SWTOR - Guardian Tank PvE (1.5)

Hello defenders of the Republic, let me introduce myself: Elsinnia Katarn, tank guard on the Battle Meditation server. I told myself that putting together this little guide could help many of us guardians who work to protect others. Hopefully this guide can also help the Sith Ravagers if they go to the trouble of changing the names of powers. Obviously, the tank specialty being mostly played in PvE (and rather useless in pvp) I will not focus on this first aspect.

Arbre the talent

33/3/5

Since most of the operations bosses are single-player enemies, the Guardian Tank is perfectly suited, having a better single-target threat overall than the Jedi Shadow, which is more effective in multi-target. In short, I'm going to explain how each point in the talent tree is interesting (or not!).

Defense Tree

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• Momentum: When you chose the Guardian class, you obtained an outfit called Blade Pivot which grants you 100% Melee and Ranged Defense for 2 seconds and Blade Storm still costs 4 Focus. It's handy to have this buff allowing you to use it for free right from the start of the fight and allowing healers to get into position while you're not taking damage.
• Dust Storm: Reduces the accuracy of all targets affected by your Force Sweep and Cyclone Slash by 5% which, however, is worth taking.
• Victorious Flood: very interesting because the problem with the Guardian Tank is that it can quickly find itself lacking in concentration.

• Solidified Force: Icy Force is useless in PvE so don't put any points in it.
• Startle: you have to take this power because it is important in the tank cycle: the less concentration it costs, the better you are.
• Defensive posture: you are obviously a tank so increasing your ranged and melee defenses is important.

• Pacification: Force Sweep, Extreme Strike, and Cyclone Slash are major strengths of the tanking cycle, increasing your damage helps prevent aggro losses.
• Cleansing Sweep: The armor reductions on bosses are nice because the more damage you inflict, the more you will increase your animosity. Force Sweep being important in the tank cycle, it kills two birds with one stone.
• Protective Call: this is one of the spells to use when you are in bad shape because 40% less damage for 12 seconds is good.
• Blade Barricade: Riposte is a rather useful power to the tank because it increases your melee and ranged defense by 3% for 12 seconds: interesting.

• Stasis Mastery: particularly interesting because it allows you to inflict the normal damage of Force Stasis and to benefit from the points of concentration it gives while continuing to strike and thus increase your animosity.
• Courage: this improvement is really very, very practical when you have the 3 charges on either, to launch your blade storm so that it only costs 1 point of concentration (instead of 4).
• Blade Barrier: Each Blade Storm you cast will give you a shield that absorbs moderate damage before disappearing. You will see that in PvE it can seem to be useless because the shield explodes at the slightest attack but I assure you, it can save your life. In addition, thanks to the points put in Startle in the first line, it will cost you nothing at the start of the fight and on certain bosses.

• Command: Force Push is not useful in PvE since bosses are immune and therefore cannot be knocked back. Don't waste points.
• Extreme Strike: Essential tanking spell because it greatly increases your animosity.
• Shield Specialization: You're a tank, so increasing your chance to trigger a shield is the best way to survive.

• Hurricane gusts: very very important to avoid lack of concentration!
• Inner Peace: Aplomb is a powerful spell that increases your health by 30% for 10 seconds, it is a useful defensive spell when you are in danger, increasing it by 5 seconds is a good way increase your survival during dangerous times.

• Protective Slit: For me the question always arises and I am debating with another tank to know if it is really useful in PvE HL or not. For now, I advise you to take it and see later if you keep it or not because it costs a lot of focus points.

 

Vigilance Tree

• Unique Saber Mastery: In Soresu form, you increase your animosity and defense. To take.
• Instability: useless in PvE.
• Improved Fatal Strike: Knowing that your Force Sweep already inflicts 4 armor reductions and your Lethal Strike has base armor reduction, there's no point wasting points on it.

 

Concentration Tree

• Expert Focus: Expert hitting is quite powerful and allows you to keep typing when you're out of focus. Thus increasing its damage and its cooldown is interesting.
• Insight: Increases Force critical strike damage by 2% (only put 1 point in this skill). Can be useful for increasing the damage of your force sweep and any kinetic damage you can deal.
• Reinforced Winds: Increases the damage of Force Sweep and decreases its cooldown, this spell is essential as a tank.

 

Tanking cycle

Overall, the guardian tank does not have a cycle, just priorities that it must absolutely put to work not to lose the aggro of the bosses. I'm not talking about mob packs between bosses because you are a tank guard. Other than your Force Sweep, Cyclone Slash, and Defiant Appeal, there's not much you can do so don't worry too much about these packs. The hardest part, during combat, will be to have concentration because tank spells are expensive and you do not gain much during the fight.

Entry cycle : Saber Throw, Force Leap, Taunt, Protective Slash (if you've dotted it), Extreme Strike Force Sweep, Blade Storm (before your free Blade Storm upgrade goes) then Extreme Strike. Remember to use your Fatal Strike or Force Stasis if you run out of focus instead of your Strike. Then it is a question of making play the priorities while taking care of the debuffs on the boss even if there should not be too many problems if you follow my advice:

• Priority n ° 1 : use Riposte as soon as you can, it's extremely important!
• Priority n ° 2 : Protective Slash, Extreme Strike, Force Sweep (inflicting Precision Debuff on all affected targets).
• Priority n ° 3 : Blade Storm if you have all 3 Courage upgrades.
• Priority n ° 4 : When none of your spells are available and you have your concentration not knowing what to do, use your Cyclone Slash. When you have less than 6 focus points, use your Focus in battle and then continue with Cyclone Slash as they increase your animosity much better than any other basic power. In addition, this power decreases the cooldown of Combat Focus by 3 seconds per hit so you can use it again more quickly. This spell has a third use: it also inflicts the precision debuff on all people affected by this spell. Prohibition to use the Lunge which is useless: your job is to keep aggro, not to do damage.
• Priority n ° 5 : Use Expert Strike when you have nothing else to do before doing Strikes (as you gain focus by getting hit after 3 seconds, you are likely to have enough focus to cast a new spell mentioned above otherwise use your Strike or Fatal Strike to gain some).

Level defense power, the 4 piece set bonus for high level equipment is interesting because your Saber Return absorbs 70% damage for 12 seconds. Then an endurance stimul can increase your life points, a dopant can increase your armor index. Then you have the classic survival spells like Plumb and Protective Call.

Guardian tank equipment

Goalkeeper gear is very difficult to optimize because, like all classes in the game, you have to make changes in order to get what is right. I'm going to tell you about the milestones here that will allow you to take much less damage while generating a good amount of animosity.

The priority for the Tank Guardian is to increase his shield proc chance to 50% and shield absorption to 50%. You have to try to assemble both at the same time. Then you must reach the 27% chance of defense (you must have 30% chance of defense but riposte gives 3% free as soon as you use it). You can obviously further increase all these statistics allowing you, for example, to reach nearly 55% in shield and absorption.

I just want to warn you that Stamina - Stamina increases are definitely not of interest to you. Seek to increase your defense capabilities with Shield Index - Potency / Absorption Index - Potency / Defense Index - Potency upgrades.

 

Now let's talk about relics The relic that is very important to start with is the shield-boosting Dread Guard relic, the best to date. It allows to obtain 455 absorption points every 6 seconds which is not negligible. Second, you can opt for the M7-Y3 matrix cube or the Dread Guard relic which gives 215 points in absorption and shield for 20 seconds.

 

If you ever need more advice or find that I forgot some parts, please ask me in-game if you are on my server or right here!

Elsinnia Katarn
Guardian Tank - Battle Meditation