Shadow/Assassin Tanks in 2.5 (attn Combat Team)

[slafko]

That's part of why I'm hoping people will listen. It's my main spec, and while part of me feels very warm at the thought of being utterly, crushingly OP (like shadows were pre-1.3), I don't think it's good for the game.

Ah, the good old days when the only things that could kill me were the lax construction safety regulations the Republic loves so much. Apparently, it's easier to build a planetary defense system that instagibs cruisers than to add a few railings here and there.

 

As far as the current spikiness is concerned, I'm constantly being trolled by healers and other tanks are making fun of my shadow. Sometimes I feel my shadow gets more hate than Darth Bieber - Legendary Drowner of Kittens and #YOLO Spammer, were he real, would ever get. It's beginning to take a toll on me as evidenced by the increase in gray hair numbers.

 

What I'd like to see is some form of knockback and knockdown resistance. I'm a freaking Jedi master and it seems like every Harry, Dick and Tom is able to knock me back, kick me off my feet and toss me around like a rag doll. Those same dudes don't even flinch at having their faces pummelled by pretty big rocks and droids. I mean, one second they're on the business end of a flying R2-D2's grandad and on the next one they're sniping my Jedi *** some 50 meters to the back. Oh, and don't get me started on the "Speeder to the Head" immunity every mob suffers from.

[DaftVaduhhh]

Yeah I'm sorry KBN but I can't agree with the changes specified to Guardians, I would consider that an overtuned buff when you take into account their CDs versus those of a VG.

 

Average VG mitigation must be higher than that of a Guardian before CDs, full stop. I know you're taking CDs into consideration, but the margin should not that wide between the two if your graph is any indication. Shadows have multiple skill elements to maintain their high mitigation in 2.5, as they do currently:

 

- Replanting Phase Walk without increasing party damage

- Maintaining 4 stack buff at all times (thought I suspect this is the weakest challenge)

- Maintaining Bulwark stacks for as long as possible.

 

Vanguards even have a slightt skill element in they could hold off their Energy Burst for a few seconds to best account for a heavy hitting combo/attack from the boss, while Guardians I suppose have Blade Storm to assist. IMO Guardian has the strongest toolset to counter boss mechanics, and so perhaps should have the weakest mitigation set to account for that.

 

Thus the average mitigation given the proposed changes to buffs and before all defensive CDs should be IMO, in order:

Vanguard

Shadow

Guardian

 

Please note I am not including Energy Blast, Riposte, Blade Storm, Kinetic Ward/Bulwark and TK Throw as defensive CDs in this context.

Edited October 15, 2013 by DaftVaduhhh

[Rebel_Guy]

I don't think it's as big of a deal as people think... whatever happened to the idea that mean mitigation mattered much less than spikiness?

People were going on whining sprees about nerfing juggernauts even though that it was well known that they had the worst average mitigation, because the only thing that supposedly mattered was spikiness and mean mitigation was much less noticeable, and at this point in time not a very serious concern.

Now that the spikiness is very close to each other it really seems that the notion of juggernauts in desperate need of a buff seems very much exaggerated and just seems like something extra to complain about. I'm all for buffs to shield/absorb if they need it, but you must realize that this cycle will just continue when (and not if) they are overtuned and suddenly there's no reason to bring an assassin or powetech tank...

[ArchangelLBC]

So, the graphs do not represent spikiness in any form. Specifically, they're looking just at healing efficiency. How much healing is required to keep a tank HP-neutral. Shadows are currently the kings of that race, but the subjective argument is that this is a fair design construct since shadows are also the spikiest tanks. Now, the spikiness is way out of proportion, and that's why things are unbalanced today, but if you just look at mean mitigation, shadows do extremely well even now.

 

Fair enough, but in that case you may want to reword your original post. Saying they represent relative tank balance would seem to imply a more holistic approach which takes into account pretty much everything, including spikiness. Even dropping the words "average survivability" made me wonder if you'd taken spikiness into account with the graphs since your original model on spikiness based things on a "probability to die". Now I understand that that kind of holistic model would be very difficult, if not impossible, to actually figure out. Combining mean mitigation with spikiness to generate an average chance to survive and including the amount of healing needed all into some sort of quantifiable "balance" that would have any real meaning....yeah. But what you actually said could have been construed to mean that you had done just that.

