Hey guys and welcome to basic tanking in SWTOR, the new-comers guide to general tanking here in the Old Republic! I’ll be going through a few of the simpler things, from common abbreviations every tank should know to working out how to wieght stats to suit your own characters development. This will be a time consuming W.I.P so please, bear with me, things will get added as time moves ever onward!
Index
1A – An Introduction to Tanking
1B – Tanking Trees
2A – Tanking – The “Must’s” and “Must Not’s”
3A – Combat
3B – Single Target Rotations
3C – Multi-target Rotations and Taunting
3D – The Differences Between Heroic Quests and Flashpoints
4A – Consumables
5A – Professions
1A – An Introduction to Tanking
Hello and welcome to my basic guide to tanking in TOR. My name is Elicas and i will be writing this with a view to helping newcomers to tanking. This guide shouldn’t hold too much any current min-maxers in other MMO’s do not already know, and is more of a repository of knowledge for nearly 10 years of MMO tanking experience. If you’ve made it this far and your still interested in learning more, read on!
First things first, any prospective tank needs to know a few basic terms used in the tanking community. These terms are pretty much universal, being in use in most mmo games across the spectrum. These are useful terms for all three player archtypes to know, Damage Per Second classes (DPS), Healers and Tanks.
MOB and PC’s – These are the terms used for Non-Player Characters (NPC) that are Hostile towards the Players Characters (PC’s). Mobs come in several varieties:
- Casters – Have a mana bar and cast spells at the highest threat PC, these can also in some cases heal other mobs. Casters that heal should usually be targetted first.
- Ranged – Focus on the person with highest threat with a ranged physical attack, usually a blaster.
- Melee – These focus on the highest threat PC usually with high single target damage.
- AoE – Can be any mix of the above, focussed on dealing damage to the whole party.
- Trash – Non boss mobs inside of instances are usually known as ‘Trash Mobs’ . Trash mobs can be non-elite or elite status (see below).
Mobs have three designations. Non-elites, Elites and Boss mobs. Non-elites are usually soloable mobs in the world area, or trash mobs in an instance. Elites usually require either multiple persons to down, a significantly higher level PC, or a build that is specifically suited for taking on Elite mobs with self healing and other advantadges. Boss mobs generally always require a full group of four PC’s unless the PC is of a much higer level. For example, it is possible to solo Black Talon/Esseles as a level 15 tank with healing companion, where a full group of fourincluding a tank and healer should be required at level 10 for newer players.
Armour Mitigation(AM) – Also called Armour Contribution (AC), this is the amount of physical damage that is reduced by the armour you wear. A Tank taking physical hits wants as much armour as is possible to gain. This typically does not negate magical damage. AM is what is taken away from a hit that has not been avoided or blocked.
Effective Health(EH) – This is how much raw Health Points (HP) you have modified by the damage reduction of your Armour Mitigation (AM). The maths is Health / (1-AC%). Therefore a level 50 tank with 10,000 HP and an AM of 50%, would have (10,000 / 0.5) 20,000 effective health. Important – This only affects physical damage taken by mobs melee swings, not damage done by non-physical special abilities and spells.
Crowd Control – Crowd Control, better known by the term CC, is a players ability to render a mob harmless for a set duration of time. There are many forms of CC in TOR and learning which ones your group has can be the difference between success and failure.
RNG – RNG is known as Random Number Generation. This means the game rolls a virtual dice and applies the number to the action you are doing. For example, on a roll of a 50 or more our of 100, you dodge the next attack (Made up numbers). This is where a persons inherant luck comes out, particulaly unlucky players can get in a scenario where they might not dodge or parry a single attack for an entire fight, where other lucky so and so’s get a whole string of dodges and don’t take any damage at all for periods of a fight. This leads many tanks to primarily gear for EH and AM, due to it being a static amount rather than a luck based random roll.
Cooldowns (CD’s) – Cooldowns are abilities that can be activated by the PC that have an extended cooldown beyond the GCD. This usually takes the form of 120 second and 300 second survival cooldowns.
Sequential Marking – This is where the group leader/raid leader (usually the tank) marks the mobs of a multi target group pull with icons that indicate in what order they must be killed and what will be CC’d. In some games you get hovering icons such as a skull or a X, in others such as Rift we have numbers that hover over a mobs head. Usually marks will be given as 1-3 the top most important mobs to die first, in that order, with lower marks being given for mobs that need to be controlled.
