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Seems like you are confusing the tank specs with the dps specs? She was talking about the dps specs being underpowered - they can't pull or debuff folks.

It is hard to compare directly because everyone gears differently. But the real issue here is just using mods/enhancements with tank stats or using mod/enchancements with dps stats. Also, things like implants/earpieces. Assuming both routes prioritize endurance, it's a very direct comparison. There's no need to bring stims or weapon crystals and things like that into the equation because a person can do whatever they want to on those independantly. Your huge endurance gap essentially comes from tailoring the entire gearsets into different directions. That's not the issue...we need to look at somsone taking a gearset the same direction regardless but just changing those mods/enhancements, etc. When you narrow it down to just swapping the things I mentioned, the difference in health is less than 2k and the the health pool and survivability is very maintainable by good healers. Just because a person is using dps stats doesn't mean they are gearing for dps. It just means they are avoiding poor stats that give low return.

Just because you two are the best "teams" on your servers doesn't mean your tank players are elite quality. Based on the SS, they're likely just good dps players that throw up a guard and do basic tank functions. I have seen much better tanks. And you don't seem to be understanding how effective high-level guard swapping can be. Your strat doesn't even work against it; it's exactly what the tactic is designed to defeat. You make your hard switch and the gaurd just follows the switch almost immediately. I don't doubt that you guys are the best on your server like you say, but it's big fish in a small pond without cross-server queues. There are a couple teams on my server that do know high level tanking and have great dps and healers to go with it. They would farm you because of their tanks out-skilling yours.

It is. The duplicated half intensity attacks inflicted on the tank through guard go through all the same mitigation rolls/reductions that a normal attack would. That most attacks in a PvP environment bypass defense/shield doesn't have anything to do with guard mechanics.

OP has a really good point, and I severely doubt it's conciously intentional behavior from Bioware. It's also a significant part of why Pyro/AS performs so well in PvP compared to most other dps specs/classes. ^ This is what is actually happening, I just don't think the guard behavior is an intended side effect. With most similar mechanics in game, such as Shadow's "technique" procs and stuff, this same type of thing would probably happen more often except most such mechanics have an ICD limiting how often they can occur. So, it could proc on the first target but can't proc on the second because of the ICD. CGC doesn't have an ICD, and equally importantly the talents that cause auto-apply seem to bypass ICD's anyway (see tank tree behavior.) Personally, I don't see a real easy way for them to code around this issue. Usually, devs would look for a quick fix of some sort. Here, you'd probably have to do two things: 1. Make the auto-apply talents subject to ICD. (that would fix tank tree since it already has an ICD) 2. Give CGC a very short ICD. (Even 0.5s would work.) The perhaps unfortunate side-effect would be that aoe attacks for Pyro would only be able to set one target on fire per pulse instead of currently being able to proc multiple targets simultaneously if you get lucky enough, which I think probably is intentional behavior. If Bioware were that other gaming company, they'd probably just lower the damage on the cylinders/cells a bit and leave the mechanics alone until they get around to fixing it 3 years later. Doing a perfect fix would require changing how guarded damage gets treated and reported in combat logs so that they could give abilities separate code to work from depending on if they are the original attack or the guard redirected attack. I don't think we can expect them to make that sort of change without being part of a significant game mechanics overhaul.

Even through I agree with you that good competition will find ways to get kills in no matter what, it's really not a situation of them getting theirs no matter what and just a matter of distribution on which of your teammates take the kills. A good tank and quick healer can drastically cut down the number of deaths that occur, even against a good team if they have a comp and skill level that supports it. For example, with that screenshot I would hazard a guess that there wasn't a whole lot of guard swapping going on for either side. They probably just camped their guards on a specific healer most of the match and left it there. They might be good all around players, but it's not exactly a shining example of high level tanking. An elite skill tank (which are very rare in my experience) will be guard swapping like crazy in reaction to wherever the opposing team is currently focusing dps. In this particular fight, their guard would have been on those dying PT's quite a lot... This gives the healers much more opportunity to respond and get the necessary heals out because the opposing team is constantly trying to burst into shared health pools and against taunts and disrupts. Done well enough, and even elite level teams are faced with a choice of either: 1. Stop focusing because the tank can't guard everyone at once 2. Kill the tank first (negates their guard and taunts at least) 3. Keep bursting guarded targets and rarely get kills No matter what they pick, they are going to have a really hard time closing out kills and mostly because of the tank, and a team that usually gets 40-60 kills might only get 15-25. And even though having a tank that plays like this will often result in keeping the tank alive being the hardest job the healers have (because so much focused burst gets redirected to him,) the idea that Shadow tanks dying a lot as a class makes them good is pretty much insane. They die a lot because they are squishy, not because they somehow impale themselves on the enemies lightsabers in sacrifice to their teammates. And they definitely aren't anywhere near enough of a threat to warrant focused attacks from the enemy team; they're still typically the lowest threat on the field for the opposing team.

