Aelanis
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Posts posted by Aelanis
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I agree, shadow protection needs to last longer and I also add that self healing is not strong enough.
If you're saying that our current self heals aren't enough, well..... I guess no self heals isn't a whole lot of them. But pre 2.5, our self heals were what was putting us at the 'least external healing required' status amongst the 3 tanks.
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So the thread title says it all "2.5 Shadow tanking... Overall disappointing". My opinion is development needs to take another look at the Shadow tank prior to patch 1.3. My understanding was the changes in 1.3 were to only satisfy the pvp arenas, make Shadow tanks less invincible is my take on those player requests. Since 1.3 Shadow tanks have been struggling in PVE and PVP. The armor buffs in 2.5 are a step in the right direction, but the self healing needs to be better somehow. It's just not enough. And while the shield / absorb is supposed to mitigate internal, kinetic and energy/electrical damage I'm not seeing it. I think that is completely broken. I'm not seeing the absorb flytext for that type of damage at all.
You will never see 'absorb flyby text' from shielding an attack - it doesn't do that. You'll see your shield flicker when you shield an attack, and if you're paying close attention, you'll notice the difference in damage between the hit and an unshielded hit, but that's it. Also, shields don't work against internal/elemental damage, you kinda have to just take those attacks to the face. They do, however, help to mitigate all Energy and Kinetic attacks, be they Melee, Ranged, Force, or Tech attacks. Example: Shields don't work against a Sentinel's Cauterize burn DoTs, but can reduce the damage from Master Strike.
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That execute phase is sexy.
I forgot how smooth it was for infil until I did a few parses after the modules came out.Yeah, the execute phase seriously buffs our sustained damage (Spinning Strike costs less and does more damage on average than Clairvoyant Strike), and has us regenerating resources just a little bit better by weaving in Spinning Strike, allowing us to very easily have a double Circling Shadow buff up when Project comes off CD, even if we'd normally be stretching our resources thin for it. On top of that, we get a 6% damage buff throughout the phase. When doing Infiltration parses, I literally anticipate the final 30% the entire fight, and revel in it when it arrives. Critting on a Shadow Strike, Spinning Strike, Project (with Upheaval!), Force Breach, Clairvoyant Strike and then Spinning Strike all in a row is just insane.
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Kantner, you should tell Bombay to give this a go, he's the reason I tried to get on the boards in the first place, and I honestly think he could place up here.
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After trying your suggested build, and trying a few I came up with, I've arrived at my expected conclusion: it can be done, but it's far from competitive. My best was 2400 dps with a hybrid I made, but considering I usually pull 3100 dps on the same dummy in Infiltration, and 3200 on a good day, I can't suggest you try it if you want to pull competitive numbers. It just doesn't have the sustained damage. The 1 trick pony nature of the builds is holding it back, as it can't build breaching shadows (Infiltration's damage rotation), it doesn't have usable DoTs (Balance) to get buffed by Force in Balance, and it doesn't build Harnessed Shadows, which doesn't work well enough for damage anyway. Getting Deep Impact helped up dps by about 200 over the other attempts (including full tank spec), but getting to there made project too expensive, as it ate up a little over 1/3 of my force with each use.
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I don't dismiss it is an edge; but not that much helpful - right now boss could not K.O like before 2.5; an unlucky string of spikes right now can be undone by healer easy - The reason why it adds to everything because it is suppose to replacing our selfheal. Beside not only that we get 5% damage reduction from slow time; 5% dodging from ( complete forget the name ) and great shields and defends rate as you said. Just leave it alone; we're doing fine now, don't let that lazy bump of a tester nerf us again because of his favourite class fall.
But this wasn't a nerf for Shadows, at least for high incoming damage content. Our self heals were way OP in low damage content, and pretty underpowered in high damage content (HM/NiM Ops, especially 16 man versions, and 1vx in pvp, where x > 1). Nefra dealt me 2k post mitigation damage, and I kept up Shadow Protection literally the entire fight. Without it, I would have taken over 20,000 extra damage, and there were a few times I survived a spike by the skin of my teeth. I have found it extremely helpful.
