I'll show you your wrong, just like I did last time. You've obviously never played City of Heroes. There, tanks are self sufficient and able to basically wade into hordes of mobs without the 'green numbers of comfort' your pinning so hard after. I've played that game, and can tell you flat out there are times where a tank can stand toe to toe with the toughest mob in the room and live to talk about it. There are times where a healer is disabled, or busy, and when that happens the tank has to do everything they can to stay alive or the team will wipe over and over again. You've obviously ignoring all the other mechanics in all the other games you've played just to try to tell me that any measure of time for the healer to react within, no matter how small, is good enough and any means to extend that time is ridiculous and dumbfounded. So until you show me solid facts for your point, and not just 'well, i think the DPS increase will be better, and the survivability increase is meaningless' which I've showed YOU is actually the other way around, I'm pretty sure you just need to accept defeat.

The thing your not considering, is that its 8hp/second on top of what you already have for mitigation (which is about 25% defense, 50% block, 30% absorb, 2% force/tech resistance, 40% K/I innate resistance, and 21% I/E innate resistance) Once you realize that its not a straight 8hp/second boost, then you'll see how it can add up pretty quickly. I proved that already with the Mental Fortitude vs Elusiveness argument, that 2% more endurance is slightly better then a 15 second reduction on resilience, due to the increase hit point pool, and benefiting your self healing. If you'd like i can repost that math here and show you how i came to that, but the simple fact is, adding more health to your character will increase your mitigation (both via having a massive hit point pool and by benefiting your self healing) more then adding willpower would by decreasing the length of the fight. As per my previous post, running through an assuming 30 second rotation of our attacks, 200 willpower amounts to a 26.7 DPS increase. That's not a percentage increase, its a flat number. In order for the added DPS to overcome the percentage gained from endurance (as that a percentage number, not a flat out amount) you would need to be doing between 240 and 320 DPS. And i'm pretty sure, at level 50, with 100% accuracy against raid level mobs, you'd be doing more DPS then that, which makes the DPS increase very minor over all. Yes, if the increase in DPS is enough to lower the fight by a significant amount, then it would be worth going for, but as I've shown by running through a assumed 30 second rotation, and DPS increase for add 200 willpower is literally next to nothing. Due to Coefficient values, a bonus damage amount of 40 doesn't translate into a solid 40 damage across all powers. Some benefit more, some benefit less (ironically enough, Saber Strike is almost gaining the most of it, as its a pure weapon + bonus damage power, Project only gains so much mainly due to the Upheaval proc adding a 45% for 50% more damage) Now if someone else can show that Willpower is going to provide more then a 26.7DPS increase overall, and how exactly that will work (using the numbers we have now) then i'll concede my point entirely. I hope that it was specific in my answer, at least enough to show you how 200 endurance > 200 willpower. Again, if you'd like i can copy and paste my math showing how a minor increase in hit points and self healing can amount to great times until death.

Let me just clarify here. Your basically saying that because hitting the 'healer is no longer needed' goals of mitigation is so far out there (due to boss mobs hitting so hard) that its not worthwhile, and thus after you hit a 'good enough' goal you should then aim for a DPS increase, as killing the mob faster will amount to more overall mitigation? My counter argument isn't that your wrong per say, but that the level of DPS increase you would gain by stacking willpower over endurance is also next to meaningless. Willpower gives you .2 bonus damage per point, and 1% critical chance per 140 points. In order to add a meaningful amount of damage via willpower, you would need to stack quite a bit of it, my example being 200 willpower, which would equal 40 'bonus' damage, and 1.43% bonus crit. Looking at your powers for a second, and breaking them down best you can, via torhead.com rip of the power specifics, you can see the various Coefficient of the powers: Saber strike -> first hit, .33 Coefficient, second .66, third 1.00 total = 2.00 (so that 40 damage, equates to 80 damage increase on saber strike) Double Strike -> first hit, .74 Coefficient, second hit also .74. Total = 1.48 (so that 40 damage equates to 59.2 damage increase on double strike) Project -> For a shadow its 1.85, with a Upheaval proc Coefficient of .925. 45% chance of the Upheaval proc, so a combined Coefficient of 2.27. (so that 40 damage equates to 90.8 damage increase on Project) Telekinetic Throw -> .79 Coefficient total, or .1975 coefficient per hit (4 hits). Assuming its not interrupted, that 40 damage equates to a 31.6 damage increase. Force Breach -> .435 Coefficient, so 40 that 40 damage would equate to a 17.4 damage increase. Slow Time -> .94 Coefficient, so that 40 damage would equate to a 37.6 damage increase. Now, if you factor in the GCDs, and cast times, your looking at these numbers: Saber strike being increased by 53.33DPS Double Strike being increased by 39.47DPS Project being increased by 60.53DPS TK Thrust being increased by 10.53DPS Force Breach being increased by 11.6DPS Slow time being increased by 25.07DPS Project gets the most gain, followed by saber strike, then double strike with slow time, force breach and TK thrust being the least amount of gains, due to GCD and low coefficient values. Project is used every 10 seconds to help maintain force (and get the 100% crit chance) TK Thrust is used every 30 seconds (so your at 3 stacks of the proc, for maximum damage, and the self heal) Force Breach and Slow time are used every 15 seconds to maintain the debuff and Double strike and Saber Strike are used in between. Double is used to trigger Project procs, and saber is used to conserve force. Using the above, you can assuming 20 GCDs in 30 seconds, 2 each for Force Breach and Slow time, 1 for TK Thrust, 3 for Project which leaves 12 GCDs for Double strike and Saber Strike. To maintain Force and trigger Projects, you'd need to use 8 Double Strikes, and 4 Saber strikes. I'm not going to account for force use, and just assume the above is viable, plus I'm not going to count any GCDs or force used for Defensive cooldowns. So, your combined DPS increase by increasing your willpower by 200, in pure damage, and accounting for the extra critical (which would just mean multiplying everything by .715% as critical is only 50% added damage) and you'll have an increase of ((((2 * 11.6) + (2 * 25.07) + (1 * 10.53) + (3 * 60.53) + (8 * 39.47) + (4 * 53.53)) / 30) * 1.00715). or about 26.70DPS increase So adding 200 willpower, boosts your overall DPS by 26.7. You'd have to find out exactly what your DPS value is before the 200 willpower to figure out what kind of an increase your looking at but there ya go. 200 willpower = 26.7DPS. Now, I've already shown the math on 200 endurance, and how it can boost your mitigation. Would the increase in DPS (26.7) be enough to offset the increase in mitigation? (8.44% to 11.3%?) Until we know for sure what a Shadow's DPS numbers actually are, we may not ever know, but for kicks, lets see what your DPS should be for 26.7 to make the mitigation values. For 8.44% your looking at 316.35DPS, and for 11.3%, you would need 236.28DPS. Pretty sure you'd be doing much more then 236.28DPS - 316.35DPS as a shadow tank, so how exactly would the 200 willpower benefit you more then the 200 endurance?

