Katzyk Posted January 14, 2013 Share Posted January 14, 2013 Hi, Im sorry for the long post, but this has for some time plagued me, and Im hoping a Dev/Mod will see this and be kind enough to address my conundrum. In the last 5 months I have fully leveled an assassin Tank to 50, this being my 3rd 50, and first Tank. Ive read more "guides" than I can count and have fully read up on the class. In all of my reading though I have come across some very interesting things about tank PvP. Along my travels I have come across many opinions that the "tanking gear" is useless for PvP, and that any toon wanting to be "tanky" should use their skill tree for tanking abilities and gear into Dps gear, and stack defence for maximum numbers. Their reasoning for this is that they claim Absorption and Shield do nothing. There's even sites that say that there is a 70% debuff on Shield and Absorption, going into Pvp. Like I said, Ive read a lot of threads and the like, but never have I read OFFICIALLY from SWTOR that this is true, or false. That being said, I started thinking about why I chose the Assassin in the first place. I wanted stealth, with the tanking option. I wanted to be able to be fairly undetectable and know that If left guarding any post in game, that I would be able to hold my own until my team mates could help me out. First and foremost though I wanted to protect my healer, and the others on my team. Thus creating the conundrum of Gearing. Ive gone mostly Survivor WH, for the 4 set bonus, but I wanted to know what im doing If I intend to go any further. If I cant stack shield//absorption then what is the point of shielding a person. Your shield then projects the little damage that it takes, back to you, and with no absorption, if your getting hit on my 2 guys, and another is hitting the person your guarding, your going to go down pretty fast. Not to mention if you throw out your mass taunts and are migating damage for other players as well. Yes you get more damage with the Dps gear but your squishy if your trying to tank as well. Coming from a objective player, I dont care about numbers. I dont care about damage. I care about migating damage away from my team so we can all do our part in playing the objective. I care about holding a turret/console and having survivability enough that its harder for them to kill me than it is to kill a dps class in the same situation. So in these regards, why debuff the tank from being able to do the job its supposed to be doing? Also If this is true, why isnt there a VISIBLE debuff, so the tank is shown that their stats are reduced? On the other side, all those people could be smoking to much weed and there really is no debuff. Which is exactly what I thought when I realized that upper PvP tanking gear is stacked with Shield and Absorption. Why would SWTOR put those stats on gear if they dont do you any good to begin with? I remember times in the early stages of the game where I would take my 50 Dps and go to a turret to solo cap and be hit with a brink wall. There was no possible way that I would be able to break the tank down with enough time to cap successfully before reinforcements arrived. Where as in a pug group you dont always have a tank guarding and in the same situation against a equal dps taking a turret was easy and the eventual 3 cap was laughable. Now, I kill "tanks" just as easily as I would their Dps counterpart. Obviously something in game has changed. I had opened up a ticket, requesting the simple answer of "does this debuff exist?" and I was met with an email 2 says later saying "thank you for your impressions and ideas, and we can assure you our Dev team is always interested in receiving constructive feedback from our players." And then I was told to Post this on the forums. Two things bothered me about this. Firstly, I never gave "impressions", "ideas" or "constructive feedback". I merely asked a simple question. Secondly, Ive already read a ton of crap online of players thinking they're right, or cookie cutter sites stating "this is how you should be specked or your doing it wrong". I dont want this to be another forum getting tons of replies from players, debating gear and aptitude. I would just like a simple answer from a Mod or Dev or someone official whom I can trust will give me the official answer. Is there such thing as a "debuff" in PvP in regards to Shield and Absorption stats? and if so what is it? Like I said above, this idea has plagued me for a while now and any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katzyk Posted January 18, 2013 Author Share Posted January 18, 2013 *Bump Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petnil Posted January 18, 2013 Share Posted January 18, 2013 It has something to do with attacks that cant be shielded. Basicly it depends on your enemies whether shield and absorb is worth it. You should still use a shield offhand even in case you choose dps enhancements. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petnil Posted January 18, 2013 Share Posted January 18, 2013 try posting in yyour advanced class forum. Someone will probably know more specificly what stats are best for tank pvp. In suggestion post get burried fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jawstheshark Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 Yea I have not heard of an actual debuff on shielding applied in PVP. But force and tech attacks do not even roll against Defense or Shielding. Good pvp DPS know this, and know when they are hitting a tank. I agree it does not feel very tanky when 2 raw DPS folks come along and melt you in 3 seconds. Myself I mostly run with the tank pvp gear, and a couple items here and there I have swapped in DPS items. I also run a Hybrid tank/dps spec. I would be nice if full tanky talents were viable in pvp, but I agree they do not appear to be. I ran that way for quite some time before I changed. To my perception the hybrid yields better results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katzyk Posted January 24, 2013 Author Share Posted January 24, 2013 *bump Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turshek Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Not sure what you expect, a dev telling you what to wear ? If you read thoses good and bad guides and checked in game the different tooltips, character sheet window, ... you would have your answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katzyk Posted January 24, 2013 Author Share Posted January 24, 2013 Im not at all asking "what to wear". If you would have read, my question is stated at the bottom. what im asking is: Is there a real "debuff", (other than white damage only hitting), what is it, and why isnt it stated as a Pvp debuff when your gearing your tank? If you dont have anything useful to say ****. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ailie Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 Shield and absorb DO have an effect, but only against certain attack types. This is no different in PvE however in PvP the better players know this and focus tanks with the Force/Tech abilities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tXHereticXt Posted January 24, 2013 Share Posted January 24, 2013 (edited) Along my travels I have come across many opinions that the "tanking gear" is useless for PvP, and that any toon wanting to be "tanky" should use their skill tree for tanking abilities and gear into Dps gear, and stack defence for maximum numbers. It's primarily due to lack of foresight of PVP incentives. Expertise increases damage, among other passive stats, therefore the higher the expertise the more damage output someone can do - which is fair given that people should be rewarded for spending time at doing what they love. However this also is a double-edged sword, it adversely negates armor values. Force/Tech, across the board between PVP and PVE, bypasses shields making shields and their absorb ratings useless when you encounter enemies of those damage types; a player will always be smarter than AI therefore exploit this weakness. Force/Tech vs Shields, IMO, needs a second look. I am not advocating change, I would like it but perhaps revisiting this mechanic to make sure it's actually fair. I myself would approve to put shields on the table as far as versus Force/Tech but it's values slightly lower than say armor ratings. However number crunching is not my thing so I wouldn't know how to start in coming up with a balanced approach. Edited January 24, 2013 by tXHereticXt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
althene Posted January 27, 2013 Share Posted January 27, 2013 It's primarily due to lack of foresight of PVP incentives. Expertise increases damage, among other passive stats, therefore the higher the expertise the more damage output someone can do - which is fair given that people should be rewarded for spending time at doing what they love. However this also is a double-edged sword, it adversely negates armor values. Force/Tech, across the board between PVP and PVE, bypasses shields making shields and their absorb ratings useless when you encounter enemies of those damage types; a player will always be smarter than AI therefore exploit this weakness. Force/Tech vs Shields, IMO, needs a second look. I am not advocating change, I would like it but perhaps revisiting this mechanic to make sure it's actually fair. I myself would approve to put shields on the table as far as versus Force/Tech but it's values slightly lower than say armor ratings. However number crunching is not my thing so I wouldn't know how to start in coming up with a balanced approach. It's actually even more complicated than this and, no, there is no debuff for defense/shield/absorb raring in PvP outside of how the mechanics actually work. That is to say, in a PvP setting, defense mechanics are pathetic. Shield rating is directly compared to crit rating when the combat rolls occur. In PvE, this doesn't really raise concerns since most NPCs have little to no crit rating. In PvP, however, players can reach rediculous levels of crit, especially with short duration buffs. While its still true that force and tech attacks ignore your armor and shields altogether (defense still works but is counted as a dodge or miss, I believe), high levels of crit can "push" your shield rating off the chart entirely. It works similarly to how hit rating pushes defense off the table for possible outcomes, too. And since absorb raring does nothing unless you can shield the attack in the first place, it's very low on the priority list for PvP stats. It's also well documented that the PvP armor is horribly itemized for certain classes and specs, forcing players to buy multiple items just to strip the mods and optimize their gear. Most PvP tanks with either use dps gear or put in the effort to optimize their tanking set such that it has heavy defense rating to maximize avoidance with plenty of power and surge to get that burst damage (though somewhat dependent on RNG). This is still not optimal since many of the high end pieces have accuracy out the nose anyway. In either case, maximizing your expertise is your number one priority since this is going to have the mist direct effect in your survivability in the current PvP setting. That said, it would be nice if they revisited the shield/absorb mechanics. If dps players are able to completely bypass my armor and defenses as a tank, I should be able to completely negate their crits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katzyk Posted January 27, 2013 Author Share Posted January 27, 2013 If dps players are able to completely bypass my armor and defenses as a tank, I should be able to completely negate their crits. ^^ A thousand times that. Speaking from a Main Dps perspective, this is a highly unfair mechanic. Even if there was just some sort of Buff for the gear, or perhaps it the 4 peice tank set had a barrier against the crit. Thank you for the responses, they've been really helpfull so far. Im still getting used to Tank Mechanics, Ive never had a tank before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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