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M-knightrider - Shadow - Infiltration - 5/36/5 - 4m 44.718s
Log: http://www.torparse.com/a/526341/time/1387468886/1387469170/0/Overview
AMR: http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/107d8314-97ea-4cbd-bbc9-1d2c4139f9f2
So what brought you to the decision to not use Low Slash or Spinning Kick to proc Infiltration Tactics?
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Falver,I have a few questions.I'm Juggernaut. Why all can use module with armor penetration,but another player is not allowed to assist me with Bloodthirst? Marauder don't have armor penetration's effect. So...Why I can't use his bloodthirst? I don't agree with your rules. With this module marauders and another classes don't have a real damage.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the rules are set up this way because every single person now has access to these armor debuff and HP modules, whereas not everyone has access to Bloodthirst/Inspiration. Marauders may not have any moves that leave an armor debuff on the boss, but they can use the module on the dummy. On the other hand, while you could argue that anyone could get a Marauder/Sentinel aboard their ship to give Bloodthirst/Inspiration, that would be a second player helping you increase your damage, and the point of this thread is to see what your character can do without any outside interference, such as boss movement, boss mechanics, and other raidwide buffs provided by other characters.
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1st question; does healer can't control their force / Heat / Ammunition ? Cause if not, the self heal is useless, heals can take care of that, actually before 2.0 you can forget harness shadow and still able to tank HM / effective gear - not over gear. 2nd I am talking about the Shadow Protection which grant 4% of DR is useless, cause I compare it to selfheal. Increasing our armor rate is correct, I don't complain anything about that. 3rd I complain about the way they actually balancing the class, the guy did not test anything except using computer simulate, if he actually test it he would see that to keep up 12 second of shadow protection would be a problem - though it is useless.
I can assure you, Shadow Protection is far from useless. When fighting Nefra last night, against whom it's boringly easy to keep up Shadow Protection, I took a couple very unlucky strings of spikes, ending pretty close to 0 health. Well within the boundary of that 4% extra DR saving me. Also, you're simply thinking about it as another 4% DR against Melee/Ranged attacks. Percentage wise, it's an approximately 10% boost to damage reduction at full 78 armorings with set bonus. It's also a static 4% boost to your Internal and Elemental damage reductions, which is a 17.4% increase. That's massive. It's double our 4 piece set bonus, which is already a pretty great set bonus. With Shadow Protection at full stacks, a fully optimized Shadow tank will have 44.45% DR, which is shockingly close to what the heavy armor tanks get, AND we have fantastic shield, absorb and defense rates.
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Link the build you're using and I'll certainly give it a shot. Unfortunately, I don't think it's going to work out as well, as there are so few skills that buff shock, the biggest one of which requires the usage of our tanking stance, reducing our bonus damage by 5%. Still, link your build and I'll look it over and test it out.
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Shock is melee. Thundering Blast is force. It's definitely odd, but that's the way it is.
And yes, resilience does appear to have a roughly 5% failure rate. It's the thing I hate most about this game.
....it's really melee? That's just dumb. Okay, well, that would explain it. At least Deflection still works against it. And yes, I agree, Resilience shouldn't fail 5% of the time if they say that it prevents all Force/Tech damage. I guess I just got unlucky with Thundering Blast that time and Resilience failed twice against it. I'm glad my healers were on the ball, but I feel like it wouldn't have been a wipe if I hadn't taken quite so much damage, as the healers would have been able to save the other tank.
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Tanks get all the girls
^ This. Also, tanks get all the groups. Ever.
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So, I'm pretty sure it's been shown that Resilience has a 5% fail rate, correct? If not, please, let me know, so I know to stop thinking it's useful any more. I say this because tonight, when tanking Tyrans HM, I watched it fail completely 3 times. One whole attempt at the boss was full of nothing but complete failure on its part to do anything. Here's the log, second to last fight:
http://www.torparse.com/a/526024/11/0/Log
Note: this log is not my complete night of raiding. Just a couple of our attempts at Tyrans with a slightly new raid group. An example from the log where Resilience failed:
22:46:24.575 Ellendra activates Resilience.
22:46:24.575 Ellendra gains Resilience.
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22:46:27.734 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1502 energy damage, causing 1502 threat.
22:46:27.735 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1502 energy damage, causing 1502 threat.