The issue with this is your assuming that more willpower will suddenly fix any and all threat issues. A tank is already building threat 50% faster then a DPS. A DPS needs to do 150% more damage then a tank to pull the mob off of the tank, and any given tank has at least 2 tanks, and at least 2 other abilities that build high threat. This means that for a Tanks threat building cycle, the tank is actually building threat even faster then 50%. Project is uses literally every 10 seconds, which is a 100% crit chance, with 165% threat. Force pull has the same 165% threat increase (due to being a higher threat power) and then you have mind control, and mass mind control. If your losing threat on groups, with decent gear adding more willpower won't fix it, because it takes so much willpower to even matter (200 willpower = 40 more damage) Your better off yelling at your DPS to not AoE right away, give yourself time to build threat, and then let them unload. DPS for a tank is never important, but building threat is. There are plenty other games out there without damage or threat meters, and tanks are able to hold aggro just fine, without stacking damage bonuses on top of their mitigation. If your having issues hold threat check your rotations, check your gear (for accuracy, if your not hitting, doesn't matter how much damage your dealing), and see exactly why threat is being pulled off you. Chances are, adding 40 more damage isn't going to solve it, if your missing every 4th attack, or the DPS is AoEing everything at the start of the fight, or your spamming double strike and bottoming out your force so you can't use Project when you need to. There are plenty of other factors to consider before you want to increase your damage by such a small amount.

I used a time until death metric, by averaging out the healing gained by those powers over the time frame. Using those powers, with more hitpoints, means more healing, thus means more mitigation value for the heals in question. The only reason its such a small time frame is due to the large (4.3k) incoming DPS. Lower that DPS, and you'll increase that time frame. In order for you to survive for 6.7 seconds with 16000 hp, you'll need to boost your mitigation by 19.5%. Or, you can simply increase your hp to 18000, a 11.11% increase in health and suddenly live just as long. That the metric I'm showing. If you'd like to explain how 'time until death' is an improper metric, please do, because your estimating that healers will be keeping Shadow tanks at 100% hp, 100% of the time, which just simply isn't possible, and is counter productive to Shadow tanks built in mitigation. Saying that more endurance makes for lazy healing doesn't account for the fact that the healers job isn't to just keep the tank alive. They have an entire group to worry about, cleansing, healing, and keeping themselves up and active, plus resource management. Taking your example of a tank with 16k hp, and a tank with 18k hp and both getting hit for 6k. Tank 1, can self heal back 9280 hit points every 2 minute (4 uses of TK Thrust, 1 BR), tank 2 can self heal back 10240 hit points every 2 minutes (again, 4 uses of TK thrust, 1 BR) an increase of 9.3%, with just an endurance increase of 11.11%. both tanks can shrug off that 6k damage without the need for a healer pretty easily. Increase that damage to 10k, and tank 1 can't quite put themselves back to full, while tank 2 could. In that same 2 minute mark, Tank 1 would be at 15280 hit points, and tank 2 would be at 18k hit points (with 240 over healed) No healers required, and the tanks are able to keep themselves alive and active with high damage spikes. Higher the endurance, greater the heals, and unless the damage starts becoming percentile based then more endurance will be the way to go once you stack enough mitigation (via defense, block, and absorb) where your hitting DR. There are no diminishing returns on adding more hitpoints, and you can increase your overall time until death by a pretty large margin by just increasing your endurance. You didn't answer the question, Would adding 200 more willpower boost your DPS by enough to shorten to fight to make up for the increased survivability that 200 endurance would give you? 200 Willpower only adds 40 damage to your attacks (.2 damage per point) and 1.43% critical chance to your attacks. Would such a small increase in overall damage and critical offset the endurance increase? Your not looking at the overall picture. You can't assuming healers will be able to keep you at 100%, you can't even assume that the tank will be the focus of the healer for 100% of the time. Healers could be mez'ed, healer could be healing DPS, heck, healers could be unlucky and get smacked around, requiring them to have to heal themselves and not the tank. Your also not considering the self healing of the Shadow tank into the overall equation of mitigation. If you can heal yourself for 58% of your max Hitpoint every 2 minutes, and the mob your fighting can't knock you down to below 42% in those same 2 minutes, do you even need a healer? If you can stack enough endurance where you not just increase your overall 'pool' of hit points but also your self heals to the point where any outside healing would amount to over healing wouldn't that basically mean that your healer is redundant? Why wouldn't you try to aim for that goal, and instead try to increase your overall DPS which while it make shorten the fight, i highly doubt it will shorten it enough to offset the increase in durability you'd be giving up for it.

