So what would be better numbers for tank stats

I have already pointed out in the past text that the numbers they give for Defense, Shield and Absorption are horribly wrong, not only not even close to what they should be on a properly geared character, but in many cases even completely impossible numbers to ever reach.

More about that here:

http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-stats.html

here:

http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/review-of-noxxics-guide-for-juggernaut.html

and here:

http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/noxxics-guide-for-powertech-shield-tech.html

Now you don't see a lot of people giving the numbers in percentage anymore but rather as raw amounts of how much each stat you want with various stat budgets but even if Noxxic absolutely wanted to just give a percentage for each stat, they could have easily come up with much better by just taking a few minutes of their time to check few sources and to do a little bit simple math.

Here's how I would do it...

First we need to know what the base percentages for each class are, before the gains from the stats on gear are added to it, including  base defense, base shield and absorb from equipping a shield and shield gains from being in the tanking stance and all passive buffs from talents in their skill tree, but not counting skills that give temporary buff that is not up full time.

The base numbers with 0 stats on gear would be:

Assassin/Shadow: 16% Defense, 20% Shield chance, 24% Absorption

Juggernaut/Guardian: 8% Defense, 24% Shield chance, 20% Absorption

Powertech/Vanguard: 11% Defense*, 22% Shield chance, 24% Absorption

*includes 2% defense from set bonus for PT/Vang

Next we need to know the formulas how to calculate on how much percentage they gain from the stats on their gear.

Those are:

Defense Chance = 30 * ( 1 - ( 1 - ( 0.01 / 0.3 ) )^( ( DefenseRating / 55 ) / 1.2 ) )
Shield Chance = 50 * ( 1 - ( 1 - ( 0.01 / 0.5 ) )^( ( ShieldRating / 55 ) / 0.78 ) )
Absorb Percentage = 50 * ( 1 - ( 1 - ( 0.01 / 0.5 ) )^( ( AbsorptionRating / 55 ) / 0.65 ) )

Next we need to find out how much of each stat you should expect to have. There just so happens to be some good theorycrafting threads in the tanking section of SWTOR official forums that we can use as source for that information.

Now we need to just decide what defensive stat budget we should calculate our percentages for. The maximum you could have at 2.1 was something slightly over 2500, but with 2.2 coming up, let's just use 2600. I may have to revise that number later.

At 2600 stat budget

For Assassin/Shadow according to this source the optimal numbers would be 557 defense rating, 948 shield rating and 1095 absorption rating
This would give 23.46% Defense, 38.00% Shield, 47.07% absorption

For Juggernaut/Guardian according to this source the optimal numbers would be 1066 defense rating, 948 shield rating and 586 absorption rating 

This would give 20.65% Defense, 42% shield chance, 34.10% Absorption

For Powertech/Vanguard according to this (Note: I'm using different one for this one) source the optimal numbers would be 783 defense rating, 1089 shield rating and 728 absorption rating
This would give 20.93 Defense, 42.06% shield, 40.86% absorption

Just to be sure nobody misunderstands: These numbers are not any kind of caps or anything. They are simply estimations of where your stats should optimally be with one given stat budget. If your total stat budget is higher or lower the numbers need to be adjusted accordingly, just follow those linked threads.

Now let's compare...

Shadow/Assassin
What Noxxic said
Absorption (60%) = Shield (65%) > Defense (20%) >= Endurance > Willpower >= Accuracy (110%)
What they should have said
Absorption (47%) = Shield (38%) = Defense (23%) > Endurance >= Willpower

Note: There is a = and not a > symbol between defense and shield and absorption.
38% shield is of course without Dark Ward/Kinetic Ward. With them it (and set bonus) it would be 58%. A good guide should specify if the number they give is with or without.

Guardian/Juggernaut
What Noxxic said
Absorption (40%) = Shield (45%) > Defense (25%) >= Endurance > Strength >= Accuracy (110%)
What they should have said
Defense (21%) = Shield (42%) = Absorption (34%) > Endurance >= Strength

Note: Even though still not using "greater than" signs between mitigation stats, I am listing defense first and absorption last since defense is the stat you get the most and at much lower stat budgets they should even go all defense and no absorption at all.
Noxxic saying Absorption>Defense is about as wrong as you could possibly get it.

Vanguard/Powertech
What Noxxic said
Shield (50%) = Absorption (65%) > Defense (20%) >= Endurance > Aim >= Accuracy (110%)
What they should have said
Shield (42%) = Defense (21%) = Absorption (41%) > Endurance >= Aim

Note: The 21% defense is with set bonus. Without set bonus it would be 19%. This should be mentioned.

