Noxxic's guide for Madness Assassin - another epic fail

Starting our next series articles with a look on the Madness Assassin guide that Noxxic has.

1. Stat priority

There is plenty wrong about what Noxxic says about stats. I mentioned some of it on my previous text, so not going to repeat it all here.
http://noxxicsucks.blogspot.fi/2014/04/noxxic-and-dps-stats.html

Power and critical rating use same itemization points. A Madness Assassin will want about 300 critical rating and the rest power.
Obviously you should not even look at the total critical chance percentage as that is useless in determining how much critical rating to put in your gear. Even if the actual total critical chance at some gear levels did get close to the 25% that Noxxic tells every class to get, it is out of pure coincidence.

Surge and Accuracy use same itemization points. You will want to put accuracy as close to 435 as possible and put surge on all the rest of the gear that have accuracy or surge, no matter how much that ends up being. Neither of them should be 395 at this point like Noxxic falsely claims.

Now for the more interesting part...

2. Skill tree build

Just what the hell is this? I have no words to describe how bad this is. This looks like it is made by someone who just blindly clicks all over the skill tree without paying any attention to what he ends up putting the points on.

It would take too long to explain everything wrong with it so just pointing out few of the most obvious mistakes.
- Why so many talents with 2/3 or 1/2 points? Seriously, in some rare cases I would understand it in some filler points needed to get higher up in the tree or just spending the last leftover point somewhere, but this does not appear to be the case here, especially not with that many. This is just someone spending points completely randomly without even looking at it.
- There is one unspent point left there!!! Whoever made this was so lazy that they did not even bother to check if they had spent all the points they have to spend.
- There is no point in Creeping Terror (we'll get to that shortly)
- In a PVE dps build they suggest wasting points on useless talents such as Shapeless Spirit, which does nothing to help your dps and is almost completely useless in PVE in any sense, even while they are missing points in several talents that would affect your dps. There are number of other talents that you should not have such as Chain Shock, but not going to list them all.

moving on...

ROTATIONS

Would it be too much to ask to just remove this piece of text or at least remove the part that says "maximum threat" when you have a guide for a DPS spec? 

And the rotation itself... Not sure which is worse, this or their randomly generated skill tree build.

Where to even begin? Just going to list few of the most obvious mistakes.

- Discharge is way too far down the list. It should be just on the second place just after Death Field. To make matters worse, they even put it below some melee attacks. One of the main points of the Madness Assassin rotation is to hit melee attacks on targets that have the dot from Discharge on them first, to proc Raze.

- The "key to the spec" part tells to to "maintain Crushing Darkness and Creeping Terror dots, but neglects to say Discharge dot needs to be maintained 100% uptime too. (also Crushing Darkness can't be maintained 100% uptime)

- This rotations lists Creeping Terror even though their skill tree build does not even put point into Creeping Terror. (and yes I know it had one unspent point which could be put there but with so many talents with 2/3 or 1/2 points in them it is not at all clear where, whoever made the skill tree build, even intended to put that last point)

- And the worst of all: Noxxic tells us to use Maul when exploit weakness procs from Duplicity, which is a talent so up in the Deception skill tree. Duplicity is unavailable for any kind of full Madness spec build and has been unavailable since the game changes in the Patch 2.0 over a year ago. Maul has no place in the Madness rotation under normal circumstances.

- Shock should not be there either.

Overall Noxxic only ever describes any rotations only as a simple priority list. In many cases listing also and example of the actual order in which abilities are used would be more useful.

Moving on...

Ok, again with the nonsense about "optimal threat or healing" on a dps guide. Is it really that hard to make different templates for different roles?

Normally I mock Noxxic for listing knockback abilities like Overload in their guides for dps rotation, but I admit using Overload can be ok for a DPS Assassin, since their other AoE moves are crap if, and only if, the targets are all immune to knockbacks, which should be at least mentioned if you are going to list it.

Well offensive cooldowns are not always "used on every single cooldown" as there are situations where it is better save them for a phase where you need to do a lot of damage in a short amount of time.

The way this tells to use Recklessness is also wrong since it is telling one to use it to buff Shock, which should not even be part of the rotation.

"Survivability cooldowns"

This is again just a list of defensive cooldowns and also other utility abilities. It doesn't really tell anything about how to use them best, as it should.