Using some more elaborate math, at least from the side of increasing HP in relative to mitigation, lets compare some knowns from our previous debate: Armor/buffs prevents 36% of incoming damage, 5 different HP values, 16k, 18k, 20k, 22k and 24k. 20k seems to be about the average HPs of any given tank, so that our base. 16k would basically mean giving up all endurance bonuses for willpower, and 24k would basically mean giving up all willpower bonuses for endurance. Incoming damage is 4.3k, and TK thrust heals for 12%, BR heals for 10%. Lets ignore any other variables, like CT procs, or the boosted affects BR gives to CT, as those aren't affected by endurance. 4300 * 36% = 1548 damage mitigated by armor, for a total incoming damage of 2752. at 16k HP, TK thrust heals for 1920 health, or 32hp/second, and BR heals for 1600 health, or 26.67hp/second. Your time until death is (16,000 / (2752 - 58.67)) or 5.94 seconds. at 18k HP, TK thrust heals for 2160 health, or 36hp/second, and BR heals for 1800 health, or 30hp/second Your time until death is (18,000 / (2752 - 66)) or 6.70 seconds at 20k HP, TK trust heals for 2400 health, or 40hp/second, and BR heals for 2000 health, or 33.33hp/second Your time until death is (20,000 / (2752 - 73.33)) or 7.46 seconds at 22k HP, TK thrust heals for 2640 health, or 44hp/second, and BR heals for 2200 health, or 36.67hp/second Your time until death is (22,000 / (2752 - 80.67)) or 8.24 seconds at 24k HP, TK thrust heals for 2880 health, or 48hp/second, and BR heals for 2400 health, or 40hp/second Your time until death is (24,000 / (2752 - 88)) or 9 seconds So, with each increase of 200 endurance, your extending your lifespan by .76 seconds, which is any where between a 11.3% (the difference between 5.94 vs 6.7) to 8.44% (the difference between 8.24 and 9) increase in overall lifespan. Would adding the same 200 willpower increase your overall DPS by 8.44% to 11.3%, thus shortening the fight by the same duration?

To add my 2 cents into this debate, one has to consider just how much Willpower is going to benefit the Shadow tanks DPS. Willpower adds 1% crit per 140 points, and .2 damage per point, so 5 points = 1 damage. Exactly how much that 1 damage will increase your overall DPS is up for debate, especially without damage meters to back things up. Even if your doing 80% of the DPS of a pure DPS spec'ed character your still not a DPS class, so adding a DPS stat when you already have threat under control (with 3 taunts (mind control, mass mind control, and force pull), plus Project, a shadow shouldnt have many threat issues, even without top tier gear) The other thing to look at on endurance, is that it will benefit a Shadows self healing, thus provide a tangable benefit to thier overall mitigation. TK Thrust is a 12% heal. That 12% scales with max HP. Battle Readiness can be talented to provide a 10% heal, which also scales with your max HP. So adding more endurance is going to do more then just give a 'safety cushion' to your healers, its going to increase your overall mitigation as well, allowing you to soak not just more damage (via having a higher HP pool) but to regain more hitpoints back each time you self heal. Healers heals aren't percentage based, so yes having a larger HP pool could cause issues for healers to keep you at 100%, but i feel 'good' shadow tanks shouldn't be healed up to 100%, and doing so will actually take away a good portion of their mitigation, as a lot of it is based on self healing. I feel that Good shadow tanks should hover between 80-100% HP, and if they dip below that then, and only then, should the healer top them off. With a 12% heal every 30 seconds, self healing procs that can be boosted to pretty nice numbers, and a 10% heal every 2 minutes that is a lot of self healing, nearly all of it is based on max hp, which higher endurance values would affect.

Just because I have to argue with Kitru, I'll propose this build. The only difference is lower uptime on Resilience vs 2% more endurance. Fundamentally, they provide about the same overall mitigation, so its really up to you. For PvP, i feel the added HP will be more useful, due to burst damage being a massive thing to deal with. Also, while its difficult to resist force/tech powers, players have a tendency to use them far more often then every 45 seconds, so even with a reduced cool down on Resilience, its not going to provide as much mitigation as say a scripted PvE fight would.

