“Iron Fist” 25/14/2 PVP Tank Spec for SWTOR Powertech / Vanguard
This video covers my “Iron Fist” 25/14/2 PVP tank spec for the Bounty Hunter Powertech and Trooper Vanguard advanced classes in Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). Vanguard and Powertech are mirrors so this video is applicable to players of both classes.
I designed the spec after discerning the limitations of the Defense (avoidance) and Shield (block) mechanics for tanks in PVP. Mitigation is king in SWTOR, and therefore the spec provides a significant amount of flat mitigation against all damage types. Mitigation is king in SWTOR PVP. The two 2% mitigation talents and 5% mitigation from the tanking stance stack additively to provide 9% mitigation against all damage types (i.e. Elemental, Energy, Internal, and Kinetic) – you can see this by mousing over Damage Reduction on your Character window.
The 4-pc Tech set bonus, Flame Shield (Static Shield) talent, and Flame Surge (Static Surge) talent synergize to generate a high frequency of high-damage Rocket Punch (Stockstrike) crits.
Here is the spec used in the video: Powertech (Vanguard).
The “Iron Fist” spec has been very effective for me in PVP, both group play and solo. It’s designed to support aggressive close-quarters combat gameplay: you can tank and burn down MDPS and pressure and shutdown casters and healers, while retaining Guard, charge, and debuff capability.
For more information about Powertech / Vanguard PVP, please refer to my free in-depth Guide.
I queued solo for the Huttball match shown in the video.
Comments / Errata:
- I had an incorrect Relic bound on my Quickslot bar. The point made in the video still stands: the level 50 Crit buff stacks with a Relic
UPDATE (2012/01/28): people asked about the pros and cons of Carolina Parakeet (21/2/18) and Iron Fist. Here’s my brief take…
Here is what you gain with Carolina Parakeet:
+ improved ranged capability
+ better burst mechanics when Prototype Particle Accelerator (Ionic Accelerator) procs multiple times in a short time window
Here is what you gain with Iron Fist:
+ better mitigation and CC capability
+ no wasted talent points or set bonuses
They are both excellent specs – which you choose depends on your preferred capabilities.
UPDATE (2012/01/29): to clarify why mitigation matters and how it stacks, consider the following…
Talents such as Power Armor are not affected by diminishing returns, and mitigation becomes more valuable the more you have.
Without points in the two 2% mitigation talents, my mitigation against Energy and Kinetic attacks is 45.5% from Armor and the tanking stance, so I suffer 54.5 points of damage out of every 100.
With Iron Fist, the mitigation increases to 49.5%, so I suffer 50.5 points of damage out of every 100.
Which means that a non-IF tank spec is going to take 7.9% (4 / 50.5) more damage than an IF build. The difference is significant and very noticeable in PVP.
By the same token, the damage that a non-IF spec takes from Elemental and Internal damage compared to an IF spec is > 4%.
I.e. non-IF in tank stance has 5% mitigation against those damage types, and IF has 9%. So 95 damage taken vs 91 damage taken, or an increase of 4.4%.
When you factor in the +10% mitigation buff from Sorcs / Sages, the gap between non-IF and IF tank specs widens to 4.9% (4 / 81).
And the above percentages again increase when you factor in our 4% damage debuff.
UPDATE (2012/02/02): people have been asking about gear for this spec. Here’s what you want to get:
- Supercommando Shield offhand: to leverage the free +15% Shield Chance buff you get from the tanking stance. While I don’t believe the Shield Chance stat is worth stacking for PVP, the +15% benefit is worth leveraging
- Combat Tech 4-pc set: for the awesome +15% Crit Chance to Rocket Punch (Stockstrike). Alternatively, if you prefer the Supercommando set bonuses, you can go 4-pc Supercommando and swap out the mods for DPS ones
- Go for DPS stats for the remaining slots: this means Eliminator, Combat Tech, and in some cases Combat Medic. The priority for the stats is what I documented in the Stats and Gear section of my Powertech / Vanguard Guide
UPDATE (2012/02/08): read NoGoal’s insightful comment on the mechanics limitations for Rebraced Armor.
