Riftstalker - Rogue Tanks in 1.8

[Muspel]

NOTE: As of patch 1.11 this guide is out-of-date. I'll be writing a new one as soon at some point after Storm Legion comes out. In the meantime, the spec recommendations are still largely correct, although you'll need to adapt them a bit for certain changed talents. The rotations are also basically the same, although Wrath of the Planes has replaced Annihilate as the second finisher. Follow the basic concepts in the theorycraft section and you should be fine.

Most of the current rogue tanking guides are fairly out-of-date and no longer maintained, so I decided to make a new one.


1 The Spec
2 Macros
3 Abilities
3.1 Tips and Tricks
3.2 Defensive Cooldowns
4 Stats and Gearing
4.1 Runes and Consumables
5 Movement
6 Theorycraft
7 Final Words

1 The Spec

When it comes to talents, there are only really two valid choices.

51 RS/8 Rng/7 Bard is the standard choice for 20-man raiding. The idea here is fairly straightforward: with these talents, you get a lot of extra health, which gives you a nice survivability buffer when dealing with hard-hitting bosses.

51 RS/8 Rng/7 BD is a slightly more avoidance-focused spec. If you're focused on tanking 5-man dungeons or most 10-man raids, then this is going to be your go-to build, due to stronger AoE threat. You also get Side Steps from Bladedancer, which is a very powerful defensive cooldown. For certain raid bosses, this can be a better choice.

What about going 17 points into Bladedancer for Turn the Tide?
Turn the Tide is, in general, not worth it. In order to pick it up, you lose 7% endurance from Improved Guardian Phase, 5-10% bonus health from ranger or bard (depending on which you choose to drop), 6% mitigation from Bolster, 3.5% mitigation from Improved Rift Guard, and Scatter the Shadows. You will, on average, take about the same amount of damage, only it will be spikier and therefore less predictable, making it harder for your healers to anticipate how much healing they need to give you. Furthermore, it's never up when you taunt a boss off of the other tank for a swap mechanic, meaning that you take even more damage during a risky healer transition. It's just a bad trade-off all around. The relevant math can be found here, for those who want to see the numbers.

What about going 8 points into Bladedancer for Meditative Trance?
Not worth giving up the point in Bolster. Meditative Trance scales off of your AP, which you don't get much of as a tank. You're looking at incredibly small amounts of healing, and most of it will be wasted on overheals anyways. The skill is designed for solo specs, not tanking.

What about taking a point out of Street Smart for Anthem of Glory? Isn't the armor better than the avoidance?
Yes and no. The armor is absolutely better, but it doesn't stack with the armor buff that Archons provide, so in a 20-man raid, AoG generally goes to waste. If you mostly run 5-mans (or 10-mans without an Archon), then you should spec into it. That being said, if you're mostly doing 5-mans or 10-mans, I would recommend speccing into Bladedancer rather than Bard.

Are there any other useful sub-souls or talents?
Not really. The only other defensive abilities are generally either far too deep in a soul to be worth it (like the Nightblade defensive cooldowns), or compete with other vital talents. Conceivably, future tiers might have bosses where you'd want utility-based skills (for instance, Saboteur's AoE slow would be useful for kiting large packs of enemies for extended periods of time), but there aren't any encounters like that in any raid that's been released so far.

2 Macros

There are only a couple of macros that you need.

#show Planar Strike
suppressmacrofailures
cast Phantom Blow
cast Planar Strike
cast Quick Shot

#show Shadow Assault
suppressmacrofailures
cast Shadow Assault
cast Shadow Blitz
cast Shadow Stalk

That's all you need. If you're comfortable with the rotation, then you can take Phantom Blow out of the first macro and only use it every 20 seconds rather than every 10, since it does slightly less damage than Planar Strike... but honestly, it's such a tiny difference that I wouldn't put it as a priority, particularly if you're just starting out.

I also recommend keeping Shadow Blitz and Shadow Stalk as separate keys for flexibility. On single target fights, you can just use the macro to maintain Planar Vortex, but in other situations (particularly 5-man dungeons), you may want to use Shadow Blitz or Stalk at certain times when the other ones are already off cooldown, which the macro alone can't do.

