So, I don't know how to put quotes within quotes, but meh. There's a number of issues in those: 1) KBN wrote, "the fact is that most bosses in TOR hit like wet noodles (relatively speaking)." Compare that to an experienced Sent, Van, Sin that can hit 10k+ shots that might be defendable (I know some of the Van's are at least from testing). 2) KBN wrote, "But, I only had about a 40% shield chance, so that 3-4% was more like 1.4% or so, because a lot of the time it'd be useless. [. . .] Fortunate Redoubt would raise my defense by about 3% at that point." He's of course running full tank builds with the best gear in the game. I'm running sub-1000 budget stats so the bonuses to Defense and shield/absorb will be significantly greater; Especially true for this build's Defense Stat. If you can defend it, you don't take ANY damage from it, and the FR relic will more than double my build's Defense Rating. That said, the SA relic does still look next to useless compared to the RW one, since the shield will only proc at far less than 35%, and while the absorb rating LEAPS in this build, it will only leap by maybe about 10% (which still only reduces damage 1/3rd of the time, and only of shieldable attacks which may be only about 1/3rd the attacks coming your way in PvP anyways). My conclusion there has to be swap the SA for the RW, and keep the FR. Can you show me a build? And I don't know what's wrong with the ear in that one. . . I suppose the Weaponmaster instead? With the enhancements I picked there, you get shield and 2 of them for defense, but also more power. Not as much, but it's enough to bring a tiny defense budget in order to maintain the ability to withstand focusing. The only thing I think that would really make the added Damage overcome that shield and defense rating would be Power and Crit, which don't seem to exist. Otherwise it'd have to be crit & surge which would lower the bonus damage and only help when you actually Crit. Tanking trees don't offer any auto-criticals, so power & surge isn't particularly useful either. Good because that's exactly what I'm testing: the value of a DPS geared tank against a potential third DPS on a team. Perhaps a better test would be to compare ten matches with a DPS geared tank against ten matches with a third full DPS; but I don't have the time to run that one myself. Those sorts of tests always become testimonials anyways, without any data around. Either way whenever you start a reply to a post with "the fact that you [ . . . ] nullifies this thread," it actually nullifies your reply because it proves you haven't remotely considered the merits of the argument. So your opinion is blind and worthless. Also, I have no idea what the relevance is of someone who tends to lick windows to the subject. I actually read your post before I posted mine; and I liked your work. You make great arguments. I wanted to make one where the need to guard nodes and run a hutt-ball were completely irrelevant here. How is your build going now? Do you still run a DPS geared tank?

I searched for something like what you suggest and found: I can't find anything from him specifically addressing the value of FR vs. SA or RW. Can you quote?

625 additional defense rating for up to 30% (6 of 20 seconds) of a fight, especially when starting with such a low stat budget for defense, is not insignificant. I don't argue that the Reactive Warding relic may be BiS, but I will point out KBN's PvP ideal distribution (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=621033) that values defense over shield and absorb. If I am to replace one with reactive warding, it would definitely be the shield relic. If you looked at this build, you'd see it has 0 absorb rating and only 340 shield rating.

Fixed.

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/35ed604e-ebf6-40a8-9a1c-a6f988bacbc0 Here's a version with the Deft AX mods and the Might Augs. While it has 32k health, and does basically the same amount of damage; it loses over 5% of Defense Chance; which could equate to 3k health every few seconds. I updated the original build, however, because the difference in power/strength stacking is pretty negligible, and went with the Deft BX mods which nets enough endurance to get the build over that magical 30k health (with all the datacrons).

I still mostly taunt and peel, guard switch, etc. The difference is, in DPS gear I can better contribute to bringing someone down who's getting low; and do enough damage to healers to make them heal themselves instead of team when I'm trying to shut them down.

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/d8861b88-3c4f-4ef7-99fb-70d15c077734 Gear build I would consider ideal here. Incidentally, there's a third category of numbers that could/should also be considered here; mitigation. This build has nowhere near the mitigation of a full tank, but leaps and bounds above a DPS.

I'm using Obroan Relic of Shield Amplification and Fortunate Redoubt, and I die quite frequently.

This thread is specifically focused on arenas, so huttball type things don't apply. The tank is only going to require more attention from the healer in an arena if the tank is being focused; which I've usually seen still go bad for the other team...

Yeah, usually getting really high numbers in damage in an arena just means the other team has a really good healer.

