SWTOR Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide

SWTOR Jedi Shadow PvP Tanking Guide by Powerr

Introduction

Jedi Shadows tanking spec has been recently upgraded by BioWare into being a full decked out beast. We now have an AOE snare that does nice damage on an 8 second cooldown and stacks an 5% damage debuff on all targets. This ability is also great because it does not put resolve on your target.

Commentary Walkthrough
Latest Tanking Video w/ commentary
Kinetic Spec Walkthrough

Video Guides w/ commentary
Video of each class talking specifics about their specs, rotations, and need to know cooldowns.
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=353901

Pre-Requisites for Maximum Burst

Use Warzone Expertise pot over the Power Adrenal because it will both do more damage than the power adrenal would do, and it also benefits you with 15% more defense from the added expertise.

–Overcharge Consumable(15% Expertise bonus for 25 seconds.)
–Power Relic
–Power Adrenal
–Force Potency
–Battle Readiness
-if your character like mine hits Diminishing Returns on your Surge, swap your relic to Power.

Note that.. popping a warzone expertise pot while you have a red damage buff will WASTE your expertise pot and result in a 3 minute wasted cooldown. (It refreshes the red buff not technically waste).

What I did was put it on a separate q-bind than my other pre-requisites.

Tanking Damage rotation

The rotation in the tanking stance goes as follows:

(Pre-pop Kinetic Ward, you can use it in stealth along with any buffs)
-Open with Spinning Kick (uses 1 bar of resolve on target)
-Double strike until you get Particle Acceleration procced
-Pop Requisites listed above
–Project
–Slow Time
-Should have some stacks of Harnessed Shadows
-Telekinesis Throw (should be in time to get your last stack of potency used up)
-Repeat rotation, or if you like shadow strike, be my guest
-Execute!

**note that slow time should be used off the gcd, but! is much like force breach in the sense that you need to use it directly after project for maximum burst.

Abilities off the GCD

-Kinetic Ward
-Taunt
-AOE Taunt
-Interrupt
-Sap (Mind Maze)

Team Play

Remember that you can be doing multiple things at once in this spec. I normally peel while keeping my enemies taunted, debuffed, and snared.

With the new re-vamp on Guard, it makes it much easier to quickswap guard to focus fired targets. Take advantage of that, don’t be the tank that is predictable. There is nothing more annoying than running around with a tank train and every target you attack is guarded as soon as you get on it. If the other team is not assisting, pick their best dps player, and detaunt him the entire game and keep slow time up. Keep snares up on the entire team if possible. Lastly, clear off your healer!!! You need him/her.

The most important things you need to do as a tank is peel off your healer, suppress their top dpsers, and assist burst when needed.

If your team is all dead and you are last alive, use it to your advantage, vanish and pop cooldowns to hold your point for as long as you can via sap, slow time, survivability.

Video Demonstration
Tank Vid w/ Commentary[watch in HD]

Ideal Gear

I’ve done some digging and testing for group play and I’ve found it to be quite difficult to judge what the best template is for your shadow. I’ve been a firm believer that higher dps>more wins in warzones. Reason being, you wipe them fast enough, you get the point no questions asked. On top of that the Jedi Shadow really excels as a DPS character. We are the higher DPS of the tanks, while being a bit more squishy. We do however not have great sustainable AOE dps like say the vanguard/powertech.

What I have found to be best is to use mostly stalker gear with a 2 piece set bonus survivor set for the decreased cooldown on Spinning Kick.

This however depends on who you are playing with. If your team has lots of stuns and interrupts then you can sacrifice that survivor gear for more damage. The more stalker gear, the significant increase in damage you will receive. As most of our force attacks are not affected by tanks defense, you will truly see some nice numbers in tank spec.

I would however change this up if you plan to solo in WZs, as having the extra survivability without a reliable healer can truly keep you in the game and more successful.

My best advice (it’s not absolute) would be to play your first life in what you think would work best. When you die quickly make adjustments during the match.

Ask yourself, could I have killed that person if I had more damage?
Ask yourself, does my team have lots of DPS?
Ask yourself, is my team heal heavy?
Ask yourself, do we need to better protect the objectives?
Ask yourself, are players getting off too many casts I could have interrupted?

These are things I think about as I play and adjust accordingly. People are always asking me what spec I am playing/gear using because I am CONSTANTLY changing it up situationally.

Glory says, “The best defense is a good offense”. and it generally doesn’t let me down too often.