True Confessions of a Tier 2 Rogue Tank
I've been tanking Experts for a good while now as a Riftstalker and I wanted to put my thoughts and concerns about Riftstalker tanks in general, based on my experience and feedback I get from my healers and other Riftstalkers.
Issues
Rogue tanks lack avoidance
In my excellent Tier1/2 tanking set, with the standard tanking spec, my combined dodge/parry sits around 11-12%. This means we get hit by the vast majority of attacks, and since Rogues can't block we bear the brunt of those attacks.
It's possible to boost our avoidance by dipping into Bladedancer, but at the significant cost of reduced mitigation and endurance because of the loss of points in Improved Guardian Phase, Improved Rift Barrier and the Bard and/or Ranger mitigation/HP talents.
Even a max avoidance build only gives Rogues 30-35% combined avoidance in Tier 2 gear (with Improved False Blade active), at the cost of a whopping 22% of our endurance and 9.5% combined mitigation compared to the standard tanking spec.
Rogue tanks lack itemization
This is something that will probably be addressed, but is worth mentioning just the same. It's very hard to find any tanking leather outside of the Skirmisher/Auxilla sets. For accessories, trinkets, and essences, many of these have the +block stat which is actually useless for Rogues. The high +endurance items also tend to have copious amounts of Str, while Rogue tanks want Dex as a secondary stat.
Rogue threat does not scale
This issue does not become apparent until Tier 2, where you start running with DPS that is heavily geared. In early experts, Rogue threat is fine. No one will ever pull aggro off you. However, Rogues do very little damage compared to other tanks. I usually sit around 100 DPS and might get near 200 DPS on AOE pulls. Cleric and Warrior tanks tend to do more than double that amount of DPS. While tanks are not there to do damage, this means that our threat does not scale well.
The bottom line is that Rogues do about the same amount of threat in full Tier 2 as we do in level 48 blues, while DPS is constantly increasing with gear. So far, I've never had issues with threat in single target fights, but in AOE fights, its already at the tipping point for aggro loss to DPS in Tier 2 gear. In Tier 3 it will almost certainly be too much. Yes, in small AOE pulls, we can compensate by tabbing to each target, but with 5+ mobs this gets to be too much for tab targeting to work. Yes, the DPS could just back off, however with a war/cler tank, they don't have to, which will make Rogue tanks a poor choice in instances in the foreseeable future.
Rogues take too much damage from multiple mobs
Rogues raw mitigation is high enough that in single target fights, we can be healed despite having low avoidance. Rogues mitigate about 45% of attacks from armor, 12-18% from Phantom Blow, Exceptional Resilience and Bolster and 35% from max Improved Rift Guard. Since these stack multiplicatively, this gives us a raw mitigation of about 73%, which is a bit higher than other tanks. However, since we have no shield and low avoidance, this mitigation quickly becomes ineffective in multi-mob situations.
When many mobs are attacking, avoidance begins to act like mitigation. Because of the sheer number of attacks coming in, the law of large numbers states that a 1% increase in dodge or parry becomes just like 1% damage reduction. Blocking further reduces this damage by large amounts and abilities that heal when blocking become incredibly powerful under these circumstances, offsetting large amounts of damage.
Because Rogues have low avoidance and no block (and no abilities which heal us on dodge/block), our damage received quickly becomes far greater than that of other tanks in multiple mob/AOE fights. Basically, Rogues are very tough to heal on trash and even more so on bosses with adds that must also be tanked.
The rogue talent which grants a heal based on remaining combo points at mob death is ineffective in these situations, because damage is highest and death is riskiest at the start of the pull when all mobs are at 100%. While this talent is useful in certain situations (like the final boss of FC), it is not useful in the majority of AOE pulls, where mobs die at relatively similar rates.
Suggestions
Until recently, the Boosted Recovery talent made up for these differences by allowing healers to compensate for the additional damage rogues receive through additional healing. Rogues in turn stacked hit points. This provided a balance: Rogues would take more damage, but they would have more hit points, and receive additional healing.
The problem with the Boosted Recovery talent (and the reason for its subsequent nerf) was its very accessible location in the Riftstalker tree for Rogues to combine it with other specs, especially in PvP. I have some suggestions for improving Boosted Recovery to return it to the 30% healing received state, but making it inaccessible and/or ineffective for Rogues trying to abuse it for non-tanking purposes. All of these suggestions assume Boosted Recovery will be returned to its 30% state.Improving Boosted Recovery is not the only thing that could be done to improve Rogue tanking, but it is the simplest. Rogues could also benefit greatly from a talent in Riftstalker to increase parry and another to provide a damage mitigation or avoidance benefit after a parry. Because Rogues are the only class that uses two weapons while tanking, it is sensible that they should parry more often than other tanks, and benefit from those parries.
- Move Boosted Recovery deeper into the Rift Stalker tree
This could be placed at the 20+ tier without hurting our tanking ability. However, this would make it prohibitive for other souls (none of which are tanking focused) to use as a subspec. Unlike Warriors, Rogues only have one tanking soul. Rogues also tank differently, gear differently, and face different issues when tanking. The talents don't need to be exact clones of each other.- Make Boosted Recovery only work on healing from others
If Boosted Recovery doesn't work on self heals, it will reduce its power as a subspec, while retaining its power as a tanking talent, where 99% of healing comes from other players.- Make Boosted Recovery only work in Guardian Phase
If the Rogue must be in Guardian Phase to gain the benefits of boosted recovery, he won't have any use for it except in a tanking role.
I don't see any other method for improving Rogue tanking other than boosting avoidance or boosting healing received. Further increasing our mitigation could become problematic with certain boss mechanics and Rogues already have the highest raw mitigation.
To improve Rogue threat, it makes sense to improve the damage scaling of Planar Strike, Phantom Blow, Rift Disturbance and Shadow Blitz. Rogues do the least damage of the tanks, so improving the damage on our threat abilities would be helpful in both threat generation and in tanking parity.
Thanks for reading. I know its a book but Rogue tanks really need another look if we're to be a viable option in the long term. Until then, I'll continue to spam pots on trash and hope for good healers.
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Originally Posted by Schnorplepiffle 
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