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

[Ovuel]

Skipping Slow Time isn't going to work out for end game tanking, though it's probably acceptable for flashpoints and such. Once you get into operations your dps will, or at least should be, doing a huge amount of damage. This damage is going to generate a lot of threat. While Guard will help with the worst offender in this scenario you can't rely too heavily on it. You have to be able to generate a lot of threat, and that's one of the nice benefits of Slow Time. The other being that you're not getting hit as hard once the debuff from Slow Time is applied.

 

 

Sounds like some of your guys need to have a look at this thread:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=425

 

Tanking at 50 works really well. One key difference for us as compared to other tanks is we spend more time worrying about our shield absorption and chance then we do endurance and defense.

 

 

Here's a video of me tanking the first boss in Heroic Esseles last night, as you can see, no real issues, even during the add phase. Slow time is one of our best pure threat moves, and once you start running FPs on a regular basis, it is a necessity.

 

[Kitru]

Either way, I ended up wondering which ability will actually provide more threat per target per use. Force in Balance obviously has the higher damage, but Slow Time according to the tooltip provides high threat. Anybody got any idea about the threat multiplier on it? (Assuming it's going to be a multiplier anyways and not a static threat bonus, given how many scaling issues that gave in other MMOs)

 

The "high threat" modifier is supposed to be 150%, so, with the 30% additional damage talent, Force in Balance and Slow Time provide roughly the same amount of threat on a single target. The heal for FiB, however, is remarkably low, so the 5% decreased damage output (which reduces the target's AoE and focus damage on other people as well) definitely wins out on the survivability factor.

 

Keep in mind that Slow Time isn't going to be an incredible threat generator or damage dealer in a single target fight. The only times you should be using it on CD are when you are fighting multiple targets, wherein it deals about as much damage as Whirling Blow but provides more threat. In single target situations, Force Breach and Slow Time should only be used to maintain the debuff (which are *incredibly* useful; assuming a 20% dodge chance, that 5% is reducing your incoming damage by 6.25%; with 30% dodge, it becomes 7.7%; the higher your dodge gets, the better it is).