In any case, giving the numbers as percentage is really not the best way to give information. It tells you far less about how many mods with defense or absorption rating you would want than giving the numbers as raw amounts of how much each rating you want.
However even if Noxxic absolutely wants to give the numbers as a percentage, at the very least if they changed them to something little closer to what I presented here, it would be a huge improvement.

Of course there are hundreds of other things wrong in their guides which should be corrected too.

What about accuracy?
I would prefer not to have accuracy included at all.
Even if they absolutely wanted to mention accuracy, they should just say it is a stat to be avoided.
They definitely should not tell tanks to get 110% accuracy like they do now.
My previous post was about that:
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/noxxic-and-accuracy-for-tanks.html

Noxxic and accuracy for tanks

Tanks should not use accuracy in their gear at all. They should make sure to have 0 accuracy rating on gear. One of the reasons why Noxxic is bad is them telling tanks to have 110% accuracy.

Noxxic has their own forums too in their website, but they mostly do not answer people's questions and they mostly ignore suggestions for corrections and even very often just delete posts and ban people that point out that there is something wrong with their guides (if they reveal too much of how much noxxic gets wrong), but one time they actually did answer something.

about accuracy for tanks

All I can say is... Dear Noxxic team, that is just retarded and stupid.

If that was their only reason to list accuracy for tanks, then WHY do they put a number for that accuracy that even they themselves admit they should not be getting?

I have encountered countless tanks who insist that they need 110% accuracy because Noxxic tells them to get that, and had to explain them why they don't need it. Clearly the Noxxic's guide gives the wrong message.

If the only reason to include accuracy was because if you don't have it people will ask "where does the accuracy fit into the priority" then why not simply list accuracy and say it is a stat that tanks should not be stacking?


Also Noxxic's explanation of how accuracy works is also still wrong

Noxxic's guide for Powertech Shield Tech PvE reviewed

Before moving on to other roles, to complete the series about tank specs let's review Noxxic's class guide for Powertech Tanks.

http://www.noxxic.com/swtor/pve/bounty-hunter/powertech/shield-tech

While PT is the tank I have spent least amount of time playing out of the 3, I can still point out plenty of things wrong with that guide.

"Stat priority"

Out of the tank stat priorities, which Noxxic gets wrong for every class, this might actually be the most retarded of them all.

50% shield chance is higher than what is even possible to reach right now even if shield rating was stacked to its maximum value with the currently available gear. (strangely I'm sure I remember even seeing them suggest it be 60% for few days after patch 2.0, which is even more way off, but it's not like  50% is that much better as both are impossible)

65% absorption is the most retarded number ever. This is even more far above what is possible to have even if you stacked absorption rating to it's maximum value while completely ignoring other stats. This number will never be reached within current expansion even with any future gear tiers that allow higher stat budget. This is a number they completely pulled out of their ass.

20% defense is the only one that is somewhere within what you can realistically have.

Also there should not be any "greater than" symbols between defense and absorption. Optimizing tank gear is not about one stat always being better than the other, but about finding the optimal ratio of how much each stat compared to the others you want to get the best damage mitigation.

And Accuracy should not be in the list at all. No tank should use gear with accuracy, especially not Powertechs for whom it is perhaps even more important to take all the shield rating they can get.

The only improvement Noxxic has recently made is that they no longer give the same numbers for every tank class, so they have at least finally understood that different classes should go for different numbers. That does not help much as the numbers are still, as they have always been, wrong for every class, and perhaps even more wrong now than before.

For those interested how to actually optimize their tanking stats there are several good theorycrafting threads in the SWTOR official forums tanking section http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=73

"Stat summaries" 

This part tries to give explanations of how stats work and what they do. They get some things wrong there too. Since I already covered them in my review for assassin tank guide, and most of that would apply here too, those interested can read that: http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-stats.html

Item Modifications

This part of the guide talks about what mods to use, and gives pretty bad advice and even contradicts themselves.

I wrote more about this in look at their Assassin and Juggernaut guides. Since I would be saying mostly same things, I rather just suggest people go back and look at those:

http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/review-of-noxxics-guide-for-juggernaut.html

Short re-cap:

- Noxxic telling to use "B"-mods without even mentioning the unlettered mods is pretty bad advice.

- Listing the overly endurance heavy "Vigilant" and "Steadfast" enhancements as the primary choice over the Bulwark, Sturdiness, Bastion or Immunity enhancements is very very bad advice too.

- Telling players to use enhancements with accuracy is even worse.

The Spec

Again, not too bad. Could be a lot worse.

Still I don't fully agree with it. For example all those points movement speed slowing stuff, while useful in some rare situations, could be most of the time better spent on something else.

