Hello, fellow Jedi Guardian class, which is my favorite class in SW:TOR. i2i2n
From the very first moment I saw the end game tank Guardians, like stat priorities, boss tactics, and rotations.
Leveling Up:
The story line encounters where you are forced to initiate battle from point blank range, where you can not open with your force leap. Once you get “Combat Focus” at level 22 this becomes less of an issue, but any attacks or talents chained to force leap(i.e. Opportune Strike/Momentum) are still going to be off limits.
When I leveled up my first Jedi Guardian, the first thing I noticed was that choosing the Defense tree right off the bat exacerbates all of the problems I just cited previously. Soresu takes one focus off of your main two focus building attacks, Strike and Sundering Strike. One focus can be recovered via “Victory Rush”, but that still leaves Strike giving you one solitary point. Because most of your better Defense abilities are high in the tree, I recommend leveling as another specialization. I chose the Focus tree. Why Focus? First off, Shii-Cho still provides some flat damage mitigation, unlike Shien. This helps allow you to tank, even as a DPS spec. Shien, from Vigilance, helps alleviate your focus problems, but the Focus tree matures earlier. You get “Zealous Leap” at level 20 where you don’t get “Overhead Slash” until at least level 30.
You get cool down reduction on all of your force attacks with “Zephyr” and the extra critical chance to Slash makes spamming that god awful attack somewhat worth while. It is also more than possible to tank in Focus, but you should itemize your gear accordingly. Building glass canon is not going to make tanking very reliable. Secondary stats not withstanding, it is important to stack as much health as you can. Endurance should be your primary tanking statistic at lower levels. With your Zealous Leap and high damage Force Sweeps, holding threat, even over multiple targets, should be a breeze. This was my talent tree up until level 33.
Around this level or so is when I finally respec to Defense. With 24 talent points at your disposal, you can finally pick up skills like “Stasis Mastery”, “Hilt Strike”, and “Blade Barrier”. Finally, we have access to real tank abilities. From this level out you should build only in your Defense tree until you reach “Guardian Slash”. My talent tree at level 40 looked something like this.
Talent Builds:
At end game, there is a lot of debate on the swtor.com forums about which talent builds are the best for tanking. The talent tree I have been using since beta is a pure Defense spec, 31/8/2.
tree talents, “Hilt Strike”, “Warding Call”, “Stasis Mastery”, and “Guardian Slash”, while at the same time forgoing other talents that are worthless in PvP, which I will go into later. I’ve also used 33/8/0 for pure PvE.
Alternative talent builds include hybridizing the Defense and Vigilance lines such as 14/27/0 or 18/23/0.
The logic behind these talent builds is that “Overhead Slash” can have its cool down lowered to 9 seconds, where as “Guardian Slash” has a set cool down of 15 seconds. The Vigilance tree also has some tank friendly talents, like “Protector” and “Commanding Awe”. The reason I choose not to use these builds is because they lack any form of no-channel stuns, where the Defense line has 3 of them. Though stuns do not work on bosses and some champions, they do work quite well on strong mobs, which are often seen during boss fights as adds. Some of these strong mobs, designated as silver stars, are extremely dangerous, such as the infected mercenaries and screamers in Kaon Under Siege. Even so, I have seen hybrid builds used quite effectively.
PvE vs. PvP:
When it comes to tanking, there is a PvP tanks should always choose damage gear from their PvP vendors and avoid talents like “Shield Specialization” that only add to stats we don’t want(I keep “Guard Stance” in just because I do want SOME defense and there isn’t much else to get at that tier). Instead, you should choose talents that lower your crowd control cool downs, like “Command”, and increase your damage, like “Perseverance” and “Pacification”.
When it comes to PvE, however, the name of the game is threat and survival. Since almost every mob spams some sort of high damage auto-attack, your defensive stats are in full swing. Talents like “Command” won’t help you as much, save for some area encounters with Challenging Call, due to the limited usefulness of “Force Push” in PvE. Now talents like “Guard Stance”, “Shield Specialization”, and “Blade Barricade” come more into play.
