KBN's Stress-Free Guide to the Tank Rotation

[KeyboardNinja]

With the changes in 2.5, shadows/assassins have (in general) been finding that the rotation feels a lot more challenging, particularly on bosses with high movement. Also, there have been a lot of complaints that the "new" rotation is a lot more static and rigid than it has ever been in the past, with no time to spare for utility powers and such. This guide is an attempt to address some of those concerns, as well as generally inform. I'm going to steer clear of the "more challenging" and "new rotation" points except for the following note: nothing about the rotation has changed aside from the 12 second timer, which is 3 seconds longer than the pre-2.5 rotation.

 

Oh, this is also not a complete guide to shadow/assassin tanking. I've considered writing such a guide in the past, but frankly Fuyri and Tennebras have that pretty well covered, and while I don't agree with every detail in their guides, I agree with everything important. Thus, I will refer you to their guides together with my general tank gearing post for more in-depth information things that are not rotation.

 

Video

 

 

This video was done in full Dread Forged gear sans implants (which are Kell Dragon), mitigation itemized according to the "Average" profile from my tanking stats post, and all Force Wielder armorings and hilt. Quesh world boss (so that I get defense/shield based regen). 4 minute duration.

 

The point of this video is to exemplify how precisely I go about maintaining my Shadow Protection/Dark Protection stacks in a boss fight. You'll notice that at no point do the stacks fall off. In fact, at very few points are the stacks less than 3 seconds from expiry, though this is harder to see since buffs do not have timers on them without mouse-over. The Quesh world boss isn't the best thing for demonstrating what to do here, because it lacks significant movement, but it gets the job done. There is a brief movement phase at the 3 minute mark, which shows what you do when you're forced to move around at critical points in your rotation (i.e. during or immediately following your channel). The accuracy debuff is maintained at all times, except for a couple of seconds where I simply made a mistake in not refreshing it slightly earlier. Kinetic Ward/Dark Ward is also given 100% uptime without premature refresh, though given that I'm defending/resisting everything the boss does, KW/DW uptime is much less exciting than it could be.

 

One key thing to notice here is that I don't actually need to finish any of my channels! The first tick is always sufficient, because I never let the stacks drop in the first place. Thus, if I had to, I could keep moving 100% of the time and never, ever stand still to channel without losing any mitigation (*cough* PvP *cough*). On an actual boss fight, force management does tend to get a bit tricky if you're not allowed to complete the channel (as Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning is force-positive), but you have enough leeway in the rotation that you can always squeeze in enough Saber Strikes to keep up with your force.

 

Explanation

 

In a single sentence, the shadow/assassin rotation can be summarized as this: use Project/Shock and Slow Time/Wither exactly on cooldown, and channel Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning as soon as you have 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness.

 

The structure of the rotation is exactly as follows:

 

proc1 > proc2 > gcd1 > gcd2 > gcd3? > proc3 > gcd4? > gcd5? > channel

 

When I say "procX", I basically mean either Project/Shock or Slow Time/Wither; which is to say, abilities which proc Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness. You will always be able to use both Slow Time/Wither and Project/Shock consecutively immediately following your channel (Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning) unless something has happened which caused the rotation to get out of sync. Falling out of sync happens most often when you have to move away from a boss and then "reopen" the fight after a phase change. Coming back into a reopening with more than 0 and less than 3 stacks results in abilities drifting out of the structure I have above. In that case, just fall back on the maxim of "use it on cooldown" and you'll be fine.

 

So you use two procing abilities immediately following your channel. Provided that things aren't out of sync, they will always be off cooldown. In fact, provided that things aren't out of sync, the abilities should be precisely the following:

 

Slow Time/Wither > Project/Shock > …

 

This is because you always (barring falling out of sync) proc your third stack using Project/Shock due to its shorter cooldown, which means that the first procing ability off cooldown will be Slow Time/Wither, with Project/Shock coming off CD immediately thereafter. If both Project/Shock and Slow Time/Wither are off cooldown at the same time, Project/Shock has higher priority (the reasoning here will be explained in a moment).

 

Now you have essentially three GCDs (labeled "gcd1" through "gcd3") which are filler while you're waiting for Project/Shock to come off cooldown (as it will come off CD faster than Slow Time/Wither). You can use these GCDs for whatever you want. They are only significant in that they increase your DPS or utility. Thus, you can move around in these GCDs, get stunned, push adds, go AFK, etc…

 

Traditionally, these GCDs are filled with some combination of Force Breach/Discharge (if the accuracy debuff is falling off), Double Strike/Thrash, Shadow Strike/Maul and Spinning Strike/Assassinate. Double Strike/Thrash, Shadow Strike/Maul and Spinning Strike/Assassinate are particularly exciting as they have a chance to finish the cooldown on Project/Shock and essentially abbreviate your rotation. This proc is exciting when it happens, but ultimately it isn't necessary! You do not need this proc to maintain your stacks, it just makes the rotation more dynamic, that's all.

