PvP Tank Basics: Using your AoE Taunt Effectively

PvP Tank Basics is a series of articles in which I'll examine the baseline PvP tank abilities and discuss strategies for maximizing their effectiveness. I will keep these articles up to date, so that they can be referenced at any time by new PvP tanks. Today, we're looking at your AoE taunt.

Your AoE taunt is a highly effective tool for turning the tide in a heavy pressure situation. The word "game-changer" literally applies here. Here's the ability for Juggernauts:

Threatening Scream

Instant
Cooldown: 45s
Taunts all enemies within 15 meters, forcing them to attack the Warrior for 6 seconds. Player targets deal 30% less damage when attacking anyone other than you. Lasts 6 seconds.

This ability is named Challenging Call for Jedi Guardians. For Sith Assassins and Jedi Shadows, it is called Mass Mind Control. For Powertechs it is named Sonic Missile, and for Vanguards it is called Sonic Round. All these abilities function identically, except that Sonic Missile and Sonic Round are targeted on an enemy instead of being centered on you. You do not need to be in your "Defensive Stance" to use your AoE taunt ability (see the section below called "What if I'm not a tank?").

The ability is useless if used on someone who is attacking you. It has a fairly long cooldown compared to your other damage-reducing abilties, so it's important to use it appropriately.


AoE Taunt Usage


My personal guidelines for using an AoE taunt are as follows:

1. Is heavy pressure being applied to a healer or ball carrier? If so, get into a position to hit as many of the attackers as possible with your AoE taunt. You can easily save a healer's life with this ability while racking up a lot of protection.

2. Does stalling here make sense? If one of your allies is being attacked in a position which is advantageous for your team, you can use your AoE taunt to stall them, keeping them in this position longer. A good example is in Voidstar - you want to keep enemies away from the doors. If multiple enemies pile on one of your teammates in a bad position, it usually makes sense to use your AoE taunt.

3. Are more enemies about to join the fight? For example, maybe you're defending a turret on Alderaan Civil War. You and a healer are fighting two enemies, but you see another enemy inbound as well. As long as your healer is okay, it makes sense to wait until the third enemy joins the fight to use your AoE taunt, to cut down on potential burst.

4. Are enemies likely to be attacking me right now? For example, if you have the huttball and are carrying it across the middle, you likely are being attacked by almost everyone on the other team, so your AoE taunt could just be wasted.

The Psychology of your AoE Taunt


Your AoE taunt only lasts 6 seconds, and few opponents will be perceptive enough to see that they've been taunted and switch to you. It does happen sometimes, so have those defensive cooldowns ready.

Using your AoE taunt at the right time can literally save your team. The damage reduction can give your healers time to catch up or at least stall long enough for your DPS to win the day. If enemies notice you taunting repeatedly, you could find yourself the target of focus fire. Don't be afraid to break line of sight to enemies trying to focus you - it buys your healers even more time.

What if I'm not a tank?


Not primarily a tank, but your advanced class has access to an AoE taunt ability? No problem. I'd recommend you still use it.

If you are DPSing in PvP, you often find yourself in the thick of combat. Feel free to throw out your AoE taunt during a big pile-up: you'll be helping your team and getting free medals, assuming you aren't being attacked by everyone on the other team. I would argue that if you play an advanced class that has access to an AoE taunt, even if focused on damage, you should be using it. It is a unique and highly-effective part of your toolbox which often becomes forgotten. It is part of what separates a good DPS-specced Juggernaut/Powertech/Assassin from a great one.


What now?


Check out my PvP Tank Video Guide on using your AoE Taunt:

Mixing it up

As mentioned in my Maintaining Composure post, I've been trying to get a feel for all the dedicated PvPers in the guild so that I can assess where our strengths are, and where we need to improve. Also, though our guild screens for disruptive and rude behaviour, people are obviously capable of lying so it also lets me make sure that the guild's name isn't being ruined out on the field.

Last night, I finally had the chance to PvP with one of our newer recruits, a Marauder that I'd heard some good things about. I had been trying to work him into a group, but it seemed for a while that we were playing "Guild Chat Tag": our availability never seemed to line up. One of us always seemed to be AFK when there was a vacancy, or else one of the two of us was already in a full group of four guild members.

I'm also still new to the whole "PvP Officer" thing, which I'm sure didn't help things. Sure, I've acted in an Officer capacity before in other guilds, but normally that was as a class or role officer or raid leader. Never before have I had the responsibility of playing with someone who likely is not playing my class and analyzing their playstyle, strengths and weaknesses. Oh, yeah, I also have to try to help my team win while I do this. I don't resent the duty - on the contrary, I'm honoured to do it. It's just that I'm not comfortable with myself in the role yet, so I guess I probably missed some opportunities to invite this Marauder previously, and I felt bad about it.

