Darkness Tanking Compendium

[CanWolfShadow]

Great post.

 

Which of those builds would you recomment going for a Newbie? I'm at Level 29 (Almost 30) and am looking for a good levelling rotation/priority list, and this looks to take it pretty easily.

[Knight_Marshal]

Electric Excecution is worthless; Dark charge does no damage.

 

Charges your lightsaber with dark energy, giving your attacks a 50% chance to drain life force from the target, dealing 179 internal damage and healing you for 130. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds. Increases your armor rating by 150%, shield chance by 15% and threat generation by 50%. While active, melee bonus damage is reduced by 5%. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber. Does not break Stealth.

 

I don't understand your statement.

[Daellia]

Panda, we need to recruit you to the SWTOR version of EJ: sithwarrior.com. Seriously, you'll have a hayday over there.

 

Edit:

I don't understand your statement.

 

I have a feeling it was hyperbole. Dark Charge is rather weak in the damage department, and its healing is just as pitiful. Swelling Shadows and especially Electric Execution are definitely last-resort type talents. I think that's the point he was trying to (somewhat less eloquently) make.

Edited December 31, 2011 by Daellia

[LazyBoot]

I don't understand your statement.

 

Considering that the numbers in your quote is the lvl 50 numbers, I assume he meant that it does so little damage that it isn't worth it

[theonepanda]

I don't understand your statement.

 

Sorry, I might come off as abrasive sometimes lol.

 

Well like I posted before...

 

First off, the numbers on Torhead are wrong. So wrong in fact, that I might've been completely off recommending raze over force lightning...yea. The lvl 50 "green" numbers are way off, i'm in lvl 50 mostly blues and half epics, and my numbers are nowhere near theirs XD I need to do more testing.

 

Dark charge...does like 80 damage for me. I'm not sure why. I don't think it scales at all with gear, if it does, it is so miniscule it doesn't matter...this either needs to change or is intended, not too sure.

 

The healing with overcharge is great though, hits for >200 every gcd.

 

And like I posted before, over a 5 min boss fight, 3 FULL points into electric execution nets you a total of 2k damage, thats basically one shock plus any filler.

 

So each point gives you roughly 2.3 dps. I mean, I guess thats something, but certainly not strong, or even mediocre.

 

So you save 3 seconds over an entire fight, heh. Any survivability talent would be worth taking over that. Even the endurance one...heroic bulwark is a huge jerk >.< Though I think thats because the fight is buggy as anything.

 

EDIT: Bad news Darkness/madness buddies, this build might be dead for endgame, killed by incorrect numbers at Torhead (curse you!) =( I am crunching the numbers and writing up a simulation now; but it seems that there may be little to no reason to use this build in an endgame tanking environment.

 

EDIT: derp, i got sidetracked by playing my operative. Also, kinda tired and probably gonna be drunk soon. More theorycrafting maybe after new years hangover. But i'm leaning towards pure darkness as a better tank spec actually. It may even be better dps, most likely comparable dps though.

Edited December 31, 2011 by theonepanda

[theonepanda]

Great post.

 

Which of those builds would you recomment going for a Newbie? I'm at Level 29 (Almost 30) and am looking for a good levelling rotation/priority list, and this looks to take it pretty easily.

 

Pre 33 your build is going to look the same for either build. (put everything into darkness)

 

I would recommend going to madness as soon as you pick up the 2(3) talents in that tier of darkness, then swap to madness.

 

You will notice quite a bit of dps increase over taking force lightning.

 

However once you hit 50, if you are tanking flashpoints/heroics, you may want to consider full darkness. More on that later.

Edited December 31, 2011 by theonepanda

[fragnot]

Hey buddy! Nice post by the way.

 

Could you help out a fellow newbie, and tell me what armoring, mod and enhancement things i should buy ?

[Celesian]

After trying some more spec's out and tanking along side a Power Tech and a Jugg the main problem I see with assassin's is threat. Both AOE and Single Target threat on a sin are lacking badly right now. This is mostly because the only +threat ability we have is Wither and it really does not seem to work right at all. Shock gets 15% threat if you spec into it enough. But after trying as many spec's as i can think of a jugg and power tech will rip agro right off you with very little effort.

