Beginners Guide to Juggernaut Tanking by Phottek

[Gankstah]

The 6% strength increase would be a fairly substantial threat increase over the course of a boss fight.

 

No... it's not.

 

I want you to find whoever told you this and ridicule them mercilessly until they cry. And trust me, after reading the following, you will enjoy the experience.

 

Let's pretend for a moment that you have 2,000 strength. You will NEVER have that much but let's just pretend. Your damage bonus from 2,000 strength is 400 (2000*.2=400). With a 6% increase your strength jumps up to 2120 for a damage bonus of 424 (2120*.2=424). So you've just rendered a net gain of 24 points of extra damage for 2 talent points.

 

To put that into perspective, since we're already pretending, let's also pretend that we are solo'ing a world boss. Let's also pretend that world boss has 1,000,000 HP. Since we're in lala land let's also imagine up us a companion that doesn't get fear locked by World Bosses and has insane-o healing that allows us to never die.

 

And finally, since we're way past the realm of reality at this point, let's imagine us up a 2,000 sustained DPS (<<--- Lulz) and 100% armor penetration.

 

With the above factors we can conclude that it will take exactly 500 GCD's (1mil/2,000=500) to kill that boss. Assuming of course you never miss, never run out of rage, never get stunned, never get knocked back, knocked down and manage to miraculously never miss a single GCD (you have freaky durable hands). Thanks to your 6% 2 point talent investment you will save yourself exactly 6 cooldowns.

 

Six.

 

Out of 500.

 

For 2 talent points you just saved yourself 1 1/2 minutes out of over 2 hours of finger ****-ing your keyboard.

 

I trust I don't have to outline how absurdly insignificant that is.

Edited January 15, 2012 by Gankstah

[Morfideath]

Awesome guide, I will definitively be using!

I have a question though. Are most tanks completely useless without an adept healer? Should healers focus on tank only?

[GlowRage]

No... it's not.

 

I want you to find whoever told you this and ridicule them mercilessly until they cry. And trust me, after reading the following, you will enjoy the experience.

 

Let's pretend for a moment that you have 2,000 strength. You will NEVER have that much but let's just pretend. Your damage bonus from 2,000 strength is 400 (2000*.2=400). With a 6% increase your strength jumps up to 2120 for a damage bonus of 424 (2120*.2=424). So you've just rendered a net gain of 24 points of extra damage for 2 talent points.

 

To put that into perspective, since we're already pretending, let's also pretend that we are solo'ing a world boss. Let's also pretend that world boss has 1,000,000 HP. Since we're in lala land let's also imagine up us a companion that doesn't get fear locked by World Bosses and has insane-o healing that allows us to never die.

 

And finally, since we're way past the realm of reality at this point, let's imagine us up a 2,000 sustained DPS (<<--- Lulz) and 100% armor penetration.

 

With the above factors we can conclude that it will take exactly 500 GCD's (1mil/2,000=500) to kill that boss. Assuming of course you never miss, never run out of rage, never get stunned, never get knocked back, knocked down and manage to miraculously never miss a single GCD (you have freaky durable hands). Thanks to your 6% 2 point talent investment you will save yourself exactly 6 cooldowns.

 

Six.

 

Out of 500.

 

For 2 talent points you just saved yourself 1 1/2 minutes out of over 2 hours of finger ****-ing your keyboard.

 

I trust I don't have to outline how absurdly insignificant that is.

 

I guess saying a significant increase in threat was not accurate, but saving cooldowns is not what I meant by increased threat.

 

Using your example, you state that the 6% bonus to 2000 str would be an additional 24 damage. While this may not seem like, much, this is an increase in damage per attack. Threat is directly based on damage dealt, and for those two points, in your example, you are increasing your threat generation by 1.2%. It's not much, but it is there.

 

Additionally, in the 500 cooldowns of your example, a 6% increase to strength, at an extra 24 damage per attack, means you will do an additional 12,000 damage during the duration of the fight, or 1.2% of the boss's total health.

