Sniper Roll "immunity" \ Marauder undying rage || DreadGuard NM.

[veyl]

It's amusing to watch the turn in threads sometimes... I'm sorry for sin tanks in this game because developers can't find a way to fix you guys without breaking the class for pvp (which it will...look at all the tank hybrids pre 2.0 in pvp) but that's not the main point of this thread. (though I'm with you.. sin tanks desperately need fixing)

 

The point of this thread, even though some of you find it to be a qq from a marauder...when it's not, is to see if certain mechanics during a boss encounter are actually broken or working as intended. Marauder Defensive CD's are not working during the lightning explosion to save them from death and snipers are able to immune all of them. These are two things that I'm pretty sure is not working as intended.

 

People that come to these forums need to realize that there are players who just want to make the operation scene much better then what it is. Asking the development team if they intended certain classes to be completely unharmed when using certain abilities at the right time during specific raid encounters........ IS NOT A QQ. These are genuine questions that should've come up during the testing cycle of this operation to make the encounter more difficult and also remove "easymode" kills.

 

Using certain classes abilities correctly or incorrectly to avoid a boss mechanic whether it is working or not... should not happen within a raid encounter. For example... Vanish Rezzing: Still in the game since release but never any confirmation if this is "okay". It's a free battle rez for almost every occasion, working around the 5 minute in combat rez... Is this an ability that should be working like this?

 

Another example is the Sorc/sage pull during the Kephess fight in EC. When a player has the bomb they can be immediately pulled once the grapple goes up under the walker... which will cause that player to completely avoid all damage and still knock down the bomber. To me... This was never working as intended but was never addressed.

 

My examples are questions to the development team in order to make the raid encounter more smooth and not have any class bias. (though I can see where the sin tank arguments can be applied here).

[insaneric]

Been one-shot by Terminate much lately? What about Force Scream + Voltaic Slash on Kel'sara's third phase?

 

Cooldowns do not solve the problem. This has been demonstrated MANY times on the tank forums, but I'll say it again here. Spike intervals are too frequent for CDs to always be up. Huge Grenade and Terminate are both excellent examples of this, since the only CDs which work on them have 2 minute cooldowns, while Terminate is used once every 40 seconds, and Huge Grenade is once every 80 seconds (give or take, I don't remember the exact interval). And on top of that, we only have one CD which is actually guaranteed (Resilience is 95%, Deflection is a 50% additive boost to a ~27% base, for a ~77% total chance).

 

Even if CDs did solve the problem, the fact that shadows *need* to use them while the other tanks don't and can thus save them for more opportune moments is in and of itself a significant balance issue.

 

I like my shadow too. I'm well aware of how to play it and how to maximize the value of my cooldowns and my self-heal. I'm not exactly new to the party. :-) Believe me when I say that the shadow issues are not just L2P related. The math is very clear on this. I know Suckafish takes an assassin tank to progression, and that does surprise me a bit, but it doesn't change anything about their current balance problems. Just because you *can* clear content with an assassin/shadow tank does not mean it is as easy to do so as it would be with a different tank class.

 

Terminate, yes, but i believe it's a badly designed move rather than the assassins fault. If they made it deal 90% of the target's health or something similar then it would keep that, you want to have the tank topped mentality without 1 shotting them. The kel'sara combo has never been an issue for me. Huge grenade u'd normally only take every other one and it doesn't do enough damage to warrant the use of a cooldown.

 

I don't use my cooldowns whenever I take a spike of damage due to bad rng I use it when i'm anticipating an increased period of damage. When you take spikes of damage due to bad rng it's up to healers to keep you up (one of the trade off from taking an assassin tank). The danger of death as an assassin is when a period of burst from the enemy lines up with bad rng, this is why you use your cooldowns here. There aren't any fights where you require more cooldowns than you have for these increased periods of damage.

 

The assassins are not even with the other tanks for their mitigation but you take them for their utility. There's nothing wrong with having a tank class that is designed to fill this style of role. If that's not their intent then that's a problem that Bioware should fix but doesn't stop them being equally viable for endgame content.

[KeyboardNinja]

Terminate, yes, but i believe it's a badly designed move rather than the assassins fault. If they made it deal 90% of the target's health or something similar then it would keep that, you want to have the tank topped mentality without 1 shotting them. The kel'sara combo has never been an issue for me. Huge grenade u'd normally only take every other one and it doesn't do enough damage to warrant the use of a cooldown.

