How many are giving up on Shadow tanks?

[Kitru]

Some of us were pointing out that kind of scenarios while 2.0 is still on PTS, but some known people from sin&shadow community kept defending the armor reduction changes and saying that it's gonna be better than pre 2.0.. I'm wondering where are they and why they are not talking now? Maybe some of them stopped playing eh?

 

I was one of those that defended the armor reduction because the argument was based around *mean mitigation*, which did actually get *better* in 2.0. Spikiness wasn't brought up specifically as an issue, except in the confines of certain trash packs that hit all at once, which was a well known weakness of Shadows, which is easily solved via appropriate use of CDs.

 

The spikiness problem isn't the same as the one that was brought up on the PTS. While I'll admit that I was wrong in stating that spikiness wasn't problematic *at all*, I feel vindicated in stating that it's only a problem in very specific scenarios where burst damage in intense enough that survival becomes a question of the RNG not deciding to screw you over.

 

On the PTS, the general sentiment was "Shadows take too much damage because we lost the 20% armor!". The argument was in the general context, not the specific context of extreme spike damage (especially since the issue of the extremely high spike damage in S&V wasn't well known to be the problem that it has ended up being).

 

So, yes, those of us, myself included, that were perfectly fine with the loss of the 20% armor in order to gain the additional Absorb from Kinetic Bulwark, have ended up being wrong, but not in the context of the argument presented on the PTS. What was previously a tangential concern to overall tank capability has become a fundamental balance concern since it's become so absolutely extreme.

 

The problem isn't so much that Shadows are spiky (we're only *slightly* spikier than we used to be). The problem is that the *content* is designed to punish spikiness much *more* than it used to while simultaneously creating a larger gap between the "average" spikiness and Shadow spikiness thanks to the changes to Guardians (i.e. the difference in spikiness between a Guardian and a VG was about the same as between a Guardian and a Shadow; *now* the difference between a Shadow and either of the other tanks is twice as extreme as it used to be).

 

It's also complicated by the fact that Shadows are *massively* overreliant on self healing as mitigation (it accounts for ~25% of our total mitigation, which is *absurdly* high when you consider that it's both a *reactive* mitigation mechanism as well as one that doesn't scale *in the least* with incoming damage).

 

Honestly, going back to the Shadow mitigation profile in 1.7 wouldn't solve things. It's the changes to the content design combined with our spikiness that causes our problems. The Shadows tank mitigation profile needs a complete overhaul in much the same way that the Guardian tank mitigation profile got overhauled in 2.0. Without something on that scale (reevaluating and reducing our self healing while also adjusting the ratio of RNG based to static mitigation mechanisms to be heavier than it currently is on static), Shadows are going to have problems with any current content.

[roflmbo]

I'm playing a recent 55 assassin tank and I'm finding these threads pretty depressing. I think I will make a guardian tank rather than continuing to try to improve my assassin. I hate that assassins are no longer viable for end game compared to the other tanks. I'm too lazy to learn the situational awareness needed to assassin tank properly in the current climate. I'm a casual player and that amount of effort and learning just sounds too tedious.

 

Besides, I've been wanting to see the Sith warrior storyline.

 

Before the expansion to the level 55 cap (at 50) I was able to easily tank any HM FP. If there is trash that can take down assassins so easily lately, then I'm moving on.

Edited June 13, 2013 by roflmbo

[Kitru]

Before the expansion to the level 55 cap (at 50) I was able to easily tank any HM FP. If there is trash that can take down assassins so easily lately, then I'm moving on.

 

The burst trash packs are only going to be a problem for you when you first start doing the 55 FPs, and, as a Shadow, you can get away with running in with either Deflection or Battle Readiness prepped to eat the alpha strike (of course, this is something that only Shadows really have to deal with so it's still not really "balanced"). The bigger problem is when you get into the Ops and have to deal with the burst damage scenarios, which are going to actively chew through you since it's RNG to survive and you won't have CDs up for all of them. It's for *this* reason, not the trash reason, that people are looking upon Shadows with disfavor: in operations, they're more of a liability than an asset and no ops can afford to have the primary threat machine as a liability (DPS and sometimes healers, but definitely not tanks).

[Hockaday]

Fact is, I believe any Sin who played on the PTS -knew- this was coming...been preaching this since I ran a HM on my Sin on the PTS in Min/Maxed Ark. Unfortunatly, -most- of the community did say "no spike damage isn't a problem"...and I believe I probably fell in line eventually. But looks like we were right. I Hope BW doesn't turn into SoE and refuse to repair this class.

 

As it states, Jugs need a rebalance (well, a nerf...but it really is a balance) in mitigation, while Sins need a boost. As others have said, I don't know why, besides "this is the class i play, make it op" that they increased jug defense.

 

A 40% armour loss and I a large heal loss has pushed the class over the edge so far. Which is unfortunate. I'll still be running my Sin...but I'm gearing my Jug to replace him just in case.

[SomeJagoff]

Fact is, I believe any Sin who played on the PTS -knew- this was coming...been preaching this since I ran a HM on my Sin on the PTS in Min/Maxed Ark. Unfortunatly, -most- of the community did say "no spike damage isn't a problem"...and I believe I probably fell in line eventually. But looks like we were right. I Hope BW doesn't turn into SoE and refuse to repair this class.

 

As it states, Jugs need a rebalance (well, a nerf...but it really is a balance) in mitigation, while Sins need a boost. As others have said, I don't know why, besides "this is the class i play, make it op" that they increased jug defense.

 

A 40% armour loss and I a large heal loss has pushed the class over the edge so far. Which is unfortunate. I'll still be running my Sin...but I'm gearing my Jug to replace him just in case.

 

I'd prefer that they buff sin tanks rather than nerf jugg tanks.

 

As for the 40% armor nerf....

 

In 1.3, the dark charge armor boost was nerfed by -35%

In 2.0, the 20% tree talent armor boost was removed, -20%

Also in 2.0, people mentioned that the base inquisitor class had its armor nerfed by 25%, affecting both sorcs and sins.

 

So including that last point Sin Tanks specifically have had their armor nerfed by a total of 80%.

 

But then, who needs armor for tanking when you can just rely on RNG to save you? Oh, I guess Jugg and PT tanks.

[Kitru]

As it states, Jugs need a rebalance (well, a nerf...but it really is a balance) in mitigation, while Sins need a boost.

 

Once again, it's not that Shadows need a boost to our *mitigation*. It's that we need our mitigation *shifted around*, which is a completely different thing. It may seem like I'm talking semantics here, but it's a *very* important distinction. Shadows *already* have absolutely insane mean mitigation. Making it better is *not* something you'll ever be able to convince anyone that does any kind of math that it is a good idea.

 

As for Guardians, the problem with them is primarily that they just have too large and too effective of a stable of tank CDs, not to mention some utterly *amazing* new raid utility (Guardianship definitely made me go "***!?!?" when I saw it since that's just an *amazing* talent for an AoE taunt). Their mitigation is largely tied with VGs (the absorb shield makes it slide to better/even/worse depending upon the level of incoming damage; with HM S&V numbers, it's even), though it might be seen fit to tweak their F/T I/E mitigation somewhat (5% resist chance when the other tanks only get 2% and 24% I/E DR when the other tanks can only get 23% and 19%), not that it's a *major* concern.

 

Compared to Shadows and VGs, the *biggest* advantage they've got is their massive stable of incredibly powerful tank CDs. Since VGs are *known* to have terrible CDs (something that *really* needs to be addressed), I'll compare their CDs to what Shadows (who are, you know, supposed to get the *best* CDs since they're skill tanks) get.

 

Saber Ward compared to Deflection.

 

100% Defense for 3 seconds and 50% Defense for the remaining 9 seconds as well as 25% multiplicative F/T DR compared to 12% Defense for 12 seconds. Saber Ward is outright *better* and not just by a little. For a Shadow with 27% functional Defense (22% + 5% acc debuff), Deflection provides ~69.5% M/R mitigation for the duration. Ignoring the 25% F/T mitigation (which turns Saber Ward into a universally applicable CD rather than an M/R specific CD), for a Guardian with 31% functional Defense (26% + 5% acc debuff), Saber Ward provides 100% M/R mitigation for 25% of its uptime (which, if used properly, can allow you to reliably and completely ignore certain burst mechanisms like Terminate) and 72.5% M/R mitigation for the remaining 75% of its uptime. This equates to 79.375% average mitigation contribution for the duration, which is 15% better than Deflection.

 

Add in the universal applicability (which means that there will never be a situation where it's absolutely worthless, like F/T fights, i.e. Kephess the Undying) of it thanks to the F/T and, even if you don't want to consider those F/T exclusive fights, still means that Saber Ward applies to some extent to *all* incoming damage for the duration, rather than just some of it. Using a 70/30 split between M/R and F/T, the total mitigation contributions of each CD would be 48.65% (Deflection) and 63.0625% (Saber Ward). On those grounds, accounting for the universal applicability of Saber Ward, Saber Ward is ~30% better than Deflection is (using Deflection as baseline).

 

The balancing factor between these 2 abilities is supposed to be the CD: Deflection is on a 120 sec CD whereas Saber Ward is on a 150 sec CD. Saber Ward has a 25% longer CD. Based purely off of the potential use on flat CD, Saber Ward still ends up edging out Deflection (1.3 / 1.25 = 1.04). Accounting for more realistic use cycles (since it's, you know, a survivability CD not something used *on* CD), however, is a bit more complex since tank CDs are (or, at least, *should*) be used in a stochastic manner to mitigate damage in an emergency or a burst damage scenario.

 

Unless a burst mechanism has a 120-149 second wait in between how often it's used, Deflection and Saber Ward are going to have a very similar use cycles (in the current content, most burst mechanisms are on a 35-45 second burst cycle, which means that Deflection applies to 1 out of 3-4 whereas Saber Ward applies to 1 out of 4-5) assuming they're only used in burst damage situations (a Guardian is much *less* likely to be in an emergency situation than a Shadow is thanks to a smoother incoming damage profile; as such, better uptime is actually a valid balancing factor; i.e. Deflection should actually edge out Saber Ward because of this). As such, the 25% increase in the CD has closer to an 28% increase in number of desired cases where it's on CD, meaning that the 4% better that would be assumed based upon raw CD is closer to 1% better (1.3/1.28).

 

Even if you don't like that comparison and prefer to go with something closer to a "reserve time frame" model (i.e. you hold the CD in reserve until it's appropriate, which adds a flat added time frame to represent the "average" time held in reserve), the difference in CDs is still going to make Saber Ward look better: adding 30-45 seconds to the baseline CD shifts the ration from 1.25-to-1 to 1.18/1.2-to-1. Use that new number and Saber Ward is then 8.3-10% better than Deflection.

 

Either way, Saber Ward ends up being better than Deflection, contributions averaged out for contributed mitigation, damage types, duration, and CD. As the explicit "skill tanks" (as defined by the devs themselves), that's not quite right since skill tanks are supposed to have *better* CDs than non-skill tanks, especially since Shadows should, nominally, have better CDs to also account for their spikier incoming damage profile.

 

 

Battle Readiness compared to Warding Call and Enure.