But not going to analyze it further just leave it for future reference.

Rotations & Cooldowns

"The Opener"

An opener would have been something that would have been good to have in the other tank guides (well would have been good if the advice in it was good, which in case of Noxxic, it would probably not be). I wonder why PT is the only tank out of the 3 for whom they decided to include something like this.

That being said this opener does not make much sense. Grapple and Jet Charge are just gap closers for Powertech that don't really produce high threat (well Grapple is listed as high threat move but it is only high for being a non-damaging ability but not that high compared to damage dealing attacks)

More importantly why would anyone use Flame Sweep on a single target? Even though Flame Sweep does put the -5% damage debuff on the target, so does Flame Burst. Flame Sweep does not generate high threat either. There is one talent that increases Flame Sweeps threat by 5% but since even weak single target attacks like Flame Burst do way more than 5% more damage they still generate more threat.

 Of course if someone wanted the highest initial threat possible it would make a lot more sense to get in stronger attacks like Rocket Punch as soon as possible.

Now the rotation itself:

While getting some things right, there's some weird stuff too...

- Why do they keep saying "healing" with these tank rotations? None of the abilities they listed does any healing.

- The sentence "Maintain Heat Screen stacks with Heat Blast and Flame Burst" shows that the idiots who make these guides for Noxxic have absolutely no clue how these abilities work. Can't these retards even read the tooltips? Heat Blast does not maintain Heat Screen stacks but instead consumes them and  it gives even stronger absorption buff instead. Flame Burst has almost nothing to do with it. Heat Screen stacks are gained either by shielding an attack (which is how they are most often gained) or by applying the effect from Ion Gas Cylinder on a target (which can proc from other attacks but only rocket punch has 100% proc chance).

- Why is there no mention at all of Shoulder Cannon? It is instant and free of heat cost and does not respect global cooldown so it does no even delay other attacks if used right and with the spec they have, heals yourself by 5% every shot. It would be silly to not to use it.

- It is of course true that Neural Dart like all taunts can be your most effective threat builder if used right. However I do find it strange that this kind of thing is found only in powertech tank guide and not on other tank guides Noxxic has, since same is true for their taunts. 

Of course this taunt spamming is not necessarily the best advice in all cases since there are fights where you have to save your taunts for tank switches or aggro resets, and any decent tank should learn to hold threat without relying entirely on "taunt fluffing". 

And why is there no mention of Sonic Missile? Aoe taunts have the same effect even on single targets.

Also just putting the taunt on number 1 spot on priority list and telling to use it on cooldown, does easily give the wrong idea to people who don't know all the details of taunt mechanics. Taunts generate threat based on a percentage of highest pre-existing threat so if you wanted to use it for building threat you would want to taunt only after generating certain amount of threat with other attacks.

Ok, next AOE rotation

Powertech AoE attacks, especially as a tank are a bit more situational that simply following this kind priority does not work.

Death from Above while it is very powerful AOE is not your best choice in all situations even if it is available.

Noxxic also completely forgot to mention Rail Shot which does cause an AoE damage effect when used when you are in tank spec.

"Burst cooldowns"

I'm not going to start analyzing the other stuff, but I don't quite agree with what they say about Thermal Sensor Override. It might not be as big of a deal for Shield Tech Powertechs but they say the same for all bounty hunter specs. In general I think one could get a lot more out of it by using it with either one of your higher heat cost abilities or with an ability with longer channel time than a gcd, and not just use it with your "next" ability no matter what that is.

Survivability cooldowns...

Now this isn't as bad as what they had for other tanks.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this first time I wrote this even though I meant to say it. Noxxic is completely missing one important defensive cooldown in their list, the Oil Slick.

But on a possibly positive note, they actually did not include Powertech's threat dump in the list (although they still have the same incredibly stupid introductory text that says survivability cooldowns are used to "reduce aggro" even for tanks).

That being said, I am afraid that the only reason they did not include Chaff Flare to this list is because they just don't know yet that Powertechs now have this ability. I say this because they didn't add it to the dps powertech's guides either, despite having similar abilities on all other class guides. So I do fear that if Noxxic ever adds Chaff Flare to dps Powertech guides they will, being the idiots that they are, add it to the tank specs too at the same time. 

We'll just have to see what happens.

Review of Noxxic's guide for Juggernaut- Immortal - PvE

This time let's have a look at what Noxxic has to say about Juggernaut tanks.

http://www.noxxic.com/swtor/pve/sith-warrior/juggernaut/immortal

"Stat priority"

This stat priority again is total bullshit. Even though it does not have the numbers that are quite so ridiculously high above what is even possible to reach as the assassin guide does, it is still in many ways actually worse than the assassin guide because if someone tried to follow (which is still impossible) they would end up with stats even more far removed from what is optimal.