It really depends on how much mitigation you already have. Its about that simple. The more mitigation you have, the less hit points you need to maintain the same lifespan. They are an inverse to each other. Assume 1000DPS over 5 minutes (so a total of 300,000 damage) If you have 100% DR to K/E/I/E, but only have 100 hit points, will you ever die? If you have 0% DR to K/E/I/E, but have 300,100 hit points, will you ever die? So more hps only help you out if you low mitigation numbers. Granted, at base, a shadow tank has about 36% innate DR, so any hit points is probably best, but in the argument of willpower vs endurance, it really comes down to which will make the fight easier. Will killing the mobs quicker make the fight easier, or will being able to take more hits make the life easier? For everyone involved in the fight, be them DPS, healers, and you (the tank)

Honestly, mine would be the 'I mathed you!' "No, you mathed yourself." 'Well, I'll math you still!' I really am satisfied with the situation, and how we were able to break everything (including CT) down into exactly how they benefit a shadow tank. Hopefully someone will see this thread, or at least our explanations, and better understand what it means to be a shadow tank.

I agree completely with you, and the way you described the different situations. My only concern is the talents that we're actually contesting. It isn't Mind Over Matter (which increases the duration of resilience) but Elusiveness, which decreases the cool down of Resilience. Either build in question, would have Mind over Matter, but mine wouldn't include Elusiveness, where yours would.

Not entirely. Anything over 100% accuracy decreases the defense of the enemy by the amount over the 100%. And, base 100% accuracy only accounts for mobs of equal level. Say a mob, your level has 10% defense. in order to hit them 100% of the time, you'll need 110% accuracy. Another mob, equal level has 0% defense. In order to hit them 100% of the time, you'll need only 100% accuracy. Anything over, is basically wasted. At least to my understanding of Accuracy. Its not quite armor pen, its the opposite of defense.

I'll have to agree with you. Even with the vicious commentary, I am generally enjoying this back and forth we're having. I am however curious as to which part of my post we've come to a satisfactory conclusion on. I do understand that 3% endurance isn't amounting to very much of an overall increase on life (.02 seconds as per my calculations) but I feel that any extension of your lifespan is worthwhile, even such a small amount. Would our argument be something we can set in stone, as to which build is best used to tank with for a shadow tank? That way, if the question arises again, we can clearly point others to our discussion and clear up any misconceptions very quickly and easily?

In the case of resistance vs damage reduction vs defense, i think its basically all the same number. 'Resistance' to force/tech is basically defense, so any resistance you have lowers the damage of force/tech powers by roughly the 'resistance' amount. Any damage reduction you have after resistance is then applied (as force/tech powers have damage types, like every other power does) So, while resilience technically increases your 'defense' *and i mean 'resistance' there* to tech/force powers, without resilience, you have still damage reduction to said powers (in the form of K/E, and I/E reduction) so resilience is not a flat 100% reduction. Say, you have 100% damage reduction to K/E/I/E damage. Would resilience benefit you at all? That's is basically my point here. The fact you have K/E/I/E damage reduction makes Resilience benefit you less, as the damage you would've taken from those attacks are then reduced by your K/E/I/E innate resistance. So, using that theory, lets look at what exactly Resilience is doing for us, compared to what more hp would do for us. We've both agreed on 50% block chance, for 30% reduction, 25% defense (vs range/melee) and 2% resistance (vs tech/force) We've also agreed, mostly, on the innate resistance values of 40% K/E, and 21% I/E. And we seem to agree on the base hp being 20k. Now, with 1% endurance boost, your hp total is 20175, and with 3% endurance boost your hp total is 20525. The uptime of Resilience with a 5 second duration, and 45 second cooldown is 11.11%. The uptime of Resilience with a 5 second duration, and 60 second cooldown is 8.33%. We've evenly split the damage between Force/tech and Range/melee at 50/50, and the damage 'type' is split 75% K/E, and 25% I/E. CT provides 38hp/second. TK Thrust provides 80hp/second, and BR provides 16.67hp/second, for a total of 134.67 hp/second healing base. 1% endurance boosts the above numbers to 38hp/second for CT (unsure if endurance affects it, so i won't count it) 80.7hp/second for TK Thrust, and 16.81hp/second for BR, for a total of 135.51hp/second. 3% endurance boosts the above numbers to 38hp/second for CT, 82.1hp/second for TK Thrust, and 17.10hp/second BR, for a total of 137.2hp/second. Now, lets look at what exactly resilience is doing for us, in regards to tech/force powers. We have 1000 incoming damage. 50% of it is force/tech, 50% of it is range/melee. 75% of that damage is K/E, and 25% is I/E. 500 * .75(defense chance) * .85(shield chance) = 318.75 Range/melee 500 * .98(resistance) = 490 force/tech Damage type break down for Range/melee 318.75 * .75 = 239.06 K/E damage 318.75 * .25 = 79.69 I/E damage Damage type break down for Tech/Force 490 * .75 = 367.5 K/E damage 490 * .25 = 122.5 I/E damage Damage reduction via armor/buffs for Range/Melee 239.06 K/E damage * .6 = 143.44 Incoming K/E damage 79.69 I/E damage * .79 = 58.22 Incoming I/E damage Damage reduction via armor/buffs for Tech/Force 367.5 K/E damage * .6 = 220.5 Incoming K/E damage 122.5 I/E damage * .79 = 96.78 Incoming I/E damage Total damage sustained before armor/buffs are considered: 808.75 total damage Total damage sustained before armor/buffs are considered, but after Resilience is considered: 318.74 Total damage sustained after armor/buffs but before Resilience is considered: 518.94 Total damage Total damage sustained after armor/buffs and after Resilience is considered: 201.66 Total damage Percentage of damage armor/buffs are mitigating from total damage: 36% Difference between Force/tech damage before Armor is considered, and after armor is considered: 172.72 Percentage of damage Armor/buffs are mitigating from force/tech powers: 35% Percentage of damage Resilience is mitigating from Force/tech powers after armor is considered: 65% So, Resilience is only giving you a 65% damage reduction, after you consider armor/buffs reducing the incoming damage. Using that 65%, let see how long your lifespan will be, with an incoming DPS of 4300. 36% total mitigation from all sources, with an 11.11% uptime of an additional 65% mitigation from force/tech powers. Force/tech powers are 50% of incoming damage, so you have (65% * (11.11%/2)) or a total of 3.61% mitigation value, for a grand total of 39.61% mitigation. With 1% endurance increase, you have 20175 hp, with 135.51hp/second self healing. Your time until death is (20175 / ((4300 * (1 - 39.61%) - 135.51)) or (20175 / (2596.77 - 135.51)) or (20175 / 2461.26) or about 8.20 seconds until death. 36% total mitigation from all sources, with an 8.33% uptime of an additional 65% mitigation from force/tech powers. Force/tech powers are 50% of incoming damage, so you have (65% * (8.33%/2)) or a total of 2.71% mitigation value, or a grand total of 38.71% mitigation. With 3% endurance increase, you have 20525 hp, with 137.2hp/second self healing. Your time until death is (20525 / ((4300 * (1 - 38.71%) - 137.2)) or (20525 / (2635.47 - 137.2)) or (20525 / 2498.27) or about 8.22 seconds until death. Now, its not a huge increase, but i think i covered all the bases. Having innate damage reduction, via armor/buffs lowers the value of resilience because Force/tech powers still deal K/E/I/E damage. Regardless of if your hit, or not with them, they still deal damage types that you have innate resistance to, so you can not count the full 100% immunity before applying the innate resistance you already have. Self preservation. I'm all for using your personal cooldowns throughout a fight, but there is no shame in relying on a healer to do their job. If your healer is keeping you at 100% hps at all time, then yes, Battle Readiness is useless. The same could be said for Resilience being used as a self cleanse. If your healer is quick enough to notice, and control your level of debuffs and DoTs, then you only need to worry about using Resilience for the damage reduction (which is what it does) Also, if the debuffs/DoTs don't stack higher then 2, why use Resilience at all, when your healer can cleanse them much easier. While healers do have limited resources, they aren't limited enough to prevent them from cleansing every once in awhile. In the event of massive debuff/DoT spikes (upwards of 3 all at once) then using Resilience, or any other self cleansing power, is probably your best bet, especially if you don't need to use it to negate incoming damage. If that is not happening, using a 45 second cooldown for a few debuffs wont do you very much good.