 

 

Before 2.0, Battle Readiness would have just been compared to Enure because they were both just hp mechanisms. With the change from a pure healing mechanism to a mitigation mechanism as well, Battle Readiness now has to be compared to both Warding Call and Enure. Right off the bat, this is actually something of a disadvantage since you do not always need mitigation and self healing at the same time. In fact, most of the time they are somewhat disconnected since, for best application, you use a mitigation CD *before* a burst incident and a self healing CD *afterwards*. Guardians, in having their hp-CD and a mitigation CD split into 2 separate CDs, have the advantage since they can gain the relevant benefit whenever needed rather than having to choose between wasting the healing portion to benefit appropriately from the mitigation portion.

 

On to the CDs themselves. For mitigation, Battle Readiness (with 35.5% K/E DR and 23% I/E DR) provides a 38.75% decrease in damage taken for K/E and 32.47% decrease in damage taken for I/E. Warding Call, since it's multiplicative, is just a a flat 40% reduction in damage taken for both. The comparison here is pretty simple: Warding Call does more while it's active.

 

As to the duration and uptime, Warding Call only lasts 12 seconds whereas Battle Readiness lasts 15 seconds, and, for CD, Warding Call is on a 150 sec CD whereas Battle Readiness is on a 120 sec CD. Ergo, the maximum uptimes are 8% and 12.5%, for Warding Call and Battle Readiness, respectively (Battle Readiness as 56.25% better, assuming you get appreciable survivability use out of those 3 additional seconds). Balance the CDs as I did before and you either arrive at either Battle Readiness being ~61% better (15 /12 * 4.5/3.5) using the applicable cycle method or 47-50% (15/12 * 180/150, 15/12 * 195/165) better using the reserve time method (the reason for Battle Readiness's substantially higher effectiveness is almost entirely due to the shorter duration of Warding Call; if you're using the CD to prevent damage from a specific spike event, the only seconds taht really matter are the first 5-6, so that difference in duration really doesn't matter appreciably; I'm not factoring this in however). From a mitigation contribution standpoint, Battle Readiness looks pretty damned good (which is appropriate, imo; as previously indicated, Shadows are skill tanks).

 

For the hp benefits, Enure provides a 30% hp cushion for 20 seconds whereas Battle Readiness provides 15% hp and increases healing from CT from ~60 hp/sec to ~160 hp/sec (increases the heal by 100% and decreases the functional CD from 6 seconds to 4.5 seconds by increasing the proc rate from 65% to 100%). Factoring in the 15 second duration, the increased healing from CT equates to an extra 4.2% of total hp ((160-60) * 15 / 36000).

 

Unless you're in a situation where you cannot expect any external healing for more than 20 seconds (of which the 19.2% provided by Battle Readiness is not going to amount to much; it's ~6900, which is a single GCD of healing from 2 healers), the hp cushion provided by Enure is substantially better (by slightly more than 50%), not to mention that it's got further advantages insofar as it is an increase in max hp rather than a quantity of self healing, which means that it can be used proactively rather than reactively (i.e. you use it *before* you take a big hit rather than after, which means that you don't have to survive the big attack to make it useful; you can actually use it in order to *survive* a big attack). Even in solo play and PvP this is useful since, especially in PvP, the sudden burst of 30% hp when you are low can provide all the cushion you need to take out another player 1 v 1 (in any other situation, you should expect to have a healer behind you).

 

Unless you use Enure entirely *incorrectly* (i.e. you stand no chance of dying within the next 10 seconds), Enure is going to contribute *way* more than Battle Readiness will: that 30% cushion is substantially larger and more useful than the ~20% self healing (5% of which is delayed over the next 15 seconds) since it's both 50% larger and of a qualitatively more useful type of hp assistance from a survivability standpoint. Since we're going for raw quantification, rather than assigning a value to the qualitatively more valuable type provided by Enure, we'll just stick with Enure providing 50% more hp assistance than Battle Readiness.

 

Another option for comparing their effectiveness would be to look at the contributions not as hp assistance but as percentage based mitigation of incoming damage: if you have 130% of your normal hp, a hit is going to hit you for comparatively less (as a percentage of your max hp) for the duration; the 20% self healing from Battle Readiness is simply a reactive form of this same mitigation (since it's primarily percentage of max hp based). As such, Enure is still 50% better.

 

As to the CDs, Enure is on a 90 second CD and Battle Readiness on a 120 second CD, which means that Battle Readiness has a 33% longer CD. Using the applicable cycle method based upon burst intervals, Enure can be used once every 3 times (90 / 35 and 90 / 45) whereas Battle Readiness can be used once every 3-4 times, which means that Enure can be used roughly 16% more often than Battle Readiness. Using the reserve time method, we'll add 20-30 seconds to each (with lower CDs, it's appropriate to use a lower reserve CD), Battle Readiness ends up having a 25-27% longer CD.

 

Combine the effectiveness difference (Enure being ~50% better) with the CD difference (Enure being either 16% better or 25-27% better) and Enure, from an hp assistance standpoint, ends up being 74% better (1.5 / (1 / 1.16)) or 87.5-90.5% better (1.5 / (1 / 1.25 or 1.27)).

 

 

And, finally, Resilience to Saber Reflect.

 

 

 

Resilience and Saber Reflect exist in a strange place from a balance perspective since they do much the same thing but in completely different ways while affecting different but overlapping categories of abilities and having completely different secondary benefits. There's also some issue with the CD/effective use interval that I'll bring up as well. I'll break each of these down and explain how they interact from a balance perspective, trying to quantify as much as I can.

 

The fundamental mechanic for Resilience is Resistance chance: Resilience provides 200% Resistance chance for the duration, meaning that anything that can *possibly* miss, *will* miss. There are some attacks, however, that *cannot* miss (those with the "autohit" tag on the back end that interacts with the attack roll system; my guess is that it allows the tagged attack to simply bypasses the hit/miss roll completely) and, as such, Resilience does nothing against. This does however provide an advantage insofar as Resilience allows the user to avoid any secondary effects of any F/T attacks that would have hit. It doesn't do anything for secondary effects of M/R attacks, however (like the many slows, DoTs, and other things attached to boss basic attacks). This provides an advantage in avoiding certain F/T attacks that are detrimental primary due to their secondary effects. There aren't that many in the current tier of content and the only real case of this being a distinct advantage that I can think of is the internal damage DoT from Kephess in EC. For the current tiers, it doesn't really do anything (esp since the secondary effects now tend to be autohit).

 

On the other hand, Saber Reflect operates by providing 100% multiplicative damage reduction to all relevant attacks which means that, even if the attack is autohit, Saber Reflect still applies. This provides an ever so *slight* advantage to Saber Reflect since not that many attacks are labelled autohit (Scream in TfB HM is the only one that I can think of).

 

These 2 factors (barring the whole Resilience bug issue where Resilience sometimes fails for no reason) mean that Resilience and Saber Reflect are largely a wash from a back end mechanical perspective from a theoretical standpoint. Practically, however, Saber Reflect has the advantage of not having a bug that will sometimes render the activation of it pointless.

 

As to the different categories of abilities they don't work against, you must look at the comparative rarity of ST ranged attacks and AoE F/T attacks. For spike effects (where Saber Reflect and Resilience are most useful), the only real spike ranged and AoE attacks I could remember were Terminate (ranged), Isotope Release (AoE), and Huge Grenade (AoE). In general, the spike attacks that the abilities work on tend to be one or the other in roughly similar ratios (looking at previous content and the general use rate of the relevant abilities) so it's largely a break even.

 

However, it should be mentioned that the attacks that only Resilience works against tend to be attacks that Guardians are generally able to mitigate without much worry (thanks to their high K/E DR) whereas the attacks that only Saber Reflect work on tend to be attacks that Shadows treat as coin flips of doom (thanks to their low K/E DR). From a practical standpoint, this means that Saber Reflect has the advantage insofar as the situations Resilience allows a Shadow to avoid effects are detrimental but not extreme for Guardians whereas Saber Reflect allows Guardians to avoid situations that are extreme to Shadows but only moderately detrimental for Guardians. While this isn't an explicit concern of the ability, it does reference the utility of the ability within the central confines of the entity using it, which is in and of itself a balance concern.

 

For the secondary effects, Resilience cleanses any cleansable debuffs, which is something that a healer can do just as well, and Saber Reflect reflects attacks for bonus damage and threat (while also generating a lot of threat on pretty much everything in existence with just the click itself) which is something that DPS can do just as well if not better. As such, the secondary effects are largely a wash: Guardians have healers to cleanse them and Shadows have DPS to blow targets up faster (your mileage may vary on this depending on how you rate the burst threat that Saber Reflect can generate on massive numbers of targets; I'm being reluctant to weight it particularly heavy since threat in TOR is such a minor issue).

 

As to CD, Resilience definitely has a lower cooldown of ~41 seconds (1.5 * 60 / (1.5 + .7 * meleeRangedDefShield + .3 * forceTechShield); meleeRangedDefShield = .27 + (1-.27) * .57; forceTechShield = .55), which is a fair deal better than the 60 seconds of Saber Reflect. Of course, since this value is *variable* it cannot always be counted on since it relies on the RNG behaving properly (and an attack speed of 1.5 attacks/sec which tends to be a bit fast for most bosses, especially those with applicable spike damage scenarios). However, something that needs to be brought up is the practical and effective use rate of these abilities. Neither Resilience nor Saber Reflect is intended to be used on CD.

 

They are intended to be used situationally in order to avoid damage spikes. As such, CD alone matter less than the interaction of CD with the relevant use rate of the ability. Since the spike damage interval of applicable attacks is 35-45 seconds (as from before), Shadows, depending on RNG and the given interval of the attack, are likely to receive no real advantage from their lower CD compared to Saber Reflect. For example, on the Golden Fury, Isotope Release is used every ~35 seconds, which is too fast for Resilience to come off of CD. As such, in that case, it wouldn't matter whether Resilience were on a 41 second or 1 minute CD: the use interval would be the same such that CD doesn't matter at all. It's for this reason that the difference in CD doesn't actually make an appreciable impact the usefulness of the given abilities. To actually make an appreciable impact, the CD on Resilience would need to be roughly 5-10 seconds shorter than it is now. Without that, the decreased CD has no functional value.

 

So, overall, Saber Reflect and Resilience are largely a wash and the one advantage that Resilience is *supposed* to have doesn't actually operate as a real advantage because content designed precludes the one real advantage it has (shorted CD) it from actually being used.

 

 

 

To summarize, Saber Ward and Deflection are largely a wash, Battle Readiness's 2 different attributes are significantly better than Warding Call (assuming you need the full 15 seconds rather than just 12 to mitigate a spike, at which point it's a wash) and and significantly worse than Enure (with the separation of the two attributes providing a distinct situational advantage), and Saber Reflect and Resilience are largely a wash.

 

Since Shadows are nominally supposed to be the *skill tanks* of the game, the fact that Guardians have a comparable (or even slightly *better* in practical terms) suite of CDs seems more than a bit off, especially when you consider that they've got excellent mitigation, excellent utility (seriously, Guardianship makes me *so* jealous; such a friggin' sweet talent), and top tier spikiness. When the skill tank doesn't have the outright *best* suite of CDs, something is kind of wrong. Before 2.0, Shadows had the outright best suite of CDs: Battle Readiness was still worse than Enure, but Deflection and Resilience, thanks to their low CDs, were better than the combination of Saber Ward and Warding Call. Now, thanks to the *addition* of an amazing tank CD as well as the substantial reduction in the CD time of 2 of their others, the Guardian CD suite is, honestly, just too strong for everything else they get.