3 Abilities

Buffs: Planebound Resilience, Predatory Instincts, Guardian Phase, Fanfare of Vigor (only if you have bard in your spec, and this will be overwritten by other buffs in most groups), Combat Pose (only if you have Bladedancer in your spec, and this will be overwritten by other buffs in most groups)

The Riftstalker rotation is fairly simple. You have several buffs and debuffs that need to be maintained. They are, in no particular order: Guarded Steel, Annihilate, Phantom Blow, Planar Vortex, and Rift Disturbance. I strongly recommend using an addon to track them-- I'm a fan of Karuulalert, but other addons can work just as well.

For a single-target pull, you'll open up with Shadow Assault, immediately use Guarded Steel, then begin to mash your combo-point building macro. Weave in additional teleports and Rift Disturbance in order to keep Planar Vortex and the AP/SP debuff active. Annihilate does slightly more damage than Guarded Steel, so if GS is already up and is not about to wear off, use Annihilate at 5 CPs.

For AoE pulls, most of your threat will come from Planar Vortex, so it's even more important that you teleport every 8 seconds. Rift Disturbance also does very high threat, so use it as frequently as possible unless there are going to be more adds incoming that you want it for. Take note that Rift Disturbance and Shadow Blitz both have a limit to the number of targets they can hit, while Planar Vortex does not, so act accordingly when dealing with very large groups of enemies.

3.1 Tips and Tricks

• You have a LOT of mobility, which can give you a lot of flexibility when dealing with certain mechanics. Always look around: if there's somewhere that's better to be, you can be there almost instantly.
• However, be careful not to move TOO much. Every time you make enemies move, it makes it harder for the DPS to attack them, particularly melee DPS. Don't go teleporting around more than necessary, and enemies will die faster. The best tanks are those who move as little as possible, and try to take mobs in predictable directions so they're easy to follow.
• Planar Switch is off the global cooldown, which means that you can use it to generate extra combo points. If you do this too much, then you'll end up energy starved, so keep an eye on where your energy is at.
• Rogues are very good at using line-of-sight to force mobs to move. If you want to move a pack of mobs, try placing your Memory Capture point behind a wall, Blitzing in, then using Flashback to move back behind the wall-- all of the mobs will run right around the corner, stacking up nicely.
• Planar Attraction is great for stacking up spread-up groups, particularly those with caster mobs or archers.
• You probably won't use Planar Reversal much as a tank, but it can be useful right off the pull so that the boss starts off facing away from the group.
• If you're not needed to tank something at the start of a boss fight, you can begin in Stalker Phase, letting you push out a little extra damage until the times comes for you to get your face smashed in. Just don't forget to switch back to Guardian Phase!

3.2 Defensive Cooldowns

Rogues have a lot of defensive cooldowns, but it's important you use them appropriately. Some of them are much better for certain things than others.

Planar Refuge - This is a fairly straightforward ability. It's best used pre-emptively, rather than reactively: that is, if you're already at low health and you're worried that you're going to die, then this is not a great choice. Learn when bosses use certain hard-hitting abilities, and plan your use of this ability accordingly. It's also useful if one of your healers dies: the damage reduction can keep you alive until the healer is resurrected.

Scatter the Shadows - Scatter is definitely one of the most unique cooldowns in the game. It'll let you survive almost anything, and can even prevent certain debuffs from applying while it's active. The trade-off is the very short duration. If a boss does very heavy damage in a very short period of time, this is the cooldown of choice... and on some fights, such as Guurloth, you can use it to cover every such usage.

Defer Death - Defer Death is unusual in that it's very easy for it to be completely wasted. While Scatter and Planar Refuge will always reduce any damage that you take, Defer Death might not proc at all. For this reason, it's most useful as a reactive cooldown-- that is, a panic button when you're about to die. However, on some fights, such as Ituziel, you may want to sync it with particularly nasty hits.

Side Steps - This one is only available if you have the Bladedancer soul, but it's remarkably powerful. First off, it lasts 15 seconds, which is a very long time compared to your other cooldowns. Secondly, 50% extra dodge means that you'll take almost no melee damage for its duration. This is particularly good if you accidentally pull an extra pack of mobs, or if a healer is temporarily unable to heal you for some reason (IE you're out of range, they died, or they have some debuff that's limiting what they can do). Unfortunately, Side Steps doesn't affect unavoidable damage at all, which makes it less effective against many hard-hitting attacks, such as Inquisitor Garau's Obliteration Beam.

