DefenseAbsorbShield rating

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1. Defense only rolls against white attacks. Most of the "viable" specs in the DPS realm have Force/Tech heavy hitters. PT, Sin, Smashers, hell even Carnies (that deal a lot of white damage) have Force/Tech attacks as their main burst. Another issue is that the formula for Defense has a very shallow slope curve (when you add points from gear, see link below). This means with a limiting amount of gear slots, getting any meaningful amount of defense is pretty much impossible from a gear perspective. If you notice, most tanks have a skill/talent that increases defense by 50%+, to get that increase from gear, you would need over 4000 Defense from gear.

This also means, as a tank, you should somewhat devalue any defense talents in skill trees unless its a HUGE add.

2. As stated, Shield/Absorb only works on non-crit attacks. Most DPS are built around 20-25% sustained crit (which some argue is effectively more like 30-35%), and talents to Auto-Crit makes Shield/Absorb even more moot. I do carry a shield generator, but the reason being is that the base shield chance is 20% just for equipping it and tank stance. After that, you can get a few Shield/Absorb stats, but at the end of the day, they can still be bypassed by the bulk of DPS specs. I also should say, there is a difference between absorb and absorb rating. The latter is gear related and only acts, IF shield activates (as far as I know, but don't quote me on that). There are some talents/relics that I believe says "absorb", but acts more like Sage bubble(heal). Those are "good things" to spec/equip.

This also means, as a tank, you should somewhat devalue any shield/absorb talents in skill trees, unless its a HUGE add.


3. This leaves tanks with END. Basically, raw HP is the only undeniable tank stat worthy of discussion because of the above. Considering PVP medpacks and some tank talents work off of MAX HP, the choice is pretty much a no brainer. At the end of the day, having more HP + tank "given" CDs/Guard are what give tanks survivability. But the irony is those "tank given CDs" are given to just about every class. In a recent "debate", I told a guy that a Carnie Mara had similar or better DFCDs than some tanks. She/He pretty much called me an idiot, and I laughed because of this one idea.

Would you rather have a 50% defense increase or a 90% Accuracy debuff? with that understanding on how attacks calculated, I came to the following conclusion.

4. Tanks are not viable unless they stack high endurance DPS gear. There is no point in carrying large amounts of "tank" stats or even tankie "specs" for that matter in PvP. I been playing Hybrid Guardian since like 1.6, and even with the Smash nerf, I still deal decent damage as a tank, while being 100% viable by having the main mitigation talents of full tanks. TBH, tanks need to do this, otherwise a second healer is "better", especially if you have taunt capable DPS, as teammates. It's a lot to consider, but my personal opinion is tanks should stack END heavy DPS mods, a bit of Shield/Absorb, and ZERO defense.