UPDATE (2012/02/17): with the nerf to Surge Rating in 1.1.3, burst damage is down significantly for all players and time-to-kill has increased. An implication is that “mana” management has become more important.
As such, I moved the point in Oil Slick (Smoke Grenade) over to the second point in Shield Vents (Shield Cycler). The idea here is to get your internal cooldown on the Heat vent (Ammo regen) proc from SV (SC) ticking as fast as possible.
To see me PVP’ing live, check out my TwitchTV channel. My stream features real-time commentary – and to the extent possible interaction with the Chat Room.
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Now that I’ve lvled my PVE guild a healer…I’m going full time on leveling a powertech & vanguard w/ your guides…as soon as I figure out why Bioware would have an unscheduled patch on a Friday night? SIGH…
Great work on your guides and video!!
Yo mate, just wanted to thank u for the awsome vids and the insanely good blog. Full coverage and i reccommend this to all the peeps i see playing powertech.
Keep up the good work!
Two questions, Firstly how does the 13% stack with armour (im assuming that if you have 50% mitigation from armour that the 13% would be more like 6.5% but I just dont know). Also in your guide you spoke about crit pushing back shielding chance, does that mean that 20% crit makes 25% shielding chance a 5% chance or a 20% chance (since if you crit 1/5 of the time and you shield 25% of the remaining it works out to be 20%). Sorry if you have answered these questions anywhere else. Oh and like everyone else I love your videos guides and commentary. Most of all I like the way you explain things : )
Let’s leave the 4% damage debuff on a target aside for a moment.
The two talents and tank stance stack additively: 2% + 2% + 5% = 9% mitigation
You can easily tell this from mousing over the Damage Reduction tooltip – the mitigation amount for each of the 4 damage types (Energy, Elemental, Internal, and Kinetic) is increased by 9%.
The fact that this stacks from a flat additive perspective not multiplicative perspective is what makes mitigation a very good PVP stat.
http://taugrim.com/2012/01/19/understanding-swtors-avoidance-and-mitigation-mechanics-for-tanks-in-pvp/#comment-7083
First of all I have to agree, you are doing a great job with your guides.
Two things bothered me at first with this spec:
1. Why did you choose Shield Cycler at all? Then I tried to rebuild it and saw the reason. Then I wondered isn’t Ceramic Plating better with its CD-Reduction on Adrenaline Rush? I crunched some numbers and saw the reason for that as well, so the question was moot after that.
2. Why Gut over Blaster Augs? Isn’t the 8% damage increase inherently better than one extra DoT-Skill?
To be noted: my Vanguard (35ish) was up to now all the time in Shield Spec, so I haven’t tried Gut at all so far (I’ll try out some other specs in the near future though)
SC provides passive ability to vent heat (regen ammo) at the cost of 1 talent point. I don’t put 2 points in the talent due to the internal cooldown.
AR is a low heal spread out over time, i.e. it’s better than nothing but not particularly strog.
The 8% damage increase is to one “ability” which doesn’t do much damage.
It’s not worth the point. By comparison, the talents in the tanking tree that buff the the stance damage and effects are much better point-for-point and worth the investment.
Blaster Augs is an excellent talent for either Pyrotech (Assault Specialist) or Advanced Prototype (Tactics) but not for a tank spec.
Retractable Blade (Gut) provides a long DoT effective and has a very good “damage-to-mana-cost” ratio.
So you can use it on opponents to delay a node cap after you die, and it’s helpful for wearing down healers.
Oooh, I always read the tooltip as “8% more damage dealt while Ion Cell is active” not as “8% more damage from Ion Cell’s proc” as it actually states…
Silly me, can’t read for whatever
Well, with that in mind, a new spec is coming asap.