Once I got on the field with him, my feelings changed completely.

I'm not sure why exactly, but PvPing with someone for the first time is always a breath of fresh air for me. I'm often exposed to new strategies and playstyles. Instead of intuitively knowing where my teammates are and what they're doing, I'm forced to keep my head up and take it all in. If the class is not normally one I play with, I experience new synergies and group capability.

Perhaps the most interesting part is seeing someone mentally integrate themselves into our group.

In Kira's words, "Isn't teamwork grand?"

I don't prep people when I PvP with them. I guess I could say, "Hey, when we're in there, I'm going to be asking you for information and asking you to do things... if you have any questions, feel free to ask me", but that would be far less fun. I get a certain amount of excitement out of seeing people get it, so to speak. Even if they had done PvP in a group setting before, there's that moment when they become comfortable with us and things just start clicking.

The Marauder in question did really well, and I'm glad to have him on our side. As a result of last night's experience, I'm going to focus on scrambling groups as much as I can. I know there are some people who will still want to play together if possible, and that's okay too. But I feel that we all still have a lot more to learn from each other.

PvP Tank Basics: Using Taunt Effectively

PvP Tank Basics is a series of articles in which I'll examine the baseline PvP tank abilities and discuss strategies for maximizing their effectiveness. I will keep these articles up to date, so that they can be referenced at any time by new PvP tanks. Today, we're looking at Taunt.

Taunt is a great way to cut down burst damage, which is one of the prime killers of healers in PvP combat. The ability itself is fairly simple:

Taunt

InstantCooldown: 15s
Range: 30 m
Taunts the target, forcing it to attack the Warrior for 6 seconds. Player targets deal 30% less damage when attacking anyone other than you. Lasts 6 seconds.

This ability is named Taunt for Jedi Guardians, also. For Sith Assassins and Jedi Shadows, it is called Mind Control. For Powertechs it is named Neural Dart, and for Vanguards it is called Neural Jolt. All these abilities function identically. You do not need to be in your "Defensive Stance" to use your Taunt ability (see the section below called "What if I'm not a tank?").

The ability is of course useless if used on someone who is attacking you. It has a fairly short cooldown, which means that you can (and should) use it often.


Taunt Priority


My priority for using taunt is as follows:

1. Any class capable of heavy burst damage who is currently attacking a healer. Good examples are Operatives/Scoundrels who have just opened on a healer; Marauders/Sentinels who have just charged a healer; Rage/Focus-specced Juggernauts/Guardians; Gunslingers/Snipers.

2. Any damage class attacking a healer. This is fairly self-explanatory. The less healing healers need to use on themselves to stay alive, the more they will be throwing on your team, including you.

3. Burst damage-capable enemies focus-firing friendly DPS. Again, self-explanatory. Give your healers a chance to save this person. There are better abilities to use in this situation, but if none of them were available and Taunt was, I'd at least use it.


4. Any enemy DPS focus-firing friendly DPS.

As a side note, never Taunt an enemy healer. They aren't doing damage, so the ability has no effect.


The Psychology of Taunt


Taunt only lasts 6 seconds, and few opponents will be perceptive enough to see that they've been taunted and switch to you. It does happen sometimes, so have those defensive cooldowns ready.

If Taunt is used at the right moment, it may demoralize an enemy and get them to switch targets, especially when combined with other abilities. A good example are Operatives/Scoundrels who open from stealth on a healer. If you taunt them, you are going to be reducing their burst damage significantly, and they may give up or vanish in an attempt to re-open. Burst damage is one of their primary strengths; you are drastically decreasing their effectiveness by taunting them and they don't have a great way to adapt to that.


What if I'm not a tank?


Not primarily a tank, but your advanced class has access to a taunt-like ability? No problem. I'd recommend you still use it.

If you are primarily dealing damage in PvP, you often find yourself attacking enemies who are attacking your healer. Obviously, enemy healers are the highest priority and there is little point to taunting a healer, but once they are defeated your enemies are often stuck to your healers.

Spend the global cooldown to throw your Taunt on one of them. Not only will you get free medals, but you'll  be helping your healer out. You may be primarily a damage dealer, but you can still save someone's life. I would argue that if you play an advanced class that has access to taunt, even if focused on damage, you should be taunting often. It is a unique and highly-effective part of your toolbox which often becomes forgotten. It is part of what separates a good DPS-specced Juggernaut/Powertech/Assassin from a great one.