Physical Wellness - I actually don't recommend using this as a personal cooldown. The personal health boost isn't bad, but it's not particularly powerful, either, not compared to the benefits that it gives to the raid. Save this for when you expect heavy raid damage, but be sure to pop it 5-7 seconds early: the healers will need to fill people up once it affects them, and there's a small delay between when you use it and when people get the buff, and that delay increases the further away from you that they are. I tend to use this for things like Grug's knockback after a tower phase, or on Garau if an add reaches him and he gets the damage buff, but there are plenty of other situations where it can really help out, such as on Dark Tide.

Shadow Blitz (with HK 4pc bonus) - This set bonus is, ultimately, not very powerful. Most of the time, you'll just continue to use Shadow Blitz to keep Planar Vortex up-- the reduction is small, it only lasts 5 seconds, and it'll be back up in 25 seconds. Together, that means that it's usually not worth trying to time it, except in specific situations where you take predictable damage spikes, such as Sicaron. If you're holding Blitz in reserve for such a situation, you can use other abilities to keep Vortex going, such as Shadow Warp or Flashback (with a capture point at your feet).

When should I use my cooldowns?
As a tank, it's very important that you properly manage your defensive cooldowns. Many bosses have hard-hitting abilities that happen at pre-determined times throughout the encounter, and it's often worthwhile to plan a cooldown rotation ahead of time. For instance, on Inquisitor Garau, my planned CD rotation looks something like this:

1st Beam: Planar Refuge
2nd Beam: Scatter the Shadows
3rd Beam: Call for a Sentinel to give me Healer's Covenant
4th Beam: Planar Refuge (which has recharged)

And so on.

This allows me to hold Defer Death in reserve in case my health gets low at any point, and it ensures that there's something to ease the healers' burden for each beam. Try experimenting with CD rotations on various boss encounters to find what works best for you and your healers.

In a 5-man dungeon, you can generally have a cooldown up for most trash pulls. On particularly large pulls, Planar Refuge is your best bet, but Scatter the Shadows is fantastic if you're dealing with particularly painful dispellable debuffs.

Also, it's worth noting that you'll almost never want to use more than one cooldown at a time. Not only do they interfere with each in certain ways, you never really need more than one at a time. In particularly painful situations, you're generally better off with chaining them-- throwing up a new cooldown when the previous one expires.

4 Stats and Gearing

First off, we'll go over the stats that rogue tanks can get, and the benefits that each one provides.

• Endurance - This stat increases your health. Point for point, it's one of the best stats that there is for surviving burst damage-- that is, making sure that you don't die so fast that your healers can't react.
• Armor - Armor reduces the physical damage that you take.
• Dexterity - Each point of dexterity gives you 1 point of dodge and 1 point of deflect. It also increases your attack power and your physical crit.
• Strength - Each point of strength increases your attack power and your parry.
• Dodge - Each point of dodge will increase your chance to avoid basic melee attacks. It has no effect on magical damage or most special attacks. Some bosses also have certain special effects that apply when they hit you, and dodges can prevent those from stacking up. Caor Ashstone in Iron Tombs is a good example.
• Parry - Parry is identical to dodge, except that it converts into avoidance at a much lower ratio. You cannot parry attacks from enemies that are standing behind you.
• Deflect - Deflect is exactly like a warrior's or cleric's block, except that you do not need a shield equipped. However, you can only deflect attacks while in Guardian Phase. Deflect works similarly to dodge, except that it has a much higher chance to occur per point, it only stops a portion of the damage instead of all of it, and it will work on some attacks that cannot be dodged, such as Sicaron's Moldering Decay. Aside from T1 and T2 set pieces and certain planar essences, you won't find any gear with deflect outside of Infernal Dawn. You cannot deflect attacks from enemies that are standing behind you. Deflect reaches a soft cap at 927 rating, after which its value is sharply diminished.
• Hit - Hit rating reduces the chance for your attacks to miss. In higher tiers of content, you will need more and more hit to ensure that all of your abilities connect with their intended target-- you can see how much you need by mousing over your hit on your character screen.
• Toughness - Toughness reduces the damage multiplier of critical hits made against you. Just like with Hit, you'll need more toughness in higher tiers, and you can check it in the same way. There's no benefit to having extra toughness beyond the cap for the relevant tier, unless you're dealing with a boss who can reduce it, like Murdantix.
• Attack Power - Attack power increases the damage dealt by your attacks. This stat doesn't directly appear on your gear, but you will get some of it from the dexterity/strength on your equipment. AP will also increase the effects of certain other abilities, such as Meditative Trance, but none of them are very relevant to tanking, and the effect is miniscule to begin with.
• Physical Crit - Physical Crit increases the chance that you will score a critical hit with your attacks, dealing extra damage. Like attack power, you won't get this on your tanking gear, but you don't need any extra.
• Resistances - Resistances reduce damage from specific element types (life, death, fire, water, earth, and air). You can get them from planar essences, resistance runes, or vials. They also grant a small chance to completely mitigate attacks of the relevant element.
• Block - Certain planar essences and jewelry will have block on them. This stat does nothing for rogues, so such items are generally not worth using unless there's some other stat on the item that you're in desperate need of (such as elemental resistances).