25% defense, I'm not even sure if it is possible to reach now. With the new gear in the upcoming patch 2.2 it will be reachable, but this would require one to ignore optimal stat distribution.

45% shield chance would require several shield rating augments, which you should never use on a Juggernaut.

40% absorption though possible to reach is way too high as you end up with too low defense if you go for that.

Although these numbers may be possible to reach individually it is absolutely impossible to have them all at the same time.

Furthermore I have said it before that I do not like these stats being separated by "greater than" symbols as optimizing tank gear is not about one stat being always better than the other but about finding the optimal amounts of what proportion of your stat budget goes to each stat. 

However if someone really really wanted to use ">" signs then at least THEY SHOULD PUT DEFENSE FIRTS since optimal stat distribution for Juggernauts has a lot more Defense across all stat budget that are possible to have with the available gear and at very low stat budget they should even go maximum defense and no absorption rating. 

Lastly: Tanks should not use accuracy rating in their gear at all, so including it is just wrong.

For those more interested what are the the optimal stat weights, some of the best theorycrafters are posting their stuff here: http://www.swtor.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=73

"How stats work"

Most of their explanations on what the stats do are pretty bad too. I covered much of it in the assassin tank guide's review so not going to repeat it here. Those interested can read it:

http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-stats.html

All I'm going to add here is that Noxxic is pretty stupid for saying that Strength increases healing done.

Item modifications

Mods:

Noxxic tells all tanks to use high endurance "B" -mods, and does not even mention the unlettered high mitigation stat mods. This at least for Juggernaut tanks I can't agree at all. They might be a viable alternative for Shadow/Assassin tanks, but even though the difference between endurance is slightly greater than difference between defense/absorption, when comparing "B" and unlettered mods, endurance just is not that great for Juggernauts.

Enhancements: 

With enhancements Noxxic sinks to plain stupidity again. For one thing Noxxic lists enhancements with accuracy as something tanks should use. That is just retarded. Enhancements with accuracy rating should be avoided at all costs. Even using lower level enhancements with all mitigation stats is better than using higher level ones with accuracy.
Even for the enhancements with all mitigation stats they get it as wrong, by suggesting the overly endurance heavy "Vigilant" and "Steadfast" enhancements as the primary choice over the Bulwark, Sturdiness, Bastion or Immunity enhancements. Nobody who knows anything about stats would agree with that (the exchange rate between endurance and mitigation stats is much worse for enhancements). Vigilant and Steadfast enhancements are utter shit that nobody should use.
Noxxic is even contradicting themselves here, since in their stat priority puts mitigation stats ahead of endurance (which at least they got that part right even though all other details are wrong) but then suggest gearing the exact opposite way.

The Spec

What Noxxic suggests is this:

Not entirely bad, could be a lot worse (as it is in some of their other guides).

Still the 2 points on "Vicious Retaliation" are almost useless, while "Sonic Wall" could be useful in ops. 1 point in Unyielding could be better spent on Accuracy. (If going for mostly single target boss fight, I would even move the 2 points in "Decimate" to "Accuracy" too, though when fighting a lot of adds/trash mobs decimate is nice. Well people have different opinions on that so no need to go too much into that).

Moving on...

"Rotations and Cooldowns" 

Now the weird stuff.

Single target rotation:

Someone more dedicated into looking into Jug tank rotations might have more to say about all this, but I'll just make few observations.

- What is this "healing" they keep talking about?

- For a rotation that claims to be designed for maximum threat, they are not exactly putting their highest threat moves 

- Sundering Assault is not the only attack that puts in Sunder Armor debuff.

- Using the word "maintain" for buff from Sonic barrier, as if it could be kept up all the time, almost implies Noxxic does not even know what it is. It's not exactly going to last until you can Force Scream again.

- Does Noxxic even know that Chrushing Blow and Retaliation give beneficial buffs too?

- WHERE IS RAVAGE? It is both free of rage cost and does plenty more damage than many other attacks. At the very least it should take priority over things like Vicious Slash. Not to mention in their skill tree build Noxxic does tell people put points into a talent that increases damage of Ravage. Why would you put points in a talent that does nothing else but increases damage of ravage if you then don't use it at all in your rotation???

- Why no mention of any kind about Saber Reflect? Even when fighting mobs that do only melee and/or AOE damage which can't be reflected it still causes more threat than most damage dealing abilities. And it should be used for that especially on mobs that deal only damage that can't be reflected since then you don't even need to consider saving it for defensive use. Of course when there are attacks that reflected it is even better threat builder.

