Shield Specialist Vanguard

Increased drop rate from Dxun Nature of Progress operation. Not available from Tech Frag vendor.

(2) +2% Endurance

(4) Reactive Shield's duration is increased by 5 seconds.

(6) Activating Power Yield grants a major absorb shield for 3 seconds.

(note the graphic used is from standard Mek'sha armor, as I do not have the Emergency Power chest piece, but it looks similar)

Analysis:

Reactive Shield is the discipline’s best overall defensive cooldown. With a 15s duration and 120s cooldown it provides +25% damage resistance (DR). Its buff is actually stronger than the raw amount once you consider the effects of other mitigation statistics.

(Note this is essentially copied from the Kinetic Combat Shadow commentary on Battle Readiness, which provides a similar +25% DR buff.) So how effective is Reactive Shield in terms of its net impact to reduce the damage taken in combat. If we assume a tank is taking consistent damage of 20,000 melee/ranged damage per second with a 40% defense chance, 50% damage resistance from armor/buffs, 55% shield chance and 55% absorb chance prior to cooldowns, then they should be taking around 4,200 DTPS. If that damage is affected by Reactive Shield to buff their damage resistance from 50% up to 75%, then the result becomes 2,100 DTPS which is a 50% decrease in damage taken!!! If we assume the damage is Force/Tech (so not generally able to defend), the numbers go from 7,000 to 3,500 (a similar % change but larger aggregate change).

The duration is normally 15s so increasing it to 20s represents increasing its benefit by 33% and increasing its average uptime from 12.5% to 17%. More importantly, we saw how the cooldown should effectively halve any damage taken so extending that duration significantly makes it a more powerful cooldown for extended durations to give healers more time to recover.

With all that said, the real prize to the set bonus is the 6-piece set bonus. Power Yield is a fairly weak defensive cooldown with its stacking buff to armor but with this set bonus it provides Vanguard with a mechanism to cheese any damage that isn’t a one-shot kill mechanic. Testing has shown the absorb shield will not absorb unlimited damage, but in practice it will fully mitigate any damage that isn’t intended to be a one-shot kill mechanic.

Impact on Rotation:

Make sure to use Power Yield only for big hitting mechanics if any are present, otherwise use as an offensive cooldown. It’s important to remember that Power Yield with this set bonus will not let you cheese one-hit kill mechanics so it is not quite as useful as Blade Blitz or Saber Reflect for Guardian tanks or for Resilience or Deflection for Shadow tanks. However, your absorb shield applies to many more regular types of damage (i.e., covers AoEs unlike Saber Reflect and applies to melee/ranged damage unlike Resilience and Force/Tech damage unlike Deflection).

Increased drop rate from conquest.

(2) +2% Mastery

(4) Battle Focus increases damage done by 20% while Ion Cells is being utilized and increases damage reduction by 10% while Ion Cells is not being utilized.

(6) Each time you take damage while under Power Yield the cooldown of Battle Focus is reduced by 3 seconds. This effect cannot occur more than once every 3 seconds.

Analysis:

This set bonus sounds like primarily an offensive set bonus for tanks from the first read. The 4-piece set bonus provides a +20% damage buff for tanks, while the 6-piece provides for a cooldown reduction on Battle Focus to have more uptime on that damage buff.

The key to the defensive impact is the Soldier’s Grit passive ability, which provides a +35% defense chance while Battle Focus is active.

Battle Focus has a 2 minute / 120s cooldown before alacrity and lasts for 15s. Power Yield has a one minute / 60s cooldown and lasts for 10s. This means we should get at least one Power Yield and often two in between each use of Battle Focus, or 10-20s of uptime on the 6-piece cooldown reduction benefit. Assuming you are taking damage continuously during Power Yield, this should yield 4 procs of the 6-piece per use of Power Yield of 18s of cooldown reduction. So in total, we would expect 18-36s of reduced cooldown on Battle Focus each time.

If we go with the average of 27s reduced cooldown, we take Battle Focus from 120s cooldown to an average 93s cooldown and a 15s duration. That increases the potential uptime of the 35% defense buff from 12.5% to 16%.

Additionally, that helps provide more overall uptime on cooldowns. Between Battle Focus (+35% defense, 15s duration, 93s average cooldown), Riot Gas (+15% defense, 10s duration, 60s cooldown), Power Yield (+40-200% armor, 10s duration, 60s cooldown) and Reactive Shield (+25% DR, 15s duration, 120s cooldown), the Vanguard tank can provide around 75-80s of uptime on defensive abilities every 120s.

