Who has tried both the vig/def hybrid tank build AND straight def tank build?

[angrydurf]

Addressing some math here:

With 50% absorption, 4% Shield = 2% mitigation, not 4% mitigation. Additionally, you can only shield against Kinetic and Energy damage. If that is half our incoming damage, as implied above, 2 points in this talent is worth 1% overall mitigation, not 4%

 

I'm not sure where you got the Blade Barrier was that much stronger than the damage reduction of Commanding Awe - Its protection seems negligible if you aren't stacking power, and there doesn't seem to be any power on a tier gear, which uses Accuracy for its threat stat.

 

 

Inner peace provides 4% reduction to Internal/Elemental damage If that is half of our damage take (which it is likely more than half by many estimations as we don't get to defend against it with Armor) it would be effectively 2% total mitigation at half of 4%. 4% shield chance with a 50% absorb rating would also be 2%. In total the 4 points in both talents supply 4% general mitigation, which would be equivalent to the 4% offered by Commanding Awe.

 

Blade barrier is compared against Protectors 4% endurance. The numbers for Blade barrier are datamined over on Sith Warrior. It is assuming no willpower/power from gear just base stats.

This absorbing shield scales with your level and absorbs 1257,5 damage @ lvl 50 [with +17 healing power from 100 willpower as base stat]

From: Immortal-Defense-Compendium-A-Tank-s-Guide-To-The-Galaxy Full description of the formula and how it all works is deeper in the thread if you care to get that in depth and may be higher than that actually.

 

So one use of blade Barrier is effectively 1257.5 bonus HP. or 125.75 End as 1 end = 10 HP, So a quarter of that would be 31.4375 make that 1% of the end you would need for Protectors End bonus to be equivalent (one quarter of 4%) and you find that you need an end of 3143.75 to match one use of blade storm with the Protector Buffs 4% end. That's roughly double what pretty well geared tanks have at 50 to equal 1 use of blade storm. In a five minute fight You'll manage to use blade storm 25 times or over the course of that fight manage to knock out 3143.75 End worth of damage. That's basically a 200% end bonus if your end is at 1571 which is a pretty good estimate of lvl 50 tank Endurance with good gear. Even if Blade barrier is only worth Half what is above it effectively doubles your end over a 5 minute fight if you have ~ 1570 endurance. It just get's better the longer the fight goes as it continually adds in. It does not scale well as it does scale off of Healing power according to data mining. But it's base utility is pretty good even if it never scales up.

 

Lets turn that math around a little. Say you have 1600 End in your endgame gear. That's pretty good stats Highest I've seen reported is around that 1570 mark. 4% end is 64 end For one blade storm to be equivalent it has to be an absorb shield of 640. Over the course of that 5 minute fight above it would need to block 25.6 six damage per use.

 

Ah but blade storm happens before other mitigation you say. This may or may not be true it's not clear but would make sense. It almost certainly happens after the defense roll (which includes the shield chance) so for Kinetic/Energy damage it will be dropped by your armors effectiveness so it would need to be 75% stronger at most (75% is the extreme end of diminishing returns on armor) in that case for the five minute fight it would be a 44.8 hp Shield. Heck even in a 2.5 minute fight it would it would only need to be an 90 point shield to be better than Protector. Needless to say it is significantly higher than that.

 

Now the leap frogging May well give you more protection than blade barrier over the course of a fight but the argument has consistently been that even without utilizing the protector/unremitting buffs you will be better on defense than full defense. That is just not true.

[Onrak]

i have tried both and in my opinion hybrid is better.

it may be more challenging to master (i advice focus target use) but its more fun, same defensive capability,much higher threat and viable for pvp

in some boss encounters u might have problems to effectivly bounce around, but didnt proof as too much of a pain for me

[RydelFox]

Inner peace provides 4% reduction to Internal/Elemental damage If that is half of our damage take (which it is likely more than half by many estimations as we don't get to defend against it with Armor) it would be effectively 2% total mitigation at half of 4%. 4% shield chance with a 50% absorb rating would also be 2%. In total the 4 points in both talents supply 4% general mitigation, which would be equivalent to the 4% offered by Commanding Awe.

 

With Inner Peace, you reduced its overall mitigation by half because it only affects half the incoming damage, Internal and Elemental.

 

Shield Specialization also only affects half the incoming damage because you can't shield against Internal and Elemental Damage, so it would also result in the same reduction you applied to Inner Peace.

