Endurance v. Willpower (Shadow Tanking)

[Enduretwentytwo]

What a novel idea!

 

This is the only forum coummunity I've ever seen where there are actually tanks arguing that's it smarter to stack a DPS stat than HP. Pretty amusing stuff.

 

It's amusing because one side is arguing:

If I have no trouble surviving, why not stack for more damage?

 

While the other side is arguing:

If I have no problems holding aggro, why shouldn't I be stacking survival items?

 

LOL. The correct answer is, if you are succeeding in both your survivability and threat, then you are completing your only two roles as a tank and you shouldn't be concern with the min and maxing of theorycrafters, because in actuality its all theory for a game that has only been out for less than a month.

[Dyinn]

Realy interesting stuff here.. Specialy Kitru's point of view.

 

The way I see it the need for HP pool is as much as you need it to survive hit cycle from boss in aprox 5 sec time frame (5 sec = time healer should react and heal you back up). Everything else is pure waste of stat and would be more logical to put the rest to willpower since it helps with your threat and dps and with that the lengh of the specific fight, which of course means less force spent on healers end since boss isnt doing damage (dead) . I think I get it.

 

But...

 

We all know that being the perfect tank with the perfect healer is imposible since in the end we are all still humans and we make mistakes. What im getting at, is that an "extra" endurance is a must for a tank to have since we need to think about all the ****ups peeps are doing during the fight and only "larger extra hp pool" than "needed hp pool to survive" save the attempt from wipe.

 

Basicly, more endurance means we get to make more mistakes and still survive. Kitru.. would that be acceptable reason to advise future tanks that they still need endurance more than willpower?

 

Does that make sense?

[alonephoenix]

So, People are arguing Effective Health as a tank, long story short.

 

Kit's mentality and priority structure is ideal (And even endorsed by one of the tanks that you Wow guys are taking your advice from: Ciderhelm, whether you're aware or not. See his EHP discussion on TankSpot.) for SWTOR tanking. Here's why:

 

You cannot make the assumption that healers need to be doing other things that healing. Because should you make that assumption, then you're acknowledging one of Kit's points: You should do ANYTHING else once you have "enough" health to survive. When you're pushing content in any game, you need to have enough of your role in order to allow others to perform theirs, so you can continue contributing to the most important part of the content push: Killing the boss.

 

Here's the issue with the discussion of the 10k Health tank, versus the 5k health tank that was mentioned earlier:

 

You're assuming that by not directly attempting to stack Endurance, that the difference in EHP will be greater than the avoidance that will be granted by stacking similar Defensive stats. Guess what? They're not.

 

Endurance grants you 10 HP per point. Flat. Let's look then at Defense: 57 points yields around 2.089% chance to avoid all damage. (We're also assuming level 50.) I have an understanding that around approximately 24% item-added defense (Which, I will high ball the approximation at 650 defense, assuming that DR starts kicking in hard at that point.) versus a flat 6500 Health addition. Now, we know that a good general, pool of HP with green gear at 50 may put you at 11k to 14k health, for people starting off.

 

If you have 6500 additional health, you're looking at possibly pushing 20k health. We're going to EQUALLY assume that you talented the exact same as someone who is going for avoidance, to rule out the chance that spec plays a role in this exercise.

 

The ONLY thing that matters in a tanking scenario, is that you don't get killed for the longest time span possible. This is pivotal. Trash is irrelevant, even in SWTOR. If you can't CC trash in your group, you don't need to consider this conversation, and do what you must. Therefore we have two tanks with the following HPs:

 

20.5k with 0 Additional avoidance.

14k with 24% avoidance.

 

Assume the boss swings every 2.5 seconds. Assume the boss swings for 4k damage.

Assume your healers can handle doing 3.5k heals per 2.5 seconds without running out of force.

 

With 20.5k health, and 0 avoidance, you will survive for the following time:

41 swings @ 500 damage = 20.5k Health.

41 swings * 2.5 seconds = 102.5 seconds alive.

 

With 14k health, and 24% avoidance, you can survive for the following time:

Each swing has a 24% chance to miss. We reduce the boss damage from 4k to 3.04k (4000 * .76)

You live indefinitely. The boss should never land enough blows to kill you on the average.

Let's redefine how avoidance is modeled in that case, because that paints such a pretty picture for the avoidance tank:

Let's assume the boss is paying Bioware to rig the RNG such that they will always get 1 swing to connect of every 4 that they throw at you. Lets assume that Bioware was nice, and decided to make those the final swings instead of the first swings.

Now, the damage intake looks like the following:

12k *.76 = 9.12k + 4k = 13.12k per 10 seconds - 14k = -880 HPS?! The healers are Still ahead!

 

Clearly, point for point, Defense is ahead of Endurance solely because 4k damage avoided is impressively important. The longer the fights go, the easier it shows why avoidance is king in that regard. Once you begin to factor in absorbs, and absorb rating, you see how you have significantly smaller hits that land. Defense is the first factor in determining if a hit lands.