Avoidance – This is your ability to completely avoid all incoming damage. Unlike block, avoidance always gives you a chance to get away from a hit scot free. However, avoidance can be a RNG nightmare, where some tanks will be lucky from one fight to the next, others unlucky weeks on end. Avoidance generally comes in the form of either dodge or parry and is always a good stat to take. However it is the general consensus that you should not gear for avoidance instead of EH. Neither view points is right or wrong, it all boils down to personal preference. The basic difference between an avoidance tank and an EH tank is this; An avoidance tanks takes fewer hits, but get hit harder, an EH tank takes more hits, for less damage.
Taunting – A taunt is an ability that forces the mob it is used on/cast on to focus attack the caster/user for X number of seconds. Each tanking AC recieves a taunt.
AoE – Area of Effect. The area that an ability is affected by, commonly used with the terms AoE DPS or AoE Tanking. AoE DPS means using large radius damage spells on a group of monsters. AoE Tanking means to hold aggro on multiple mobs at once. This is most commonly seen during trash encounters in raid instances.
Threat Generation – All mobs have a built in threat/hate list. The person at the top of this list is the person that the mob will attack. There are three ways to get to the top of the list, damaging abilities, healing abilities and taunts.
Healing abilities cause a small amount of hate, usually 50% of the amount healed.
Damaging abilities usually do 100% of the damage caused plus your threat modifier.
Taunts automatically put you at the top of the threat list and usually make the affected mobs target you for a set amount of seconds. This is useful for pulling mobs that are attacking another player, but you must continue to build threat on them or risk losing them again.
Tanking is defined as being the person with enough effective health, armour mitigation, or avoidance to survive a monsters attacks, while balancing enough threat generation to hold the aggro of a monster.
1B – Tanking Trees
There are three main tanking AC’s in SW:TOR for each faction.
- Sith Juggernaut/Jedi Guardian – EH monster with very good single target threat.
- Bounty Hunter/Republic Trooper – Fast AoE threat generation, good shielding.
- Sith Assassin/Jedi Shadow – Jack of all trades, moderate shielding, single target threat and AoE threat.
2 – Tanking – The “Must’s” and “Must Not’s”
There are few mistakes that every new tank usualy makes. These aren’t necessarily major things, but can seriosuly impact your ability to get new groups, especially in a game where server reputation will make or break a tanks prospective game time. If you build a rep as a solid tank who listens to his group, you can almost guarantee you will be sought after to tank 4man and possible even pick-up group raid content.
The musts are small, but very important.
- A tank must taunt mobs off of a healer before he taunts from a DPS.
- A tank must feel no shame if a DPS continues to pull aggro from a target that has not got the highest sequence mark. For example DPS A has continued threat on Mark 3, while mark 1 and 2 are still alive.
- A tank must listen to what CC his group has available and use it accordingly. If you have CC availible, use it. It could mean the difference of surviving a pull, or wiping on the 6 mob pack you tried to rambo.
- A tank must interrupt as many spells as possible when tanking casters, to make the healers life as easy as possible. Especially healing spells, DPS outside of your guild/regular play group can not always be relied upon to do it for you.
A tank must be prepared to be blamed for wiping, tanking and healers have the most stressful jobs in a group and at some time or another, you will be blamed for it, even if it’s not your fault!
The must not’s are also relatively small, though equally important.
- A tank must not rage quit out at the first sign of trouble. This is the number one way to get yourself a bad reputation and stop getting invites to groups. Wiping on trash because a CC was resisted or the healer was a little slow to keep you up and leaving the group with a “F@#! you guys, find another tank!” is not a way to get yourself remembered fondly.
- A tank must not rely upon his taunts to keep aggro. Taunts are there for if something goes wrong, perhaps a mob knocks you back and wipes the threat that you have, perhaps a healer heals you before you have threat on mob number 7 and that mob runs off to smack your Sage about. Having taunts on cooldown all the time is not a good way to go. If it’s happening, you need to evaluate either your playstyle, or that of your group members.
- A tank must not believe himself to be god. You have the most health, you have the most mitigation and avoidance. You don’t usually have the most healing and DPS at the same time. You want to clear the content, you need the other group members just as much as they need you. Possibly more so, a well co-ordinated group with a few CC’s, a healer and an off healer should be able to clear most of an instance without a tank except perhaps for bosses. Play nicely.
And now we get to the meat and vegetables of this guide, the how to: combat. Having great theoretical knowledge behind your class doesn’t realistically prepare you for the realities of combat tanking and unfortunately nothing i say in this guide can do anything other than give you a solid idea of what you have to work with. No amount of guides can play the game for you. Practice makes perfect.