 

Assuming that you either get no procs or you had to fill these three GCDs with something other than Double Strike/Thrash, Shadow Strike/Maul or Spinning Strike/Assassinate, then Project/Shock will come off cooldown in exactly the "proc3" position listed in the rotation structure above. Use it immediately. You have now proc'd exactly three stacks of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness. The optimal thing to do in terms of threat and rotational safety is to channel Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning immediately and start the rotation over from the beginning. This is what I do most of the time. However, you are also perfectly free to inject two additional GCDs before you channel, though the second GCD is playing with fire unless your connection is very lag-free. These GCDs are new in 2.5, since it was previously utterly mandatory to channel as often as you possibly could, whereas now there is no particular benefit in channeling before the stacks are about to expire (aside from extra threat).

 

For the above reason, I tend to reserve gcd4 (and if necessary, gcd5) for Spinning Strike/Assassinate if it is up (since this is optimal in terms of DPS), Force Breach/Discharge if the accuracy debuff will expire in less than 6 seconds (I do this at least twice in the video), or any utility powers that I need to apply. I try very hard not to use gcd5 at all, since I know that I'm far from perfect in terms of executing the rotation, and I would rather refresh the stacks a GCD early rather than risk them falling off. If I'm not in the execute phase, no utilities are needed and the accuracy debuff is secure, I'll just channel right away here as it is the optimal thing to do in terms of damage and threat, in addition to making the stack refresh a bit more secure.

 

Once the channel is finished, you start the rotation block from the top. Note that, because of the Particle Acceleration/Energize proc, it is entirely possible that your rotation will actually look like this:

 

Slow Time/Wither > Project/Shock > Double Strike/Thrash (proc) > Project/Shock > Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

 

It's very nice when this happens, because it means that you're refreshing your stacks after only four GCDs, which is to say 6 seconds or half the duration of the buff. Generally, when this happens, I will dither around a bit and maybe toss in an extra Double Strike/Thrash after Project/Shock to see if I can reset the cooldown before I channel, essentially amortizing the luck that I saw in the current block and making the next block a bit easier.

 

Just to reemphasize the point: the Particle Acceleration/Energize proc is not needed to maintain your stacks! If you don't believe me, go practice your rotation on the training dummy while standing at 8 meters (out of melee range). As long as you use Project/Shock and Slow Time/Wither on cooldown, you will always be able to refresh your stacks with exactly 3 seconds to spare (corresponding to the gcd4 and gcd5 slots). Always. Because Particle Acceleration/Energize isn't essential, or even a survivability gain (as it was pre-2.5), you shouldn't fear using Shadow Strike/Maul or Spinning Strike/Assassinate instead of Double Strike/Thrash whenever they're up, despite the fact that they have a lower proc chance. You also shouldn't be concerned about space in which to use your utility powers, like Force Breach/Discharge, since foregoing the proc on Project/Shock is not going to have any effect on whether or not you can refresh the stacks in time.

 

Thus, while the position of your procing abilities (especially the first two) is extremely rigid, most of the shadow/assassin rotation is actually quite dynamic and free to change and shift in response to situational requirements and DPS-increasing procs (such as Shadow Wrap/Conspirator's Cloak). The addition of gcd4 and gcd5 in particular is very, very welcome and represents a significant loosening in the strictness of the rotation from what it was pre-2.5, where gcd4 and gcd5 couldn't exist due to the need to channel ASAP.

 

Project/Shock vs Slow Time/Wither

 

I mentioned earlier that you always want to use Project/Shock before Slow Time/Wither whenever you have the option to do so. The reason for this is quite simple: it gives you a free additional GCD without making the channel timing any tighter. Consider these two alternatives (assuming no procs):

 

Project/Shock > Slow Time/Wither > gcd1 > gcd2 > Project/Shock > Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

Slow Time/Wither > Project/Shock > gcd1 > gcd2 > gcd3 > Project/Shock > Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

 

Both rotations are bounded entirely by the 6 second cooldown on Project/Shock. In every rotation block, you are essentially waiting for your second Project/Shock to come off cooldown in order to get your third stack of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness. This is true regardless of which ability (Project/Shock or Slow Time/Wither) you use first. However, using Project/Shock first means that the rotation block is at its absolute minimum in terms of duration, whereas putting Slow Time/Wither first adds a mandatory GCD at the start of the block, delaying the end of the cycle by 1.5 seconds.

 

Thus, another way to look at the rotation is purely in terms of Project/Shock. Basically, we have the following:

 

gcd1'? > Project/Shock > gcd2' > gcd3' > gcd4' > Project/Shock

 

Assuming no procs, this is the shortest block duration possible. The four GCDs around Project/Shock (annotated with the ' character to differentiate from previous use of the labels) will always include exactly one Slow Time/Wither. Thus, every rotation block has at least two spare GCDs (out of five) in which you can inject any one-GCD ability without consequence. In the optimal case, the Slow Time/Wither usage will come between the two Project/Shock activations. When this happens, the optional gcd1' simply disappears, leaving only the three GCDs in the middle and shortening the entire block by 1.5 seconds. This is an optimal case, since it means that you have built 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness with an enormous amount of time to spare. This leaves you the widest margins for utilities and fight mechanics such as movement, stuns, knockbacks, tank swaps, etc.