 

Instead what you've done is basically graph mean mitigation, and shadows have long won that race as you said. The subjective argument has always been that it's ok because shadows are spikier, and it's ok for guardians to be so far behind because they have so many cooldowns. But with those arguments around , a graph that purports to show tank balance is, as I said, very misleading. Afterall, what would that graph have looked like in the immediately preceding tier (both before and after the Terminate nerf)? Didn't shadows theoretically already require the least healing due to winning that mean mitigation race? But of course actual experience showed the huge weakness in shadow tanks.

 

Where things get problematic is when the spikiness is completely fixed (good!) without decreasing the shadow's lead in overall efficiency (bad!). In terms of spikiness, shadows and guardians will be neck-and-neck post 2.5, but shadows will take dramatically less damage overall. Under those terms, why would a serious raid group ever consider taking a guardian? To make matters worse, shadows will still be far enough ahead of vanguards to be noticeable, AND will bring a much better suite of cooldowns. Why would you take a vanguard over a shadow? Vanguards will be slightly less spiky than post-2.5 shadows, but not by a perceptible margin. Again, shadows will simply reign supreme.

 

No, I agree actually with your basic premise that bringing shadow spikiness all the way down to Guardian level is a bad idea if we're essentially going to maintain the same, or near as makes no difference, mean mitigation.

 

I think that buffing both non-shadow tank classes is a viable approach. I'm just concerned with the long-term balance consequences. The question we need to answer is the following: are vanguards performing to the intended mean, or do they need to be buffed in and of themselves? We don't want to end up in a situation where all of the tanks are over performing, since that unbalances healing and forces content to be redesigned to remain challenging.

 

Basically, my impulse whenever I see a number of classes out of balance is to buff/nerf them all down to their mean, rather than buffing them all up to the highest performer. Believe me, I don't want to see the shadow changes nerfed. They look so gosh darn yummy. I just don't want shadows to completely out perform the other tanks, and I also don't want overall game balance to be disrupted by inflationary buffs across the board.

 

Ultimately, I think balancing them all to some set level, whether it's to the mean or to the highest performer, is definitely the way to go. The question is whether or not the content was more or less already balanced to the highest performer or to the mean. Of course current content is already going to be balanced to 72 gear as opposed to 75 or 78 and it's highly likely that full KD tanks with a smattering of 78s are already over performing if they have similarly geared healers backing them up.

 

Keep in mind that Vanguards almost certainly need another cooldown or need Riot Gas changed in some way to be a much more significant cooldown than it currently is (in particular their lack of a good Force/Tech specific CD is pretty glaring at this point).

 

But if they don't get it (because BW has proven to not be very speedy when it comes to tank balance), then yeah it basically comes down to whether or not vanguards are performing at the mean. I just get nervous when we ask BW to fine tune things, but assuming they just copy/paste your recommendation, I think we should be ok overall.

[KeyboardNinja]

Average VG mitigation must be higher than that of a Guardian before CDs, full stop.

 

Frankly, I think that's a pretty deep game philosophy point, and so I am going to stop you right there. Here's the issue with your assertion: defensive cooldowns are not used on cooldown (at least not by good tanks). Because of this, you can't just count defensive cooldowns as part of mean mitigation (unlike offensive cooldowns, which can be weighed into DPS). This in turn poses a very significant issue when you want to make statements like "defensive CD X is worth mitigation Y".

 

In my opinion, tanks are balanced along three axes: efficiency, spikiness, and cooldown strength. None of these can be traded off directly, but they do need to be weighed against each other. It's a bit like how DPS are balanced along the axes of sustain, burst and AoE (with an additional overlay of melee vs ranged). I do agree that guardian cooldown strength merits a slight reduction in efficiency (or an increase in spikiness), but nothing to the extent of what we're seeing. Above and beyond that, the shadow cooldowns are, pound for pound, nearly as good as the guardian cooldowns. They're slightly worse in terms of mean value, but they have lower cooldowns (in the case of Resilience, much lower). And yet shadows have more mitigation and (in 2.5) the same spikiness.

