How many are giving up on Shadow tanks?

[Leafy_Bug]

You don't need to use ForceSpeed - just Wither when you're about to hairpin back the other way.

 

As I'm posting anyway, I'll answer the OP's question (this thread has so many discussions going on), I'm going to start experimenting with my Jugg & perhaps my PT on HM's leading in to NiM's. This means we'll be running two Juggs as our tanks (8man raid guild).

The reason I'm exploring my options is just as many people have stated, my Sin simply dies far too frequently while by contrast, our Jugg tank survives through just about everything all the time; Our healers find our Juggs significantly easier to support.

(And now I'm going to wade through more of the many huge posts in this thread, ta for so many contributions to the discussion).

 

 

 

Thanks for the feedback keep us posted. I tanked with my Vanguard and already at Arkanian level grade gear it is way better than my BIS 72 shadow. While I cannot get accustomed to the boring playstyle, I am actually giggling on teamspeak when Thrasher hits me for so much lower and same values all the time. I also have a few 72 pieces and tanked TWH in NiM with both my tanks and my healers have told me the slack way more than when I play on my shadow. When I am on my shadow I dip very often into the low health range but with the vang its that happened just once as we had a positioning issue and I was out of range for heals.

 

 

 

A quick tip for those tanking TWH in Nightmare. Leap to the boss when he vanishes and you will be teleported by the game at the new spawn point and you can turn the boss very fast. I do that with my vanguard storm move and especially with my sentinel. When I see him vanish, i zoom out and leap, i get moved in his new spawn point and lose barely any damage.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[Atramar]

I gave up on my sin tank long time ago... before armor nerfs and juggs buffs... it was just to boring and jumping on a jugg made me giggle in real life

 

now I see, it was best decision (in game) I ever made.

 

my co-OPS friend still uses her sin, and she is so jealous of me jumping around like a ping pong ball.

 

Ha.

 

edit: actually, scratch that 'before armor nerfs', just reminded that I did EC HM on sin with BH augmented, and then (same ride, I just swapped to jugg) my jugg in Columi (but fully augmented) did better job (according to my healer) on taking damage (or rather not taking damage), plus needed to interrupt more often for mine field.

That was last time I touched my sin tanking ops.

 

so yeah, Juggs power!

Edited June 24, 2013 by Atramar

[TridusSWTOR]

When you decide to stop getting hyperbolic about how *anything* you reference concerning the amazi-tude of the 2 shallow Shadow utility factors (stealth rez and Phase Walk) or the difficulty of playing a Guardian effectively, I'll stop rabidly facepalming any and everything you say while I aggressively point out how completely oblivious and obstinately ignorant you are (or, as you would call it "throwing a tantrum"; because insinuating that I'm immature is an *amazing* way to dismiss the fact that your argument falls apart at the slightest review and you're incapable of actually bringing a *valid* counterargument to mine).

 

You are the one that refused to respond to my post in the first place.

 

I guess if insulting people is your way of "proving" them wrong, then good for you?

[Kitru]

You are the one that refused to respond to my post in the first place.

 

I refused to respond because you're incapable of actually making legitimate arguments (either temporally or without resorting to drastic exaggeration to actually *have* an argument) so arguing with you is pointless. It didn't help that you actively made your post harder to respond to by formatting it terribly with no desire to actually *fix* it, knowing that it was formatted terribly (which makes me think that you did it on purpose, knowing that it would be annoying for someone else to reformat).

 

I wasn't insulting you beyond remarking that something has to be wrong with you if you're incapable of actually forming a legitimate argument to contribute to the discussion, which isn't an insult so much as a conclusion based upon a well documented observation.

[Hockaday]

So I ran a SM S/V on my jug last week. Since Generally I tank sunder since the other tank is a PT, I did it again this time. My Jug is in a mix of 66s to 72s with only one piece of Ark. His stats are lower than my Sin's total mit stats. I was able to face tank Sunder...literally, I didn't have to kite it while we were killing. It's amazing playing a jug compared to a Sin in ops atm...you feel op lol.

