[Archive] Immortal Juggernaut (SW) | Defense Guardian (JK) Compendium

[cerberias]

@alratan

I agree that it is the safer alternative to assume for survivability, but some fights may not be centred around tank damage, as I stated. If threat is an issue - as I have no idea at this stage if it is or isn't - then you may have to go for more threat over more survivability its as simple as that.

@masterkiller

If you'd actually read what I wrote I said that if dps is low due to tank threat not being up to par. Tank threat can effectively capp dps to a specific level its quite a simple concept. As I also wrote I agree that survivability is the most important part of being a tank but as I personally don't know how the fights play out at this stage, we may find out that endgame pve is more centered around aoe damage, dps races etc.. and unless you have information that disproves this you are forced to admit that if you need more dps, tank survivability is not an issue, and the tanks threat is limiting the dps, then the only option is to drop some survivability for more threat generation. That is all I meant by this.

[Freehugs]

There's an extremely powerful talent in the Vengeance tree that has me rethinking the Immortal heavy tank build:

Huddle (2/2): Increases total Endurance by 4%. In addition, Intercept now further reduces damage taken by 30% and has a 100% chance of applying it's effect to you as well.

For reference:
Intercept
Cooldown: 20s
Range: 30m
Leaps to a friendly target, reducing his or her damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds.

Which becomes:
Intercept
Cooldown: 20s
Range: 30m
Leaps to a friendly target, reducing his or her damage taken by 50% for 6 seconds. Also reduces the damage you take by 50% for 6 seconds.

Total: 15% damage reduction, ~4% health


To get Huddle you loose:
Invincible (-40% damage for 10sec, 180sec cooldown)
Dark Blood (+4% Elemental and Internal resistance)
Consuming Howl (Force Scream heals you for 3%, 12sec cooldown)
Endure Pain (+30% health for 15sec, 180sec cooldown)
Payback (Unleash heals you for 10%, 120sec cooldown)

Total: 6.2% damage reduction, 2.5% health, 0.3% self heal/second


That's a fairly crude comparison but I think it highlights the strength of Huddle, not even considering it's potential to mitigate raid damage on a friendly player or protect another tank. A build with Huddle also gives you Unstoppable, which is a 20% damage reduction linked to Force Charge.

[Dass]

(09-15-2011 06:03 PM)Freehugs Wrote:  There's an extremely powerful talent in the Vengeance tree that has me rethinking the Immortal heavy tank build:

Huddle (2/2): Increases total Endurance by 4%. In addition, Intercept now further reduces damage taken by 30% and has a 100% chance of applying it's effect to you as well.

For reference:
Intercept
Cooldown: 20s
Range: 30m
Leaps to a friendly target, reducing his or her damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds.

Which becomes:
Intercept
Cooldown: 20s
Range: 30m
Leaps to a friendly target, reducing his or her damage taken by 50% for 6 seconds. Also reduces the damage you take by 50% for 6 seconds.

Total: 15% damage reduction, ~4% health


To get Huddle you loose:
Invincible (-40% damage for 10sec, 180sec cooldown)
Dark Blood (+4% Elemental and Internal resistance)
Consuming Howl (Force Scream heals you for 3%, 12sec cooldown)
Endure Pain (+30% health for 15sec, 180sec cooldown)
Payback (Unleash heals you for 10%, 120sec cooldown)

Total: 6.2% damage reduction, 2.5% health, 0.3% self heal/second


That's a fairly crude comparison but I think it highlights the strength of Huddle, not even considering it's potential to mitigate raid damage on a friendly player or protect another tank. A build with Huddle also gives you Unstoppable, which is a 20% damage reduction linked to Force Charge.

Huddle is interesting and I could certainly see it being beneficial during selected fights where a boss is randomly switching aggro allowing you to use the talent to its full potential. That's the crux of my problem with it though, how often are those kinds of fights going to applicable, most of the times if the tank is doing his job correctly the aggro will never leave them.

