Tanking. Stick on the gold star or try to gather up all aggro

[loudent]

Hey All,

 

I'm leveling up a jedi guardian and I have a question about flashpoints because I can see it going either way. As a tank is it just my job to hold the gold start bosses agro and let everyone worry about the silver ones or should I try to gather up agro from as many mobs as possible (and possibly lose agro to a dps that is focusing on the boss and not the silvers)?

 

(obviously if the healer is getting swarmed with silvers I need to do something about that).

[ScarletBlaze]

Hey All,

 

I'm leveling up a jedi guardian and I have a question about flashpoints because I can see it going either way. As a tank is it just my job to hold the gold start bosses agro and let everyone worry about the silver ones or should I try to gather up agro from as many mobs as possible (and possibly lose agro to a dps that is focusing on the boss and not the silvers)?

 

(obviously if the healer is getting swarmed with silvers I need to do something about that).

 

I don't have a tank but what our tanks do in the flashpoints we do (we are all lv 55) is the tank keeps on the gold/boss while the dps handles the silver ones. Our tank does watch out when I have too many on top attacking my sage as if I have to fight the silver it takes away from me healing but the dps can do this as well as our dps tend to do that as well so the tank can focus on the gold/boss, but that would depend on how well the team works together.

 

I don't run pugs so my experience is limited to my guild .

[Kuciwalker]

Yes, you should try to get all of the mobs. As you are learning, don't beat yourself up if you fail to do this, but while you are leveling is the best time to learn how to get and maintain aggro on multiple targets.

 

The DPS should be focusing on the weakest mobs first (rule of thumb). So if you do lose a mob to DPS it will be the weakest, not the strongest.

 

Sure, some DPS don't follow proper kill order. You should just take this as a challenge and do your best to hold all of the aggro anyway

[loudent]

Thanks, my confusion probably stems from the fact that I've been pugging my way through the flashpoints. I assumed the dps would be wiping up the silvers but then I'd notice the healer getting swarmed so I'd jump in to clear that out and then the dps would pull agro on the gold start one.

 

Made me wonder if I was missing something and what the best course of action is.

[Elzen]

The DPS should (with very few exceptions) never start on the golds. So if they pull the gold off you due to anything but AoE, they are doing it wrong. In most cases, they should kill the small stuff first, then go on to big stuff.

 

As for you, with the above in mind, ignore the standard mobs. As for strong (silver) vs. elite (gold), the strongs often do more damage than the elites, so they should be your focus. Ideally both DPS are attacking the same mob so that you don't have to split your attention.

 

What level/class are you? The ability to keep AoE threat is really dramatically different between the classes while leveling.

[MGNMTTRN]

Juggernaut AOE threat is far behind that of Powertechs and Assassins. And it gets worse at level 55. So as a Jugg, focus on the center of mass and/or the strong+ enemies; That means get minimal aggro on the golds and silvers, while simultaneously stunning and lightly damaging the weak enemies. In a flashpoint this might entail Saber Throwing the strongest enemy, then leaping toward a group of 3 or 4 weak enemies, smashing them, then focusing single-target threat on the strong enemy. Meanwhile you can move toward any silvers and Force Push them into position close to the weak enemies so your dps can easily hit the silver with AOE.

 

It's the tank's job to minimize incoming party damage, so do your best to tank all enemies. However, there are a few nuances:

• Make sure that if the pull has a healer in it, you don't try to tank the healer. I have seen many tanks try to tank things like the healing droids in the trash pulls between SNV Thrasher and Olok. Since the healer isn't doing damage, it's not like getting 'aggro' on it is going to reduce damage that the party takes
  
• If a caster is in the pull, even if the caster has hard-hitting abilities, you might not need to tank it for the first few seconds. Something like Saber throw, Leap (to interrupt cast), Smash, interrupt, Crushing blow, backhand, interrupt, force push can lock down the caster's powerful abilities without necessarily causing you to get aggro on the enemy. This is helpful if there is another direct damage enemy in the pack that needs tanking more urgently
  
• If the pack has many weak enemies, your party's best damage mitigation will probably come from you leaping into the center of the pack of weak enemies, Smashing (to stun them for a few seconds), using Crushing Blow (to stun them for a few more seconds), then using Intimidating Roar (to stun them until they take more damage). Those 5+ seconds of lockdown on 5+ enemies can sometimes be worth diverting your attention from a strong enemy for a while. As you are using these AOE stun abilities you can tank the strongest enemies and begin single-target threat on them. Obviously if possible you should bring the strong+ enemies into your AOE radius using taunts so that you can get threat on them more easily and DPS can hit them with AOEs
  
• If melee enemies have suitably high threat against you and are within 30m of you, they'll chase you down. Obviously taking 0 damage is better than taking some damage, so it can sometimes be useful to execute an opener like Leap, Smash, Crushing Blow, AOE taunt,, <Push+Leap OR Intercede to ranged friendly>. This should get you out of melee range of the melee enemies but should establish aggro on them. For a few seconds they'll be attacking nothing because they'll have to run to you first. Follow up with Intimidating Roar for even more time spent not attacking anything. Also kiting does have a discernible effect against melee enemies. There's no reason not to do it so long as you're getting attacks off every 1.5 seconds.
  

