Threads like this repeatedly shake my head. Fact, in HM TFB and NiM EC Jugg tanks have the all around best survivability. KeyboardNinja/Tam has combat logged this in other threads if you have doubts. Juggs also have the fantastic cooldowns, certainly far ahead of Powertechs, and arguably better than Assasins since every Jugg CD works against every damage type (though Force Shroud does break/bypass many mechanics). Sticking these CD's on shorter than 3 minute timers would make the class overly OP. Sins have no cooldowns the work against both weapon and force damage, PT's have only one cooldown that works against both and it's a weaker version of Invincible. The usable return heals mentioned by the OP? I'll take and 11k instant heal over the PT's 4.5k over 10 seconds heal any day. Fun fact, when you hit Endure Pain you actually heal for 40% of your total health, and only have to return 30% of your total health, meaning you get 2-3k health for free. You want utility? Nothing is better than picking a team mate and putting a 20% damage reduction buff for 6 seconds on them. I know the OP didn't gripe about this, but the repeated mention of Juggs lacking a pull is also baseless. Pull, Jump, Knockback; each tank AC gets a different set of 2 from that list. In my opinion Juggs are the best tanks in the game. They have fantastic passive and active mitigation. They have good utility. What they lack though is single target and AOE threat. For AOE, it's a simple matter of having long CD or high resource AOE moves. For single target threat, well, having everything would make the class OP, and as a result PT's and Sins put out a lot more threat (tested, around 50% more). But then Sins have to work for their mitigation, and PT's have almost nothing in terms of active mitigation. OP has much love for Sin tanks, and as much as I appreciate all the utility and Force Shrouding of big hits my Sin co-tank has, the fact is, Sin tanks are an extreme liability on under 60% NiM Kephess. Not once before getting to that phase of Kephess have I seen my Sin co-tank, my Jugg tank, or my PT alt tank fall so far short of other tanking classes that a strategy had to be put in place specifically to accommodate a tank class. There is something broken about Jugg tanks though. Everything I said above applies to standard 31 point Immortal Juggs. However, at the cost of stuns and AOE threat (which is already pointlessly abysmal) , the 18/23/0 Hybrid build far outperforms a 31 point Immortal build in survivability, and puts out 5% more threat.** ** Tested myself with the same gear set. The average threat for Hybrid in the first 15 seconds is 5-10% more than Immortals threat. The sample size on the test was small though, so by statistical significance it's more correct to say both builds put out the same threat.

I mention my gear to convey how much I actually do switch specs. At the very least for both characters I daily switch between tank, pve dps, and pvp dps for both. On my Jugg Rage vs Vengeance switches do pop up regularly depending on enviroment, frustration with bubble stuns, and the impending nerf bat to Rage. Point being, if you're going to allow saved specs and quickbars, limiting it to two is a half measure. And I think many people regularly run a pve spec, pvp spec, and a utility heal/tank spec in either or both pvp and pve. You can already respec mid warzone, or mid Kephess to suit the present situation. Having to manually click your spec and switch quickbars is a good natural way to keep people from completely cheesing an encounter in one GCD. If any sort of multi-specs are introduced they would need to have a 10+ second channel to them, otherwise people would end up effectively playing multiple trees at once (Jump to that annoying sorc while in Vengeance, hit one button and get that 8k smash off without being bubble stunned). I know Bioware is committed to quality of life improvements (that why we have free respecs anywhere to begin with), but in this case, to do it right and better than it is now would require a lot of effort that could otherwise go into more content so I wouldn't have to play 4+ specs on my characters to keep things feeling fresh (and yes, I have 4 other alts, those are the two I like best though).

I have a Powertech with Campaign/DG Tank and DPS gear, and full War Hero. I bounce between a tank spec, a pvp pyro spec, a pve pyro spec, and a pyro parsing spec. I have a Jugg with DG Tank gear, Rakata/Campaign gear, and War Hero/EWH gear. I bounce between a tank spec, vengeance pve spec, vengeance pvp spec, rage pvp spec, and rage pve spec. I don't see how duel specs will help me bounce between 4-5 specs based on my mood that day. Saving quickbar setups would be nice. Being able to field respec and simply move 2-4 points around would be fantastic instead of resetting it all.

