I had the similar issues and have also had to have my BH friend help out. Healing wise I would say that surgical probe is key to relieving some of the energy pressure. Seeing as your hybrid you may need some help as the flashpoints will only get more difficult.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Star Wars: The Old Republic |OT| EA: "Let's blow this thing and go home!"
- Thread starter Emitan
- Start date
I had the similar issues and have also had to have my BH friend help out. Healing wise I would say that surgical probe is key to relieving some of the energy pressure. Seeing as your hybrid you may need some help as the flashpoints will only get more difficult.
I like this. DPS should have some responsibility to dump threat once in a while instead of just always spamming like a maniac and expecting the tank to hold aggro forever
razgriz417
Member
Yea tho extra pants and shoes for my crew would be nice
Have a feeling we'll have another patch tonight
BattleMonkey
Member
Thats a tough part because the dogs are so numerous and people using their aoe attacks and such will often cause the dogs to go flying and often out of aggro of the tank causing a mess to keep track of on that narrow "bridge" thingie. At that level the tanks dont got their AOE taunt either so to keep aggro on all those dogs is really tough.
Interfectum
Member
The biggest problem (if you can even call it that) with my Jugg right now is... im excelling at PvP and flashpoints but when questing I feel slow. I'm not chewing through mobs like I want to and if I didn't have quinn I'd be stopping every 10 seconds to self heal. Got any pointers to help my DPS for questing? (veng btw) Should I even be using Quinn?
There are no tips, we Juggs just suck at questing.
Well obviously, I don't think we should be doing more DPS than DPS classes..
But I agree that the problem is mostly AOE-related. On single-targets I can hold aggro, but if I have to target switch and a DPSer bursts a bit too much, it's fucked, and there's no snap threat. I *have* to blow the taunt, which could instead be used to save the healer should he need to.
I don't believe in a tanking system that relies on an AOE taunt, either. It's just ridiculous and doesn't make a ton of sense, to be honest, because Taunts in TOR work the same way Taunts work in every game - it doesn't generate threat, it only bumps you to the top of the threat. Which means that it's a "get out of jail free" card, not a "this is how I keep ppl on me" card.
Regardless, I retired my Guardian. I'm sad about it but for now it's Vanguard for me. I seem to like their resource system better, I love the fact that I can still generate stable threat while on the move and I like the Cell system.
BattleMonkey
Member
I use Vette which geared up is a very good DPS. I'm tank spec and I'm plowing through mobs without issue. Charge target and smash, Vette will 95% finish off your smash target while you can attack another and Vette chews throughs them while you draw aggro. Once your in your 30's you get several hard hitting abiities and stuns.
Are you fighting mobs exactly your level?
Interfectum
Member
I'm level 31 and I just started Alderaan.
perhaps I'll respec to tank and gear her up to see if that helps.
BattleMonkey
Member
Vanguard and Jug tanking use the exact same system for generating aggro, it's how it simply works. The single taunt jugs have is slow CD so you have to be very actively hitting targets to keep your threat up, you can't simply aggro and concentrate on a target, you have to spread the love. The AOE taunt may seem cheap to you.... but it's an essential tool for tanking. Vanguard is just as cheap in it's aggro generation. It's not any different from the single point taunt, which is another "get out of jail free" card.
See how a geared Vette works for you. I never use Quin because he frankly sucks, has next to no damage output. When I used Quin all my fights took forever, but pull out Vette and she just doubles the speed of your encounters.
popsicle_sundays
Member
Got my Sith Sorc (Dyslecix) to 23 last night and heading to Nar Shadaa tonight, really enjoying the game. Sith Sorcerer is getting really fun, the Lightning talents are finally getting awesome (got chain lightning last night) and solo'ing is a breeze. I may even end up doing healing at 50.
GAF EMPIRE REPRESENT
GAF EMPIRE REPRESENT
XiaNaphryz
LATIN, MATRIPEDICABUS, DO YOU SPEAK IT
Anyone?
BH/Trooper tanks get the death from above (Not sure what trooper version is called) aoe burst. It simplifies tanking for those classes on aoe pulls by giving them a ton of snap aggro. Warriors never get anything that makes things quite so easy. Vanguard will always be 'easier' but Juggernaut/Guardians have more room for creative cooldown usage to manage situations.
It's also important to remember that the standard mobs in dungeons aren't dangerous and you can usually leave one on a DPS player; if people complain about that then they're being ridiculous. I've gotten plenty of compliments on my tanking and I do that all the time; there's no point to me running across a room to pick up a single standard enemy.
