New 60 Tank LF advice

[brunen]

Hey

 

I'm reasonably new to 60, vanguard tank. My gear averages around 180 I'd say, my lowest item is 178. It's all defence / shield kinda gear, except my offhand which for silly reasons is a dps offhand. So, I'd say my gear isn't *too* bad.

 

I'm an experienced MMO tank, I understand threat and so on, yadda yadda.

 

However, I'm having a hard time in hard mode FP's. I loose threat easily I feel and on some bosses it's clear the healer can't keep me up. While I understand that well geared DPS can easily out threat me, there's little point lowering myself and pointing fingers.

 

What I'm not used to is SWTOR endgame. In other games, we have enchants, gems, whatever.

 

Does anyone please have a link, or advice, regarding gearing up for HMFPs and, eventually, Ops?

 

thank you.

[flem]

You are doing quite a few things wrong.

 

First, having a shield equipped is 100% essential. This is the single biggest gear piece for your survivability. Having a generator in your offhand makes you worthless as a tank.

 

Second, despite the listings, HM60 flashpoints really are balanced for 186, particularly from a tank. You'll also want to start augmenting as many pieces as possible (all the oranges, anyway) with shield augments. (These augments come with power as a secondary, so you'll up your threat generation by a lot as well.) And at least buy a 186 barrel for your mainhand so your base weapon/tech damage goes up considerably. (Or go to Ziost and get a 190.)

 

Third, Vanguards want absorb a lot more than defense. You'll want to keep your defense under 300 if you can (it's hard without lots of gear scrambling, so just go absorb whenever you have a choice) until your stat budget gets a lot bigger. See this thread for full numbers:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=804989

 

Fourth, guard the stronger DPS to reduce his threat. Don't guard the healer except in a very few limited situations.

 

edit - I guess I should have mentioned that you want to enable detailed item tooltips to break out the stats of each component of the item. Note that comm items have the high-endurance, low-mitigation enhancements, MK2 drops (FPs and Ziost) have medium-end, medium-mitigation enhancements, and crafted/raid token enhancements have low-end, high-mitigation enhancements (Sturdiness, the Shield/Absorb of the latter, is mostly what you want). Those go in increasing order of desirability. Note that for mods, though (the second of the components within each item), most people have been using lettered (high-endurance) versions from comm pieces and MK2 drops vs the raid token unlettered ones.

Edited April 30, 2015 by flem

[brunen]

AFter posting, I realised I had enough ultimates for a shield, so that was fixed, and then I augmented the shield also. So, good for that.

 

Cheers for the rest, I'll work through. Good to know about the actual level required.

[KeyboardNinja]

One of the other things to think about, relative to threat, is that threat is somewhat tighter in this game than in many others (not all, but many). In other MMOs, particularly WoW, a tank is expected to hold threat 100% of the time on everything in the pull. Losing agro for even a second is generally enough to one-shot a DPS or healer (often the healer), and the tanking classes are given tools that are commensurate to that challenge. (which is to say, tools that make it into "not a challenge")

 

In SWTOR, the tank threat multiplier is only 200% baseline (as opposed to 500% in recent iterations of WoW; I don't know if that is current). Count your lucky stars; it was only 150% at launch! This 200% is multiplicative with "high-threat" moves in your rotation, which are generally between 200% and 300% of normal threat. Even still, this can make threat surprisingly tight in certain situations. The tank classes have rotations that are as (and in many cases, more!) intricate than the DPS classes, and they need to be able to execute on those rotations with the precision of a DPS while maintaining mitigation and mechanical control.

 

The most notable situation where even a BiS tank can lose threat to non-BiS DPS is when attempting to hold AoE threat on a pack where one NPC in that pack is being single-target DPSed by a burst class. You'll lose threat every time in that situation.

 

In flashpoints, threat loss is normal. Just patch it up after the fact, if and when it happens. Don't burn a taunt unless you feel it's safe to (i.e. you're not going to need that taunt in a few seconds to solve an even bigger problem). Use your stuns aggressively if you lose agro, and make sure you don't get distracted and lose threat on even more things! It's very difficult to get threat back by rotation alone once you've lost it (due to the agro thresholds), but it is possible if you have your high burst stuff up.

 

Speaking of burst… The most vulnerable time in a pull is the opener. Threat in SWTOR is cumulative and does not decay (this isn't uncommon in MMOs, but I thought I'd point it out). Due to agro thresholds, as long as you hit the mob first, you do have a small built-in head start, but it isn't a large one. Guard your highest burst DPS (which may not be your highest sustain DPS), and front-load your opener to get your highest threat stuff up front. Taunt off yourself (as a threat multiplier!) if you're on a single-target boss and you don't need your taunt again for a little while. Dulfy's vanguard tank guide shows the best way to do this with the class. Note that, unlike a shadow, you are very cooldown-dependent for your best burst, so if you're doing multiple frequent pulls, you won't be able to provide the same threat security with each one.

 

And yes, augments will help a lot. Gear in general, honestly.

Edited May 1, 2015 by KeyboardNinja

[brunen]

One of the other things to think about, relative to threat, is that threat is somewhat tighter in this game than in many others (not all, but many). In other MMOs...

 

Good advice, thanks. I've noticed the threat thing, it's quite easy to loose it, especially to the can't keep it in his pants jedi who leaps in and thrashes away! The relearning is that in most MMOs, threat buttons are "oh crap" tools, but are more a matter of use in SWTOR.

 

Also, I do have a healer and in line with that, I notice that when a DPS does over pull, it's not the end, there's more than enough time to deal with it.

 

Must admit, I would like to see a threat metre in action, in the game

 

And yes, I've been following Dulfy's guide now since I posted, regarding builds and so on. Also started augmenting gear that's worth doing, plus built my own rifle rather than an off the GTN purple.

 

cheers

Edited May 2, 2015 by brunen

[Whitelightr]

Few things to do:

 

Gearing:

Augment everything (at least blue augs if its a piece you'll be upgrading soon) - starting out you might want to split augs up between shield and absorb. But mostly straight shield is considered best. Stay away from Defense. You'll get some of it along the way but don't gear for it intentionally. Shield and Absorb are your bread and butter.

 

For FPs - focus aggro. Champion>GOLD>Silver>Reg. Kill order for competent DPS will be the reverse of that. Regs and Silvers don't last very long and don't hit very hard (usually) so if a DPS takes 1-2 hits it doesn't matter).

 

Don't guard the healer, guard the biggest DPS threat (AOE or single target dependant). Some mechanics it may be helpful to guard the healer though.

 

Knowing the mechanics of the fight and your class > gear.

 

 

For threat visuals you can run StarParse. If nothing else it has a popout window I find useful to monitor threat.