 

Another thing to consider is that as a Guardian, you probable won't have 50% Absorbtion. In part Columi and part Rakata gear, I'm at about 35% (I can't check the actual numbers right now since I'm not at home)

[TheMoodyOne]

Addressing some math here:

With 50% absorption, 4% Shield = 2% mitigation, not 4% mitigation. Additionally, you can only shield against Kinetic and Energy damage. If that is half our incoming damage, as implied above, 2 points in this talent is worth 1% overall mitigation, not 4%

 

I'm not sure where you got the Blade Barrier was that much stronger than the damage reduction of Commanding Awe - Its protection seems negligible if you aren't stacking power, and there doesn't seem to be any power on a tier gear, which uses Accuracy for its threat stat.

 

your Maths are dead on but you got one thing wrong - the Shields only work off White damage - Kinetic and Energy are both Yellow.

 

Basically there are 3 damage types -

 

Weapon damage (White) which is both mitigated by armour and can proc the shield

Kinetic/Energy damage (Yellow) which is mitigated by armour

Internal/Thermal (also Yellow) which is non mitigated (except by flat damage reduction)

 

When pvping White damage comes from attacks which use weapons - ie most sniper attacks and all of our lightsaber attacks - the other 2 come from Force/Tech attacks.

 

Sorcs/Sages are major Kinetic/Energy dealers as are Mercs/Commandos and all "up close" operative/scoundrel damage is Kinetic (with the exception of Flachette round/Acid blade which is internal/thermal)

 

Most dots are Internal or Thermal.

 

Armed with this knowledge you can see one fact straight off - the hybrid build gets a 4% bonus reduction which covers Kinetic/Energy which is the Prime damage type in PvP - neither the shield proc or the 4% internal/thermal reduction can cover that and thus the hybrid build comes out ahead.

 

Its a little less clear cut in PVE - there's a lot more White damage so the shield proc is worth more but without a damage log it would be hard to determine which form of Yellow damage is most predominant

 

This really only leaves the Blade Barrier - one problem - Damage shields like Blade Barrier and Static Barrier/Force armour are applied BEFORE mitigation

 

If you stack power and willpower enough to get a 1k Blade barrier shield and have a 50% damage reduction for energy damage then if you get hit for 2000 damage you will actually take 500 ((2000 - 1000)/2) - had the shield not been up you would have taken 1000 - thus the 1k shield actually blocked 500 damage - the bigger the hit the weaker the shield actually is - couple this with the fact is scales off Willpower and Power... is it worth the points?

 

If Mitigation is all your are interested in then I suspect the Hybrid comes out better - even before Unremitting and Protector are brought into the equation

 

Tanking isn't all about mitigation though and the 31 Defence build does get more "toys" #Cough# Stasis Mastery #Cough# to play with

 

it really comes down to preference... not a bad thing you know

[RydelFox]

Weapon Damage is usually Energy. You can see this on the weapon's tooltip.

 

I think Vibroswords might deal Kinetic Damage, but The Bulwark is the only decent Vibrosword, so that's not a big deal.

[angrydurf]

Ok my point is that Shield Spec gives roughly 2%. I think in full columi gear it's around a 40% absorb. 40% of 4% is 1.6% as you scale up towards rakata you end up getting closer to 50% and thus 2% total mitigation from that skill. I'm using broad numbers on these. The other half is Inner Peace's Internal/Elemental mitigation. As a heavy armor class you already mitigate a healthy portion of any Kinetic/Energy damage being done. This in fact happens after shield absorb in the calculations so Internal/Elemental damage mitigated counts for more overall mitigation than Kinetic/Energy. So in overall mitigation Inner peace is worth slightly more than half of 4% total mitigation.

 

What I am arguing is that taken together the slightly less than 2% from Shield spec and the slightly more than than 2% from inner peace is Equivalent to the 4% from Commanding awe.

 

That being the case taking Protector and Unremitting DR on leap out of the mitigation you are left comparing the Protector 4% End to Blade barrier. Where it loses. Badly. You need to use the DR from Unremitting and Protector in order to match a full defense spec in mitigation. This is to counter all the proponents of Hybrids who have been stating that you have better mitigation than Defense without "leapfrogging" Every use of Force leap or Guardians leap improves your Mitigation and reduces your threat (by eating up GCDs which are what both specs actually are low on). Is the balance point of leaping some to get enough defenses to be better protected than Full defense in such a position that you still do better threat? Possibly. It's really tricky to try and compare a flat additive mitigation like blade barrier to a short term percentage DR leaving lots of room for variance dependent on Burst phases and efficiancy of CD management. The discussion on SithWarrior went down that route and was a mess as you really can't spreadsheet all those variables.

