Consular tanking... O.o does it really work?

[Trojanwashere]

I am only lvl 30 atm with a Consular tank, it seems like a fail tanking spec as of yet i take about 30-40% more damage then any other tank in the game.

 

I am not to sure if it is going to get better on later level or i just just reroll something new.

[Vasma]

Hopefully you're specced into Kinetic combat and at level 30 your talents should look something like this.

 

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#601bIbckbco.1

 

*Note I have not played a Shadow tank yet, but my understanding of them is that they are an avoidance style tank so your health will drop in spikes rather then a slow degredation like a heavy armored tank which can make some healers panic. Also it's possible that at level 30 the itemizations might not be optimal yet, so you might be missing or not have enough of the stats that make you more viable as a tank, in which case I would say to hang in there as itemization generally gets better as you level up.

[MithrilSoul]

Once you hit level 14 and activate your tanking stance, your damage mitigation from armor should be within about 5% of the other two tanking classes. If you are taking 30-40% more damage, then either you are not using your tanking stance or else you are doing something else catastrophically wrong. Your avoidance should be higher than the others and you should be shielding quite well too, even better once you get Kinetic Ward in the KC tree.

[StargateSGC]

Tanking definately works with JC, i have a level 26 jedi shadow, if you use proper specs in talent tree as well as proper gear which is geared towards tanking, you should do fine. Make sure you use combat technique too Edited December 21, 2011 by StargateSGC

[taolan]

Shadow tanks are not avoidance tanks. Swtor has no avoidance tanks. All swtor tanks are mitigation tanks.

 

Spec matters a lot. The linked spec above is a great start. Make sure your equipping a shield offhand and not a focus. Make sure to check the shadow tanking guide for your ability priority "rotation", as that helps a lot.

 

Get Kinetic Ward ASAP and keep it up as much as you can.

[TheMickey]

you're doing it wrong

[Inarai]

*Note I have not played a Shadow tank yet, but my understanding of them is that they are an avoidance style tank so your health will drop in spikes rather then a slow degredation like a heavy armored tank which can make some healers panic. Also it's possible that at level 30 the itemizations might not be optimal yet, so you might be missing or not have enough of the stats that make you more viable as a tank, in which case I would say to hang in there as itemization generally gets better as you level up.

 

Your understanding is incorrect. They do use about 5% more avoidance, yes, but they're still primarily based on mitigation/absorption. They also have some procs to regen health and similar things.

[GFWarper]

Well tank should have well armor, even if it's light. Tanking in outdated greens is a bad idea. Also shadow tank should use combat stance always.

Your are not supposed to face your enemy all the time, but you should use crowd control skills often. On trash you sap 1 enemy in a pack prior to pull. It makes a lot of difference. On bosses you can stun adds with project and other cooldown abilities. You can and should use AOE knockbacks between AOE bursts of your party.

[TheToony]

Doesn't make much sense that you'd take 30% more damage. What with armor percentage not being that wide a gap.

[Inarai]

Well tank should have well armor, even if it's light. Tanking in outdated greens is a bad idea. Also shadow tank should use combat stance always.

Your are not supposed to face your enemy all the time, but you should use crowd control skills often. On trash you sap 1 enemy in a pack prior to pull. It makes a lot of difference. On bosses you can stun adds with project and other cooldown abilities. You can and should use AOE knockbacks between AOE bursts of your party.

 

Better early level initiation tactic seems to be Stealth in -> Shadow Strike primary threat ([50]50/100 Force, 1.5s) -> Breach([70] 42/100 Force, 3s) -> Possibly other AoE -> Wave([90] 34/100 Force, 4.5s) -> Stun([110] 26/100 Force, 6s) -> Possibly TK Throw or Project ([140] 8/100 Force, 8s; [155] -7/100 Force, 7.5s; [185] -21/100 Force and 9.5s for both). Looking at the numbers, making it work in full requires some sort of buff to regen (See: One With The Force), cost reductions, or something of the sort. However, as long as you get up to about Wave you're nailing the essentials.

 

Grabs threat on everything, debuffs, controls a major enemy, lets you be flexible for target priority (Stun one foe, Project another and Throw a third, for example), and working in buffs like Potency can of course make it more powerful given the involved abilities. The Knockback buys you a nice bit of breathing space before everything's beating on you, making it easier for everyone to get into position and pick their targets. This could also synergize well with group members, such as if they timed their own knockback-free AoE to coincide with the AoE phase of this tactic. Fortunately, the Shadow's regen for Force doesn't slow down when there's less in the tank.

