NERF : Guardian Tanks

[Marb]

Tank damage isn't really a factor in this fight, its simply mechanics and execution. Swapping tanks each laser phase doesn't really bring anything game changing to the encounter.

 

Not swapping does put more pressure on the add tank, as they have to manage their aoe taunt and a guardian will need assistance on the barrels with no pull, as they must be back for the adds as soon as they spawn to prevent a healer getting splatted. In short, if a tank is capable of doing the adds full time, there is no advantage to swapping before radiation leak.

 

Nothing is lost by using the swap either, so they are both valid strategies. I just wouldn't call single tanking the adds "crazy".

Edited July 30, 2013 by Marb

[KnyghtmareX]

Threads like this are the Reason Powertech/Vangaurds got nerf hard now you asking for another tank class to get nerfed please like someone said in the beginning of the thread "Just quit the game" quit crying dang

[leto_cleon]

With 2 jugg tanks it is a joke, just tank swap every add spawn so you make sure they have saber reflect up for every single add group, and with any other tank you should also do that to keep cds and relics up, not to mention AoE taunt. I don't understand why people try to use crazy tactics keeping one tank always on boss and another on adds.

 

If a Guardian is tanking Golden Fury, he should actually be using Saber Reflect on the range attacks as a mitigation and aggro generation. (I think the ranged attack is called Rapid Blast). So it is not the case that 2 Guardian tanks solves the issue of the adds spawning faster than the cooldown of challenging call and saber reflect.

[Leafy_Bug]

Did Kitru hack your account? Damn, I used to think you were one of the reasonable shadow/sins that posted.

 

Such a shame.

 

 

When you one shot SV HM with two 31k guardians, with level 35 relics,level 40 earpieces, a mix of 66 gear and 2 arkanian pieces , something is definitely wrong with the game. I appreciate your honesty but diplomacy seems to bring nothing in this game. When the PVP-ers went on a rampage about shadow nerfs, they received them, we will on a rampage about guardian nerfs, to even out the playing field. It is not fair for guilds to set back progression and level guardian tanks / recruit them because everyone prefers them in operations, faceroll tanks.

 

Clearing content with guardian tanks is too easy compared to shadows. They are at two extremes and this is not alright. Tanks have never been worse than now but nobody seems to care. Some of the replies on the forums are still mind boggling. When people claim that guilds have cleared nim with shadows and you see on streams that shadows get one shot without even saying that is not normal it is just sad. A tank is a tank, you stack mitigation, you gear up to TANK not to be one shot. Doesn't not matter if its light armour, heavy armour, we gear up to stay alive so others don't have to die but wait, we get one shot while the other two tanks, especially the Guardian does not. So conclusion is if a tank is supposed to stay alive by any means necessary then the shadow is not a tank.

 

 

Before 2.0 shadows were tanks, after 2.0 shadows are a class with tanking abilities. There is a major difference between the two and not in a good way. We had to change our composition, I gave up on my shadow tank because my guild is suffering in ops. I spent hundreds of hours and tens of millions in this character, I grind gear to have a 2500 mitigation budget according to our theorycrafters and for what? So I take a mediocre geared Guardian tank in my ops group and we one shot everything while I go with my bis 72 shadow tank and on trash i drop like a fly in hp ?? Thrasher puts me on low hp even in 8 man and the 31k guardians were kind of saying in teamspeak after we one shot thrasher : I did not think this was possible. Healers are 100% sure now that shadows put more stress than needed on their resource and on how strict the raid is when clearing content. It feels nice to have a class that Jesse Sky has rendered trash in both PVP/PVE. So one dude decided one day to p*ss on my 1.5 year effort and buff the class he plays. All I can say is *facepalm* because it seems that he is a better person than all the thousands of shadow tanks and his preference is above all.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[THoK-Zeus]

When you one shot SV HM with two 31k guardians, with level 35 relics,level 40 earpieces, a mix of 66 gear and 2 arkanian pieces , something is definitely wrong with the game. I appreciate your honesty but diplomacy seems to bring nothing in this game. When the PVP-ers went on a rampage about shadow nerfs, they received them, we will on a rampage about guardian nerfs, to even out the playing field. It is not fair for guilds to set back progression and level guardian tanks / recruit them because everyone prefers them in operations, faceroll tanks.

 

Clearing content with guardian tanks is too easy compared to shadows. They are at two extremes and this is not alright. Tanks have never been worse than now but nobody seems to care. Some of the replies on the forums are still mind boggling. When people claim that guilds have cleared nim with shadows and you see on streams that shadows get one shot without even saying that is not normal it is just sad. A tank is a tank, you stack mitigation, you gear up to TANK not to be one shot. Doesn't not matter if its light armour, heavy armour, we gear up to stay alive so others don't have to die but wait, we get one shot while the other two tanks, especially the Guardian does not. So conclusion is if a tank is supposed to stay alive by any means necessary then the shadow is not a tank.