 

Basically the salient benefits of Hybrid Vs. Full defense are that OH slash is better Threat than Guardian Slash/Hilt strike over most long fights. And that any lost mitigation can be made up for with carefull use of the Protector/Unremitting DR buffs. The downside is that management of those buffs and CDs and the positioning of them is complex and eats into your time to generate threat by using up GCDs to position and execute those abilities and that focus generation has a narrower band of excess than with full defense. BOTH produce enough focus to never run out when executed perfectly. Defense allows for more breathing room on your focus generation however when dealing with KBs or just plain missing a few sunders in your rotation.

 

As I have said before they are pretty comparable actually. With perfect play Hybrid may slightly edge out Full defense. But no one plays perfectly and the game can still throw alot of things in your way (IE Hilt strike is better than anything Vengence gets for snap threat after a threat dump, but Taunt can usually see you through that situation) Full defense is more forgivign and offers a playstyle less reliant on timeing issues CD management etc.

 

As a quick note to themoodyone. White damage is weapon damage yellow is force/tech damage. those are actually ability types not damage types all damage is kinetic, energy, internal or elemental (which I think you were calling thermal). Shields protect against all of those damage types but only white(weapon damage) is stopped by defense/shield chance(absorb). Armor will mitigate Kinetic/energy damage but not Internal/Elemental damage. My discussion here is purely on PvE hence extensive explanation of threat and relative mitigation. In PvP all of this is right out the door. Full defense will do better than hybrid in PvP due to better focus generation (as we are focus starved in PvP) and access to several more/better CCs/slows. Full vengeance will also outperform hybrid as it will use shien not soresu and thus have better damage and focus generation. ALOT of Defense's use in PvP is in CC and protecting. In ToR you actually get credit for protecting team mates not just kill/damage count so you can do well as a PvP tank though it is nothing like a PvE tank.

[TheMoodyOne]

Weapon Damage is usually Energy. You can see this on the weapon's tooltip.

 

I think Vibroswords might deal Kinetic Damage, but The Bulwark is the only decent Vibrosword, so that's not a big deal.

 

Technically yes but sadly it isnt the same thing

 

Shield Procs work for weapon damage - ie damage which appears as white - while the actual type is energy/kinetic it is applied differently to say Force Lightning which produces yellow damage

 

easy to test - find a sage/sorc - have then use Force Lightning/telekinetic throw on you

 

this is pure Force Energy/kinetic damage

 

your shield will never proc

 

no have them use their free saber strike - this will produce Weapon damage (white) Energy damage - your shield will occasionally proc

 

because the game treats weapon damage (be it kinetic or energy) differently id class it as a different type of damage - maybe thats a bit misleading but point stands

[TheMoodyOne]

As a quick note to themoodyone. White damage is weapon damage yellow is force/tech damage. those are actually ability types not damage types all damage is kinetic, energy, internal or elemental (which I think you were calling thermal). Shields protect against all of those damage types but only white(weapon damage) is stopped by defense/shield chance(absorb). Armor will mitigate Kinetic/energy damage but not Internal/Elemental damage. My discussion here is purely on PvE hence extensive explanation of threat and relative mitigation. In PvP all of this is right out the door. Full defense will do better than hybrid in PvP due to better focus generation (as we are focus starved in PvP) and access to several more/better CCs/slows. Full vengeance will also outperform hybrid as it will use shien not soresu and thus have better damage and focus generation. ALOT of Defense's use in PvP is in CC and protecting. In ToR you actually get credit for protecting team mates not just kill/damage count so you can do well as a PvP tank though it is nothing like a PvE tank.

 

yes I did mean elemental not thermal - and yes as I said above I know that technically White damage is either energy or kinetic but because the game treats it differently to Force/Tech damage of the same type I class sit as separate

[RydelFox]

yes I did mean elemental not thermal - and yes as I said above I know that technically White damage is either energy or kinetic but because the game treats it differently to Force/Tech damage of the same type I class sit as separate

 

Ok, that clears that up.

