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.

Xenoanalyst II as a Shadow? Yes please.

After idling a bit (thanks to school), I am back and today I will take a brief look at the 'Relics of the Gree' event boss Xenoanalyst II.

You can easily kill the boss in story mode while only having one tank. No Thermal Tolerance debuff -> no tank switch needed. Also, the adds that spawn do not hit hard and are easy to be tanked in one spot without any cooldown. In hard mode, two tanks are necessary to deal with the Thermal Tolerance debuff and Terentatek adds.

So who is the best tank to tank Xenoanalyst II? The answer is, of course, a Shadow! Resilience is once again the key ability. If you time it properly after getting the first stack of the Thermal Tolerance debuff, you will effectively resist 6 stacks out of 10 leaving you with only 4 stacks after the channel is finished. First, your healers don't need to 'omg-heal' you throughout the channel. Second, you *only* get 80% damage taken increased debuff which allows you to tank one of the Terentateks quite safely when it comes to the second add phase where four of those big dudes spawn. However, when Xeno drops below 20% and starts spamming his execution ability, it is probably best to vanish to drop aggro for some time. The stacks won't be gone and guess what the boss did after attacking our other tank? He turned to me and I went splat in one hit - 28k. I believe the execution targeting isn't arbitrary and respects the aggro table since it was first one tank, then me, then our highest dps, then another dps. I don't have any real evidence yet, but the execution seems to work as 'hit and wipe aggro' ability.

At the end of the day, this fight is pretty straightforward and requires no exceptional skills or gear. Well optimized Black Hole tier should be more than enough to take on this boss in hard mode. Having a Shadow tank just neutralizes the most lethal mechanic ;-)

Will post more regularly now, until then...

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...

Skills and Gear

As requested by Mish in one of the comments, this post will take a look at the best possible skill distribution along with the current (patch 1.6) optimal gear focus. My opinion is based on my personal experience playing a Jedi Shadow tank so if you disagree or have some interesting insights, I'll be happy to hear it.

Here is the link to the skill tree and gear overview.

Ask Mr. Robot

I have some notes concerning the site calculations. First, the defense chance is not accurate because the 4% bonus from Double-bladed Saber Defense is not included in the calculation. Second, the final health pool (with the Exotech stim and Trooper buff) is below 26k while my Shadow in-game sits above 26k with even slightly worse gear than presented here.

Skill tree

The skill distribution is 34/0/7. There is obviously no reason to pick anything from the Infiltration skills. As for Kinetic Combat skills, there is no reason to miss any skill but Applied Force and Nerve Wracking. Those two are completely irrelevant to PvE and should be avoided. All the above mentioned is pretty much given, the only interesting question may arise with Balance skills. The very bottom row is again obvious, but what then? There are two points remaining and the decision lies between Upheaval and Psychokinesis. My personal choice is both points to Psychokinesis because it helps me better manage my Force and create a more consistent threat generating rotation, which is especially important in the beginning of the boss fight. Tanks in the end-game content face a difficult task doing enough spike threat in order to hold the boss while bloodthirsty dps go all out. And trust me, Shadows are still the best at this. I don't really see any reason to pick Upheaval over Psychokinesis, yet, some people prefer to do so.

I personally don't feel there is much that could be done differently, at least not skill-wise. Gear is a slightly different matter, but that was already covered in my previous post about Mitigation. As always, feel free to comment. Next post should be the already promised Defense stats breakdown, until then...

Survivability, i.e. how to treat our CDs

High Armour Rating, high threat generation and multiple defensive cooldowns – those are the key constituents defining a tank. It is the ability to get beaten for longer periods of time, attracting attention of various enemies at the same time (if needed) while not dying in that process. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Cooldowns

Shadows haven't been given as many cooldowns as Jedi Guardians for instance. However, ours are viewed (by many) as the strongest. What is a strong cooldown for though, when we either don't use it or use it at the wrong time? It is essential to learn which types of attacks we are facing in order to use our cooldowns efficiently. Once you master this, your healers will love you because popping a cooldown means you become literally immortal for its duration. 

Deflection

 

Deflection cooldown is the longer lasting one of our pair. It is extremely valuable against melee/ranged bosses and adds. It won't help us against Force or Tech damage though so don't waste it on these types of attacks. Also, notice the cooldown on this ability is 'only' 2 minutes. Use it when expecting huge burst of damage or when something unpredictable happens (healer dies, other tank dies, someone stands in fire and healers need to heal them up etc.). The important thing is to communicate with your healers because it helps them manage their resources. Note that this cooldown is very powerful since it elevates you to 80% dodge/parry/deflect chance (with at least Campaign gear level). When you know you won't need it for another 2 minutes, do not hesitate to use it even if there is no special danger - it would be a shame to waste such a precious ability for 3 minutes, waiting for something unexpected to happen, right? You have to know what you're doing though. ;-)

Resilience

This ability, Resilience, is what makes us so valuable for certain mechanics! It grants us 100% resistance against Force and Tech attacks for 5 seconds with Mind Over Matter. With Elusiveness on top of it, we have this ability available very often. Once a Shadow learns to use Resilience properly (which includes knowledge of the fight and the type of damage done by particular boss), it's a win. I don't think it is necessary to further elaborate on its awesomeness - it is simply the best defensive cooldown in the game at the moment.

Summary

We need to have our stats well balanced to minimize our (Shadows) default squishiness because our armour doesn't grant us the highest damage reduction around. 'It's not fair, other tanks have heavy armour and I'm stuck with this weird tunic (not to mention sometimes even gay..).' In my next post, I will go through every single part of the term defense, because it consists of far more than just Defense Rating (shocking!). It will be far more complex and analytical, expect some numbers. Until then...

Limited Mobility?

Do we miss leap or charge? This is something which is discussed every now and then, let me share my view in a nutshell. All tanks should be provided with some gap-closing abilities. And I'm saying they are. Vanguards have Harpoon and Storm, Jedi Knights have Force Leap and Guardian Leap, Shadows have Force Pull and Force Speed! There we go, two gap-closing abilities for each tanking class. Some say that Shadow tanks are the most limited movement-wise and their basic argument is:

'Guardians can leap, Vanguards can charge, but Shadows are screwed because Force Speed is not a proper gap-closer. It's not just a click'n'hit ability.'

I agree, you don't just target the enemy and tadaaa, there you are. Leaping or storming to your enemy truly can be effective, especially during fights like Firebrand & Stormcaller in the Explosive Conflict. However, if you learn to rotate your camera, strafe and jump, Force Speed is a far more flexible ability than Force Leap or Storm. There is a common knowledge that you need to learn to handle a Shadow in order to be an efficient tank – this applies here. You sometimes have to jump, change direction, but you don't need to target anything to be able to rush anywhere! Force Speed is not limited by your sorroundings and you can still use abilities while speeding. How comfortable it is to have Force Speed during Kephess encounter in Terror from Beyond when you need to cleanse yourself of the electric debuff. Additionally, Force Leap/Storm cannot be used on targets in cover, not to mention that it sometimes even messes up the bosses cast which might give those in charge of interrupting a hard time (the cast occurs again in 3 seconds if interrupted by such an ability). Yet, Force Leap or Storm can save you from falling in various occasions (SoA etc.) and offer a direct path toward your target even through AoE without practically 'stepping into that AoE'. And, of course, PvP is a totally different matter.

To summarize, I'm not trying to prove Force Speed to be better than Force Leap or Storm, I just wanted to point out that it definitely can be treated as a proper gap-closing ability even though it technically isn't. Feel free to question my statement, I'm always happy to discuss any mechanic.

A post focusing on survivability and cooldowns coming soon, 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...