A Shield Vanguard's Primer (Tanking Guide)

[Iella]

I do have a tanking question for PvP though. I'm new to MMO's but I understand guard and taunts, and that the tank's role is keeping the group alive via damage reduction and mitigation. With PvP, are you trying to draw aggro with any particular move set, or just by being scary-looking?

 

I've been pvping as a Shieldguard for a little while now and you can't aggro anybody in pvp unless they decide to turn their attention to you. So what you have to do is make them pay attention to you.

 

You do that by being a nuisance. Harpoon a melee that is attacking a dps/healer. Guard a dps/healer. Storm/interrupt healers or casting dpsers. Your job isn't to burn someone down, but be a distraction so that your dpsers can dps and your healers can heal. Your other job in pvp is to guard objectives. You keep people off of capture points and objectives. You take a beating and hang around, keeping people off of the cap until you can get reinforcements. A good tank with a good healer can hold an objective for a long time.

 

Now, let me explain taunts for a bit. Taunts can't make someone turn their attention to you. Which is why I said what I did in my first paragraph. Taunts in pvp reduce the amount of damage people do to your teammates. So if you see someone attacking a teammate, you taunt then and now they are doing 30% less damage than they were. Notice that I said when attacking your teammate. Taunting someone that is attacking you will not lower their damage to you. So when you taunt someone attacking a teammate, they have to make a decision. Do they continue to attack their target at a reduced strength or do they turn their attention to you? Most folks will never notice that they were taunted and will continue to attack their first target, but that's okay because they're not hitting as hard. Throw in an ion pulse and now they're hitting even more weakly.

 

Oh and let me throw in a caveat in regards to using harpoon. If you're going to use it to pull an attacker off of a ranged dps or a healer, great. But if someone is locked in with a melee dpser like a Sentinel, Guardian, Tactics Vanguard, Shadow, or Scrapper Scoundrel, don't yank them away unless your teammate is close to dying. If you do, you're just going to aggravate your melee because they now have to chase down the person you yanked away.

[Fordel]

Anyone knows what does more damage in the long run? Supercharged Ion Cell or +3% aim? Is there anyway to test it?

 

I've wondered this myself.

 

I'm currently going with the extra 3% aim, partly because aim is universal and partly because I hate seeing half finished talent slots

 

I imagine until we get a proper combat log, we won't have a definitive answer either way though.

[Manjiyomi_Jun]

Let me start by saying that I am not sure if this is an issue with me or just a boss mechanic acting as intended. I am going to get a little specific in this post but will touch on a broader tanking question by the end.

 

I was doing Mandalorian Raiders last night. During the first boss, I was constantly losing the attention of the first boss. I say "attention" because, again, I am not sure if this is me or if he just does this normally. I would have him kited away from the group and every few seconds he would turn away from me and run towards my group, who was on the other side of the room fighting the dogs. He would do this right about the time my taunt would come off cooldown, so I could grab him back. It seems strange that this would happen but I rarely every loss single target threat except on this guy. On the final boss, I was able to hold aggro on both him and both turrets by him, so this confused me.

 

We made it to the second boss and I spent most of the fight grabbing up people who lost aggro on me. It seems that multitarget boss fights are tough for me, even when I have dps focusing down my target. The main issue I have run into is there being virtually 0 room for error. If I switch targets or am not attacking the focus target 100% of the time, he leaves. This is especially frustrating when the Sith Warrior uses force push. It knocks me down is a basically guaranteed that he goes elsewhere.

 

I am not complaining. I love an uphill battle. I just want to know how I need to adjust to make this work. I use a 1:1 Hammershot ratio in between each attack. Should be be doing 1:2 or 1:3 hammer shot to ability ratio for high threat? Should I open with a ton of moves, then blow recharge cells and use my 1:1 after threat has been established? I use Stockstrike everytime it is up. I keep Ion Pulse's debuff up with itself or explosive surge. I use explosive surge about every other attack when in a group fight and Sticky Grenade when it's up. Would Ion Pulse be worth integrating?

 

Thanks for any feedback I get from this. I love tanking and wanna step my game up to meet the ridiculously awesome challenges that flashpoints bring.

 

tl;dr: take your Ritalin and read it.

[beefarooni]

+3% aim will do more damage as it affects everything you do.

[Chariton]

Hi Anoiktos,

Excellent discussion! The defence vs. shield question is going to remain unanswered I suppose until Bioware opens up the game and lets us use addons to measure dps, threat and damage.

 

By the way PROC (alledgedly) originated from Everquest and it's an acronym for "Programmed Random OCcurrence".

 

Keep up the good work

 

Chariton

[Necodreus]

bumping!

[Lance_Dunsten]

I have just started with tanking as a trooper (lvl16), this is a great guide, I was wondering where to place my points. Now I have a clearer direction.

 

T'anks

[Taunque]

The more defense I stack the less responsive my abilities feel, and the harder it is to maintain aggro against dps that are just getting stronger. Anyone else noticing this?

[Kaigen]

The more defense I stack the less responsive my abilities feel, and the harder it is to maintain aggro against dps that are just getting stronger. Anyone else noticing this?

 

There is currently a bug where going into the dodge animation will interrupt ability usage/the GCD.