 

In a sense, the optional gcd1' positioned before Project/Shock in the above block diagram is actually part of a set of three GCDs which can be placed anywhere in the rotation block. More fully:

 

gcd1'? > Project/Shock > gcd2' > gcd3' > gcd4' > Project/Shock > gcd5'? > gcd6'? > channel

 

When we use Project/Shock first in this block, we are liberating ourselves to place gcd1', gcd5' and gcd6' anywhere in the rotation without delaying the channel (or remove them entirely, if that's what is situationally best). When we cannot use Project/Shock first in the block, we are forcing ourselves to use one of these three precious GCDs in a very specific place: at the start of the block. This is true even when that GCD is being spent on Slow Time/Wither. This removes flexibility, since it means that we can no longer drop these GCDs if we experience downtime during the block (i.e. spend the GCDs on "empty" space, likely being knocked back or moving). It makes a situational decision about the tail end of the rotation before we know what the situation of the fight will be at the tail end of the rotation, which is why we don't want to do this if we can help it.

 

This implies a very strong maxim about the shadow/assassin tank rotation: USE PROJECT/SHOCK AS OFTEN AS POSSIBLE. When you delay the first Project/Shock in your rotation block, you are effectively betting your stacks on the hope that you won't have any delays in using your second Project/Shock. Don't do this! Project/Shock will always, always be off cooldown at the very latest in the second GCD of every block.

 

I'll make this simple: if you don't use Project/Shock in either the first (optimally) or second GCD after you channel Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning, you're doing it wrong. If you're having trouble maintaining your Shadow Projection/Dark Protection stacks, this is probably why.

 

Note that this implies the ideal opener for a shadow/assassin tank, just based on priorities, is the following:

 

Force Pull > Project/Shock > Slow Time/Wither > Force Breach/Discharge > Double Strike/Thrash > Project/Shock > (Force Potency/Recklessness) Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

 

Following this opener, you will have a block which looks like this:

 

Slow Time/Wither > Project/Shock > gcd1 > gcd2 > gcd3 > Project/Shock > gcd4? > Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

 

Barring any fight mechanics – because you know, those totally aren't a thing – all of your subsequent rotation blocks will look like this second block above, with varying abilities placed in gcd1 through gcd3 (and potentially eliminating these GCDs if Particle Acceleration/Energize procs early) and optional abilities being applied in the one GCD following Project/Shock as necessary.

 

Force Management

 

I'm not going to say much here, since honestly on most fights, force management is really, REALLY easy. This is probably the number one reason why vanguard/powertech and (especially) guardian/juggernaut tanks consider shadow/assassin tanks to be extremely easy-mode. We just don't have to think about managing our force 90% of the time.

 

However, there are situations where this isn't the case. This is most noticeable when off-tanking, since we miss out on almost 40% of your resource generation by not shielding/defending attacks (the skill tree tooltips are bugged, FYI). There are also some bosses which don't hit frequently enough to keep up with the force drain of our rotation (Dash'roode and Grob'thok being decent examples). Finally, there are some situations even on average hit-rate bosses where force can become an issue for mechanical reasons. For example, if you get unlucky with the droids on Nefra, you may find yourself being forced to consistently break your channels in order to move out of the circle. When this happens, the rotation becomes much more resource-constrained than is ideal.

 

Fortunately, there's more than enough room in the rotation to account for these situations. The solution is to essentially go into all-out efficiency mode, where "efficiency" is code for "boredom". This rotation looks like the following:

 

Slow Time/Wither > Project/Shock > Saber Strike > Saber Strike > Saber Strike > Project/Shock > Saber Strike > Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

 

Yawn…

 

This rotation has the following costs: 20 + 26 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 26 + 0 + 30 = 102 force. The total duration of this rotation is 9 GCDs, or 13.5 seconds. During that time, assuming no regen procs from shield/defense, we will regenerate 10.4 * 13.5 = 140.4 force, which means that we are actually force-positive here by 38.4 force. Thus, if you find yourself in a situation where you're running very low on force, throw in a rotation block which looks like the above and you should find yourself back into safe waters.

 

The important thing, really, is just to make sure that you have enough force to keep Project/Shock on cooldown and use Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning before the stacks expire. The easiest rule of thumb to accomplish this is to always ensure that you have at least 26 + 30 - 15.6 = 41 force at the end of gcd3. Remember this rule of thumb for resource management and you should have absolutely no force-related issues maintaining your stacks.

 

Most of the time, I don't pay very much attention to my force bar. This is because, most of the time, I don't need to.

 

Expert Refinements

 

One particularly nice refinement to the rotation structure given above was suggested by Tenebras. Specifically, rather than channeling Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning as soon as you have 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness (as used to be optimal), glance at your Shadow Protection/Dark Protection buff to see if you have a little bit of time left on it. If you have a GCD to spare, then inject a Double Strike/Thrash, Spinning Strike/Assassinate or Shadow Strike/Maul. It doesn't actually matter what you put here, as we'll see in a second.

 

Practically, this alters the structure to be the following:

 

Project/Shock > Slow Time/Wither > gcd1 > gcd2 > Project/Shock > gcd3 > Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning

 

The massive, massive advantage to injecting gcd3, rather than channeling immediately, is that you now have aligned the cooldown of Project/Shock with the tail end of Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning. It doesn't matter what you do in gcd3, Project/Shock will always be off cooldown following your channel! This means that you can reliably put Project/Shock first, and thus cut a full GCD off of your next proc delay on Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (as explained in the previous section).