 

@Angrydurf

You're still dividing Inner Peace's bonus in half because if only affects half of the incoming attacks, but not doing the same for Shield Specialization even though it affects less than half of the incoming attacks.

 

If you do this, Commanding Awe comes out 1% better than Inner Peace and Shield Specialization combined.

[Malissant]

Ok, that clears that up.

 

@Angrydurf

You're still dividing Inner Peace's bonus in half because if only affects half of the incoming attacks, but not doing the same for Shield Specialization even though it affects less than half of the incoming attacks.

 

If you do this, Commanding Awe comes out 1% better than Inner Peace and Shield Specialization combined.

 

It looked like he was to me, Shield Spec is 4% bonus talented, he's saying 2% from Peace, 2% from Shield = 4% which is the same as 4% from awe.

[Modecrypt]

This is really a fantastic and useful thread... probably the best thread I've read on these forums. Thanks for that.

 

Side question, since you're all here, which spec is actually the fastest for leveling? I'm guessing Vig but I just wondered if anyone had different thoughts. I'm working my way through a Guardian alt atm.

[RDeanOU]

It looked like he was to me, Shield Spec is 4% bonus talented, he's saying 2% from Peace, 2% from Shield = 4% which is the same as 4% from awe.

 

Except that 4% Shield doesn't give you 2% mitigation even at 50% absorb.....not even close. You cannot shield Internal/Elemental damage. This means that you are only absorbing 2% of HALF your damage with 4% shield chance. This equates to a 1% damage reduction.

 

That is assuming you get anywhere near 50% absorb, which most Guardians won't. In reality, that 4% shield chance is mitigating significantly less than 1% of your damage. If your absorb is at 40% it would be more like 0.8%. If you are sitting at around 35% (as RydelFox said he/she is in part Columi part Rakata) that puts the mitigation from 4% shield chance at a measily 0.7%.

 

Now when we combine those two talents we are adding something like 0.8% mitigation from shield chance to the 2% from inner peace and we only get 2.8%. Commanding Awe's flat 4% reduction is over 1% better than those two talents combined. I don't think blade barrier is going to make up that difference. That's especially true given what TheMoodyOne points out here:

 

This really only leaves the Blade Barrier - one problem - Damage shields like Blade Barrier and Static Barrier/Force armour are applied BEFORE mitigation

 

If you stack power and willpower enough to get a 1k Blade barrier shield and have a 50% damage reduction for energy damage then if you get hit for 2000 damage you will actually take 500 ((2000 - 1000)/2) - had the shield not been up you would have taken 1000 - thus the 1k shield actually blocked 500 damage - the bigger the hit the weaker the shield actually is - couple this with the fact is scales off Willpower and Power... is it worth the points?

 

Now, keep in mind, this is all before we start figuring in any bonus at all from unremitting and protector. We have been omitting those bonuses from the discussion entirely because of the claim that using guardian leap/force leap on cooldown hamstrings your flexibility. Even if I am not using leaps on cd I will still get some mitigation from them. Let's say I use one guardian leap and one force leap per minute (This shouldn't cause anything like the flexibility problems that people have been talking about). That's going to be 20% more mitigation for 10 seconds. My math could be wrong but I am counting that as like 3.33% mitigation for that minute (20%/6).

 

Now we are talking about getting between 7% and 8% mitigation from the hybrid compared with the 2.8% from Inner peace + Shield Specialization + whatever we are getting from Blade Barrier.

 

Anyone still think this is close?

[angrydurf]

Ok, that clears that up.

 

@Angrydurf

You're still dividing Inner Peace's bonus in half because if only affects half of the incoming attacks, but not doing the same for Shield Specialization even though it affects less than half of the incoming attacks.

 

If you do this, Commanding Awe comes out 1% better than Inner Peace and Shield Specialization combined.

 

I misspoke a little earlier. There are two rolls for an attack first is hit/miss this is a roll against defense and for fluff reasons is split between parry dodge and regular miss. The second is Crit VS Shield (With shield pushing regular hits off the table and Crit pushing shield off (at sufficient levels).

 

Force/tech attacks as I understand it are autohit with no hit/miss roll vs. defense. They can however crit and thus do make the shield roll and can be shielded. At least that's my understanding of the mechanics. I know that Crit and shield are on the same roll it is a logical progression that any ability that can crit can therefore be shielded.