 

This model is extremely rough. I can't get definitive values for the Diminishing returns on Defense/Shield/Absorbs. I also, haven't factored in the healing output requirements discretely. There are CLEARLY times where an energy based healer will suffer because an avoidance based tank may catch an evil string of RNG, but it should be nothing that their CDs ****And yours***** cannot handle.

 

Sage healers will have the least difficulty in handling the avoidance tank because they are effectively immune to the restraints of reduced regeneration over increased expenditure that Troopers and Smugglers suffer. Smugglers and troopers may prefer healing the higher endurance target, because they can budget their time on the tanks, but they aren't really helped in the long run because they should be able to maintain a reasonable HPS with respect to the DPS of the boss, or they shouldn't be healing it in the first place.

 

Sorry if this has been done elsewhere. I just get tired of seeing people claiming stacking Endurance is the key. More effective health can be found in itemization of defensive sub stats. The balance of enough defensive stats, with Willpower, is the real mystery.

 

TL;DR: Kit's concept of (Defense/Shield/Absorb)>stuff>Endurance is superior than Endurance>(Defense/Shield/Absorb) assuming damage is consistent, and heals are consistent.

[TrevNYC]

Copying this from another thread...:

 

More health means you live longer. Healers don't always have focus to cast, get stunned or CC'd. Having more health keeps you up while they resolve that.

 

Except for when it doesn't. Again, you have to use math and understand how game mechanics work. If a boss hits for x, then you need to have health in multiples of x in order to survive y number of hits before your healers need to heal you. This gives it a "break point" where you have enough help to stay alive under any reasonable situation that your healers are in, and more doesn't do anything at all.

 

Willpower? Does nothing but a minor increase in dps with force abilities.

 

Willpower increases damage with all abilities, not just force ones. Dps makes the target die faster, which means you take less damage. This is because the target can't hit you when it's dead.

 

Moreover, you can't keep assuming that an increase in dps from willpower is "minor" while any increase in health whatsover magically buys your healers more time to make sandwiches and surf the Internet in-between healing you. You have to look at the math.

 

Finally, increasing your dps doesn't just affect your dps. It *can* affect everyone else's dps. Eventually your dpsers will have gear that is on par with or outstrips yours. They focus entirely on dps stats when gearing up. Their threat will increase at a faster rate than yours because you are focusing on survival stats. They will start ganking aggro, which wastes healer resources even more, or they will have to start throttling back, which means the boss lives longer and keeps hitting you.

[oddmyth]

Stuff about Effective health.

 

The only problem with your mathematic scenario is that we aren't looking at 650 DEF versus 650 END. You can't get gear or mods that choose endurance over defense.

 

Its endurance versus willpower, defense has nothing to do with this conversation.

The answer quite obviously is already stated, if you are getting gibbed, you need more END or need to understand the encounter better, use CD's properly or need to group with better people who do everything else properly.

 

If you are losing threat, then you need more willpower, or need a better dps cycle or your group needs to learn the encounter better or you simply need a better group.

 

At the end of the day you can't make this decision in the vacuum. It comes from trial and error and testing and knowing who is in your group and what is happening in the encounters.

 

In every MMO I've played since 1998 tanks have had different sets of gear for different encounters and its going to happen in SWTOR as well. Some encounters where your healer gets random knockback or there's a tonne of chaos and raid healing needed will necessitate whether you need a bigger health pool or not. Some encounters will allow balls out dps and you will have threat problems.

 

There is always a solution though and being flexible enough to understand all the variables necessary to overcome those situations is a large part of what makes tanking and raiding fun.

 

TL:DR If it's working for you now, it might not work for you later, but that doesn't mean its right or wrong, it just is.

Edited January 6, 2012 by oddmyth

[Ashirael]

Call me crazy, but Shadow tanks seem fairly close to Druid tanks from WoW, and there was a *huge* argument over stacking health or stacking damage. In WoW it mattered because doing damage gave you a shield, which blocked more incoming damage.

 

I played a Druid tank for years, and I always went with threat stats over stamina after about 3 to 4 weeks into expansions. My reasoning? After everyone was geared and had the content on farm DPSers got lazy and would go all-out right away. I needed that extra damage. The extra DPS from me and the DPSers going all out killed the boss fast enough that my "lack" of HP didn't matter anymore because the healers could still keep me alive. As the weeks went on I would stack less and less stamina, because everyone was geared up enough that extra health didn't matter.

 

Moral of the story? The first level 50's should have stacked stamina and as they understood the encounters and got better gear they should have gotten rid of their stamina for more DPS stats. So those of you saying to stack stamina are right-to an extent. Match your HP with tanks you see running the instance(Tanks of your class, of course. There are differences!) and then focus on DPS stats for the rest, because the great thing about SWTOR is you don't need to choose between DPS, Health, and damage mitigation.

[Sterrius]

for me the question is more about gear. You dont have many options at lv50 making all the discussion kind of useless for the end game.