[RLWalker]

My feeling is that assassins are performing below average, not just in burst scenarios but also general (high-level) tanking. Some of this is because juggernauts just seem to be so damn good right now. Not sure how they get nearly the same mitigation as powertechs but have more and better cooldowns. Sure there was a problem when the difference in mitigation was a couple % (1.2-ish era) - now the difference is more like 15% once buffs are up.

 

Burst has been a problem in 16-man since EC nightmare was released. It didn't get much attention because all tanks were pretty equally vulnerable to being bursted down and keeping the tanks alive was like the 3rd most difficult problem to solve on Kephess.

 

Now for some numbers. This is from NM writhing horror, assassin with 72s. Total damage taken in 3 seconds is 49260. Luckily the damage was front-loaded and healers were able to react in time. At this time I did not have hollow or med-kit available because I had burned it on an earlier burst of 39601 in 3 seconds.

 

20:32:53.276 103s Melee Attack 10620 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

20:32:53.277 103s Melee Attack 10620 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

20:32:55.305 105s Melee Attack 0 No The Writhing Horror

20:32:55.306 105s Melee Attack 10620 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

20:32:56.238 106s Nasty Bite 3650 energy No The Writhing Horror

20:32:56.238 106s Nasty Bite 6875 energy No The Writhing Horror

20:32:56.260 106s Nasty Bite 6875 energy No The Writhing Horror

 

Looking at powertechs/juggernauts it seems the highest burst phases are about 38k in 3 seconds on the same fight. It matches up with the expected ~30% difference in mitigation.

 

My thoughts are that some bosses should be changed in the way they do damage. For example, nasty bite is split into 3 which is good. But maybe take half that damage and create a DoT (internal bleeding) that ticks for 6 seconds. This would put more pressure on powertechs/juggernauts relative to assassins. Even then I feel assassins should be bumped up to ~40-ish % DR.

[MGNMTTRN]

My feeling is that assassins are performing below average, not just in burst scenarios but also general (high-level) tanking. Some of this is because juggernauts just seem to be so damn good right now. Not sure how they get nearly the same mitigation as powertechs but have more and better cooldowns. Sure there was a problem when the difference in mitigation was a couple % (1.2-ish era) - now the difference is more like 15% once buffs are up.

 

Burst has been a problem in 16-man since EC nightmare was released. It didn't get much attention because all tanks were pretty equally vulnerable to being bursted down and keeping the tanks alive was like the 3rd most difficult problem to solve on Kephess.

 

Now for some numbers. This is from NM writhing horror, assassin with 72s. Total damage taken in 3 seconds is 49260. Luckily the damage was front-loaded and healers were able to react in time. At this time I did not have hollow or med-kit available because I had burned it on an earlier burst of 39601 in 3 seconds.

 

20:32:53.276 103s Melee Attack 10620 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

20:32:53.277 103s Melee Attack 10620 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

20:32:55.305 105s Melee Attack 0 No The Writhing Horror

20:32:55.306 105s Melee Attack 10620 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

20:32:56.238 106s Nasty Bite 3650 energy No The Writhing Horror

20:32:56.238 106s Nasty Bite 6875 energy No The Writhing Horror

20:32:56.260 106s Nasty Bite 6875 energy No The Writhing Horror

 

Looking at powertechs/juggernauts it seems the highest burst phases are about 38k in 3 seconds on the same fight. It matches up with the expected ~30% difference in mitigation.

 

My thoughts are that some bosses should be changed in the way they do damage. For example, nasty bite is split into 3 which is good. But maybe take half that damage and create a DoT (internal bleeding) that ticks for 6 seconds. This would put more pressure on powertechs/juggernauts relative to assassins. Even then I feel assassins should be bumped up to ~40-ish % DR.

Yep, the Juggernaut seems to have many strengths (steady dtps, good cooldowns, good mobility, average threat) and no weaknesses, apart from maybe aoe dps. Whereas the Shadow's mitigation mechanics create weaknesses: spikiness, ~25% more damage taken overall, self-heal doesn't scale with respect to boss damage, mobility problems and constant 3 sec channels.

 

Regarding TWH's DOT, apparently Guardians have even better internal/elemental damage reduction than Shadows in 2.0. This would actually pressure Vanguards the most, and Guardians the least.