[angrydurf]

This is really a fantastic and useful thread... probably the best thread I've read on these forums. Thanks for that.

 

Side question, since you're all here, which spec is actually the fastest for leveling? I'm guessing Vig but I just wondered if anyone had different thoughts. I'm working my way through a Guardian alt atm.

 

Leveling is pretyt fast regardless of spec. Completing quests is the fastest way to level in general not grinding (like in some games) and few quests are kill X mobs so it's pretty even between specs you might go a slightly faster with a DPS class but not much.

 

Play what seems fun.

[RydelFox]

I misspoke a little earlier. There are two rolls for an attack first is hit/miss this is a roll against defense and for fluff reasons is split between parry dodge and regular miss. The second is Crit VS Shield (With shield pushing regular hits off the table and Crit pushing shield off (at sufficient levels).

 

Force/tech attacks as I understand it are autohit with no hit/miss roll vs. defense. They can however crit and thus do make the shield roll and can be shielded. At least that's my understanding of the mechanics. I know that Crit and shield are on the same roll it is a logical progression that any ability that can crit can therefore be shielded.

 

Attacks can ignore shielding independent of their ability to crit. Refer to the discussion TheMoodyOne and I had.

You can shield attacks based off weapon damage.

 

A good way to see this would be to fight a Sage or Sorcerer - They can crit (a lot) but you can't shield their attacks.

[TheMoodyOne]

I misspoke a little earlier. There are two rolls for an attack first is hit/miss this is a roll against defense and for fluff reasons is split between parry dodge and regular miss. The second is Crit VS Shield (With shield pushing regular hits off the table and Crit pushing shield off (at sufficient levels).

 

Force/tech attacks as I understand it are autohit with no hit/miss roll vs. defense. They can however crit and thus do make the shield roll and can be shielded. At least that's my understanding of the mechanics. I know that Crit and shield are on the same roll it is a logical progression that any ability that can crit can therefore be shielded.

 

afraid not - Force/Tech attacks do not trigger the shield EVER

 

Other testing confirms what you suggest - that Tech/Force abilities bypass Defence rolls

 

there's a great video that demonstrates this

 

a Jugg and a Operative test the Jugg's defences - for the first few minutes the operative uses only Tech attacks - no shield or defence occurs.

 

The Operative then swaps to white damage attacks - almost straight away the shield starts procing and attacks are blocked/defelected

 

Edited February 4, 2012 by TheMoodyOne

[xCOLBYJACKx]

Man, this thread has some amazing maths and theories floating around in it in support of both builds... That's great, but it still doesn't make it very clear which build works better. I guess at the moment I'll just stick with Hybrid since it's what I know. But please, keep the discussion up, it's very informative and helpful.

[Grandmasterslash]

I've tried both specs, at both gear level(geared and undergeared....right now I'm sitting in like half Rakta and half Columni, which I guess would qualify as geared).

 

 

In my opinion, it goes like this:

 

Undergeard: Use Hybrid spec

Geared/Overgeared: Use Defensive spec

 

 

What the Hybrid spec does is give you survivability at the expense of steady force generation and a few other neat utility tools. While the added health and DR is nice, I always found the spec way to spastic in terms of focus usage. It feels like a spec where you either have a ton of focus or nothing at all.

 

Once I started getting gear however, survivability really stopped being an issue. I missed non-channeling stasis, I missed the added damage of Guardian Slash, I missed building my Courage stacks so that Blade Storm/Force Sweep could be free, and I missed the extra focus Cyclonic Sweeps gave. I respecced back to 31/10 after a night or two of raiding and getting some Champion pieces, and noticed an increase in steady damage.

 

Another reason that I found that 31/10 is a better spec for when you become geared is because of the shield chance it gives you. Once you start to get around 26-28% defense rating and a good amount of health, you can start to up your survivability substantially by stacking Shield Chance and Shield Absorption over Defense. Doing this, my defense went down by around 3-4%, but my SC and SA shot up by at least 10-15% EACH and made my healers lives much easier during raids.

 

EDIT: Not to mention the 4 piece PvE set bonus exclusively buffs an ability only in the 31/10 tree.

Edited February 5, 2012 by Grandmasterslash

[Stncold]

I've tried both specs, at both gear level(geared and undergeared....right now I'm sitting in like half Rakta and half Columni, which I guess would qualify as geared).