 

From what i saw until now.....

 

PVP and PVE AND Craft gear all have 3 sets only.

 

Stalker , Survivor and Master force.

 

And you cant tank with stalker or master force.

 

So you will go endurance no matter what you are doing. Unless you want to go with a gear 100% made in craft with mods, something not easy to do when 90% of the market if made of DPS mods.

 

You can also take half survivor and half staker so this way you get what you want, but you will sacrifice defensive stats for that.

Edited January 6, 2012 by Sterrius

[jcurri]

I'm a 42 shadow working on the kinetic tree. One of my most significant focus's is to keep my guys alive by putting them on guard. I'll even stay in stealth at the beginning of the engagement while using "mass mind control" because the enemy will tend to blow their offensive load right at the beginning, and hopefully the tunnel vision will set in. That being said...

 

When you have a friendly on guard, and the incoming damage is directed towards you, does the damage *you* take go through the same defense, damage mitigation, and shield procs as it would if it were not being redirected?

 

If it doesn't, wouldn't stacking endurance be the way to go, as you're not going to be taking advantage of those defensive stats?

Edited January 6, 2012 by jcurri

[alonephoenix]

...

 

TL:DR If it's working for you now, it might not work for you later, but that doesn't mean its right or wrong, it just is.

 

This is going to be the key. However, if you look back into the thread, you'll see several people claiming Endurance is the most important stat that the Shadow tank should be hunting down. This simply isn't the case.

 

I'd argue that they "ought" to be looking for things like Armor, but we don't have much that we can do to control that statistic.

 

I personally feel that threat sets are significantly more important than survival sets. (This is solely because they are often the most ignored set a tank owns.) I also dislike the habit games make in build "set bonuses" that strongly push you one way or the next into particular pieces of gear. Especially with SWTOR, where we have such a mod system, we should be looking into things that might allow us to do things such as "create set bonuses" much like rune combos in Diablo 2.

 

My major point in the post should have been TL;DR'd:

Once you have enough health that you aren't being 1-3 shotted by a boss, Get threat. It contributes more than stacking more health.

[inseeisyou]

Health does not directly contribute to your survivability within Flashpoints or Operations. While solo, it has some utility if you are not at a point where the use of your own abilities and a healer companion allow you to overcome any incoming damage, even from champions.

 

Stacking Endurance is not an appreciable expenditure of gearing largely because its only contribution to tank survivability is to increase the amount of damage you can take without receiving any heals before you die. Since default hp is so high compared to incoming damage, stacking additional endurance has little to no comparative contribution to your survivability in legitimate tanking situations. Willpower, on the other hand, increases your damage output (which is *excellent* even when compared to pure DPS) and threat, making your allies less likely to die and allowing them to DPS harder without risk of pulling off of you.

 

As a tank, you should prioritize as follows: (Defense>Shield>Absorb)>Willpower>Endurance. Endurance just doesn't do enough to make it worthwhile to stack to any appreciable extent.

 

This to a large extent. High Endurance may help in shorter, burst damage oriented tanking situations, but in any lengthy encounter the ability to mitigate damage is what really matters.

 

Consider this small example.

 

Would you rather have twice as many hit points or take half as much damage?

 

Obviously you want to take half as much damage because it means heals are twice as effective.

 

If you understand this point you will understand what Kitru is trying to say. Once that bit of extra hitpoints from the top of your health bar are gone, they are gone for the rest of the fight, you health will be a direct result of the healing you receive. The willpower on the other hand will make your hits heavier for the entire fight.

[JeremyDale]

This to a large extent. High Endurance may help in shorter, burst damage oriented tanking situations, but in any lengthy encounter the ability to mitigate damage is what really matters.

 

Consider this small example.

 

Would you rather have twice as many hit points or take half as much damage?

 

Obviously you want to take half as much damage because it means heals are twice as effective.

 

If you understand this point you will understand what Kitru is trying to say. Once that bit of extra hitpoints from the top of your health bar are gone, they are gone for the rest of the fight, you health will be a direct result of the healing you receive. The willpower on the other hand will make your hits heavier for the entire fight.

 

No. You need to reread the debate, because this is not about endurance vs mitigation, where a fair argument can be made. This is a debate between Endurance vs Willpower. If you want to defend her point, you need to actually use her point. You also may want to reread the title of this thread.

 

And these are her words:

"additional hit points will not magically allow your healers to heal less over the course of a fight."

 

This is simply an incorrect statement. They do, and I've already explained why. Reread my earlier example using very simplistic numbers and it SHOULD become clear to you.

 

Also you are looking at HP all wrong. High HP does not just dissapear after they are used up during a fight. That's like saying all anyone needs is enough HP to live through one hit, because getting any more is worthless because a "non-lazy healer" can just quickly heal you back up before you get hit again. It's just a misguided way of looking at it.