PvP Tank Basics: Using Guard Effectively

PvP Tank Basics is a series of articles in which I'll examine the baseline PvP tank abilities and discuss strategies for maximizing their effectiveness. I will keep these articles up to date, so that they can be referenced at any time by new PvP tanks. Today, we're looking at Guard.

Guard is a frequently misunderstood ability. While keeping it on a healer is a prudent strategy, it doesn't do anything for someone who isn't taking damage in PvP. Guard will almost always be your main source of Protection on the scoreboard at the end of a warzone if you are a dedicated PvP tank. It also allows your healers more time to react to incoming focus fire. Used appropriately and with healer support, it can turn the tide.

This means that the most effective way to use guard is to make sure that it is always redirecting damage to you. The only way to ensure this is to swap it as different members of your team are selected as targets. Do not be afraid to switch your Guard to someone new. The only possible exception to this is if you are the ball carrier in Huttball and do not wish to risk taking more damage.

Any advanced class with access to a tanking skill tree will learn Guard at level 14. From Torhead:

Guard

Instant
Range: 30 m

While active, the guarded player takes 5% less damage and generates 25% less threat. In addition, so long as you remain within 15 meters of the guarded player, 50% of all incoming damage from enemy players is transferred back to you. Requires Soresu Form.

Regardless of your advanced class, Guard always requires that you use the "Defensive Stance"  for your advanced class (Soresu Form for Juggernauts and Guardians) in order to be able to use it; if you switch stances it will immediately be removed. There was talk in Beta that Guard let your guarded target use your damage reduction. This has since been proven to be false, however they do still get the flat 5% damage reduction bonus while guarded.

The most important thing to remember about Guard is that you must be within 15 meters of your Guarded target in order to intercept 50% of their incoming damage. If you overextend, you may be responsible for the guarded player's demise, especially in a heavy-pressure situation.


Guard Priority

Guard does a good job of making healing easier to handle for your team's healers. But who should you be guarding at any given point in time? My priority is as follows:

1. If one of my healers is being attacked, I put my guard on them until they are no longer in danger. This aspect of using Guard is often a judgement call. Look around for Ranged DPS that may still be focusing on your healer before you leave them alone. If possible, ask your healer if they are okay (voice communication is helpful here).

2. With my healer no longer in danger, I look at the health of those around me as I move into the thick of the fight. If I see someone is being focus-fired, I use guard on them immediately and, if available, Intercede to them or Force Charge to an enemy nearby so that they will be getting the benefit of my Guard as soon as possible (other ACs can substitute their own gap closers here). Very often, the enemy's focus fire target is a melee DPS on your team who has made themselves a threat by antagonizing the enemy's healers. If possible, call the enemy's focus fire target to your healers (again, voice communication helps) in case they are not yet aware of it.

3. While guarding the focus fire target, I continue to monitor our healer's health as I help support the DPS. Setting your healer as your focus target helps make this a lot easier. You need to enable this in Preferences and the keystroke is Alt+F by default. Your healer should also communicate with you, if possible, in the event that they are being attacked. That way, you know to go back to help them.


The Psychology of Guard


A lot of the time, DPS will continue to attack a guarded healer, either not noticing or not caring that they are doing only 50% of their normal damage to the healer. As a tank, this is what you want them to do. Even if your healer is only able to keep you and themselves alive, they are likely occupying the time of 3+ enemies who are not attacking other people on your team, and you are able to utilize your taunts to further decrease the damage. In other words, you are buying time for the rest of your team to kill them.

However, smart DPS will usually do one of three things to counter this:

1. They will switch to you, attempting to burn you down while the healer recovers from recent pressure. Since they are attacking you, you're taking full damage from their attacks and your taunts are useless. The exact threat this poses to you depends on the type of classes attacking you, but it's not usually a good situation. Here's where you use your defensive cooldowns. If possible, throw out stuns on your attackers to let your healer respond to the target switch. Keep your guard on your healer for the moment, in case they choose to switch back.

2. They will switch to another member of your team. This scenario is actually more favourable for you than the first one. Intercede to that target, swap your Guard to them, and utilize taunts and/or stuns to make the enemy's team difficult. Keep your eye on your healer; they may switch back once they realize you're responding to their pressure. Use this opportunity to throw out snares on the enemy in case they decide to switch back to your healer.

3. They will attempt to separate you from your healer. Not much you can do here besides use your gap closer to get back as soon as possible. This is possibly the worst scenario for you, depending on your healer's status when you get separated and on how much damage is being thrown at your healer in your absence.