 

 

In my opinion, it goes like this:

 

Undergeard: Use Hybrid spec

Geared/Overgeared: Use Defensive spec

 

 

What the Hybrid spec does is give you survivability at the expense of steady force generation and a few other neat utility tools. While the added health and DR is nice, I always found the spec way to spastic in terms of focus usage. It feels like a spec where you either have a ton of focus or nothing at all.

 

Once I started getting gear however, survivability really stopped being an issue. I missed non-channeling stasis, I missed the added damage of Guardian Slash, I missed building my Courage stacks so that Blade Storm/Force Sweep could be free, and I missed the extra focus Cyclonic Sweeps gave. I respecced back to 31/10 after a night or two of raiding and getting some Champion pieces, and noticed an increase in steady damage.

 

Another reason that I found that 31/10 is a better spec for when you become geared is because of the shield chance it gives you. Once you start to get around 26-28% defense rating and a good amount of health, you can start to up your survivability substantially by stacking Shield Chance and Shield Absorption over Defense. Doing this, my defense went down by around 3-4%, but my SC and SA shot up by at least 10-15% EACH and made my healers lives much easier during raids.

 

EDIT: Not to mention the 4 piece PvE set bonus exclusively buffs an ability only in the 31/10 tree.

 

 

I actually overall agree with this.

 

Guardian Slash scales REALLY well with gear.

[dizzyMongoose]

I'm curious, is it worth it to skip Shield Specialization and put those two points in Command? Having 15 seconds chopped off the AoE taunt seems like bigger salve to the Guardian's problems than a 4% shield boost. Edited February 5, 2012 by dizzyMongoose

[RDeanOU]

Man, this thread has some amazing maths and theories floating around in it in support of both builds... That's great, but it still doesn't make it very clear which build works better. I guess at the moment I'll just stick with Hybrid since it's what I know. But please, keep the discussion up, it's very informative and helpful.

 

I think which build works better will depend on the player. I actually think Grandmasterslash is right on the money in his post above. The real advantage of the Hybrid build is one of survivability and from everything I have seen that becomes less and less of an issue as you start getting really good gear. At that point, some of the abilities and tools in the Defense tree will become a lot more attractive.

 

So ultimately the answer to the question of which works better will depend on a lot of things and your personal play-style will be one of them.

Edited February 5, 2012 by RDeanOU

[Tenetke]

Uhh ok, no one is debating that as a tank you need to be in soresu... I understand that the more damage you do, the more threat you generate, but what I am pointing out is that if you have 2 golds and 3 silvers beating on you with a group of trash mobs without those seemingly pointless defensive buffs, your survivability as a tank goes way down

 

 

I don't think that 4% damage reduction on elemental/internal dmg is going to make a difference in that case. Where as 40% damage reduction might.

[dizzyMongoose]

I think which build works better will depend on the player. I actually think Grandmasterslash is right on the money in his post above. The real advantage of the Hybrid build is one of survivability and from everything I have seen that becomes less and less of an issue as you start getting really good gear. At that point, some of the abilities and tools in the Defense tree will become a lot more attractive.

 

So ultimately the answer to the question of which works better will depend on a lot of things and your personal play-style will be one of them.

 

I can't be the only one who finds it humorous that the hybrid build is the one with arguably better defense, while the Defense build is the one with higher utility, right?

[xCOLBYJACKx]

I can't be the only one who finds it humorous that the hybrid build is the one with arguably better defense, while the Defense build is the one with higher utility, right?

 

It is strange, isn't it? Anyway, what I'm getting from this after all the discussion is that hybrid is great all the way 50 and beyond... until you get geared enough to survive without reliance on super-defensive abilities, then defense is more useful. That's good to know.

[Galtin]

Aside from Hilt Strike, as far as I can tell Defense tree doesn't get any specific skill that allows a Defense build to generate more threat than a hybrid build. Everyone is going to be in Soresu form when tanking anyways so it seems to me that whichever build generates the most DPS is the one that is best for tanking. Which build mitigates incoming damage the best is second in importance to which build allows you to generate threat the best.

 

What good does mitigating damage do you when the mobs are attacking your group mates because you can't hold aggro?

 

Guardian Slash should generate extra threat on top of the damage it inflicts. That would resolve a LOT of the Guardian tanking issues.

Edited February 7, 2012 by Galtin