I'd like to point out that if the Dreadfull Orb is just a vanity item like the Czerka crate someone mentioned, it would very likely not have a 24 hour cooldown on it. Great stuff Carnage, my guild went from passively debating about running 16 man content for variety as everything is on farm in 8 man, to over night setting up a 16 man raid.

You were going well, and I was getting convinced that I should go for EWH bracers instead of a 63 PvE armoring and WH mod. Then you said this. Please don't ask me how magnets work, I'm a scientist and will just lie to you.

If you want to get down to it, we (APEX) would have had the Kephess kill over a week earlier if Kephess didn't drop his raid wiper on us at 9% when we had two players go down. You had an extremely sloppy kill, and while I haven't a clue what makes the marauders scream at your video, I kept yelling for your tanks to drag Kephess the hell out of there before they boxed the melee DPS in. Good to see you back though old friend, did you get the pain in your unmentionable parts fixed?

Can we back off the Marauder elitism for a bit and go back to a more important point: How the hell did you guys not get the raid wiper with 2 DPS down at the end? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy you got the kill and didn't wipe at 1%, I'd hate to hear in the news about a guild committing mass seppuku. I'd just like to know how to avoid the raid wiper myself.

I think I speak for all tanks in this game when I say, **** You.

Hopefully this thread gets updated as I just dropped 100k on adrenals to push the 2k mark. Amelthea is a 8/8/25 Pyro Powertech in full Campaign with 63 Mainhand barrel and 63 Offhand armoring. Just over 5 minutes I got 2013 DPS. If Pyro is not an OP spec then I don't know what is. With little 63 gear I'm breaking 2k, on an offspec of an alt (main is Gorthog of APEX). It's also an incredibly ******* spec to make tanks deal with, I hit 2957 DPS in the first 17 seconds. I'm so glad I only have Marauders being *******es in my raid.

My raid leader made a quip before our Kephess kill this week saying that NiM Kephess is the only fight in the game where you really should use a stim. I took that as a challenge and tanked TFB HM without a stim and without any problems last night. While sitting on the upper platforms because our healers get bored otherwise (I think they both run single screens, can't youtube mid fight). After we get our titles and I can risk a wipe on Toth and Zorn and the tanks I'll run up to Kephess without a stim too. Point being, min-maxing and looking at slight improvements to gearing end game, at the DG level, only really matters for Kephess. For Kephess having a click relic and adrenals ready is far more advantageous than having flat mitigation; I don't think under 60% Kephess is meant to be healable without even a soft cooldown. I blow Saber Ward on either the first or second bleed so the healers don't have to heal the bleed and the damage from Kephess. Even if I hit it on the first bleed it's not back up for the last phase. Our DPS routinely takes the walker to under 20% on the second burn phase, we were 6 seconds +/- 2 under the 4 minute enrage timer. On the kill we had 5 full cycles of Breath of the Masters, and got the kill as I placed the 1st circle of the 6th set. Having Invincible (40% DR), a relic, and adrenal for each of my 3 turns, as well as constant Predation from a Marauder (still beat enrage) made the healing far more manageable.

This. You can have a full combat log of NiM Kephess showing an average of about 1150 DPS taken over the course of the fight. That more than hides the fact that without cooldowns you're eating around 4000 DPS from under 60% Kephess. With a click relic activated you're taking 160 less DPS than if you had a War Hero relic in that slot, and you only have about 20 seconds at a time on Kephess. Let me put this misrepresentation of averages into perspective: Assasins get ROCKED by Force/Kinetic damage, but, they can often come out far ahead of other tanks by Force Shrouding key damage spikes.