 

I've tried many rotations including just spamm thrash the entire time on a mob and it made no difference they still yank it right off me. Shock costs a ton of force hit's like a truck and still is not even enough to keep a second mob of a healer.

 

If it's any sort of an AOE pull you can forget it once dps starts to AOE the mobs will run everywhere and since everything you have is 10 meter range you have to either taunt or try and force speed over to something and pound the crap out of it hoping it gets back on you.

 

From my observation Dark Surge needs to provide 100% threat instead of 50% simply because we don't have any +threat abilities where jugg's and powertech's both get spammable high threat abilities. As far as survival is concerned, Assassin's take a lot of gear to become a good tank but once you get that gear your dmg and mitigation is very very good.

[fragnot]

After trying some more spec's out and tanking along side a Power Tech and a Jugg the main problem I see with assassin's is threat. Both AOE and Single Target threat on a sin are lacking badly right now. This is mostly because the only +threat ability we have is Wither and it really does not seem to work right at all. Shock gets 15% threat if you spec into it enough. But after trying as many spec's as i can think of a jugg and power tech will rip agro right off you with very little effort.

 

I've tried many rotations including just spamm thrash the entire time on a mob and it made no difference they still yank it right off me. Shock costs a ton of force hit's like a truck and still is not even enough to keep a second mob of a healer.

 

If it's any sort of an AOE pull you can forget it once dps starts to AOE the mobs will run everywhere and since everything you have is 10 meter range you have to either taunt or try and force speed over to something and pound the crap out of it hoping it gets back on you.

 

From my observation Dark Surge needs to provide 100% threat instead of 50% simply because we don't have any +threat abilities where jugg's and powertech's both get spammable high threat abilities. As far as survival is concerned, Assassin's take a lot of gear to become a good tank but once you get that gear your dmg and mitigation is very very good.

 

 

 

Interesting.. What stats would you say is decent to start Hardmoding?

 

HP, armor, dmg reduction, def chance, shield rating and absorb rating?

[asmox]

i'm by no means doing endgame content yet, having too much of a blast on all the story.but..

 

as far as i can tell mobs being behind you doesn't matter. i have watched myself deflect blaster bolts coming from behind.. also in pvp i have deflected shots from behind.. it's kind of a neat animation that's why i noticed.

 

but it's generally best for you to have the mobs grouped up as nicly as you can so other dps can avoid "cleaves" or use their own positionals.

[theonepanda]

I have never had someone pull threat off my single target. My thrash comment was in regards to dps, obviously if you don't do your tanking rotation correctly another tank is going to pull off you.

 

Yea your aoe sucks, which is why I said we're not very good aoe tanks. You also can't really compare it if your dps are bad dps, and just lay into aoe before you have any chance to gather and start hitting them.

 

We're also severely limited by mobility in tanking, so spread out ranged mobs are almost impossible to tank well.

 

For gearing, I would recommend resolve armorings. I prefer them to force wielder armorings, mostly because I dislike endurance. However with percentage based self heals and whatnot, endurance may be more attractive. I dunno really. Your preference, but choose one of those two.

 

For early on at least, it is also very difficult to find any non specialized mods/enhancements. Figure out how much total mitigation rating you can get (it should be something like 400-500ish entry level 50, and you should have an additional 100-200 accuracy (unavoidable it seems, meh, its more dps)), then use the chart and try to make your ratios of points match that for maximum mitigation.

[asmox]

i'm only in the late 30's but for spread out groups of mobs i generally open..

 

discharge to whatever mobs are closest together i can usually get 3 mobs with discharge, force pull a 4th to me, lacerate2x for initial threat building. if theres another i'll blow my taunt on it. this opening sequence has given me the most sucess for keeping threat on large spread out groups.

 

 

 

i dont know how mobs are in 50's dungeons but i've noticed a few are "normal" mobs not silver or gold, i try to mainly keep threat on golds then silvers. i wont bother with normals because i tell the dps to just off them 1st.