 

Having a higher HP pool is always there. It allows to take more damage before you need another heal, so it will consistently reduce the amount of healing you will need for the rest of the fight, as once the healer heals you back up you can take MORE damage before you need another round of healing.

 

This is tank 101 and I really can't believe I'm having to explain the importance of having higher HP pools as a tank. I"m beginning to think this is a lot of people's first MMO or something.

 

Yes, me and everyone else agrees mitgation stats should be your top priority. No one is even arguing that. But increasing your endurance should take priority over increasing your willpower, as it actually improves your performance at your role as tank, enabling you to live longer before needing heals. That is what tanks are there for, and why people do not use DPS classes to tank - because tank classes can live longer before needing another heal. That is the entire concept behind a tank class.

Edited January 6, 2012 by JeremyDale

[madmilitia]

wow we aren't seriously have a debate weath our not DPS stats greater the HP stats are we guys

 

 

kitru i'm feeling more and more that you don't have a clue how to tank.

 

any one that thinks willpower is bwtter because the fight will end faster cause you do more damage is crazy.

 

your job as a tank is to hold agrro and be a meat sheild and if we were supposed to hit massivly hard to hold agrro why do we get a talent that increases our aggro and decresses our DAMAGE done.

 

if you are a tank never pick the armor where the willpower out weighs the endurance.

 

this is common sense.

[XGrievusX]

So, People are arguing Effective Health as a tank, long story short.

 

Kit's mentality and priority structure is ideal (And even endorsed by one of the tanks that you Wow guys are taking your advice from: Ciderhelm, whether you're aware or not. See his EHP discussion on TankSpot.) for SWTOR tanking. Here's why:

 

You cannot make the assumption that healers need to be doing other things that healing. Because should you make that assumption, then you're acknowledging one of Kit's points: You should do ANYTHING else once you have "enough" health to survive. When you're pushing content in any game, you need to have enough of your role in order to allow others to perform theirs, so you can continue contributing to the most important part of the content push: Killing the boss.

 

Here's the issue with the discussion of the 10k Health tank, versus the 5k health tank that was mentioned earlier:

 

You're assuming that by not directly attempting to stack Endurance, that the difference in EHP will be greater than the avoidance that will be granted by stacking similar Defensive stats. Guess what? They're not.

 

Endurance grants you 10 HP per point. Flat. Let's look then at Defense: 57 points yields around 2.089% chance to avoid all damage. (We're also assuming level 50.) I have an understanding that around approximately 24% item-added defense (Which, I will high ball the approximation at 650 defense, assuming that DR starts kicking in hard at that point.) versus a flat 6500 Health addition. Now, we know that a good general, pool of HP with green gear at 50 may put you at 11k to 14k health, for people starting off.

 

If you have 6500 additional health, you're looking at possibly pushing 20k health. We're going to EQUALLY assume that you talented the exact same as someone who is going for avoidance, to rule out the chance that spec plays a role in this exercise.

 

The ONLY thing that matters in a tanking scenario, is that you don't get killed for the longest time span possible. This is pivotal. Trash is irrelevant, even in SWTOR. If you can't CC trash in your group, you don't need to consider this conversation, and do what you must. Therefore we have two tanks with the following HPs:

 

20.5k with 0 Additional avoidance.

14k with 24% avoidance.

 

Assume the boss swings every 2.5 seconds. Assume the boss swings for 4k damage.

Assume your healers can handle doing 3.5k heals per 2.5 seconds without running out of force.

 

With 20.5k health, and 0 avoidance, you will survive for the following time:

41 swings @ 500 damage = 20.5k Health.

41 swings * 2.5 seconds = 102.5 seconds alive.

 

With 14k health, and 24% avoidance, you can survive for the following time:

Each swing has a 24% chance to miss. We reduce the boss damage from 4k to 3.04k (4000 * .76)

You live indefinitely. The boss should never land enough blows to kill you on the average.

Let's redefine how avoidance is modeled in that case, because that paints such a pretty picture for the avoidance tank:

Let's assume the boss is paying Bioware to rig the RNG such that they will always get 1 swing to connect of every 4 that they throw at you. Lets assume that Bioware was nice, and decided to make those the final swings instead of the first swings.

Now, the damage intake looks like the following:

12k *.76 = 9.12k + 4k = 13.12k per 10 seconds - 14k = -880 HPS?! The healers are Still ahead!

 

Clearly, point for point, Defense is ahead of Endurance solely because 4k damage avoided is impressively important. The longer the fights go, the easier it shows why avoidance is king in that regard. Once you begin to factor in absorbs, and absorb rating, you see how you have significantly smaller hits that land. Defense is the first factor in determining if a hit lands.

 

This model is extremely rough. I can't get definitive values for the Diminishing returns on Defense/Shield/Absorbs. I also, haven't factored in the healing output requirements discretely. There are CLEARLY times where an energy based healer will suffer because an avoidance based tank may catch an evil string of RNG, but it should be nothing that their CDs ****And yours***** cannot handle.