I stand corrected on Charged Bolts, Grav Round is a tech power (as per the Abilities window, which tells you if a power is active/passive, tech/ranged) and I've seen that miss as well. Which again, is easy to do because of the various procs and abilities that use Grav Round. In your previous post you said that most of the tech/force powers are Internal/Elemental damage. My point was that it is really not that cut and dry. And most attacks (be them force/tech, or melee/range use the Kinetic/energy damage type, while few attacks are pure internal/elemental damage. And that most Internal/elemental damage types are added on as DoTs. That's my only argument in regards to damage types. Actually, there is a MUCH easier way to look at things. Just open your abilities window, and look at the power itself. It'll either be passive (most talents, weapon/armor proficiencies etc) Active (heals, buffs, debuffs, etc) Tech/force (usually powers that aren't reliant on weapon damage, but may come from a weapon) and melee/range (powers that damage scale with weapon damage, but may not come from a weapon) Look, I'm just reading what the tooltips says. Shadowsight says Defense, so it provides Defense. Defense is also parry/deflect, the fact that Shadowsight provides 'resistance' to force/tech powers as well, is a bonus, but not one that I even considered in my equations. I think your not understanding my math. I didn't account for dodge/deflect/block/miss chance at all. I merely split the viability of resilience in half as a means to account for the fact that not all powers are tech/force. That's the only thing i considered in my equation, making everything basically equal. Your right in the fact that melee/range 'mitigation' would be even higher, due to the dodge/deflect/block/miss chance, but I didn't consider it because i wasn't working with my melee/range powers. I wasn't saying 'Well, Resilience only adds X amount, so its worthless, I said 'Resilience only adds X amount for the attacks it would help you defend against' From what your telling me, defense DOESN'T exist for force/tech powers. So doing exactly what you would do in order to figure out how much Resilience would benefit you. 750 * .75 * (1 - (.15)) 750 * .75 * .85 = 478.125 Hmm... Lets see how you did that. maybe? 750 * (.75 * .85)? 750 * .6375 = 478.125... Nope. (750 * .75) * .85? (562.5) * .85 = 478.125...Nope How exactly did you get 310? Because your math isn't working very well to begin with. But anyways... First off, i said 50/50 split on force/tech vs melee/range, and 75/25 K/E:I/E damage split with 40% K/E resistance, and 21% I/E reduction. So your not even using the numbers I did. Using my numbers, your looking at: 1000 incoming damage. 500 melee/ranged, 500 Force/Tech. 500 * .75 * (1 - (.5 * .3)) = 318.75 500 * .98 = 490 318.75 + 490 = 808.75 total damage. with the 75/25% split, your looking at 808.75 * .75 = 606.56 K/E damage 808.75 * .25 = 202.19 I/E damage Now, applying the resistance values I uses (40% K/E resistance, 21% I/E resistance) and you have: 606.56 * .6 = 363.94 K/E damage 202.19 * .79 = 159.73 I/E damage This would only be true in a vacuum where you have 0 base resistance. I accounted for the fact that Resilience is only giving you enough resistance to meet that 100% cap. Anything above that 100% cap is wasted, so anything that resilience provides about 100% can not be counted as 'mitigation' because 100% is the cap. Which is why i accounted for damage types, and not attack types. If you have 40% resistance, and you add 100% resistance to it, how much resistance did you increase by? Hint, its not 100%. That's what my equation shows. The higher your base resistance is, via just innate resistance, the less resilience is going to protect, because of the 100% cap. Well, first off your using the wrong numbers again, both in your actual math, and in the the way I used them. Lets first reuse your numbers, the correct values of them. Force/tech would be 245, but range/melee would be 478.125. The total would be 723.125, before resistance is considered. As you can't have higher then 100% resistance, anything above 0% resistance has to be considered, and you have 40% K/E resistance, and 21% I/E resistance. When you consider resistance after you consider defense, you have a total incoming damage of force/tech powers of ((245*.75*.6)+(245*.25*.79)) or 158.64 force/tech damage, and ((478.125*.75*.6)+(478.125*.25*.79)) or 309.59 melee/range damage, a total of 468.23. So, with resilience active, you would have that damage reduced to 309.59, a 33.8% reduction. Averaged out to 5 second every 45 seconds, and your looking at 33.8 * 11.11% or about 3.76% reduction in incoming damage over time. Averaging it out to 5 seconds, every 45 seconds and your looking at 33.8 * 8.33% or about 2.82%. A difference of .94%. Blow that up into a 5 minute fight, with 4300 incoming damage (even though the numbers we've been using have been 1000 damage, which would skew the numbers much more using a different damage value from our original) and your looking at 12,126 hit points over 5 minutes. For reference, using 1000 damage, which is what we used to get the mitigation values in the first place, puts you at 2,820 hit points over 5 minutes, or about 9.4 hp/second, with a 75/25 split of both force/tech:melee/range and K/E:I/E damage. My numbers show that force/tech would be 490, and melee/range would be 318.75. The total would be 808.75. With resilience active, that damage is reduced to 318.75, a 60.5% reduction. For 5 seconds every 45, your looking at 6.72% reduction. For 5 seconds, every 60, your looking at 5.04% reduction, a difference of 1.68% reduction. Blow that up into a 5 minute fight, with the 1000 incoming damage (which is what you should use, not the 4300 damage, as you started with 1000, not 4300) and you have a hit point difference of 4,800 over 5 minutes or about 16 hp/second, with a 50/50 split of force/tech:melee/range and 75/25 split of K/E:I/E. I'm again confused on how you got 125 hp/second before the 1.75% better heals, but if your increasing your healing by 125hp/second with the added hit points, then its far better then the mitigation, even by your own skewed math. In order to see exactly how much you'll extended your lifespan by, you have to open your eyes to the bigger picture, and take all values into consideration, which is not just defense, but then innate resistance, and healing adding to your hit point pool. If you ignore any aspect of that, in regards to the damage your taking, then you can't solidly say X is better then Y by Z%. You need to look at all the variables. Yea.. Whose been mathed? While I was mistaken with Charged Bolts, the easiest way to tell the difference is the 'color' of the damage it deals. White damage appears to be melee/range, Yellow damage appears to be tech/force. But if course I wouldn't know that because i have no idea how to differentiate the two.. Yea.. just like you mathed me. Again, even if you remember, if an attack isn't protected by Resilience then lowering its cooldown isn't going to help you very much at all now is it? The only thing you proved is how you can pull numbers out of thin air, without anything backing them up. Please show your work exactly next time, so that we can at least be on the same page. I'm still waiting for you to prove exactly and why tech/force powers are immune to defense completely, especially when the 'attack equation' is actually 2 equations. Hit/miss and shield/crit. If your telling me that Force/tech powers can't be dodge/deflected/blocked/missed, then they can only hit/crit? which goes completely against the attack mechanics of the entire game. Show me somewhere, besides word of mouth, where it specifically says Force/tech powers can not be blocked/dodged/parried/missed and then I'll believe you. While yes, i would agree with you, but a healer could remove those same DoTs and debuffs MUCH faster and easier then you could. You can remove everything every 45 seconds at most, or a healer could remove those debuffs/DoTs 2 at a time every 4.5 second. If you remove all those DoTs and debuffs, and they are reapplied almost instantly, then you haven't really helped yourself out any. You've prevented your healers from having to use their ability, but you've also wasted a cooldown on something minor. Removing debuffs/DoTs and immunity to tech/force is a simultaneous thing. You can't pick one or the other, you get both, and if you need one or the other and you use it to remove debuffs, you can't use it to protect against tech/force powers, especially if those attacks are on different timers.