[Celesian]

First of all things are much different at 50 and you run with some real geared people before you can really understand the full problems. Discharge has no built in +threat to it. so opening up with discharge only gets them to turn to you. Usually discharge + wither will at least get them facing you. But as soon as dps start's AOEing you will loose all that agro very quickly. Most of it is because of the long CD on discharge and wither.

 

As for stat's and stuff I am still experimenting. What i have found works best starting out is getting as much +shield rating and +absorb as you can. Don't take out defense out of your gear to get it though. When your Dark Ward starts falling off before CD is up. then you need to start getting as much defense as you can while keeping absorb high.

Edited January 1, 2012 by Celesian

[Kogarvandalin]

I leveled as a tank and I'm loving the (25/0/16) over the (31/0/10) build. Thanks a bunch for posting it, I would never have thought to use it and it's way easier to manage. The 3 stacks of harnessed darkness where just a pain.

[gkshow]

At what level would you say assassin tanking picks up? I'm level 21 right now and not having that much of a good time tanking

[Celesian]

Tanking picks up around lvl 36 due to assassinate and other tools. As far as being enjoyable if you don't enjoy it now you will hate it more at 50. Takes a lot of patience to run as an assassin tank. The agro issue's alone will drive you absolutely crazy. Guard is nice and all but what happens when you have 2 dps that can pull right off you. Spamming taunt is boring but sadly at 50 that's about the way it works.

[gkshow]

What about death field for some aoe threat?

 

Its not that I am not enjoying tanking now, but I am level 21 only so I don't think I have the proper talents etc.

 

So I was debating on respeccing DPS and switching to my hybrid built (25/0/16) around 30s...

[theonepanda]

Death field does like the same threat as wither.

 

It has ~2x the base damage, however, wither has talented wither (which...is kinda a no brainer if you go down 31/0/10), which makes it do 30% more damage, which lowers death field's advantage to 25% more damage.

 

Death field also has no threat bonus, so it actually does -less- threat than wither. Furthermore, it only hits 3 instead of 5 targets, making it just awful mostly.

 

And...I've been tanking at 50 for a long time >.<

 

Yes we aren't terribly good at aoe threat. I hate lacerate and the fact that our force pool is so tiny really makes it awful. Also we're designed around single target tanking. I made that abundantly clear.

 

You should not be aoe tanking unless you absolutely need to; most of the time you should only aoe to hold threat against healers...you should tell your dps to focus down one strong/elite/boss at a time.

 

You should not be trying to aoe down strongs. Their dps/health is so high, they do almost as much damage as elites, but with like 1/10th the health. It is MUCH better to burn down single target.

 

Weak/normals are a joke and who cares if you don't pick those up, they should die before your aoe taunt wears off.

 

Stacking shield/absorb is not the way to go. You should generally have def/shield/absorb in a 3:1:2 ratio., switching to something like a 4:3:3 ratio later.

[DarthVenizen]

Charges your lightsaber with dark energy, giving your attacks a 50% chance to drain life force from the target, dealing 179 internal damage and healing you for 130. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 seconds. Increases your armor rating by 150%, shield chance by 15% and threat generation by 50%. While active, melee bonus damage is reduced by 5%. Requires a double-bladed lightsaber. Does not break Stealth.

 

WTH?!

 

this tooltip is way off compared to mine :confused:

 

my tooltip says heals for 49. i only ever get healed for 49.... (70 something on crits)

 

is my dark charge glitched??

 

i'm lvl 50 and have trained all my skills... sooo confused now

[Shadowseve]

All of the talk about threat has me a bit bummed. I've tanked a few flashpoints in the mid 20's and darkness is the only Assassin tree I like. I'm starting to wonder if I should have rolled sorc.

[gkshow]

So panda, which spec did you level with and which spec are you using to tank now?

[Celesian]

The reason why I say stacking shield + absorb to start with works best is because your starting gear will be flooded with it. Unless you physically run around buying +def only enhance and mod's you will find it easier to get the absorb.