We stand on guard for thee


Having read these tips, get out there and start supporting your allies on the field with Guard! It is, without a doubt, the most powerful ability tanks have in PvP to protect their allies. Using it well is the first step on your PvP tank journey. As always, any feedback is appreciated.

Maintaining Composure

I had a rather jarring experience the other day, and thought I should perhaps share it, because it taught me some things about myself.

I had queued up for warzones with three other guildmates. My guild doesn't have "tryouts" or anything, we just foster a culture of learning and support. That means there is no "skill" requirement to get into our guild, but if you want to get better, there are tons of people willing to help you do just that.

These guys that were in my party are some of the best in our guild, and I had no question in my mind that we would be doing a strong service to our team when we got into the warzone. 

When we got into Alderaan Civil War, I immediately saw our group was accompanied by another 4-person premade from a guild on our server. I won't name them here because, honestly, there's no point. I wasn't terribly familiar with them, but had played with them on a couple of occasions. Some experiences had been very positive, and some had not been. On Ventrilo, my fellow group members shared their thoughts about the guild in question.

Because I always try to communicate well, I asked if they could send two of their guys to left, the rest to mid. Their response: "No". They didn't offer any other advice, nor did they expand on why. As a result, I respectfully asked them what they thought we should do. 

One of them said, "We're going right and if any of you follow us we will leave and you can enjoy your loss".

I politely explained I was just trying to be helpful. They responded with "Stop trying to pretend you're good, you're in Section One."

I would be lying if I said this didn't make me angry. I don't (and never will) claim to be the best PvPer out there. What I do claim is that I do my best to play the objectives, support my team, and communicate. I also do my best to make sure that my guild members do the same, or are given the opportunity to learn how to do this. This person had not only insulted me, they had insulted my entire guild.

This is what I wanted to do.

"Gooooood, gooooood."

Instead, I responded with: "I'm sorry if you've had problems with my guild in the past. I'm trying to change stuff like that." To understand what I mean here, I'll remind you that there's no "skill requirement" for Section One. The guild has history dating back to Star Wars Galaxies, where they were known as a formidable force on the popular Bloodfin server. However, we also have people recruited in this game (including myself). We have people with varying degrees of commitment and time to dedicate to the game. Not everyone is playing at the same level. I'm working, as PvP Officer, to try to elevate everyone as high as they are willing to go.

Anyways, a funny thing happened when I was polite to this guy.

He absolutely backed off. He was still arrogant, and did not call for our help and ended up losing his precious flag on the right (although it was too late for the other team, also made up of two premades, so we still won), but he definitely backpedaled. I think maybe he realized how obtuse he sounded, or maybe someone in his group just decided to scold him.

 

I realize now that I could have freaked out, I could have told him that I've run into players from his guild who weren't great, but that I still tried to work with him in this warzone, strategize with him, and extend him the courtesy of anyone who was on my team. 

In the end, it wouldn't have been worth it. The guy obviously had no interest in being polite to anyone. I'm happy with the choice I made. 

In Defense of Expertise

I was listening to the TORWars Podcast #74 today and there was a discussion regarding expertise and whether or not it made sense to have a "PvP stat" in the game. Jeff, Deirdre and Brian seemed more or less on board with the idea of letting PvE gear function just as well as PvP gear in PvP scenarios. I really like TORWars and their podcast, but I think I need to step into the pro-expertise corner on this one.

For those readers who may not know what expertise is or how it works, it is a stat which appears only on PvP gear and increases damage, damage reduction, and healing in PvP only. Due to the recent changes in Patch 1.2, it is basically the best possible stat you can have in PvP.

I understand that it can be frustrating to have gear only work in specific scenarios, but I believe that a "PvP stat"-type system is the best solution for preserving balance. I also understand that many people object to it from a design standpoint, saying that it is clunky or that it wouldn't be necessary if class balance was truly perfected. I disagree.

It needn't necessarily take the same form as the one we have (you could make it more complicated, have PvP gear lack essential PvE stats, or have multiple PvP stats that do different things), but overall I believe that expertise offers the developers the best tools to balance PvP while continuing to offer exciting and engaging content in both PvP and in PvE without fear of ruining the prevailing order in both systems.


The problem of motivation

Vader does NOT need to find new ways to motivate them.

Before the Patch 1.2 changes were put into effect, making PvP gear even more effective in PvP, a curious thing was happening. Players who wanted to start doing Operations and Flashpoints were being told by their friends to start PvPing. Sound silly? To most people, it wasn't - because not only was it far easier to acquire PvP rewards, but they were almost as effective as their PvE counterparts. People tend to do whatever is easiest to complete goals, and in this case it was extremely easy to acquire PvP rewards when compared to assembling a group of people and then trying to do a Hard Mode Flashpoint.