Using the example I used previously, Charged Bolt vs High impact bolt (charged being tech, HIB being ranged) I've seen Charged Bolt miss. And its easy to see when it misses on a trooper, because of the fact that so many powers use it to build procs. If I use the power, and the proc doesn't stack, then it missed. I think we're looking at different powers here. because this is shadowsight, and it clearly says 'defense' and while it doesn't specify tech/force, like Double-bladed Saber Defense specifies Melee/Range. On the character sheet, I'm not seeing a difference between the defense types, the Defense window merely says Melee Parry, Ranged Deflect, Resistance, Resistance, with different percentages. I'm going to assume that the 2 resistance aspects are for tech/force powers, but I can't be sure. It could be due to my lower level (the alt I logged in was level 12, Shadow) and it may change with higher levels, but it doesn't specifically say force/tech defense any where yet. So.. your telling me that force/tech powers do not care about melee/range defense, and my equation reflects that (by not counting ANY defense at all, only innate resistance to damage types) and somehow my equation is wrong because of it? Either way the equation is the same. If I was counting defense in my equation I would need to factor in deflect/parry/miss chances as well, which would change the numbers completely. My equation is assuming 4,300 points of damage is hitting you every second. Nothing misses, nothing is deflected, nothing is parried. The 'if it comes from a weapon' argument doesn't hold much water when you look at other classes. The Trooper uses a weapon for nearly all their attacks, but not all of them are ranged. Would Saber throw be a ranged, or force attack? Would Force Leap be Force or Ranged? Both 'use the force' to enable actions. Trial and Error testing, while great, isn't something that will help you out. I'm assuming 50% of the attacks are tech/force, 50% are melee/range. If you do use resilience, and find out the attack did no damage, then resilience doesn't help you at all. Thus it doesn't benefit you at all to decrease its cooldown. Here's a better hypothetical: A boss uses a massive force storm attack every 45 seconds, and every 30 seconds does a series of attacks that load your character full of DoTs, and slows you down. If one attack is used, the other isn't, so they can't stack. Which would you use Resilience on? You can't manage both, even with the reduced cooldown.