 

Sage healers will have the least difficulty in handling the avoidance tank because they are effectively immune to the restraints of reduced regeneration over increased expenditure that Troopers and Smugglers suffer. Smugglers and troopers may prefer healing the higher endurance target, because they can budget their time on the tanks, but they aren't really helped in the long run because they should be able to maintain a reasonable HPS with respect to the DPS of the boss, or they shouldn't be healing it in the first place.

 

Sorry if this has been done elsewhere. I just get tired of seeing people claiming stacking Endurance is the key. More effective health can be found in itemization of defensive sub stats. The balance of enough defensive stats, with Willpower, is the real mystery.

 

TL;DR: Kit's concept of (Defense/Shield/Absorb)>stuff>Endurance is superior than Endurance>(Defense/Shield/Absorb) assuming damage is consistent, and heals are consistent.

 

Your example is slightly flawed. Your example should be 20.5k hp with some avoidance and the other less hp and more avoidance. The only way your current example would balance out otherwise which would be absurd is 20.5k hp and 0% avoidance vs. 0 hp and 24% avoidance. The 20.5k hp shadow will have some avoidance maybe more, because all of the gear with Defence, Shield and Absorb I have seen has had greater endurance over willpower. In fact there are only a few gear pieces I have seen leveling to 43 that did not stat out this way. That only leaves moddable gear which 5 pieces that you could choose the willpower dominant armor mod. Just like people are saying that the hp from the endurance heavy mod is unsubstancial, one could argue that the additional willpower you get from the other mod would be of little consequence as well. And from what people are saying end game gear with tank stats like defence are the same way. Therefore the whole argument may be moot. I don't see how you could gear in a manner where you could focus on avoidance and not get prodominantly more Endurance over willpower with the way gear is itemized that has tanking secondary stats. I have chosen upgraded mods with focus on avoidance and still ended up wih pieces that had more endurance than willpower. Threat is not a problem and although I don't do as much damage as a DPS I do a fair amount of damage.

 

Dev's have indicated armor mods will drop on end game bosses that will allow you to upgrade moddable gear to tier level gear. If you could get mods for your gear at end game with more willpower to make your moddable gear as good a tier level gear how much of an a-hole would a shadow tank be to roll on the armor mod with more willpower against a Sage healer, sage dps or Shadow DPS?

Edited January 6, 2012 by XGrievusX

[Psydils]

Here's the thing, there is always an absolute minimum amount of "stats" you need for any situation. As a tank, the minimum amount of hit points you need is to survive one hit of any attack that a boss throws out that is not interruptable or avoidable through some other mechanic such as moving out of fire.

 

Conversely, the minimum amount of threat/dps you need is enough to hold aggro so that your teammates are allowed to dps freely and at their maximum rate. Any tank talking about "dps" is a noob, tanking is about threat generation.

 

So, Endurance has a set minimum amount that you will need to survive and Willpower has a set minimum amount so that a tank will be able to hold threat adequately. After this amount, which stat you choose will depend on many factors.

 

Argument A states that Endurance above the minimum amount is not needed because boss attacks don't hit that hard, those that do are avoidable/interruptable and threat generation is more important.

 

Argument B states that Willpower above the minimum amount needed to hold threat is not needed because anyone trying to DPS as a tank is a noob and there are countless situations where a tank having a higher health pool may be beneficial when "**** hits the fan".

 

Both are reasonable arguments and there may be "specific" circumstances where Argument A is viable. But, generally speaking, under the vast majority of situations, Argument B is going to apply to the most people and situations. If you are holding threat, your team's DPS is maximized, there is no reason for a tank to stack more DPS stats to "kill the boss faster". This has been shown time and time again and the argument is completely absurd, it's like arguing the earth is flat.

 

Now, in someone's very specific circumstance, group make up, skill level, encounter specific, mechanic specific, etc. situation, they may be able to have success not stacking Endurance and stacking Willpower. Good for you, but that does not mean it is ideal or a good thing to do. We've already heard from a tank who stacks Endurance, that they have no threat generation problem playing with some of the best geared DPS in this game right now...so, why would they need more Willpower? So, they can DPS as a tank? If you want to DPS, don't be a tank.

 

Like I said, in specific situations people may find success stacking Willpower, but that doesn't mean it is ideal or applicable to others, generally speaking.

[alonephoenix]

Stuff about why my flawed model is flawed.

 

You're correct. Each tank will have built in avoidance. I also mention this in beginning. (This ties into the specs. We naturally gain avoidance through talents, and solely as characters at a certain level.

 

I reduced the model to only account for the defense granted by external sources for that reason. I can remodel assuming that there's a tank with 20.5k HP and 24% avoidance, and a 14k HP tank with 48% avoidance to land the point if I must.

 

But what I don't want to see are tanks that don't contribute more to their groups once they hit this ideal spot of Avoidance/Endurance, and just start stacking Endurance, ignoring things like Willpower, Accuracy, and the like, because they think that a good tank is defined by how huge their HP pool is.