Now, not everyone who wanted to do Operations also wanted to do PvP, so these people were left with a choice: do something you're not really interested or invested in for the easy gear, or spend a lot more time doing what you want, but which may or may not be effective and has no guaranteed reward for time invested.

If both sets of gear work equally well in both scenarios, we'll see pretty quickly that most people will feel pressured to take the quick and easy path which, with the current evolution of PvE content, will almost definitely be PvP, since winning is not a requirement and losing continuously, while slow, would likely still be faster than trying to PuG with an 8-person Explosive Conflict group. And again, even if it were faster to PuG EC, there is no guarantee that you get what you need.

Ultimately, the best choice should be to let players to what they love, and reward them by giving them better tools to continue doing it - not to do something else.

Not everyone can be Yoda-like and avoid the quick and easy path.

A controlled environment


Another thing that a PvP stat offers is the ability to make across the board adjustments to all classes in the areas of damage, damage reduction, and healing.

As of 1.2, these things all scale differently with expertise (eg. You get a larger damage bonus from expertise than you do a damage reduction or healing bonus), but Bioware has shown that they are not afraid to re-balance ratings to better accommodate the play experience of their subscribers. They currently have the ability to look at any of those three things via their metrics, decide that one of them needs to be adjusted, and then adjust it across the board. Now that's flexibility.

Ultimately, I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see an "expertise co-efficient" on abilities to change their effectiveness in PvP. We've already kind of seen this with all healing abilities (Trauma, for example), but I'm talking for specific abilities. Maybe particular abilities will be encouraged in PvP, and so they gain some bonus damage or healing in PvP. Maybe some abilities will have their potency toned down for PvP, but some of this penalty will be offset by expertise.

Palpatine calls for a PvP nerf to reactor shafts.

In "that other game", before their first expansion, the roles of the two were reversed - it was far easier to get top-tier PvE gear than PvP gear, but not having a PvP stat resulted in players literally being two-shot by players wearing top tier PvE epics with no way to balance it short of class changes (which honestly weren't the problem). PvE and PvP environments are different beasts that require their own balancing efforts. Getting rid of a PvP stat makes this task even harder, as values in PvP cannot easily be modified without changing core class mechanics, which will also change the character's ability in PvE.

To conclude


I believe that players should be doing what they want and getting rewarded appropriately for doing it. Clearing PvE content should not entitle you to top tier PvP gear, nor should achieving an amazing warzone rating allow you to breeze through PvE content. That they are separate isn't a bad thing! It's just more game to explore and experience.

Quick Notes: Patch 1.2.1

Patch 1.2.1 was applied to the live servers this morning and though the majority of the changes are bug fixes, there are a few points of interest:

- The cost of PvP consumables has been reduced to 10 commendations. In my opinion, this is a much-needed change. At 20 apiece previously they were overly expensive, but now if you get a big win you can buy some consumables and still save for that next piece of gear.

- Sniper and Gunslinger received 5% buffs to numerous damaging abilities. I had heard from others that the numbers for Snipers and Gunslingers were not looking too hot in comparison to other classes in PvE environments, so I welcome this change.

- Corrected an issue that prevented players from adding offline players to their friends list. Not the first time I've seen this on patch notes, so we'll see if it's actually fixed this time. It seems like it is, at least, because I just did it successfully.

- Helmets now work correctly when unifying colors on the character sheet. This is nice. Glad they got this fixed so quickly.

The full patch notes can be found here. Thanks to Eric (@Torkar1982) for the tip on the PvP Consumables.

Burek's PvP Tanking Guides, #2: Force Push (Knockback)

I am proud to announce the public release of my second PvP Tanking Guide, which focuses on using your knockback ability! This guide should be useful to many advanced classes, since almost all advanced classes have a knockback. Even if you don't have one, the video should show you how to make yourself a little harder to throw.

The guide aims to help players make more efficient use of their knockback. It uses freeze-frame explanations and play-by-play commentary to help viewers understand the decisions made in the video. I recommend viewing the video in 1080p or 720p in full screen mode for the best viewing experience.

I had a lot of fun making this video, and I hope it shows. I hope you enjoy it, and that some part of it is useful to you!

I'm always happy to accept feedback from any of my viewers. If you have a topic you'd like to see for a future video, please share it with me!

Georg Zoeller on Time To Kill (TTK) in PvP

You may have missed my previous post based on Taugrim's evaluation of the Patch 1.2 PvP changes. In it, I expressed (like Taugrim) that the recent changes to time to kill (or, TTK) in PvP were not positive. Since the patch, TTK has dropped quite substantially, which I feared might represent a shift away from Bioware's previous design philosophy of longer, tactical battles instead of the extremely bursty PvP in other MMOs.