The difference in health between the two gearsets would be roughly 1980 health if you're doing both sets right with "optimal" components. So, pretty much divide all those other guy's numbers by 3.

There are 5 total pieces, but the bonuses come at 2 piece and 4 piece, so the 5th doesn't matter. You can also mix with 2pc Stalker + 2pc Survivor, but it's not a good pick for Kinetic because they don't really use Force Slow much so you're better off going for either of the two 4pc bonuses.

It adds up against certain classes. Defensive stats aren't completely worthless like some say. It's just that when you start quantifying the bang you get for your stat-point buck, the dps stats come out way ahead. The other part of it is if your group wants you to go full survival because they need/want a max durability tank and care not a wit for dps, then Shadow is an absolutely terrible class choice to fill that role with.

I assume you're primarily in a tank role and doing damage is secondary although obviously helpful. Survivor mods/enhancements just offer very little value in a PvP environment outside of just the extra HP. DPS stats just offer more value than the tank stats, even for a tank. The exception might be a player who literally doesn't attack stuff hardly at all, but such a player is a drag on their team anyway compared to someone who plays a complete game. So, ideal is generally get 4 pc Survivor armorings only just for the set bonuses, and then use dps mods and enhancements. For a given set of stats, you always have two choices...for a tank role, get the ones with the higher Endurance. You have to get a lot of extra war hero items to pull out the parts and pieces you're looking for. You could mix in a few survivor mods/enhancements if your healers aren't very good, but I wouldn't recommend using very many. The first few get pretty good conversion rates. If your team mostly sticks you off on solo Defender duty, 4 pc Stalker bonus would probably be better. Gearing full Survivor just doesn't offer enough survivability increase to be worth the massive loss of damage output compared to a gearset with dps stats because the majority of important PvP attacks completely bypass defense and shields. Armor is your biggest survivability stat and dps gear is exactly the same there.

Well...if you're trying to do maximum overall damage/pressure, you should never wait on Exit Strategy stacks to use Force Breach. Just use it when you're ready to use it within the context of your rotation, outside events, force management, etc. If you delay using it just for stacks, it's technically an overall dps loss. The PvE folks figured this out with Simcraft a long time ago. Although, stacks continuing to build does offset part of what would be an overall damage loss from waiting and effectively reduces the value of the Security Breach talent. Now, if you're trying to surprise burst someone to death combined with cooldowns that you normally can't close a kill on...then yeah, saving up stacks to make sure the kill actually happens might be the thing to do. On a tangent...Exit Strategy stacking is an example of one of the things I like about Infiltration and the flexibility of playing the spec. It helps allow us to adjust timing without killing our total output. Some folks view Infiltration as predictable and rigid where I actually see it as probably one of the most flexible specs in the game in terms of design. The reason I see it that way is we can bunch damage and bank in downtime and shift around timing with very little impact on overall damage in the end compared to other classes/specs. If you ever play around with Simcraft, you can drastically screw around with priorities and timing and as long as you're still doing something that makes sense the spec still does pretty much the same total damage in the end. Being able to do that without paying a penalty allows us to adapt to context and situation very effectively. It allows us to play the game instead of robotically push buttons. Most other specs have an "ideal" rotation of sorts either due to cooldowns or resource management that is very rigid because if you deviate from it much, total output suffers substantially. They are continually faced with the option of taking a dps loss to adapt or not adapt and try to bulldoze with max performance. At face value, Troopers and Smugglers would be pretty similar to us with their resource systems, except that they actually have a very narrow band of their resource bar to work with unless they are willing to pay fairly severe long-term penalties...and in some cases they are cooldown limited anyway.