 

 

Before 2.0 shadows were tanks, after 2.0 shadows are a class with tanking abilities. There is a major difference between the two and not in a good way. We had to change our composition, I gave up on my shadow tank because my guild is suffering in ops. I spent hundreds of hours and tens of millions in this character, I grind gear to have a 2500 mitigation budget according to our theorycrafters and for what? So I take a mediocre geared Guardian tank in my ops group and we one shot everything while I go with my bis 72 shadow tank and on trash i drop like a fly in hp ?? Thrasher puts me on low hp even in 8 man and the 31k guardians were kind of saying in teamspeak after we one shot thrasher : I did not think this was possible. Healers are 100% sure now that shadows put more stress than needed on their resource and on how strict the raid is when clearing content. It feels nice to have a class that Jesse Sky has rendered trash in both PVP/PVE. So one dude decided one day to p*ss on my 1.5 year effort and buff the class he plays. All I can say is *facepalm* because it seems that he is a better person than all the thousands of shadow tanks and his preference is above all.

 

I suppose you could one shot sv hm in less then above tanking gear (even as a shadow). You saw on fuyris stream that he died to terminate. Why did you then not answer to my posts about terminate in the other section (and instead keep on writing your opinion as a fact (like disproven kitru)). On 8 man hm thrasher i had fights where i did not go a single time under 80% life. If your healers can't keep a decent geared shadow tank on 8 man hm for thrasher up they are not bad, but really bad i suppose.

Healers said sometimes (when we had our first few tries on some bosses in 8 man nim), that i am more difficult to heal, but when we did the fights a few times and they learned how the tanks got damage in that fight there was no difference between me and the other tank.

[leto_cleon]

I appreciate your honesty but diplomacy seems to bring nothing in this game. When the PVP-ers went on a rampage about shadow nerfs, they received them, we will on a rampage about guardian nerfs, to even out the playing field. It is not fair for guilds to set back progression and level guardian tanks / recruit them because everyone prefers them in operations, faceroll tanks.

 

It not true that reasoned posts don't work. Read http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6067622&postcount=2 by Andrew_Past (the current Guardian Class rep) and the subsequently reply http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6072056&postcount=3. Vigilance Guardians received a 15% movement buff from the Shien Form in 2.2.

 

As a Guardian Tank myself, I prefer to have a Shadow or Vanguard co-tank rather than a fellow Guardian. The 5% damage reduction from slow time and static field is pretty noticable. It's simply misleading to say that raids are better off with 2 Guardian tanks.

[Leafy_Bug]

I suppose you could one shot sv hm in less then above tanking gear (even as a shadow). You saw on fuyris stream that he died to terminate. Why did you then not answer to my posts about terminate in the other section (and instead keep on writing your opinion as a fact (like disproven kitru)). On 8 man hm thrasher i had fights where i did not go a single time under 80% life. If your healers can't keep a decent geared shadow tank on 8 man hm for thrasher up they are not bad, but really bad i suppose.

Healers said sometimes (when we had our first few tries on some bosses in 8 man nim), that i am more difficult to heal, but when we did the fights a few times and they learned how the tanks got damage in that fight there was no difference between me and the other tank.

 

 

The 'your healers are bad' approach. This is the one being used nowadays instead of learn to play. When people realized that learn to play cult could only go so far, they resorted to blaming the healers. So you are nitpicking on the fact that if my healers are not Friendly Fire, Suckafish, Severity Gaming, FROG, material they are bad healers. I would like to see why a guild is better for clearing content with a shadow tank as opposed to a guild who is running the best setup after 2.0. Can you link me a thread or something where having kills with a Shadow Tank/ Assassin makes you best guild in the world? Is there an achievement I don't know about, special lootz? As far as I am aware, a kill is a kill it does not matter if you take a shadow or not. Why would you take a shadow that puts stress on the healers, especially in 16M NiM? You have to be an idiot to use a Shadow tank in such content given that you can be spiked to 85% of your hp. We are talking mitigation build here with 36800 hp.

 

 

Saying that my healers are trash because they let my tank drop to under 85% when thrasher spikes me in 8M HM to 20k dps in some cases is a bit rude. I have 36800 HP on a 2500 mitigation budget and there are times when thrasher takes away almost all my HP, due to bad RNG of course, faster than my healers can top me back up. I would use a cooldown but I already used them in the previous 16k dps spikes I had. Battle readiness and Deflection are on a far too long cooldown to cover spike damage. So bad RNG, 20k DPS spike, leads to sucky healers. We go to TFB HM, we clear TWH with my Shadow, healers say it was not easy to heal. The next week we try with a vanguard/guardian combo and the healers say it was way easier. Damn they bad!!!!

 

 

It not true that reasoned posts don't work. Read http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6067622&postcount=2 by Andrew_Past (the current Guardian Class rep) and the subsequently reply http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6072056&postcount=3. Vigilance Guardians received a 15% movement buff from the Shien Form in 2.2.

 

As a Guardian Tank myself, I prefer to have a Shadow or Vanguard co-tank rather than a fellow Guardian. The 5% damage reduction from slow time and static field is pretty noticable. It's simply misleading to say that raids are better off with 2 Guardian tanks.

