Good day, TORWarriors! Today I’m going to break with tradition and do a specialized Jedi Knight write up especially for tanks. I’ve chosen to do this because tanking is such a specialized art that can easily be done wrong.
Setting Up The Points
First of all, this is my personal preference for point allocation on the Defensive tree. Everything allocated has a purposeful impact on your ability to tank. I won’t explain all the complexities but I’ll go over the main ones. The two main ones that you MUST have regardless of your point allocation should be Blade Barricade and Blade Barrier. These two abilities are the key to tanking in Star Wars: The Old Republic.
Heed my advice, or Gharj will get you!
They are key because they consistently (and almost endlessly) increase your defensive abilities and damage absorption. In any situation your main objective is to use Riposte and Blade Storm at the first possible chance as they offer such a big defensive bonus. The setup allocated is also focus friendly; allowing you to use Blade Storm almost endlessly. I have put points in Swelling Winds because in this setup Force Sweep easily does over 1000 points of damage per usage and it works in conjunction with Courage, which grants the ability to use Force Sweep free of focus on occasion. The remaining points I have put onto Master Focus because in this setup you can use Force Stasis without channelling it; so having it recharge quicker is always a CC’ing dream. This also reduces the cool down on Master Strike – this again is a real bonus as with this build you can quickly find that all your abilities are recharging at once.
Tanking Ways
Everyone has their way of doing this, and this is mine. First of all, train up Biochem (that is after you’ve trained up synthweaving and got Rakata War Leaders Belt and Rakata War Leaders Armguards). You need Biochem for its amazing crafting powers. With Biochem you can craft the Rakata Fortitude stim which increases Endurance by 136 and Defense by 56. This stim never gets ‘used’ up, once you make one, it lasts forever. The buff this stim offers is fairly tremendous, so it’s well worth doing.
Might have over done it with the stims
Whilst you’ve trained up Biochem and got the stim, you then need to make the Rakata Medpac, which again, isn’t consumed on use. It is best to bind the medpac to a key on your keyboard for ease of access. Or if you have a fancy mouse, assign it to one its buttons. You need only use this medpac in emergencies, so if it’s bound it’s easier on you. Next up, bind “Target Next Enemy” and “Target Previous Enemy”.
The reason for doing this is that you will never hold all the aggro. Strong DPS classes actually have the ability to break taunts from what I’ve experienced; so this little trick is to counter that. Say you’re fighting strong enemies and you’ve used Challenging Call to rally them to you. Eventually, they’ll get bored of hitting you and go for someone else. When one breaks away (generally one you’re not directly targeting or hitting) hit your bound button for “Target Next Enemy” and use Taunt on them. They’ll come running straight back to you. Then, as is the way with aggro in this game, a second enemy will break aggro and run away. Then use your Hilt Strike. This isn’t guaranteed to regain aggro on that enemy, but it’s well worth trying. It can be difficult to keep aggro; but these few tips will make it easier.
Use the Hilt Strike, my apprentice!
Tips Of The Week
Guardian Leap can be your (and someone else’s) saviour. It’s likely you’ll be facing off with enemies that will break aggro at the worst possible time when all your aggro gaining abilities are on cool down. Target the person they’re hitting and Guardian Leap to them. You offer quite a drastic damage reduction for that person. Also, Guard doesn’t have to be left on one person for the duration of what you’re doing, nor does it have to be put straight onto healers. Those that gain aggro most are the strong DPS classes such as Scoundrels, Commandos, and Sages; it’s best to put Guard on them as it lowers their threat generation, allowing you to keep aggro for longer.
And that’s all for this week, fellow Knights! If you’ve got some tips for tanking, leave them in the comments below – we want to hear from you!
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I respectfully disagree. I have tanked all hard mode operations and am now moving into Nightmare mode and you have some key mistakes in your spec. This is or course my opinion and is subject to differnt opinions as well.
1) Inner peace is next to useless. You barely encounter elemental and internal damage thus far in the game, and when you do, the extra 4% protection is not worth two talent points. Further, if the extra 5 seconds of Enure almost never means the difference between win and lose, and if it does, your healers/dps are doing something wrong.