 

This is most definitely something that requires a bit of practice though. If you had some delay before your first Project/Shock, or if you had to delay your second one for whatever reason (less common), then you need to straight into your channel to avoid losing your stacks. The easiest way to do this, actually, is to just count GCDs. The buff from Shadow Protection/Dark Protection lasts precisely 12 seconds, which is 8 GCDs. You want to leave a spare GCD to account for lag and movement and such, so that's 7 GCDs that you can use. Project/Shock and Slow Time/Wither take the first two, and Project/Shock rounds out the second-to-last GCD. You will always have at most 2 GCDs between Slow Time/Wither and Project/Shock (possibly less), which means that you can rely on there being not just one, but two GCDs to spare at the end unless you had to delay your first Project/Shock.

 

This is really the kicker. If you can use Project/Shock immediately following Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning, then you're absolutely safe to inject the extra melee attack prior to channeling. If you had to delay by a single GCD, then you're still safe, but you need to start watching out. If you delay by more than one GCD, or if you have to move a lot in the middle of the rotation (delaying the second Project/Shock), then you probably need to go straight into the channel just to be safe.

 

This is a situational adjustment to the rotation, and definitely something that takes a while to become accustomed to. It makes the biggest difference in DPS once you hit the execute phase, since it allows you to use Spinning Strike/Assassinate almost on cooldown, rather than only once per rotation cycle. It also increases the effective crit chance on Project/Shock by a very sizable amount, as well as increasing the number of Shadow Strike/Maul activations throughout the fight. In short, it's a pretty noticeable DPS jump, on top of giving you better control over the margins on refreshing your buff.

 

The only place where I categorically do not use this trick is in the opener. Double Strike/Thrash just doesn't do enough threat for me to be confident holding agro while using it. Additionally, injecting that extra GCD throws off the timing of the rotation with respect to the taunt debuff, forcing me to either delay my first taunt (almost always resulting in an agro rip), or to potentially break my Force Potency/Recklessness-enhanced channel in order to AoE taunt back if agro is ripped immediately after the taunt debuff falls off (in the exact middle of the channel). In short, it's not great. Thus, I still use the "channel as soon as possible" opener, and then start injecting the pre-channel melee attack as soon as I have the margins after the first rotation.

 

Hard Priority Queue

 

In summary, you want to observe the following priority queue for optimal shadow/assassin mitigation, threat and DPS:

 

1. Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (if 3 stacks of HS/HD and <1.5s on Shadow Protection/Dark Protection)
   
2. Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (if 3 stacks of HS/HD and MECHANICS INCOMING!!!1!)
   
3. Project/Shock (if <3 stacks of HS/HD)
   
4. Slow Time/Wither (if <3 stacks of HS/HD)
   
5. Force Breach/Discharge (if accuracy debuff expiring)
   
6. Spinning Strike/Assassinate (if above 51 force)
   
7. Force Potency/Recklessness + Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (if 3 stacks of HS/HD)
   
8. Shadow Strike/Maul (if above 46 force)
   
9. Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning (if 3 stacks of HS/HD)
   
10. Double Strike/Thrash (if above 49 force)
    
11. Saber Strike
    

 

You'll notice that optimal use of Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning falls in multiple places on the priority queue, depending on your procs, the fight, available cooldowns (i.e. Force Potency/Recklessness), and so on. This is part of why the shadow/assassin rotation is actually a lot more dynamic than it seems at first glance, since really the only two rigid elements of the rotation are (1) Project/Shock on cooldown, and (2) Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning before your stacks expire.

 

Those of you who have read Tennebras's guide (and those of you who are in fact Tennebras himself) will probably notice that this priority queue does not include any facility for exploiting the Force Potency/Recklessness stack removal glitch at the tail end of the Telekinetic Throw/Force Lightning channel. This glitch does technically increase DPS (and TPS) by allowing you to effectively get three stacks of Force Potency/Recklessness rather than two. I think this is a neat trick, but it unfortunately relies on using Slow Time/Wither last in the preceding rotation block in addition to saving a Particle Acceleration/Energize proc. This implies at least two GCDs of delay following your second Project/Shock in the preceding block (one for Double Strike/Thrash and one for Slow Time/Wither). This is technically sustainable, but honestly it is playing with fire (the expiry of your stacks) for a fairly marginal increase in DPS. Two GCDs following the second Project/Shock is safe (with 1 GCD to spare) provided that Project/Shock was the very first thing in the preceding rotation block, but this is rarely the case. More often, Project/Shock is on cooldown for 1 GCD at the start of a block, which means that barring lucky Particle Acceleration/Energize procs between the first and second Project/Shock, this two GCD delay is literally within milliseconds of dropping the stacks. My personal verdict is that it just isn't worthwhile. Too much risk and not enough reward (the net gain is about 17 DPS, assuming nearly perfect play and a static fight).