 

It's just not the case. Once you are no longer a strain on the healers, you need to contribute more DPS. Not keep it the same. That's the point in the threat set of gear for tanks. I've seen, in several past MMOs, where people never build this magical threat set, and instead, just continue stacking endurance and think they're doing it "right."

 

I don't want to see that. Particularly with a class such as this, where there is a great opportunity to really exploit extra damage.

 

And if I need to really show this, there's a reason why Wow added the Vengeance mechanic into their game. They let and almost encourage players to solely stack their defensive stats as a tank. While this does make it simple for the player, it does remove a layer of complexity to the role.

[Zintair]

Here's the thing, there is always an absolute minimum amount of "stats" you need for any situation. As a tank, the minimum amount of hit points you need is to survive one hit of any attack that a boss throws out that is not interruptable or avoidable through some other mechanic such as moving out of fire.

 

Conversely, the minimum amount of threat/dps you need is enough to hold aggro so that your teammates are allowed to dps freely and at their maximum rate. Any tank talking about "dps" is a noob, tanking is about threat generation.

 

So, Endurance has a set minimum amount that you will need to survive and Willpower has a set minimum amount so that a tank will be able to hold threat adequately. After this amount, which stat you choose will depend on many factors.

 

Argument A states that Endurance above the minimum amount is not needed because boss attacks don't hit that hard, those that do are avoidable/interruptable and threat generation is more important.

 

Argument B states that Willpower above the minimum amount needed to hold threat is not needed because anyone trying to DPS as a tank is a noob and there are countless situations where a tank having a higher health pool may be beneficial when "**** hits the fan".

 

Both are reasonable arguments and there may be "specific" circumstances where Argument A is viable. But, generally speaking, under the vast majority of situations, Argument B is going to apply to the most people and situations. If you are holding threat, your team's DPS is maximized, there is no reason for a tank to stack more DPS stats to "kill the boss faster". This has been shown time and time again and the argument is completely absurd, it's like arguing the earth is flat.

 

Now, in someone's very specific circumstance, group make up, skill level, encounter specific, mechanic specific, etc. situation, they may be able to have success not stacking Endurance and stacking Willpower. Good for you, but that does not mean it is ideal or a good thing to do. We've already heard from a tank who stacks Endurance, that they have no threat generation problem playing with some of the best geared DPS in this game right now...so, why would they need more Willpower? So, they can DPS as a tank? If you want to DPS, don't be a tank.

 

Like I said, in specific situations people may find success stacking Willpower, but that doesn't mean it is ideal or applicable to others, generally speaking.

 

This

 

Furthermore as I said previously in this thread, the T2 Columni gear the armor slot is NOT moddable.

 

 

Its not as black and white as Argument A and Arguement B however. There is a whole ton of grey area.

 

Thje important thing to take from this thread is that there are multiple ways to achieve success as a Shadow tank and the debate for Endurance vs Willpower should fall under where your OWN PERSONAL toon needs work.

 

If you have a solid group and can achieve some more DPS/threatGen instead of HP then do that. If you find the DPS has that covered and you want to make sure you stay alive and have more of a buffer for mistakes then do that.

 

Both work, its personal preference. The point is neither is WRONG if the boss dies.

[Zintair]

You're correct. Each tank will have built in avoidance. I also mention this in beginning. (This ties into the specs. We naturally gain avoidance through talents, and solely as characters at a certain level.

 

I reduced the model to only account for the defense granted by external sources for that reason. I can remodel assuming that there's a tank with 20.5k HP and 24% avoidance, and a 14k HP tank with 48% avoidance to land the point if I must.

 

But what I don't want to see are tanks that don't contribute more to their groups once they hit this ideal spot of Avoidance/Endurance, and just start stacking Endurance, ignoring things like Willpower, Accuracy, and the like, because they think that a good tank is defined by how huge their HP pool is.

 

It's just not the case. Once you are no longer a strain on the healers, you need to contribute more DPS. Not keep it the same. That's the point in the threat set of gear for tanks. I've seen, in several past MMOs, where people never build this magical threat set, and instead, just continue stacking endurance and think they're doing it "right."

 

I don't want to see that. Particularly with a class such as this, where there is a great opportunity to really exploit extra damage.

 

And if I need to really show this, there's a reason why Wow added the Vengeance mechanic into their game. They let and almost encourage players to solely stack their defensive stats as a tank. While this does make it simple for the player, it does remove a layer of complexity to the role.

 

The gear at end game already chooses stats for you.

 

It prioritizes Accuracy and Absorption. While your correct in your ideas I dont think we have that level of customization. Unless you mean taking a DPS implant instead of a tanking one.

[Duedroth]

Any tank talking about "dps" is a noob, tanking is about threat generation.

 

I'm not end-game in SWTOR yet, but I've tanked end-game in other MMOs. This is too much of an absolute statement, and I'd like to disagree with it.