Here are your priorities, in order:

Get enough hit that you can hold aggro. This is generally just the hit cap for the relevant tier of content.
Get enough toughness for the relevant tier of content.
Get enough endurance and armor so that you don't die to burst damage.
Get enough dodge/parry/deflect so that your healers can keep you up over longer periods of time, ensuring that you don't die to attrition.

Prior to reaching 927 deflect, it's your best stat for overall damage reduction (the last step listed above), followed by dodge and then parry. After 927, deflect and dodge are roughly equal.

How much endurance/avoidance do I need for <boss name here>?
There's no definite answer, other than "enough". How much health you need will depend on what your healers are comfortable with and capable of handling. Talk to them and figure out what they find easiest to deal with. As a general rule of thumb, if you're dying before your healers can react, then you need more endurance. If you're dying gradually while your healers are spamming you, you need more avoidance and deflection.

In most cases, endurance is going to be more important than avoidance. This is covered more in-depth in the Theorycraft section below.

4.1 Runes and Consumables

Helm - Icewatch Bandit's Rune
Shoulders - Blazing Tough Rune
Chest - Blazing Resolute Rune (Incandescent Indomitable Runeshard if you need extra toughness)
Gloves - Radiant Elusive Rune
Belt - Mathosian Tumbler's Rune
Legs - Crafty Dragonslayer's Rune
Boots - Incandescent Adamant Rune (or Blazing Resolute Rune if you're cheap)
Weapons - Blazing Dexterity Runeshard (or Incandescent Precise Runeshard if you need extra hit)
Seal - Blazing Rage Runeshard

For consumables, you'll want Thick Armor Plating on your chest, an endurance vial (or a resistance vial in certain situations), and Lightning Glyph on your weapons. You can also use insoles on your boots, although on many fights it's not necessary because you either don't need to move or can easily teleport around. Ember Steak provides the best possible food buff for tanks, but anything that boosts your endurance or max health will help if you want some food that's cheaper. Elder Tablets will slightly boost your avoidance if you want to use them.

5 Movement

Once you've mastered the basics, it's time to move on to a more complex part of tanking: movement, and how to minimize it.

I see a lot of tanks who ignore this, because it's not necessarily something that you think about unless you've played melee specs while dealing with a jittery tank. The general assumption is that "if I'm holding threat, it doesn't matter where the mobs are going". In some ways, that's true-- but the melee DPS will frequently end up out of range if you move enemies out of range unpredictably, and that will hurt your group a lot. On many DPS-intensive fights, it's important that you move as little as possible, and that you move in predictable directions when you DO move.

For instance, any time that fire spawns under me, I tend to strafe left. I only move right if moving left is bad for some reason (if there's already fire over there, for instance). I try not to move back if possible, because that'll often force the melee back away to avoid the fire I just moved out of. Moving forward can work if the boss doesn't cleave, although it's not optimal because some DPS specs are reliant on backstabs. (Always moving right instead of left would work, too-- the important thing is consistency).

Because I almost always move in the same direction, the melee that I raid with are easily able to predict and follow the boss (while avoiding cleaves, if any), which means that they rarely end up out of range, letting them stay in range. Over longer movement paths, the ranged and healers know the general direction I'll be heading, which lets them easily reposition during instant-cast GCDs, rather than needing to interrupt cast-spells because the boss unpredictably ran out of range.