The following numbers represent the end overall statistics of 10 group ranked arenas I ran today. I compared my defense and protection with the damage number of the highest hitting DPS on my team. Somewhere toward the end we switched around a few members and the numbers might reflect that. The hypothesis of the test is that a tank in mostly DPS gear (ideal build I think--perhaps with a Reactive Warding relic instead of Shield Amplification: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/d8861b88-3c4f-4ef7-99fb-70d15c077734 / obviously far better build than what I actually have) better supports a ranked arena team than a third DPS member would; and better than a tank in full tank gear would. Argument against full tank here: The actual numbers here: Total: Combined difference: 467,821; Average: 46,782.1 per full match. These numbers assume protection is equal in value to damage. This is a tenuous assumption because the damage that counts most is the damage that kills, and no tank is going to see single hits much above 5-6k (unless there's something I'm unaware of and if so I would appreciate it brought to my attention). On the other hand, I can argue that protection is more important because it tends to go most to the people who need it most (guarding the healer, switching to people who need it to survive). Ultimately, I don't know what else to do with the numbers besides treating them as equal. In addition, I believe there is a third number that is not represented anywhere: damage mitigation. Mitigation, I feel, should be on par with protection and damage value, and while all these numbers only indicate how spread out the damage is or how good the healer is, if the third stat could be counted it would support my hypothesis. My conclusion, overall, is that the numbers do support my hypothesis. As a tank, the build still peels and taunts and shuts down healers, that doesn't change; but has added utility in that it can help bring down enemies who get low, and do enough damage to the healer that the healer has to concentrate on himself rather than his teammates. This testing is of course imperfect and needs reproduced, but personally I very much enjoy it and feel far more useful than I do in full tank gear. I have yet to convince my die hard DPS guildmates that a tank has any purpose in a rated arena at all; but I have hope.

What you're all talking about is basic reward based motivation. Psychologically speaking, all motivation is reward based. Internal rewards: Accomplishing something very difficult; creating something that will reach an audience; creating something that will last. These seem to be the rewards many of you want to see, the problem is when it comes to PvP you need a large enough population to support these same rewards, while most people seek the more basic rewards. External rewards (what you call theme-park): Stuff. Titles. Quantifiable currency of value (commendations). I see plenty of opportunity to build the first category with space PvP, guild capital ships, other things that are probably pipe dreams to hope for but can't completely rule out. In personal PvP, it's entirely based on external rewards. Some people want to be the best, most just want to be good enough. People deal with internet stability barriers that they personally realize will always prevent them from being best in class on their server. So they deal with what they have and do what they can. Judging everyone else and calling them babies just rewards is a great example of an internal reward (I'm so much better than all these people even though I've never really considered this other group's difficulties). External rewards for PvP will never go anywhere. You had them in EvE null-sec-- hard cash in game-currency; the profit potential of building up your own sector. Without it, the less serious players wouldn't support it. So you can't support one or the other, you have to support both or support only external. You can ***** and complain about how Bioware is failing you and your needs, but if it was really that important you'd be building it yourself instead of complaining. If you want to create a situation in which you can actively rank yourself against the rest of the server and your 8 man ranked team, my proposal was simple, though ineligantly stated: 1. The majority of the month, while queuing for ranked 4 man arenas, allow the option to queue pair with a random other 4 man team. This is purely for two reasons; build the population that plays it, and to level the playing field so the pro-aspiring team doesn't crush the casual or merely pro-interested teams out of existence and into not playing it. 2. One weekend a month, let the 8 man teams go at it. This is also for the same reason. More teams playing means you might get crushed once, but face a similarly skilled group next time. This is really the key. The only time a game is fun for everyone is when competitors are of similar skill. This is basic matchmaking, and Bioware got it right with Arenas and how that matchmaking system works (you can whine about how much it sucks, but unless you can offer a better idea, your opinion is worthless). Apply the same system to 8v8 and you might have something that works.

Pre-made 4 man teams. In other words, while people are putting together their 4 man team for ranked arenas, allow an option to queue pair them with a completely random team and face two other randomly paired teams of 4. Some work will have to be done to keep people from sync-queuing to try and get a friend's team, such as putting a minimum between team rankings, average individual ranks, etc, or something to the effect, but it's there. This idea takes away the absent population problem (which led to ranked farming, win trading, etc), and could lead to sufficient increased interest that some day enough people will want to do 8 man team battles. A second idea on that; make one day a week (or even a month) "ranked 8v8" day. The absent pop problem goes away again. Or ranked 8v8 weekend. My guild used to get excited when we heard "hey, a bunch of other guilds are doing ranked warzones today, lets all queue up," only to face the same guild with pro-aspirations twice and realize they'd tricked us. If we knew ahead of time there'd be a weekend a month for it, it just might push the PvP aspirations of more people.

That flavor works for 1% of the playing population 1% of the time. Add in the first idea you didn't like to the second idea you didn't respond to, and you get to have your cake and eat it too.

Pre-made 4 man teams. In other words, while people are putting together their 4 man team for ranked arenas, allow an option to queue pair them with a completely random team and face two other randomly paired teams of 4. Some work will have to be done to keep people from sync-queuing to try and get a friend's team, such as putting a minimum between team rankings, average individual ranks, etc, or something to the effect, but it's there. This idea takes away the absent population problem (which led to ranked farming, win trading, etc), and could lead to sufficient increased interest that some day enough people will want to do 8 man team battles. A second idea on that; make one day a week (or even a month) "ranked 8v8" day. The absent pop problem goes away again. Or ranked 8v8 weekend. My guild used to get excited when we heard "hey, a bunch of other guilds are doing ranked warzones today, lets all queue up," only to face the same guild with pro-aspirations twice and realize they'd tricked us. If we knew ahead of time there'd be a weekend a month for it, it just might push the PvP aspirations of more people.