The major downside with this set bonus and why I don’t recommend it relate to the nature of the Battle Focus buff to defense. Defense does not mitigate Force/Tech damage (bypasses defense) or Internal/Elemental damage (bypasses defense and shield). Riot Gas and Power Yield are already really strong cooldowns against white damage but neither provide as strong a benefit to Force/Tech damage (Riot Gas provides no benefit absent the Oil Fire tactical). Finally, Vanguard already has the best baseline average mitigation and so is the best tank already against any damage that can be mitigated by Battle Focus.

Impact on Rotation:

Be proactive in using Power Yield on cooldown as an offensive ability to maximize uptime of Battle Focus, which should be used to mitigate weapon / “white” damage.

Increased drop rate from operations.

(2) +2% Endurance

(4) Shockstrike and Stockstrike's energy is reduced by 4. Energy Blast, Shockstrike and Tactical Surge increase damage dealt by 10% for 15 seconds, this effect cannot occur more than once every 30 seconds.

(6) Activating Battle Focus gives you Ionfall for the duration of Battle Focus. During this time, dealing damage with Ion Wave, Ion Pulse, Tactical Surge, Stockstrike or Shockstrike builds up to 7 stacks of Ionfall. When Battle Focus ends, it detonates dealing elemental damage to all enemies around that scale with Ionfall stacks. After it explodes, your energy-using abilities cost 50% less energy for 20 seconds.

Analysis:

Meteor Brawler is an amazing set bonus for DPS between the 4-piece energy cost reduction and +10% damage buff that should have very uptime and the 6-piece Ionfall damage and follow-on energy cost reduction. However, it provides essentially no benefit whatsoever to mitigation.

Impact on Rotation:

Make sure to use Battle Focus as an offensive cooldown aggressively and make sure you build 7 stacks of Ionfall to maximize its burst damage and then be aggressive with energy to take full advantage of the 4-piece and 6-piece energy cost reductions.

Increased drop rate from flashpoints.

Power Screen now stacks up to 6 times. Activating Power Yield immediately generates 6 Power Screens and finishes the cooldown of Energy Blast.

Analysis:

So this one is a bit complicated, so let’s revisit all the relevant facts before analyzing the impact.

Power Screen is a passive ability and a buff granted by that passive ability. The buff grants +1% shield absorption and is granted either by Ion Cell triggering or by successfully shielding an attack, with a rate limit of generating a Power Screen once per second. Each time you proc this passive ability, the cooldown of Energy Blast is reduced by 1 second. Normally the maximum number of stacks if 3.

Worth noting is that Stockstrike and High Impact Bolt also each generate a stack of Power Screen by triggering Ion Cell. Stockstrike has a base cooldown of 9s before alacrity (and can have its cooldown reset every 7.5s via Static Shield passive with a 50% chance to trigger from shielding/defending an attack), while High Impact Bolt has a 15s cooldown before alacrity.

Energy Blast is the signature ability of the discipline and provides some pretty amazing buffs. It consumes 3 Power Screen stacks (normally it consumes all when the maximum is 3 prior to this tactical), deals moderate damage, regenerates 10 energy, has +25% threat generation, is off-GCD and most importantly provides +25% shield absorption for 6 seconds.

Finally, Power Yield has a 1 minute cooldown and normally provides +40% armor and +2% damage for 10 seconds and can stack up to five times.

So what does all this mean for the benefits of the tactical? Firstly, increasing the maximum number of Power Screen stacks from 3 to 6 means your maximum shield absorption buff goes from +3% to +6%. Energy Blast consumes these stacks so they will not have full uptime but should provide a consistent 1-3% higher average shield absorption most of the time.

Secondly, Power Yield providing a free 6 stacks of Power Screen and resetting the cooldown of Energy Blast means you should get 2 extra uses of this powerful ability every minute. That means higher uptime on the energy regeneration and on the +25% shield absorption buff.

My testing with this tactical suggests that it allows Energy Blast to be used once every 9s or so based on average shield chance and triggering of Ion Cell, while without the tactical it can be used every 12s or so. That may not sound huge but consider the implications. With the +25% absorption buff lasting 6s, using it on average every 9s means you have 75% uptime of a +25% absorption buff instead of 50% uptime normally. That means noticeably less burst damage taken over the course of a fight.