22:46:27.735 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1502 energy damage, causing 1502 threat.
22:46:27.735 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1502 energy damage, causing 1502 threat.
22:46:27.874 [REDACTED]'s Salvation heals Ellendra for 673, causing 303 threat.
22:46:28.233 Ellendra's Telekinetic Throw hits Dread Master Tyrans for 0 damage, causing 1 threat.
22:46:28.461 [REDACTED]'s Kolto Cloud heals Ellendra for 787, causing 354 threat.
22:46:28.897 Ellendra gains Focused Defense.
22:46:28.901 Ellendra gains 6 Force.
22:46:28.913 [REDACTED's Salvation critcally heals Ellendra for 1145*, causing 515 threat!
22:46:29.281 Ellendra's Telekinetic Throw hits Dread Master Tyrans for 1254 kinetic damage, causing 2509 threat.
22:46:29.282 Ellendra loses Harnessed Shadows.
22:46:29.283 Ellendra loses Unshakable.
22:46:29.363 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1387 energy damage, causing 1387 threat.
22:46:29.363 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1387 energy damage, causing 1387 threat.
22:46:29.363 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock hits Ellendra for 2854 energy damage, causing 2854 threat.
22:46:29.363 Dread Master Tyrans's Shock glances Ellendra for 1387 energy damage, causing 1387 threat.
22:46:29.457 [REDACTED]'s Kolto Cloud heals Ellendra for 787, causing 354 threat.
22:46:29.657 Ellendra loses Resilience.
Now, sure, this wasn't all that bad in the grand scheme of things. I shielded 7/8 parts of the two shocks, so it didn't really hit very hard. But it didn't prevent a single point of damage, and proceeded to do the same for the next two uses in this attempt. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Shock is still Force Energy damage, yes? If so, then the chance of Resilience failing here would be 0.00000000390625%, just on the portion of my log I copied into this post. I'm pretty sure I'm not that unlucky.
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Not to mention threat would also be a function of how often you can taunt, and how many of those are at greater than melee range. It would basically become a taunt multiplying race.
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hilt 78 + balance instead infiltration. He isn't alone. + length of fights.
I don't want to diminish him I know he is really good (and i got a conversation about balance hyb) but good anomaly, is an exaggeration
and dps infiltration is a lot grn dependent.
I only ever meant it as a compliment. I just don't think that a 78 hilt can add 350 dps, that's why I think he's a bit of an anomaly. I'm convinced he's just better than the rest of us, heh.
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I believe the plan is to archive everything from 2.4 and use parses that can't be from before 2.5, so I believe all the current parses are going to be discounted, and only new ones will qualify.
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Judging by the leaderboards, Hybrid Vanguards/Powertechs are able to out-dps Shadows all around, for the most part. Vigilance Guardians aren't too far ahead of Shadows in general, but it seems that the only specs that are truly behind are, like you said, most hybrids, along wtih Focus/Rage Sentinel/Maurader (possibly Guardian/Juggernaut, too) and Scrapper/Concealment Scoundrel/Operative. Every other class is in a better place right now.
I also happen to be discounting MKnightrider from this conversation, as he seems to be an exception to the rule. The top 5 spots for Shadow consist of him at 3.6k dps, and the next four range from 3260 to 3240 dps. Number 5 is about half a percent away from number 2, and all four are around 10% behind the leader. Most other advanced classes see a little more competition for the top spot, but for Shadows, it's a competition for number 2. I'd say he's a ridiculously good anomaly.
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Double Strike does typically end up being your focus dump. But at absolute most, you'll use it 6 times in 9 seconds (which is totally ludicrous, you're going to have 3 stacks of harnessed shadows WAY before the full 12 seconds) with no Shadow Wrap procs (which typically happen every 6 or so seconds, I've found) and no particle acceleration procs (which typically happen about every other double strike or shadow strike, it seems). When I'm tanking, I typically end up using double strike 3 or 4 times in 12 seconds, with a mix of a total of 3 projects and slow times, maybe 2 Shadow Strikes and a Force Breach. Not the most involved rotation, but each move is situationally useful. Double Strike just so happens to proc 2 of your big threat generators. Opening up the fight with a critical project at 4k damage and a full critical TKT with 3 stacks of harnessed shadows hitting for 1.8k a tick, nobody is going to pull aggro off of you.