There's probably much more that could be said about all of the above, but let's move on...

Now we get to the really stupid part

AOE rotation

I'm not kidding you. Honestly... This is what they have for AOE rotation.

This looks like them just having added completely randomly selected Jug abilities without even 

2 of the attacks there are single target attacks. While I do understand that even in aoe heavy fights someone may include single target abilities in between, but even then from that perspective what they have there makes no sense at all. Why those 2? It is also very inconsistent since all of their other class guides list only AoE attacks in the AoE priority list.

Further more there is a single target attack in the number 1 spot on the aoe priority list, but at the same time that same attack is below Smash in their single target priority. 

How is it even possible to be this stupid?

They also completely forget to include Crushing Blow which has a high threat aoe damage effect to it.

They also fail to even mention Saber Reflect, which is probably the most power AOE threat builder.

And then...

Burst Cooldowns

Uhm... what???

Lets move on...

"Survivability Cooldowns"

Here we have probably the dumbest the most retarded thing in the entire Noxxic.com website.

They are telling tanks to use threat dumps as defensive cooldowns.

While Enraged Defense is not just a threat dump, it is one of the most powerful threat dump abilities in the game. 

Even if you somehow manage to hold aggro after the initial threat drop the Enraged Defense when used, if you take damage (which you will as a tank), will continue to lower your threat even more up to 10 more times within the next 10 seconds, so your chance to loose aggro goes really high. Also it consumes 1 rage each time it does that so it can rage starve you too, which can have additional negative impact on your threat generation.

Telling anyone to use this as a tanking cooldown is so horribly bad advice it makes me believe Noxxic is giving bad advice on purpose. How could anyone get things this badly wrong if they had good intentions?

Assassin Darkness PvE - Part 3 and 4, the ultimate stupidity

This is the last part of the review of Noxxic.com's guide for Assassin tanks
First two parts here:
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-stats.html
and here:
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-part-2.html

Part 3 "Talent Build"

Their suggested build looks like this:

Well, I suppose it is not entirely bad, it could be worse. Still I don't really fully agree with it. For one thing, they have points in Electric Execution, probably the most useless talent ever, and there are few other things that could be changed. 

I'm not going to any more details right now, as this is getting to be a long review and there is still a lot to cover, and I am planning to make my own guide in the near future. However I do say that a good guide should include also at least brief explanations of which are the most important talents (that you should always take) and which are more of an optional ones that could be traded for something else depending on the kind of content you are doing, something Noxxic does not have.

Ok, moving on

Part 4 Rotations & Cooldowns

Ok now we get to the part where Noxxic has some of the worst and stupidest advice ever.

Starting with single target rotation:

So Noxxic says: "rotations are designed for maximum damage, threat or healing". Even though for Assassin tank all 3 are kind of relevant, with self-healing being important part of their rotation, that is not what they are going for with this. They do in fact have this exactly same introductory text for every spec of every class, listing maximum threat for healers and dps who definitely don't want maximum threat and listing healing for classes that can't heal at all. That's just stupid. Could not be that hard to change the text to match the class.

To the rotation itself:

Where do I even begin? There's so many things wrong here.

So what is this rotation supposed to be for?

Optimal damage/threat? No, it isn't because Assassinate so low on the priority list. Most people let Assassinate take priority above all else once it becomes available.

Also if this was about threat rather than damage, it should include Force Pull, which even if you can use it only once does more threat on even targets that cant be pulled than any damage dealing ability

Optimal survivability? Well you could think that since they put mainly survivability abilities on top, but no, not really. The problem with that is that they basically seem to suggest to use Shock only with energize proc. If your goal was to maximize survivability you should use shock immediately when it comes out of cooldown regardless even if you haven't got energize proc yet, to get harnessed darkness stacks up as fast as possible to self-heal as often as possible. Even if the priority was to maximize damage or threat instead of tank survivability, I'm not entirely sure if it is worth trying to get energize before every shock even now (pre 2.0 it certainly was not worth trying to get at all)

Also placing Discharge above Shock is kind weird. Discharge, despite having higher than normal threat modifier, actually does very low threat due to its low damage. The only reason to have it in your single target rotation is the -5% accuracy debuff. Since the debuff lasts longer than the cooldown of discharge, it is not necessary to use it immediately when it comes of cooldown. It is however necessary to use Shock always immediately when it comes out of cooldown (and I say again, use it even if it is without energize proc) to build up HD stacks as fast as possible. Therefore Shock belongs higher up in the priority list.

And WHERE IS MAUL??? Why is Maul not in their attack rotation at all? It should be. As we can see above in the talent build, even Noxxic tells people to put points in "Conspirator's Cloak" which allows Maul to be used up front and reduces it's cost. Now why would they spend points on a talent that only affects Maul, if they are then not going to use it all? Are the people behind Noxxic stupid or something? (Why do I even ask?)