The only thing where Noxxic suggests something about how these abilities should be used is when they list Force Cloak + Force Shroud together as if these two abilities should be used together, which is just wrong and a huge mistake.
While there could be some (extremely rare) situations where they could be used at the same time, these abilities are used separately and independently far more often than they are used together.
Force Cloak is used to remove yourself from combat to be able to stealth ress or to reset your threat if you happen to overaggro or in some cases for Dark Embrace buff, often at times when there is no need to use Force Shroud at the same time but it would be important to save Shroud for later use.
Force Shroud is used to cleanse yourself to remove any dots or debuffs on yourself or alternatively to resist all damage from an incoming force/tech attack, and often used at times when there is no need to use Force Cloak at the same time, but that should be saved for later use.

I've given Noxxic some feedback countless times telling them to list these abilities separately, not together connected with a plus sign. They have nothing to do with each-other. After months of spamming them with messages, Noxxic eventually gave in and agreed to correct this mistake in their Assassin tank guide, but they still insist keeping this nonsense in their dps guides.

Update:

Few weeks after patch 2.7 Noxxic did "update their guide for patch 2.7" but unlike their usual rutine of just writing "updated for patch 2.7" on their guide, they actually did one more change.

They "fixed" their "talent build" to no longer have a one unspent point. However the end result is worse than I thought it would be:

So they did not even put the missing point to Creeping Terror which would have at least made some sense as they tell us to use it in the attack rotation.

Overall this spec is total nonsense with several useless talents taken, and points missing in talents that would have been important for dps.

And the rotation Noxxic presents is still exactly the same as seen above.
The rotation is of course completely impossible for any kind of build as it is not possible to have Creeping Terror and Duplicity at the same time. Duplicity is only available to Deception or some kind of Deception/Madness hybrid spec. Creeping Terror is only available to full Madness spec.

To make it worse Noxxic tells you to spec into a build that does not have either of these and still in the same guide tells you to use both of them.

So basically the guide tells you to use 2 abilities in your attack rotation that you do not even have.

Noxxic and dps stats

After being busy with other stuff for a while, I thought it is time to come back and make some new posts here.
The next few texts are going to focus Noxxic's guides on some dps specs and point out some of the more obvious stupid errors in those.

Before we start going into actual class guides in this post I will look into what Noxxic says about secondary stats for dps.

First of all a typical stat priority list Noxxic has:

I took this one from their guide for the Madness Assassin, which is one I will go to look into next, but Noxxic has exactly the same stat priority for every dps spec of every class (with the only difference being replace Willpower with whatever is the primary stat of any given class) and that is pretty bad, especially when it comes to the part that says 25% crit for every spec of every class.

Also their explanations on how each of these stats work, are pretty bad and in many cases just plain wrong
Here we go:

Let's look into each of these stats.

Willpower: This explanation with the statement "increases the damage and healing done by your abilities" would be generally correct for a Sorcerer but as I mentioned above, I took this from the guide for the Madness Assassin, and for them Willpower only increases damage done, not healing.

Well you could say that Assassins don't really have proper healing abilities, but I could also say that especially in Madness spec Assassins actually do have several abilities that do cause self-healing, but those generally heal based on percentage of your maximum health. So they do have abilities that do healing, but Willpower does not increase the amount of healing done.
Unlike the other errors here, this is a point of minor importance, but can still be misleading to some people.

Accuracy Rating: This is actually isn't as bad as it has been in the past. Some of the past versions of Noxxic have had the explanation on how accuracy works much more horribly wrong but now they have removed some of the false claims there.

You do indeed want 100% M/R accuracy and 110% F/T accuracy for every dps spec now. However their claim that the optimal accuracy is gained at 395 accuracy rating is just plain wrong.

With few exceptions most specs of any class to go from the baseline 90%/100% to the 100%/110% will need to get 3% from their skill trees + 1% from the companion legacy buff + remaining 6% from accuracy rating on gear (and would need more from gear if you don't have all these)

To get that 6% from gear, you will need 435 accuracy rating. 395 is not enough, but will give you only about 5.52% or something like that.
(One exception worth mentioning is the Carnage Marauder who gets another 3% accuracy from Ataru Form and therefore needs only 3% accuracy from gear, only half as much as most other specs, but in their inability to recognize the differences between specs Noxxic has the same 395 even on the Carnage Marauder guide even though it is way too much for them.)