 

The extra 2.4 a second from One With The Force should amp the Force levels to: 50/100, 45.6/100, 41.2/100, 36.8/100, 22.4/100, 7/100, -1.8/100. That 1.8 Force deficit requires less than a fifth of a second to make up, if regen is constant rather than piece-wise (I haven't checked).

 

Of course, this leaves you Force starved, but you could regen the whole pool in under ten seconds - so you basically just mix in some extra Saber Strikes so that you trend up on the Force level, back up over the 50 mark. Something like Strike>Strike>Double>Strike>Strike and you're there. Alternatively, alternating Strike and Double gets you there after nine sets. Or, you can get there in the course of 3 GCD's by just using Saber Strike (5 without One With The Force).

Edited December 21, 2011 by Inarai

[magnuskn]

After getting owned on the first boss of Taral V ( I couldn't hold aggro at all on the two beasts the guy has with him ) I am wondering myself... although it worked fine on prior bosses. Maybe the two what's-their-name monsters aren't tankable? :-/

[Mungo]

Was tanking some mobs in Hammer Station last night as a Infiltration specced shadow. Combat Technique really helps. The group was wiped out and it was me and 2 elites, I used a medi pack when I hit 50% health and carried on fighting.

 

I have no delusions that at higher levels this may not work though, but it was intresting. But as an off-tank and someone to kill adds and take agro off the healers it works well.

[Meage]

Personal opinion, but I would make come changes to the talents posted by Vasma. I would take the points out of expertise and put one in Applied Force and 2 in Shadowsight.

[Kitru]

Having run as a full Kinetic (39 atm), you'll realize quite early on that you feel like a really squishy tank compared to what other games have their tanks perform at. This is simply how BW designed the game. For large groups of enemies, damage is really high. CC is really important, even in low level FPs and Heroics. Use it and abuse it. When you have a group pared down to you tanking 1-2 big targets and some of the dps tanking smaller enemies while they blow them up (it's not worth it trying to tank the little guys when the DPS will just blow them up faster than you can threat them and DPS can take a bit of punishment for a little while) you'll feel much more effective.

 

Keep in mind that Kinetic Shadows do not really start feeling well rounded until *after* level 30. You don't get legitimate AoE threat capabilities until 26 nor do you really have the Force to play around with all of your tools yet. As the only Shadow tank I have seen on my very full server (Saber of Exar Kun) in about 15 levels, I get the feeling that a lot of people abandoned their ambitions to Shadow tank because it really is a long time before you feel effective.

 

Of course, once you get there it is *amazing*. Once I got Harnessed Shadows (so very very nice...), I could start soloing Champions and Heroic 2s and duoing Heroic 4s with a dps.

 

Overall, the reasons for this is twofold: there isn't legitimate Shadow tank gear available until your 30s (shields are especially bad; there aren't even any craftable shields (instead there are duplicate WP attack OHs) and the only purchasable shield I found was on Nar Shaddaa) and you don't get your necessary tank abilities until your 30s. All in all, it's just not set up to make a Kinetic playable at low levels.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Kitru

[Kitru]

Personal opinion, but I would make come changes to the talents posted by Vasma. I would take the points out of expertise and put one in Applied Force and 2 in Shadowsight.

 

I would also take 2 points out of Mental Fortitude (2% endurance is pretty much nothing and has no realistic contribution to your survivability) to fill out Applied Force and take Mind Over Matter. MOM is amazing because the number of slowing and immobilization effects present even in PvE is incredible, especially since a large number of them are coupled with knockback effects, not to mention getting an extra 2 seconds of tech/force immunity with Resilience when you're being beaten to death by the massive tech and force damage powers you encounter can be a real life saver (in PvE, just like PvP, casters die faster, but they also deal a metric ton more damage, especially with AoEs they enjoy dropping right on top of themselves). AF is excellent because Double Strike is pretty much half of the attacks you make. 6% more damage adds up quickly when you're using it so much.

[GFWarper]

Inarai

The main purpose of a tank is to keep monsters on himself and stay alive. You are talking about damage abilities sequence, I'm talking about survivability.