 

- Replanting Phase Walk without increasing party damage

- Maintaining 4 stack buff at all times (thought I suspect this is the weakest challenge)

- Maintaining Bulwark stacks for as long as possible.

 

As a shadow, I so want to agree with you. I do agree that these are skill elements, and they should be rewarded, but shadows strike me as too far beyond vanguards in 2.5. High end raid groups would take shadows every time because they have better cooldowns, better mitigation and almost identical spikiness. Skill floor is less meaningful there because you're already looking at the cream-of-the-crop in terms of players.

 

Thus the average mitigation given the proposed changes to buffs and before all defensive CDs should be IMO, in order:

Vanguard

Shadow

Guardian

 

I agree, except that the shadow and guardian should be identical and only slightly (~1%) behind the Vanguard. This is before you consider spikiness though. If shadow armor is nerfed in the way I propose, their spikiness will go back up slightly. It would be to the point where I would consider it fair to put shadows and vanguards on equal footing, since vanguards are already less spiky than guardians, and guardians would be less spiky than shadows (with my armor nerf proposal).

 

Incidentally, you'll note that guardians *do* fall behind Vanguards in DP, just not in DF. This is primarily a consequence of how their mitigation works. You're not going to be able to balance all tanks across all bosses, so you have to pick some sort of mean. Even with my shield and absorb buffs, guardians still fall slightly behind Vanguards on average.

[Zoom_VI]

 

Ideally, I think Guardians/Juggernauts should be buffed, and by quite a bit. Playing around with the numbers, I experimented with giving guardians a 5% bonus to shield and a 15% bonus to absorb. That was enough to bring them exactly even with vanguards (slightly behind on DF, and slightly ahead on DP). This should also give you an idea of just how far behind guardians/juggernauts are today.

 

An issue I see with this would be from a PvP perspective. If we ignore hybriding Juggs are the single most potent tank in game, primarily due to a design decision to make them both the cooldown tank and the utility tank. Currently Sin tanks and (36pt) VG tanks are about the same in performance however both are flawed. (Sin for being to spiky and VG for not enough cooldowns to negate the disadvantages of having the majority of their mitigation based off of RNG shielding and armor)

 

The 2.5 buffs will probably equalize Sin and Jugg tanks although the Sin looks like it will come out a little ahead due to being able to contribute more damage. VG tanks (non-hybrid) look like they are again become the lesser tank or poor man's Jugg as some would say. Due to lack of useful utility and being almost entirely passive mitigation based means that in PvP burst situations they have very few tools to keep themselves up and are at the mercy of RNG.

 

Buffing Juggs in the way you described would cause a much greater disparity, particularly since your doing it via shield and absorb which is considerably more strong mechanically in PvP than in it is in raids. The only way I could see such a change being made to jugs would be if it was perhaps changed a bit. By either severely cutting some of the flat mitigation talents of jugs and return what was taken in the form of more shielding (making them more RNG prone to be on par with VG) or a better way would be to cut out the "utility aspect" of the jug. I.E cutting the DR out of intercede, removing/nerfing their CC options, reevaluating talents like Guardianship and Rule of Two. Of course doing so would also cause a massive hit to QoL for jug PvP tanking as the class is already infuriated enough of always having to be chasing melee range.

 

Sin tanks with the 2.5 changes look like they will have their own OPishness just because by removing their spikiness added with the change of the PvP metagame in 2.4. they are looking to be extremely formidable. Mostly due to their potent damage pressure. This will be probably be further exacerbated by most of the coming buffs being to armor talents and flat DR, meaning that 2.5 will most likely bring the return of Sin tank in dps gear.

 

In short from a PvP perspective Juggs don't need any further buffs but rather Sins need to be toned down a little at least so they can't get away with running dps gear and pulling great damage while still being able to effectively tank as well as the other two AC

[Berjiz]

KBN, could you post the code that generated the graph? Would like to test some things but would perfer not having to write my own code from scratch.