Kitru, it's been long over due that I got to bounce relic ideas around with someone. To argue against a few points: 1) The 20 seconds of use for DG. Yea, that was annoying to see. However, for defense click relics, the Campaign relic has always been 20 seconds of use, and the Rakata relic is only available to Artifice users. So, unless you're using Artifice you're stuck with 20 seconds on use, at which point the DG relic is more favorable for its higher boost and higher endurance. It appears I was wrong about click relic cooldowns, though I'm not sure why you would need two then, given you have 2 good cooldowns as a Jugg and hopefully adrenals. That's another debate though. 2) I'll concede Matrix Cube ~= Absorb Proc for Juggs. I like the Matrix Cube more for its main stat and decent endurance (more than Campaign relics, less than DG relics) than its defensive stats since I take all lettered mods and have some real ******* Marauders in my guild. I've been running that setup since before the DG relics were put in game and I didn't have much in the way of 63 gear, so I'm a bit stuck in my ways. 3) The PVP Defense relics are very good, but I would caution against using 2 of them. The Elite War Hero relics lose 51 endurance to the DG relics and take away a soft cooldown. Can we come to an agreement that the more preferable arrangement is 1 (E)War Hero Defense relic and 1 DG Defense click relic for Juggs? The extra Defense on use (5.25% for me, sitting at 566 Defense Rating) can be very useful when things are only going slightly bad, and is pretty much needed with an adrenal or second click relic to survive the last phase of NiM Kephess.

Let's look at what relics are available to tanks: Dread Guard Defense on click Dread Guard Shield/Absorb on click Dread Guard Absorb on Proc War Hero static Defense War Hero static Shield Matrix Cube (Juggs and PTs only) Before we talk about relics, let's ask what your actual chances are for defensing and shielding an attack is (if you theorycraft yourself skip to the next paragraph). With your current stats, your 27% Defense chance will be buffed up to 30% with Retaliation. Now the base accuracy for boss attacks is 90% aside from "special" attacks as the developers call it, couple that with your Smash debuff and the bosses accuracy is at 85%. Now the chance of dodging the attack is a roll of Defense against Accuracy, and basically is 100% - (85% - 30%), or 45%. Quite a bit larger than your listed Defense chance. The next roll is for Shields, all attacks that bypass your Defense roll have a 50% (rounded) chance of being shielded. The probability of and attack bypassing Defense and then being shielded is then .55*.5, or 27.5% chance to shield. Now, to start crossing relics off the list. Dread Guard clicky relics share cooldowns, so you only want one. The Defense click relic gives better mitigation to a Jugg than a Shield/Absorb click, so the Shield/Absorb click is tossed out. The War Hero Shield relic is not ideal for Juggs, you pick up around 550 Shield Rating just through Enhancements and Implants alone unless you're grabbing a lot of Accuracy (which you shouldn't). All calculations that take a total number of defense/shield/absorb points to be allocated, and finds the mathematically ideal allocation show that the amount of Shield rating you have to carry on enhancements and implants is the correct amount of Shield. Now, the DG Absorb proc relic. You get the boost for 6 seconds after you shield. The slowest attacks will be around 1 attack every GCD. For 6 seconds you have 4 GCD's, so at worst 6 attacks. With our 27.5% chance to shield, it is expected to shield only 1 of those 4 attacks with the Proc still up. Furthermore, the 20 second rate will not be on a 20 second cooldown as there will be 2-3 GCD's after the 20 seconds ends before you shield again to proc it. Now at the upper end, the last phase of NiM Kephess is 5 attacks every GCD (bye bye Sin tanks). That leads to 20 attacks in the 6 second proc window, and at 27.5% chance to shield you expect to absorb 5.5 attacks, and have the 20 second rate constantly refreshed. Each of those attacks Kephess does hits for 2700 after armor. So at 50% absorb, a shielded hit is 1350 damage. Without the proc up, shielding 5.5 attacks in 6 seconds is 7425 damage taken, or 1238 DPS (just from the shielded attacks). With the proc up, you gain roughly 10% absorb, at which point a shielded attack hits for 1080, and shielding 5.5 attacks during the proc comes out to 5940 damage taken, or 990 DPS (just from the shielded attack). That's 248 less damage taken per second during the proc window, but factoring in the proc only being up 6 out of 20 seconds, it averages out to 74 less damage taken per second. In comparison, the Matrix Tank Cube has a static +21 Defense chance on it. That adds about .4% Defense Chance. When looking at the tank melting numbers from Kephess (19500 DPS pre-mitigation) that made the absorb proc relic look viable, that .4% Defense Chance actually works out to 30 less damage taken per second. Not quite where the absorb proc is, but you have to realize that this is one phase of one fight. Every other fight in the game save the TFB tentacles attacks with far less frequency, at which point the RNG will go full 6 second windows where you don't shield again. For Hybrid Juggs with less than 45% shield chance, and those like myself with 31% Defense Chance, the math is even more in favor of a Matrix Cube providing all around more mitigation than the Absorb proc, and has the added bonus of a lot of Strength to help with threat. The last relic to mention is a War Hero static Defense relic. There shouldn't be any argument about this one, it's a viable relic and the only knocks against it are being low endurance and without power or main stat. That leaves the DG Defense click, War Hero Defense, and Matrix Cube as the three more viable relics for appropriately geared Jugg tanks (if your defense chance is below 25% I can't help you...). Personally, I pick the DG and Matrix cube because I like the main stat boost, higher endurance, and less pvp involved with the Matrix Cube over the War Hero, but most combinations of those 3 will work well. Side note for Sin/PT tanks. The absorb proc relic is certainly more viable (and I think BiS for PT's), though the Defense click will likely be better than the shield click. I sort of mess with my PT alt, but I'll admit I don't know much about Sin tanks.