 

While 1.2% may not seem like much, think about how many boss wipes are sub 1% because of enrage timers. If every player in a raid were putting out an extra 1.2% damage, that's anywhere from 9.6%-19.2% (depending on raid size) of a boss's health. It adds up.

 

Finally, looking at the talent build with those two points free(http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101dMGcubrouRZhG.1), there is really nowhere else to put them that increases survivability, or threat, aside from Dreadnaught. It may not be a huge increase to threat, but it's the best option for a raid tank.

[Alek_Ebonstar]

Great guide!!! It solves a lot of problems for tanking and answers a lot of questions! Thanks

[krby]

great post, thank you

[Gankstah]

...there is really nowhere else to put them that increases survivability, or threat, aside from Dreadnaught.

If you have a build in mind that has no other choice, like the vengeance tank, than yeah, there's not much that can be done. But if given a choice, do not invest in it.

 

It may not be a huge increase to threat, but it's the best option for a raid tank.

Correction, it's not the best option for a raid tank, it's the only option for THAT build.

 

I understand that we have a significant population from other MMO's, specifically WoW, and of that population from WoW most are accustomed to having to min/max to the extreme in order to be competitive. I've said it dozens of times before and I'm sure I'll have to say it hundreds of times more over the course of TOR's lifespan... this is not WoW.

 

The encounters in TOR are not built around a min/max model. 1% will not make nor break a raid. As a tank who is currently tanking NMM every night and 5/5 EV I must stress to my fellow Tanks that a difference of 3-5% will not drop your raid. In TOR, cohesion trumps everything else.

 

The encounters in TOR are designed specifically to stress your unit cohesion. Does gear play a part? Yes, of course. But that part scales to a point. We've had up and coming tanks MT EV 5/5 in full sets of 106. Seriously, marginal difference are indeed marginal. What matters is your communication and your groups ability to adapt to the encounters presented.

 

Hell, the very very VERY first people to complete D7, Red Rancor, did so from start to finish on their first try and weren't even geared. They were able to do it solely because of communication. In TOR, the kings of content are the ones that are able to lead and follow as a team.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Gankstah

[goneawayting]

wow soooo much information, being a total newb to mmo and not really doing well in the tank toon I will be taking as much of this in as I can lol. Thanks for the great guide.

[Zartuim]

You one glaring error (or misinpression) early in the blue section.

 

You speak about taking dmg and med packs. The impression you give is that they will automatically be consumed when you take dmg that would normally kill you.

 

YOU need to manually consume them during the fights, and the timing can be of the utmost critical importance.

[Saintzzero]

Target marking keybinds:

 

OP: "NOTE: Don't mark more than you have to, it just slows runs down unnecessarily. If you can get away with 1 mark per pull then do it. You can also keybind marking to speed things up. I use keybind mark "Lightning" for CC then keybind mark "Bulls-eye" for FF, make the pull then mark another Bulls-eye as the first is about to die. At the end I change the Lighning target to Bulls-eye right as the second last mob is about to die."

 

I have looked the options and for the life of me cannot find the options to target marking keybinds.

 

Can anyone confirm that this is possible? I hope it is or will be.

[JPBooth]

Dude just started, and wanted to be a tank. Thanks for the info, really gonna help!!!

[WilliamM]

Thanks for this guide, I have yet to try it out in the field, but I'm already impressed by how comprehensive and in-depth it is. One question left though: as a rather casual player, I have spent most of my time soloing the questline with only the occasional heroic and no flashpoints except the Black Talon and the Mandalorian Raiders. I do know my tanking basics from previous experience in Lotro 6-player instances (where I was a rather decent Guardian meatbag), but the mechanics were very different. So hence my question:

 

Would you say it's still feasible to "learn" proper tanking at higher levels? My concern is that other +45 players are expecting a tank to know the layout and mobs and I know how frustrating it is to wipe simply because the tank isn't up to par, so I definitely want to save others from experiences like that when they're grouping with me.

[BAllusis]

Excellent and well structured guide, you have helped me in developing my SW in more ways than I could imagine. You guys are veterans and should be proud of yourselves for helping so many people.