 

As others have said, I don't know why, besides "this is the class i play, make it op" that they increased jug defense.

 

When I look at each of the changes made to Guardians in 2.0 individually, I can see where Peckenpaugh was coming from. The changes to the Guardian attacks was definitely needed to fix their threat problems. The creation/improvement of a lot of the deep talents (Guardianship, Guardian Slash getting the massive buff, Beacon of Might, Daunting Presence) was needed to fix the whole "hybrid tank is better than full tank" problem. The Guardian incoming damage profile needed to be fixed to account for the 2.0 shield changes (even though, without those changes, Guardians would be taking pretty much the same damage, with lower deviation, as Shadows do so... not entirely sure they did it *right*, especially since VGs are *worlds* beyond what either Shadows or Guardians manage for F/T K/E attacks). Saber Reflect is just a really kewl power and make sense for Guardians to have from a thematic standpoint.

 

The problem is when you look at all of those changes being implemented simultaneously. I'm not going to argue that their threat shouldn't have been fixed, but all of those changes to their survivability being implemented simultaneous just pushed them *way* too far ahead. I'm not sure if it was just the developers not *thinking* about how all of those changes would actually affect Guardian tanking or if they specifically *wanted* to make Guardians the de facto only tanks you want to bother bringing (since the 5% damage debuff can be brought by Watchman Sents now so they're not even missing anything), but I don't think we'll ever know. I'm not even sure why they felt like mixing up everything for Guardians since the pre-2.0 state of tank balance was simply *amazing*. They either changed Guardians just to change 'em or they had the specific intent of making them gods amongst tanks (neither of which is a good idea in an MMO).

 

*Something* needs to be done to unseat Guardians from the pillar they currently stand upon. Ignoring the need for Shadows to get their spikiness addressed, whether it's buffing Shadows and VGs (reducing the CDs on Shadow CDs and providing VGs with another CD, specifically the anti-F/T CD they're now the only tanks without, while reducing their spikiness *even more*) or nerfing Guardians (increasing the CD on Warding Call, Saber Ward, and Saber Reflect and reducing the size of Enure to limit the ridiculousness of the Guardian mitigation profile; moving some of their passive K/E DR over to shield/absorb to make them spikier and/or reducing their mean mitigation outright), the devs definitely need to take action because, until they do, Guardians are going to continue leaving the other tanks on the sidelines while they end up doing everything better.

[Elzen]

I used to feel like a red-headed step child as a jugg tank (from 1.3 through to 1.5 or so). Now I'm the favorite son. I'm planning on enjoying it while it lasts.

 

Yes, it's a problem.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Elzen

[Kitru]

In 1.3, the dark charge armor boost was nerfed by -35%

In 2.0, the 20% tree talent armor boost was removed, -20%

Also in 2.0, people mentioned that the base inquisitor class had its armor nerfed by 25%, affecting both sorcs and sins.

 

So including that last point Sin Tanks specifically have had their armor nerfed by a total of 80%.

 

You're doing the math on this wrong. The armor reductions you're talking about wouldn't be additive. The armor increases specific to the tanks are multipliers whereas the base armor reduction your refer to (I didn't hear about the 25% base armor reduction for Consulars and Inqs, it wasn't in the patch notes, and it doesn't grok with the armor and DR numbers I've been dealing with so I'm not sure it actually happened) is a reduction to the value pre-multiplier.

 

As such, if 2.0 has 25% less armor on Light Armor (still not sure I agree), Shadow tanks would have actually experienced a 59.7% reduction in total armor (1-((1 - (.75 * (2.7 - .35 - .2)) / 2.7)) and a 108.75% reduction in our total effective armor multiplier (from 270% to 108.75% of pre-2.0 armor).

[MGNMTTRN]

You're doing the math on this wrong. The armor reductions you're talking about wouldn't be additive. The armor increases specific to the tanks are multipliers whereas the base armor reduction your refer to (I didn't hear about the 25% base armor reduction for Consulars and Inqs, it wasn't in the patch notes, and it doesn't grok with the armor and DR numbers I've been dealing with so I'm not sure it actually happened) is a reduction to the value pre-multiplier.

 

As such, if 2.0 has 25% less armor on Light Armor (still not sure I agree), Shadow tanks would have actually experienced a 59.7% reduction in total armor (1-((1 - (.75 * (2.7 - .35 - .2)) / 2.7)) and a 108.75% reduction in our total effective armor multiplier (from 270% to 108.75% of pre-2.0 armor).

I'm guessing that 25% "armor reduction" is the change from the pre-2.0 armor formula to the new 2.0 formula. No armor ratings changed, but the damage reduction formula definitely changed. Vanguards lost 6% armor

[Kitru]

I'm guessing that 25% "armor reduction" is the change from the pre-2.0 armor formula to the new 2.0 formula. No armor ratings changed, but the damage reduction formula definitely changed. Vanguards lost 6% armor

 

The formula stayed the same, afaik. The only thing that "changed" was that level went up, which meant that, if you had 7k armor, you wouldn't have the same DR at 55 that you had at 50.

 

Also, if the formula was changed, it would affect the DR of all of the tanks, not just Shadows (which is what the previously quoted poster was referring to).

[SomeJagoff]

I didn't hear about the 25% base armor reduction for Consulars and Inqs, it wasn't in the patch notes.

 

Yeah, the 25% base class armor nerf wasn't in the patch notes, but a lot of people were talking about it during the 2.0 pts test, you can probably still find the threads in the google cache. A lot of sorcs/sages were complaining about it mainly because they already have the least armor in the game, and then it was apparently nerfed even further.

 

Though, they also didn't list the removal of the armor buff from the sin "Eye of the Storm" tank tree talent. Not sure if it's because they had too many changes to the trees to list everything or if they intentionally left it out. I only got confirmation of that change when I made the original pts thread asking whether that was an oversight or an intended change, which shortly thereafter got a reply that the nerf ("rebalance") was intended.

 

So yeah, you'd have to ask around about the base class 25% armor nerf, I'm not fully clear on how or where the armor was nerfed. I know they nerfed sorc bubbles by 10%, but that was a separate nerf.

[grallmate]

I used to feel like a red-headed step child as a jugg tank (from 1.3 through to 1.5 or so). Now I'm the favorite son. I'm planning on enjoying it while it lasts.

 

Yes, it's a problem.

 

Pretty much this. Around 1.5 I leveled a Shadow for kicks and it was seriously easy mode by comparison. I was really looking forward to 2.0 and the buffs to Guardian threat along improvements higher in the Defense tree rather than nerfing the Hybrid but the overall buffs were a little extreme. For example, AoE threat went from "difficult but doable" to "press a single button".

 

I really like that my favorite tank is now the best MT option for almost every fight and aside from Shadow spikiness I think the tanks are in a really good place. Some fights are better with a Shadow or Vangaurd and having 2 different tank classes really helps (I would hate to run Cartel Warlords with 2 Guardians for example). Personally I accept that balance between tanks will shift between patches and I'm enjoying that Guardians are king at the moment.

 

I acknowledge that Shadows have a major concern (spikiness) and that needs to be fixed but I don't agree that Shadows *SHOULD* be the best tanks just because they are the skill tanks. I think (as it currently is) the best tank should vary by fight and every fight should be completely doable with any tank.

 

Shadows need to be less spiky and less reactive.

Vanguards need another CD.

Guardians are in a great place. The only thing I'd consider adding is a more frequent root/snare breaker.

[Shadowseve]

Yeah this sucks when left shadows/sins were top just about. Now I come back and they're at the bottom. I had just started leveling a shadow. O.o

[Kitru]

I acknowledge that Shadows have a major concern (spikiness) and that needs to be fixed but I don't agree that Shadows *SHOULD* be the best tanks just because they are the skill tanks. I think (as it currently is) the best tank should vary by fight and every fight should be completely doable with any tank.

 

Shadows shouldn't *always* be the best tank, but, in general, they should be because they are the skill tanks. That's part of what makes skill tanks actually viable. Unless there is an explicit reward for playing them as effectively as possible, there's less reason to actually *play* a skill tank rather than an easy-mode tank (beyond simply the desire for a more complex playstyle). It's the reason why VGs were the "worst" tanks pre-2.0: they were faceroll tanks that could be played effectively by pretty much *anyone*.

 

Unless Guardians get a bit of a nerf (imo, to their CDs since that suite of CDs really is too strong for a non-skill tank as well as lowering their armor and increasing their Shield/Abs so that they don't have an incoming damage profile that matches VGs) to go along with the commensurate adjustments to the other tanks, there isn't going to be that appropriate "reward" for a properly played skill tank. It sounds a bit cruel, but, without that, any buffs are going to adjust the standard performance higher than it really should.

 

As to the whole "all tanks are viable, but no one tank is always the best", that's really dependent upon the content design itself. Even if Shadows were the best for mitigation, fights like NiM Writhing Horror would still suck for them since they don't have the leap to close the random gap and any kind of fight with heavy spike damage is still going to be harder to heal them through that it will be for other tanks. Heavy F/T damage fights are *also* going to be worst for Shadow tanks since, even with the spikiness smoothing adjustments, they'll still take a lot more damage than VGs.

 

Until the content developers start actually testing and designing with more than just Guardians in mind, the content itself is going to be something of a crapshoot as to how effective the various tanks will be, with the exception of Guardians, who are always going to be viable. I still have to wonder how they can justify designing content without being more than just tangentially familiar with the other tanking classes.

[Kitru]

Vanguards need another CD.

 

I don't think it's necessary to give VGs another CD so much as more CD *functionality*. Hold the Line and Riot Gas are both places where some more specific CD functionality could both be added without adding another CD but fulfilling the *need* for more CDs. Just one of them should be tweaked as such, but, they're great abilities to *build* off of for the needed extra CD functionality.

 

The idea that's been bouncing around in my head lately is adding a linked talent to Riot Gas that provides you with a buff that increases your F/T resistance by 200% whenever you use it that is consumed whenever an F/T attack misses you (and drops off if you leave or are pushed out of the Riot Gas area). It provides a bit of an interesting conflict in how and when to *use* Riot Gas while having it act as an F/T cooldown that is slightly worse than Resilience or Saber Reflect.

 

HtL could have a talent in the tank tree that provides some degree of F/T damage reduction or resistance (25/50% at the cost of 2 talents) for the duration. HtL can be used *way* more often than Resilience or Saber Reflect, but you'd make the effect substantially weaker (and having it as Resistance actually makes it not guaranteed, further "weakening" it). As an added bonus, I think that the name makes a lot of sense for it to become a tanking CD of some kind. Seriously, "Hold the Line", to me, brings up images of standing tough against an onslaught, refusing to back down even under the heaviest attacks.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Kitru

[Omophorus]

I acknowledge that Shadows have a major concern (spikiness) and that needs to be fixed but I don't agree that Shadows *SHOULD* be the best tanks just because they are the skill tanks. I think (as it currently is) the best tank should vary by fight and every fight should be completely doable with any tank.

 

There is literally no point to having a higher-skill-floor-plus-higher-skill-ceiling class unless the ceiling is meaningfully higher than other options.

 

To Kitru's point, content design can, and does, help push the skill floor higher for the skill tank in harder content, and that is in and of itself a sufficient balance mechanism.