 

Summary

 

The Shadow Protection/Dark Protection stacks are eminently maintainable. The above is how you do it. The end. :-)

Edited December 3, 2014 by HillaryNicole

[Leafy_Bug]

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Having said that, I have a comment about the video : that is not shadow tanking but simple repetition of a boring rotation. Would be nice to see real gameplay scenarios where other things show up between that rotation : swaps, cooldowns, taunts, knockbacks, etc.As someone who prefers consistent and hard truth, I would have expected some OPS gameplay not dummy scenarios.

 

 

Voila, sign me up for the irrelevant shadow protection test club. I made a video as well, sorry Quesh boss was dead but I chose this one as he snares and jumps to interrupt you. My video and yours are merely a waste of hard drive space / youtube bandwith because, as I have stated above, shadow protection is not so easily maintained as in the videos. In my vid, I even delayed it by adding force breach and 1 extra double strike on particle acceleration to show I can still maintain the damn thing when nothing happens. Please post OPS videos next time to make it more believable.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Leafy_Bug

[Aelanis]

Thanks for taking the time to do this. Having said that, I have a comment about the video : that is not shadow tanking but simple repetition of a boring rotation. Would be nice to see real gameplay scenarios where other things show up between that rotation : swaps, cooldowns, taunts, knockbacks, etc.As someone who prefers consistent and hard truth, I would have expected some OPS gameplay not dummy scenarios.

 

 

Voila, sign me up for the irrelevant shadow protection test club. I made a video as well, sorry Quesh boss was dead but I chose this one as he snares and jumps to interrupt you. My video and yours are merely a waste of hard drive space / youtube bandwith because, as I have stated above, shadow protection is not so easily maintained as in the videos. In my vid, I even delayed it by adding force breach and 1 extra double strike on particle acceleration to show I can still maintain the damn thing when nothing happens. Please post OPS videos next time to make it more believable.

 

This was a rotation demonstration, not him trying to prove that it's possible to keep the stacks up during any fight no matter the circumstances. It's showing the optimal rotation to keep the stacks up, this was just an easy fight to do that on, since it's not that hectic and you can clearly see what he's doing. I'm sure he would have uploaded a video of the council fight or Brontes if he wanted to show that it could be done around lots of tank swaps and other mechanics.

[Leafy_Bug]

This was a rotation demonstration, not him trying to prove that it's possible to keep the stacks up during any fight no matter the circumstances. It's showing the optimal rotation to keep the stacks up, this was just an easy fight to do that on, since it's not that hectic and you can clearly see what he's doing. I'm sure he would have uploaded a video of the council fight or Brontes if he wanted to show that it could be done around lots of tank swaps and other mechanics.

 

 

 

I encourage that as he ran a PVP test but never uploaded a video of that either. I am gearing up my shadow and I will post videos to show how useless shadow protection is in PVP. As I said, not the first time KBN claims one thing and he does not use the videos to back it up. Call me whatever, I am kind of fed up in seeing threads with many paragraphs telling me and others l2play, when a video is worth 1000 words .

 

 

As a shadow tank I can hold my own compared to most and have cleared more content than the majority, both OP (like now) and gimped. I have been vocal on elitism perpetuation and how shadow tanks need not be boring like certain people are the de facto reason as to why BW opts for a 12 second shadow protection window when current content does not welcome it.

Edited January 17, 2014 by Leafy_Bug

[KeyboardNinja]

I encourage that as he ran a PVP test but never uploaded a video of that either. I am gearing up my shadow and I will post videos to show how useless shadow protection is in PVP. As I said, not the first time KBN claims one thing and he does not use the videos to back it up. Call me whatever, I am kind of fed up in seeing threads with many paragraphs telling me and others l2play, when a video is worth 1000 words .

 

Given how many times you have vacillated between "shadows are broken, NERF GUARDIANZ" and "I laugh at Raptus", I'm not sure your opinion of "worth" means anything to me anymore.

 

Also, you will note that I did provide a video. This post is about the rotation, not about how to optimize it specifically for certain bosses.

 

With that said, more videos would be helpful. I haven't done any videos in actual PvE or PvP largely because 2.4 adjusted the graphics in some way that significantly degrades my graphics performance running under FRAPS (though without affecting the non-recorded performance in any palpable way). You can actually see this even in the Quesh world boss video. It basically makes the game unplayable with FRAPS running in most of the new HM fights (Dread Masters seem like an exception). If there's really demand for this though, I can poke around with the graphics settings with FRAPS running to see if I can find more of an equilibrium.

 

Which fights would be most interesting to see? Nefra is trivial, and Tyrans is only slightly less so. Calphayus is stack-drop city, but has points where combat stealth works a lot. I still haven't perfected my stack maintenance on the Dread Masters first phase, but the remaining phases are no problem. Brontes is probably the most actively hard stack-management fight where I am still successful (outside of obvious drop phases like the droids and the lightning rods).

 

PvP is trickier, since ideally it would be edited down to a subset of encounters where the stacks either matter or the maintenance is instructive, and I simply don't have the time to do that. I could toss out some unranked arenas videos, but that's about all I could promise.

 

As a shadow tank I can hold my own compared to most and have cleared more content than the majority, both OP (like now) and gimped. I have been vocal on elitism perpetuation and how shadow tanks need not be boring like certain people are the de facto reason as to why BW opts for a 12 second shadow protection window when current content does not welcome it.