You’re not alone in making this mistake — my first understanding was that it gave a flat 8% boost to ALL blaster skills when using Ion Cell, instead of only affecting Ion Cell’s proc damage.
I came to realize that were that the case, this would undoubtedly be a three step talent, instead of a single point.
If that was how the talent works, it’d be the single best talent in the entire game
What are you using in your offhand? Just a pure stat stick or do you use the shield generator?
Nevermind just saw your tweet.
You must have a Shield offhand equipped in order to Shield. It’s like equipping a “board” shield to block in fantasy MMORPGs.
http://taugrim.com/2012/01/04/guide-to-bounty-hunter-powertech-trooper-vanguard-mechanics-and-pvp/#stats
hi great vid. is ur guild recruiting? if so, can i grab some info? thanks
We were accepting apps but I think we’ve put a hold on that as we received enough applications in the past week.
http://mavenguild.enjin.com
This is your best footage so far, IMO, with some nice plays in Huttball. This is one of the builds that gives me problems 1v1 when it’s backed by 20K HP.
It would be nice to see some 1v1-focused content from you some time.
Thanks Oozo!
I’m planning on full DPS PVP gear with this spec, as the stats for Defense and Shield on the PVP tank items aren’t valuable in PVP, and I want to play an offensive durable tank not just a meatshield.
So I won’t be getting anywhere near 20k HP. Maybe 17k HP with full Battlemaster gear without a stim.
Yea, I’m going to get to that soon. This spec rocks in 1v1s. I can tank DPS and beat up tankier tanks or squishier tanks.
I’ve been trying many different builds @ 50 and haven’t clicked with any spec yet until I played this one.
I did enjoy a spec, 1/22/18, which is very close to the 0/23/18 spec you’ve often talked about in your videos.
Are you still playing 0/23/18? I’ve unfortunately been too busy to check up on other people’s videos, and I know you’ve posted some in the past week or so.
Yes, still playing that build. It has some weaknesses but I like its playstyle.
For 1v1 against a melee class, do you strafe kite or face-tank with this spec? Your post implies face-tank, just wanted to confirm.
Generally speaking, face-tank vs another melee.
We don’t want to create a gap vs Warriors or they will charge us.
You can situationally strafe kite a Shadow/Assassin while putting up your Explosive Dart (Sticky Grenade) and Rail Shot (High Impact Bolt).
Taugrim,
Concerning leveling, are you going through PVE content or just purely doing PVP to level the characters you play?
Thanks for all the great work you are doing for the community.
WTG
While leveling, I do my class quests, space dailies, and the rest of my time is in PVP.
Partly because I love PVP, partly because it gives good XP and currency, and partly because I want to be at or close to Valor Rank 49 when I hit level 50 on each character.
Thanks for the prompt reply Taugrim.
How do you equip your Character playing this way? Do you sprinkle in some Flashpoints or do you just buy new stuff from the GTN / get stuff from your Guild crafters?
Right now my focus is getting to Battlemaster (Valor 60) and starting to pick up gear.
That being said, I do plan to PVE tank flashpoints and when we have the numbers @ 50, operations.
Taugrim, just something you may not have considered: champion bags love to give out duplicates (I am now at 5 pairs of pants while stuck with centurion in 4 slots). I’ve been taking the DPS mods and enhancements out of combat tech/eliminator gear and putting them into supercommando set pieces. This way I get the same damage stats as the combat tech gear, but with the very powerful 5%-dmg-while-guarding set bonus of the supercommando set.
Yea that’s a great tip.
It does cost ~35-40k to pull out each mod, but for min-maxing it’s a good idea.
For now, I’m holding on to my duplicate Champion pieces for now in case BioWare implements a trade-in system at some point in the future.
Taugrim I told you about playing tank spec in dps gear for charge/being tanky/stockstrike a while ago during a livestream, but you didn’t read what I said and assumed it was with tank gear
. I think credit for the first person to play with this spec (or a poorly optimized version of it) goes to Shadow on terentatek.
