Tanking Writhing Horror Nightmare as a Shadow

I can't help but write about this. As I mentioned in the previous post, Shadows are reportedly being excluded from progression because of their inability to immediately leap/charge to the boss. This, of course, is not the case of top guilds, where Shadow/Assassin tanks still have their place in the progression group.

So, having no leap/charge is taxing? Not at all. When tanking Writhing Horror, turn your camera angle (max zoom out) so that you see the boss only and yourself behind it. This way, once the boss buries, you can easily see the red circle on the ground marking the spot where the boss is going to emerge next. Use Force Speed to get there quickly and tadaaa, it's a win. If you react quickly enough, you will be there even sooner than leapers or, at least, you won't be trailing behind. If you're lucky and the boss emerges close enough, there will be no AoE spit. If it is far away, there will be one spit. Rarely, there might be two spits before you reach the boss but that is usually because you don't Force Speed soon enough or you simply didn't see the circle in time. The spit, however, causes no issue (hits for 2.5-3k) unless some players are already very low on hp - that usually occurs during red pool/Jealous Male phases.

Below 20% though, when you decide to burn the boss and tanks are not switching anymore (not to spawn the little adds so that you don't need to have anyone wasting time positioning themselves into the red circle and occasionally getting stuck too far away from the boss to dps/heal), it is better to have a Guardian/Vanguard tank the boss until she dies and a Shadow doing the kiting/gathering job. Shadow can Resilience the green debuff you get from Twisted Spawns, they can kite effectively because of Force Speed and they can even Force Cloak and retaunt the adds once again to gain some additional time before the boss dies.

Cooldown management on this fight is essential as there is a thin line between being a capable tank and a spiky burden.

When you start tanking the boss by pulling, focus on building threat for the first 10 seconds and then pop Deflection. The boss hits with melee attacks that hurt when not mitigated (12-13k). There is also and elemental/internal attack the boss does which always comes after she spits at someone to apply the cleanseable debuff. So when you see her spitting the debuff, pop Resilience to resist the sequence of elemental/internal damage. After Deflection is out, Resilience has been used and you start taking some serious beating again, pop Battle Readiness. After Battle Readiness expires, switch is about to come very soon and your job tanking the boss is finished for now.

When you start tanking the boss by switching, pop Deflection 3-5 seconds after taunting. Everything else is the same. You just want to get the first cooldown running faster because healers' attention is now split between you, the tank tanking Jealous Male and the person stood in the red circle, whereas when you pull, there is no one else to heal other than the main tank).

There is no reason to wait with cooldowns until you get the 'oh shit' situation when you drop below 50% hp. This fight is demanding on healers and you need to mitigate as much damage as possible to make it easier on them. You will have both Deflection and Battle Readiness ready for the next time you tank the boss and you want to use both cooldowns every time you tank the boss to minimise the damage taken. Surprisingly, the logs will tell you that you are taking approximately the same amount of damage as a Guardian or Vanguard when you use your cooldowns appropriately.

Last but not least, deploy Phase Walk as often as you can - in the middle of the 'flower triangle'. The best time to deploy it first is when you start the fight (before or during the pull). During the fight, don't waste time running around placing it while you tank, of course. Deploy it when it's off cooldown and when you are done with tanking the Jealous Male. No reason to use it for your own escape until the burn phase where it might help you to kite the adds longer.

The fight is fun as a Shadow and if done properly, the group won't suffer from having a Shadow tank. However, when Shadows react slowly or don't use their cooldowns at the right time, the damage they take will become unmanageable and they will end up being hated.

As always, any comments and constructive criticism is much appreciated and welcome. The next post will be about the role of tanks as DPSers. Until then...

Defense

Here comes the promised post about defense stats breakdown. Below, I take every single defensive stat and describe all parts it consists of. It may feel obvious and descriptive - yes it is. Yet, it might be helpful to see what plays the role in composing our defense in its complexity.

All the stats below are based on the assumption Combat Technique is active and on this (more or less) BiS geared character sheet.

Damage Reduction

Armor Rating 6307
- provides 36.87% Kinetic/Energy Damage Reduction

Kinetic 40.87%
from Armor 36.87%
from Skills/Buffs 4.00%
* affected by: Jedi Resistance 2%, (4) Tier Set Bonus 2%
Energy 40.87%
from Armor 36.87%
from Skills/Buffs 4.00%
* affected by: Jedi Resistance 2%, (4) Tier Set Bonus 2%
Internal 23.00%
- from Skills/Buffs 23.00%
* affected by: Technique Mastery 9%, Force Valor 10%, Jedi Resistance 2%, (4) Tier Set Bonus 2%
Elemental 23.00%
from Skills/Buffs 23.00%
* affected by: Technique Mastery 9%, Force Valor 10%, Jedi Resistance 2%, (4) Tier Set Bonus 2%

Defense Chance 32.06%
Basic 10.00%
from Defense Rating (622) 16.06%
from Skills/Buffs 6.00%
affected by: Double-bladed Saber Defense 4%, Shadowsight 2%

Shield Chance 46.56% + 20% (Kinetic Ward 15%, (2) Tier Set Bonus 5%)
- from Shield Generator 5.00%
- from Shield Rating (600) 26.56%
- from Skills/Buffs 15.00%
affected by: Combat Technique

Shield Absorption 62.79%
- from Shield Generator 20.00%
- from Absorption Rating (666) 38.79%
- from Skills/Buffs 4.00%
affected by: Impact Control

This post serves as a summary and will be progressively updated to reflected all the changes time will bring.