 

Powertechs really have no excuse for not tanking all the enemies in a pull. Between DFA and Flame Sweep their AOE threat is trivialized. Assassins have equally easy, if not easier, AOE threat, but they can sometimes die within the first few seconds of engagement against a large pack of ranged enemies due to extreme squishiness/spikiness. If you can survive the pull as an Assassin you should get aggro on all of them.

Edited November 19, 2013 by MGNMTTRN

[ekimmak]

Powertechs really have no excuse for not tanking all the enemies in a pull. Between DFA and Flame Sweep their AOE threat is trivialized. Assassins have equally easy, if not easier, AOE threat, but they can sometimes die within the first few seconds of engagement against a large pack of ranged enemies due to extreme squishiness/spikiness. If you can survive the pull as an Assassin you should get aggro on all of them.

 

Of course powertechs can have trouble holding AoE threat. It's called "Overenthusiastic knockback", and when the DPS get it, it makes holding aggro incredibly frustrating.

[CIhe]

For Jug/Guardians sweeping slash/cyclone slash is under utilized. It can actually build some pretty decent threat despite what seems like a not very big damaging attack. (with the talents). smash -> crushing blow -> enrage -> spam sweeping slash can build up a pretty good aoe threat buffer. Its now discharge/whither spam however but we Jugs work with what we have.

[steave]

Hey All,

 

I'm leveling up a jedi guardian and I have a question about flashpoints because I can see it going either way. As a tank is it just my job to hold the gold start bosses agro and let everyone worry about the silver ones or should I try to gather up agro from as many mobs as possible (and possibly lose agro to a dps that is focusing on the boss and not the silvers)?

 

(obviously if the healer is getting swarmed with silvers I need to do something about that).

 

As you can probably tell from the other responses, it's gonna depend on the situation, in some cases you'll need to focus on the gold(s), but in other cases you can go get them all. As a general rule of thumb I'd say that if a pack has 2 or more golds spread out so you can't get them all in your aoe range, focus on the golds and just use saber throw before the charge to get a little bit of aggro on something else and let the dps handle the rest, but if it's only 1 gold or they're close enough to each other that you can sweep both of them just do that and then do one or 2 single target attacks on the remaining enemies tp keep them off the healer until the dps can get on them. If you have a DPS that's not following the kill order and goes for the gold, wait a second or 2 after he pulls it and then taunt it back with single taunt and continue gathering up the rest, repeat with aoe taunt after if necessary and by the time that has also expired you should have finished gathering everything up and single target taunt should be back off CD so you can taunt the gold again and start building single target threat on it.

 

A typical pull for me on my level 37 jugg (also have a 55 guardian, but this guy is leveling himself so I'll assume not all abilities are available) generally goes roughly in this order:

1: Sabre throw on a ranged mob separated from the main group

2: Charge the gold or something close to it (whichever will let you catch more mobs in your aoe range) and sweep them. If there's more than one gold, charge to one of them and push it to the other before doing this. Add Guardian Slash if you have it for the mitigation boost. After level 51, throw in sabre reflect too for damage reduction and greatly increased threat.

3. Blade storm something that wasn't quite close enough for sweep, but that's still in the 10m range of BS while running any other nearby clusters of mobs, or alternatively get into position to push+charge one of the nearby mobs into one of those clusters to get there faster.

4. Here it gets less static - if you can get 2 or more mobs in range of it at the same time, use 2x cyclone slash to both get decent damage on them and apply the accuracy debuff to them, otherwise sundering strike+riposte on the first target you reach (to get focus for the rest), followed by blade storm > hilt strike > slash depending on what's off CD. Use combat focus if you run out at any point during this.

Force stasis is also an option, but I prefer to save my stuns as backup.

5. By the time you've gone trough all of them this way, charge should be off CD and your AOE taunt about to expire on the gold (if bad dps forced you to use taunts on them), so charge back to the golds and do your single target rotation, just keep an eye on the mobs close to you and switch over for a second or two if you think you're about to loose aggro on something, blade storm is great for this due to its extra range (sweep will keep anything in actual melee range of you on you easily enough).

 

Of course, every pull is different - the above is a rough example of how it usually turns out, but the group you're in as well as the composition and positioning of the mobs will require you to adjust it on the fly, but that requires you to develop a feel for the class and role in general. When I'm tanking I don't actually think about any of this stuff, it just comes naturally at this point.