 

Is it just or are there very few Vanguards / Powertechs in the tank discussions? They always feel so focused on Shadows and Guardians.

[KeyboardNinja]

KBN, could you post the code that generated the graph? Would like to test some things but would perfer not having to write my own code from scratch.

 

I was using Mathematica. The code which generates the graph is posted in my Tanking Stats thread (http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=616779).

 

Is it just or are there very few Vanguards / Powertechs in the tank discussions? They always feel so focused on Shadows and Guardians.

 

Too few Vanguards frequent the forums, I think. Class self-selection is one of those topics that I've been meaning to explore a bit further. In general, one's main seems to fall out of a particular personality bucket, particularly if you rolled your main early on. Guardians and Shadows just tend to be a lot more active in debates than Vanguards.

[DaftVaduhhh]

Frankly, I think that's a pretty deep game philosophy point, and so I am going to stop you right there. Here's the issue with your assertion: defensive cooldowns are not used on cooldown (at least not by good tanks). Because of this, you can't just count defensive cooldowns as part of mean mitigation (unlike offensive cooldowns, which can be weighed into DPS). This in turn poses a very significant issue when you want to make statements like "defensive CD X is worth mitigation Y".

There's where we diverge in our diverge in our philosophies and assertions: you are catering to the top 1% of the player base first and foremost, I am asking for it to be balanced against catering to the following 4-5% so that there is a player base interested and engaged in all levels of content.

 

I'm not accusing you of being intentionally elitist at all, it's just that by declaring something to be too easy (and you're right in the sense that it will be if the changes go through as originally proposed for Shadows/Sins), you are already putting a negative perception in the minds of those who take up and regurgitate this information due to a developed sense of trust that you are fully informed.

 

If everybody carries this can, I honestly think there will be backlash about the Shadow changes, because the average player just won't get how to utilise them to the fullest. Highly-skilled tanks should have no problem with any tanking class, and there should be a concession of regular cooldown usage for HM operations, particularly for guilds who will be entering in at the base gear level (such as right now, as teams enter the 2.4 operations).

 

As a shadow, I so want to agree with you. I do agree that these are skill elements, and they should be rewarded, but shadows strike me as too far beyond vanguards in 2.5. High end raid groups would take shadows every time because they have better cooldowns, better mitigation and almost identical spikiness. Skill floor is less meaningful there because you're already looking at the cream-of-the-crop in terms of players.

I apologise for not making it clearly in my initial post, but I agree with you that the initial numbers look like they've gone overboard. My issue was with the level of buffs that you proposed to Guardians, which go so far as to make them extremely close to the distribution of values on a Vanguard.

 

Currently I would pair up the following tanking classes with the following healing classes so as to best balance the strengths and weaknesses of each:

Shadow - Scoundrel

Vanguard - Sage

Guardian - Commando

 

The Shadow changes don't mess with that 'formula', they just smooth it out. Your changes once and for all quash Commando heals as a viable option IMO, and that is as bad as overbuffing Shadows.

 

I agree, except that the shadow and guardian should be identical and only slightly (~1%) behind the Vanguard. This is before you consider spikiness though. If shadow armor is nerfed in the way I propose, their spikiness will go back up slightly. It would be to the point where I would consider it fair to put shadows and vanguards on equal footing, since vanguards are already less spiky than guardians, and guardians would be less spiky than shadows (with my armor nerf proposal).

 

Incidentally, you'll note that guardians *do* fall behind Vanguards in DP, just not in DF. This is primarily a consequence of how their mitigation works. You're not going to be able to balance all tanks across all bosses, so you have to pick some sort of mean. Even with my shield and absorb buffs, guardians still fall slightly behind Vanguards on average.

This is an excellent counter point and it had fallen into my considerations; my listing was intended, as you noted earlier, as a philosophical stand-point.

 

I also recall you talking about Resilience and alluding to its contribution up against Sabre Reflect. I would suggest Reflect winds up being a more powerful tool the majority of the time, and thus is entirely comparable despite the average CD of Resilience being closer to 40s. That said they are continually refining mechanics to address this, and the latest batch of content is a fantastic example of that.