 

Depends on your strategy. Obviously you take every other one in HM. In NiM, some strats dictate that both grenades are taken by tanks, which means that you're taking all of them.

 

As to whether or not it does enough damage, that depends entirely on your HP. I haven't done Titan in NiM yet (bad week for scheduling), so I can't say how hard it hits me.

 

I don't use my cooldowns whenever I take a spike of damage due to bad rng I use it when i'm anticipating an increased period of damage. When you take spikes of damage due to bad rng it's up to healers to keep you up (one of the trade off from taking an assassin tank). The danger of death as an assassin is when a period of burst from the enemy lines up with bad rng, this is why you use your cooldowns here. There aren't any fights where you require more cooldowns than you have for these increased periods of damage.

 

The problem is not that the healers need to work harder (this is just part of healing an assassin tank), it's that the damage can and will outpace what a healer can reasonably do. The kel'sara combo drops me by 88% in the span of GCDs when neither of the abilities are shielded or defended. Sure, healers *can* react to that, but they need to land their big heals before the next ability in the chain, which is a 7k Discharge that will not be shielded (as it is internal damage). Is it possible to anticipate and heal through this? Yes. It comes with a very specific timing and a really good healer will know this. Is it realistic to expect this? No. Will it lead to overheal and wasted effort? YES. It's RNG whether or not this combo does any appreciable damage at all (when I shield, I take embarrassingly low damage levels). If the damage levels are that low, then the healer probably just wasted a precast heal on me.

 

Terminate is the rule in new content, not the exception. While it is the highest spiking single damaging ability, it's far from the only one. Dash'roode and Thrasher both have brutal swipes (especially Thrasher). The snipers on Thrasher are practically "shield or die". Even Writhing Horror, who is otherwise a pushover, carries a risk of nearly instagibbing an assassin tank. I generally roll cooldowns in scripted sequence on that fight to avoid Nasty Bite RNG from compounding.

 

Your point about Terminate is valid, it *is* in a sense the ability's fault, but it's not a problem for the other two tanks. You can look at this in one of two ways: the content is biased against assassins, or assassins are biased against the content. In either case, it's bad news. Two of the three models put forth by the theory crafting community to quantify this issue take content into account and demonstrate what happens when you fiddle with burst levels.

 

The point is that assassins are spiky beyond their control on current content, and that spikiness is so severe in places that no amount of healer skill will save them. If you get hit by Terminate, you either a) defend, b) shield, or c) lose 100% of your HP. That's just a coin flip, really. No amount of healer skill (or tank skill) will save you. Terminate is nice because it's a single ability that we can point at, but as I said, it's far from the only example of this problem.

 

Regarding proactively hitting CDs when you know heavy damage is coming… duh? :-) That's like, tanking 101. CDs are occasionally good emergency buttons, but if you're running with a healer you trust, you're probably not going to use them as such unless you see the rest of the raid is in worse shape. If you're running with good DPS, you won't need them to negate an enrage, so you can use them strictly as part of your mitigation profile when heavy damage phases are about to hit. Unfortunately, your assertion that no boss has a heavy damage phase which comes more frequently than CD availability is simply false. Thrasher is a great example of this, since his swipe happens once every 30 seconds (on the dot) and is melee damage, meaning you have only Deflection and BR to deal with the issue. The snipers pose a similar problem to the off-tank. Kel'sara's high damage phases come once every 15-20 seconds, though her burst is definitely lower than Thrasher or Operation's Chief (and split into many abilities, thus less RNG prone and more healable). We already mentioned how Terminate comes once every 40 seconds, which means you can use Deflection on one for a *chance* to live and BR on another for slightly better odds (assuming really good healers), but you can't keep it up indefinitely. Better hope your DPS can kill the boss before you have to take a third Terminate!

 

The assassins are not even with the other tanks for their mitigation but you take them for their utility. There's nothing wrong with having a tank class that is designed to fill this style of role. If that's not their intent then that's a problem that Bioware should fix but doesn't stop them being equally viable for endgame content.