 

Spike damage on Vanguards:

My Torparse; sort by boss fights, second attempt at TWH was our kill..

• At 53 seconds into the fight, I took my maximum single-second spike of 17771 damage; I had the DOT, taunted the boss, and stood in the DOT's aoe
  
• From 118 seconds to 122 seconds I took 22881 damage
  
• From 318 seconds to 319 seconds I suffered 20804 damage
  

There were some other events in the 20k-over-3 second range. But all of these events were either not really spikes, or didn't have much to do with failed def/shield rolls. Maybe I'll get unlucky on Tuesday and take some real spike damage, we'll see. But for now, I'd have disagree that vanguards/powertechs are getting spiked for 38k.

 

Edit #2: Nevermind, he was posting a parse from 16man NIM and my numbers are from 8man NIM.

 

I don't understand how you can be taking Melee Attacks for 10620 and Nasty Bites for 6875. My maximum Melee Attack damage was 4832, and if I have 51% damage reduction it must do 9861 base damage. 9861 damage at 32% damage reduction is 6705 damage to a Shadow.

 

The tank 5% damage reduction debuffs will change the damage profile and so will gear, but it won't kick UP your damage from 6705 to 10620. Maybe your armor was in disrepair, or you didn't have Combat Technique on.

Edited June 24, 2013 by MGNMTTRN

[Kitru]

Regarding TWH's DOT, apparently Guardians have even better internal/elemental damage reduction than Shadows in 2.0. This would actually pressure Vanguards the most, and Guardians the least.

 

Guardians are the outright best for anything I/E and not just because they have the best I/E DR. Shadows have 23% I/E DR (10% buff + 2% talent + 2% set bonus + 9% talent for Shadows) and 2% resist chance (from talent). Guardians have 24% I/E DR (10% buff + 5% talent + 6% stance + 3% GS) and 5% resist chance (from Riposte). VGs have 19% I/E DR (10% buff + 5% stance + 2% talent + 2% talent) and 2% resist chance (from set bonus).

 

But for now, I'd have to say I disagree that vanguards/powertechs are getting spiked for 38k.

 

I would be *really* reluctant to say that VGs are ever spiked particularly hard. They've *still* got the best K/E DR, which means that, even if nothing else works for them, they're still better off than Guardians in the same situation. Guardians and VGs pack pretty much the exact same spikiness, with VGs being almost imperceptibly better because of their ~1% worse K/E DR.

[RLWalker]

Guardians are the outright best for anything I/E and not just because they have the best I/E DR. Shadows have 23% I/E DR (10% buff + 2% talent + 2% set bonus + 9% talent for Shadows) and 2% resist chance (from talent). Guardians have 24% I/E DR (10% buff + 5% talent + 6% stance + 3% GS) and 5% resist chance (from Riposte). VGs have 19% I/E DR (10% buff + 5% stance + 2% talent + 2% talent) and 2% resist chance (from set bonus).

 

The idea was to be able to force shroud when a spike of damage came in.

 

All of these events were either not really spikes, or didn't have much to do with failed def/shield rolls. Maybe I'll get unlucky on Tuesday and take some real spike damage, we'll see. But for now, I'd have to say I disagree that vanguards/powertechs are getting spiked for 38k.

 

16-man.

[Omophorus]

In the following particular instances, it is not a bug:

 

In Nightmare Mode, Huge Grenade does in fact deal weapon damage (rather than the spell damage it deals in Story and Hard Modes). This was an intentional change for Nightmare Mode, done to make the encounter more challenging.

 

As for Terminate, it has always been a weapon damage attack in any difficulty mode that it appears, and it would have never worked to Force Shroud it - any such luck to the contrary is a mere coincidence (though probably not uncommon).

 

In other instances while Force Shroud is active and you know that you are being hit by a tech or Force attack, the issue is most likely that players and NPCs always have at least a 5% chance to hit with any ability, regardless of how high your defense is to that type of ability. So while Force Shroud is active, there is always at least a 5% chance that you could be hit by any tech or Force attack.