Unstoppable again I see being great for fights where you are either chasing the boss around due to random aggro switches or a situation where there are multiple mobs. The rest of the time the only chance you’re going to get to use the talent is right at the start of the fight that's it.

Both talents look extremely beneficial in selected fights I'm just dubious at this time how often those types of scenarios are going to be applicable. Base that against the talents you’re giving up and how often those can be used during any fight scenario and I'm finding it hard to justify.

[Alratan]

(09-15-2011 05:02 PM)cerberias Wrote:  I agree that it is the safer alternative to assume for survivability, but some fights may not be centred around tank damage, as I stated. If threat is an issue - as I have no idea at this stage if it is or isn't - then you may have to go for more threat over more survivability its as simple as that.

If it's a safer alternative to assume for survivability, then that's what should be planned for. Only once a basic build has been decided upon as a starting point is it truly worth making builds which are less likely to be needed or are situational.

(09-15-2011 07:31 PM)Dass Wrote:  Huddle is interesting and I could certainly see it being beneficial during selected fights where a boss is randomly switching aggro allowing you to use the talent to its full potential. That's the crux of my problem with it though, how often are those kinds of fights going to applicable, most of the times if the tank is doing his job correctly the aggro will never leave them.

Don't forget that you don't need the target to have aggro for this to be useable. In any fight with a melee character/another tank nearby, you could Huddle with them in order to reduce your damage. Also, if there are fights which do shared splash damage rather than AoE (i.e. deals X damage split evenly between all people in front of the boss), this could be useful in a similar manner.

In a manner unrelated to Huddle, Intercept could also be useful if there's spike damage on the current tank other than the Warrior, and using Huddle would reduce their damage during a critical phase or nigh-Full To Null scenario.

[Masterkiller]

@Huddle
Huddle does look situationally interesting, but I can't justify all the skills/abilities you would lose for it as a main tank. Invincible is simply to powerful to give up. I think Huddle would be something incorporated into Vengeance Wars to be a part of raid utility. I can certainly see top guilds using tactics like this.

[GWARRR]

The opportunity cost of picking up Huddle is far, far too much in my eyes. It is almost impossible to give up Endure Pain, Invincible, Consuming Howl, Payback and Dark Blood for an ability that will only be situationally used to maximum effectiveness. The combination of Endure Pain, Invincible, Consuming Howl, Dark Blood, and the like allows for a complete weathering of damage (burst or no) for the Immortal, whereas giving all those up for Huddle, which is not nearly as flexible and not nearly as effective in maintaining total survivability, makes it a lot harder to do that. For a main tank (as we are aiming for in this guide), the cost of picking up Huddle just doesn't seem to be very well justified.

That being said, Huddle would likely be a very, very good ability in PvP settings (but we are talking end-game raiding, not PvP). I also think Huddle would be a very good off-tank or secondary tank ability. Off-tanks and secondary tanks can afford more battlefield mobility, and they can slap a Huddle on the main boss tank in tough boss sequences to make sure the main tank makes it out in fine shape or slap Huddle on a squishy. Overall, like Unstoppable I think it's a good skill, I just don't think it particularly belongs here for a main tank.

[Freehugs]

(09-16-2011 01:40 AM)Darth GWARRR Wrote:  The combination of Endure Pain, Invincible, Consuming Howl, Dark Blood, and the like allows for a complete weathering of damage

I get that, having a lot of different defensive abilities lets you chain them together or use them all at once as needed, which you can't do with Huddle.

(09-16-2011 01:40 AM)Darth GWARRR Wrote:  ...an ability that will only be situationally used to maximum effectiveness.

...but I don't get this. Does Intercept has a minimum range or some other mechanic that I'm missing? Why is a 50% mitigation cooldown situational for a tank?


By the way, thanks for the compendium GWARRR. Damn fine work especially considering the game's not even released.

[Hakolatos]

@cerebrias-Your healers will be talking behind your back and hating you if you give up so many survivability talents for more utility or DPS. Doing so makes you a liability to your operation and a drain on your healers. In my experience those DPS races are incredibly tank healing intensive and you will want more survivability in that fight than in most others (think Patchwerk or Brutallus if you're familiar with WoW). In the bigger picture it just doesn't make sense and is counterproductive to your role.

