Tanking: Fearless or courageous?

[Blows]

Well, it's actually funny to see how some endgame guards got totally opposite opinions from eachother. Guess there is no right or wrong is this, since we do not know the exact formula for aggro. I'm still hoping they will ever explain how it works, so someone can build an 'aggro-parse' that way we could look which does most

[Yawgmoth-VDN]

I also want to touch up on Natural Health Regen. I personally think it's bugged in the description, and not giving an accurate depiction of what it really does. I have lifesaver feated out amongst one of my many builds for my guard. And when I do have it feated out, I see a drastic change in my survive ability within a raid. I think there is a reason funcom would have put 2.5 nat health regen within the armor, if it wasn't worth having why would they put it in the T4 armor to begin with? Not saying Funcom doesnt make mistakes. On the contrary, Im' saying their description of Nat Health Regen is broken. I'm simply saying that I see a performance increase with it. Thus, T4 CS gear is better for a guard "imo".

talking about health regen: the jiang shi book, path of the enlightened, gives +5 natural health regen, and i found that it helps a lot to recover when i get low on health, so basically i tend to use it more as a healing spell, than as a dps tool...

[magnum92]

Your throwing the 1% hate mod off as some sort of sham, when in fact I believe that it makes all the difference in the world.

I did some hours of testing regarding hateinc, and for some this isnt come as a suprice. CoH and Shieldslam(The added aggro) is not affected by hate-modification. I havent tested Irritate yet, but would be fun to try aswell. I also tested the general aggro with just doing combos on mobs without aggrotools, with diffrent hate values, and then a dpser did whitehits untill they got aggro, and we counted the hits. Result? Minimal diffrences. Tho if one of those combos was a crit, the whitehits from the dpser to get aggro increased by 4 or 5 hits, but with 5% more hate, the diffrence was 1, pretty much every time.

As far as 1k hit points. I don't see how 1k of hit points isn't worth a lot to you? 1k is 1k, and is a strait forward health jump. It allows you to take about 5% more damage as a tank basing the 1k/19k hp "ish" range. You spread 5% across say 3-4 tanks via a raid and all of a sudden things are 15-20% easier to survive/succeed at.

If you're not switching aggro before you reach 1k health, something else is wrong, my point is, if you have good aggroswitching, you could play with 12k health and works like a charm.

[Redd]

I'm still hoping they will ever explain how it works, so someone can build an 'aggro-parse' that way we could look which does most

Aggro pars would make the game so trivial, both from dps and tank perspective, I really hope it will never happen.

[sardanapal]

some minor pieces from fallen empire set (unchained loot) esp wrists and hands works wonders too

[kennyfisterbotm]

I did some hours of testing regarding hateinc, and for some this isnt come as a suprice. CoH and Shieldslam(The added aggro) is not affected by hate-modification. I havent tested Irritate yet, but would be fun to try aswell. I also tested the general aggro with just doing combos on mobs without aggrotools, with diffrent hate values, and then a dpser did whitehits untill they got aggro, and we counted the hits. Result? Minimal diffrences. Tho if one of those combos was a crit, the whitehits from the dpser to get aggro increased by 4 or 5 hits, but with 5% more hate, the diffrence was 1, pretty much every time.




If you're not switching aggro before you reach 1k health, something else is wrong, my point is, if you have good aggroswitching, you could play with 12k health and works like a charm.

As I don't know exactly what Hate mod will affect, I see a HUGE performance difference from where I use T3 and Last Legion. The 1.5% hate does "imo" make a difference. Now you can contest the fact that there is crit on the LL gear as well, but I have both used a pot "5% crit" and not used a pot with the testing I have done. And seen almost no difference in aggro at all. As I agree it does contribute some, and does in fact help. I do use crit pots, but not needed in most occasions.

Also, the 1k hit points etc. You misunderstand what I say. Having 1k extra hit points is a % of what you have already. Roughly 5-6% depending on how big your health pool is. With this said, I'm not saying to hold aggro till your at 1k hp and then finally release. I'm simply saying that it gives you an extra 1k of total damage or 5-6% more capability to hold onto it. Making it that much easier to tank, and you spread the hp across multiple tanks say 4 tanks, you multiply this by 5% and you get 20%, thus making a boss or raid 20% easier to tank etc.

Of course you can tank something with less hp, I'm not saying you can't. Its all about making it easier to do so, thus the gear improvements.

I would also like to think that maybe Hate mod affects the innate threat built into the guard destroyer or something. Maybe? Since Funcom hasn't strait out told us all on how the calculations are done regarding hate mod, it's unknown. Regardless, 1-3% hate mod affecting only our dps doesn't constitute a big difference at all. 1% of 550 dps is hardly anything at all. So it can't be only dps it affects, it's either COH, Irritates, Innate threat, and maybe some of the dps X Hate mod, who knows.

I test off of performance none the less though. I see a diff with hate mod stacked, you see a performance increased with less hate mod and more crit. I say 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. If the bitch is dead in the end, who cares.

[kennyfisterbotm]

Aggro pars would make the game so trivial, both from dps and tank perspective, I really hope it will never happen.

Aggro parse on one hand would be good for testing out a build etc. But bad for use during raids, you can simply tell if the tanks are doing there job based on if dps dies or not, the exchange from one tank to another, or if the tank holding it can simply just solo tank the biotch.

I could see it now, DT's rocking as much wisdom and light armor tos/pom gear as they can with crit, going into T3/4 and just parsing up a storm with aggro, yet die within just a few hits. Oh wait, that **** already happens!

[magnum92]

The problem with trying things in raids is that its hard to get facts clear, its dependant on too many factors to make any conclusions, did your fellow tanks get the normal amounts of crits? Did all tanks complete their rotation without lag interupting? Did your sin use Cover of dusk in the right time? I never make any conclusions from hardmodes and raids.

Try yourself, hate+ doesnt affect CoH or Shieldslam, Like i said i dont know about irritate, but if you have time, go with a dpser or another tank to onyx.

You have a great point regarding the Hitpoints, I totally agree with it being easier with more health. Tho, if the switching is top-notch already, I dont see any point making it easier then it already is, for the challange sake. And while we talk about challange, how many Melee fights in T4 are actually challanging for a guard? None IMO, nothing I would need those extra 1000hp for atleast.

Its nice to trade diffrent point of views, guardian forum have been inactive for too long ^^

[kennyfisterbotm]

Ya, I enjoy talking guard etc. How to learn ya know!

[Blows]

Aggro pars would make the game so trivial, both from dps and tank perspective, I really hope it will never happen.

I'd just like to know how much the influence of hate and crit actually is, for conq, guard and dt seperately. Certain combo's have tooltips with "a high amount of threat", that's pretty vague...

An aggroparse would indeed make it too easy, it would be redd do more dps, blows slow down abit, making aggro too easy.

@Mori / Schou: I agree that more hitpoints make solotanking easier, so you can keep the aggro longer. But like mori says, how many fights are there actually, that are meleedamage and actually give guards a chance. Zodiac for example, no way you'll stay ahead of a good tali-dt.

Fights that come to mind in T4 are Imp (which is a walk in the park with 16.5ish) and basilisk, which would be the one place I can think of where you have an advantage with high hp.