 

Current content is fine with 12 seconds. It's not elitism if we're talking about basic class competency. Here's a question for you: if a watchman sentinel in full min-maxed Dread Forged was parsing a 2100 on Nefra, would you tell them to fix their rotation or would you just assume that the class is broken and unfriendly to current content? This is the same situation.

Edited January 17, 2014 by KeyboardNinja

[Leafy_Bug]

As I said, i want to learn from you, as clearly you are the better player, so post some videos, would save you the walls of text.

[KeyboardNinja]

As I said, i want to learn from you, as clearly you are the better player, so post some videos, would save you the walls of text.

 

I was serious about asking for preferences on which fights I record. I have very limited time, and despite what it may seem, it took me about 5 times as long to prepare the video portion of this post as it did to prepare the text portion (I typed this up in less than an hour). If you let me know which fights would be most exemplary, I'll try to record them sooner rather than later.

[mmerry]

It basically makes the game unplayable with FRAPS running in most of the new HM fights (Dread Masters seem like an exception). If there's really demand for this though, I can poke around with the graphics settings with FRAPS running to see if I can find more of an equilibrium.

 

Try out Bandicam. That's what I use to record in game video. I used to use FRAPS but as you said it can be quite taxing on your computer. With bandicam I don't get the fps drops during fights. (no im not a bandicam rep, I just like it a lot)

[KeyboardNinja]

Try out Bandicam. That's what I use to record in game video. I used to use FRAPS but as you said it can be quite taxing on your computer. With bandicam I don't get the fps drops during fights. (no im not a bandicam rep, I just like it a lot)

 

Hmm, I hadn't ever seen any bandicam-recorded videos that were not the suck, but your videos are excellent (and honestly, I thought they were recorded with fraps). I'll have to look into it more closely.

[Evolixe]

Dxtory. Nothing better out there unless you have a 600/700 series nvidia GTX GPU.

 

There are very friendly pirates on the internet that hand out stuff to everyone that help them handing their stuff out.

 

Yes you know what I mean. It's good, try it.

[tXHereticXt]

I usually find too that if Double Strike/Thrash doesn't refresh Project/Shock immediately then using Shadow Strike/Maul often does. Keeping Protection up isn't entirely too difficult assuming you're generating enough force via the mob's attention but I do find it rather taxing at times. At the moment I'm still of the mind set that it needs to be extended to what they had originally intended.

[Master-Nala]

It genuinely amazes me that KBN would write all this and argue so stridently to maintain an exclusionary duration for this buff. The trend has moved in the exact opposite direction. For example, Upper Hand is moving to 15 seconds. Which is interesting because the majority of powers that use that resource proc have NO cooldown. But the devs have obviously concluded that the longer duration allows for more people to reach the full potential of that class.

 

With Shadow Protection, it really, really doesn't matter if KBN and others can easily keep up the buff, plenty of other players can't. There is simply no reason for this spec and class to have to work so hard for a buff guardians get with a button press.

[Aelanis]

It genuinely amazes me that KBN would write all this and argue so stridently to maintain an exclusionary duration for this buff. The trend has moved in the exact opposite direction. For example, Upper Hand is moving to 15 seconds. Which is interesting because the majority of powers that use that resource proc have NO cooldown. But the devs have obviously concluded that the longer duration allows for more people to reach the full potential of that class.

 

With Shadow Protection, it really, really doesn't matter if KBN and others can easily keep up the buff, plenty of other players can't. There is simply no reason for this spec and class to have to work so hard for a buff guardians get with a button press.

 

I'm pretty sure he wrote this to try to help other people improve. Personally, I'd like to see the skill of an average player of this class improve, because then we can quash those people who still think Shadows make terrible tanks.

[ArchangelLBC]

Great guide KBN. Very helpful.

 

It genuinely amazes me that KBN would write all this and argue so stridently to maintain an exclusionary duration for this buff. The trend has moved in the exact opposite direction. For example, Upper Hand is moving to 15 seconds. Which is interesting because the majority of powers that use that resource proc have NO cooldown. But the devs have obviously concluded that the longer duration allows for more people to reach the full potential of that class.

 

With Shadow Protection, it really, really doesn't matter if KBN and others can easily keep up the buff, plenty of other players can't. There is simply no reason for this spec and class to have to work so hard for a buff guardians get with a button press.

 

As said, maybe they should read the guide and figure it out. Even if he was a proponent, until they DO change it, those players need to learn how to do the best they can under the 12s restriction. And so either way this guide is a wonderful thing to have. One would hope that once they get it down we can stop pretending like a longer duration is necessary. Even if BW gives in though, anyone that masters a 12s duration will be all that much better when it increases.

[Master-Nala]

Great guide KBN. Very helpful.

 

One must wonder why you need a multi-page guide if it is so "stress-free."

 

 

As said, maybe they should read the guide and figure it out. Even if he was a proponent, until they DO change it, those players need to learn how to do the best they can under the 12s restriction. And so either way this guide is a wonderful thing to have. One would hope that once they get it down we can stop pretending like a longer duration is necessary. Even if BW gives in though, anyone that masters a 12s duration will be all that much better when it increases.