It doesn't matter if it's 8 man or 16 man, there's Nightmare EC, and then there's Nightmare Kephess. It would be wise not to mix the two up. Ace won at Nightmare Kephess in a manner that can't be replicated due to the nerf. Putting Friendly Fire ahead of them in any sort of guild ranks would be the same as putting CKN ahead of Friendly Fire because they cleared TFB HM first. With that said, Friendly Fire impressively downed the tanks first before that fight got nerfed, and anyone who downs Nightmare Kephess in 8 or 16 man has my outright respect, though more so for a 16 man kill.

Then you're missing out. I run a 17/24/0 spec that goes up Immortal far enough for the force scream bubble, and up Vengeance far enough for the 4% Damage Reduction and Impale. Trading 4% Shield Chance for 4% Damage Reduction is a significant step up in survivability, and taking Impale on a 9 second cooldown will generate more aggro than Crushing Blow (top talent in tank tree) as it's on a 15 second cooldown. I've never tried the 27/14/0 or similar build but I sure bet getting a point of rage every 3 seconds makes aggro work out. All around though, aggro is starting to slide in respect to the numbers some DPS are pushing. I'm working on NiM EC right now and to beat the enrage timer on the tanks DPS can't sit back for very long and an unguarded Sin DPS was ripping aggro off the Sin Tank on Stormcaller a few times since you can't roll taunts to start that fight. Speccing one way or another doesn't significantly help the situation when tanks can pull 700 DPS and several classes are pulling 1800+ over the course of a fight. There is one valid point sort of made in the quoted comment, Juggs are the only tank AC with a viable hybrid build.

This is fantastic stuff, thanks OP. I found a calculator someone coded a while ago and it pretty much agrees with your formulas (don't ask for the link, no idea where I got it). I would like to point out a few points though: 1) You're going to have a ton of shield rating at full Campaign. For tank gear you only have the choice between Accuracy and Shield on enhancements, ears, and implants. At nearly full DG on my Jugg I'm stuck with 520 points in shield. For Sins and Powertechs your results hold up well, but for Juggs the suggested numbers yield shield ratings lower than what you can achieve. 2) People need to realize endurance stacking is intelligent to an extent for all tank classes. If you're taking the 61 mods with 32 endurance to get 10 more defense, you're only preparing yourself for 1 of 3 types of attacks. Force/Kinetic damage bypasses your defense/shield and goes straight to armor, and that kind of damage is all over TFB HM. Elemental damage doesn't care about either defense/shield or armor and hits for a roughly flat 20-25% damage reduction for each tank class, and this type of damage is all over NiM EC. For each of those two damages you can only increase your survivability by upping your armor rating (Full Campaign to Full DG adds less than 1% I believe), or by increasing your endurance. Really, I feel bad for any healer trying to heal a sub 25k health Jugg on NiM Stormcaller. Balance your mitigation people.