 

MGNM has a good point about sweep and guardian slash having a stun effect, but at least personally I don't really think much about the rank of the mobs other than the gold/not gold distinction, the small white markers for strong doesn't stand out as much so I generally just charge in and keep the aggro rather than focusing on maximizing stuns since the damage from targets affected by it is pretty low anyway, so it's not worth the time to look for that IMO - as long as you hold the aggro, the healer isnät gonna have any problems keeping you alive regardless.

I definitely disagree with his recommendation to kite enemies too unless you have a special reason for it, it makes it hard for DPS to position AOEs and forces melee to run around, lowering their normal DPS too, as well as just being generally annoying for them. On trash pulls the extra reduction just isn't needed anyway, and on boss fights it may cause enrage issues unless you're overgeared, and if you're overgeared, the extra mitigation is uneccecery again.

 

Finally, spec advise while leveling: I always take Single Saber Mastery from Vigilance and Swelling Winds from Focus before I start going up Defense - as long as you can keep all the mobs on you your increased armor plus whatever other defensives you manage to get will be plenty to stay alive, but the weakness of a jugg/guard tank is still aoe threat, so the boost to that plus the 3% defense from SSM and the more reliably applied accuracy debuff from sweep is worth it IMO.

[Marb]

MGNMTTRN said it all.

 

Another thing that is phenomenally easier on a PT is the ability to "tap" enemies with rapid shots. This is something I really miss about the PT, as it made tanking large spread out groups so much easier to manage.

 

As a guard it takes a lot more movement and micro to get that bit of damage out on every target. This is another reason why it helps when dps go after the weaker mobs first, because it makes the job of taking that initial threat away from the healer a lot easier.

 

MGNMTTRN really hit it on the head about using your CC's. Smash, scream, crushing blow all have cc effects on normal enemies. Adding to that, backhand and force choke can lockdown most gold mobs and intimidating roar has an added niche role as a poor mans AoE interrupt. The guard has a lot of options when it comes to control.

Edited November 19, 2013 by Marb

[loudent]

Thanks everyone. Good advice all around.

[Excise]

For Jug/Guardians sweeping slash/cyclone slash is under utilized. It can actually build some pretty decent threat despite what seems like a not very big damaging attack. (with the talents). smash -> crushing blow -> enrage -> spam sweeping slash can build up a pretty good aoe threat buffer. Its now discharge/whither spam however but we Jugs work with what we have.

 

Agreed, but Cyclone/Sweeping Slash chugs through Focus/Rage pretty quickly. Using it regularly along with all the other required can be tough.

[SithTyre]

For Jug/Guardians sweeping slash/cyclone slash is under utilized. It can actually build some pretty decent threat despite what seems like a not very big damaging attack. (with the talents). smash -> crushing blow -> enrage -> spam sweeping slash can build up a pretty good aoe threat buffer. Its now discharge/whither spam however but we Jugs work with what we have.

 

Don't forget saber reflect also does an aoe threat increaser.

[SithTyre]

Agreed, but Cyclone/Sweeping Slash chugs through Focus/Rage pretty quickly. Using it regularly along with all the other required can be tough.

 

Meh, one sundering gets you right back to do a few more.

[Kufuffelupagus]

Try and get aggro on everything to minimise damage to your group. There's a lot of ways to do this depending on your level and abilities, but here's a quick list (some of which have been mentioned):

 

* Leaping to the middle of a group of enemies and using AoE attacks (Cyclone Slash and Sweep are definitely under-utilised by most; Guardians, check your Single Saber Mastery skill, it says in Soresu form it will increase threat generated by these two attacks. Pair that with the damage buff skill in the right-hand DPS tree and you got great AoE tanking.)

 

* Using Saber Reflect, a level 51 ability, after your opener (works only on ranged attacks iirc)

 

* Depending on the situation, I may Saber throw to one enemy off to the side, then leap to another enemy off to the side, force push it into the pack, and leap to a different enemy in the tidy group of red and use AoE

 

* If you have a melee mob and are worried about losing aggro on them, use Force Slow so you have time to see them turn to someone else and start to (very slowly) run off

 

* You can sometimes ignore standard and weak enemies grouped together (especially if your DPS are Trooper, Gunslinger, or other AoE classes like Balance Sage or Sweepers) and hit Strongs, Elites, and Champions, because if it's not going to last two seconds it's not going to hit anyone much. You know what I mean- you're in a flashpoint and a group of three or more standard enemies comes out of a door and there's no explosive tank to use... If a Trooper DPS wants to Mortar Volley them that's fine, you can spend your time getting aggro on the others

 

* If you have two enemies of the same strength, say two turrets, mark one and throw your saber at the other one to get initial aggro and then use your threat rotation on the marked one the DPS are hitting. If the DPS don't hit the other one you will keep aggro on it because you're the only one who's hit it.

 

Good tip- don't bother finishing off enemies. If it's nearly dead move on to the next target so you can get a couple of attacks on it and get threat before the DPS come in- or, if you didn't have threat on it already, to get it. The number of times a tank has been hell-bent on killing something while something else is hitting my healer...