 

Well, it is necessary in PvP unless we just assume that it's only intended to be up all the time in PvE. But more to the point, right now we have an imbalance. Guardians get 3% DR on an overlapping cooldown. That is simply unfair. You can't ignore the ease of use in balance. Shadows need to work significantly harder to get equivalent performance.

 

It is true that skill should be rewarded. But right now it is not. Higher skill is needed to be even. The fact that people still believe that Shadows are not on-par with the other tanks shows this. I don't have access to the data mining, but I would bet that the average guardian performs better than the average Shadow in tanking. But you and KBN and others are so focused on the theoretical performance because you can reach it, that you don't care about the rest of the community. Great! Wonderful for you. I can easily keep the buff up when I'm hitting a static AI PvE mob too. You're right, it's not impossible. A bit boring, but so goes PvE. But I also see plenty of Shadows who can't, while there is no guardian (awake at least) that doesn't keep Guardian Slash up at all times.

Edited January 21, 2014 by Master-Nala

[GrandLordMenace]

Sorry if this sounds a bit dumb but isn't that a trade off you get as a guardian vs a shadow? Like shadow you get a pretty face roll threat generation at the cost of a more dps-like indepth rotation.

 

Guardians get mediocre threat gen but a face roll rotation and potato damage.

Edited August 10, 2016 by GrandLordMenace

[GrandLordMenace]

I've always personally thought that tanking rotations should be far more in depth. DPS fat finger a button they are screwed. Tanks? Pshhhh. Who careeeeezzzz.

[KeyboardNinja]

One must wonder why you need a multi-page guide if it is so "stress-free."

 

"Stress free" does not mean "trivial". Just because it's a tanking rotation that bears some analysis beyond the trivial "if it's off cooldown, use it" variety doesn't mean it's impossible.

 

Well, it is necessary in PvP unless we just assume that it's only intended to be up all the time in PvE. But more to the point, right now we have an imbalance. Guardians get 3% DR on an overlapping cooldown. That is simply unfair. You can't ignore the ease of use in balance. Shadows need to work significantly harder to get equivalent performance.

 

Yes, we have to work harder. Welcome to being a shadow. It has always been like that. If anything, the skill floor on the class has been lowered due to the two extra GCDs (minimum) added to the rotation which can be spent on anything whatsoever.

 

Sure, guardians have a faceroll rotation. If you want a faceroll rotation, then I'm sorry but you should roll a guardian or a vanguard. Shadows are designed specifically to fill to niche of a tank with a rotation that has tighter margins.

 

It is true that skill should be rewarded. But right now it is not. Higher skill is needed to be even. The fact that people still believe that Shadows are not on-par with the other tanks shows this. I don't have access to the data mining, but I would bet that the average guardian performs better than the average Shadow in tanking.

 

I don't doubt this. The average guardian can fill with Strike and use all the major powers simply on cooldown and have optimal mitigation and probably 85% of optimal threat and damage. You can do something sort of similar on a shadow to achieve optimal mitigation with respect to your stacks, though your Kinetic Ward usage will be really shoddy. You'll be missing a larger chunk of your DPS though.

 

But you and KBN and others are so focused on the theoretical performance because you can reach it, that you don't care about the rest of the community.

 

I focus on it because it's there. You can't buff a class that can already reach a balanced level without creating an imbalance. Balance is all about optimal performance, with a secondary concern for how easy it is to get to that optimum. If you read the guide at all, you'll know that it isn't hard to hit that cap.

 

Great! Wonderful for you. I can easily keep the buff up when I'm hitting a static AI PvE mob too. You're right, it's not impossible. A bit boring, but so goes PvE. But I also see plenty of Shadows who can't, while there is no guardian (awake at least) that doesn't keep Guardian Slash up at all times.

 

I can keep the stacks up in PvP too. A bit boring, but so goes PvP.

 

The fact that you see shadows who can't keep SP up indicates that there is a skill gradient which simply doesn't exist with the other tanks. In other words, a good shadow is measurably better than an average shadow, which is measurably better than a bad shadow. It's good for a class to have that gradient, because otherwise there's no depth and no reason to work on perfecting one's play.

[MGNMTTRN]

I don't even understand why people would expect it to be possible to keep up full stacks of +4 DR. Guardian Bladestorm absorb barrier obviously doesn't have 100% uptime and Vanguard Energy Blast has less than 50% uptime.

 

If Shadows are supposed to be the spikiest tank, and if their mean mitigation is already higher than that of the other tanks, it seems reasonable to me that one way to make them balanced would be to reduce the uptime on their +4 DR.

 

But I guess Bioware is going in the opposite direction... pretty soon you won't even need 3 stacks of Harnessed Shadows to build your stacks of DR. Just casting Project will give you +5 DR.

[TACeMossie]

I'd like to quickly point out the issue with using the Quesh World Boss as a demonstration:

 

http://www.torhead.com/ability/d0p1pGV/double-bladed-saber-defense

http://www.torhead.com/ability/9ksMgPf/rapid-recovery

 

With the obscenely high dodge/parry rate granted by the quesh WB, you are going to have about a 20% higher force regeneration rate than against say a 55 boss (give or take a few %). So when you take that into account, its quite possible you might not have the force to keep the rotation up.