* Note that the values of Defense Chance, Shield Chance and Shield Absorption do not have to be precisely the same. I am using this distribution based on my personal experience and preference. However, having roughly 30%/65%/60% should be the aim.

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Next post will be on the importance of self-healing in connection with the health pool.

Is it Kitru(e) or False?

Today, I was browsing through SW:TOR official site forums and a thread called 'Guardian or Shadow' caught my eye. The original poster of the thread is asking whether he should roll a Guardian or a Shadow for PvP tanking, which is not entirely relevant to my blog. However, a guy named Kitru (active forum viewers will be familiar with this name) replied to this guy several times and I'm particularly interested in sharing the following lines that were included in Kitru's summary of the tanking classes in PvE.

'Guardians have the worst threat and damage of all of the tanks. Shadows have the best damage and threat of all of the tanks. VGs are in the middle.

All of the tanks have pretty much the same survivability when played proficiently. When played poorly, a Shadow has the worst survivability, a Guardian is in the middle, and a VG has the best. When played proficiently, they're all pretty much the same. When played *well*, Shadows are the best, Guardians are in the middle, and VGs have the worst (though it's still perfectly serviceable for everything endgame).

Guardians are, pretty much, universally agreed to be the hardest tanks to learn to play proficiently while VGs are the, de facto, simplest tank outright; Shadows are somewhere in the middle. When trying to play the class at the absolute top tier of performance, Shadows are the hardest, Guardians just below, and VGs are still pretty much the same (this stems from Shadows having a lot of active mitigation and attack interaction with their attack priority whereas Guardians and VGs are pretty much static once you've learned how to play them, not to mention the power and specificity of Shadow CDs compared to the general applicability of Guardian and VG CDs).'

I have decided to share Kitru's opinion because mine is pretty much the same. I'm not saying Vanguards are not good tanks (at the top tier performance) even though Kitru's post is kind of suggesting that idea. I only believe they come with some sort of a safety belt - they don't let you become disastrous even if you handle them poorly, which takes its toll in the sense of not giving you much flexibility in terms of improving your performance either.

I also agree with the threat generation as I have already mentioned earlier in one of my posts. Not that it matters much further during the fight, only the initial seconds are tricky in this game and Jedi Guardians definitely are the worst at this, simply because their attacks rely on Accuracy way more than those of Shadows or Vanguards.

I am not sure to which extent I agree with the statement about Guardians being the hardest tanks to learn. I played a Guardian tank since launch (3 months), so I wouldn't call myself an experienced Guardian tank, but I do have some experience with that class and particularly its tanking tree. Yet, I admit that back then, it felt nice and easy to tank as a Guardian and I didn't notice any issues with either threat generation or survivability. However, after rolling a Shadow tank and switching my Guardian to a dps for several months, things apparently changed. A couple patches have come and when I tried tanking on my Guardian recently, it was...a letdown. I certainly see where all the Guardian love for hybrid specs comes from. I didn't like the range restrictions, limited mobility, and especially my main threat generation attacks not landing on the target! I am talking about a pure defense tree here by the way, haven't tried tanking with the hybrid spec. Anyway, I think I'll stick to tanking on my Shadow for a while.

My last comment will be on damage reduction/prevention cooldowns, which I believe is the main reason for the classification of tank difficulty mentioned above. I don't find mashing your keyboard (exaggeration) in order to get enough abilities out and hold the aggro difficult, no matter which tank you're on. I know that abilities differ for each class, but the range of useful abilities for that purpose is not wide so you can hardly mess it up. Cooldowns are a different story though. Vanguards have one cooldown Reactive Shield for all types of attacks/damage, so they don't need to worry about which type of damage they get hit by. Guardians are in a similar situation: two cooldowns, Warding Call and Saber Ward with the latter being especially effective because of the short invulnerability it grants upon popping. I am not including Enure, since it's not a mitigation cooldown, same as Adrenaline Rush - but both these cooldowns are helpful and can be matched with Shadow's self-healing ability. Shadows currently have the best defensive cooldown in game Resilience, which can prevent huge spikes of damage if timed properly: second boss in TFB hard mode - the big explosion during the first phase, TFB Kephess's electric debuff during the first phase, Kephess's red circle landing in the second phase, Terror's spit in the second phase etc. It is that good, because SW:TOR developers love to make all the huge spike damage a Tech type. The other cooldown Deflection then creates the whole package of having cooldowns against all the attack types.

So this should be all for now. I'm quoting to show that I'm not the only one with these opinions. As always, feel free to share your opinion on the matter, every input is much appreciated. Hopefully, the post about Defense is coming next. Until then...

Mitigate (f)or Life (updated 15/6/13)

'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...