Anyway, thanks for the guides on the defensive mechanics/tips on how to optimize them, and its always fun to see you play
I’ve been telling people for several weeks that DPS gear would work well for tanks given how not strong Defense and Shielding are in PVP.
There wasn’t anyone on the Powertech or Vanguard forums who was talking about how weak those mechanics are, until I brought up some of my findings.
Hmm, never heard of that player.
FWIW: I’ve never seen anyone post the same spec as “Iron Fist”.
Given the number of people playing SWTOR players are going to independently come up with the same or similar builds.
Hey Taugrim, thx for another great vid!
I have a question. When I use my shoulder slam on incapacitated npcs it works just fine but in WZ it never works. Do you have the same issue?
All classes have a “finisher” ability that only works on NPCs. The tooltip descriptions of these abilities does not make that clear. Mine is called Blitz. It does not work in PvP.
Yep.
The ironic thing about abilities such as Blitz is that they only work on the weakest mobs. You can’t use it against elite mobs either.
So they’re kind of pointless.
Ok ty both for that clarification. I’ll put something more usefull in that keybind
Taugrim, I love your work. I don’t get enough time to research specs these days (but still love MMOs). I’ve pretty much been following your spec and having a blast. Thanks. Here’s my question, I am only level 34 at the moment and I figure I need to have at least have 11 points in Tactics to get Gut before I put points into Shield Spec. Am I better going straight up Tactics until I get to at least level 36 and can then get my 15 point talents in Shield Spec?
11 points in Tactics to get Gut is a fine stopping point, every talent point you spend on the way will provide value. Well, except for Blaster Augs if you switch to Ion Cell. BA is good for running either DPS stance but not the tanking one.
If and when you decide to switch to tanking and using the tank stance, make sure you have at least 8 talent points to invest in the tank tree, so that you can get the 2 talents that make your tanking stance proc apply a DoT and snare effect
Curious as to what you think of this spec:
http://www.torhead.com/skill-calc#801GRGMzRroMZMcdroZb.1
Trades out a point in Front Line Defense and the single point you invested into Shield Cycler and places them into 16% more armor. Figured the 3% loss in Gut and Ion Pulse probably wouldn’t mean much, and a 20% chance to proc a 25% chance talent to return 1 ammo didn’t seem worth it. 16% armor seems like it would help more in the long run, as mitigation seems so good.
16% more armor is a low single-digit % increase in mitigation against Energy and Kinetic damage types.
Only 42, so that may have something to do with it, but 16% more armor is more than 5% reduction in both.
I take that back, instead of just removing a piece of gear to simulate the lack of 16% extra, I respecced to get a clear number. Turns out it is a little over 3%, which feels on par with the other mitigation talents. More armor would make this even better, but leveling up may make it worse, who knows, I’m clearly not a mathematician. Assuming it stays the same, 3% mitigation on the non-shieldable attacks can’t be bad.
First, armor only works against kinetic and energy damage. It doesn’t work against elemental and internal damage.
Second, classes that use strong attacks mitigated by armor usually have debuffs.
Third, the % is based on your base armor, not base+60% from your tanking ´stance´.
Last, maths! Let’s say you have 5000 armor rating @ L50.
- 5000 armor rating = 31.65% damage reduction [5000 / ( 5000 + 200 * 50 + 800 ) * 100]
- 8000 with tanking stance (+60%) = 42.55%
- 8800 [5000+(5000*0.6)+(5000*0.16)] with the talent = 44.90% (+2.35%)
Most will have the -60% talent to boost Rail Shot (HIB) so:
- 2000 (5000-60%) armor rating = 16.62%
- 3200 = 22.86%
- 3520 = 24.58% (+1.72%)
It’s obviously not bad but, in your template, you lost 25% chance to vent 8 heat when struck, 1% shield chance and 3% damage on Flame Burst (Ion Pulse) and RB (Gut) for it.