 

If Shadow/Assassin is going to be considered a "skill" class by the developers, it must be explicitly better when played skillfully, and explicitly worse when played poorly.

 

Guardians/Juggies and VGs/PTs should have unique attributes to make them viable even if they are ultimately "worse" in a mathematical sense.

 

For VG/PT, simplicity and smoothed damage are in and of themselves valuable. They permit execution mistakes or hectic situations to occur with far less disruption to the group. Even for top-tier groups, this remains noteworthy, as speeding progression is aided by minimizing variables that can contribute to a wipe. For more mainstream groups, the benefits are similarly useful (as average player skill will often be somewhat less). The combination of a leap and a pull is also handy, to move to a target or bring a target to the group. I would concur with Kitru that Hold the Line/Hydraulic Overrides should be talented to have some tanky effect (probably flat DR for the full or partial duration).

 

Juggy and Guardian would honestly be in a pretty solid state right now with a damage profile less smoothed and controlled than PT/VG. I'm fine with the reduced CDs on their suite of active defensive abilities, but their passive mitigation is too good. Converting some armor into Shield/Absorb would definitely be a starting point to re-increase their spikiness somewhat, and require more reliance on CDs to bring overall DTPS down. Juggy/Guardian mobility should also be a distinguishing factor, but not much content really makes use of their advantages.

[ohto]

There are a couple of mechanics that seriously disadvantage the class.

 

Writhing Horror's tunneling is manageable but a miscue can wipe the raid.

 

Thrasher hits so hard that it requires abusing all CDs plus good healers plus no RNG bad luck.

 

Operations Chief's Terminate is always problematic, and serious risk of OHKO or nearly so each time it's used.

 

You can use Shroud/Resilience on Terminate so it should be a non-issue for Assassin/Shadow tanks.

[Kitru]

You can use Shroud/Resilience on Terminate so it should be a non-issue for Assassin/Shadow tanks.

 

Actually, you can't. A lot of people thought it was originally, but KBN dig a lot of digging through combat logs and found that it's actually a ranged attack. As such, Resilience does nothing against it, so the only way to guarantee that you won't be blown apart by it due to bad RNG is to burn Battle Readiness (Deflection pushes your chance of a non-mitigated hit from 32.85% to 10.35%; if Deflection fails on that, it *sucks* since you burned it and got nothing out of it).

 

Saber Reflect works on it, however, so Guardians are able to laugh at it even more than they could before.

[Kitru]

I would concur with Kitru that Hold the Line/Hydraulic Overrides should be talented to have some tanky effect (probably flat DR for the full or partial duration).

 

The CD on Hold the Line is just too low to justify applying flat DR to it, even for just a small duration. That's why I suggested that it apply specifically to F/T: it would roughly balance out with Resilience and Saber Reflect since it's applying half of the effect roughly twice as often (still has a better uptime than either of the other two, though; might have to cause it to only apply the effect for 3 seconds per application).

 

The uptime/CD problem of HtL is one of the reasons why I suggested the alternative of providing an additional F/T soaking effect to Riot Gas, since it's already got the same CD as Saber Reflect and Resilience, and you could easily balance out the high uptime by restricting it to a single attack that it can soak per use. It also creates an interesting setup that maintains the simplicity of VGs since using Riot Gas applies a level of survivability to *everything* (the 30% acc debuff to M/R and a single F/T avoidance) so it doesn't require a lot of thinking to use.

[grallmate]

I disagree with the blanket statement that Shadows should be the best because they are the skill tanks. I do however agree that there should be meaningful advantages to using a skill tank and they currently exist. Highest DPS and TPS, least external healing required and the ability to cheese a whole slew of mechanics are all big advantages to bringing a Shadow tank and once spikiness is addressed Shadows will be back in a great place. As a good player and tank, I don't want to be back in the situation where I look at my Guardian that I really enjoy and think to myself, I'd be better off as a Shadow. I'm at or very close to the skill ceiling on both and I really like that the difference in 'best tank' comes down to what fight we're doing.

 

Funnily enough, remove (or greatly reduce) Shadow reliance on self healing as has been suggested by Kitru and you move them away from being the skill tanks for anything beyond CD usage (exclusivity) or maximal threat generation. Sure there would still be a lot of procs to watch but really, most of those don't contribute to survivability. IMO the extent of Shadow 'skill' beyond using the right rotation comes down to "Can I get off a full 3x HS TkT before I have to move/get interrupted?", "Can/Should I resilience that or use Deflection?" and "Refresh KW right as its about to fall off". When actively tanking, Shadow Warp is a no brainer ("Oh Shadow Strike lit up") and Particle Acceleration is similar ("Oh look, Project is off CD early"). Shadow Warp is very different when you are off tanking, that I will admit, but I really think people are over stating the 'complexity' of the "skill tank".

 

If you're looking at CDs as an aspect of "skill tank", then Shadow and Guardian are honestly very close there. Both have methods to avoid certain attacks. Hell you could argue that Gaurdians are actually the skill tanks when it comes to CDs since they get Blade Turning and Saber Reflect. They can theoretically avoid anything aside from DoTs and AoEs. Shadows only "skill" requirement with CD use comes down to "Do I use Resilience *OR* Deflection?" followed by "Oh the useful one is on CD, better use Battle Readiness" whereas Guardians can pop any CD and get some effect.

 

Are Guardian CDs better than Shadows? Yes. I've been of that opinion since day 1 and I don't see that as a problem. Guardians have always been the best 'enrage' tanks and I hope that remains. CDs are very rarely used on CD so while the previous 'theoretical best' were Shadow CDs when you looked at effectiveness combined with up time the Guardian always won out in an in-game example unless Resilience was applicable. Saber Reflect skews that a bit but really only adds utility (either extra threat or discrete attack avoidance). Given the ranged, force/tech, direct damage and single target requirements it's situationally useful but it does close the gap with Shadows.

 

In terms of certain fights that disadvantage Shadows, lets look at the list of ones that Shadows have a massive advantage in. I'm going to include previous tiers since Shadows were the best for a *LONG* time:

- Xeno HM. A Shadow can solo tank this very, very easily on their first foray in. A Guardian or VG needs to really know the fight to do this and even then it's riskier.

- EC Kephess's DoT and Trandoshan phases.

- Stormcaller's cleave. Especially useful after the kiting phase.

- Firebrand's Incinerate armor.

- Jarg.

- 16m Fabricator.

- Sunder.

- Dread Guard's Lightning Field.

- Pre-2.0 the TFB. Now its a wash. Shadow takes no damage for 5-8s before Scream, Guardian avoids the Scream itself.

Until recently, Shadow was king. The only fight I can think off that they were disadvantaged on was Foreman Crusher and even that disadvantage is removed (or at least mitigated) now thanks to Battle Readiness.

 

I don't think it's necessary to give VGs another CD so much as more CD *functionality*. Hold the Line and Riot Gas are both places where some more specific CD functionality could both be added without adding another CD but fulfilling the *need* for more CDs. Just one of them should be tweaked as such, but, they're great abilities to *build* off of for the needed extra CD functionality.

 

The idea that's been bouncing around in my head lately is adding a linked talent to Riot Gas that provides you with a buff that increases your F/T resistance by 200% whenever you use it that is consumed whenever an F/T attack misses you (and drops off if you leave or are pushed out of the Riot Gas area). It provides a bit of an interesting conflict in how and when to *use* Riot Gas while having it act as an F/T cooldown that is slightly worse than Resilience or Saber Reflect.

 

HtL could have a talent in the tank tree that provides some degree of F/T damage reduction or resistance (25/50% at the cost of 2 talents) for the duration. HtL can be used *way* more often than Resilience or Saber Reflect, but you'd make the effect substantially weaker (and having it as Resistance actually makes it not guaranteed, further "weakening" it). As an added bonus, I think that the name makes a lot of sense for it to become a tanking CD of some kind. Seriously, "Hold the Line", to me, brings up images of standing tough against an onslaught, refusing to back down even under the heaviest attacks.

 

I thought the same thing about HTL but then thought about the CD. Changing the baseline CD to something more "Defensive CD" worthy would screw over those that use it as a gap closer and having it available for 6s every 30s requires it to be weaker, maybe +10% shield chance or the bonus DR that Omorphous suggested. I'm not a fan of the +resist chance personally. If I use a CD I want it to be effective or at least have a high (50%+) chance to be effective.

 

Alternatively, reducing Reactive Shield to a 60s CD would work IMO. If changes were made to Riot Gas I'd rather see it reduce damage dealt by 25% or something. Simple and universally useful like Reactive Shield which fits the Vanguard play style better that an accuracy reduction IMO.

[MGNMTTRN]

(I kind of drifted off-topic but there were some Vanguard-related discussions that I wanted to address.)

(My feelings won't be hurt if nobody reads half this post)

 

Since we're in the "Shadows are broken" thread I'll attempt to contribute to the original topic...

 

Shadow HPS, and why it's not a viable long-term design paradigm:

 

 

The amount of healing that a tank needs can be modelled as dtps - hps, or damage taken / second - self-healing / second. Supposing Vanguards/Guardians are giving 0 hps in live ops (for reference, my Vanguard is giving 100 to 150 hps) and supposing that Shadows need an equal amount of healing as Vanguards or Guardians in, say, SNV SM, then

Shadow healing needed = Vanguard healing needed and

Shadow post-mitigation damage - shadow self-healing = Vanguard post-mitigation damage

And let's remember that Shadow self-healing doesn't depend at all upon the boss's damage; it depends upon the Shadow's health pool, and to a tiny extent, upon whether he's already at full health and whether he has procs like Commandos +heals received and Phase Walk on himself.

 

So the amount of healing that Shadows need depends upon the amount of damage that the Shadow takes (which depends upon the boss's damage output and upon the Shadow's mitigation coefficient) and the Shadow's self-healing; as a result

 

the Shadow's dtps looks vaguely like boss dps*(1-armor)*(1-d)*(1-s*a) - Shadow self-healing,

whereas the Vanguard's dtps looks like boss dps*(1-armor)*(1-d)*(1-s*a)

 

Note that the imaginary Vanguard with 0 self-healing would depend entirely upon mitigation to reduce his dtps, while the Shadow depends upon both mitigation and self-healing to be balanced. Now let's move from SNV SM to TFB NIM, where bosses hit somewhat harder. Let's suppose that the Shadow was in full 72s even when running SNV SM, and therefore could not improve his gear. Now boss DTPS has increased probably fivefold, but the Shadow is wearing the same gear, has the same endurance, and therefore has the same self-healing per second. The Vanguard's armor also has not changed. But since boss dps has increased by a huge amount, the Shadow's worse mitigation coefficient makes the Shadow take significantly more damage, meaning his dtps surges ahead of that of the Vanguard. And then Bioware kicks you while you're down: the Shadow's self-healing doesn't even scale with boss dps, and in this paradigm will never scale with boss dps. It will scale slightly with gear, but in the Bioware game design paradigm tank hp*c is increasing at a rate lower than that of boss DPS (where c is a magical coefficient that handles the 8% healing*heals received bonus every x seconds).

 

This is one problem with Shadow tanks: they can't stand up to high DPS from bosses. This is not even getting into the issue of spikiness, which I'll admit is another problem that you people have to deal with. To avoid constantly running into this problem where Shadow HPS stays constant while boss DPS increases, BW will simply have to change their paradigm. Shadows must be given more endurance, more self-healing as gear increases, and their self-healing must scale with gear (I'm looking at you, Combat Technique proc! > ). If I had to give more specific revisions, I'd say

• refund Shadows some %health whenever they defend/shield an attack. This would NEED to be on an internal cooldown.
  