 

 

Sentinels can give you the 5% damage reduction now on every use of cauterize if memory servers. We run two watchman sentinels so at any point there is one damage reduction debuff on the boss, thus making a shadow tank's slowtime useless.

 

 

Gone are the days where mean mitigation is valuable. We are in a content phase where spike damage is raising the level of difficulty on one tank and doing the opposite on the other. This is not right and Guardians need a big change to be brought in line with other tanks. I would say bring the shadow in line with guardians but BioWare does not speak this language. So nerf bat talk is our lingo.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Leafy_Bug

[THoK-Zeus]

 

 

Saying that my healers are trash because they let my tank drop to under 85% when thrasher spikes me in 8M HM to 20k dps in some cases is a bit rude. I have 36800 HP on a 2500 mitigation budget and there are times when thrasher takes away almost all my HP, due to bad RNG of course, faster than my healers can top me back up. I would use a cooldown but I already used them in the previous 16k dps spikes I had. Battle readiness and Deflection are on a far too long cooldown to cover spike damage. So bad RNG, 20k DPS spike, leads to sucky healers. We go to TFB HM, we clear TWH with my Shadow, healers say it was not easy to heal. The next week we try with a vanguard/guardian combo and the healers say it was way easier. Damn they bad!!!!

 

Sentinels can give you the 5% damage reduction now on every use of cauterize if memory servers. We run two watchman sentinels so at any point there is one damage reduction debuff on the boss, thus making a shadow tank's slowtime useless.

 

 

Gone are the days where mean mitigation is valuable. We are in a content phase where spike damage is raising the level of difficulty on one tank and doing the opposite on the other. This is not right and Guardians need a big change to be brought in line with other tanks. I would say bring the shadow in line with guardians but BioWare does not speak this language. So nerf bat talk is our lingo.

 

Thrasher does not spike for 20 k in 8 man hm. The biggest spike you can possibly get is 14k from an unmigated swipe, which will happen on average 4-5 times during the whole raid. After each swipe hes atleast waiting 3-4 seconds for another normal melee attack or for a stomp..

Maintanking thrasher the last time (i don't have many 8 man hm sv parses), i get an average out of 1,5k hps with a sorc healer on me and not a single 20k spike....

Show me your 20 k hit on 8 man hm thrasher please...

[leto_cleon]

Sentinels can give you the 5% damage reduction now on every use of cauterize if memory servers. We run two watchman sentinels so at any point there is one damage reduction debuff on the boss, thus making a shadow tank's slowtime useless.

 

Weakening Wounds from the Watchman tree also gives a 5% raid damage reduction when burns are applied. Your point however has to do with overall raid composition rather than a comparison between tanks. In terms of raid composition it simply isn't the case that every raid is going to have a Watchman Sentinel. Duplication as a result of raid composition really is not a lack of utility.

 

Aside from boss fights, clearing mobs using force pull / harpoon also does make clearing mobs along the way much easier, than with just force leap. For boss fights, Shadow tanks have so much more mobility, dps, and AOE threat than Guardian tanks. Shadow also are the only tanks with stealth as well as cc.

 

Gone are the days where mean mitigation is valuable. We are in a content phase where spike damage is raising the level of difficulty on one tank and doing the opposite on the other. This is not right and Guardians need a big change to be brought in line with other tanks. I would say bring the shadow in line with guardians but BioWare does not speak this language. So nerf bat talk is our lingo.

 

On your early point about a 31k HP Guardian being able to tank HM S&V easily. If I recall correctly, a min-max Guardian tank using the immunity/sturdiness enhancements is about 31-32k HP. My suspicion is that your Guardian tanks might have teased you by wearing lower gear that gave them the same health, just to mess with you. If that the case, I'd say that the prank was very well played.

 

In a time not to long ago when KP was still fresh, I remember trying to solo tank Foreman Crusher as a Guardian. I had much better gear than my Shadow co-tank, but there was just no way I could solo tank him. So the Shadow tank would always solo tank the boss, and I would be on add duty. Given horrid Guardian AOE, the adds would simply break loose. Was I a liability? Yep. What did I do? Sucked it up and carried on.

[Leafy_Bug]

Weakening Wounds from the Watchman tree also gives a 5% raid damage reduction when burns are applied. Your point however has to do with overall raid composition rather than a comparison between tanks. In terms of raid composition it simply isn't the case that every raid is going to have a Watchman Sentinel. Duplication as a result of raid composition really is not a lack of utility.

 

Aside from boss fights, clearing mobs using force pull / harpoon also does make clearing mobs along the way much easier, than with just force leap. For boss fights, Shadow tanks have so much more mobility, dps, and AOE threat than Guardian tanks. Shadow also are the only tanks with stealth as well as cc.

 

 

 

On your early point about a 31k HP Guardian being able to tank HM S&V easily. If I recall correctly, a min-max Guardian tank using the immunity/sturdiness enhancements is about 31-32k HP. My suspicion is that your Guardian tanks might have teased you by wearing lower gear that gave them the same health, just to mess with you. If that the case, I'd say that the prank was very well played.