 

DPS generates threat. If it didn't, you wouldn't have also stated that the minimum amount of threat is to let DPS go freely and at maximum capacity but still hold the mob.

 

Therefore, DPS is a consideration of the tank in terms of threat generation. It's usually the last consideration, but it's still there. Other threat generating mechanics are more important, but adding DPS to it makes it that much easier to maintain aggro, and does in fact help move content more quickly (if even just slightly).

[madmilitia]

I'm not end-game in SWTOR yet, but I've tanked end-game in other MMOs. This is too much of an absolute statement, and I'd like to disagree with it.

 

DPS generates threat. If it didn't, you wouldn't have also stated that the minimum amount of threat is to let DPS go freely and at maximum capacity but still hold the mob.

 

Therefore, DPS is a consideration of the tank in terms of threat generation. It's usually the last consideration, but it's still there. Other threat generating mechanics are more important, but adding DPS to it makes it that much easier to maintain aggro, and does in fact help move content more quickly (if even just slightly).

 

i understand what you saying here and you right being able to do a bit more DPS is helpfull but not as helpfull as concintrating on your primary stats.

 

in WOW did you stack crit as your tank?

 

or to get even closer to the point of this thread did you stack STR as a Prot warrior?

 

the bosses in heroic flash points and raids hit hard trust me. and the only midigation mods/enhancments you can put in have higher endurance then willpower.

 

so those that stack willpower are either not doing the balsvis dailies cause those mods don;t allow you to have high willpower and defense/absorbe

 

or they are picking the high willpower low endurance 0 midigation mods.

 

IE the willpower endurace and crit mod. and if that is what they are doing i would never run with them.

[Dracyula]

I'm a 42 shadow working on the kinetic tree. One of my most significant focus's is to keep my guys alive by putting them on guard. I'll even stay in stealth at the beginning of the engagement while using "mass mind control" because the enemy will tend to blow their offensive load right at the beginning, and hopefully the tunnel vision will set in. That being said...

 

When you have a friendly on guard, and the incoming damage is directed towards you, does the damage *you* take go through the same defense, damage mitigation, and shield procs as it would if it were not being redirected?

 

If it doesn't, wouldn't stacking endurance be the way to go, as you're not going to be taking advantage of those defensive stats?

 

That is a great question (about damage going through defenses with guard), and I would like to know the answer as well. Keep in mind though, You are talking about PVP, in PVE the damage does not come to you through guard.

[Dracyula]

No. You need to reread the debate, because this is not about endurance vs mitigation, where a fair argument can be made. This is a debate between Endurance vs Willpower. If you want to defend her point, you need to actually use her point. You also may want to reread the title of this thread.

 

And these are her words:

"additional hit points will not magically allow your healers to heal less over the course of a fight."

 

This is simply an incorrect statement. They do, and I've already explained why. Reread my earlier example using very simplistic numbers and it SHOULD become clear to you.

 

I'm sorry but you are incorrect. Regardless of your health pool, the healer will have to heal the same amount. The healer heals damage that you take, so this is what determines how much healing they have to do, it's pretty simple.

 

In other words, in a five minute fight, if you take 95,000 damage, the healer would have to heal 95,000 damage. Your endurance has no effect on how much the healer needs to heal over the course of a fight.

[madmilitia]

the 50% of damage that you recive does not get effected by your defensive ablities.

 

in other words there is no chance that if your gaurd target gets hit for 1000 so 500 cause it's 50% less that you will block that 500 incoming damage.

 

at least taht is true in PVP

[XGrievusX]

You're correct. Each tank will have built in avoidance. I also mention this in beginning. (This ties into the specs. We naturally gain avoidance through talents, and solely as characters at a certain level.

 

I reduced the model to only account for the defense granted by external sources for that reason. I can remodel assuming that there's a tank with 20.5k HP and 24% avoidance, and a 14k HP tank with 48% avoidance to land the point if I must.

 

But what I don't want to see are tanks that don't contribute more to their groups once they hit this ideal spot of Avoidance/Endurance, and just start stacking Endurance, ignoring things like Willpower, Accuracy, and the like, because they think that a good tank is defined by how huge their HP pool is.

 

It's just not the case. Once you are no longer a strain on the healers, you need to contribute more DPS. Not keep it the same. That's the point in the threat set of gear for tanks. I've seen, in several past MMOs, where people never build this magical threat set, and instead, just continue stacking endurance and think they're doing it "right."

 

I don't want to see that. Particularly with a class such as this, where there is a great opportunity to really exploit extra damage.

 

And if I need to really show this, there's a reason why Wow added the Vengeance mechanic into their game. They let and almost encourage players to solely stack their defensive stats as a tank. While this does make it simple for the player, it does remove a layer of complexity to the role.