• when Shadow takes damage, build up procs for +healing received. Maybe tie to kinetic ward
  

 

Apart from the HPS issue I think there's room for improvement in damage ratios, especially Force/Tech balance. Shadows, with Resil and 19% (I think?) base resist chance, and self-healing, have the best defenses against otherwise unmitigatable damage. EC NIM's Stormcaller was a good example of a point where Shadows did well, while other tanks crumpled before him.

 

Spikiness has already been discussed by others.

 

 

 

Edit: nevermind, see previous posts. Issue got addressed in previous posts while this post was under construction, and I was kinda wrong anyway

You can use Shroud/Resilience on Terminate so it should be a non-issue for Assassin/Shadow tanks.

Resilience is definitely bugged.

• Here's the search for more info
  
• Here's an example of one player's report
  
• Here's Keyboardninja's report
  
• And last week we definitely tried to have the Shadow engage and Resil the hit, and he almost died.
  

 

Is Terminate even a tech attack? In my raid group we have decided we don't want to bother trying to find out.

 

On Vanguard cooldowns:

 

 

Coming from an ardent Vanguard fan: I strongly disagree with the claim that Vanguards need another cooldown. Each class should have weaknesses, and if you consider lack of cooldowns to be a weakness then by all means, let the Vanguard's weakness be that. My Reactive Shield (+25% damage reduction for 18 seconds) is my panic button, and if I'm on the cusp of death I also have a medpack (~17% hp heal, or 6.8k). These are the things I keep in reserve*; whereas I have all these other cooldowns that I can cycle:

• Smoke grenade (30% defense for 17 seconds, 60 sec cd = 28% uptime), not to mention the 70% slow that's quite useful on trash
  
• self-heal (20% healing, 95 second cooldown)
  
• adrenal (15 sec uptime, ~+6 armor, 3 min cd)
  
• two relics (+~3% shield, 3% absorb at 50% uptime, close to 100% uptime if we're taunt-swapping every 30 seconds)
  

* if I can predict a burst of damage, I'll definitely pop my Reactive shield beforehand. Here are examples where I can predict burst damage:

• Ops Chief's Terminate
  
• Styrak's Thundering Blast
  
• EC NIM the second time that Kephess drops down, after he bestows his DOT on the other tank, and the walker is shooting its aoe and the raid group decides to charge directly into the aoe...
  
• when I engage the writhing horror at the beginning of the fight I'll pop my reactive shield, and I'll also hit it if I'm tanking the boss as the adds spawn since I'm pretty sure 1) she increases her damage when the adds spawn 2) our other tank, a Shadow, likes to bring the jealous male as far from the boss as he can get, meaning both tanks tend to not be in healing range for one or more of the healers 3) the adds do damage which the healers now have to heal through 4) the healers, two scoundrels, like to throw down flybys on the adds which requires cast time and energy
  

In all these cases, I typically call for a taunt swap afterward or a swap is required, so I don't have to tank the boss while I have no cooldowns/panic buttons available. For this reason, in the entire time since 2.0 launched the only situation in which I've taken burst damage that I would have shielded with another cooldown if I had had one is when I take a second Terminate without Reactive Shield up, because in my raid group the only other option is to have the Shadow tank take it and that can get messy.

 

If you enter these operations with a maintank/offtank distribution of labor and if your tanks don't cycle their cooldowns, they are just causing more stress for the healers. In my opinion not cycling cooldowns is almost egregious as not erecting Kinetic ward, proccing Blade barrier, or firing off Energy Blasts.

 

 

 

So that's what I have to say on Vanguard cooldown intervals. And now, since we're in the Shadow thread, let's compare Shadow and Vanguard cooldowns:

 

 

• Shadow Battle readiness gives +25% damage reduction, as does Vanguard Reactive Shield, both with a 2 min cd. However, the Shadow's Battle readiness lasts 15 seconds, against thee Vanguard's 18 second reactive shield. Shadow's Battle readiness also gives +25% health on 2 min cd, vs Vanguard's +20% health/1.583 min cd; note that over 6 minutes 20 seconds, Shadows would get 75% health whereas Vanguards woud get 80% health (and to be fair, over 6 minutes 21 seconds, Shadows would get 100% health against Vanguards 80%). In addition, Vanguards can use these two cooldowns (shield, health boost) independently, which allows for better situational utility and smoother damage taken. The Vanguard's 20% heal is also broken into 4 controllable ticks, which allows for less overheal. Despite the Vanguard's abilities being superior, as a Vanguard I am much more loathe to hit my Reactive Shield so I'd be willing to call this a tie.
  
• Shadow's Deflection gives +50% def for 12 seconds on 2 min cd, against Vanguard Riot gas (30% acc debuff for 17 seconds on 1 min cd; or over 2 minutes, Vanguards get 34 seconds of 30% acc debuff). Let's do a simple heuristic check: the Vanguard's riot gas duration is more than twice (almost 3x actually) the deflection's uptime (34 secs vs 12 secs), and the Shadow's deflection is not more than twice the Riot gas's debuff (50% vs 30%). The Riot gas will also give a less spiky damage-taken profile. Also note that this 1 min cd and aoe debuff provides much better opportunities for tactical timing and trash usage for Vanguards. Note that this Riot Gas is in exchange for the 5% acc debuff that the Shadow and Guardian can bestow (17*0.3/60 = 0.085, against 0.05). Since Riot gas is so much more controllable, in my opinion the Vanguard wins this round. I will admit that Deflection + acc debuff together contribute to lower damage taken than Riot Gas alone in most cases, but 1) it's not like the Shadow/Guardian acc debuff only applies to the Shadow/Guardian, and 2) I'm attempting to only discuss cooldowns here, not passive debuffs.
  
• The Vanguard has no answer to Resilience (200% resist for 5 seconds, 30-60 second cooldown), though let's remember that Shadow has no answer to Adrenaline Rush (essentially lock yourself at 30% hp unless you're taking huge damage, 3 min cd). Resilience has much greater utility (let's be generous and say it can block up to 40k damage in some situations). I discussed self-healing in the top of this post, but I hope it should suffice to say Shadow wins this round hands down.
  
• Relics and adrenals are equally available to both classes. But let's remember that the Rakata Adrenal, +1575 armor for 15 seconds on 3 minute cooldown, was proven to be superior to nano-infused adrenals. So comparing armor adrenals, my Vanguard's Rakata absorb adrenal (+1575 armor) pushes him from 50.81% DR to 56.86 = +6.05 armor. Whereas using an exotech absorb adrenal (+1675 armor) pushes my undergeared Shadow from 32.15 DR to 42.79 = +10.64 DR. Shadows win the armor adrenal competition, though let's not forget how bad/spiky/flimsy their armor was to begin with. The relic analysis depends entirely upon the fight, how frequently you tank swap, and your gear, so let's not bother with it.
  

If I have forgotten a Shadow cooldown, I sincerely apologize. What I mean to illustrate is that Vanguards do have cooldowns, and they're actually quite similar to those of the Shadow. The "Vanguards have bad cooldowns" narrative is another vast exaggeration, something that people use to distill the game's mechanics to a level that they can understand. And don't even get me started on "Shadow utility."

 

 

 

Vanguard DTPS and proposed Vanguard changes:

 

In this thread I also have seen hints at this myth: "Vanguards are less spiky but take more damage overall." But my lower dtps - hps bound is ~600 when I've been tanking bosses for a reasonably long time, and I think the difference in dtps will depend immensely upon cooldown usage, boss, and strategy. Ideally a Guardian who uses all his cooldowns would take less damage than a Vanguard, even I admit this. But until I see parses showing otherwise, I think a Vanguard who cycles his cooldowns can achieve lower dtps than a Guardian who holds all of them in reserve. I did ask to see more dtps parses in my thread but got no bites.

 

Some people also proposed specific changes to the Vanguard dtps profile

• +armor on HtL usage, as proposed earlier in this thread, sounds fine to me. Fits with the Vanguard passive mitigation style. One problem is it might be hard for clickers to handle; I noticed BW attempted to restrict class procs so each tank class has one off-GCD ability that has an ~12 sec cd (Energy blast, kinetic ward, retaliate) and having to keep HtL up could overwhelm players without high apm, i.e. clickers. I guess this would increase the skill threshold that Vanguards have, which may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on which side of the Vanguard fence you're on.
  
• I also think Energy Redoubts (when hit, proc damage absorption), which are currently in the middle trees for Vanguards and Commandos, seem like an ability in the style of Vanguard tanks. Might be too similar to Juggernaut Force Scream
  
• Here's some abilities that still are lackluster and could use refinement: Storm (needs +threat, I'd rather proc something other than Explosive surge, the +30% speed was a step in the right direction, gives Vanguards an incentive to run out of melee range constantly to build more procs with storm), explosive surge (bw pls why do you keep pushing this awful attack. make it proc a defensive ability other than the passive -4% damage that all tanks get), and most importantly I think Sticky grenade needs changes for tanks (initiates combat but doesn't generate threat until 3 or 4 secs later? ***! For redesign take inspiration from
  )
  
• Probably the simplest solution is to move the +2.5% healing / 3 seconds from a passive, innate class ability to a passive tank skill tree ability, and give it a buff. Speaking as someone who occasionally takes his Vanguard DPS into PVE, I know that this was a reaction to 1) protests that Vanguard Assault DPS were too squishy 2) an attempt to neuter Smash, which BW did a... uh... thorough job of.
  
• I also think that the new trend is for AOES to be elemental (TFB's scream, Thrasher's roar) and this is a good place to give Vanguards a buff. Vanguards should be getting in the thick of things, facetanking AOEs like honey badgers. I am aware that it is a design choice to give -30% aoe damage to DPS classes (Sentinel's defensive roll, Marksman Snipers, Tactics Vanguards) but this is definitely an opportunity to give Vanguards an edge up against the other tank classes/differentiate them from the other tank classes, and these elemental aoes are suitably rare that it doesn't make Vanguard tanks overpowered. It would barely change the damage taken from kinetic aoes (T and Z's leap, Styrak's dog's smash) because that damage was already kinetic and therefore mitigatable by armor and shield, which Vanguards excel at, AND we were getting +2.5% health when we took those hits anyway, so those kinetic aoes are already just tickles.
  
• the final place where I can see room for changes is with Reactive Shield. I say this with some trepidation because I like the change that Reactive Shield got (+3 sec for Vanguards) and I am scared that changing it will change the Vanguard dtps profile in a bad way. But here goes: double down on the Vanguard weakness/cooldown shortage. Give Vanguard tanks the ability to spec for a passive that constantly reduces the Vanguard's Reactive Shield (already in Tactics tree) and make them have to use their Reactive Shield constantly. Apart from my already-voiced fears about making Vanguards worse, I am also afraid that this could make Vanguards look too similar to Shadows.
  

 

 

Edited June 16, 2013 by MGNMTTRN

[grallmate]

... self healing doesn't scale with incoming damage...

 

There are 2 options here. Either balance it at the top/moderate end (NiM TFB/S&V) which makes self healing OP in low damage encounters, or balance it at the lower end (SM Ops/FPs) which makes it almost worthless in high damage encounters.

