'I am a good tank, look at my HP!'
This I've heard so many times and it's
like a disease. As a healer, I would politely excuse myself and run
furthest away possible. It may be good for sitting on the Fleet, such
a huge pool will definitely attract some 'oh my..' attention. But
that's pretty much it because as a real tank, you need to approach
your stats differently.
Mitigation > Endurance
Without a doubt, mitigation is our
priority. As tanks, it is our alpha and omega, since that makes us
tanks in the first place. One can easily have a Commando with nearly 35k HP, wearing heavy armour – does this make them a tank? No. Same
for us, having 42k HP and heavy armour doesn't mean that we are good
tanks (even worse if it is a Shadow tank in light armour!). So forget
about Endurance and start looking Defense rating, Shield rating and
Absorbtion rating. This site (many thanks to Rurik!) provides a table which allows you to quickly see what distribution should you aim for with your current stat budget.
Armourings / Mods / Enhancements (2.1 patch)
To begin with the essential, we have to
avoid all the Endurance heavy modifications, and yes, that forces us
into the expensive mix & match game. The obvious exception to
this are Armourings where we simply pick the Endurance heavy ones,
because threat is not an issue and therefore we don't need to go for
the Str/Will/Aim heavy ones. So for Shadows, Advanced Force Wielder Armoring 31 is the
one to stick to. Regarding Mods, we aim to get the ones
with the most mitigation stat.
Advanced Reinforced Mod 31 or Advanced Robust Mod 31
are the current BiS (Best in Slot), everything else is only a worse
alternative. As for Enhancements, the situation: Advanced Bulwark Enhancement 31 and
Advanced Bastion Enhancement 31.
Enhancements with higher Endurance are the least desired option. Also,
Accuracy Enhancements are not our aim, because threat is not an issue
even with the basic 94% Accuracy.
So to sum up, the formula always
remains the same: Avoid Endurance-weighted
modifications and look for the mitigation.
Augments
Augments sometimes serve as a 'patch'
for DPS classes to reach the cap; boosting whichever stat they are
missing when it's not provided by the gear itself. For us tanks, the
situation slightly differs, because we shouldn't be missing anything
(such as Critical, Surge, Accuracy). We use augments to balance our
mitigation so that we don't waste any of the three. As mentioned
above, use the table to see how to properly
balance your mitigation stats in order to avoid wasting them because
of diminishing returns.
These are the augments we want: Advanced Redoubt Augment 28, Advanced Shield Augment 28, Advanced Absorb Augment 28.
At the end of the day, you get enough
Endurance from the gear, you will always use Endurance stim and have
the Trooper buff, so you don't need to worry about being under 37k HP
which is entirely enough. Having over 40k HP doesn't help your healers if
you take seven 15k hits in ten blows, while having 37k HP and taking
only six 8k hits does. And that is the reason why we don't
want to sacrifice mitigation in favour of Endurance.
There will be several similar articles
coming up soon to sort of sum up the basic aspects of shadow tanking
before I go into more delicate matters. After all, I still want this
blog to provide a complex overview of shadow tanking. Until then...