If you want to keep the armor talent, I’d take the (25%) chance to vent heat and drop Oil Slick (Smoke Grenade). It’s great on void star as people are usually packed but everywhere else it won’t affect many targets (not sure of the range. is it 10m?). It shines when people have Defense on their armor (and enemies don’t have accuracy) but they’ll rather want offensive stats. It costs 8 heat (1 ammo), 60s cd..
3% damage is a small loss but I find it more useful than -5s on Grapple (Harpoon).
Brilliant post, couldn’t have said it better myself.
It’s not really 25% to vent when you are struck, but a 20% chance (21 with talent) to enter another 25% chance to gain/vent 1/8 ammo/heat. That is also 21% on only the shieldable attacks.
As for the armor, the -60% is for the one attack, and how many other classes get something that is that high for a certain ability, and how many get straight armor pen? (Not making a point, generally curious).
The smoke grenade doesn’t show the range, but I’m assuming it is 5, just like Explosive Surge. It also doesn’t cost me anything me anything to use.
Right now I don’t have the talents in the reduced Harpoon, and the 45s cd is eating away at my soul.
These 3-4 points aside, the spec looks great and I can’t wait to try it at 50. Awesome job Taugrim. There were some people on the forums stating that some players on their servers gen chat arguing that devs where looking into reworking how shields work in pvp. Obviously “a friend of a friend of a friend” information isn’t the best to go off of, so I’m just wondering if you’ve heard anything about it.
Correct.
Combat-spec’d Sentinel gets a 100% Armor pene for 6 sec every 15 sec.
Operative/Scoundrel gets a flat 30% Armor pene.
The shared tree for Jedi Knight / Sith Warrior has Armor pene talent far up in the tree.
Those are some offhand.
Correct.
Haven’t heard about this.
Playing with the concepts that you laid out, I moved the points from quell and supercharged ion gas to endurance.
http://db.darthhater.com/skill_calc/bounty_hunter/powertech/#::fefe6f3defe5fe2f6ef4e2f4ef4ef11:
My reasoning is that Ion Cylinder dot is weak, and 2 seconds off quell CD not that necessary.. Why not improve how long I last by adding 3 endurance.
In your experience and research on these pvp specs, how much weight would you give endurance compared to quell and supercharged ion gas? If you had to use 3 points and quell and supercharged ion gas were not options, where would you put them?
If not endurance I think I would fill out shield vents and jet speed.
Thoughts?
Supercharged Ion Gas is taken for the 3 seconds added to the dot which in turn makes the 50% slow last that much longer. Turns the slow from 8 seconds (6 second dot, last tick procs the 2 second slow) to 11 seconds, with the last tick hitting at 9 and slowing for another 2 seconds, being 11 total. At least that is why I took it.
I’ve also read that the damage and the dot damage aren’t as strong as the tooltip says, so if they fix it buff it up to that, then the talent will be even better. If they just change the tooltip to the actual damage it does, then you still get that 3 seconds longer on the slow, plus a little more damage.
I’ve personally found that 8s on the interrupt (Quell its called for you, I think) is just long enough to prevent me from hitting the next heal or whatever. Cannot count how many times I’ve gone to interrupt and seen the button greyed out for a second or so to go.
Snare duration is fixed at 2 seconds.
Tooltip says damage, not ´apply´ unlike the pyro ´stance´. I’m not in shield spec atm so I can’t check and I must admit I’ve never paid attention to it. If it’s like Crimsonbolt claims it to be, the extra tick is a must have in PvP.
Even without that the talent is good to keep the DoT rolling and make sure you can rail shot on CD. It also adds an extra tick so it increases the damage of the DoT.
PS: darthhater tooltips on some talents are wrong. Use Torhead instead.
No, Taugrim is right. Did a test last night to see.