If you use Mind Maze (from hide) and regen force prior to pull, you have something like 50 seconds of free crowd control. If you kill 5 monsters pack, it will remove the necessity of tanking that particular mob for 50 seconds. If this monster will hit your for 150 per attack, you'll get 5k additional damage over fight. From another point of view - you'll reduce initial damage by 20% removing one of 5 opponents. Doesn't it worth 5 seconds preparation? Do you keep up with all the damage incoming?

 

Better early level initiation tactic seems to be Stealth in -> Shadow Strike primary threat ([50]50/100 Force, 1.5s) -> Breach([70] 42/100 Force, 3s) -> Possibly other AoE -> Wave([90] 34/100 Force, 4.5s) -> Stun([110] 26/100 Force, 6s) -> Possibly TK Throw or Project ([140] 8/100 Force, 8s; [155] -7/100 Force, 7.5s; [185] -21/100 Force and 9.5s for both).

Force wave with immediately following stun will render half of force wave's stun duration useless. It's better to save stun for later use, preferrably to interrupt long casting ability or stop monster from attacking partymate. At least you'll get 1.5 seconds more total stun, at most you'll interrupt another ability.

Also Shadow strike is inferior in regard of damage/power unless you spec infiltration and utilise Find Weakness. You can do 2 Double Strikes for the same amount of force and possibly get proc for Project.

As tank you are not supposed to do most damage in party, you only should do enough to damage to generate enough treat.

[Inarai]

Inarai

The main purpose of a tank is to keep monsters on himself and stay alive. You are talking about damage abilities sequence, I'm talking about survivability.

 

That post is very specifically about generating threat at the beginning of an engagement at early levels - before there's a lot of area threat abilities. There's a reason very few spec abilities are accounted for. Very useful for someone getting started, as they can then look at switching in other abilities as they progress.

 

Mass Mind Control doesn't come around until 30. Until then, you need a way to build up group threat, which that engagement strategy front loads via damage (the only available method for the level range it's written for).

 

Also, directing Force Stun at an enemy above standard would be the idea, as they do not suffer the knockdown. Also, Kinetic Ward's cheap enough once you've got it that fitting it into there is easy.

 

As for the damage comparison between Shadow Strike and Double Strike, part of the point is the timeline - a single Shadow Strike is more time efficient than two Doubles. This is big, because it allows you to ensure that the prime threat is on you before you do anything to worry about any other enemies.

Edited December 21, 2011 by Inarai

[Kitru]

As for the damage comparison between Shadow Strike and Double Strike, part of the point is the timeline - a single Shadow Strike is more time efficient than two Doubles. This is big, because it allows you to ensure that the prime threat is on you before you do anything to worry about any other enemies.

 

The issue I have with this is that, if you're opening with an attack, you already have a threat advantage over anyone else because, in order to pull off of you, another individual has to generate either 110% (if they are in melee) or 130% (if they are at range) of your current threat on the target for the target to switch. Using a *vastly* more expensive power (since you recover 8 Fps, the real "cost" of a power is its cost minus 12 (or, at higher regen rates, 1.5 times your regen rate)) to deal only marginally more damage doesn't really make your ability to generate threat substantially better. If anything, I would argue that it makes you less likely to keep aggro because you're going to have to use Saber Strike earlier than you would have otherwise thanks to lack of Force.

 

I'd also like to comment on the use of Force Wave as a tank. Personally, I didn't use it at all. Since it is melee radial KB, unless the pack of enemies is stacked up very closely together (something the AI goes to great lengths to avoid), it is going to scatter everything, making it harder for you to maintain threat (since you will be considered at range and therefore have a lower threat loss threshold as well as having to run around like crazy). Its damage is also a joke (roughly 25% of what a Double Strike will deal). I found it more effective and easier to simply remove Force Wave from my bar and spend the entire time spamming Double Strike while switching targets. It may seem counter-intuitive to not use abilities that you have access to, but virtually all non-situational Shadow abilities with the exception of Double Strike are either worthless or too expensive without talent support.

[Zintair]

Your doing something wrong if you are having trouble post 30 with your Shadow tank.

 

Spend money on better +End/Def/Shield mods

 

Make sure you are guarding the right target. If there is a class that is a heavy DPSer throw your guard on them because you will significantly boost your threat.