 

A high defense rating to me didn't seem to help much because if you stack defense to start with your mitigation still won't be high enough to avoid the big hit's. If you parry and dodge stuff great but with a low shield rating if the boss swing's through your defense that hit is going to hurt a lot.

 

This is especially apparent with crit's. We seem to have a hard time handling numerous crit's at a time. Higher defense rating does prevent more hit's which overall reduces the total number of crit's to deal with but even with full Champion gear + some Columi gear I'm still not high enough in the defense to make one better than the other.

[evilgoodness]

i just had an interesting conversation with an operative who insisted i should get willpower over any other stat as an assassin tank cause i needed to crit more to hold more agro.... i have been stacking defense, my defense is 324 atm, and sheild and absorb. i was confused as to why anyone would think being able to crit would be a beneficial thing to a tank. but this further calmed my mind in showing me im doing what i need to be with my toon. thanks.

[theonepanda]

WTH?!

 

this tooltip is way off compared to mine :confused:

 

my tooltip says heals for 49. i only ever get healed for 49.... (70 something on crits)

 

is my dark charge glitched??

 

i'm lvl 50 and have trained all my skills... sooo confused now

 

TORHead tooltips are severely bugged.

 

Your stuff isn't glitched, the formulas on TORHead are just wrong.

 

Keep that in mind when you theorycraft/gear.

 

And gk, I leveled as darkness/madness, going down madness first (it gets chain shock) until lvl 20. Then I respecced into full darkness (you get energize at 20, is why), and stayed darkness until 31 (you get Electrify and Eye of the Storm), then split into darkness/madness until 47 (you get Raze then), then just did whatever with the remaning points.

 

I stayed in dark charge the entire time. Well, I had lightning until lvl 14, obviously.

 

I tanked as Darkness/Madness (25/0/16) for about a week or so.

I tank as Full Darkness (31/0/10) now, because

 

1. the Tooltips are wrong on Torhead. Stacked lightning does MORE damage than 1 Raze procs. It is worth ~1.5 Raze + saber strikes.

2. The healing is significant. I thought it ticked 3 times, it ticks 4. 12% Healing is not to be scoffed at.

3. I get crappy RNG and tend to clip Razes, lessening Raze dps even more.

4. Watching and timing 5 things (force pooling, raze, energize, exploitive strikes, dark ward) is significantly taxing and takes away from raid awareness, for what is now marginal gains.

5. Force lightning is basically force neutral, allowing me to continue my rotation as soon as it leaves off.

6. Wither is possibly important in a raid/heroic setting.

 

EDIT:

 

Technically I lied, I dps as deception now, so I'm kinda hung up on theorycrafting that XD. Our guild doesn't have enough 50's to run operations now, and our bh likes tanking so I figured I could try out deception for heroics. 200k and 20 commendations later, I still like darkness more and think it does comparable dps lol

Edited January 3, 2012 by theonepanda

[Celesian]

I do believe right now that 31/0/10 is the best Ops tank spec. Raze only having a 33% chance on crit to proc is very low especially when in my gear I have around 18% crit buffed. Raze barely ever procs and when it does i get a chain of 2-3 in a row so I end up clipping almost a full duration Darkness.

 

The 5% damage reduction offered by wither is nothing to scoff at when your getting hit for 4K by a boss. I think the best fix for assassin tanks right now is to buff the threat on Dark Surge significantly. It should be at least 100% threat since non of our abilities generate additional threat by themselves. Wither says it does but I have pulled with wither before gotten 1 heal and the mobs hauled *** for the healer. If 1 heal can pull an entire pack of mobs off you then there is no threat on that ability period. Keep in mind this was a test to see if the threat worked not a holy crap you gotta hit with discharge and stuff to.

 

As for mitigation and stuff with enough gear mine is balancing out pretty good to be equal to a PT and Jugg. The difference is the PT and Jugg seem to be much stronger tanks in less gear but don't scale as high as an assassin does. This is a good thing until expansion's and stuff come out.