Two VG tanks for raiding?

[ElevenBfour]

Any downside to this? Just curious as our guild recruited another tank for our raid team that happens to be a VG. Any pro's or con's to this? Just curious. We're not kicking him, but if there are con's I might start gearing my Shadow or Guardian on the side.

[Eternalnight]

The disadvanteges of having 2 Vanguard tanks

 

1.

 

Each tank class applies 2 out of 3 possible debuffs the reduce the damage done by your enemy

Vanguard can do -5% melee/ranged damage and -5% force tech damage debuffs

Shadow can do -5% melee/ranged damage and -5% melee/ranged accuracy debuffs

Guradian can do -5% force tech damage and -5% melee/ranged accuracy debuffs

 

So you need to have 2 different tank classes (does not matter which 2) to have all 3 debuffs

With both tanks being same class you only have 2 out of the 3.

 

Although in case of Vanguards you will get 2x Riot Gas which pretty much makes up for the loss.

 

2.

 

Guardians and Shadows have defensive cooldowns that can for a few seconds completely negate the damage of some boss abilities which Vanguards don't have

 

 

There are few other possible minor benefits to different tank classes although some can be done by a dps of that class too, but no need to go on more about that right now.

 

 

All that being said...

 

All the disadvantages of having 2 Vanguards are overall pretty insignificant.

 

I would still say that actually 90% of the time 2 Vanguards is actually by far the best combination currently.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Eternalnight

[KeyboardNinja]

There are actually numerous disadvantages to using two Vanguard tanks for progression. Let's focus on the advantages first though…

 

 

• Hold the Line. This enables many wonderful things in several fights. You can completely cheese Master-Blaster, for example, making the fight dramatically easier in terms of positioning at the cost of higher healing requirements (more on this later). You can also be much more precise with Trail of Agony in Revan.
  
• Riot Gas x2
  
• Steady, dependable mitigation. Contrary to popular belief, Vanguards don't have the least variance, but they have the least "jumps", meaning that healers generally find them easier to predict.
  
• Probably the best mobility in the game. Hold the Line and Storm.
  
• Some of the best "general purpose" cooldowns in the game, with Reactive Shield and Battle Focus. Battle Readiness is better than either of these, but not by that much.
  
• Excellent off-tank DPS (far better than the other two tanks)
  
• Capable of achieving maximum potential on a fight without deep analysis or careful refinements to gameplay. This one honestly goes overlooked too often, but Shadows and Guardians have a ton of work that they need to do in order to achieve their maximum potential on a fight. They are capable of doing some amazing things, but it's hard for them to get there the first couple times seeing a fight, and so that can slow down progression a bit. Having a Vanguard to just "do their thing" and do it well the first time out is invaluable.
  

 

 

Now the downsides:

 

 

• Vanguards take appreciably more damage than the other two tanks. This is particularly noticeable on high internal/elemental fights, like Master-Blaster, Coratanni and the phases of Revan with difficult heal checks.
  
• Vanguards lack the cooldown suite of the other two tanks, coming up well short of what they can offer. This is part of why vanguards are "high floor, low ceiling" tanks, in that they can rise to their maximum potential with very little progression time on a fight, but their maximum potential is not as high as a shadow or a guardian.
  
• Running double-Vanguard misses out on another utility slot. Phase Walk spec'd for the healing boost is nearly twice as good as Ballistic Shield when you time-average it, and Guardian's AoE bubble taunt is right up there as well. Vanguard's AoE reflect is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but if you have one Vanguard to supply it, you don't actually need a second one.
  
• While Riot Gas does supply the accuracy debuff at a higher potency than the debuffs provided by Shadows or Guardians, double Riot Gas is strictly inferior to Riot Gas + the accuracy debuff. Double Vanguard literally leaves mitigation on the table.
  
• Related to cooldowns, but Vanguards simply cannot cheese things that don't involve physics effects. Hold the Line is great, but it is useless (for example) in doing things like cheesing the knockback in the third phase of Master-Blaster (which Shadows can do), or deleting every other Mega Blast from Sword Squadron, or eating a failed Underlurker cross without taking any damage, or even just smoothing out the damage spikes from Kurse in the Revanite Commanders soft enrage. Shadows and Guardians can do all those things. Vanguards… can't.
  

 

 

In general, I would say that all three of the tanks are very well balanced, and even doubled compositions are not too severely disadvantaged. Many guilds have progressed with double Vanguard, and it is viable on the top-end content. But all things being equal, Vanguard-Shadow or Vanguard-Guardian is going to be appreciably better than Vanguard-Vanguard.

Edited May 1, 2015 by KeyboardNinja

[Eternalnight]

Phase Walk spec'd for the healing boost ... and Guardian's AoE bubble taunt

 

Although those can be done by a dps shadow and a dps guardian if they are specced to those utility points, so technically they don't absolutely require a shadow tank or guardian tank

[KeyboardNinja]

Although those can be done by a dps shadow and a dps guardian if they are specced to those utility points, so technically they don't absolutely require a shadow tank or guardian tank

 

Very true. That plays off against your DPS corps. The more salient point is that having two Vanguards does effectively waste a single utility slot, since there really aren't fights where you need to use the reflect more than once every 45 seconds.

[KaiserTNT]

Hold the Line. This enables many wonderful things in several fights. You can completely cheese Master-Blaster, for example, making the fight dramatically easier in terms of positioning at the cost of higher healing requirements (more on this later). You can also be much more precise with Trail of Agony in Revan.

 

I actually think PT + Sin can cheese Master/Blaster better than double PT. If your DPS is good enough, 2 Hydraulics and 1 Phase walk is all you will need to get through the roaming yellow circles phase without moving. If your dps is a bit slow, you can have a sorc dps/healer pull the sin on the second knockback he has to take, and it will avoid it entirely. If the Sin has the Fade utility, you can then break Master's first beam after Rain of Pain, and shroud the second one both times, making the second half of the fight way easier on healers and dps.

Edited May 1, 2015 by KaiserTNT