Sith Assassin/Jedi Shadow Tanking Compendium

[Laas]

I have been curious to follow the general guidelines of stacking defense until DR considering shield rating is extremely high if accuracy is removed. With the new gear and no accuracy I run: 250 defense, 550 shield, 425 absorb or 25% def, 44% (64% ward) shield chance, 56% absorption. Tionese came with more defense. *note shield rating only seems interchangeable with accuracy, I can't validate removing any shield rating.

The spreadsheet says absorb is more-valuable than defense for me. Replacement gear is all coming with increased shield rating so I keep stacking absorb. Is it ok to run such a low defense rating? I still have enough threat survivability to clear denova hard but I want to make sure my stats are optimized.

[Oramac]

(04-24-2012 03:08 AM)Laas Wrote:  I have been curious to follow the general guidelines of stacking defense until DR considering shield rating is extremely high if accuracy is removed. With the new gear and no accuracy I run: 250 defense, 550 shield, 425 absorb or 25% def, 44% (64% ward) shield chance, 56% absorption. Tionese came with more defense. *note shield rating only seems interchangeable with accuracy, I can't validate removing any shield rating.

The spreadsheet says absorb is more-valuable than defense for me. Replacement gear is all coming with increased shield rating so I keep stacking absorb. Is it ok to run such a low defense rating? I still have enough threat survivability to clear denova hard but I want to make sure my stats are optimized.

I'd be curious to know the answer to this too. I'm nowhere near that gear level, but am running into the same issue. I have tons of shield/absorb, and what seems to be low defense. I've not had any problems tanking anything yet, but it does seem odd to me.

[Evel]

(04-24-2012 03:08 AM)Laas Wrote:  I have been curious to follow the general guidelines of stacking defense until DR considering shield rating is extremely high if accuracy is removed. With the new gear and no accuracy I run: 250 defense, 550 shield, 425 absorb or 25% def, 44% (64% ward) shield chance, 56% absorption. Tionese came with more defense. *note shield rating only seems interchangeable with accuracy, I can't validate removing any shield rating.



The spreadsheet says absorb is more-valuable than defense for me. Replacement gear is all coming with increased shield rating so I keep stacking absorb. Is it ok to run such a low defense rating? I still have enough threat survivability to clear denova hard but I want to make sure my stats are optimized.

Not sure what spreadsheet you are reading, but Defense is still a very important stat and should maintain a minimum of around ~370 (450 without 2 set piece bonus) - reference the the chart on the front post. After that point it becomes more important to stack Absorb (of course Shield follows). By not stacking Defense to at least that stat goal you are taking more damage because you are avoiding less. However, the damage you do take is overall less, but I doubt it is enough to make up for the lack of Defense.

[Alratan]

Bear in mind that whilst Absorb will be more valuable than Defense at present given your incredibly high Shield rating, the ideal distribution of your secondary stats in total is different. Swapping Shield for Defense should yield greater survivability gains, but if you can't lose any Shield, Absorb may well be more valuable until you can re-arrange your gear.

[Fuhrerschein]

In regards to reverse-engineering black hole pieces, can anyone confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that (lets use biochem as an example) buying the black hole implant, then reverse engineering, will grant you the schematic for the same implant?

sorry to slightly de-rail. just very curious.

[Alratan]

I can't grant it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I can say that I don't recall seeing an error "No schematic available for this item" and I am reasonably confident that the game doesn't erroneously say that at the moment. Additionally, a guildmate of mine successfully acquired the schematic for a Campaign War Leader's Belt by Reverse Engineering the drop.

[Fuhrerschein]

Hmmm I wonder if it is a 100 percent RE success rate. Otherwise it seems risky to waste many comm's or take loot from guildies with the possibility of it being destroyed for no profit.

[Alratan]

RE is 20% success rate.

[Surfnbird]

it is a 20% chance to learn the schematic, there is a post from a dev recently that said something like...

"If you click Reverse-Engineering, hover over the item and DO NOT see any text about learning the schematic, then you will not be able to receive a schematic from it."

You can actually hover over items on a vendor and it will tell you if you can learn them or not. As far as I know you CAN learn the Relic/Ear/Implant but you CAN NOT learn the Black Hole Body pieces. It may also be the case where you can only learn the pieces dropped in EC Hard, we have plenty of people able to craft the gear but only from pieces dropped in the operation.

Keep in mind, this system is still full of bugs, so even if it's supposed to work, it might not.

[Zelgius]

I can confirm it beyond a shadow of a doubt. I farm black hole commendations on 4 toons (2 assassins, 1 juggernaut and 1 powertech) and funnel all the gains into my second assassin.

Juggernaut is synthweaving so is REing black hole assassin armor (nothing learned yet).

Powertech was artifice and learned the 61 end/will/absorb enhancement. I've since crafted all 6 of these that i need and grinded this guy up to cybertech so he can start working on learning the mods/ear. (nothing here yet).

Assassin1 is biochem and REing implants (learned the MK1 assassin implant the first RE).

So currently the second assassin (just hit 50) is working on getting actual gear for himself while the other 3 spend all their coms trying to learn how to craft him better stuff.

The first 2 items I RE'd (the enhancement and the implant) both learned something. They said 20% at the time but a few friends who also RE'd stuff that week also learned it. I'm under the impression that the first few days after 1.2 that stuff was bugged at 100% and has since been fixed but I don't exactly have any source to support this.