2)Force clap is USELESS in PVE. The stun does not effect bosses and the extra 2 seconds does not really make all that big a difference in trash pulls
3) After tanking I do understand why you put points into Profound resoultion as you do get stuned and lose control of your character quite often, however so long as you have skilled dps and healers it is a waste of 2 points.
3)NOT PICKING UP DUSTSTOM IS OUTRAGEOUS. Force Sweep is your single best move, and the ability to lower the accuracy of every mob, (including boss champions, by 5% is invaluable to the style of jedi knight tanking which is defense.) It essentially gives you a 5% chance increase of deflecting or parrying the attack which is what guardians do best, and it will always be up because you should be using force sweep every time it is off CD. This is the biggest mistake I have seen
4)Why would you not pick up perserverence in the vigilance tree. 6% strength increase is essential to aggro holding
5) The accuarcy talent is also helpful if you are below 100% accurace which I suspect most tanks who arent in full Columni or above are.
6)Improved SUnder Strike is ESSENTIAL to your ability to keep your focus up.
7)While master focus is useful, its not essential because stasis is more of a shit I lost aggro move, and Master strike is a shit I have no focus move.
I love your article and I read it every week. But I urge upcomming Jedi Guard tanks to ignore your spec because it gimps a lot of the strengths of Jedi Guard tanking. If you are interested in discussing this further I would love to talk and share opinions. My email is christian.r.bonet@gmail.com.
Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you!
Please disregard my terrible grammer. I wrote this in a hurry and did not proof read.
I’ll take some time to reply
1. Those extra seconds on enure make all the difference in pvp, and can also do the same for boss fights. If you deal the killing blow to a boss with enure up (when you’d have died), you come out of it with 1 hp. When you do Nightmare mode when things bug out (which they will), it’s really useful.
2. It’s great for pvp
And it useful in pve too, it’s just another form of crowd control. If a healers getting tanked by an ad, you can quickly shut that ad down. Shouldn’t be needed really, but it’s not like everyone is perfect and paying attention all the time.
3. For me this is purely a pvp thing. It is useless against bosses as their effects apply throughout the fight. It can be useful in pve, but as i said, anyting you break out of is generally put straight back on.
4 (or 3 again…). So 5% for Enure isn’t worth it, but 5% of reduced accuracy is? :p For me, 5% does not warrant the point cost; especially when you’ve already got riposte and blade storm doing what they do best.
4. 6% strength won’t stop a DPS sage or grav round commando breaking aggro. It’s as simple as that really; if they have the ability to do 3x the damage you can, adding 6% strength isnt going to make the slightest difference
5. If they aren’t in full columi they’ll find hard and nightmare mode even harder, so spending points in accuarcy would be waste for them anyway
6. If you were to check the tree, you’d see Focus is never an issue. Don’t forget that Combat focus (can’t remember name) is always there and recharges sooner. Also, you can use all your abilities constantly if you’re using strike and sundering strike.
7. Master Strike does double the damage Guardian strike does, it’s exxceptionally important to have it more often. Especially when all your abilities are recharging leaving you with no real attacks left as they’re on cooldown. And statis is always amazing for pve and pvp
I’ll say it again because i think it really needs to be hammered home, tanks will never keep aggro if DPS is around, it’s that simple. Tanks simply don’t compare damage wise to those classes, tank critical hits aren’t half of what a normal DPS hit is – aggro will always be lost because of them, 6% strength won’t make the slightest bit of difference.
The only thing I’ll say is that I can see your point of view on ever thing except Dust Storm. 5% reduced chance to hit means EVERYTHING in PvE. It aboslutely is more important than a few seconds of extra health. It is way better than the 800ish that blade barrier absorbs (although I would not at all recomend getting rid of blade barrier). It is a must have for every serious tank.
I understand where you are comming from in every other catagory and we obviously have creative differences, (Which is awesome imo because great mmos allow people to play the same role in different ways).
I would just urge you to reconsider Dust Storm and support that because it is essential for all PvE tanks.
