what is the difference between the 3 tank classes.

[marke34]

I am planning on making tanks and healers on the server in order to help out the server since there are so few tanks and healers in this game. I already know the difference between the healers when I looked it up on their forums, but I do not know the difference between the tanking classes in this game and I cannot post on the regular forums since I am not a subscriber. So what is the differences between the tank classes? From what I gathered, the guardian/juggernaut has the best and most defensive cooldowns but the lowest aggro generation and mitigation out of the 3 classes by around 5%, the shadow/assassin has the best AOE ccs in the game, but they have to rely on their defensive cooldowns to sruvive and have the lowest survivability, and the vanguard/powertech has the best mitigation by a small margin, have the easiest time generating aggro, but the hardest time maintaining aggro and have the worst defensive cooldowns out of the 3 tanks.

[WarpedAcorn]

Well, you've pretty much hit the nail on the head from what I understand. However, the exception is that they have an extremely hard time balancing Assassin Tanks. Due to their Light Armor, they rely on Dark Charge's Armor boost (which is a percentage). Unfortunately, they seem to go back and forth on this and Assassins go from being totally CD reliant to unkillable Juggerna-errr guys. Last I heard (which admittedly has been awhile) was that Assassins were solid and were the preferred Tanks in big boy raids...of course its been awhile since I fired up SWTOR, so take it with a grain of salt.

[marke34]

Thanks for the quick reply. I am going to stick with my juggernaut tank since the assassins will eventually get the nerf bat, and will eventually be the worst tanks just like the other classes(the trend where they become extremely powerful for a certain amount of time becoming FOTM and then they will get the nerf bat and will become the worst class.) For that reason, I have decided to play the tank I enjoy the most which is the juggernaut tank though I might want to try out the powertech tank. Now if you excuse me, I got to craft some orange armor and augments using synthweaving, reskill and apply some armorings and mods to my orange gear using cybertech while getting the enhancements from comm vendors(the tanks need as much armoring and augments as they can get for armor rating.) Bye!

[Gelda82]

I felt like Powertech was a mix of Wrath/Cata era paladin tanking with a DKs death grip and a warrior charge. If those WoW comparisons mean anything to you.

[Lovestar]

Outside NiM ops the 3 tanks aren't different enough to matter balance-wise, if you're dying you're either:

• Gearing wrong
• Playing wrong
• Relying on bad group members (poor healing or DPS disobeying mechanics, not managing Threat, etc)

Not picking the wrong Tank class.

It just comes down to what tools and mechanics you feel more comfortable with:

• Juggernaut: More work to establish and hold aggro, very few ranged abilities, tons of defensive CDs to cycle through, simple cooldown-based rotation, can Charge, Push, and Charge to Ally (Intercept)
• Assassin: Medium work to establish and hold aggro, moderate ability range, moderate defensive CDs, relatively complex resource/buff/proc-based rotation, can Sprint, Push, and Pull, can Stealth, can CC
• Powertech: Easy to establish and hold aggro, many ranged abilities, fewer defensive CDs, relatively simple resource/buff/proc-based rotation, can Charge and Pull

They can all do their job completely fine once you get used to playing the spec. Sins are less popular because they require you to keep track of a lot more details in order to perform properly. Juggs are very popular because they're A-B-C-1-2-3 — if it lights up, press it. PTs are somewhat of a middle-ground between the two.