[THoK-Zeus]

There's where we diverge in our diverge in our philosophies and assertions: you are catering to the top 1% of the player base first and foremost, I am asking for it to be balanced against catering to the following 4-5% so that there is a player base interested and engaged in all levels of content.

 

I'm not accusing you of being intentionally elitist at all, it's just that by declaring something to be too easy (and you're right in the sense that it will be if the changes go through as originally proposed for Shadows/Sins), you are already putting a negative perception in the minds of those who take up and regurgitate this information due to a developed sense of trust that you are fully informed.

 

If everybody carries this can, I honestly think there will be backlash about the Shadow changes, because the average player just won't get how to utilise them to the fullest. Highly-skilled tanks should have no problem with any tanking class, and there should be a concession of regular cooldown usage for HM operations, particularly for guilds who will be entering in at the base gear level (such as right now, as teams enter the 2.4 operations).

 

 

I apologise for not making it clearly in my initial post, but I agree with you that the initial numbers look like they've gone overboard. My issue was with the level of buffs that you proposed to Guardians, which go so far as to make them extremely close to the distribution of values on a Vanguard.

 

Currently I would pair up the following tanking classes with the following healing classes so as to best balance the strengths and weaknesses of each:

Shadow - Scoundrel

Vanguard - Sage

Guardian - Commando

 

The Shadow changes don't mess with that 'formula', they just smooth it out. Your changes once and for all quash Commando heals as a viable option IMO, and that is as bad as overbuffing Shadows.

 

 

This is an excellent counter point and it had fallen into my considerations; my listing was intended, as you noted earlier, as a philosophical stand-point.

 

I also recall you talking about Resilience and alluding to its contribution up against Sabre Reflect. I would suggest Reflect winds up being a more powerful tool the majority of the time, and thus is entirely comparable despite the average CD of Resilience being closer to 40s. That said they are continually refining mechanics to address this, and the latest batch of content is a fantastic example of that.

 

In the new content Resilience is definitly (way) stronger then Sabre Reflect. For the most bosses you are just using both abilitys for their big f/t attacks (so resilience trumps with his 40 s cd). Also a number of bosses now have a lot of cleansable dots on the tanks, which makes Resilience self-cleanse again superior here.

 

For old tfb /sv nim Sabre Reflect was stronger (although the difference was not that big like in the new ops in my opinion).

 

Generally most of the sin defensive cooldowns are not that visible (3-4 medpacks per fight ; Exotech Adrenal has a way bigger Impact then on jugg/pt..) but they are very strong. I am not 100% sure whether a Juggernaut or an Assassin Tank has the better defensive cooldowns, but in the current 2 ops the sin tank (assuming you use all of them very good) could even be ahead of the jugg in terms of defensive cooldowns.

[Ecaja]

Do you know how long it takes for BW to balance classes? If we sit around and wait to see how changes will play out in reality we won't see any rebalance for around 4-6 month. That's what you want?

 

Considering i am still running into bugs i reported during beta? Yeah, i have a pretty good idea. I still think we should wait till its actually implemented.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Ecaja

[Vaidinah]

There's where we diverge in our diverge in our philosophies and assertions: you are catering to the top 1% of the player base first and foremost, I am asking for it to be balanced against catering to the following 4-5% so that there is a player base interested and engaged in all levels of content.

 

I'm not accusing you of being intentionally elitist at all, it's just that by declaring something to be too easy (and you're right in the sense that it will be if the changes go through as originally proposed for Shadows/Sins), you are already putting a negative perception in the minds of those who take up and regurgitate this information due to a developed sense of trust that you are fully informed.

 

If everybody carries this can, I honestly think there will be backlash about the Shadow changes, because the average player just won't get how to utilise them to the fullest. Highly-skilled tanks should have no problem with any tanking class, and there should be a concession of regular cooldown usage for HM operations, particularly for guilds who will be entering in at the base gear level (such as right now, as teams enter the 2.4 operations).

