Speaking of DTPS, shouldn't we consider only the DTPS during parts of the fight where tanks are taking damage? In Tyrans there is downtime after tank swaps. In Calphayus there is downtime after swaps and while waiting for portals to open, etc. In Raptus I couldn't tell what might be downtime due to how seemingly random the damage spikes were, so I didn't bother trying to calculate that. In Council the only downtime is the end of phase two when Brontes does her beam and I get my crystal. In Writhing Horror there was downtime after a tank swap when the Jealous Male was dead. In Op9 there is downtime while I channeled at my panel and for a short time after Black Obtuse. In Kephess there is downtime after tank swaps and between phases. Tyrans - 4347 Calphayus - 4602 Council - 2777 Writhing Horror - 5151 Operator IX - 4147 Kephess - 6423 I uploaded my logs to Parsely in case anyone wants to check them. Tyrans Calphayus + (end) Raptus 1st part & 2nd part Council Writhing Horror Operator IX Kephess the Undying

I've always followed the theorycrafter recommendation that the Reactive Warding relic provides the most mitigation over the course of a fight. However, recently I had a dispute with my raid lead over which tanking relics provide the best mitigation, so I decided to test the RW relic against a Shield Amplification relic in a full clear of NiM DP and a partial NiM TFB. Method: Results: The Shield Amplification Relic mitigated the most damage in five out of seven fights. My tentative conclusion is that the SA relic is better for Assassins for any fight with very little internal/elemental damage. Even if the SA relic is not the best, it is at least not as far behind as I had previously thought based on the theorycrafting. (Detailed results and calculations here: [spreadsheet]) Tyrans DTPS - 2857 % internal/elemental - 10.3% melee/ranged - 41.6% Fight length - 6:24 RW total mitigated - 19880 SA total mitigated - 25703 Calphayus DTPS - 2382 % internal/elemental - 14.5% melee/ranged - 70.6% Fight length - 8:38 RW total mitigated - 31240 SA total mitigated - 23475 Raptus DTPS - 1421 % internal/elemental - 2.9% melee/ranged -10.5% Fight length - 7:33 RW total mitigated - 11360 SA total mitigated - 17637 Council DTPS - 2636 % internal/elemental - 16.1% melee/ranged - 44.8% Fight length - 9:03 (I tanked Calphayus and Brontes.) RW total mitigated - 34080 SA total mitigated - 30897 Writhing Horror DTPS - 3288 % internal/elemental - 0.9% melee/ranged - 41.5% Fight length - 5:04 RW total mitigated - 14200 SA total mitigated - 23851 Operator IX DTPS - 1926 % internal/elemental - 0% melee/ranged - 69.8% Fight length - 8:31 RW total mitigated - 25560 SA total mitigated - 35116 Kephess the Undying DTPS - 2881 % internal/elemental - 1.9% melee/ranged - 7.8% Fight length - 4:31 RW total mitigated - 17040 SA total mitigated - 18271 Caveats: In some fights the average unmitigated attack damage was difficult to determine. For example, in the Calphayus fight there are 3 different attacks named "Strike" which each hit for different amounts. Also, some attacks did not hit me often enough to determine a reliable average (Rising Slash and Driving Thrust on Raptus, Leap Slam and Thundering Blast on Council.) I did not have perfect uptime on Dark Protection, the "Protected" healer buff, or the Survivor 2 piece set bonus. In some cases Overcharge Saber was active during the SA proc. I hope that taking the average unmitigated damage of each attack would correct for this. In some cases the SA relic proc occurred during the uptime of Deflection, and I therefore shielded less attacks than I would have otherwise. The effectiveness of the SA relic varies the most in fights with infrequent large hits (such as Raptus.) The RW relic would have won if I had shielded two less of the big hits in that fight . To be accurate, I would need to tank these bosses several times and record an average between fights.

Answer: tl;dr = More stat is better than less stat, even if you wind up with less absorb rating, so you should use the higher rating defense mods.

o.O Did you mean 186? I don't think the loss of armor rating in 146 would be worth 5% more shield chance.

The 220 crafted relics give less endurance than the 224 DPS token versions. (Ultimate Exarch vs 220 crafted) If we could trade Defense for shield or absorb that would be true. Since we can't, it's better to keep the Defense. More mitigation stat will always be better than no mitigation stat if you already have enough HP to survive spikes. Defense would only be bad if you were fighting a boss that didn't do any melee/ranged attacks. Currently there aren't any bosses like that, so having more Defense stat will always increase your mean mitigation.