 

Thanks again! couldn't appreciate it more

Cheers

[Locustone]

I asked this in Gankstah's post on tanking and I'll echo it here as well, since I see the same need to provide simplified data that the community is aching for.

 

This is all great information, but after reading it I still felt like it was too broad. Is there any way to further simplifing this for the non mathmaticians? I've seen this type of guides before include a summary of the recommended stats and their yield for each stage of the PvE game. For example (these are %'s as they appear in the paper doll, not some hidden derivative):

 

Recommended Juggernaut tanking stats for running normal FP's:

 

Armor Damage Reduction = x = y damage reduction

Deflection/Parry = x = y Deflection/Parry

Shield Absorb = x = y Damage Absorbed

Shield Chance = x = y Shield proc

Accuracy = x = y hit chance

 

Recommended Juggernaut tanking stats for running Hard Mode FP's:

 

Armor Damage Reduction = x = y damage reduction

Deflection/Parry = x = y Deflection/Parry

Shield Absorb = x = y Damage Absorbed

Shield Chance = x = y Shield proc

Accuracy = x = y hit chance

 

Recommended Juggernaut tanking stats for running OPS:

 

Armor Damage Reduction = x = y damage reduction

Deflection/Parry = x = y Deflection/Parry

Shield Absorb = x = y Damage Absorbed

Shield Chance = x = y Shield proc

Accuracy = x = y hit chance

 

In my opinion this type of information would be much more useful to the community.

 

Thanks.

[ElmaChips]

How can i pack up my skills dashboard ?

 

Can u show me with a Printscreen ?

 

Thx guys

[LtAceAlot]

Pay the man!!!

[pipol]

thanks for this amazing guide! keep up the good work

[Chancimus]

I've been reading all the guides, your guide is outstanding. Theres one thing that this guide did with the going over of very single talent (which was pretty baller sir)

I picked up Single Saber Mastery because i thought it worked in tank stance loooooool feel like a derp. gonna have to respec when i get home.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Chancimus

[Truck]

Thanks for posting this!

[Phottek]

Just rolled out another update. IS now current for this build taking into account changes to Force Push etc. FAQs and Flashpoint guides are now complete. Also made some fixes i'll list here with quotes for those who alerted me to them. Thank you for letting me know, with a document this size it will never be perfect.

 

You speak about taking dmg and med packs. The impression you give is that they will automatically be consumed when you take dmg that would normally kill you.

 

Fixed, was that way in beta when originally written. Never noticed it was still in there.

 

Companion info on wanted gifts is not right. Vette for example likes Underworld Trading most.

 

Ty for this, I got the info off a site. I will manually check all companion gift preferences myself and update soon.

 

Was reading it through, there's a typo on the duration of Invincible: Should be 10 seconds.

 

Ty, Ive been looking for this error for a while. Could never see it in the abilities section. Finally saw it in the talents section. Fixed

Edited February 7, 2012 by Phottek

[Miccalea]

Most Excellent, thank you kind sir.

[BrettMone]

As a Trooper Tank, I must applaud this guide. It's always great to read up on how other classes operate and I couldn't have asked for a more thorough description! You've been saved on my favorites list.

[Fatinah]

Thanks for this guide. Some of it is nothing new for anyone who's ever been a proficient tank in any other MMO, but the SWTOR specific sections are outstanding and a must read for any new or veteran tank and I read every word. This is a great, well-written guide and I hope every tank reads it, especially Juggs.

 

Thanks again!

[Doormad]

Thx for this guide ! biggup for all the work you have put in.

 

1 question tho: what is the base HP a jugg tank should be having ideally before adding more avoidance and such ?

 

I just dinged 50 this week and levelled as rage, but would like to tank from now on

[timtones]

Great thread, now I know that I definitely want to be a Jugg Tank! This is my first MMORPG and now I know what is expected of my toon.

[ylaenna]

Dear Phottek,

 

You, sir, write a very mean guide. Thank you!

 

-y