15s window, so you can't use any of these cooldowns more than once. Tank Shadows have to rely pretty heavily on Resilience essentially for base survivability because their passive mitigation is so poor now. Their armor values are closer to what Guardians have in dps stances than they are in tank stances. For either of these classes, maybe cooldowns will be available, maybe they won't, but Guardians just have so many more of them and better base mitigation such that realistically they are much better in the real world in the type of critical situation I described. It's just a fact, and it's part of why high rated teams are moving away from Shadow/Assassin tanks and towards Guardians/Juggs for dedicated tanking roles. Even if a Shadow has ALL of their cooldowns available, it's still normally not going to be enough. Even if a Guardian only had the two cooldowns you want to consider them limited to, Saber Ward and Warding Call, they still survive much longer than the Shadow, just with those. You also mention Force Cloak...it doesn't even work if you don't save that Resilience cooldown to use with it. Shadows need Resilience to boost their effective base mitigation. And they need it for emergency survival. And they need it for utility. And they need it to escape to stealth. Resilience is spread a little thin if you hadn't realized and doesn't spend much time off CD.

Well, to be fair it's more like: 2/2 Shadowy Veil + 2/2 Jedi Resistance = Medium Armor (or very slightly better than medium armor) And the medium armor classes have opportunities to take stuff that bumps them up back ahead, too.

It's just offense vs. defense mainly. In terms of value per point, Shadowy Veil soundly beats Security Breach in %-increase per point. It's just increase in defense instead of offense. In fact, that's the case with nearly all the survivability talents in the dps trees. As much as people complain about the dps trees being too squishy, you'd think more people would try to shore up that weakness with solid value talents, but most people elect for 0.4% more damage instead.

Why necro up a 3 month old dead thread and then tell folks to stop the QQ?

I had come up with this similar build a long time ago, but it's a whole lot more survivability oriented. Basically, it's really good on CC, Force management, and has probably the best survivability of any dps shadow build. It also has a 100% uptime on Force Slow (barely) which is a huge damage increase in the real world. Takes a mild hit on damage and max burst, but still does enough to kill people when geared. It works really good when you don't have much teammate support. 0/22/19 durable dps I still don't consider any of the hybrid dps specs to be as good as pure dps specs in teamplay, though.

The 2 second snare reapplies itself when the cylinder/cell ticks for damage again. You get a whole lot more total snare time out of a cylinder/cell proc than just 2s. The weird thing is it ticks every ~3s or so for just a 2s duration...and the snare is also very buggy from what I've seen and doesn't apply consistently after the first application. And you get rng reapplications of the cylinder/cell on various attack abilities. End result is targets end up slowing down and speeding up somewhat erratically.

Scoreboards don't win warzones. And if they did, you'd take the Rage Jugg running tank stance over the tanksin anyway.

A PvP tank specced for max durability in PvP will have gone far enough in their trees to pick up both Warding Call and Commanding Awe talents. So, your long duration mitigation talents are: Warding Call - 40% for 10s (best in game for any class) Saber Ward - 25% Force/Tech (most damage in PvP is this type) & 100%(first seconds)/50% avoidance on white attacks (even better than if it were a flat 25% reduction) for 12s Focused Defense - 15% for 10s plus healing effect Plus you have some extra buttons to push: Force Leap - 20% for 4s plus control immunity Enure - +30% health for 10s And I would also say don't forget Awe…very powerful for curbing incoming damage. No other tank has anything that can come close to that package. One of the most important functions in a tank (in terms of wins/losses) is making sure your group is able to bridge a rezz cycle without completely wiping off an objective and losing it. Even when a team is "winning" something bad can eventually happen…healers run out of gas…a few have to peel off to assist elsewhere…someone finally manages to gib a healer. It starts a chain reaction and folks start dying off and rezzing back. It'll be just fine once everyone runs back in fresh, but someone has to hold the node and prevent the cap for those last critical 10-15s. Compare to a Shadow tank. Already much squishier due to passive mitigation gap. And they can pop 50% white attack avoidance for 12s (does nothing for yellow attacks) and Force/Tech immunity for 5s (does nothing for white attacks.) Those two together are barely better than Saber Ward alone in trying to last 15s and worse if the attackers are smart enough to save their big yellows for the few seconds it takes for Resilience to wear off. The only other bullet in their gun is a 10% heal, which isn't even as good as the Focused Defense heal. So, a Guardian in the same position has what the Shadow has plus better passive mitigation plus -40% reduction for 10s plus -15% reduction for 10s plus -20% for 4s plus +30% health for 10s plus an aoe CC. The Shadow isn't even close here. And realistically…it's unlikely for the Guardian to have all their buttons available. However, the same goes for the Shadow, and with their lower passive mitigation they are far more likely to have needed to use some buttons early. I've seen this scenario play out bunches of times in rateds… The Shadow tank dies and the objective is lost. Guardian tank not only holds out against the cap, but lasts long enough to get healed back up by incoming rezzers and gets guards back out for a smooth recovery. So you thnk they don’t have tons of cooldowns? Maybe not, but compared to the other two tanks they do.