When gearing for greater mean mitigation, Defense is more valuable. When gearing to survive spike damage, Endurance is more valuable. But even then, he should be careful that he isn't trading stats at a bad ratio. For the sake of conjecture, if he wanted to survive a 75k single hit he should be wearing as much 224 gear as he can. He could get 83,409 HP by wearing mostly 224s with 220 B mods and a DPS relic. (DPS relics have Endurance and are still a better trade ratio than the Enhancements.) If that isn't enough of a cushion for his healers, he could use an Earpiece and Implants from the vendor instead of token (i.e. Exarch Steadfast MK-4 vs Ultimate Exarch Bastion Device). Even that would be a better ratio than trading 220 with 224 Enhancements. With all 224 except for 220 B mods, 220 vendor Earpiece and Implant, and a DPS relic he would sit at 86,314 HP. I haven't tried NiM Raptus, but I imagine a 10k HP buffer should be enough with the possibility of tank swapping/popping a defensive cooldown to give the healers time to recoup. Regarding the Advanced Bulwark Enhancement 44, as far as I know that doesn't exist in-game. If it does exist, I'd like to know where to find it.

That wouldn't give any more shield/absorb stat, so its not really useful for stat rebalancing. Bulwark Sturdiness As you can see, he would lose 37 Defense and gain 32 Endurance per Enhancement. If he really needs to beef up his health pool to survive spike damage, he can get a better exchange of Defense for Endurance by using lettered mods (i.e. Advanced Warding Mod 43B) instead of unlettered (Advanced Warding Mod 43.)

For some reason BioWare likes to design NPCs that ignore cover protection. Another really bad case: the Rakghouls in the Rakghoul Tunnels will stun you regardless of Entrench/Hunker Down.

The discussion started on this page.

My raid group cleared HM Master & Blaster for the first time tonight, despite the bug. Once we got used to seeing the AoE pointing at us it was no big deal.

That, or all our Synthweavers/Armormechs no longer have any schematics to craft.

Never missed as a merc? Not even with your offhand? Something smells fishy here...

That would depend on whether you are gearing to survive spike damage or just to have higher average mitigation. In my opinion, the decrease in constant damage reduction from losing 2x224 armorings is not worth it. Wither comes off cooldown every 10 seconds, so assuming you use Wither on cooldown (not possible for the many bosses that involve kiting and tank swapping) you would only have that +4% damage reduction roughly a third of the time. You could try delaying Wither so you have the proc up for certain predictable spikes, but I wouldn't recommend it.

1) Suppressive Fire 2) Suppressive Fire 3) Suppressive Fire In all seriousness, the gameplay while leveling is so mind numbingly easy now that it really doesn't matter what abilities you use. You won't get most of the abilities that make an energy neutral rotation until rather late, so it's a moot point anyway.

What we really need is a separate Legacy-wide storage specifically for materials (ala Guild Wars 2's Material Storage system). This would free up the normal Legacy bank slots for more non-stacking items, such as legacy gear. And while they are at it they could change the useless companion "go sell junk" function into "go deposit all my materials."

Each "Tanks vs. Dmg profiles" section has two lists of stats for each tank class. One list uses token mods, the other uses commendation mods for more health. It seems that you have only been looking at the former.

Bummer, I was looking forward to testing that out. Thanks for the correction.

Aside from tank DPS considerations, wouldn't the Power relic also be marginally better for Juggernauts due to Sonic Barrier, which is based on the Force Healing stat? Mastery gives .14 to bonus healing per point of stat, whereas Power gives .17. Sonic Barrier cannot benefit from the crit added by Mastery, so Power would be more effective. This might also be true for the Dark Charge proc heals for Assassin tanks during Overcharge Saber.

Maybe I missed out on some theory crafting re: relics, but I thought as per this post Mastery relics were only better than Power relics if the user has enough free Crit in their rotation or Crit Rating in their gear to cause an auto Crit when the relic procs. For tank spec and gear that would not be the case.

That skill still exists, but it may have been removed from your quickbar. You should be able to find it in the Shadow section of your ability window.