It seems that my fears may have been misplaced. A post by Georg Zoeller on the official forums on Friday has clarified that they are aware that TTK is lower than intended and that they are monitoring the situation, though no changes besides the Tracer Missile/Grav Round bug fix were confirmed. 

He also explains that some of the TTK is caused by expertise disparity, since expertise has intentionally been buffed to be the single most important PvP stat. While I agree that expertise should be incredibly important for PvP to dissuade people from using PvE gear, I am afraid of the stat inflation this could cause. Ultimately though, Bioware has shown that they are not afraid to rebalance ratings in order to make the game work better, so I remain cautiously optimistic.

It also comforts me greatly that they have acknowledged that there is an issue, though their explanation is fairly vague beyond the expertise mention. Georg notes that "stacking debuffs are creating a real TTK issue", but there's no real example of what debuffs are stacking, whether or not this is a bug, and how exactly one could fix this if it isn't a bug.

At least we didn't get a confirmation that design goals had shifted and they were aiming for lower TTK - that really would have broken my resolve (see what I did there?). In all seriousness, this is reassuring news.

I've included the post below for your convenience; you can click to enlarge.

Communication wins games, Part 1

It wins games. Honestly.

If you've been in a PvP warzone with me, you've heard me say it - communication wins games. It sounds like a silly slogan or something that your high school basketball coach would say.

It is 100% true.

As rated warzones grow nearer (though how close they are exactly is still uncertain), I have been attempting to prep my guild for them. I've been appointed "PvP Officer", with the possibly-dubious honour of wrangling people into 4-person units and getting them to work together in preparation for eventual 8-person Rated Warzone groups. While my experience has been mostly positive, I have noted one thing that separates a good player from a great player. That thing is communication.

It is my experience that oftentimes the most valuable contribution you can make to your team is information. There have been games where my stats were not great, but the information I relayed to my team earned me multiple MVP votes.

I could probably write three or four articles on communication in warzones, but for this post I'll focus on what normally goes wrong with team communication and how to fix it. This could be your guild's warzone group, or it could be a pickup group. It could be via ops chat, or via a voice client like Ventrilo, Mumble or Teamspeak. Regardless, here is what normally goes wrong with communication:

1. No communication. Duh, right? This one is extremely easy to solve, but requires co-operation from your team.

• If you're in a pickup group, do not be afraid to communicate.
• Discuss strategy before the game starts (eg. "Drayn and myself will go left, everyone else mid, ok?"). If no one offers any answers, then dictate a strategy to your team that makes sense.
• Look at your team composition - if multiple members are in the same guild, they will likely be trying to operate as a unit in the warzone. Plan accordingly.
• Are you guarding a healer? Let them know, so they know to keep you alive. Are you a healer? Tell your team, so they know to peel for you and/or guard you.
• Prompt your teammates for information. Let's say you've won the fight for the middle turret in Alderaan Civil War and you don't see any more enemies incoming. Where else are they likely to hit? Your other turret, obviously. Ask, "How is east flag?" and find out where your team needs to be.

• Don't be afraid to prompt your team to do something (eg. "Call those incs, communication wins games", "Pass, I'm above you", "run ahead of me so I can throw it"). 

2. Late communication. You need to get into the habit of calling out information early - if you're wrong, you can always amend what you've said.

• As soon as you see enemies approaching, the first thing you do is call it out to your team. If you are killed and afterwards type "there are two at east turret", you've waited too long. No one can possibly respond to your message in time to save the turret. You've given good information, but it was too late for anyone to use.
• Similarly, if your side on Voidstar is being demolished, take the 1.5 seconds it takes to type "left help". I can assure you the extra GCD you lost will not have turned the tide for your team if you needed to call for help in the first place.
• Did you just clear out your objective? Tell your team immediately (eg. "east turret clear"). Don't wait for someone to ask you. If you don't tell your team, they may continue sending players to help you, leaving another node undefended.
  
