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SWTOR Tanking: This is a general guide to tanking in SWTOR. It will go over tools, UI essentials, and some common strategies used in fights. It is not a complete guide, but will help a newcomer to learning some of the role specific goals when going through Operations (Raids). This guide will not be going over class specific abilities but include abilities that all tanks share in common. The role of tanking is an open role that requires practice and experience to become good at. "Good" being a relative term to the survival of a group during any encounter during any fight. It is the use of abilities to do ALL of the following: 1) Keep the enemy focused on you or your fellow tanks. 2) Soak up as much damage that would be inflicted on you or your party while still surviving. 3) Positioning the enemy so that the rest of your team can perform their role. 4) Prevent fellow party members from taking unnecessary damage during the encounter. The primary abilities that are used by tanks can be classified the following ways: 1) Taunts: Immediately focuses the enemy to you. a. you have a single target taunt and a group taunt. You need to know the difference and effective range. b. Single target taunts have a lower cool down than group taunts. Think ahead of when you will need them. c. Both taunts will last 6 seconds, then go to the next highest person on the threat table. d. You or your co-tank need to be that next person on the threat table. 2) Defensive (off global cooldown) abilities - Damage mitigation abilities with high cool down periods. a. Depending on your class, you need to know what they are, and how best they are used. b. You need to communicate to your team if they are all used up. Healers will appriciate this. c. You need experience with the fight to know how big of a hit is coming. Practice and research. 3) Interupts - interupts the current casted ability a. These are used on casted abilities that would inflict you or your party damage. b. They only prevent the ability from being used for 4 seconds. Pick the ability and time during the cast wisely. c. Research the fights in advance or ask which abilities should be interupted if unknown. d. Some fights require more than the tank to interupt. Assign an interupt order or a system to get all the interupted abilities covered. 4) Threat generation - Main class abilities. All of them damage, some build threat. a. During the encounter, you need to be constantly building threat. Know your abilites. b. Read the tool tips. They will advise you which abilities generate threat. c. Do not become focused on damage. Damage is a bi-product of you performing your role. d. Guard the biggest threat generating team member. I. Malee will out generate ranged threat. But not always. II. May or may not be a healer. III. You can delay guarding someone until you see who is on top of the threat table. IV. With experience and knowledge of your party, you can swap guards to different people throughout a fight to assist in threat control. Tanking Sub-groups: Main Tank - Person that will be on the priority target (i.e. boss) Off Tank - Person that will be on the secondary targets(s) (i.e. adds) Fake Tank - Not really a tank. DPS on one of the classes that have a taunt. *Note*: Fake tanks are used as cannon fodder for when the sole tank in a fight dies and needs time to resuscitate. Common Strategies: Open communication: This is not to be understated at any point. The primary chatter that goes on in the group during the encounters are from either the tanks or the healers. You need to be able to communicate what you are seeing, how you are responding, and general status checks for the fight itself (Phase changes, damage percentage, etc). If the tanks are not able to communicate properly with the team, then any strategy will end up falling apart, people will take more damage than necessary, and eventually the group will end up wiping. No matter what you read or see online, tanks are not the defacto leader of the team. The team is. You job is to keep them alive. You will need words to do it. Sub-Role Swapping: The group as a whole is a team. That makes the tanks a team of a team. Add management for the pre-boss encounters will take up most of the time during the instance. In order to keep efficiency in clearing the adds, tanks often swap sub-roles between mobs (mental adjustment). The Main-Tank, Off-Tank sub roles are not something that is locked down. Since group taunts have a higher cooldown, it is the interest of the tanks to take turns when pulling adds. Also this will allow the "Off-tank" to mop up any other adds that manage to change focus. All that is required do do this is open communication. See above. Taunt Swaps: In configurations where there are two tanks and the boss in a fight applies debuffs that stack (increases damage with each iteration), tanks will need to taunt swap the boss between them. This is done so that the debuff has time to drop off the victim. Normally debuff stacks reach a critical point where it is unsustainable by the healers. That is the point where the swap needs to occur. There are general rules for fights on how many stacks a tank can take, however, it is dependent on the group makeup as to whether the swap needs to occur sooner. The remaining constant is the time that it will take for the debuff to wear off. If the swap occurs before the debuff wears off the other tank, it will continue at the stack level where it left off (as unsustainable by the healers). Additionally, taunt swaps are used for positioning, add management, and general assistance by the other tank. Look for opportunities where it would make the fight easier, and not risk survival of the team. Then communicate it. Common UI Adjustments that will need to be enabled: Focus Target Focus Target/Main Target swap keybindings Target of Target Enlarge self debuffs 3rd Party Tool: StarParse StarParse is a tool that analyzes the combat logs in real time and displays it in an overlay viewable from the game itself. This tool will allow you to see the threat tables for everyone on the team. It is vital for aggro management and knowing who to guard and post fight analysis to see where improvements can be made. With any tool, it should not be the sole basis for a decision. It is just an accountable factor. Edit (2/5/21) - Still holds merit. Doesn't need changing. - Rashin