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Bah. Semantics! (I edited the post)
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The rotation is not going to look like your endgame rotation until you have all of: Harnessed Darkness, Shadow Wrap, Particle Acceleration and Slow Time. Your rotation basically gets interesting from levels 40-45. Until then, you kinda spam Double Strike, Project, and Force Breach.
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Self heals were a very significant part of our mitigation. 300 incoming heals per second, assuming they're effective heals, is nothing to shake a stick at when your incoming damage from a boss was ~2000 dps. Our self heals used to easily put us in the 'least healing required' category. And if you think an increase of ~7.5% DR (4% of which affects Internal and Elemental!), which is ~11% extra DR, is useless, you need to seriously re-examine how you're looking at these changes. My raid group finally downed Corruptor last Sunday, and I cannot tell you how many times my co-tank skirted death after getting caught in the anti-gravity field because he was having lag issues, all thanks to his now higher damage reduction. It's making a difference, especially in spikiness.
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I don't recall any of this either, and I played shadow/assassin tank extensively in pvp for the last year and a half or so. To be honest, my only complaint was that the self heals needed to be bumped back up after the hefty nerf they recieved. The nerf, by the way, brought about by the fact that self heals are so useless.
I doubt that. The damage reduction in pvp is miniscule. In raids the damage reduction makes sense because of the ginormous hits you take while receiving constant healing.
I'm going to assume you doubt me being saved by the damage reduction, as doubting me liking the changes would be silly.
Anyway, PVP has WAY higher incoming damage than PVE does. A single enemy can provide upwards of 3k dps, which is more than the average HM DF/DP fight. You get 4 people attacking you, and it doesn't compare at all to PVE DtPS. Self healing could never keep up with that. Especially in a format where stun-locking is so common, the straight buff to our armor rating is better than the self healing alone. It's nigh impossible to keep up Shadow Protection when it would really matter in PVP. Considering neither the self heals or Shadow Protection can be used to their full extent, I'm going to have to go with the passive damage reduction we received being better.
In the couple matches I've played as a tank in PVP since 2.5, I've felt a lot more solid. In just those few matches, I've skirted the 1-3k hp mark, and was saved by a healer, or stuns wore off and I was able to stealth out and get away. From my ~35k health, and undoing my mitigation (~35% DR, ~50% Shield with Kinetic Ward, ~45% average Absorb with Kinetic Bulwark, ~18% Defense (which is useless when stunned, if I remember correctly)), that's 62,500 incoming damage, pre mitigation. I'm ignoring Expertise in this, since there would be no change in Expertise with the case of self heals still being around. I also assumed ~40% Melee/Ranged Kinetic/Energy, 30% Force/Tech Kinetic/Energy, and 30% Internal/Elemental for the damage profile, and maybe I'm wrong, but unless it's drastically different, the results are largely the same. Losing just 4% DR from our armor turns that 32,000 post-mitigation damage into 35,400.
So maybe people can't see it as well, since it only becomes obvious in cases where you skirt death, but it is making a difference, if you're being attacked, which is when it matters. If you can heal yourself through an opponent's damage with your self heals, they aren't a serious threat to you. Then again, that also assumes they're not smart enough to stun/knockback as soon as you start channeling TKT.
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Personally, I'm really happy with the changes. I've had multiple occasions where I would have died (in both pvp and pve) where the extra damage reduction has been what saved me, even when I was stunned and my Shadow Protection buff fell off. For PVP, these changes are a buff, unless I'm getting ignored, and if I am, I'm not really doing my job. I can also attest to it not just being a problem in PVE in Nightmare raids. I got killed before Terminate was changed in a Story Mode run when I took 31,000 damage from that Terminate. One shot from 90% health in a STORY MODE operation. When you can get killed like that in a story mode operation, something's wrong.
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what?
Oops, sorry to confuse you
I forgot how smooth it was for infil until I did a few parses after the modules came out.
2.5 Shadow tanking... Overall disappointing
in Shadow / Assassin
Posted
I know I do somewhere, I just have to comb through them to try to find where it happened. I'll post again in a bit once I find it.