  

3. Inaccurate communication. Sometimes what you've said makes no sense or doesn't tell your team anything. Be precise.

• State your position, amount of opposition, and urgency of situation. (eg. "2 inc east I am alone") Stay away from one word remarks that contain none of these (eg. "stealther". This doesn't tell your team anything meaningful).
• Be as accurate as possible when calling numbers because other players on your team will make decisions based on your information. Do not exaggerate. Don't say "THEIR WHOLE TEAM IS AT EAST TURRET" if there are only 6 of them there.
• Did you make a bad call? Did you say an objective was clear, but then two operatives appeared out of nowhere and introduced you to the pointy end of their vibroknives? Call this immediately. Your team will be making decisions based on this info, and they need to know you need help. And no, you won't be able to solo the two operatives.|
  
  

4. Meaningless communication. We've all done it. We've all sung "What is Love" into Ventrilo, or complained about a particular class in ops chat. It's best to know when to back down. I'm not saying "don't have fun", just know when to switch to the business at hand.

• If someone is trying to talk in Ventrilo and you're not saying anything important, let them speak. If they don't start speaking again, prompt them to start or ask them what they just said.
• Similarly, try not to spam ops chat about how Scoundrels are so OP, or about how you are eating pizza right now. People need to see important information, too.
• If you're trying to relay important info via ops chat and there is a lot of chatter going on, consider sending the message twice: you can hit enter to open the chat prompt and then the up arrow key to populate the message you just sent. Hit enter again to send.

These are the basic mistakes that people make with regards to communication - hopefully you find these helpful and pass on these tips to your guild! As always, I welcome any feedback you may have.

Gear Selection: Tanking or DPS gear for PvP tanking?

A lot of people have asked me about how defensive stats work in PvP, and whether they are worth it if you want to tank in PvP. Here is a link to what is, in my opinion, the best explanation, from the wonderful Taugrim:

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=213530

If you're not familiar with our defensive stats, here is a previous post of mine explaining what each of them does. I recommend you read that first, if you aren't familiar with them.

To summarize the information for you:

Attack Types:

There are four ATTACK TYPES: Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech.

You can only shield and defend against MELEE and RANGED attacks. Every class in the game has at least one Force or Tech attack.

Some classes are more reliant on Melee and Ranged attacks than others: for example, Immortal and Vengeance Juggernauts; Annihilation and Carnage Marauders; Marksmanship Snipers (and their Republic mirror classes).

Damage Types:

There are four DAMAGE TYPES: Elemental, Energy, Internal, and Kinetic.

The damage type does not determine if you can shield or defend against an attack, but armor reduces damage from Energy and Kinetic attacks. You can also, via skills, get Damage Reduction to specific types of damage.

Pros/Cons:

Pros to wearing tanking gear:

• Tanking stats may not be amazing in PvP, but they do have an impact, allowing you to stretch survivability to the maximum
• Tanking gear has more Endurance anyways

Cons to wearing tanking gear:

• Reduced damage output
• Tanking stats (besides endurance of course) are completely useless against specific opponents, like sorcerers.

Class-specific Information:


Immortal Juggernauts and Defense Guardians received a sizeable single-target damage buff in 1.2 since they can now gain access to Single Saber Mastery in Soresu Form. They also can use Vicious Throw earlier (at 30% health instead of 20%). Because of this, DPS gear is really personal preference for Juggernauts who are tanking in PvP.

Currently, Assassins and Shadows can get away with wearing a lot of DPS gear while tanking because, more than any other tank, they can choose when and whom to engage. In addition, they are naturally the highest-damage single-target tank in the game. 

Powertechs and Vanguards can mix and match with a good deal of success, but again this is mostly personal preference.


My verdict:

Wearing actual tanking gear is worth it, if you want to make tanking your primary focus. It does give you a survivability edge.

If you're queuing solo all the time, you may do better in DPS gear.

My Reaction to Taugrim's View of Patch 1.2 PvP Changes

If you don't already check out Taugrim's stuff, I highly recommend you do. He has an made an extremely insightful post that I think is pretty much spot on regarding class balance in PvP in 1.2.

While I think the rest of Patch 1.2 is overwhelmingly positive, the class balance changes worry me. As pointed out by Taugrim, the "Time to Kill" (or TTK) has dropped substantially since the patch. The combination of healer nerfs, Sentinel/Marauder buffs (an extremely popular class now) and changes to Resilience and how it affects healing are, in my opinion, the likely culprits. Here's my comment over on Taugrim's blog:

I agree pretty much across the board. Time to kill is significantly shorter and it has a seriously negative impact on classes that aim to protect or heal others. I am still shocked that Sentinels/Marauders were buffed, and I wonder idly if the buffs to them are not partially responsible for the dramatic reduction in TTK. 

I can’t see how Bioware will let this stand, though, as it runs counter to what they had stated as their PvP goals before release. Unless, of course, those goals have changed.

I honestly do hope that Bioware re-evaluates these changes, but only time will tell. It would definitely be nice to know if they've decided to go in a different direction with PvP, though I seriously hope this isn't the case.