 

In a time not to long ago when KP was still fresh, I remember trying to solo tank Foreman Crusher as a Guardian. I had much better gear than my Shadow co-tank, but there was just no way I could solo tank him. So the Shadow tank would always solo tank the boss, and I would be on add duty. Given horrid Guardian AOE, the adds would simply break loose. Was I a liability? Yep. What did I do? Sucked it up and carried on.

 

 

Your last part of the post is very far fetched. So one day after they dinged 55 they were BIS with sturdiness but trolled me? So this is how far we are going to justify guardian superiority? Let me write that down:

 

1. L2p your shadow tank. Its fine

2. Your healers suck

3. You got trolled by Guardians with 31k hp because they were BIS but you did not know

 

 

My first point about slowtime was to show that if before the best combo was guardian shadow, now, shadows do not bring anything other classes can't. Slowtime damage reduction can be obtained via applying burns.

[Yngow]

O.o Crazy tactics? You say swap tanks as if it just a matter of moving a few feet when what you are really talking about involves ensuring both tanks have 100% uptime of ISO, are able to move from one side of that room to the other in an increasingly small window while preventing both tank targets from 1 shotting every one else not to mention how the MT needs his/her cds for tanking the boss and not to be used on the much less hard hitting adds. Have you ever actually tanked 16M HM TC? On SM it is entirely possible to single tank the whole encounter which could explain your belief that its "easy". As for needing saber reflect for every set of adds, you're flat out wrong. With the right rotation and being, you know, skilled at the class you can hold both without saber reflect. A previous poster made the excellent point that even saber reflect alone won't hold aggro against good dps for long after it ends.

 

I tanked it and it is very easy, the tanks each have one side of the room with isotopes for themselves so they shouldnt ever have an add phase without it, during the laser the tanks move to the side, leap to an iso tank (or guardian leap to a proper positioned healer), kill a tank if iso is about to go out and get the adds or boss depending if it is your turn or not. The tank swap is not because of saber reflect, but SR is a nice bonus to it, if you notice the spawn timer of the adds is exactly the cd on your AoE taunt and the adds are powerful enough to pretty much one-shot a dps or healer without iso buff, if you keep on add duty all the time just like a guy pointed out for SR you will notice that the cd on AoE taunt will get delayed more and more to the point where it will be available only when the adds are either dead or already killed someone. Also the boss doesn't hit hard at all if you keep your iso buff up all the time but if needed you have plenty of cds to deal with that other than saber reflect. I have done this many times as tank and dps and as a tank I see that swapping makes the ads much easier and as a dps I see that swapping makes it much easier to not pull from the tank and kiss the floor

Edited July 30, 2013 by Yngow

[Panzerfire]

So the arguments against nerfing Guardian tank are...

 

I) Shadow tanks are fine if they have better healers than the Guardian tanks, lets give the top 1% of the healers to guilds with Shadows and the remaining of the top 5% can heal the Guardians and then everything is fine.

II) Shadow tanks are nice to have if they're the off-tank as often as possible and they only tank the boss while using cd's, this works if the Guardian is maintanking whenever possible.

III) Saber Reflect is a *threat generating tool* and in no way adds any survivability to Guardians, it also takes *skill* to use and will be worthless if you don't use it correctly.

 

These are the more unreasonable claims made, a lot of Guardians do realize that the tanking balance is off and they want it to be fixed, question is whether to nerf Guardians or buff the other two tanks. I liked the idea of different damage done by bosses depending on the tank class holding aggro but it's unlikely that Bioware will try to implement this due to laziness.

 

If you add too much I/E spike damage (as in EC) shadows outperform Guardians/Vanguards. Adding only K/E spike damage (as in S&V) made Shadows simply awful (compared to Guardians/Vanguards) in this content. As previous replies have mentioned the problem lies in content designing and outgoing damage types, TFB is actually one of the more balanced instances with Guardians/Shadows having different advantages on bosses.

 

Also to everyone here, please do not ever use Shadow secondary and tertiary utility abilities as arguments for tank balance. Compare tanking performance to tanking performance instead of using BS reasons like movement and stealth ress.

 

Shadows do not have more mobility than Guardians (unless you mean taking the 15% speed increase and kiting Kel'sara during DG or something like that). They do not have more dps, Shadows have less dps than Guardians but they do have more initial threat, do not confuse these two different things. AoE threat is irrelevant for most fights and do you really want to argue that Shadows should be punished in S&V NiM because they can tank the adds on GF HM better? Really? Stealth ress is ony viable on a few bosses (TFB final boss, Operation Chief, Olok and that's it).

 

Finally, I'll be happy if Shadows get buffed and the next operation has only E/I damage spikes, which is unlikely since the people responsible for tanking balance in end game pve content are idiots.

[PifferPuff]

I understand where you are coming from Leafy_Bug. I primarily roll as a Shadow tank, and the nerfs have made my class mostly unenjoyable to play. As such, I've been scaling down the amount of time I spend on this game. It's just getting boring.