Tried kiting an elite, and the snare only lasted the two seconds, and was only reapplied when I would use Hammer Shot (other ranged attacks can do it too, just did that for simplicity) and it would only apply the snare when Ion Cell procced again. The dot doesn’t reapply the dot like you (I, more specifically) would have assumed by reading the talents. Would be nice to have the game tell me and not confuse with bad wording. After some thought while walking back to my car from class, I primarily melee class having an 11 second snare that was easily applied by using a free 30m range attack (not to mention HIB/Rail) would be pretty dumb. Still going to keep the talent for the initial hit from proccing being increased and the longer dot duration for more damage/keeping someone from capping.
@Taugrim: I think what I disliked about the Shield Cycler was that, when reading it after reading your post about tanks in pvp, it seemed like a low chance, lower than I would like to really rely on. With my limited (as shown above more than once) math skills and assuming 1/3 of the attacks I receive are shieldable:
21% chance to shield, 25% to proc, and 33% chance to even initiate the shield, equals out to a seemingly low number.
Lannadhor posted the spec but with taking two points into Shield Cycler instead of 2, and for whatever reason, the extra 25% chance to have the block give you the ammo feels way more comfortable to me. Going to respec and try that.
Glad I found this site though, like being able to ask questions to someone about a class/game I’m new to without scrambling around on google or harassing some geared guy in the fleet.
Lots of typos there.
Endurance provides a linear increase to time-to-live, at my gear it would give me ~400 HP. I don’t think it’s worth 3 very valuable talent points.
I find being able to interrupt every 6 sec instead of 8 sec to be a significant difference in locking down healers and casters.
You convinced me. I am lvl 31 and respecced today grabbing the RB so I can get used to that dynamic, and I put the rest of my points into the shield tech tree. Will be leveling with this spec doing PVP mostly. Will keep coming back here for more info.
36 now and I have just been wrecking shop in warzones topping the charts almost every game averaging 8 medals.
Been 50 for a couple weeks now and compared this spec with the all out DPS and the Parakeet. I found my survivability in Iron Fist far outweighed the increased damage from the DPS spec, and the Parakeet spec did not seem to have additional damage at all and the loss of utility was frustrating.
Only downside is that in 4 piece centurion, and a few champ pieces, my dps does not seem to be enough to really hurt a lot of people. I guess this will improve when I get more champion gear? However, I can be really annoying… lol
Should I got for full champ mainsets / offsets or grab the champ gun first?
Celebrated my first 50 today by spending on the respec and correcting the missteps to bring my Vanguard into fuller alignment with this build. Opted for the second point into Shield Cycler instead of the Smoke Grenade.
Taugrim: Your time and effort is so greatly appreciated, along with your professional and dignified presentation in both your posts and videos. You’re a gentleman amongst apes.
(tips helm)
Yea that’s fine.
Thanks
Maybe I missed it somewhere but what gear pieces are you using outside of the combat tech 4 piece. Rest combat tech or super commando.. eliminator?
Supercommando only for offhand.
Rest of the pieces are Combat Tech, Eliminator, and in some cases Combat Medic for the stats. Just stick with the stats I recommend in my Powertech / Vanguard Guide:
http://taugrim.com/2012/01/04/guide-to-bounty-hunter-powertech-trooper-vanguard-mechanics-and-pvp/#stats
Alternatively you can go for the 4-pc Supercommando set bonus but replace the mods with DPS ones.
Just hit level 40 and have been pvping using this build. It’s amazing. I don’t pump out a whole lot of damage but I’m tough to take down. Grapple and storm are a must in huttball. Solid build will use it straight to 50 and beyond. Thanks for your videos. Maybe we will see you on the battlefield on Ajunta Pall.
Hi Taugrim,
I have an off topic question for you. What are your thoughts about an iron fist like Jedi guardian spec??
Any idea how this spec would work in Karragga’s Palace as an off tank for normal mode?
Given that IF works fine for HM Flashpoints, it would probably be fine for OT for normal KP.
When you are tanking HMs, what gear are you using? Do you gave a PVE set?
whats your basic pvp skill rotation?
you didnt comment much on gut, is it worth it?