I completely disagree with any sentiments that Juggernaut DPS is bad. Juggernaut DPS is really good even as a tank but like anything you do with Warriors/Knights in this game if you mismanage your skills/rage you will go from awesome to worthless.
Azwethinkweiz
Member
You won't actually get to tank until around lvl 15, because that's when you get your tanking stance. Other than that, it's fun and has some cool talents.
Not much to say. The talent trees are clear enough and it seems fairly powerful as a class.
Confused101
Member
Am I missing something? My jugg's AOE taunt has a 45 second CD which I can drop down to 30 if I use up 2 talent points. Is that really considered ridiculously fast?
Here's my problem with Jugg tanking. Taunting does not equal threat generation. At least it seems that way. Even the tooltip lacks the word "threat" in it. It just forces the mob to look at you for 6 seconds then it will go back to beating on whoever is at top of the threat meter. Usually the healer. On top of that, our damage is so low, that even with the 50% threat generation in tank stance, I cannot peel that mob off the healer even when I start going bonkers on him. Taunt seems to be the only thing that works but now I have to wait another 9 seconds to use it again or use my AOE taunt. And then, when I've left my current target to go attack the mob that's killing my healer, my old target will inevitably start attack the DPS because I'm not there to hold threat on him. Do you see where I'm coming from with this?
Am I doing something wrong? Should I learn to play my class? My Jugg is 37 and I have no probably with small packs or bosses. However, throw a group of 5-7 ranged elites at me and it's a hell of a time trying to keep their attention. I feel like I don't have control of the situation yet I don't have the correct tools to give me control. This is just how it feels to me but maybe I'm missing something.
I've tanked plenty of end-game content in that other game and, while they are two different games, I just don't feel confident as a Jugg tank that I can keep my groupmates out of danger like I could in the other game.
Skellig Gra
Member
Man the spec for my sage is going haywire here.
http://www.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/jedi-sage/19/?build=100000000000000000000000000003231202012001000000000000000002000000000000000000000000
Anyone know what "pushback" when activating abilities is?
http://www.swtor-spy.com/skill-tree-calculator/jedi-sage/19/?build=100000000000000000000000000003231202012001000000000000000002000000000000000000000000
Anyone know what "pushback" when activating abilities is?
BattleMonkey
Member
Never had issue with holding enemy attention, find you got to be much more active here and constalty switching targets unlike tanking in lot of other games. The AOE taunt mixed with the regular one usually do things well. If you taunt an enemy back to you and go at it and then others in the mob peel out because you are not paying attention to them, that is really an issue of the rest of your party not concentrating on the proper targets and causing pulls to peel off. The group doing it right as a team should work pretty well with your CD's
You should never be responsible for tanking 5-7 ranged elites though, there should always be in a group CC holding couple of these while the group whittles down the group to a manageable state.
Dripping with jealousy. I love it!
Confused101
Member
If you use an ability that channels, when you get hit by an attack it will shave time off the ability so it won't be used to it's fullest effect. Reducing pushback reduces the amount of time that's shaved off to make the ability more effective.
I'd say there is more things to do for a casual player.
BattleMonkey
Member
The game is geared towards casuals? If you want it to yes, the main class gameplay is really solo friendly
Skellig Gra
Member
Hmm, very interesting. Thanks
Currently? No. But WoW has had a lot of time to implement a lot of stuff. The game is by no means unfriendly for casuals, but you've got only a handful of dailies, an open world pvp zone, battlegrounds and 4man dungeons for 'casual' content.
Confused101
Member
Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong. I'm relying on my taunts to be able to keep the attention of others that the group is not current attacking. I'm used to not moving much if at all when tanking. I guess I have to get in these mobs' faces more when I tank. Be more active in generating threat if you will.
As for the second part, I guess it was the group's makeup that was hindering us. We were facing a group of 2 golds and 4 silvers but only 1 of us could CC. So trying to keep everyone's attention was an act of futility. The silvers did drop fast if we focused them and we got through it but it was by the skin of our teeth. It felt more like we got lucky than anything else. I guess I need more practice.
BattleMonkey
Member
Yea you really have to shift your attacks much more to keep threat up than in most mmo tanking, which I think takes ppl by surprise.