 

... using a CD when the Jealous Male spawns...

 

I also use a CD here (usually relic/arenal or another non-clutch CD), not because the damage WH does changes (it doesn't) but there is a lot more raid damage happening between the adds and the Jealous Male so making the healers job easier while that's happening is of benefit.

 

If you enter these operations with a maintank/offtank distribution of labor and if your tanks don't cycle their cooldowns, they are just causing more stress for the healers. In my opinion not cycling cooldowns is almost egregious as not erecting Kinetic ward, proccing Blade barrier, or firing off Energy Blasts.

 

My raid uses that distribution of labor unless there is a need for tank swaps, as does Kitru's IIRC. I vary my CD usage depending on the fight, for some I use proactively or to deal with certain mechanics (WH, Ops Chief, Dread Guard, Op IX, TFB, Cartel Warlords, Styrak) and for some fights I use them re-actively (Thrasher, Dash'roode). In either situation I have a CD available whenever I want/need to use it so cycling CDs between tanks isn't needed, joys of being a Guardian I suppose. The only time we do cycle CDs is when burning down Tu'chuk last or when dealing with Sunder's The End ability.

 

... a Vanguard that uses his CDs will take less damage than a Guardian who holds them in reserve...

 

I agree completely and conversely a Guardian who uses his CDs proactively will take oodles less damage than a Vanguard who holds them in reserve. It really depends how you view CDs though. Are they intended to save you from a **** hit the fan moment or are they intended to reduce total damage taken across the encounter? If both tanks are using them with the same ideology then the Guardian wins both times. If they're using them with different ideologies you can't really compare since they are both achieving their own goals while (potentially) failing at the alternative goal.

 

As an aside, TFB's Scream is actually a single target attack against everyone on the tanks platform, not an AoE hence why Saber Reflect works.

[ezrafetch]

*partial snip*

 

The uptime/CD problem of HtL is one of the reasons why I suggested the alternative of providing an additional F/T soaking effect to Riot Gas, since it's already got the same CD as Saber Reflect and Resilience, and you could easily balance out the high uptime by restricting it to a single attack that it can soak per use. It also creates an interesting setup that maintains the simplicity of VGs since using Riot Gas applies a level of survivability to *everything* (the 30% acc debuff to M/R and a single F/T avoidance) so it doesn't require a lot of thinking to use.

 

I like the idea of modifying current Vanguard cooldowns to give them some extra functionality instead of introducing a new cooldown. Running with this, I whipped up two sample (and simple) fixes to the Vanguard tree based off of your CD ideas that minimize the shuffling of abilities required:

 

Solution #1: Remove Charge!, replaced with Iron Will [2pts]: Hold the Line now grants Iron Will, reducing the damage taken by Force and Tech attacks by [25%/50%] for 4 seconds.

 

Solution #2: Remove Charge!, moving Ion Shield (flat 2%/4% DR) into its place (not linked to Storm). Introduce a new talent directly tied to (meaning above) Riot Gas entitled Prototype Gas [2pts]: Remaining in the Riot Gas area now has an additional [50%/100%] chance to intercept and absorb the next incoming Force or Tech attack. Lasts for the duration of Riot Gas.

 

Charge! honestly has limited functionality. It doesn't improve your mitigation nor does it actually have any appreciable utility. Hence, it was easily the first thing that I decided should go. Removing Charge! allows me to shuffle some talents (i.e. Solution #2) to make room for enhancements to Riot Gas, if that's the path. If you want additions to HtL, then you just replace it straight up.

 

Having HtL give you a 4s buff roughly approximates the uptime of Resilience (4/30 = ~13.33% as opposed to the approximate uptime of ~11%, since Resilience's shortened cooldown on average is 47s-ish if I recall). I chose 4s, giving slightly better uptime than Resilience, since Resilience lets you completely cheese mechanics: the proposed Iron Will buff only reduces damage taken and does not grant such mechanics-cheesing ability. This does coincide much more with the Vanguard paradigm, though, as it makes all Vanguard cooldowns tend to emulate passive mitigation as much as possible (i.e. straight DR).

 

However, I tend to like the Riot Gas upgrade talent better (nearly a straight copy of Decoy found in the Gunnery tree, though functionally it would give +200% Resist chance for the next F/T attack or whatever you'd like). It gives you some ability to cheese some mechanics, which opens up strategic use of Riot Gas, a nice addition to Vanguard cooldown use, which is otherwise fairly blasé. In addition, it does still preserve the "universal" function of Vanguard cooldowns: all Vanguard cooldowns are useful in pretty much all situations like Reactive Shield, something the proposed HtL addition doesn't do. I restrict this avoidance to the Riot Gas area since it thematically makes little sense if you can drop the gas, run away and still get the free dodge.

 

There is something to be said about the strategic complexity added with the Riot Gas upgrade, but I think its virtually universal application in upgraded form mitigates the "omg too much skllz neded to play" concern that some people might have, so I'd vote for the Riot Gas upgrade over the Hold the Line upgrade, as much as I want to improve it thanks to

. Making the HtL upgrade only apply to F/T damage arguably introduces more complexity by requiring Vanguard tanks to use different cooldowns for different types of damage. While many tank players don't have issues juggling such cooldowns, introducing even the slightest bit of complexity to the "lolface" tank probably contradicts the design of Vanguard tanking.

 

Basically, I'm in agreement. But I'm being a bit wordier.

[Kitru]

Highest DPS and TPS, least external healing required and the ability to cheese a whole slew of mechanics are all big advantages to bringing a Shadow tank and once spikiness is addressed Shadows will be back in a great place.

 

Thanks to Saber Reflect, the mechanic cheesing isn't *nearly* as awesome as it used to be. Back when Resilience was actually *unique*, it was a valid concern but Saber Reflect has pretty much rendered any advantage provided by Resilience null.

 

Funnily enough, remove (or greatly reduce) Shadow reliance on self healing as has been suggested by Kitru and you move them away from being the skill tanks for anything beyond CD usage (exclusivity) or maximal threat generation.

 

I've never suggested that Shadows no longer be reliant upon their self heals to be effective tanks. If you actually look at any of my suggestions, you'll notice that, at most, I'm reducing the self healing by one-half. That's *still* 10-15% of total mitigation. The *problem* with relying so much on self healing isn't that it's skill based. Self healing, honestly, isn't all that skill oriented especially once you realize how to *play* a Shadow tank. The problem is that self healing doesn't scale as is *reactive*. On a tank that is already the spikiest, reactive mitigation rather than proactive mitigation is *terrible*. Then there's the whole "doesn't scale" issue which plays all kinds of hell with mean mitigation across multiple scenarios. Any time there's low DtPS, the self healing is *drastically* overrated, but as soon as you start encountering damage spikes or burst DPS phases, self healing becomes completely *worthless*.

 

The fact remains that Shadows rely *too much* on self healing rather than actual scaling mitigation mechanisms. The more our armor is decreased, the more our reliance on self healing increases, which makes us worse and worse tanks. It also loads *way* too much total survivability on the 2 talent points for Harnessed Shadows: 2/3rds of our total self healing comes from that single talent so, while leveling any kind of Shadow, you're going to be absurdly squishy. Yes, this doesn't matter when you're already 55, but the game doesn't *only* exist there. Leveling concerns should also be addressed.

 

Sure there would still be a lot of procs to watch but really, most of those don't contribute to survivability. IMO the extent of Shadow 'skill' beyond using the right rotation comes down to "Can I get off a full 3x HS TkT before I have to move/get interrupted?", "Can/Should I resilience that or use Deflection?" and "Refresh KW right as its about to fall off". When actively tanking, Shadow Warp is a no brainer ("Oh Shadow Strike lit up") and Particle Acceleration is similar ("Oh look, Project is off CD early"). Shadow Warp is very different when you are off tanking, that I will admit, but I really think people are over stating the 'complexity' of the "skill tank".

 

Compare all of the stuff you referenced to a Guardian tank: the only things you have to pay attention to is whether Riposte is lit up (at which point you just click it and, hey, it's the appropriate time!). Even your tank CDs are globally effective. Any supposition that it takes *skill* to play a Guardian effectively was rendered moot by the 2.0 changes. The only ability they have that is even *remotely* skill oriented is Saber Reflect, but, honestly, it's not that hard to figure out if something isn't a single target R/F/T attack (if it's the target punching you or hits multiple people, Saber Reflect won't work on it).

 

Compared to VGs and Guardians, Shadows require a *lot* more situational awareness, raid knowledge, and have a more complex rotation. This is further compounded by the fact that they only have a single universally applicable CD: Resilience and Deflection are both only effective against specific mechanics. Reactive Shield applies to everything as does Adrenaline Rush; Saber Ward, Warding Call, and Enure are all universally applicable. Saber Reflect is specific but, as previously stated, it's not like it's really all that hard to figure out. It's also a *single* specific CD versus two.

 

Hell you could argue that Gaurdians are actually the skill tanks when it comes to CDs since they get Blade Turning and Saber Reflect. They can theoretically avoid anything aside from DoTs and AoEs. Shadows only "skill" requirement with CD use comes down to "Do I use Resilience *OR* Deflection?" followed by "Oh the useful one is on CD, better use Battle Readiness" whereas Guardians can pop any CD and get some effect.

 

Once again, you're acting as if the fact that Guardians have a *couple* of questions makes up for the fact that Shadows have still got more questions attached to how their CDs are used. The only real Guardian question is "hmmm... does Saber Reflect work on this?" For everything else, Saber Ward, Deflection, and Enure are all effective. It's not like using the wrong CD suddenly and completely wastes it if it's not the appropriate situation.

 

Are Guardian CDs better than Shadows? Yes. I've been of that opinion since day 1 and I don't see that as a problem.

 

I'll debate the veracity of this. The primary weakness of the Guardian CDs has *always* been that they have a longer CD. They made up for this by being exceptionally powerful while active and applying to every possible situation. That was the balance: Guardians had longer CDs with generality and magnitude, Shadows had specificity and shorter CDs. The 2.0 changes to their CDs have demolished that previous balance thanks to the addition of Saber Reflect (so that the one truly unique capability of Shadows, Resilience, was no longer unique), simultaneously coupled with the reduction in those Guardian CDs such that, rather than having 50% higher CDs, they're now only 25% higher. That's a *very* substantial improvement, considering that the long CD was, you know, supposed to be their weakness.

 

I'm going to include previous tiers since Shadows were the best for a *LONG* time

 

So you're using the argument that balance isn't supposed to exist at the moment but rather over the entire lifetime of the game? Since Shadows were the best tanks pre-2.0 (since they were *explicitly* more skill oriented than Guardians were because the only real "skill" addition that Guardians got was Saber Reflect, post-2.0), they were *supposed* to be the best tanks. Because of this, you're now saying that Shadows *shouldn't* be the best potential tanks and Guardians *should* even though Guardians are supposed to be the compromise tanks (simplicity v. complexity) simply based upon *previous* performance. You might as well use the argument that, because Guardians had low threat for a long time, that, now, Shadows should have utter rubbish threat generation. It makes as much sense as the argument you're making *here*.