 

The average player doesn't play anything to their fullest nor comes even close. With the proposed changes from Bioware in 2.5, any player playing at the low level will be most effective on the Assassin/Shadow while having no weakness and having a strong set of defensive cooldowns as well. Assuming such a player just uses Dark Ward, Wither, Discharge, and Shock on cooldown while waiting for 3 HS stacks for Force Lightning and fills in the gaps with Thrash and/or Saber Strike, they will still have better mean mitigation than any other tank (but especially Juggernaughts/Guardians). They will be able to afford to wait up to 18 seconds to maintain their 4% damage reduction as well.

 

Right now, you want to get in as many 3 HS stacked Force Lightnings as possible to regain health. This is a skill element that is going to completely dumbed down as you can currently do this roughly every 12 seconds (even less with optimal conditions). That means you will have 50% more time to press random keys or run around without doing anything while losing none of your survivability. The loss in Dark Bulwark stacks is a minor loss in survivability and as stated before, you'd be able to completely ignore this skill element by spamming Dark Ward on cooldown and still have better mean mitigation than any other tank.

 

Based on Bioware's Shadow answers, it almost sounds like you can gain 2 stacks of damage reduction (2% DR) by hitting Force Lightning after 2 HS stacks and then doing it again to stack for 4%. If that ends up being true, you'd be literally able to hit your skills in order every time without any thought and still be better than every other tank and that's not even counting your defensive cooldowns, permanent damage + accuracy debuff (which is hands down the best for fights where tanks are split) and all the utility Assassins bring.

 

Currently I would pair up the following tanking classes with the following healing classes so as to best balance the strengths and weaknesses of each:

Shadow - Scoundrel

Vanguard - Sage

Guardian - Commando

 

The Shadow changes don't mess with that 'formula', they just smooth it out. Your changes once and for all quash Commando heals as a viable option IMO, and that is as bad as overbuffing Shadows.

 

I don't know what your justifications are for this arrangement. The Shadow weakness is spikiness, which is best served by having a Commando healer (armor buff + 5% DR through Supercharge). The Guardian's weakness is mean mitigation, which is best served by having a Scoundrel (highest overall healing). I don't have a 55 Vanguard and I don't play a healer often enough to know which is best for them (I'd assume a Scoundrel again).

[Berjiz]

The average player doesn't play anything to their fullest nor comes even close. With the proposed changes from Bioware in 2.5, any player playing at the low level will be most effective on the Assassin/Shadow while having no weakness and having a strong set of defensive cooldowns as well. Assuming such a player just uses Dark Ward, Wither, Discharge, and Shock on cooldown while waiting for 3 HS stacks for Force Lightning and fills in the gaps with Thrash and/or Saber Strike, they will still have better mean mitigation than any other tank (but especially Juggernaughts/Guardians). They will be able to afford to wait up to 18 seconds to maintain their 4% damage reduction as well.

 

Right now, you want to get in as many 3 HS stacked Force Lightnings as possible to regain health. This is a skill element that is going to completely dumbed down as you can currently do this roughly every 12 seconds (even less with optimal conditions). That means you will have 50% more time to press random keys or run around without doing anything while losing none of your survivability. The loss in Dark Bulwark stacks is a minor loss in survivability and as stated before, you'd be able to completely ignore this skill element by spamming Dark Ward on cooldown and still have better mean mitigation than any other tank.

You forget that the selfhealing is better than the 4% dr unless you have incoming dps like the old hms or higher. There aren't any signficant spikes either until that content. So it's clearly a nerf to the players that are just doing sms or lower. Shadows/Assasins already are the best tanks for that stuff even if you mess up a bit, however most of that content isn't exactly hard so which tank you have matters little.

[nlashbrook]

I used to actually main my assassin tank, Unimaginable was the name, until my team started doing nightmare content. Only stopped using him because having 2 sins was a little rough on the healers. I actually do hope they bring sins back up to be contenders with the other two tank, and want to re-gear him back up. One thing I'm curious to see is if this will change the way a sin tank needs to be built stat wise or not. After tanking nightmare with all 3 tanks I have to say that I like the idea of sins loosing their self heals in exchange for more armor, and juggs getting a bit of a buff to their mitigation. 2.5 can't come soon enough

[DaftVaduhhh]

In the new content Resilience is definitly (way) stronger then Sabre Reflect. For the most bosses you are just using both abilitys for their big f/t attacks (so resilience trumps with his 40 s cd). Also a number of bosses now have a lot of cleansable dots on the tanks, which makes Resilience self-cleanse again superior here.