 

Since I've been auto-skilling up a character - over the last few months or so - on EVE Online and getting more into that game recently, I may just stop playing this game altogether in the coming months and make the switch entirely. Also, Final Fantasy XIV:ARR looks promising, so I might be on that game too. I suppose time will tell, as will how the devs balance out the tank ACs. But, honestly, I don't hold out any hope that the devs will do anything favorable for Shadow tanks, much less give 2 ***** about our opinions on the matter.

 

It doesn't matter. This game has become a grind-fest to me - with leveling and gearing up a PT tank (that my guild has no need for), an operative healer (which sometimes has a place in raids - but rarely), an Assassin (that was tank, and now am gearing for DPS), plus a Sage healer and Guardian tank that are too undergreared to do anything other than HM 55 FPs (and boring as hell to roll as to boot). *YAWN* -- I've been with this game since launch. I've done a lot of cool stuff in it in the past, but the future seems bleak, and I'm not one for needless grinding just to re-roll as a 2nd or 3rd choice play-style.

 

Anyways, good luck in making the devs see reason -- ain't gonna happen, but best of luck all the same

Edited August 2, 2013 by PifferPuff

[xnightshadex]

I have both a Shadow and a Sin tank (the Sin is my main), and while I agree she is in serious need of buffing, that does not mean that Juggs need to be nerfed (I would normally say calling for nerfs will generate unreasonable hostility, but the hostility towards Shadows and Assassins being rationale about the problems with the class is already unreasonable).

 

Give assassins back the good armor bonus from DC and Hand of Darkness, buff the self heals back to pre-1.6, and let's call it a day. Oh, and fix that stupid 5% thing on Force Shroud. Nothing like taking that final tick of NiM DG Lightning Field with Force Shroud active .

Edited July 30, 2013 by xnightshadex
spelling is hard

[Kitru]

buff the self heals back to pre-1.6

 

By Satele Shan's lovingly engraved lightsaber, no. We *do not* need more self heals. The magnitude of our self heals is one of the *reasons* we're having the problems we're having now.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Kitru

[xnightshadex]

By Satele Shan's lovingly engraved lightsaber, no. We *do not* need more self heals. The magnitude of our self heals is one of the *reasons* we're having the problems we're having now.

 

I'm asking for all of it. The armor. The self heals. Everything that has been taken away. Would I be happy with just a restoration of DC/CT and Hand of Darkness armor? Absolutely. But since this is looking more and more like a pipe dream these days (especially with the changes to Xeno; the systematic application of Shadow/Assassin irrelevance gives me little hope for the future) I might as well ask for everything up to and including the kitchen sink.

Edited July 30, 2013 by xnightshadex
grammar is hard

[kennethdale]

if you keep on add duty all the time just like a guy pointed out for SR you will notice that the cd on AoE taunt will get delayed more and more to the point where it will be available only when the adds are either dead or already killed someone.

 

Love that in your rebuttal to my point you reference the point I originally made, that you can't use both aoe taunt and sr on the same set of adds (go back and check, ill wait) while ignoring the fact that just after that I outlined a rotation that allows for holding both adds on every phase.

 

To the guy above me (typing on my phone and I don't feel like having to c/p stuff) the argument that shadows are,oh so broken is completely invalidated by the simply fact that end game content continues to be downed with and without them. You guys say "well all the shadows are being forced to re roll and huff and puff and angry noise and that's so unbalanced" when the simple fact is that some are, sure, but others are still rolling the same way. You guys have 0 clue about real balance issues. Go back to Vanillla and BC WoW. Tank balance? Bah, except for Magtheridon (druid dodge) and Hyjal trash (Paladin AoE threat) you never used anything but a Warrior. Because it didn't work. How about the last boss in BC which could not be tanked, not was more difficult for other classes, COULD NOT BE DONE by anyone other than a warrior. That is a balance issue. Saying WAAAAAAAAAH I chose yo play a tank with light armor then chose to raid high end, end game content with it on the game I pay for because I theoretically enjoy it. My class used to be so easy but now its haaaaard that's not fair waaaaaaaaaah does not a balance issue make it.

[Yngow]

Love that in your rebuttal to my point you reference the point I originally made, that you can't use both aoe taunt and sr on the same set of adds (go back and check, ill wait) while ignoring the fact that just after that I outlined a rotation that allows for holding both adds on every phase.

 

I don't understand you point, what I'm saying is that tank swap makes it possible to use SR and AoE taunt on every single set of adds, and even if you are not a jugg it is a good reason to do that just for the AoE taunt alone, I'm not ignoring anything at all. AoE taunt + saber reflect, adds die >laser, tank swap you're on the boss>laser, tank swap you're on adds AoE taunt + SR again...how hard can this be? Sure your rotation works but it is much harder and leaves a lot of room for mistakes. Why complicate when there's a really easy way to do it? that is my point

Edited July 30, 2013 by Yngow

[xnightshadex]

 

To the guy above me (typing on my phone and I don't feel like having to c/p stuff) the argument that shadows are,oh so broken is completely invalidated by the simply fact that end game content continues to be downed with and without them.