 

The new content follows a new design paradigm. Bringing up old content without taking into consideration the *current* capabilities of the tanks is simply attempting to bring in historical capabilities to justify existing capabilities. Balance exists in the present, not the past. All you're doing here is saying that now is *your* time to shine and no one should even *think* of raining on your parade. The same argument could just as easily be applied to making *Vanguards* the overpowered tanks (and, honestly, makes *more* sense since VGs, while simple to play, were the nominally worst tanks since threat generation was such a joke to get around).

 

I kind of have to laugh that you bring up previous performance as the reason to bring up old content and then immediately reference Battle Readiness as to the reason why Foreman Crusher as a weakness shouldn't be addressed. You're really just looking for *any* kind of justification to explain why Guardians should be allowed to be kings.

 

As to the content you referenced, of the stuff that is actually *valid*, you bring up the Lightning Field which isn't a tank pressure mechanic; it's a healer pressure mechanic since it's raid wide; Resilience allows a Shadow to ignore the damage taken to themselves, but it's nowhere *near* actually cheesing the mechanic since the mechanic is intended to force raid healing and spreading out, neither of which Resilience takes care of. Referencing it as if it were something that Shadows somehow excel at is grasping at straws.

 

I do also find it amusing that you reference the strengths of Shadows in old as well as new content, using it as justification for them no longer being "top dogs" and passing that crown to Guardians (which is really what you're saying), and then only bring up their weaknesses in old content. If you're going to bring up situational advantage, have the decency to actually present it *equally*.

 

For *current* content, Shadows have a two fights where they really have a distinct advantage: HM/NiM Titan-6 since they're capable of ignoring the Huge Grenade (not that it's all that big of a deal for Guardians or VGs to eat since, you know, they take less than half of their hp from it), and Golden Fury where Shadows can ignore half of the Isotope releases (not that big of an advantage for Shadows for much the same reason as Huge Grenade). They're advantages that don't really qualify since it's not really a major advantages; Guardians and VGs eat those without any major concern. It's not like Shadows getting to ignore mechanics in NiM EC that actually put real pressure on Guardians and VGs. Shadows can tank Sunder no more effectively than a VG can (HtL for increased move speed) or a Guardian can, assuming said Guardian knows how to use Guardian Leap (or knows how to Force Leap to the other bosses when they need to get away). It's *slightly* easier with Force Speed, but it's not like any reasonably intelligent Guardian or VG couldn't manage it just as well.

 

On the other hand, there are numerous *other* situations where Shadows are at a distinct and appreciable disadvantage compared to the other tanks or Guardians have a specific substantial advantage: Thrasher, Operations Chief, and NiM Writhing Horror are all situations where Shadows are *way* worse than the other tanks and will continue to be, even if they have spikiness addressed (unless their spikiness is reduced *way* more than anyone expects), and Operations Chief is a situation where Guardians are almost *laughably* more effective since they're the only tank that can ignore the current biggest hit in the game. As to TfB, Scream is a *way* bigger deal than the short time frame before it; being able to ignore Scream is definitely more important than being able to ignore damage for a short time before it hits.

 

As it stands, there's no quantitative advantage to having a Shadow instead of a Guardian. In fact, there's some very explicit quantitative reasons to *not* bring a Shadow instead of a Guardian. Even assuming that spikiness gets fixed, Guardians will *still* have a smoother incoming damage profile, *still* have the ability to cheese the most substantial and debilitating mechanics, and *still* be absurdly easy to play if nothing about them is changed. The amount of skill required to play a Guardian effectively is pretty much tied with a VG. They don't even have any variable CD abilities that cause them to actually have to adjust their attack string: if you're tanking, you're going to have the Riposte usable as soon as it's off CD every single time. In that sense, Guardians are actually the *easiest* tanks to play at the moment.

 

I thought the same thing about HTL but then thought about the CD. Changing the baseline CD to something more "Defensive CD" worthy would screw over those that use it as a gap closer and having it available for 6s every 30s requires it to be weaker, maybe +10% shield chance or the bonus DR that Omorphous suggested. I'm not a fan of the +resist chance personally. If I use a CD I want it to be effective or at least have a high (50%+) chance to be effective.

 

The problem with the small increases that Omorphous suggested is that they're not really survivability CDs; they're closer to the short term temporary buff provided by Energy Blast. This is actually why I suggested either 50% F/T damage reduction (multiplicative so that it's not crazy powerful) or 50% Resistance chance (which you've said you would like). Personally, I'd prefer the Resistance chance simply because HtL has a *really* high uptime (longer duration than either Saber Reflect or Resilience and half the CD of either) so the fact that it doesn't *always* work acts as a balancing factor against it.

 

Alternatively, reducing Reactive Shield to a 60s CD would work IMO.

 

Reducing the CD on Reactive Shield to 60 seconds would be *insanely* overpowered, especially when you factor in the whole "18 second duration" part of it. You're suggesting that VGs should have a full on tank CD (not a pseudo CD like Riot Gas) with a 30% uptime. That's about as bad as suggesting that HtL should provide immunity to F/T attacks for the duration. It's just a *terrible* idea.

 

For a full tank CD (full duration, full effect), 2 minutes is pretty much perfect. Shorter than that and it needs to get weaker, shorter, and/or more specific.

 

If changes were made to Riot Gas I'd rather see it reduce damage dealt by 25% or something. Simple and universally useful like Reactive Shield which fits the Vanguard play style better that an accuracy reduction IMO.

 

First off, 25% DR at the uptime of Riot Gas (18 every 60 for a 30% uptime) would be *absurdly* overpowered. Riot Gas is already a remarkably good pseudo-CD that's only really balanced out by the facts that the debuff only applies to M/R attacks and that the reduction in incoming damage is RNG based. Your suggestion here would be removing *both* of those considerations, which isn't anywhere *near* balanced. When you factor in how VGs already provide the 5% damage redux debuff, this change would apply an 11% reduction in total damage dealt ((25 * 18 + 5 * 42) / 60), which is just kinda crazy, especially when you consider how it could be abused to mitigate any and all spike damage: 21% less damage taken for 18 seconds every minute gives you a *huge* burst avoidance window.

 

Changing Riot Gas to have a universal and identical effect on all types of incoming damage wouldn't be a balanced change. For the same reason that Saber Ward provides 50% Defense and 25% F/T multiplicative DR, making Riot Gas more universally applicable would need to be an asymmetrical change. It's for *this* reason that I suggested having Riot Gas apply a single stack of "ignore an F/T attack". It provides the same general utility as Resilience and Saber Ward on a similar CD without completely screwing up the entire fundamental design and balance construct of Riot Gas.

[grallmate]

Thanks to Saber Reflect, the mechanic cheesing isn't *nearly* as awesome as it used to be. Back when Resilience was actually *unique*, it was a valid concern but Saber Reflect has pretty much rendered any advantage provided by Resilience null.

 

Saber Reflect and Resilience have a little over lap but apply to dfiferent sets of abilities. That is exactly how they should interact, both useful sometimes and sometimes not.

 

I've never suggested that Shadows no longer be reliant upon their self heals to be effective tanks. If you actually look at any of my suggestions, you'll notice that, at most, I'm reducing the self healing by one-half. That's *still* 10-15% of total mitigation. The *problem* with relying so much on self healing isn't that it's skill based. Self healing, honestly, isn't all that skill oriented especially once you realize how to *play* a Shadow tank. The problem is that self healing doesn't scale as is *reactive*. On a tank that is already the spikiest, reactive mitigation rather than proactive mitigation is *terrible*. Then there's the whole "doesn't scale" issue which plays all kinds of hell with mean mitigation across multiple scenarios. Any time there's low DtPS, the self healing is *drastically* overrated, but as soon as you start encountering damage spikes or burst DPS phases, self healing becomes completely *worthless*.

 

You've suggested they have their self healing reduced because they are too reliant on 'reactive' mitigation. I never said this was a bad thing I said that self healing (and "is this the right CD to use") are about the extent of Shadow tanking 'skill'. Apparently thats like walking into a church and blaspheming given your response.

 

The fact remains that Shadows rely *too much* on self healing rather than actual scaling mitigation mechanisms. The more our armor is decreased, the more our reliance on self healing increases, which makes us worse and worse tanks. It also loads *way* too much total survivability on the 2 talent points for Harnessed Shadows: 2/3rds of our total self healing comes from that single talent so, while leveling any kind of Shadow, you're going to be absurdly squishy. Yes, this doesn't matter when you're already 55, but the game doesn't *only* exist there. Leveling concerns should also be addressed.

 

I agree here. I've levelled both an Assassin and a Shadow as well as using my Shadow extensively at end game. I'm not some newbie troll here.

 

Compare all of the stuff you referenced to a Guardian tank: the only things you have to pay attention to is whether Riposte is lit up (at which point you just click it and, hey, it's the appropriate time!). Even your tank CDs are globally effective. Any supposition that it takes *skill* to play a Guardian effectively was rendered moot by the 2.0 changes. The only ability they have that is even *remotely* skill oriented is Saber Reflect, but, honestly, it's not that hard to figure out if something isn't a single target R/F/T attack (if it's the target punching you or hits multiple people, Saber Reflect won't work on it).

 

I never said it takes skill to play a Guardian post 2.0 outside of CD usage. I said it doesn't take that much skill to play a Shadow by comparison. The normal arguments for Shadow 'complexity' are "but I have to watch a load of procs". 2 of those are signified by an ability lighting up, one is largely time based and the last one is the core of the rotation. Hell, there is so much force now that you almost never have to worry about resources while tanking. Off tanking with a Shadow is (rotationally) much more complicated than actively tanking with a Shadow thanks to the huge reduction in force regen and actually having to look for the Shadow Strike proc since the ability is usually lit up.

 

Compared to VGs and Guardians, Shadows require a *lot* more situational awareness, raid knowledge, and have a more complex rotation. This is further compounded by the fact that they only have a single universally applicable CD: Resilience and Deflection are both only effective against specific mechanics. Reactive Shield applies to everything as does Adrenaline Rush; Saber Ward, Warding Call, and Enure are all universally applicable. Saber Reflect is specific but, as previously stated, it's not like it's really all that hard to figure out. It's also a *single* specific CD versus two.

 

In my experience, the extra situational awareness Shadows require is simply "can I stand still for 3 seconds?". Extra raid knowledge is about on par with Guardian's using Saber Reflect: "Oh something is being cast, I'll try Resilience. Hmm... that didn't work, next time I'll use Deflection." While Guardian is universally applicable there are benefits to using the right one at the right time, conversely Shadows are just penalized for using the wrong one. Personally I think its about even but I prefer the Guardian method. Bonuses for using the right thing are (IMO) better than penalties for using the wrong one.

 

 

Once again, you're acting as if the fact that Guardians have a *couple* of questions makes up for the fact that Shadows have still got more questions attached to how their CDs are used. The only real Guardian question is "hmmm... does Saber Reflect work on this?" For everything else, Saber Ward, Deflection, and Enure are all effective. It's not like using the wrong CD suddenly and completely wastes it if it's not the appropriate situation.

 

Good Guardians have the same questions Shadows do, we just aren't penalized for getting it wrong. If its a F/T attack its better to use Warding Call than Saber Ward and if its a M/R attack the opposite is true. Yes, I get some benefit regardless of which I use but I get MORE benefit if I use the right one. As I said above the ONLY difference is that I'm rewarded for my 'skill' (its really not hard for either tank) whereas you would be penalized for getting it wrong.