How are you finding PvP and, specfically, TTK in Patch 1.2?

Burek's PvP Tanking Guides, #1: Threatening Scream (AoE Taunt)

I am proud to announce the public release of my first PvP Tanking Guide, which focuses on Threatening Scream. This guide should be useful to all Advanced Classes that can tank, though, since they all have a similar ability, even if they aren't tanking-focused.

The guide aims to help players make more efficient use of their AoE taunt. It uses freeze-frame explanations and play-by-play commentary to help viewers understand the decisions made in the video. I recommend viewing the video in 1080p or 720p in full screen mode for the best viewing experience.

I hope you enjoy it, and that some part of it is useful to you!

I am happy to accept honest feedback regarding the video, and will help to integrate your comments into future videos. Coincidentally, I haven't decided 100% on the topic of my next video, so if anyone has any suggestions, I'm happy to accept those, too.

I've been somewhat absent from this blog recently as I've been working on this video. Now that I have the basics of producing a video like this down it should be somewhat faster to produce them in the future, and I should be more on top of my posts here at the blog.

I'd like to thank everyone who provided feedback on the original cut. I made some changes as a result, and overall I'm pleased with the final product.

May all your screams be threatening!

Why Patch 1.1.4 looks promising

Patch 1.1.4 is currently on the Public Test Server. There are numerous bug fixes, but a couple specific additions excite me greatly.

Firstly, we will be able to adjust how our cooldowns look. For a more in-depth look you can head over to the official SWTOR blog or to Ayane at Moon Over Endor. Specifically, I am looking forward to the "Show Cooldown Text" option, which will have the actual cooldown time remaining for cooldown listed on the hotbar icon. With the UI enhancements to be added in the not-too-distant future with Patch 1.2, this should bring the UI up to a standard of quality that the average MMO player is more familiar with.

Most importantly, however, is that the warzone intentional team stacking bug is fixed. Anyone who has done some PvP has probably seen a match where one team had more than 8 players. Some clever players discovered how to do this reliably. This caused matches which were unbalanced and, quite honestly, not any fun. The patch notes seem to indicate that this may happen still, but it won't be because of player intervention if it does.

You can find the full patch notes for 1.1.4 on the Public Test Server forums.

Recent Developments

It's been a while since my Juggernaut has hit 50, but my guild is leveling more slowly than I did, so I've been leveling alts while I wait for them to catch up. Those who have hit 50 with me rerolled other characters, for the most part. I'm leveling an Assassin tank for the moment, so that I can compare the Juggernaut to it. I've done a few hard mode flashpoints in the interim, but mostly PvP.

Speaking of PvP, there is a good post over on the official forums regarding the fact that most of our avoidance/mitigation is useless in PvP. Here's a summary of the argument, by poster Avison:

THE PROBLEM

I'll be quick and dirty here. Armor doesn't protect you from internal or elemental damage, shields and your defense rating only affect weapon damage for the most part. Most classes have a spec that involves using these two damage types. You can't dodge almost every single ability in pvp.

Now shields only activate on attacks that qualify. Shields inherently only activate a small percentage of the time and only mitigate a small percentage of the damage. It is possible, with relics and the right armor, to get your shields to 50/50. Which is a 50% chance to occur and they absorb 50% of the damage when they trigger. That's a 25% damage reduction. This is unfeasable but possible. 

Now, since only weapon damage triggers shields (sniper attacks, unload, basic attacks) shields only be able to activate on roughly 10% of the incomming damage you'll be recieving in pvp. 25% damage reduction is respectable, 2.5% (25/10) is not. Now that 25% is the maximum possible if shields worked the way advertised and that is the stat cap for both those stats, at 50%. You can't even get those stats normally much less sustain them in combat. It requires using a relic. I'd also like to mention using a columi relic increase the operatives dps by 25%+ or any player using crits which fully negates the power of shields even at there best.


 I've been PvPing as Rage as a result, and find it very entertaining. You can find my spec here.

The basic idea behind Rage is that your Force Charge and Obliterate (a smaller range charge you get from speccing Rage) cause your next Smash to be an automatic critical hit. You also can increase Smash's damage using the Shockwave talent, which causes your Force Crush and Force Choke ticks to stack a 25% damage increase to smash up to 4 times.

The result? An automatic crit Smash dealing 100% extra damage. Ouch.

Needless to say the spec requires proper timing to play effectively, otherwise the combination could be wasted.  If you'd like an example of it in action, you can check out this PvP video on Youtube.

I'd also like to give a shout-out to Ayane over at Moon Over Endor (which you should check out, by the way) for reaching the level cap of 50.