 

The utility that shadows bring is generally out-matched by the other tanks, which is why I don't accept this argument. Stealth is useful situationally, but far more rarely than one would think. Vanguards bring the pull, and Guardians have a more targeted knockback (I rarely use my knockback anyway, and then only on trash). Stealth Mez is cool, but only useful on certain trash pulls (my raid group essentially never CCs anything). That leaves cooldowns…

 

Shadow cooldowns obviously roflstomp vanguard cooldowns, but that's primarily because vanguards don't have cooldowns worth speaking of. Unfortunately, shadow CDs are categorically out matched by guardians in every possible respect. If there's a mechanic you can cheese with Resilience, you can also cheese it with Saber Reflect, and Saber Reflect works 100% of the time (vs 95% for Resilience) and affects more attacks. If there's a reason to pop Deflection, then you may as well have popped Saber Ward to receive a brief 100% buff to defense, followed by the same defense buff and a *superior* force/tech buff. Battle Readiness for a 25% DR buff? Try Warding Call for a 40% DR buff! Now that Guardian CDs are on 2.5 minute timers, shadows no longer have a significant advantage in CD availability.

 

Overall, I see no significant utilities that shadow tanks bring which the other tanks cannot match or exceed, and certainly nothing that even remotely justifies their near unhealability on certain fights. The best thing you can say for shadows is that they take less damage averaged over time than other tanks do. This is absolutely true. Unfortunately, it's not a *lot* less (guardians are really close in terms of mean survivability) and the advantage is essentially swamped by the extreme difficulty of keeping a shadow tank alive through spikes and bad RNG.

Edited July 15, 2013 by KeyboardNinja

[JDotter]

2/3 guilds that have killed all content are using assassins. What exactly do people want? A godmode button just time to step back from pre 2.0 NM EC and realize you aren't god anymore and you need to play better.

[insaneric]

Depends on your strategy. Obviously you take every other one in HM. In NiM, some strats dictate that both grenades are taken by tanks, which means that you're taking all of them.

 

As to whether or not it does enough damage, that depends entirely on your HP. I haven't done Titan in NiM yet (bad week for scheduling), so I can't say how hard it hits me.

The NiM grenades hit really weakly so that a dps can survive it.

 

The problem is not that the healers need to work harder (this is just part of healing an assassin tank), it's that the damage can and will outpace what a healer can reasonably do. The kel'sara combo drops me by 88% in the span of GCDs when neither of the abilities are shielded or defended. Sure, healers *can* react to that, but they need to land their big heals before the next ability in the chain, which is a 7k Discharge that will not be shielded (as it is internal damage). Is it possible to anticipate and heal through this? Yes. It comes with a very specific timing and a really good healer will know this. Is it realistic to expect this? No. Will it lead to overheal and wasted effort? YES. It's RNG whether or not this combo does any appreciable damage at all (when I shield, I take embarrassingly low damage levels). If the damage levels are that low, then the healer probably just wasted a precast heal on me.

This sort of damage is the bad side of the trade for taking an assassin. Healers who aren't really good shouldn't be able to clear progression NiM content to begin with.

 

Terminate is the rule in new content, not the exception. While it is the highest spiking single damaging ability, it's far from the only one. Dash'roode and Thrasher both have brutal swipes (especially Thrasher). The snipers on Thrasher are practically "shield or die". Even Writhing Horror, who is otherwise a pushover, carries a risk of nearly instagibbing an assassin tank. I generally roll cooldowns in scripted sequence on that fight to avoid Nasty Bite RNG from compounding.

On Dash'roode the burst isn't too bad, I've never been insta bursted.

NiM Thrasher's damage spike tends to be from the snipers, the damage from thrasher is not that bigger issue. Our wipes were mainly mistakes in positioning (either tanks or rockets hitting people). You can rotate between deflection and overcharge saber to deal with the sniper groups that you tank.

Writhing Horror's biggest healing pressure is when the adds come out and there are multiple targets to heal, it's easy to use a cooldown here. Also assassins can vanish when the adds spawns to completely avoid the puddle mechanic (which is ridiculous and would make 2 assassins my ideal choice for this fight).

 

Your point about Terminate is valid, it *is* in a sense the ability's fault, but it's not a problem for the other two tanks. You can look at this in one of two ways: the content is biased against assassins, or assassins are biased against the content. In either case, it's bad news. Two of the three models put forth by the theory crafting community to quantify this issue take content into account and demonstrate what happens when you fiddle with burst levels.

 

The point is that assassins are spiky beyond their control on current content, and that spikiness is so severe in places that no amount of healer skill will save them. If you get hit by Terminate, you either a) defend, b) shield, or c) lose 100% of your HP. That's just a coin flip, really. No amount of healer skill (or tank skill) will save you. Terminate is nice because it's a single ability that we can point at, but as I said, it's far from the only example of this problem.

Fair point if they want moves like this in the game then they need to change the way assassin tanks work, but i think it's easier to change this move.