 

Really? I thought it was my operative that I was using to tank in NiM TFB and S&V this week. I had no idea it was my Assassin clearing content!

 

Perhaps you have not read my previous posts nor captured the subtlety of my hyperbole, so allow me to explain. The title of this thread is "NERF: Guardian Tanks" which I find to be a needlessly extreme reaction to the lack of developer response to the mathematical proof and constructive criticism that has been employed thus far in the argument for fixing Assassins. So, in vane of overreaction, I have made unreasonable demands (that are still less incensing than the original title of this thread). And even within the poetic license of my post, I still state that all we really need is our armor back.

 

To be serious for a moment: I'm pretty sure restoring the armor bonus for Hand of Darkness might just be enough to bring us close enough to the other tanks to not be a liability.

 

As for the rest of your vitriolic post...

 

Just like I don't understand why non-Jugg tanks are calling for a Jugg nerf, I don't get why you (a Jugg tank) are against fixes for the Assassin tank. Perhaps you have something to lose if Assassins are brought in line with Juggs and PTs relative to raid viability?

 

You might also want to consider getting a new keyboard; I think your 'a' key is sticking.

Edited July 30, 2013 by xnightshadex

[TridusSWTOR]

@Leafy_Bug- Yup you make good points. I still respect your approach on how to fix sin/shadow tanks. I hope you get what you want.

 

Only reason I was fighting people wanting guardian/jugg nerfs is because well...look what happened to sin/shadow tanks. Look what happened to Merc healers, etc...

 

Nerfs come in chunks in this game not bites.

 

I do respect the angle you are taking though. You always came off as a reasonable person, but if the devs aren't hearing you and many others, well I don't blame you for taking another approach. Like I said, I have my reasons for not believing in nerfs of another class, due to the way this game has been handling them.

 

Good luck with your mission though.

[alphazoolou]

oh tear.

 

STOP PLAYING YOUR ASSASSIN TANK roll a jugg problem solved. when another tank class get stronger then play that class. Dont get too attached to a certain toon there is a variety of different classes for this game. it obvious the devs are going to change up character classes frequently so be prepared and ready for when your assassin tank goes back on top.

[kwestone]

I understand where you are coming from Leafy_Bug. I primarily roll as a Shadow tank, and the nerfs have made my class mostly unenjoyable to play. As such, I've been scaling down the amount of time I spend on this game. It's just getting boring.

 

Since I've been auto-skilling up a character - over the last few months or so - on EVE Online and getting more into that game recently, I may just stop playing this game altogether in the coming months and make the switch entirely. Also, FFIV:ARR looks promising, so I might be on that game too. I suppose time will tell, as will how the devs balance out the tank ACs. But, honestly, I don't hold out any hope that the devs will do anything favorable for Shadow tanks, much less give 2 ***** about our opinions on the matter.

 

It doesn't matter. This game has become a grind-fest to me - with leveling and gearing up a PT tank (that my guild has no need for), an operative healer (which sometimes has a place in raids - but rarely), an Assassin (that was tank, and now am gearing for DPS), plus a Sage healer and Guardian tank that are too undergreared to do anything other than HM 55 FPs (and boring as hell to roll as to boot). *YAWN* -- I've been with this game since launch. I've done a lot of cool stuff in it in the past, but the future seems bleak, and I'm not one for needless grinding just to re-roll as a 2nd or 3rd choice play-style.

 

Anyways, good luck in making the devs see reason -- ain't gonna happen, but best of luck all the same

 

I was checking out EVE yesterday. It looks pretty fun. I might have to download it.

[kennethdale]

Really? I thought it was my operative that I was using to tank in NiM TFB and S&V this week. I had no idea it was my Assassin clearing content!

 

Perhaps you have not read my previous posts nor captured the subtlety of my hyperbole, so allow me to explain. The title of this thread is "NERF: Guardian Tanks" which I find to be a needlessly extreme reaction to the lack of developer response to the mathematical proof and constructive criticism that has been employed thus far in the argument for fixing Assassins. So, in vane of overreaction, I have made unreasonable demands (that are still less incensing than the original title of this thread). And even within the poetic license of my post, I still state that all we really need is our armor back.

 

To be serious for a moment: I'm pretty sure restoring the armor bonus for Hand of Darkness might just be enough to bring us close enough to the other tanks to not be a liability.

 

As for the rest of your vitriolic post...

 

Just like I don't understand why non-Jugg tanks are calling for a Jugg nerf, I don't get why you (a Jugg tank) are against fixes for the Assassin tank. Perhaps you have something to lose if Assassins are brought in line with Juggs and PTs relative to raid viability?

 

You might also want to consider getting a new keyboard; I think your 'a' key is sticking.