It should be noted in TOR that combat has a slightly more tactical and in depth approach than many competitors, as it has a slightly longer global cooldown (GCD) on abilities on your hotbar than many of it’s peers coupled with a lack of ‘auto-attack’. This allows for more thought between ability usage rather than mashing your highest threat generating abilities and hoping for the best.
Each AC has a different resource mechanic that needs to be managed in order to maximise your threat output.
- Warriors/Guardian have rage/focus, which is built up using filler attacks and spent by using heavier attacks.
- Bounty Hunters/Troopers have heat/ammo. Heat is built up using abilities, and then needs to be syphoned off. Troopers start with a full bar of ammo, which slowly regenerates and can be fully reloaded with a CD ability.
- Assassins/Shadows have force, an unlimited resource that starts full and is depleted as you use abilities, while regenerating at a moderate rate.
Rotations i hear you cry? Something that DPSers use to maximise their damage! However tanks do have rotations too! Tank rotations usually always follow the lines of a priority system and tanks in TOR are no different. I won’t post a priority system for each possible spec combination, there are so many different possible situations that it would be impossible to list every contingency. However, the following guidelines should always be used in a single target situation.
Pull -> Self Mitigation/Spell Interrupt -> Target Mitigation -> Threat
What this means is on the pull, get your self buffs up, followed by your target debuffs, followed by your ‘Adds additional threat’ abilities. Some threat abilities tie into the mitigation abilities and some do not. Spell interrupts are also very important for a tank, as spell damage is usually not mitigated by your armour and generally cannot be blocked. This means interrupting a bosses nuke can mean the difference between getting a mob down or you taking a hammering from incomming damage and wiping. If a mob can heal themselves, it is also important for you to interrupt the heal. I’ll do a basic list from a Bounty Hunters perspective so that you can see where a paladins skills come in to this rotation guideline.
Jet Charge -> Quell -> Rocket Punch/Rail Shot -> Heat Blast/Flame Burst
3C – Multi-Target Rotations and Taunting
Multi-Target pulls and priority systems are slightly different from single target fights. The basic theories are the same, keep your mitigation skills up and use your highest threat generators, but the practice is more complex as there are more mobs to follow. The following guidelines are again written from a BH’s perspective, for a typical three mob pull consisting of two melee mobs and one caster/healer mob.
Jet Charge the caster, using Oil Slick to reduce incoming damage from the melee mobs. You then have the choice to use Carbonise to lock down the group while you establish aggro, or if your happy with your aggro move straight into using Flame Sweep. You can then move back to your priority system, making sure to keep Oil Slick on CD.
3D – The Differences Between Heroic Quests and Flashpoints
This is a rather small section that highlights a few of the differences between tanking Quests and tanking Flashpoints. The most important difference is group composition. Most Quests will be completed in a small pug party, where you cannot really influence who the other players in the area wanting the quest are. You might get several healers focussing on you, you might have no healers and die every time you pick up an elite mob, you might get a group of two or three tanks each taunting off of each other fighting for threat. Theres no way to tell what your group will be, so be prepared to die several times per Quest unless you run with a healer buddy/guildies or get lucky with a healer in the group.
Instances on the other hand, are generally much easier to set up a group that will work out well and play to each others strengths and weaknesses. If your two guildies are melee dps and a healer, you could look for a ranged or a caster DPS. Your group will always know that you are the tank, you should always know who your healer(s) are.
There are several consumables all tanks should carry on them whether they are Questing or doing Flashpoints at high level. Medpacks, buff flasks and buff foods are usually mandatory in end game content. Leveling content is of course much more lenient. There are also different random drops from Questing that could be very useful for a tank depending on what shares cooldowns with what. This is something all tanks will need to work out for themselves as to what works well for them on a personal level.
The motto for consumables is the same as the boy scouts: Always be prepared.
There are many different combinations of Crew Skills available in TOR. Everyone will have their own personal favourite, but certain combinations that really stick out as useful for certain Tanks.
- Scavenging and Biochem – Healing potions and buffs for raiding, useful for every tank.
- Synthweaving – For Assassins and Shadows who want to create armour.
- Scavenging and Armourmech – For Warriors/Guardians and Troopers/BH’s.
My personal selection will be Scavenging, Slicing and Biochem. Creating my own raid buffs will save me a lot of credits at max level, plus slicing can be used to open new areas in certain instances.
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