Unorthodox gearing for CM survivability

[klham]

I recently shared a WZ with a CM-spec'd Commando in tanking gear (supercommando PvP set). They said it improved their survivability. When I asked if it cut their healing output they said they were able to off-set this by swapping Power mods into the gear. Is this feasible? It's the first time I've actually seen a CM kitted-out like this. I'm curious what the trade-offs are, particularly seeing as actual tanks disagree on the effectiveness of tanking gear in PvP. I'm interested in what ppl make of this. Edited October 24, 2012 by klham

[DariusCalera]

I recently shared a WZ with a CM-spec'd Commando in tanking gear (supercommando PvP set). They said it improved their survivability. When I asked if it cut their healing output they said they were able to off-set this by swapping Power mods into the gear. Is this feasible? It's the first time I've actually seen a CM kitted-out like this. I'm curious what the trade-offs are, particularly seeing as actual tanks disagree on the effectiveness of tanking gear in PvP. I'm interested in what ppl make of this.

 

So they swap out power mods, which I'm guessing are PvE ones, to replace the defensive mods that are in the Supercommando armor to make up for the lack of power there by decreasing their survivability by not having the defensive mods in. Correct?

 

As for the effectiveness, they gain absolutely nothing from the set bonus and any defensive stats are basically negated because of the mod removal and the fact that they aren't tanks and aren't running around using a tank spec that would increase the benefits of said armor.

 

Honestly, sounds like the only thing that they might be gaining from running around in this armor is a few more hit points.

 

Which, I guess, does help the survivability some, but I don't think it's worth the trade off.

 

I actually saw something similar the other day but with 2 dps commandos set up in the super commando armor and they said the same thing, that it increased their survivability. Apparently not enough though because in the next WZ I was placed in a team against them and out lived them both in my Eliminator set.

[klham]

Unfortunately I didn't have time to find out more. I'm assuming they kept the defence+ item modifications while swapping out everything with shield & absorb stats (since they require a shield off-hand). So I guess in theory you would have a combat medic with more hit points as you say (but still not as many as a true tank owing to the lack of the Ion Cell tanking stance with its armor buff), and who is harder to successfully land attacks on, but who has standard damage mitigation for their build. That's my assumption, but I'm not sure. They would also have lower range & tech critical chance and lower surge (which they claimed they could compensate for with Power+ item mods).

[SafeJungleFever]

For those of us in non-ranked who can't rely on good healers, the strongest stat affecting TTK is health. It would probably be worth it to run around in tank armorings and full fortitude augs (+18end/+12power). FWIW I'm going the fortitude aug route as I snag my WH pieces. I hadn't thought about it before, but I'll now be going with tank mods (possibly tank PVE mods). that said, without bonuses to shield/def/absorb tanking stats simply won't help very much. I did experiment with defense augs but found their benefit to be limited due to the internal/elemental issue. If internal/elemental could be defended, they'd probably be worth it tho.

 

Oh btw I etiher play Gunnery or gunnery/medic hybrid (the latter is awesome for gearing newbies on EV/KP runs). Will definitely be doing more CM once 1.5 hits and respec is free.

[Kitru]

I did experiment with defense augs but found their benefit to be limited due to the internal/elemental issue. If internal/elemental could be defended, they'd probably be worth it tho.

 

You're confusing attack type and damage type here. Damage type (Kinetic/Energy vs. Internal/Elemental) determines what kind of armor is applied. *That's it*. The attribute of an attack that determines whether it Defense/Shield/Absorb or just Resistance is applied is the *attack type*: Force/Tech or Melee/Ranged.

 

Your sentiment here is still true, however. Defense in PvP is relatively low value since players have a *much* higher ratio of Force/Tech to Melee/Ranged attacks than NPCs do. This is one of the reasons why tanks and tank stats are of such comparatively low value in PvP: their survivability contributions are ignored by a vast majority of player damage.