The relevant changes are in the following patches: 3.1, 3.1.2, 3.2.1, 3.3, 4.0, 4.0.3 (I left out some of the changes that fixed unintentional differences between Assassin and Shadow mirror classes.) In summary: Every spec Phase Walk has moved into the Consular base class, granting its use to Sages as well. It can be trained/granted at level 61. New Ability: Shadow Stride! 30 meter range, no Global Cooldown (GCD). 30 second cooldown. Use the Force to move through time and space, appearing at your enemy target and increasing your movement speed by 75% for 3 seconds. Does not break Stealth. Cannot be used against targets in cover. The range of Mind Crush has been reduced to 10 meters (down from 30 meters). Whirling Blow and Double Strike now consume 20 Force (down from 25). Damage dealt has been reduced with respect to the cost reductions. Infiltration Clairvoyant Strike now replaces Double Strike after it is learned. Psychokinetic Blast now replaces Project after it is learned. Kinetic Field now increases damage reduction by 3% for 15 seconds (up from 2%) when dealing critical damage. This effect stacks up to 3 time Low Slash now has a 30 meter range (up from 4 meters), and the damage it deals has been reduced. New Passive Skill: Fracturing Force! Increases the damage dealt by Shadow Technique’s Force Breach by 5%. Additionally, activating Shadow Stride while Shadow Technique is active builds 3 Breaching Shadows. Deep Impact now increases the critical strike damage dealt by Shadow Technique’s Force Breach effect and Psychokinetic Blast by 10% (down from 30%). The damage dealt by Psychokinetic Blast has been reduced. Clairvoyant Strike now consumes 20 Force (down from 25). Damage dealt has been reduced with respect to the cost reduction. Serenity Vanquish now replaces Mind Crush after it is learned. Force in Balance and Vanquish now have a maximum range of 10 meters (down from 30 meters). Mind Quell now increases the damage dealt by Mind Crush and Vanquish by 15% (down from 20%). The life redirected by Psychic Absorption for Sever Force and Force Technique’s Force Breach has been reduced to 10% of the damage dealt (down from 25%). Serenity Strike no longer benefits from Mind Quell. Prolific Justice now spreads periodic Force Breach and Sever Force effects with Whirling Blow (instead of Force in Balance). New Passive Skill: Atrophying Attacks! Dealing melee damage increases the critical chance of your damaging periodic effects by 10% for 10 seconds. Kinetic Combat In addition to its previous effects, Double-bladed Saber Tactics now increases the damage dealt by Force Breach by 75% whenever you successfully shield, parry, or deflect an attack. This effect lasts for 10 seconds and does not stack. Changed the name of “Double-bladed Saber Defense” to “Double-bladed Saber Tactics” to better fit the new additions to the skill. Reduced the damage dealt by Cascading Debris. Force Break now increases the damage dealt by Combat Technique’s Force Breach and Slow Time by 30%. Cascading Debris now replaces Force Pebbles after it is learned. Cascading Debris can now be channeled on the move. New Passive Skill: Kinetic Bastion! Reduces the cooldown of Kinetic Ward by 5 seconds and increases the shield chance it provides by an additional 3%. Shielding an attack while Kinetic Ward is active has a 20% chance to restore a charge and increase its active duration by 1 second. In addition, Kinetic Bulwark can build 2 additional stacks. Utility Tier 1 - Skillful New Utility: Snaring Strikes! Double Strike, Clairvoyant Strike, and Whirling Blow reduce the movement speed of the targets they damage by 30% for 6 seconds. Tier 2 - Masterful New Utility: Kinetic Acceleration! Project, Psychokinetic Blast, Mind Crush, or Vanquish increase your movement speed by 50% for 9 seconds. This cannot occur more than once every 18 seconds. Tier 3 - Heroic New Utility: One with the Shadows! You can use Shadow Stride while immobilized, and it purges immobilizing and slowing effects when used.

For the 224 relic with Endurance, do you think it would be better for an Assassin tank to get a clicky relic or a proc relic? The proc relic would contribute more to the group DPS over time, but the clicky relic might provide better initial threat generation in some key situations when taunt fluffing is not possible. An alacrity clicky relic might even contribute to surviviability by reducing the timer on DCDs.

That's very true. I recommended 78k because that's about the HP my sin tank had when I cleared HM DP after 4.0. We didn't have any tank deaths, but that was with liberal use of DCDs and healers that kept us pretty near topped off between spikes. Luck may have also been a factor.

Personally, for a Shadow tank in HM operations I would recommend you have at least 78k HP. That would be enough to give your healers a comfortable buffer of reaction time even on the hard hitting fights like Revan, Master & Blaster or Brontes. If you went full 224 with no B mods you would have only 77.3k HP. For HM that is probably fine. For NiM I've seen recommendations for even more HP than that - 80kish - just to survive spikes on bosses like Raptus.

Yes. Doing less than 3k DPS on that fight is extremely bad, especially for a Lightning Sorc who should be able to get lots of AoE damage on the adds.