And if the reason to not include Maul was because this was still the same rotation they had for before 2.0 then all I can say is that some of the things they say would have been even more wrong before 2.0 than after.

And the way they lay it out seems to suggest that they are telling to renew Dark Ward as often as possible whenever it comes available out of cooldown. This is wrong, because renewing Dark Ward resets the Dark Bulwark stacks so even though you want to keep it up all the time and refresh it when it runs (because 20% shield > 8% absorb) you do not want to refresh it too early but rather at exactly the moment the Dark Ward buff runs out, and not a second before or after.

Well there other things someone could point out, but let's move on, and leave those for another time.

AOE  rotation

Just facepalm at this. Seriously Noxxic? Overload???

Overload has some situational use, primarily to position mobs, and in some rare and exceptional situations for other things, but it certainly should not be part of anyone's normal aoe attack rotation.

How stupid does one need to be to not understand that pushing mobs away from yourself as a tank so you can't hit them anymore (and usually by doing so pushing them away from other people's aoe attacks too making them miss their target) is a bad idea?

Now we finally get to the most epically bad part of them all, Survivability cooldowns.

This... This is really where they make a world record in stupidity. According to Noxxic survivability cooldowns are used among other things to "reduce aggro" and it is not just a case them copy/pasting the same text to every guide (which would be stupid too) but they do actually seem to literally think that tanks should try to reduce their aggro when tanking, since they do list the threat reduction abilities (such as enrage defense for juggernauts etc.) as cooldowns that tanks should use in every tank guide.

What kind of an idiot thinks that tanks should reduce their aggro when they are tanks? 

Listing Force Cloak as something tank spec assassins should use is just stupid. Not only is it threat dump but it actually takes you out of combat reducing your threat to 0 making you always loose aggro completely. Granted there are some special very rare and exceptional circumstances when a boss fight goes through a transition during which you don't need to hold threat on anything and you can use it to for example reset those medpacks that can be used only once per combat, but that's about it. However if an ability can only be used on rare and exceptional circumstance and absolutely must not be used at any other time, but the guide does not wish to explain when to use it, they would be better not to list it at all.

The other, perhaps even more stupid detail is that they list Force Shroud on the same line with the Force Cloak connected with a plus sign as if suggesting that those two abilities should be only used together.

WHAT THE HELL NOXXIC??????????????????????????????????????????????????

By connecting Force Shroud to Force Cloak like that, anyone who followed Noxxic's "advice" would be effectively prevented from ever using Force Shroud when they really need it the most.

Force Shroud is by far the best defensive cooldown in the game as it gives an assassin tank 5 seconds where they do not take any damage from force and tech attacks and cleanses most removable debuffs.

Has it really not occurred to the idiots who created Noxxic.com that this is something a tank might actually want to use on its own, without Force Cloak, even at times when you have to hold threat and can't use Force Cloak.

Even DPS assassins who can use Force Cloak pretty much any time, do still use these abilities more often independently than at the same time, so even for them Force Shroud and Force Cloak should have been listed separately. For tank specs, not listing them separately is just unforgivable.

Sith Assassin Darkness PvE - Part 2

This is a continuation of my review of assassin tank guide in Noxxic.com. If you have not read the previous part, please do so here: http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-stats.html

Next let's have a look at what Noxxic says in the rest of their guide.

Part 2 Item modifications

The second page in Noxxic's guide opens with listing the same stat priority again

I already explained in the previous post why that stat priority is utter shit so no more about that.

Now for the modifications themselves. 

Arkanian survivor set is correct but why no mention of Underworld? And why list everything in the currently second highest gear tier as in grade 30 mods and not 31? But nevermind that.

Now for the interesting part

Mods: 

Noxxic tells tank's to use the endurance heavy "B"-mods and does not even mention the defense/absorption heavy unlettered mods. This could, depending whose point of view you take, considered good advice for assassin tanks, considering that endurance does increase the self-healing for assassins. This is not even necessarily inconsistent with otherwise prioritizing mitigation stats over endurance, because by choosing "B"-mods over unlettered mods you will increase your endurance a lot more than you decrease your mitigation stats (this is of course only true for mods, not enhancements). Even some theorycrafters that do know what they are talking about at times prefer "B"-mods, although not all agree with that, so not really sure if it is the way to go. 

Personally I'm not a big fan of "B"mods.