Another neat trick for this tactical is the ability to use Energy Blast as a strategic defensive cooldown via Power Yield. You wait until you have just used Energy Blast then trigger Power Yield. You get 6s of +25% absorption and you already have +6% absorption from the 6 stacks of Power Screen for a total of +31% absorption. This should mean an effective absorption rate of >80%. If you wait to use Energy Blast for 6s then trigger it, you get another 6s for 12s of consecutive >80% absorption for any shielded attacks.

What is the major downside of this tactical? Absorb chance only benefits you if you are successfully shielding attacks, so its effectiveness is reduced for melee/ranged attacks (since you can dodge them, meaning absorb stat was wasted) and is ineffective against internal/elemental damage that bypasses defense and shield chance. In this way, the tier of mitigation stats is DR > Shield > Absorb > Defense so even a noticeable boost to Absorb is not as strong boosts to DR like Oil Fire.

With all that said, in single target situations I think this tactical will be a strong performer unless the damage profile is heavily internal / elemental or if there are lots of enemies (where Oil Fire will provide a very large boost to overall DR).

Impact on Rotation:

Try to use Power Yield right after a use of Energy Blast to avoid capping stacks of Power Screen. If you are taking heavy damage by tanking an enemy at that time, try to delay that bonus use of Energy Blast for 6s to maintain a longer duration on the +25% absorption buff.

Increased drop rate from operations.

Riot Gas makes targets susceptible to Ion Storm. For each enemy affected by Riot Gas hit with Ion Storm, your damage reduction is increased by 2% and the cooldown of Riot Gas is reduced by 1.5 seconds.

Analysis:

So this tactical is the Vanguard AoE mitigation tactical similar to Ancient Tome of Wrath for Shadow and Leviathan’s Hide for Guardian tanks.

I rate this tactical as being in the middle of those two and is nice to have for heavy AoE fights but not amazing enough to use in most encounters.

Riot Gas has a 1 minute cooldown and lasts for 10s. It applies a 15% accuracy debuff to melee/ranged attacks, so it effectively functions as a 15% defense buff. The DR buff applied by Ion Storm to a target affected by Riot Gas lasts for 10s.

Relatively few fights have lots of adds but those that do tend to alternate between just the boss and groups of adds, with the exception of very few fights where adds are nearly continuous (e.g., Hive Queen, Dxun Holding Pens, Dxun Control Center). So let’s consider how this tactical performs in mostly single target and in situations where there are 6 overall targets grouped up.

In single target the performance is predictably bad. Each time you use Riot Gas you can hit Ion Storm and get a +2% DR buff for 10s and reduce the cooldown on Riot Gas by 1.5 seconds from 60 seconds to 58.5 seconds before alacrity. That is quite weak compared to Thermal Screen which provides a nearly permanent +1-3% shield absorption buff and noticeably higher uptime on a +25% shield absorption buff.

Now let’s consider the AoE situations. Each time you use Riot Gas you can hit Ion Storm and get +12% DR for 10s and reduce the cooldown of Riot Gas by 9s. This would mean that you can get +12% DR for every 10s out of 51s, which is fairly high uptime on a really nice DR buff. If you read the commentary above on the Emergency Power set bonus and how the DR buff from Reactive Shield is amplified in terms of the reduction in actual damage taken, this means you should be getting a reduction in actual damage taken of more like 20-25% roughly one-fifth the time.

This makes the tactical a no brainer for any fights with heavy AoE add presence and where the tank takes heavy damage during these phases.

Impact on Rotation:

Make sure to time the use of Riot Gas only during add phases and make sure that it isn’t used right after Ion Storm. The 10s duration of Riot Gas and 15s cooldown on resetting the use of Ion Storm means its possible to miss them if Ion Storm was used shortly before hitting the cooldown.

Increased drop rate from flashpoints.

Transposing a guarded target gives them a large amount of damage reduction for 6 seconds, taunts enemies, and places a benign presence on you. After 6 seconds, you swap back.

Analysis:

This tactical sounds nice as a way to take a never-used ability and make it a sort-of defensive cooldown. In practice, the results are difficult to align in a useful manner and so I do not recommend it as other tacticals provide far more consistently useful benefits.

Impact on Rotation:

If utilizing this tactical one should prioritize using your swap ability right before a heavy incoming burst attack to the tank, ideally when you do not have a good defensive available. The key will be to apply a guard to your fellow tank and swap with them before doing so, and to remember to remove the guard afterwards.