 

Regarding proactively hitting CDs when you know heavy damage is coming… duh? :-) That's like, tanking 101. CDs are occasionally good emergency buttons, but if you're running with a healer you trust, you're probably not going to use them as such unless you see the rest of the raid is in worse shape. If you're running with good DPS, you won't need them to negate an enrage, so you can use them strictly as part of your mitigation profile when heavy damage phases are about to hit. Unfortunately, your assertion that no boss has a heavy damage phase which comes more frequently than CD availability is simply false. Thrasher is a great example of this, since his swipe happens once every 30 seconds (on the dot) and is melee damage, meaning you have only Deflection and BR to deal with the issue. The snipers pose a similar problem to the off-tank. Kel'sara's high damage phases come once every 15-20 seconds, though her burst is definitely lower than Thrasher or Operation's Chief (and split into many abilities, thus less RNG prone and more healable). We already mentioned how Terminate comes once every 40 seconds, which means you can use Deflection on one for a *chance* to live and BR on another for slightly better odds (assuming really good healers), but you can't keep it up indefinitely. Better hope your DPS can kill the boss before you have to take a third Terminate!

Heavy damage isn't the same as increased damage.

NiM Thrasher is a healing intensive fight but the area of increased damage is when tanking the snipers which you can have cooldowns for (I would however bring 2 juggs for ideal comp for this fight as there's no use for the assassins utility).

 

The utility that shadows bring is generally out-matched by the other tanks, which is why I don't accept this argument. Stealth is useful situationally, but far more rarely than one would think. Vanguards bring the pull, and Guardians have a more targeted knockback (I rarely use my knockback anyway, and then only on trash). Stealth Mez is cool, but only useful on certain trash pulls (my raid group essentially never CCs anything). That leaves cooldowns…

This isn't all the utility that i mean. Stealth brings the ability to refresh your medpack for a second use, can cheese some mechanics (eg. writhing horror pools, vanish+rocketboots dash'rhoode, etc) and stealth rezing. Force sprint is incredible for kiting and re positioning. Assassins have the highest threat and dps allowing for cleaner pulls and higher raid dps to push through difficult phases. They also have great 10m range tanking (as do powertechs) for when the situation calls for it (which is fairly often). The phase walk healing boost is also good, and u can also use the active in some situations.

 

Shadow cooldowns obviously roflstomp vanguard cooldowns, but that's primarily because vanguards don't have cooldowns worth speaking of. Unfortunately, shadow CDs are categorically out matched by guardians in every possible respect. If there's a mechanic you can cheese with Resilience, you can also cheese it with Saber Reflect, and Saber Reflect works 100% of the time (vs 95% for Resilience) and affects more attacks. If there's a reason to pop Deflection, then you may as well have popped Saber Ward to receive a brief 100% buff to defense, followed by the same defense buff and a *superior* force/tech buff. Battle Readiness for a 25% DR buff? Try Warding Call for a 40% DR buff! Now that Guardian CDs are on 2.5 minute timers, shadows no longer have a significant advantage in CD availability.

I'd agree with this. My opinion is that juggernauts are the best maintank due to this. I also feel powertechs need a similar cooldown to force shroud or saber ward.

 

Overall, I see no significant utilities that shadow tanks bring which the other tanks cannot match or exceed, and certainly nothing that even remotely justifies their near unhealability on certain fights. The best thing you can say for shadows is that they take less damage averaged over time than other tanks do. This is absolutely true. Unfortunately, it's not a *lot* less (guardians are really close in terms of mean survivability) and the advantage is essentially swamped by the extreme difficulty of keeping a shadow tank alive through spikes and bad RNG.

That's fair enough, as with any comparison there are people who would fall on both sides of the fence. I feel the best balanced progression comp is 1 Assassin and 1 Juggernaut, however there are fights where 2 juggs would be better or a different comp.

 

I should probably stop derailing this thread now.

[KeyboardNinja]

That's fair enough, as with any comparison there are people who would fall on both sides of the fence. I feel the best balanced progression comp is 1 Assassin and 1 Juggernaut, however there are fights where 2 juggs would be better or a different comp.

 

I think this *will* be the best comp once the spikiness issues are reduced from RNG death to just challenging to heal. It was my favorite comp pre-2.0 (even with the very real Juggernaut threat and DPS issues), and it has only gotten stronger as a pairing in 2.0, save for the assassin spike death problems. My group currently runs double shadows just as a function of what classes our best tanks play, but there are many times where I long for a guardian.

 

In any case, I'll stop derailing as well. :-)