 

 

I'll debate the veracity of this. The primary weakness of the Guardian CDs has *always* been that they have a longer CD. They made up for this by being exceptionally powerful while active and applying to every possible situation. That was the balance: Guardians had longer CDs with generality and magnitude, Shadows had specificity and shorter CDs. The 2.0 changes to their CDs have demolished that previous balance thanks to the addition of Saber Reflect (so that the one truly unique capability of Shadows, Resilience, was no longer unique), simultaneously coupled with the reduction in those Guardian CDs such that, rather than having 50% higher CDs, they're now only 25% higher. That's a *very* substantial improvement, considering that the long CD was, you know, supposed to be their weakness.

 

In that same patch you got a new actually useful CD in Battle Readiness. You got 100% more 'CD usage' on M/R attacks and 50% more on F/T. Guardians got 20% more up time on both Warding Call and Saber Ward as well as Saber Reflect.

 

So you're using the argument that balance isn't supposed to exist at the moment but rather over the entire lifetime of the game? Since Shadows were the best tanks pre-2.0 (since they were *explicitly* more skill oriented than Guardians were because the only real "skill" addition that Guardians got was Saber Reflect, post-2.0), they were *supposed* to be the best tanks. Because of this, you're now saying that Shadows *shouldn't* be the best potential tanks and Guardians *should* even though Guardians are supposed to be the compromise tanks (simplicity v. complexity) simply based upon *previous* performance. You might as well use the argument that, because Guardians had low threat for a long time, that, now, Shadows should have utter rubbish threat generation. It makes as much sense as the argument you're making *here*.

 

The new content follows a new design paradigm. Bringing up old content without taking into consideration the *current* capabilities of the tanks is simply attempting to bring in historical capabilities to justify existing capabilities. Balance exists in the present, not the past. All you're doing here is saying that now is *your* time to shine and no one should even *think* of raining on your parade. The same argument could just as easily be applied to making *Vanguards* the overpowered tanks (and, honestly, makes *more* sense since VGs, while simple to play, were the nominally worst tanks since threat generation was such a joke to get around).

 

I kind of have to laugh that you bring up previous performance as the reason to bring up old content and then immediately reference Battle Readiness as to the reason why Foreman Crusher as a weakness shouldn't be addressed. You're really just looking for *any* kind of justification to explain why Guardians should be allowed to be kings.

 

Current content consists of 12 Ops bosses, 1 Instanced boss and 1 Bonus boss. Including older content adds 12 more Ops bosses, 2 World Bosses and 1 Instanced boss. Not only does including those double our sample size for comparing mechanics. It also highlights that content design has more of an effect on who is "king tank" than abilities. EC is a prime example of this, Resilience is way better than Saber Reflect there and when new Ops come out the balance between the 2 will vary. Current content is actually remarkably even between the 2.

 

As to the content you referenced, of the stuff that is actually *valid*, you bring up the Lightning Field which isn't a tank pressure mechanic; it's a healer pressure mechanic since it's raid wide; Resilience allows a Shadow to ignore the damage taken to themselves, but it's nowhere *near* actually cheesing the mechanic since the mechanic is intended to force raid healing and spreading out, neither of which Resilience takes care of. Referencing it as if it were something that Shadows somehow excel at is grasping at straws.

 

Arguably everything CD amenable is a "healer" pressure mechanic then raid wide or not, since you know, they're the ones actually healing it. Avoiding a large hit (regardless of its just on me or on everyone) *IS* useful in the same way that popping a CD when there is increased raid damage is useful.

 

I do also find it amusing that you reference the strengths of Shadows in old as well as new content, using it as justification for them no longer being "top dogs" and passing that crown to Guardians (which is really what you're saying), and then only bring up their weaknesses in old content. If you're going to bring up situational advantage, have the decency to actually present it *equally*.

 

For *current* content, Shadows have a two fights where they really have a distinct advantage: HM/NiM Titan-6 since they're capable of ignoring the Huge Grenade (not that it's all that big of a deal for Guardians or VGs to eat since, you know, they take less than half of their hp from it), and Golden Fury where Shadows can ignore half of the Isotope releases (not that big of an advantage for Shadows for much the same reason as Huge Grenade). They're advantages that don't really qualify since it's not really a major advantages; Guardians and VGs eat those without any major concern. It's not like Shadows getting to ignore mechanics in NiM EC that actually put real pressure on Guardians and VGs. Shadows can tank Sunder no more effectively than a VG can (HtL for increased move speed) or a Guardian can, assuming said Guardian knows how to use Guardian Leap (or knows how to Force Leap to the other bosses when they need to get away). It's *slightly* easier with Force Speed, but it's not like any reasonably intelligent Guardian or VG couldn't manage it just as well.

 

As I said, I include old content MECHANICS because it more than doubles the pool of mechanics to compare. Does including those help my argument? Yes, in the same way that simply discounting them as "obsolete" helps yours. EC was remarkably friendly to Shadows compared to the other tanks and we may or may not see that design style return in future content. I believe simply discounting it as 'old content' is wrong.

 

I haven't tested Guardian Leap while rooted but you certainly can't use Force Leap while rooted. To be honest though, I don't mind that Guardians are the worst option for Sunder, I find kiting him for several minutes to be mind numbing so letting my co-tank take care of it works for me.

 

On the other hand, there are numerous *other* situations where Shadows are at a distinct and appreciable disadvantage compared to the other tanks or Guardians have a specific substantial advantage: Thrasher, Operations Chief, and NiM Writhing Horror are all situations where Shadows are *way* worse than the other tanks and will continue to be, even if they have spikiness addressed (unless their spikiness is reduced *way* more than anyone expects), and Operations Chief is a situation where Guardians are almost *laughably* more effective since they're the only tank that can ignore the current biggest hit in the game. As to TfB, Scream is a *way* bigger deal than the short time frame before it; being able to ignore Scream is definitely more important than being able to ignore damage for a short time before it hits.

 

As it stands, there's no quantitative advantage to having a Shadow instead of a Guardian. In fact, there's some very explicit quantitative reasons to *not* bring a Shadow instead of a Guardian. Even assuming that spikiness gets fixed, Guardians will *still* have a smoother incoming damage profile, *still* have the ability to cheese the most substantial and debilitating mechanics, and *still* be absurdly easy to play if nothing about them is changed. The amount of skill required to play a Guardian effectively is pretty much tied with a VG. They don't even have any variable CD abilities that cause them to actually have to adjust their attack string: if you're tanking, you're going to have the Riposte usable as soon as it's off CD every single time. In that sense, Guardians are actually the *easiest* tanks to play at the moment.

 

I disagree on the TFB thing. If my Shadow can take no damage for the preceding 5+ seconds and be topped off when Scream occurs its not going to kill me. If my Guardian can avoid the Scream (but he still gets the debuff) its about the same, the spike won't kill me. Both have an easy time with the mechanic they just deal with it in different ways. Ops Chief, yes its markedly easier on a Guardian. I can avoid the first 3 Terminates completely while any one of those might outright kill a Shadow. Does that mean my Guardian is OP? No, it means the content needs to be redesigned. Even without Saber Reflect I can still avoid any of those if I'm low thanks to Blade Turning.

 

How is avoiding that one mechanic much different than Shadows previously being able to ignore NiM Kephess' DoT or completely negate Xeno's Thermal Tolerance? Hell, that's not even a mechanic that's likely to kill a Guardian and even discounting Reflect your Shadow is *STILL* going to struggle there. It also seems important to remind you that Reflect only affects the damage from an ability, any secondary effects (Scream debuff, knockback, etc) still take place so Guardian's are avoiding damage, not mechanics.

 

I won't deny that baseline Guardian tanking is WAY easier than it was, ironically you were also one of the biggest proponents of simplifying the Guardian attack string. Some trash pulls are literally just "Leap -> Reflect -> /sit". Getting the most out of Guardian tanking? That's slightly below Shadow thanks to their reliance on self healing. Guardians are still the worst at kiting and without Reflect, things outside 4m can still be a real pain.

 

The problem with the small increases that Omorphous suggested is that they're not really survivability CDs; they're closer to the short term temporary buff provided by Energy Blast. This is actually why I suggested either 50% F/T damage reduction (multiplicative so that it's not crazy powerful) or 50% Resistance chance (which you've said you would like). Personally, I'd prefer the Resistance chance simply because HtL has a *really* high uptime (longer duration than either Saber Reflect or Resilience and half the CD of either) so the fact that it doesn't *always* work acts as a balancing factor against it.

 

Vanguards are meant to be simple, giving them complex CDs works against that core concept. I don't like the 50% resist chance for the same reason you hate Ops Chief on your Shadow, it has the potential to put you in a 'resist or die' coin flip situation.

 

Reducing the CD on Reactive Shield to 60 seconds would be *insanely* overpowered, especially when you factor in the whole "18 second duration" part of it. You're suggesting that VGs should have a full on tank CD (not a pseudo CD like Riot Gas) with a 30% uptime. That's about as bad as suggesting that HtL should provide immunity to F/T attacks for the duration. It's just a *terrible* idea.

 

For a full tank CD (full duration, full effect), 2 minutes is pretty much perfect. Shorter than that and it needs to get weaker, shorter, and/or more specific.

 

Simplicity is good. They have 1 CD and 1 "kinda" CD. It would be better if Reactive Shield was still at its 15s duration. Doubling the uptime is about the same as giving them a second CD with similar effect, it just means they can't stack or stagger them.

 

First off, 25% DR at the uptime of Riot Gas (18 every 60 for a 30% uptime) would be *absurdly* overpowered. Riot Gas is already a remarkably good pseudo-CD that's only really balanced out by the facts that the debuff only applies to M/R attacks and that the reduction in incoming damage is RNG based. Your suggestion here would be removing *both* of those considerations, which isn't anywhere *near* balanced. When you factor in how VGs already provide the 5% damage redux debuff, this change would apply an 11% reduction in total damage dealt ((25 * 18 + 5 * 42) / 60), which is just kinda crazy, especially when you consider how it could be abused to mitigate any and all spike damage: 21% less damage taken for 18 seconds every minute gives you a *huge* burst avoidance window.

 

Changing Riot Gas to have a universal and identical effect on all types of incoming damage wouldn't be a balanced change. For the same reason that Saber Ward provides 50% Defense and 25% F/T multiplicative DR, making Riot Gas more universally applicable would need to be an asymmetrical change. It's for *this* reason that I suggested having Riot Gas apply a single stack of "ignore an F/T attack". It provides the same general utility as Resilience and Saber Ward on a similar CD without completely screwing up the entire fundamental design and balance construct of Riot Gas.

 

I love the way you always take the numbers from what I say and not the concept. This is why I usually avoid putting actual numbers in. Keep in mind that with the existing 5% damage debuff the actual effect of the proposed change would only debuff damage by a further 20% and as always, this is not a change proposed in isolation. Either upping the CD to 2 minutes and/or dropping the duration would be required. Also this I am not suggesting this be combined with the above Reactive Shield change.

 

Changing from accuracy debuff to damage debuff suits the Vanguard playstyle. Simple and universally effective while not being 'cheesy'. It also Giving them a Resilience like effect doesn't suit the Vanguard at all. Also given that Vanguards are already the weakest tanks when dealing with I/E damage it would help lower that gap. With F/T K/E damage it might actually give Vanguards a niche or at the very least move people away from the "Shadow + Guardian as universally best tank combo" view.