So where does that 395 come from? There are other websites with good (at least at the time when they were written) guides that tell you to have 395 accuracy rating. The catch is that those guides were written back when the Underworld (72) gear was the best you could have. Even then 435 would have been the actual optimal amount, but you can't get that exact amount so they had to settle for getting as close as they can. With 7 items with enhancement slot + implants and earpiece you have 10 items in total that can have accuracy or surge. With 79 of these stats per item if you went with 5 pieces of gear with accuracy and 5 with surge, you would get 395 each, putting your accuracy slightly below the optimal 435. With 6 items with accuracy and 4 with surge, you would get 474 accuracy, giving you slightly too much accuracy. At that stat budget getting that last half a percent was not considered worth loosing 79 surge for.

So 395 accuracy would be your goal if and only if you had only underworld 72 gear and nothing at all from any other gear tier. If you have higher tier (75 or 78) or lower tier (66 or 69) items at all, then 395 is definitely not your goal. And Noxxic says (at this moment in time) that their guides are for someone with Dread Forged (78) gear.

Of course if whoever made the Noxxic guide would have actually bothered to read whatever guide they copied the number 395 from, instead of just taking that number and skipping the rest of the text, they would know all this already.

Critical Rating: As I mentioned earlier, Noxxic telling every spec of every class to get 25% is what is most wrong in their guides when it comes to stat priority.

For several reasons:

1. Different specs of different classes will benefit from crit in different ways. 

Some specs get some additional benefits from crit (such as Lethality Sniper getting energy back when their dots crit) and therefore will want a bit more crit than most other classes in general.

Some specs have talents that make some abilities guaranteed crit and therefore will benefit less from critical rating than other classes in general as the autocrits will always crit no matter how much you have and so one of their hardest hitting ability does not benefit from crit.

Different specs of different classes want very different amounts of critical rating.

2. Some classes have different buffs and talents that affect your critical chance. One class getting less critical chance from other sources does not mean they necessarily want more from critical rating stat.

Now everyone has 5% base crit chance and you get 5% from a buff and probably biggest part of your total crit chance from your main stat and different amounts from skill trees and then what you get from any critical rating you might have.

Now for example a Sniper has a 3% critical chance talent in their skill trees as well as 9% main stat talent (which means also more crit from main stat) so with amounts of main stat in 78 gear they get pretty close to the 25% critical chance with literally 0 critical rating stat.

A Marauder does not have either of those kinds of talents in their skill trees so they would need a lot more critical rating stat on their gear, like 300 or more, to reach the same percentage.

So if someone followed the guides from Noxxic which tells to get 25% for every spec of every class, they would end up putting a lot more critical rating on their Marauder's gear than on their Sniper's gear, but this is doing it completely wrong. 

In reality if you look at any guides from theorycrafters who know what they are doing then it is actually the Sniper that is one of those classes that depending on spec, may want more critical rating (up to 300 or more) than most other classes, while Marauder in most specs is one of those that want less critical rating than others (usually none at all). So following Noxxic guides would make you do the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

3. Listing your total critical chance in percentage is completely useless way to tell someone how much critical rating you need. Even if you take all the skills and talents into account (which Noxxic does not take into account even those) then even then there would be other variables like how much mains stat you have in there.

In short: How much critical rating you want, does not depend on how much main stat you have. Your total critical chance percentage does however depend on how much main stat you have.

Conclusion: Therefore you should not even look at the percentage of your total crit chance, but only watch for raw amounts of critical rating stat and have your guide tell you that.

Surge Rating: Another one that is just partially true. Yes surge increases your critical multiplier.

First of all, this 200% that Noxxic mentions is complete and utter nonsense. It does not exist.

At 0 surge rating your critical multiplier is 50% (or actually 51% with the 1% from legacy companion buff). So critical hits do 51% more damage, so if we count normal hit as 100% then critical hit would be 151%. There is no 200% in there anywhere.
With Surge Rating on your gear, the critical multiplier goes up.
Neither the 70% crit multiplier nor the 395 surge rating are not any kind of goals you should have in mind. I already explained above with accuracy, where this 395 came from. With any gear higher than 72 level, you will end up with more than that for most specs.

Basically there is no need to give specific numbers for surge. For most specs of most classes, take accuracy until you reach the cap and then put surge rating in all the rest of your items that can have these stats.
(Assuming you need the accuracy as close as you can get to 435 and that you're not playing one of those few specs that may want a little bit of alacrity too, you will with 78 gear most likely end up closer to 74% crit multiplier.)

Power/Force Power: I see no problem with their explanations of these stats.

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.