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.