 

Sometimes it just takes removing prior experiences and understanding how this game works. You cant always run into a pack of elites and start whacking away. You may have to Mind Maze and Force Pull the other mobs to you. Force stun them or Force Wave them to break up damage spikes.

 

This isn't WoW or other MMOs. You need to keep an open mind to make it effective but basic MMO principles still hold sway.

[Beastfury]

OP is just full of SH#T. 30-40% more damage then other tanks. How exactly did you compare again? I checked armor values with few tanks at my level i was within few hundred armor every time. he just pulled numbers out of his arse and wants a discussion.

[Zintair]

OP is just full of SH#T. 30-40% more damage then other tanks. How exactly did you compare again? I checked armor values with few tanks at my level i was within few hundred armor every time. he just pulled numbers out of his arse and wants a discussion.

 

Or he isn;t using combat technique, but the numbers are more than likely completely made up based on opinion.

 

I know I take damage better than some Jedi Guardians so its definitely a case of "Not doing (something) it right"

[feliix]

Better early level initiation tactic seems to be Stealth in -> Shadow Strike primary threat ([50]50/100 Force, 1.5s) -> Breach([70] 42/100 Force, 3s) -> Possibly other AoE -> Wave([90] 34/100 Force, 4.5s) -> Stun([110] 26/100 Force, 6s) -> Possibly TK Throw or Project ([140] 8/100 Force, 8s; [155] -7/100 Force, 7.5s; [185] -21/100 Force and 9.5s for both). Looking at the numbers, making it work in full requires some sort of buff to regen (See: One With The Force), cost reductions, or something of the sort. However, as long as you get up to about Wave you're nailing the essentials.

 

Grabs threat on everything, debuffs

 

I pretty much follow this approach as a low level shadow tank. It works out really

well, and people are usually amazed at the aggression I generate. I'm at level 19,

so still no mind maze for a nice cc.

 

Some of the ideas later on about better rotations, are I think, oriented on higher

level tanking. At low levels, time is an issue, plus the lack of abilities. Getting

in the shadow strike throws all initial aggro on the tank, and is easy to communicate

to your pug members. The wave is useful in that you can indeed use it to get a

better clustering on the pack early in the battle through careful application, and it

gives you some time to spread some other aggro with other abilities.

 

Another wonderful tool to control pulls, is lift. You can do it from long range,

and I find it's an excellent way to set up LOS pulls. Sure, as a tank you only

get 8 seconds, but everything has to come to you, and other people can

get in their better cc's as the enemies run into your chosen battle area.

[coruscantnights]

Shadow is a great tank. Here's a checklist to follow if you don't think you're tanking properly.

 

(1) Are you specced out properly? You need to be Kinetic Combat spec'ed, and Kinetic Ward is a must.

 

(2) Are you properly geared up? Try for gear with Endurance on it.

 

(3) Are you using Combat Technique? You should be.

 

(4) Do you have an appropriate Shield in your offhand? You should.

 

(5) Are you trying to do ridiculous things with backstab? Don't.

 

(6) Do you put Kinetic Ward up every time it comes off cooldown? You should.

 

(7) If all else fails, get some medkits.

[Akzent]

Agree about force wave not being used much to an extent, I still keep it on bar but not in a priority spot, use it occasionally if a few mobs or adds on a boss fight are on say healer or something to knock then away and give dps time to burn them down and keep off the healer and to give some breathing room, but usually don't like to use it much when clearing mobs because noticed groups are quite often pretty close together so don't want to send em to close to another group and Argo them, very situational skill but does have its uses

[chungkuo]

One thing I was doing wrong the first couple times I shadow tanked was trying to tank EVERYTHING. The group I was with claimed to have no CC (lies and nubbery for sure), and at the time my only CC was Lift, which is only 8s (and the Nub Squad kept AoE-ing it anyway).

 

That said, I did okay even just using Combat Tech with an Infiltrator spec (reports from beta said this is perfectly viable at lower levels), but I was trying to tank everything including the normal mobs. A guildy suggested I don't bother with those, since they are so weak even if one of them runs to the healer he should be able to nuke it down pretty quick.

 

Part of it, for me, is that I am still thinking in WoW terms for some of this stuff. If you tank a WoW 5-man you pretty much need to worry about every mob since (with few exceptions) they are ALL elites. So, now I generally ignore everything that isn't silver or higher in the really big pulls.