Again, looking over player powers (as there isn't a full list of NPC powers yet) there isn't a whole lot of difference between Charged Bolt (Tech, Energy damage) and High Impact Bolt (Ranged, Energy damage). So I'm really not seeing how you can't consider Resilience after you consider your other mitigation powers. Also, where does it say that tech/force powers can't be blocked or dodged? Besides word of mouth, I haven't seen anything stating why they can't be blocked or dodged, and I know for a fact the tech/force powers I've used against mobs have been blocked or dodged. Plus Shadowsight gives defense, which is dodge/parry. So you just contradicted yourself. And if you actually looked at the math i used, i didn't count dodge/parry, only block. If you take away block, (which i averaged out at 15%) then the extra endurance increase your lifespan by even more of a margin (7.57 for the shorter cooldown vs 7.62 2% more endurance, longer cooldown) And here I'll agree with you to a point. Giving yourself the chance to mitigate a scripted attack entirely, especially one that you've given warning for is the best use for Resilience. The issue with that is determining which attacks are tech/force, and which are range/melee. If the scripted attack is range/melee, and you pop resilience, well, it won't do anything for you at all. Thats the reason i cut its effectiveness in half, as we're not sure exactly which attacks are force/tech, and which are ranged/melee yet. Once we have a set list, and which bosses use which powers, then it'll be easier to judge when to use resilience. But on the other hand, it'll depend on how often said scripted attacks happen. If they are every 45 seconds, then having resilience up that often will make it worth while, but if they are every 60 seconds, then its not very worthwhile to have the decreased cooldown on reslience, as you wont be using it anyways. And i didn't count the extra healing potional in my math, i only counted innate resistance plus block, based on a 75/25% split of kinetic/energy vs internal/elemental damage. I only mentioned the extra healing as a bonus to having more hitpoints, as your mentioning the cleansing power of Resilience in addition to its ability to soak large amounts of damage. I'm not forgetting, I'm just not really considering it. Taking a defensive cooldown, and saying 'it also removes ill effects!' and using that to justify decreasing the cooldown isn't really viable, as those ill effects will be happening a lot quicker then every 45 seconds (the quickest you can get Resilience down to) and any healer can dispell those same effects (usually 2 at a time) much faster then you could. Yes, having a full cleanse is very nice, but when you faced with cleansing yourself of some ill effects, or avoiding that hit for 30k, which are you going to use resilience for?