 

I don't like this anymore than you do. I know it's extremely frustrating to be hit by an ability that, for all intents and purposes, should not have hit you. Unfortunately, fixing this issue is not as simple as it seems, but I'll take a deeper look to see if there is anything we can do about it.

 

Pretty much the nail in the coffin, IMO.

 

The devs all but admitting that they don't know what they're doing and that we should all just roll Juggies/Guardians if we want to play optimally.

 

Especially since the whole 5% thing is neatly sideslipped by Saber Reflect, as nothing about it prevents a hit from occurring, it just outright negates the damage and turns some back on the attacker.

 

I wish I could spin or white knight or something to find a positive in this, but there really is none. Saber Reflect already made a mockery of Sin/Shadow CDs, and now this crap is just icing on the cake.

 

I quite literally can think of zero rationale for why one attempting Nightmare Mode content would be better served with an Assassin/Shadow in place of a Juggy/Guardian. Or even a VG/PT for that matter due to their lack of CDs or appreciable advantages over Juggy/PT.

Edited June 24, 2013 by Omophorus

[Panzerfire]

Pretty much the nail in the coffin, IMO.

 

Pretty much, they'll balance sin/shadows spikiness someday but since it's unknown when that'll happen the best plan is to have a jugg and a sin so you can use either depending on balance after a major patch.

 

Reasons to have sins/shadows would have to be efficiency and tank-dps reasons, neither of them are very convincing yet since I highly doubt that NiM S&V will put out so much damage that you *need* at least 1 sin/shadow so you have enough hps for the rest of the raid, not to mention the spike damage will mostly be on the tanks and the effective difference in hps needed between sin and jugg is debatable due to overhealing and difference in healers.

[Kitru]

NiM S&V

 

NiM S&V is actually going to put Shadows into an even more terrible state: the *one* thing that Shadows did well in HM S&V (ignoring Huge Grenade) has been turned into an M/R attack. As such, we can't even use Resilience to ignore it. Go Jesse Sky!

[Leafy_Bug]

We are very close to the 'RIP Shadow Tanks' chapter and I find it shocking to see no official input from BioWare. They have a personal agenda that interferes with consumer preferences and it will be their downfall. Instead of motivating the community to play all the three tank classes in the game, they are slowly, but surely, eliminating Shadow tanks.

 

 

Lack of professionalism when the community provides you with numbers, even says that nerfing other classes has never been an issue and the developers sit quiet slowly stripping mechanics that allowed the shadow tank to provide an advantage to the raid. I would like to thank Austin and Jesse for constantly putting personal preference first and buffing what they like. I guess they play the game at the end of the day and not us.

[Hockaday]

We are very close to the 'RIP Shadow Tanks' chapter and I find it shocking to see no official input from BioWare. They have a personal agenda that interferes with consumer preferences and it will be their downfall. Instead of motivating the community to play all the three tank classes in the game, they are slowly, but surely, eliminating Shadow tanks.

 

 

Lack of professionalism when the community provides you with numbers, even says that nerfing other classes has never been an issue and the developers sit quiet slowly stripping mechanics that allowed the shadow tank to provide an advantage to the raid. I would like to thank Austin and Jesse for constantly putting personal preference first and buffing what they like. I guess they play the game at the end of the day and not us.

 

Personally I think we hit the RIP Sin tanks once the 2.0 was on the PTS. This game has the best tanking balance I had ever seen, besides maybe late game EQOA...and all that is gone now :/ I really suggest getting a Jug to 55 and just crap gearing it and go into a SM op. You will see and feel the difference...you can face tank sunder and laugh at his damage.

[Leafy_Bug]

Personally I think we hit the RIP Sin tanks once the 2.0 was on the PTS. This game has the best tanking balance I had ever seen, besides maybe late game EQOA...and all that is gone now :/ I really suggest getting a Jug to 55 and just crap gearing it and go into a SM op. You will see and feel the difference...you can face tank sunder and laugh at his damage.