 

I just love, love, LOVE when people tell one person to do something they aren't doing themself:

 

Read back in this thread a bit and read my first two posts (actually read the one you quoted too and see where I said I was typing on a phone, so no, I don't need to consider a new keyboard, its just difficult to type out a wall of text with a touch screen keyboard, fail #2 on your part). Go ahead, I am waiting. I was all for "fixing" sins up to the point when the most prominent people calling for a shadow fix start crying about how OP another class is and it became little hard to believe things are as bad as they claim (in light of the boss kills, how many people continue unabated playing and tanking with their sins, and the fact that the thread right above this one is called Tanking Shadows Aren't That Bad). As for the post being vitriolic (no quotes there) hell yes it was. When a child falls and scrapes their knee, you help them up and dust them off. When a child throws a hissy fit, indulging them only reinforces that bad behavior. Adults, sadly, don't respond all too well to being ignored (and it doesn't translate that well into text) so a (large) bit of vitriol at least lets them see how childishly they are acting.

 

About GF, way to keep ignoring facts! This time that the MT typically can use their CDs, including and especially SR, and that my rotation is STILL a more straight forward means of holding threat.

 

SW:tOR is a game that not only encourages leveling alts but rewards it. If you hate your class so much but enjoy the game, roll a different one. Back to WoW, I played a pally for 2 years until I got tired of the direction they were taking the class. I didn't cry. I didn't whine. I leveled a priest. When I got tired of being forced to heal because shadow (hey look, word correlation) dps wasn't up to snuff, I rolled a rogue. That was without any to leveling or legacy gear. Similarly, in SW:tOR when I decided I wasn't too fond of lightning sorc dps I rolled a Mara. When I got tired of melee dps, I rolled a merc. When I decided tanking might be fun, I rolled a jugg. When people cried and said oh gosh shadows just are so hard to play i rolled a shadow. 1 hour spent before work without getting 1 shot (hyperbole there folks) and he's level 10. Gosh its so difficult.

 

The real problem with this game is not the balance. This game is remarkably well balanced for a game at 2.0 compared to other MMOs (everquest, galaxies, wow, gw, etc). The issue is that because leveling is so easy, because end game is so easy, because everything is so easy you all feel entitled to things staying easy (in spite of constant calls to make it harder). You want more difficult content but when they provide it the "top" guilds claim its impossible after not even 5 hours, you all claim tanking is too easy and they up the mechanics and everyone cries that a class is broken. You blame bioware when things are easy then again when they are too hard and its downright pathetic.

 

Even so you all cried enough that bioware came in and made a way for random players selected by the community to ask real questions directly to the development team (and its not the first time bioware has talked directly to players) and get real answers (though they smartly realized it would become a way for people to QQ directly at the dev team so they stated outright that there might be disagreement). That's just not done in gaming. Ever. But still, as usual, its not enough. Because one class is "harder" than another you have to throw a hissy fit and make huge claims about how "easy" that class is to play (its pretty obvious that most people calling for these nerfs have little to no direct experience on a jugg, then again, I have little to no experience on a sin but rather than saying that shadows are easy I've said I was going to try and see just how hard they are with the note that I am willing to bet its really not that much worse than a jugg). When do any of you put your money where your mouth is? Hell, Kitru cancelled his account when bioware wasn't quick enough with a response. Do any of you realize how completely rare it is to even be able to hope for a dev response beyond WAI (Working as intended). No, you don't. Which is why you cry and whine when they take more than a day to evaluate the accuracy of figures proposed by someone without direct access to code or formulae.

Edited July 30, 2013 by kennethdale

[Berjiz]

Juggs pre-2.0 always had inferior damage and their threat issues were huge. Not only did they have significantly worse threat on single targets, but they were by far the worst tanks for AoE threat. This is especially true if you ran the hybrid to try to partially compensate for their inferiority elsewhere. The only advantage Juggs had pre-2.0 were good cooldowns over Powertechs and they were less spiky than Assassins. Oh and they also got an armor debuff that was made redundant since almost every team ran snipers and/or mercenaries. In every other measure, they were strictly inferior and much harder to play effectively. This also isn't even counting the fact that Assassins could cheese so many mechanics in the game with Force Shroud and Force Cloak that the developers ended up slowly fixing them one by one (thus indicating they were unintended).

One of the problems is that their "fixing" has made things more inbalanced since saber reflect either works on it or works on it after the change. Just look at the changes to Xeno, tfb scream, huge greande.

 

 

There are many skills that work for Resilience and don't work for Saber Reflect and vice versa. Outside of the 5% chance of failing, both skills are almost equivalent in terms of quality for being a defensive cooldown while Saber Reflect has a longer cooldown (due to the fact that Force Shroud's cooldown will go down when tanking). You can look at Thok-Zeus's posts for where Resilience works and there are other places he hadn't even mentioned. Saber Reflect wins out over Resilience as a skill in general because it also provides great AoE threat and helps with the Guardian's damage as well. Based on the way the skill currently works, it's only OP as an extremely easy way to hold threat on any trash pull. Due to the fact that Guardians have no good way of holding aggro on mobs that aren't close to each other (Force Push is far inferior to the other two tanks' pulls), Saber Reflect was the developer's solution to that problem. It may be a bit inelegant, but it works fine.

 

Also, I want to point out that currently, Blade Turning (the 100% M/R defense chance bonus for 2-3 seconds) for Saber Ward does not currently work at all so it's not like Assassins are alone in having broken skills.