However even if we did take the side that "B"-mods are the way to go, Noxxic got that right only by pure coincidence, since they also suggest "B" -mods for other tank classes who don't have same kind of self-healing which is a lot more questionable (not to mention they suggest "A" mods over unlettered mods for all DPS specs which is just plain stupid and shows they have no clue what they are talking about with mods)

Enhancements: 

With enhancements Noxxic sinks to plain stupidity again. For one thing Noxxic lists enhancements with accuracy as something tanks should use. That is just retarded. Enhancements with accuracy rating should be avoided at all costs. Even using lower level enhancements with all mitigation stats is better than using higher level ones with accuracy. 

Even for the enhancements with all mitigation stats they get it as wrong, by suggesting the overly endurance heavy "Vigilant" and "Steadfast" enhancements as the primary choice over the Bulwark, Sturdiness, Bastion or Immunity enhancements. Nobody who knows anything about stats, not even the people I mentioned above who like the "B" -mods, would agree with that (the exchange rate between endurance and mitigation stats is much worse for enhancements). Vigilant and Steadfast enhancements are utter shit that nobody should use.

Noxxic is even contradicting themselves here, since in their stat priority puts mitigation stats ahead of endurance (which at least they got that part right even though all other details are wrong) but then suggest gearing the exact opposite way.

Augments:

This is just a list of every kind of augment tank augment, which does not really say much about how to augment.

Fortitude augments which they also list, should of course not be used by anyone.

Also one should mention that nowhere in their gearing guides does Noxxic suggest which relics to use, which could be considered something that should be there (although maybe better that they don't, since even if they did include them, they would probably get that information wrong too)

Ok. to be continued...

http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/assassin-darkness-pve-part-3-and-4.html

Sith Assassin Darkness PvE - the stats

While every guide for every spec of every class in Noxxic.com does contain noteworthy mistakes and gets at least something wrong, the guides Assassin and Shadow tanks have been always been the worst of the bunch (the others are not much better, but only slightly) and seemingly they are getting worse and worse on every update.

Sith Assasin, Darkness, PvE

Part 1 Stat priority

The stat priority they suggests for Assassin tanks currently as I write this (and I doubt they will change it any time soon) looks like this:

Now before we even begin to explain what is wrong with these numbers, I would first like to point out that Noxxic completely fails to mention if the shield chance they suggest is supposed to be with or without Dark Ward activated, something I think every guide should specifically mention. We can assume that it is with Dark Ward, but we can't be sure since the number is impossible to reach either way with or without and I'm not even sure if the people behind Noxxic know how Dark Ward works.

Now as I said 65% shield chance is currently impossible to reach, so that number is wrong.

60% absorption is also currently completely impossible to reach so it is wrong too. You can't get anywhere near it, even with any new gear that will be added in the upcoming patches.

The 20% defense is at least possible, but a bit too low. Even though, especially after 2.0, the optimal stat distribution for Assassin tanks is very high on Absorption rating and low on Defense rating, even then fully geared assassin tank should end up with slightly more than that. Note that the assassin starts at 16% defense without any defense rating gear, much higher than the other tanks, and will go well above 20% with less than 300 defense rating.

Now just to point out how epicly bad noxxic is, a little history lesson.  The 65% shield and 60% absorption would have been good numbers to go for back in the past at level 50 in swtor 1.7 (although noxxic's numbers for defense is not correct for either) when the numbers to go for were more like 30% defense, 45% shield (which is 65% with dark ward) and 60% absorption. However before anyone thinks that Noxxic simply did not update their numbers when patch 2.0 hit, the sad truth is that they did. Back in 1.7 noxxic had numbers like 25%/50%/50% (which were at least possible even though not even close to optimal). So back when 65% shield and 60% absorption would have been good numbers, noxxic did not have them, but now that they no longer are correct or even possible numbers they decided to put those numbers to their guides. So somehow Noxxic manage to get from extremely bad to worse.

Also another thing wrong with Noxxic's stat priority is including "greater than" signs between stats. Optimizing tank gear is more about finding optimal proportions of how much of your stat budget goes to defense and absorption, which change as the stat budget increases, not about one stat being always better than the other, so the ">" signs give the wrong idea.

And finally Noxxic goes entirely wrong by claiming that tanks need accuracy. There is no need for any tank to have accuracy rating on their gear as they can easily hold threat without is and having it would lower their shield rating significantly ruining their mitigation. Now the shield chance Noxxic suggests is already impossible to reach even with shield rating in every possible piece of gear and 0 accuracy, but still noxxic suggests number for accuracy that would require to have more accuracy rating than shield rating in your gear.

The numbers Noxxic suggests for other tank classes are also wrong and/or impossible, but at least Noxxic no longer gives same numbers for every tank class so at least they have finally understood that different classes should go for different numbers even though they can't get anywhere near the right numbers for any class.