 

I have tried to level my guardian and I do not have the patience to get it to 55. The class is boring as hell at low levels. I have done the story line with my sentinel and it feels bloody weird not have zealous strike and other things. I have a tank, BIS 72, I invested over 140 days on it (.played) and I love every minute when I tank with it. I go in there, pull 20 mobs and love the fast pace it has. This tank is my shadow and I cannot understand why BioWare is so against giving a bit more mitigation to the shadow.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[Hockaday]

I have tried to level my guardian and I do not have the patience to get it to 55. The class is boring as hell at low levels. I have done the story line with my sentinel and it feels bloody weird not have zealous strike and other things. I have a tank, BIS 72, I invested over 140 days on it (.played) and I love every minute when I tank with it. I go in there, pull 20 mobs and love the fast pace it has. This tank is my shadow and I cannot understand why BioWare is so against giving a bit more mitigation to the shadow.

 

Oh I agree, I love Sin tanking. But really, jug tanking is just...yeah. I suggest PvP'ing on double xp weekends with the boosts. You'll get 30-50k a match easily.

[Kynesis]

We are very close to the 'RIP Shadow Tanks' chapter and I find it shocking to see no official input from BioWare. They have a personal agenda that interferes with consumer preferences and it will be their downfall. Instead of motivating the community to play all the three tank classes in the game, they are slowly, but surely, eliminating Shadow tanks.

 

 

Lack of professionalism when the community provides you with numbers, even says that nerfing other classes has never been an issue and the developers sit quiet slowly stripping mechanics that allowed the shadow tank to provide an advantage to the raid. I would like to thank Austin and Jesse for constantly putting personal preference first and buffing what they like. I guess they play the game at the end of the day and not us.

 

That may be dramatising it just a tad.

 

More likely is that the people responsible for it have been shuttled onto another higher priority project and simply haven't been allocated time to address community rumblings.

 

They may have misjudged the importance of this or weighed the importance of it to relatively few people as being of lower importance than whatever other work they're doing.

They may simply not agree that there's an issue in the first place.

They may be working hard to figure out why people are grumbling so much because their internal numbers don't show a problem (or an easy/sustainable solution).

 

Point being, we can only speculate about their position & potential plans and at the end of the day, it all relies on just a few people who are already run off their feet.

[Kitru]

More likely is that the people responsible for it have been shuttled onto another higher priority project and simply haven't been allocated time to address community rumblings.

 

The community mods like Amber Green, Eric Musco, and Courtney Woods all make it a habit of going to talk to the developers responsible for specific portions of the game to get answers to specific questions on the forums. They explicitly say this. If the developer is too busy to respond to the forums themselves, it takes all of 5 seconds for said developer to give a brief synopsis to said community mod in order to provide an answer, assuming said community mod is allowed to provide an answer (many times, the community mods are restricted on topics they're allowed to comment on).

 

The community mods *exist* to take care of community rumblings. That's what a majority of their job is. That's *why* they're community managers and moderators. It's also their job to act as a go between for the developers and players, which is why the discuss the bugs when players bring them up and bring them to developer attention.

 

The excuse that there's no one to *provide* an answer is completely ignorant. There are people who's job is to do just that. Hell, it's Austin Peckenpaughs job to focus on class balance and design. He's specifically said that he's the only one that does it (barring tangential commentary/feedback from other devs), and he spends most of his time *doing* it. Unless they decided to specifically move their class balance guy to something else (you'd be hard pressed to come up with a more important thing than "class balance", especially when you've already relegated it to a single person), there's *going* to be a developer working on it.

 

As such, there's community mods to get answers and/or bring things to developer attentions and devs to actually understand what's going on and provide the answers. Unless there's simply a specific rule that says "developers cannot discuss class balance in any way until the changes are already coming and will not be changed anyways", there's no reason for something to be said.

 

Hell, I'm still curious why they have yet to answer with something like "We've got something in the works", "It's working as intended guys", or "we're looking into it; we'll get back to you". *Any* of those would ameliorate most of the stuff going on here, either by getting the players to simply quit playing Shadows because it's no longer fun for them or to actually finally answer the question of whether the developers even recognize it as a problem.

 

The developers will go out of their way to assure someone that a piece of *armor* is going to be fixed to look right soon, but they're unwilling to provide even the slightest teaser about a major class balance concern? Something is *just* not right if their priorities are like that.