Having 2 CC capable characters is usually good. IA and Inq will usually let you CC 2 enemies at a time. Mauraders which I don't care for to me are a waste of space in groups because they aren't as good with CC and mainly a pure DPS. They have some nice bonuses they can bring to a group, but I much rather have the other classes along who can CC
jstevenson
Sailor Stevenson
Yeah, you are about to hit a portion of the game where to be an effective Operative sole healer, you need Surgical Probe (5th level of the Healing skill tree). It's a 0-energy heal that consumes a Tactical Advantage, and since Kolto Injection grants an Advantage (with two points in incisive action), and Kolto Probe's do somewhat consistently, you now have one of your three main heals not costing you any energy.
So yeah, I think you probably are hitting the wall a bit, if you hope to be the sole healer for your group. Now at level 36, it's still pretty intense healing Heroics and FPs, even with the Surgical Probe
The 2 biggest problems are keeping track of your procs/buffs and energy regen.
The buff thats most important to keep track of is Dark Ward, which is your ability to block. However, watching for that little icon in intense situations can be difficult. Currently, I just do it every time it comes off cooldown.
Energy regen is bad at low levels and the talent Blood of Sith, which increases energy regen by 30% helps a lot but not enough to sustain a good rotation. For that you also need the talent Torment, which is the talent that decreases the energy costs on Thrash and Shock(which are my 2 most used abilities).
Assassin tanking always felt like an incomplete spec until max level to me. The low levels are really bad but it feels better with each new level. To me it just never came together as a whole class until level 50.
Confused101
Member
It's funny that you mention the marauder because that's what we had. Marauder (DPS), Jugg (DPS), Jugg (Me, tank), Sorc (My brother, healer). It was a hell of a time. After dying a few more times the marauder left and we picked up a powertech. What a world of difference. I'm not saying that the marauder wasn't skilled, but it seemed to get much easier with a BH in the mix.
So I guess I'll will start getting more proactive with my tanking. It's going to feel weird moving around so much.
But that's part of the issue - target switching on multiple ranged targets is a pain as a Guardian because you actually have to run up to them to hit them.
And what do you hit them with? What do you have that does enough damage that it generates threat sufficient enough to not peel off you?
Target switching does not seem wildly encouraged by this system because you have very few high threat abilities, which makes it so that tanking is "run here, hit mob, run here, hit mob, run here, hit mob" and repeat that a million times. While you're running, you're wasting uptime on abilities, and it's hurting you in general.
All the while managing a too many abilities with long cooldowns. I don't know, it just doesn't feel right to me. Might be me, though.
And I grew up on vanilla Warrior tanking, btw, where target switching was the norm (but at least your sunder actually created quite a bit of threat!)
It's actually very similar to how good healers manage: Triage. Identify the most dangerous threats and move from there. As I was saying earlier, most normal enemies don't need to be tanked at all individually; they aren't magically stronger because they're in a flashpoint. The game uses their tier system for enemy difficulty fairly consistently.
I think you're used to being expected to have complete aggro on every mob at all times. There are tons of enemies that do aggro drops regularly and will get hits in on other group members(Jedi in particular which I find to be great design as it reflects them not being completely retarded). I'd rather be interrupting the rapid fires/master strikes/unloads/flamethrowers on the elite enemy than worrying about the plinking little dude shooting the sorc who has a million ways to deal with it by himself.
BattleMonkey
Member
If you are getting enemies constantly peeling off of you, it's most likely the groups fault and not your own problem. With your defensive form up anything you do generates more threat, and as long as the group keeps it's focus on targets things should work out smooth. Never really find myself having to run around much at all while tanking, just lot of target switching. Taunt the one that peels off, and save aoe taunts for when shit goes bad while using smash and such to keep hitting and getting them to look at you as much as possible. Your guard ability up is also always helpful. If too many enemies are peeling off of you, then something is up, the group did not CC enough of the mob, someone doing dps or healing is overleveled and creating too much threat.
Some classes use of aoe attacks also screws with the flow and can cause an aggro mess which is annoying. But everyone has to be able to defend themselves and fight anything that peels off in TOR it seems, you get a lot of non elites mixed into the fights as well which are not worth bothering to tank, and the others in the group should be taking care of these weaker adds instead of expecting a pure tank n spank situation in every fight.
All of this is very accurate as well. If people are pulling elites/strongs off of you there's some coordination problems going on; even worse if everyone is on a different strong/elite enemy (Which makes keeping aggro almost impossible) the packs take longer to do and healers are under more stress as well. Every random I've grouped with has been really easy to talk to and listened well; everyone seems to appreciate marking and simple directions if you're polite about it. Don't be afraid to ask people to change how they're doing things.
Last night, a bunch of friends and I did the level 33 flashpoint, and we learned by trial and practice to do it that way.