 

I may have not been clear. What I was trying to say is long winded. As it stands right now If you stack avoidance (defence)/mitigation(shield/Absorbtion) you will automatically stack endurance with end game or unmoddable gear, because gear with those stats has more endurance than willpower. Your only option for Preendgame gear that will result in more willpower and less endurance is if you use modded gear and use the armor mod that has more willpower than endurance. In endgame you may switch out mods here and there when you have capped your stats to get more Willpower DPS, but by nature our gear will have more endurance than willpower. I have not seen numbers on endgame as far as exactly how much Defence, Shield, Absorption or Accuracy we need to cap but I will be suprised if we have much room to move to add any offensive secondary stats. The only place in endgame you can really bring it down to Willpower vs. Endurance is by rolling against dps and heals on armor mods dropped by raid bosses with more willpower than endurance and use them in moddable gear to bring them on par with raid gear. This could only be done on 5 items, and I would wager that the increase in DPS will be negligable. Besides that it would be real crappy for a tank to take a mod that caters to a heals or dps's primary job so that he can do more dps, when that is not his primary job. You can switch out earpieces, implants and relics to increase DPS as well but I would reserve judgement on that until we get some more info on caps and diminishing returns.

[Dracyula]

I will start off by saying that I am a level 33 shadow tank, so take my theory with a grain of salt if you wish.

 

I will start by addressing the END vs WIL debate. First, I am going to assume that a properly geared tank is able to mitigate enough damage so that the healer can do more HPS than damage you take. If this is the case, you only need enough endurance to prevent death before the healer can react (since they can out heal the damage that you take). Please remember that you are not sacrificing mitigation stats with the choice between END and WIL.

 

On the other hand, if you are taking slightly more damage per second than the healer can heal, END becomes vastly more important, as it does increase the amount of time you will survive. For example, if a boss does 1000 dps and your healer does 950 hps, you are losing 50 hp every second, so a larger health pool means you live longer.

 

Furthermore, if you do any PVP at all, the importance of END increases as well, since your healers will rarely be able to out heal the incoming damage throughout an entire warzone.

 

Now to the mitigation stats. The Defense>Shield>Absorb is sound in theory, but there is a flaw. I do agree that Defense should be 1st (at least until diminishing returns) because you get more mitigation per point.

 

As far as Shield and Absorb go, these are most effective when they are equal to each other. I will use extremes to demonstrate my point. Lets say you have 100% to split up between shield and absorb. If you have 99% shield and 1% absorb, your effective mitigation is just below 1% (because your shield blocks nearly every time for 1% of the damage). It works the same the other way as well, if you have 1% shield and 99% absorb, your effective mitigation is just below 1% (because you block nearly all damage on 1/100 attacks).

 

The ideal way to split up 100% between shield and absorb is 50/50, this will mitigate 25% of incoming damage.

 

The biggest thing people are failing to realize is that we have kinetic ward, which makes our base shield 35%, with base absorb (with a shield generator) at 20%. Simple math states that we should stack absorb over shield until it equals our shield % with kinetic ward up (assuming there are no diminishing returns).

 

So the mitigation stat priority should be: Defense>Absorb (until it equals shield)> Shield=Absorb

 

As I said, I am only level 33 at the moment so I welcome feedback, but please be specific with examples.

[alonephoenix]

I may have not been clear. What I was trying to say is long winded. As it stands right now If you stack avoidance (defence)/mitigation(shield/Absorbtion) you will automatically stack endurance with end game or unmoddable gear, because gear with those stats has more endurance than willpower. ...

 

I agree with you. Inadvertently, I think we will end up stacking Endurance as well as defensive stats in our gear naturally. However, I think that we will also have opportunities to choose how we want to fill out other slots in our gear. Maybe this will be similar in nature to Wow, where we see the real tweaks in our Relics/Trinkets/Implants/Enchants and what not.

 

However, I don't see any "enchanting" style profession or modifications in the game as it stands, minus perhaps augments. Augment itemization may be where we start to see people itemization in some method they choose. Assuming that a player has 6 - 12 different "slots" with which to work, and they already have an acceptable HP level (My guess will be 12-14k HP for a tank.) and perhaps, 12-18% Defense/Shield/Absorb.

 

From that point, I suspect there are two camps of tanks: The EHP tanks, and the Endurance tanks. The EHP tanks usually are more math heavy players, and will hunt down items that grant damage reduction, avoidance and the like. These are typically the players that I think have a "better idea" of what it means to tank: Mitigation of damage. The other camp is the one I have issues with: The Stack-Endurance-Because-More-Health-Means-I-Take-More-Hits camp.

 

The issue with the "SEBMHMITMH" camp, is that they think they're doing the healers a favor, by giving them more "breathing room." This is a half-true statement. Yes, They are technically giving healers more space to work with, BUT, they are missing out on half their job: Reducing the overall damage they take in. If they reduce the damage they take, they simply don't need this "buffer." Secondly, they believe that this makes healers happy, to have more space to heal. This is actually a force/energy/mana sponge. This is just eating away at the healer's resource, because if they itemized differently, they would be able to turn a 4k damage attack into a 3.5k damage attack, which is 500 the healers don't EVER need to think about.