 

Thats the only complaint here. But I guess we'll have to wait till you find a better recording tool before we can see what the uptime is like on lvl 55 enemies (heroic bosses on Oricon spend too much time throwing you around. Maybe use the Czerka Corporate Labs #1 boss?)

[Leafy_Bug]

Looking forward to some DF/DP 8M/16M HM videos on how to keep those 4 stacks up 'stress-free'. For flashpoints, world bosses, you don't even need shadow protection. Edited January 22, 2014 by Leafy_Bug

[Aelanis]

I'd like to quickly point out the issue with using the Quesh World Boss as a demonstration:

 

http://www.torhead.com/ability/d0p1pGV/double-bladed-saber-defense

http://www.torhead.com/ability/9ksMgPf/rapid-recovery

 

With the obscenely high dodge/parry rate granted by the quesh WB, you are going to have about a 20% higher force regeneration rate than against say a 55 boss (give or take a few %). So when you take that into account, its quite possible you might not have the force to keep the rotation up.

 

Thats the only complaint here. But I guess we'll have to wait till you find a better recording tool before we can see what the uptime is like on lvl 55 enemies (heroic bosses on Oricon spend too much time throwing you around. Maybe use the Czerka Corporate Labs #1 boss?)

 

You're nitpicking here, Force regen isn't a problem for Shadow tanks, post 2.0. The boss you suggested a video from is also a terrible test for it, as every few seconds, you're going to spend a large part of the duration of Shadow Protection out of range of the boss, unable to do anything. All of the tanks suffer reduced survivability due to the enforced downtime (unless you want to stand in the water and take extra damage). If you really wanted to pick a flashpoint boss for this, the Vrblther from Core Meltdown would be much better, with consistent stuns and knockbacks, and having to position the boss properly, as well as the adds that show up.

 

For ops boss fights, Corruptor Zero and Draxus from DF, and Bestia and Raptus from DP seem like they would be good choices for the video, though Draxus and Bestia might be a little too hectic, and the chaos might somewhat mask the rotation if you're using keybinds.

[KeyboardNinja]

For ops boss fights, Corruptor Zero and Draxus from DF, and Bestia and Raptus from DP seem like they would be good choices for the video, though Draxus and Bestia might be a little too hectic, and the chaos might somewhat mask the rotation if you're using keybinds.

 

I can record all of those fights, though we aren't doing our HM farming until Monday this week, so it'll be a bit of a wait. I can tell you right now though what things look like:

 

• Corrupter Zero - Stacks up 100% while tanking the boss, though Grav Vortex at the wrong time can cause the stacks to drop momentarily. Our strat has a swap whenever the adds come out. I tank the little adds until they die (gold is CC'd), then swap back onto the boss. I don't bother maintaining my stacks on the little adds, since the AoE threat is more important. I could maintain the stacks 100% aside from the Grav Vortex, but it's not worth the loss of control on the ranged adds.
  
• Draxus - I have stacks from stealth every time the boss pops except for the second (with the lone corrupter on each stair), and I maintain those stacks throughout his phases. Aside from that, I don't care much about maintaining the stacks. If I have them, I have them. Otherwise, meh.
  
• Bestia - 100% stacks unless things get crazy and/or I make a mistake.
  
• Raptus - Stacks drop before the challenges and immediately after. Also, they generally drop after I get knocked up (or lost) and sometimes after Force Execution. The fact that Stealth can't be used on this fight is a real annoyance.
  
• Dread Masters (not on your list, but should be) - About 70-80% stack uptime in the first phase, simply because of how fast we tank swap (every Force Push). 100% uptime in the other phases.
  

 

So I'm not sure which is going to be more interesting. CZ is neat because I consciously choose to allow the stacks to fall. Draxus is neat because I choose where I care about stacks and where I don't (and where I do care, it's very important). Bestia is neat because there's movement, swapping and utilities paired with a desire for 100% uptime. Raptus is annoying because mechanics straight-up defeat any attempt at serious uptime, and he punishes the lack of uptime with high-burst. The Dread Masters are like Bestia on steroids, and show the sorts of areas where I'm personally still learning how to improve my play.

Edited January 22, 2014 by KeyboardNinja

[Aelanis]

The only reason I didn't include Dread Masters is because I thought it would be a little too hectic to really show what was going on. Tank swaps all the time, death marks and thundering blasts flying all over, all the ridiculous amount of movement involved in the fight. I suppose if you did a voice-over after the fact, or added a text overlay to the video, you could work around it, but I was just thinking of good fights to demonstrate the rotation, and how it works. Alternatively, you could just record your entire run and post that, to show how it differs from fight to fight in the same video, without any text or voice-over.

[KeyboardNinja]

The only reason I didn't include Dread Masters is because I thought it would be a little too hectic to really show what was going on. Tank swaps all the time, death marks and thundering blasts flying all over, all the ridiculous amount of movement involved in the fight. I suppose if you did a voice-over after the fact, or added a text overlay to the video, you could work around it, but I was just thinking of good fights to demonstrate the rotation, and how it works. Alternatively, you could just record your entire run and post that, to show how it differs from fight to fight in the same video, without any text or voice-over.

 

Being that I'm highly lazy, I was planning on just posting the unedited videos and answering the inevitable criticisms on the forums (here). :-)