For a marginal player or a learning player, I would agree with that. A lot of people can't multitask enough, either through lack of practice or understanding, to try to do two things at once. As a result, if your mediocre tank is trying to dps, they are probably failing at their tank job. You'd rather them fail at dps than fail a tanking because they need to always do their primary job first. So, you take your learning tank and have them focus on tanking and ignore dps. They do it for a month and a half and eventually tanking becomes a super easy job for them that's second nature...but they have all this extra time that feels wasted in between tank functions or when their tank/disruptive stuff is all on CD. So, then you teach them how to dps and tell them to fill the gaps between tank work with it. A few weeks later they are doing all the same essential tank stuff, but they're doing 200k+ per warzone instead of 75k and they're starting to kill people and even be able to solo people. Now you finally have a decent tank player. When you're up in the high end rateds, you can't afford to carry mediocre tanks if you're facing good competition that's just as good as you are except their tanks know how to play their class. You'll lose. Tanks need to carry their own weight and kill stuff too; they just need to keep it within their priority system of tank first.

What spec are you running when tanking and what is a fairly typical attack sequence you would use when attacking someone from scratch?

Wow.... Having low damage output isn't an excuse to be dead weight on damage output. The talent makes a huge difference in damage capability and a Jugg tank is gimping their team if they don't take it and use it - it's that simple. Also, I don't see any of the good tanks running full tank spec...they all run hybrid variations and do very significant damage in addition to all the group support and utility they provide. You're also vastly overblowing how much dps bypass armor and value of CD's. If what you are saying were true, Deception Sins could just stack Endurance and be as survivable Juggs, right? Armor is still the primary form of survivability in PvP, and %-damage reduction cooldowns are the next biggest thing. The worst case is Pyro PT's and even they notice a huge difference between attacking a Jugg or Sorc. And no one else has anywhere near their capability to bypass armor. And the popularity of Pyro PT's is part of why Juggs are so much better right now, because they have so many %-damage reduction cooldowns and mechanics (or even absorb mechanic.) If Juggs were just as easy to kill as everyone else, they wouldn't be scoring so many huttballs because they'd be in respawn. Their healers would be dead too, because their tank would be in respawn. People don't target Juggs as tanks much because it's usually an inefficient use of time trying to make them die, not because they don't have enough impact on the game to be worth killing.

It doesn't take much...if you're outside of 4m, you're outside of 4m..doesn't matter if you're outside by 0.1m or 2.0m. Same with creating LoS...if you can't at least go the same speed as the guy you're chasing, you can't keep up. I outposition people all the time while both parties are snared - it's just part of the game. It's not like we have Crippling Poison in this game. I'm not sure why you think hybrid is so bad compared to full tank tree, even though I'm inclined to agree with you in a milder sense. It has all the same base survivability. It just doesn't have the 5% damage debuff and the mild snare....meanwhile there's other arguments here about all the overlapping debuffs and snares in pvp. It trades self healing from the channel for the targeted aoe self healing, which is less but more reliable when focused. For group utility, it adds instant Lift/WW CC and a 30m targeted aoe to break caps as well as burstier damage. IMO, it's at least a reasonable tradeoff. If anything, the remaining niche for tanksins is solo defender and hybrid spec is the better of the two for that because of the instant CC and 30m cap breaker.

You're kinda not seeming to make sense with the snare comments... 9 seconds is 6 gcds, not 18. A normal gcd is 1.5s long. Talented Chilling Scream has a reduced gcd of 1.0s and costs zero resource instead of 2. Without the talent, a Jugg normally cannot afford to keep everyone snared because it costs too much - or they end up putting out horrible damage, either one. On the squishier thing, you really need to do some comparative analysis between the two classes. I don't think you have any idea how bad tanksin armor is now, or how bad their healing is and how much it goes away when focused. The buff charges that are supposed to help them out with shield chance in PvE does very little in PvP - so little that most tanksin run a focus item. All the CC is single target. The ONLY thing tanksins have going for them is the 5s force/tech immunity, but 5s isn't long enough in a tank world. It mostly ends up being a utility ability rather than something that keeps them alive in face of determined pressure. Tanksins really are that squishy now, which is part of why high rated teams are replacing them.