Honestly, i would move the points from Elusiveness into Mental Foritude. the reasoning is that the 15 second reduction in resilience is worse for you then the 2% endurance increase from Mental Fortitude. Here is my thought process on it. Shadow tanks have about 40% base resistance to kinetic/energy powers, 21% resistance to internal/elemental powers, and 50% chance to shield 30% damage (with kinetic ward up) Not counting defense at all, and assuming a 75%/25% damage split on kinetic/energy vs internal/elemental damage, which is pretty accurate considering that most player abilties that heal Internal/elemental damage are DoTs (W attack does X kinetic/energy damage upfront and Y internal/elemental damage over Z seconds) Your looking at about 50.25% base mitigation. Most tanks will have 20k hp, or more, but for the sake of simplifing the math, lets assuming 20k hp. with 17500 being from Endurance, and 2500 being from base. So, that gives us 1750 endurance. Boss mobs do about 4,300DPS. This is from averaging out the damage thats been recorded from boss mobs in Beta, from this site. (assuming a hit of 6464 every GCD = 4309DPS) Resilience gives 100% immunity to tech/force powers for 3 seconds. With a base cooldown of 60 seconds, or an up time of about 5%. But its only for tech/force powers, which I'm going to assume, based again on player abilties, that they account for about half the incoming damage. This lowers Resilience down to 2.5% effective mitigation. Having a base mitgation of 50.25% lowers Resilience again down to 1.24%. Thats at base, without any talents benefitting it at all. With the increased duration, and decreased cooldown, Resilience will have a base mitgation value of 11.11% (11.11% uptime, 100% immunity) but again, factoring in the tech/force ability ratio, and the existing mitgation, and your looking at 2.76 effective mitigation. With 1% endurance increase your looking at 1767.5 endurance, or about 17675 hp from endurance, and 2500 from base, or about 20175 total hitpoints. With 4300 incoming DPS, 50.25 base mitigation, 2.76% added mitgation from resilience, and 20175 hp, your lifespan is 9.98 seconds. Now, looking at the 60 seconds cooldown resilience, and 3% increase on endurance, lets see how it changes things. 5 second duration resilience, with a 60 second cooldown is a 8.33% uptime, which after reducing it by the force/tech ratio, and accounting for the base mitgation, it'll provide 2.07% effective mitgation. 1750 * 3% = 1802.5 endurance is 18025 hp, plus 2500 base = 20525 hp. So, with 4300 incoming DPS, 50.25 base mitigation, 2.07 added mitgation from resilience, and 20525 hp, your lifespan is 10.01 seconds. Keep in mind, that the more endurance you have, the more hitpoints you have, and the more your self heals will heal for (battle readiness 10% heal, and TK Thrusts 12% heal) But, not even counting that, looking at the numbers, you can see that 2% more endurance is going to benefit you more then 15 second reduction on resilience, even if that benefit is very slight. And while i do understand that your also giving up a 10 second reduction on Force Speed, the main uses for Force Speed seem to be the initial pull and repostioning during the fight, neither of which should be required more then every 30 seconds. During fights that have large amounts of movement impairing effects you're better off relying on your healer to dispell those effects then using Force Speed to remove them, as they will be happening much more often then every 20 seconds (which is the lowest you could get force speed to come back)

From a pure numbers standpoint, the other tanks have literally 2 - 3% more base 'kinetic/energy' damage resistance, and we have about 5-9% more internal/elemental damage resistance. We have have 5% higher defense (dodge/parry chance if you will) then other tanks, and we have the highest shield chance out of any of the other tanks (when we have kinetic ward active) We also have a 10% heal on a 2 minute timer (that also increases our self healing by 300%) we have a 12% heal every 3rd time we cast project (via TK Thrust) and our tank stance gives us about .25% healing every GCD (or there abouts) We're basically a class designed to main tank, like the rest, but we do it much differently then the other tanks. We either flat out dodge/parry attacks, or shield them, and the attacks that do get through are quickly self healed back up via our various self healing powers and talents. A healer should have a much easier time keeping a Shadow time up then any other tank, due to the fact that the shadow tank can self heal for so much so often (the TK Thrust proc happens about every 30 seconds on average and it could happen even sooner then that, allowing for some very nice healing numbers while tanking)

The only thing I'd add is to keep Recharge Cells basically on cooldown. Being at .6 ammo/second is useful when Recharge Cells isn't up, but when it is, burn down to 2 ammo, and then pop recharge cells. The ammo boost, and the increased ammo regeneration will allow you to maintain your damage cycle without having to use as many hammer shots (which would actually lower your DPS) Also, Full Auto is almost ammo neutral, especially if it crits. Which is why you want to use it as much as possible, because it hits like a mack truck, and doesn't cost very much ammo at all. The more crit you have, the most ammo you will have, so at higher levels, try to stack as much crit as possible (once you get 110-115% acc, so you'll hardly ever miss) and top off with surge/power. Haste (alacrity) isn't as useful, and actually hurts your ammo regeneration, so you don't want to use very much of it (quicker Full Autos may seem awesome, but you'll regenerate less ammo during the time, thus making Full Auto cost more) Also only use HIB with the charged barrel damage boost (which i'm not sure if HIB consumes, i haven't gotten that high yet) and only use demo round with 5 gravity vortex on the target, that way your getting the most damage for your ammo costs.

Thats basically what i do as well. I've noticed very few things are immune to Cyro, and that 4 - 6 seconds you have is enough time to either burst out some nice DPS, or heal yourself via your heals (even as gunnery) between that, med pack, and properly CCing things, its not hard at all. I'm currently level 28 and running in Mar Shadda, with Jorgen (so we're both DPS) and the only quests i can't solo are the Group 4s. Any of the Group 2s i've managed to solo, without any proper healing at all. Once i hit level 33, and get the extra 8% healing recieved, plus the 10% damage reduction (after 5 grav round stacks) I'll probably swap to Dorne, and work on her affection (Jorgen is almost at 6k)