The tank simply had to keep aggro on the elite, occupy it while the two DPS we had just focused down the additional little guys around. If they are even somewhat competent, it shouldn't take long, while the healer just focused on keeping the tank alive (and throwing the occasional heal to the DPS, but one had some healing skills, so they managed themselves).
I think my Sage and their counterpart are indrectly up the list.
As of lvl 25 I have:
4 sec stun, 1.30 cd
2 sec speed boost, 1 cd (together with "cleanse" and shield basically a free out of jail card)
aoe knockback, 0.15 cd
mezz, 1.30 cd
6 sec slow, 0.12 cd
shield and hot, ~0.10 cd
I know you have asked for CC breakers, and not for CC spells. But thanks to all those spells I´m hugely mobile. Especially the speed boost im combination with your "free of all CC" ability is huge. Maybe some lvl 50 guys can comment on this as well.
As of lvl 25 I have:
4 sec stun, 1.30 cd
2 sec speed boost, 1 cd (together with "cleanse" and shield basically a free out of jail card)
aoe knockback, 0.15 cd
mezz, 1.30 cd
6 sec slow, 0.12 cd
shield and hot, ~0.10 cd
I know you have asked for CC breakers, and not for CC spells. But thanks to all those spells I´m hugely mobile. Especially the speed boost im combination with your "free of all CC" ability is huge. Maybe some lvl 50 guys can comment on this as well.
Correct, but it's not just "Channeling" spells (Channeling meaning that the effect of the spell is active during the casting bar), It's any spell with a casting bar. For instance, if you have a heal that is 2.5 seconds to cast before it heals anything and are being hit by and enemy while casting it, you may suffer a +0.2 seconds penalty [NOTE: I made this number up!] for each hit the enemy does. Suddenly that 2.5 second heal takes 4 seconds to cast, and your tank is dead before you can get it off.
Eliminating pushback is an absolute must for healing classes, and it depends on the offensive class to determine if they need it or not.
This is what happens when you hasten the patch process. People want quick fixes, they'll expect quick bugs.
I'd ban people for it if they are using it to make credits and sell it on Ebay.
Yeah that speed burst is crazy good. It's got to be one or the other force user I suppose. Leap or force speed.
Confused101
Member
You are 100% correct and I knew I was missing something when I was typing that out. I'm constantly watching my brother channel his lightning and me channel my ravage that I forgot about abilities that have set cast times. In this case, the term "pushback" makes more sense because it's pushing back the cast bar which adds more time to get the move off.
I would take speed over force because leap requires a target. Works great for getting in (as long as you are withing a certain range) but not for getting out. The Sage/Inquisitor classes are definitely among the most mobile. I hear the Bounty Hunter class gets some stuff too, but I don't know much about them. In general, there is no outstandingly crazy mobile class, as many of them have different types of mobility (stealth, knockback, speed).
Attackthebase
Member
I've been debating respecing my guy to lightening. Healing is awesome and all, but it gets a little boring. If Bioware simply gave us dual-spec, this wouldn't be an issue!
Azwethinkweiz
Member
Do you not have a guard type ability? As an assassin, we have an ability called guard which basically transfers 50% of the dmg done to a party member over to you. On top of that, that player also generates 25% less threat. I always just throw it on the healer in groups and they never seem to get any aggro.
BattleMonkey
Member
Yup we have that
Confused101
Member
Yes, I have this bad boy right here: Guard
However, read the tooltip again. "Guards the target while it remains within 15 meters. While active, the target takes 5% less damage and generates 25% less threat. In addition, 50% of all incoming damage from enemy players is transferred back to you. Requires Soresu Form."
That 50% damage transfer only works in PvP. Regardless, I do put it on my healers because it helps. What usually happens is a few of the mobs that are out of range of my AoE damage attacks will jump to the healer as soon as he starts landing some spells. This is simply because I have zero threat on them and his heals are drawing their attention. I then have to peel them off him. It's just a pain when the pack is made up of ALL ranged mobs. They don't clump together so you almost have to deal with each one individually.
Yeah that's the main issue. I grouped with people who were pissed I picked the dark choice in a FP once.
I haven't had the "very talkative" thing happen yet, but who knows? People seem to act like they're playing WoW (at least at lower levels) so it's a bit of a pain. I'll make sure to tell them to focus on normals, then silvers, then elites everywhere. I know that if I have a good head start on elites it's a walk in the park. I'll stick to my Vanguard, but at least I can use my Guardian as a bank for the time being and maybe level it once in a while