 

For old tfb /sv nim Sabre Reflect was stronger (although the difference was not that big like in the new ops in my opinion).

 

Generally most of the sin defensive cooldowns are not that visible (3-4 medpacks per fight ; Exotech Adrenal has a way bigger Impact then on jugg/pt..) but they are very strong. I am not 100% sure whether a Juggernaut or an Assassin Tank has the better defensive cooldowns, but in the current 2 ops the sin tank (assuming you use all of them very good) could even be ahead of the jugg in terms of defensive cooldowns.

Your thinking is discounting the damage output of Reflect. For groups that don't have Smuggler/Agent DPS, Reflect is godly in that respect.

 

Threat wise, it's also a boon for groups with said DPS.

Edited October 17, 2013 by DaftVaduhhh

[kennethdale]

Your thinking is discounting the damage output of Reflect. For groups that don't have Smuggler/Agent DPS, Reflect is godly in that respect.

 

Threat wise, it's also a boon for groups with said DPS.

 

I think you're over-stating that boon. As a Jugg tank who OTs with a Sin MT I can tell you for a guaranteed fact that Saber Reflect has very rarely been used as anything other than effectively a party trick on trash. There are certain fights where it is helpful (Ops chief, for one) but the number of fights where Sin CDs are useful far outweighs the few where Saber Reflect has any usefulness. As for threat generation, its great for about 10 seconds after which you're running around for 45 seconds like a chicken with your head cut off trying to pick up mobs since it doesn't really put out that much threat compared to a DPS hitting them. On my own Sin, I have never had issues holding threat on a single target or a group. Its so much better, in fact, that on Nefra HM we have the Sin pull it and tank it for about 5 seconds before I taunt so that we don't have to waste any time waiting for me to build threat.

 

The main issue people have with SR is that it is thought to be this godly ability which takes the one cool mechanic Sins had (Shroud/Resil) and made it better when I'm not so certain that's true. Sins can cleanse with Shroud, it has a lower CD, and it deals with more damage types than SR. SR on the other hand does reflect damage and cause high threat, which in certain cases can be great but the number of mechanics you can cheese with it are much lower than Shroud.

 

People like to parrot off that Juggs have the best CD suite without mentioning that those CDs are effectively better versions of the Sin ones with much longer CDs. Which is better? It depends on the fight. There have been times on my Sin I would have killed for SR and times on my Jugg I was drooling over the idea of Shrouding something or being able to use my CDs with a little more abandon.

[Vaidinah]

You forget that the selfhealing is better than the 4% dr unless you have incoming dps like the old hms or higher. There aren't any signficant spikes either until that content. So it's clearly a nerf to the players that are just doing sms or lower. Shadows/Assasins already are the best tanks for that stuff even if you mess up a bit, however most of that content isn't exactly hard so which tank you have matters little.

 

For SMs and lower, sure, but on HM and NiM, a person playing at a low level on their tank shouldn't be able to do so well and more importantly, not outperform the other tanks if those players are playing at a higher level.

[Berjiz]

For SMs and lower, sure, but on HM and NiM, a person playing at a low level on their tank shouldn't be able to do so well and more importantly, not outperform the other tanks if those players are playing at a higher level.

That problem is easily fixed with shorter duration(like 15 sec or so) on the stacks and have the stacks reset when refreshed like Dark Ward.

[Zoom_VI]

My VG is still waiting for that five second god cooldown that jugs and sins have

[TorvinAugeri]

five second god cooldown

 

five second

 

Feel free to keep waiting.

[Hockaday]

You guys really have to go and try and ruin a good thing don't ya...

[Amarath]

I wanna say i have played swtor off and on but i recently came back to play a sin. I don't think i will now because without self healing i might as well role a power tech or something i a typically play solo or maybe heroic FPs. Disappointed but the removal of a tree with self heal tree (a long CD panic button doesn't count).