[Sennin]

(09-15-2011 06:03 PM)Freehugs Wrote:  There's an extremely powerful talent in the Vengeance tree that has me rethinking the Immortal heavy tank build:

Huddle (2/2): Increases total Endurance by 4%. In addition, Intercept now further reduces damage taken by 30% and has a 100% chance of applying it's effect to you as well.

For reference:
Intercept
Cooldown: 20s
Range: 30m
Leaps to a friendly target, reducing his or her damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds.

Which becomes:
Intercept
Cooldown: 20s
Range: 30m
Leaps to a friendly target, reducing his or her damage taken by 50% for 6 seconds. Also reduces the damage you take by 50% for 6 seconds.

Total: 15% damage reduction, ~4% health


To get Huddle you loose:
Invincible (-40% damage for 10sec, 180sec cooldown)
Dark Blood (+4% Elemental and Internal resistance)
Consuming Howl (Force Scream heals you for 3%, 12sec cooldown)
Endure Pain (+30% health for 15sec, 180sec cooldown)
Payback (Unleash heals you for 10%, 120sec cooldown)

Total: 6.2% damage reduction, 2.5% health, 0.3% self heal/second


That's a fairly crude comparison but I think it highlights the strength of Huddle, not even considering it's potential to mitigate raid damage on a friendly player or protect another tank. A build with Huddle also gives you Unstoppable, which is a 20% damage reduction linked to Force Charge.

Before we were kicking the idea of Huddle around on PvP builds a while back, especially the 30 Veng 11 Rage build. I like your understanding of the skills and their usefulness comparatively to one another and you made me think of PvE again, but I think you are missing some of the tanking big picture.

Assuming there are/will be PvE encounters that require Enhanced Survivability:

Who says you have to choose? Why not get both a full Immortal tank tree and Huddle? It can't be done with only one character, but no need to gimp your MT. Merely realize that an MT will have others with them (at a raid where this kind of survivability will be necessary, no other encounter will need this level of enhanced survivability). In a raid setting: 1. Build the best MT you can. 2. Then add support accordingly.

Have your cake and eat it too
Imo, the correct thing to do is use a full Immortal MT (or whatever heavy/full tank spec class ie. Powertech/Assassin)

And then have a group of 2 to 3 Vengeance Juggs (DPS specs, which are performing a Huddle rotation on the MT) while doing their normal DPS rotations minus 1 GCD.

@3 SW Vengeance Juggs with Huddle w/ 6 sec duration and 20 sec CD, that's 90% uptime @ 50% DR assuming a perfect rotation.

The reason I see this tactic being very viable is because the added survivability is provided by DPS slots (Vengeance Juggs), and not by tank slots which would be lower Raid DPS significantly.



************
Fun Predictions/Innocent Pondering: (assuming the success of this tactic)

1. I can just see it now, at the start of xxx raid encounter, how many MT's will fancy themselves QB and signal the team (their Offensive Line) to "HUDDLE UP" and get ready to trivialize some content.

2. As seemingly invincible QB's..I mean MT's *cough* trivialize content and let the e-tosterone get to their heads, let's see how long it takes for said MT to start calling the stereotypical female healer their "Prom Queen". (Or the boss mob they just owned for that matter). Guild websites will have fun with that forever.

3. How long will it take female players to nickname/refer to all Sith Warrior Juggs QB's (and their posse of O-line Vengeance Juggs) as...."Meatheads" ?

4. How long until someone actually starts a SW from character creator and names it "Brady" or "Manning" or "Brees" or some such...? (you get the idea)

@ Freehugs, thank you for bringing me mentally back to team mechanics. I had been functionally fixated on 1v1 PvP for a while.

[Traison]

For the whole huddle thing, use it then just charge back to the boss, if you get both talents thats 70% dmg reduction if its additive. It would take major timing since the charge 20% is only 4 seconds, but still being able to get 70% every 20 seconds is pretty huge.