As for what would be better numbers, I would suggest anyone interested to go to the official SWTOR forums and read some of the posts by the people who actually know the mathematics behind the stats and follow their stat distributions. Most theorycrafters don't like giving numbers in percentages anymore  but rather list the amount of ratings for different stat budgets. I could calculate the percentages for some proposed bis setup, but we will leave that for another time as there is still much to cover.

Part 1B how stats work

Not only is Noxxic wrong about stat priority and the numbers they give for stats, but also their explanations on how the stats work have a lot of false information and outright lies too. Let's have a look.

Now the basic explanations about how defense rating, shield rating and absorption rating are mostly correct, but perhaps a bit too simple failing to mention that defense only works against melee/ranged attacks while shield since 2.0 works against both melee/ranged and force/tech attacks that deal kinetic/energy damage, and neither works against force/tech attacks that deal internal/elemental damage.

However there is a strange sentence: "You want to balance shield rating with absorption rating". What the hell is this even supposed to mean? Shield and Absorption are of course connected so more of one will make you benefit more from the other but nothing about the relationship of these stats is something I would describe as you want to "balance" one with the other. Shield rating does not compete with absorption in the gear itemization (apart from augments which you would only use for shield rating in exceptional cases for assassins). Shield rating can only be traded for alacrity or accuracy, which you don't want at all, so you simply want as much shield rating as possible. Absorption does however compete with defense rating so more absorption means less defense, so you will need to do some kind of balancing between them (which of course does not mean getting them anywhere near equal).

And the other stats...

Endurance: Saying that endurance increases your max health is of course correct. The health regeneration they mention (since they have the same text for every class) means the health if not full will very slowly regenerate even when not being healed by anything else. Personally I would not have even mentioned the regeneration part since it is so insignificant (it is not really wrong to mention it but it is pointless and confuses new players easily).
However the main problem is that they completely forget to mention here that assassin tanks have self-heals that heal a percentage of max health so endurance does increase the self-healing of an assassin tank. Failing to at least mention that is a huge flaw.

Willpower: It is correct that main stat increases damage and crit chance. Still Noxxic is very wrong when saying that willpower increases healing for assassins. Willpower increases healing for Sorcerers and Sages, but for assassins it does not. This is again where Noxxic is being epicly stupid by copy/pasting same text for different classes even when the same does not apply for both.
What does it matter? Well it matters because self-healing is a big part of assassin tank's rotation and survivability, but none of those heals are affected by willpower but either heal a percentage of max health (Force Lightning with harnessed darkness and Overcharge saber) in which case the only stat that affects them is endurance or heal a fixed amount (Dark Charge procs) in which case no stats affect them. Claiming that willpower increases assassin's healing when it does not is giving misinformation to any new players trying to figure out their stats.

Accuracy rating: While Noxxic's explanation of how accuracy works (which is the same that they had before 2.0) is no longer as badly wrong as it was before 2.0 (another history lesson: before 2.0 force and tech attacks did not benefit at all by accuracy, yet the whole time noxxic lied that they did) it is still partially wrong.
First of all tanks should not be gearing for accuracy at all. A DPS player does of course want 100% melee basic accuracy, 110% melee special attack accuracy and 110% force/tech accuracy
And unlike noxxic falsely claims a special attack is not the same thing as force/tech attack. Also all melee/ranged attacks also are not all "normal" attacks with 90% base accuracy. Only one attack for each class (Saber Strike for Inquisitors) is a basic attack with 90% base accuracy, and all others are special attacks. You will find special attacks listed under melee (or ranged for ranged classes) tab if you move mouse over the melee accuracy and they have 100 base accuracy, though you do need accuracy for the melee special attacks to fully hit since accuracy over 100% reduces the target's defense chance, which is 10% for endgame content. Accuracy over 100% for force attacks reduces the target's resist chance (not defense) which (since 2.0) is also 10% for endgame content.


We continue reviewing Noxxic's guide for Assassin tanks in the next post
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2013/06/sith-assassin-darkness-pve-part-2.html

Introduction: What is this blog for

This is blog created to help players of mmo games such as Star Wars the Old Republic to improve their game play by warning them about false information and bad advice given by some popular class guide websites such as Noxxic.com by explaining why most of the advice and information given in such websites is wrong.

I do plan to focus mostly on Noxxic.com's guides although some other websites may get reviewed too and I am going to focus entirely on their guides for Star Wars the Old Republic although reader's comments about how correct or incorrect their other guides are, will also be welcome.

The first series articles is going to expose the outright lies Noxxic has on their guides for Sith Assassin pve tank guides.