We must be playing two different games. I defenitly notice an increase in my deflect and parry rate when dust storm is up.
“Those that gain aggro most are the strong DPS classes such as Scoundrels, Commandos, and Sages; it’s best to put Guard on them as it lowers their threat generation, allowing you to keep aggro for longer.”
Or their counterparts: Agents, Mercs and Sorcs…
And yes, we are aware of rumours about a so called DPS class named Marauder/Sentinel, but deny their danger to our threat management!
1) I do a lot of solo/duo PvE and end up using Enure quite a bit. For me, 5 seconds ends up being a lot. I’m going to keep it in my spec for now, besides the 4% extra protection is hard to get elsewhere.
2) Considering how often I Force Leap (due to the frequency with which I Force Push) I find the stun adding up. It does work on elites (golds), which is quite useful.
3a) I don’t use Profound Resolution either. For me, these 2 points are better spent in Inner Peace (#1).
3b) I agree. This is in my spec.
4) For me, it was a points issue. I’m only at level 42 now, but holding aggro hasn’t been a huge problem for me. I may play with adding this. Thanks for making me realize that this was available to me in my current spec since I already have 5 points in Vigilance.
5) I won’t have points for this. And it seems like Perseverance is more bang for the buck.
6) I’m not sure how Improved Sundering Strike helps with focus, but I can’t imagine a tank who doesn’t max this.
7) I’m not in agreement here. Stasis is also a crowd control option, and Master Strike is high damage (when I get Guardian Strike I may disagree with needing this). I have this in my build as well and I think it has a solid place.
My reply was to Snake’s post, but whenever I reply to a post on here, it never nests it. Sorry.
Have to agree with Snake on this one.
There may be errors between what your spec links to and what exactly it is. When I click your spec I dont see points in dust storm, and I do see 2/2 in profound resoultion. I also don’t see points in inproved sundering strike which you are right when you say is essential to a guard tank who goes all the way up the defense tree. It allows your guardian strike to hit harder sooner. Thanks for replying to my comment. Best of luck, and I’m looking forward to next weeks post!
All I would add in here, is a message to DPS, SWTOR reminds me of what it was like to play when WoW was pre BC, and Omen threat meter was not available, DPS and healers needed to be mindful of their dammage and had to “judge” their threat levels, and still, has enrage timers to meet.
I’m reminded of that in SWTOR and this makes me very happy. And so I will not argue specs and choices of point allocation, there is always more than 1 viable option, dependant an factors such as the tank’s ability to tank (i.e. hold threat on 1 up to and including multiple adds), playstyle, and group make-up (are you pugging or do you have a raid progression group) and other factors…
The message I would hammer into anyone reading this would be if you are a DPS and are pulling aggro, only 2 options are available as to why:
a) tank is not doing a good job
b) dps is not assisting tank
Because let’s face it, no matter how good your DPS think they might be, if you take a single Champ (so that the fight lasts longer than 10 seconds) or preferably a boss, in a single target boss fight, if your DPS is pulling the boss off you (disregarding certain boss fight mechanics where the targets change and threat tables reset) there is a problem with the tank. Otherwise the DPS no matter how good won’t strip the boss from you, especially if you are guarding your top DPS because the fact is, healers rarely need to be guarded. Sages have a thread reduction ability which should be used on CD when timing allows it, reminds me a WoW priest’s Fade….
Anyways, all in all though, good article!
You might want to slow down on the Biochem stuff. News from Zoeller:
“we removed the requirement to have the BioChem profession to use Energized and Exotech stims and adrenals. This was done to (a) remove pressure of players to pick up BioChem for optimal combat performance and (b) to open up the sale of BioChem products to a larger audience on the Galactic Trade Network.
Additionally, we’ve reduced the effectiveness of the BioChem exclusive Rakata Stimpacks to be equal to Energized stimpacks. Their intended benefit is the cost savings they provide over time, not an increase in power. We are also in progress of reviewing the creation costs of many consumables in the game against the economic realities (acquisition cost of purple mission materials on our live servers) and will likely make adjustments to these in the future.”