[vVvCheese]

I've been a staunch defender of Sin/Shadows, but I did some math this evening, and while I don't think that Sins/Shadows are going to be unviable, or even necessarily unplayable, I'm prepping my Jugg for the worst case scenario where Sins maybe DO just die 2% of the time.

 

So there's that.

[Leafy_Bug]

I've been a staunch defender of Sin/Shadows, but I did some math this evening, and while I don't think that Sins/Shadows are going to be unviable, or even necessarily unplayable, I'm prepping my Jugg for the worst case scenario where Sins maybe DO just die 2% of the time.

 

So there's that.

 

 

I like your positive attitude. When you have 1 Shadow tank, 1 sentinel DPS, 1 scoundrel healer, 1 sage healer, 1 commando healer, 1 gunslinger, 1, vanguard, 1 sorc, 1 mara, and in the process of levelling a guardian, you kind of get fed up with grinding flashpoints, doing 10 wz per day and class quest to power level. So I do not have the patience needed to level another character for endgame because BioWare cannot seem to get their **** together.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[kwestone]

I have tried to level my guardian and I do not have the patience to get it to 55. The class is boring as hell at low levels. I have done the story line with my sentinel and it feels bloody weird not have zealous strike and other things. I have a tank, BIS 72, I invested over 140 days on it (.played) and I love every minute when I tank with it. I go in there, pull 20 mobs and love the fast pace it has. This tank is my shadow and I cannot understand why BioWare is so against giving a bit more mitigation to the shadow.

 

I think the money quote was when I found out that Austin Pekinpaugh is also the PVP guy. Which build of assassin/shadows didn't get f-d? The Decption/infiltration tree. The PVP tree. It was nerfed, but they made changes prior to 2.0 that brought the numbers up. They gave DW 6 more charges and called it good. Ignored us tanks warning of this. Ignored the 3 ppl who used Madness. ***? ***? Seriously, as a programmer myself I wish I could ignore my customers and just give them a final product without their input meaning anything.

 

For me, with a TON of time invested in my Assassin main, my love for this toon pre 2.0 and my disgust with what they have done with it leaves me itching for the ESO release, which has now been pushed back.

 

I have a Jugg with 69 level mods/gear but I just can't get into it. I know how to play it well enough, but I find myself happier with my Mara. I feel like stopping tanking and raiding and going back to casual playing, un-subbing. My raid team is incredible though and I just cant let them down. I guess I just get used to backhanding my way through NM content until Austin figures out no one is stacking Alacrity or Accuracy and pulls the calculator back out of his ***.

[RLWalker]

Sorry to bring this to the top again. I just wanted to show a few more numbers so people can see what assassins are facing.

 

Assassin - 72s with a couple 75s - NM WH 16-man

 

19:53:56.194 228s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

19:53:56.194 228s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

19:53:57.597 229s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

19:53:57.597 229s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

 

42388 damage in 1.403 seconds = 30212 dtps.

 

Is this really intended? I didn't die so I guess it's not the end of the world; probably gave the healers a heart attack though. Obviously an unlucky streak but... it can happen. So I guess I just cross my fingers every fight and hope the dice are nice to me.

[vVvCheese]

Sorry to bring this to the top again. I just wanted to show a few more numbers so people can see what assassins are facing.

 

Assassin - 72s with a couple 75s - NM WH 16-man

 

19:53:56.194 228s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

19:53:56.194 228s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

19:53:57.597 229s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

19:53:57.597 229s Melee Attack 10597 kinetic No The Writhing Horror

 

42388 damage in 1.403 seconds = 30212 dtps.

 

Is this really intended? I didn't die so I guess it's not the end of the world; probably gave the healers a heart attack though. Obviously an unlucky streak but... it can happen. So I guess I just cross my fingers every fight and hope the dice are nice to me.

 

Just wait for the snipers on Thrasher

[Kitru]

42388 damage in 1.403 seconds

 

And it would've been 32k (which is easily survivable albeit surprising) for a VG or Guardian.

[Leafy_Bug]

Looking good