I would like to preface this post by noting that I am KBN's cotank (Emital - Shadow Tank - Ebon Hawk). He's a better mind for analytics so I generally leave the forum to him. Thats a fairly pointed statement when all you have are your own numbers that in the context of this thread, or anything you can link to, have no analytic backing. Luckily Kitru and KBN are different people, so discontinuity between statements they make is invalid and non-germane. This above all demonstrates your own total lack of meaningful experience with this fight (NiM DG), or your abject failure to analyze your own group's performance. My assertions are numbered for your convenience: 1) The healing check for the first phase of the fight is recovering from lightening field. 2) Tanks in general should take considerably less damage from the preliminary ticks and the final burst than any other member of the raid. 3) As a function of their health and the damage any given member of the Operation is likely to take in the first phase, all lightning field damage on non tank members presents a critical imperative for the healers. Heirad is entirely capable of vaporizing a dps/healer after they've taken a full hit from the final tick of the lightening field. 4) The enrage timer for NiM DG is simply impossible for all but the very top shelf DPS. For those DPS the enrage requires brilliant execution and enviable output. With those assertions in place it becomes clear that the loss of even 1 dps (under the best case scenario when a battle res is up) causes 5-10 seconds of lost damage output, healing output, rebuff from someone (A GCD best used elsewhere) and a repeated ramp up period. Meaning, if one of our gunslingers misses their roll they subsequently die to Heirad or require the full attention of a healer to prevent dying to Heirad making tank death much more likely. Show me a group for which this is not a catastrophic, cascade failure and equivalent to a long, slow, pointless wipe to the enrage timer and I'll show you one of the dozen or so groups that has downed this fight. In short, your assumptions about what you see in any of those logs and whatever you believe they prove, that cannot be numerically derived, is patently false. If a DPS died to a lightning field in the first phase, we saved ourselves the trouble and wiped it up. Again, you acting like KBN or Kitru have some ulterior motive in providing this information doesn't help your case. Frankly, any geared tank (or the healer keeping him up) is going to find ambient damage from sources that preclude defense to be irritating but largely irrelevant in light of the 18k Voltaic slashes that defense will give you a better chance of avoiding completely. Your insistence that a single variable in the model is so magnificently incorrect as to negate not only the model but the credibility of the people that built it completely overshadows the larger pragmatic implications of what you're suggesting. If you are going to argue for the complete dismissal of defense from your gear you would have to provide that the resulting gains in shield/absorb/luck/blessings of RNG string will then make it likely that you will never be below the threshold of a voltaic slash (or similar defense-able attack) killing you. At this point you are extrapolating embarrassment over a perceived inaccuracy into a systemic defense of a system for which you yourself can provide no alternative. You can spit numbers all day long, as can I. However when it comes to taking issue with the analytic method used to verify this data all you seem to demonstrate is being wide of the mark in interpreting the model. TL;DR I believe you mean "I disagree with KBN/Kitru/Dipstik on this issue" rather than "KBN/Kitru/Dipstik are lying to everyone because they're embarrassed that I don't agree!"

You arn't going to be the top DPS, have the most kills, and be able to rock people, AND be able to take concentrated punishment from two people without heals. I've found that infil doesnt require a lot of skill to output big damage, it requires skill to stay alive in order to do that damage. KC takes some of the emphasis off actively minding your own survivability, but at the cost of lower top end damage. A note for hutball, we make good carriers while we have CD's to use. However, since part of our survivability is meant to be our self heals, we have to be doing damage to be competitive. Having to stop to TK someone while you're being beat on is not ideal. I usually prefer to be the one to grab the ball or the one to score it, that interim can be very rough for us and is better left to more durable vanguards or more agile guardians.

This is the important part. The only justification for it I ever saw from the Dev's was almost solely PVE oriented.

I played a pretty standard 31/0/10 for both Pvp and Pve pre 1.3. I wasnt in the rotation for our most recent ops night so I can't speak to ops post 1.3. However in PVP i found TK wasn't worth the points anymore. Anyone worth their salt in pvp knows to interrupt a double bladed saber using TK. And since most classes have 2 or more ways to interupt it, I almost never get all 4 ticks in. Pre 1.3 that was a bummer, but wasn't a crisis, between it and my ambient healing I was tough, and could manage pretty decent sustained damage. However post 1.3 I just couldn't justify the top 5 points in the KC tree to make HS and TK worth it. There wasn't enough benefit to them. If i choose to fill those points out again ill be running with my guild in rateds with tank gear. As it stands i'm running 23/1/17. The increased power from the trinket change plays a role, but overall I feel no tougher than your average dps, but my damage is excellent. How am I compared to how I was? Night and day, I fall apart in a stiff wind by comparison. But how am I compared to vanguards and guardians in similar gear/spec? Thats hard to say at this point. I feel like there will be across the board increases in survivability to counter the trinket change. Everyone of any class seems to be dying really fast in most WZ's.

I think you might be making too much out of Slow Time. The movement speed debuff only means anything in PVP. And I feel like increasing it's cost would screw up our rotation. We already have regular periods of time when cooldowns leave us with 2-3 GCD with nothing to do, making things too much more expensive will add force issues to that I believe. I can justify Project's cost since it's possible between PA and FP to make it an incredibly brutal single target hit. While I agree with the OP, it can be really frustrating losing two abilities out of your toolbox when CC goes out, once you start making frequent and intelligent use of your taunts, your threat shouldn't be a serious problem. I admit to not having done EC, or all of Lost island, but I imagine if it is still an issue, the lack of enrage timers on trash should inspire your dps to calm down a bit.