Immortal | Defense Compendium | A Tank's Guide To The Galaxy

[cerberias]

I have been running the 'hybrid' spec and I believe it is superior to the 'traditional' spec currently run in threat generation, utility and damage mitigation/survivability.

Sonic barrier vs Commanding Awe - Sonic barrier is a very situational shield, to maintain a decent amount of threat Blade Storm will almost certainly be used on cooldown, this means that the shield isn't timed to intercept/lower any potential burst damage. If you do time it to lower any potential burst damage, threat generation isn't going to at a level such that the dps can go all out - as they need to in many fights. Commanding Awe also scales into new fights at a higher level than Sonic Barrier - the burst damage bosses put out is significantly higher on harder difficulty settings and on sixteen man raids especially. Currently, Sonic Barrier gives me a shield equal to about 5.5% of my buffed health (1200ish), meaning that a shield that can and probably will be wasted on damage that will be healed through easily either way is going to be outshined by a flat 4% damage reduction quite rapidly, especially during burst damage periods.

Protector - A 4% endurance buff gives me around 800 health, giving me a higher health pool for surviving burst damage, and it scales as I get new gear. The 20% damage reduction helps with AoE heavy portions of fights. For example, on XRR-3 I Guardian Leap to our DPS sage so he doesn't have to heal himself and waste resources/time which is needed for the dps portion of the fight, it also gives me a 20% reduction meaning that my healers are less worried about me and can pump more heals into the raid. I don't use this as part of my rotation as I pretty much need every GCD for threat generation and the positional disadvantage is something you don't need for most fights. It's a very situational move for raids, but very helpful in hardmodes for trash/mobility.

Unremitting - The CC invulnerability is great for trash/hardmodes where mobs quite often CC the tank as he charges in and bumrush the healer in record time. The damage reduction is the raid worthy part of the talent, giving the healers a bit of extra breathing room to get into position instead of potentially being caught in a bad position. Nothing major but it can help. Also decent on fights where you're being knock back and burst (XRR-3 for instance), where the 20% DR gives your healers a bit of breathing room every time you charge back in to get you up with less fear of tank going down.

Courage - This is the main reason I dislike the defence tree. Yes, its a great talent for fights where you're being hit consistently by melee, and it can save you a lot of resources AND help you with your threat generation. What happens if we come up against a fight where the boss casts onto us, or hits hard but sporadically? - Our threat generation and focus generation goes down by a fair bit, we become resource starved and potentially lose threat. Swapping this over for free Force Sweeps and (I run 3/3 Momentum), free Blade Storms on charge means that my threat and focus generation are much more predictable and consistent, and I don't have to worry about keeping track of stacks of courage, not to mention bugged stacks.

Threat generation in general - The hybrid spec is much more resource starved than the full defence spec (assuming courage procs), and is therefore harder to manage. It does however produce much higher burst threat and short term threat generation, something I believe is much more worthy than the lower but more long term threat of a Defence spec. With the mechanics of taunt (putting you equal to highest threat and giving you current agro), long term threat generation is much easier to accomplish as each successive taunt gives you a higher buffer zone and therefore you have to produce less threat during this period. Threat at the start of the fight is much higher simply due to consistently higher damage while focus allows. My rotation for the start of the fight is as follows.

Saber throw -> Charge -> Overhead Slash -> Force Sweep -> Blade Storm -> Sunder -> Master Strike -> Sunder -> Assault (with ripostes whenever possible.)

If the fight is more lenient towards dps and threat generation (adds at the start or easy enrage timer etc..) I'll use a sunder before Overhead Slash to maximise focus generation. I also pop my trinket and a power adrenal to maximise burst threat for the start of the fight - giving me a bonus 830 power for 15 seconds. Once about thirty seconds of decent threat are up I've usually got enough of a buffer by taunt spamming that it doesn't matter hugely if I'm focus starved (which on some fights can be easily remedied by using charge from time to time essentially giving seven resource per) as I'll be far enough ahead that I'm not going to lose threat anyway.