So where exactly does saber reflect not work while force shroud does? They both have cds short enough aswell to be up for when you need it. The only exception I can think of is trasher swipe but that one comes pretty often.

 

Blade turning has the same 5% chance to still hit bug as force shroud.

[Berjiz]

O.o Crazy tactics? You say swap tanks as if it just a matter of moving a few feet when what you are really talking about involves ensuring both tanks have 100% uptime of ISO, are able to move from one side of that room to the other in an increasingly small window while preventing both tank targets from 1 shotting every one else not to mention how the MT needs his/her cds for tanking the boss and not to be used on the much less hard hitting adds. Have you ever actually tanked 16M HM TC? On SM it is entirely possible to single tank the whole encounter which could explain your belief that its "easy". As for needing saber reflect for every set of adds, you're flat out wrong. With the right rotation and being, you know, skilled at the class you can hold both without saber reflect. A previous poster made the excellent point that even saber reflect alone won't hold aggro against good dps for long after it ends.

 

it seems to me that there are a lot of misconceptions about saber reflect and its usefulness. Its a great way for a melee tank to build ranged threat fast, its also occasionally hilarious in PvP if timed correctly (watching a sniper murder himself in 5 seconds is just glorious but since snipers are the only class that can put out that much damage in that short of a period of time they are the only class you can effectively murder with one skill and even so it takes amazing timing and luck), and it is phenomenal for trash. Aside from that it has severely limited utility in ops and is basically a once a minute guaranteed non boss hit.

 

 

 

 

 

Comparing the two sins get to remove all hostile effects which makes it a survability CD juggs get to reflect back damage which makes it a threat Gen cd. Guess what? Juggs need help with ranged, force andtech mobs threat. Sins need help with survivability. They both got it. Seems pretty *********** balanced. And as for sins, I was not going to say it because its a hot button issue but honestly I'm sick to death of the whole waaaaaaah sins are hard and we get hit hard waaaaah bs. Guess what? Its tough. Yup. But guilds have downed everything so far with and without sins so you're not completely broken. And as for what rng kills sins, you are talking about extremely end game content that doesn't effect the vast majority of players. The vast majority of people who pay for the game. Why the hell would/should bioware care about what 1% of the population thinks? You think they should,spend the money they earned for the other 99% of people tuning a game for you?

 

But you know what? I'll put my money where my mouth is; I honestly do not believe that tanking on a sin (or a pt for that matter) is that much harder than a jugg, so lets find out. Starting tomorrow,I'll roll a shadow and level it up, gear it just like I did with my jugg through comms, alt runs, etc, so when he hits 55 he is in good enough gear to step into hms and I'll see just how much more skill is needed. Maybe I'm wrong, but since every other time I've done tried something like this I ended up seeing that,nope they are preeeeeetty much the same I really doubt it.

Force shroud doesn't remove all effects. The tooltip is wrong. There is a lot of efffects that it doesn't remove.

 

 

 

 

I suppose you could one shot sv hm in less then above tanking gear (even as a shadow). You saw on fuyris stream that he died to terminate. Why did you then not answer to my posts about terminate in the other section (and instead keep on writing your opinion as a fact (like disproven kitru)). On 8 man hm thrasher i had fights where i did not go a single time under 80% life. If your healers can't keep a decent geared shadow tank on 8 man hm for thrasher up they are not bad, but really bad i suppose.

Healers said sometimes (when we had our first few tries on some bosses in 8 man nim), that i am more difficult to heal, but when we did the fights a few times and they learned how the tanks got damage in that fight there was no difference between me and the other tank.

Right because a 16k swipe is not about 40% of your hp? Its even worse in 16man were swipe does about 24k if you dont shield/dodge. Have 69 gear with some 72.

 

Thrasher does not spike for 20 k in 8 man hm. The biggest spike you can possibly get is 14k from an unmigated swipe, which will happen on average 4-5 times during the whole raid. After each swipe hes atleast waiting 3-4 seconds for another normal melee attack or for a stomp..

Maintanking thrasher the last time (i don't have many 8 man hm sv parses), i get an average out of 1,5k hps with a sorc healer on me and not a single 20k spike....

Show me your 20 k hit on 8 man hm thrasher please...

15.5 k hit. http://www.torparse.com/a/354688

Doubt 20k is possible. 16man is about 24 k.

 

 

 

About Golden fury. Its slightly tricky to keep the adds on any tank I would think. I would guess though that Guardians is the easiest though due to saber reflect. Aoe taunt is up every secon spawn and holding threat on those isn't a problem. Saber reflect should help a lot on those other times.

You shouldn't need to use saber reflect on the boss at all unless you need it as an o **** button against isotope relase if you forget your buff.

 

As an assasin its challenging but doable to hold threat on the adds. They do go lose from time to time. I usually do something like this:

Wither->shock->discharge->taunt other mob->trash until shock/wither on the other one. It might be a problem when the taunt wheres off but the dps should have killed one add by then. I like tanking those adds, its both challening and fun, keeps you on your toes a bit:)

Edited July 31, 2013 by Berjiz