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

[Rolfson]

(01-11-2012 04:46 AM)Phalanx Wrote:  

(01-11-2012 03:54 AM)theothersteve7 Wrote:  Hey guys, I just made an ass of myself on the general forums because I didn't know about this spec.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#500dMG0dZIGMMMhzdMM.1

It... well... uh, I think it's strictly superior to our tanking spec. By a good margin. Has someone looked at this?

I think you are being serious. The points in Single saber mastery are wasted. I would rather put them in Defiance or Gather Strength.

Other than that, it appears to have some merit? I the Interceed -> Force Charge on cooldown seems impressive. That would be 60% DR every 30 seconds for 4 seconds and 20% for an additional 2. You would be jumping all over the place.

I like this one more.

http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#101dMG0dZhGRMrhzdMM.1

Still not sure if this is a joke. Please advise.

But I am not sure about this yet.

Having run both of those specs (hybrid and full tank) at level 50 in the same gear and tanked similar instances, I'll offer a little bit of my insight -

A quick comment though, why are there 3 points for shii-cho form? You should stay in soresu form the entire time, especially for tanking.

The biggest issue I had with the hybrid spec was the disabled rage generation caused from missing Sweeping Fury / Cyclonic Sweeps. Instead of getting 1 rage/2 seconds, you're now getting 1 rage/6 seconds. Burst threat is better with the hybrid, but it's more inconsistent and I had a decent bit of a harder time managing threat for extended periods of time. For most content now (I don't have numbers to support it, more just a feel) the additional mitigation from tank tree is not required for clearing, but it does make it a bit easier on healers and a smoother performance. However, crushing blow / guardian slash is the counter to impale / overhead slash as far as single target damage goes. Purely numerically, impale / overhead slash will provide more threat if you maintain soresu form. But you're also losing backhand / hilt strike, an ability that gives you an additional stun/interrupt and a high-threat opener for boss fights to overcome any burst crits your dps put out.

For clearing normal content, by all means run the hybrid. You can tank flashpoints just fine and you can solo even better. I leveled from 41-50 as hybrid spec and had no issues whatsoever. But for endgame, I'd absolutely go full defense.

I'll go back and respec to do this again, haven't done it in about two weeks so I may be off here. Any corrections are completely welcome as well as counter posts. End of story though, I found that going full immortal / defense spec provided better overall tanking ability especially on the defensive side. Unstoppable / unremitting is certainly a great ability to have, but it is more of a necessity if going hybrid given the loss of other defensive abilities gained in immortal / defense spec.