The issue i see arising is that sin's will be op in tanking , less fun in solo/small group, and be nerffed later to compensate.

[Calvin_Mago]

If you're going to buff Jugg tanks for PVE, you should take something away from them for PVP, such as a nerf to the set bonus to intercede, or else they will always get preference as the main tank (other than some dps hybrid comps).

[Zoom_VI]

If you're going to buff Jugg tanks for PVE, you should take something away from them for PVP, such as a nerf to the set bonus to intercede, or else they will always get preference as the main tank (other than some dps hybrid comps).

^^this

 

I recently unretired my jug tank, who currently doesn't even have half conq, isn't optimized or augmented at all, has 29k life and a terrible rotation. My Vangaurd tnak is near full Obroan, fully augmented and min/maxed, and over a years of experience with it.

 

My healer has both a operative and scoundrel at about equalt gear. When I first unretired my jug the healer was like, I dunno if this si going to work, you should roll a PT to be beefy like your VG. I then ran a set of warzones with him on my jug and after those he was like "I like your jug way better, you take no more damage than you do on your VG" Not to mention I broke my VG's 8man wz protection record within a week of playing my jug.

 

I mean really if my jug gets low I pop a cd. If someone else gets low I just use some CC, if another person gets low I use some more CC, and then I use another CC just because I can.

I have no clue why BW decided Juggs should be the utility tank, the CC tank, and the DcD tank - its insane, although the 2.5 Sin buffs may put those two AC on par. Leaves my VG back on the bottom of the Tank totempole, but I delt with that from1.2-2.0 and I will do it again.

[KeyboardNinja]

^^this

 

I recently unretired my jug tank, who currently doesn't even have half conq, isn't optimized or augmented at all, has 29k life and a terrible rotation. My Vangaurd tnak is near full Obroan, fully augmented and min/maxed, and over a years of experience with it.

 

My healer has both a operative and scoundrel at about equalt gear. When I first unretired my jug the healer was like, I dunno if this si going to work, you should roll a PT to be beefy like your VG. I then ran a set of warzones with him on my jug and after those he was like "I like your jug way better, you take no more damage than you do on your VG" Not to mention I broke my VG's 8man wz protection record within a week of playing my jug.

 

I mean really if my jug gets low I pop a cd. If someone else gets low I just use some CC, if another person gets low I use some more CC, and then I use another CC just because I can.

I have no clue why BW decided Juggs should be the utility tank, the CC tank, and the DcD tank - its insane, although the 2.5 Sin buffs may put those two AC on par. Leaves my VG back on the bottom of the Tank totempole, but I delt with that from1.2-2.0 and I will do it again.

 

I actually feel pretty darn powerful on my shadow tank in PvP even today, now that I'm running not-PvE gear. I've literally done things like surviving solo on a side node in CW against 4-5 of the opposing team while waiting for my team to respawn and/or rotate. Granted, some of that is gear, and a large part of it is the opposition simply failing to focus target, but I don't think I would have been able to do it if the class were particularly far behind the other tanks in PvP.

 

(incidentally, I've seen jugg tanks perform similar feats as well)

 

PvP tank balance is really hard to judge. It varies so much based on what the opposition is doing, how well they focus fire, what your healers are like, and even how good of a tank you are. If you aren't guard swapping and peeling appropriately, you will take less damage just as a function of not doing your job. Not saying that's what was happening to you, but it's a factor to consider in general. All I'm saying is that it's really, really hard to take the results from a couple warzones and point at one class or another and talk about balance.

 

The changes I propose would definitely make Juggs a fair bit sturdier in PvP, especially given the abundance of force/tech attacks relative to melee/ranged. Whether that is overpowered is definitely an open question. I think defensive cooldowns (where Juggs are strongest) are definitely more impactful in PvP than they are in PvE, especially in arenas due to the reset. I don't know. Balance is really tricky. I think the changes I proposed make mathematical sense, particularly in PvE, but they would need to be tested very carefully to ensure that they don't unbalance the PvP metagame.