On other bosses, you'll always be moving to the same places. In those cases, try to announce when you're moving. For instance, on Sicaron, I always say "Moving after this next Decay!" when we're running out of room for contracts, so that everyone knows exactly when to reposition.

For some encounters, things are very unpredictable. A boss like Ituziel might block off your preferred path with a lava wave. Maybe you get Mind Decay and need to run into the ranged stack. When possible, try to communicate where you're going.

Ultimately, though, your main priority is holding threat and staying alive. Don't let the finer points of exact movement detract from either of those jobs. If you die, or wipe the group in order to pick up a small amount of DPS, then it's not worth it.

6 Theorycraft

Now it's time to talk about some of the underlying ideas, particularly those that support the gearing recommendations listed above. If you don't really care about the reasoning behind this, then feel free to skip this part. Personally, I think it's important to know the basic rules, so that you know if and when they should be broken, and how certain patches might affect things.

As a tank, you have three basic jobs.

1. This is the most important part, but also the easiest: you need to be able to get enemies to attack you. If you have no way of doing this, then it doesn't matter how tough you are, because the rest of your group will die. Fortunately, if you're hit capped and you do your rotation properly, then holding threat is trivial.
2. The second priority is to survive the worst-case scenario. This is where a measurement called "effective health" (EH for short) comes into play. It doesn't do the group any good if you avoid 90% of the attacks directed against you, but die any time you get hit twice in a row. Murphy's law is in full effect: think about if you'll die if you get unlucky or things go wrong; you want to be as reliable and as stable as possible. The more burst damage that a boss can deal, the more EH that you'll need.
3. Lastly, you need to avoid/mitigate/absorb/stop enough damage so that your healers can keep you up over longer periods of time. If your healers are running out of mana, or your health bar is gradually emptying over extended periods of time and they can't quite keep up, then you need to focus on this part.

If you're able to meet those three priorities with ease, then you can consider focusing on other things that may help your group, such as wearing a small amount of DPS gear to help with a rough enrage timer... but to be honest, you're generally better off just dropping a healer from your group in that situation.

In Rift, step 2 is generally the main challenge that you'll face in raids (particularly 20-man progression), because bosses can deal extremely large amounts of damage very quickly-- much too quickly for your healers to react. Stacking endurance is a huge help in this respect. Certain trinkets can also offer EH boosts, such as the passive endurance bonus from the Whitefall Steppes trinket, or the absorption shield procs from Wind's Breath or Way of Water.

In 5-man dungeons, steps 1 and 3 are generally a bigger concern. You'll often encounter players who pull groups of mobs by accident (or on purpose), and many healers are gearing up or otherwise unable to put out large amounts of healing. If you're concerned about your performance, you can adjust your spec/gear accordingly, adding more AoE-based or avoidance-based talents to help. However, 5-mans aren't very tightly tuned, and a raid-focused spec is more than enough to handle anything they throw at you if you don't want to keep a separate role just for smaller groups.

7 Final Words

One thing that a lot of tanks overlook is that their survivability often rests in the hands of their healers. They're the ones who really get a firsthand look at exactly what you have trouble with and what's not a problem, which means that they're the ones that you should talk to if you're considering a change. Healers often have different things that they're good at, and they may want you to try something different so that you can work together more efficiently. Listen to them.

If anyone has any questions, if I didn't cover something in enough detail, or if there's something else that you think belongs in this guide, please let me know.

[Hulmaster]

Pretty nice run down of the guide, thank you for doing it.

[The Flaming]

hey,

i have a question regarding the talent "street smart":

is it worth it to put 2 points in this over 1 point in anthem of glory?

regards,
flaming

[Rozel]

Lots of info

Is there any tricks for speed runs besides how you go through the expert?
I run a 51/7/8 rs/bd/rng with more dps items than tanking ones ( literally just puts on 100 toughness with pvp gear and says I'm good to go) and most of the time I have no problems with a reliable healer.
I'm not sure how chloros heal, so I tend to go a bit slower with them as healers.

Like, when to pop sidesteps or when to defer def and the like.

[D4rkBlad3r]

So what I'm telling are my experiences, you might think in a diffrent way.

1st: The Spec, 41/17/8 is also after 1.8 you're strongest mitigation build, if TtT is up.. So for Experts or Trash or Bosses with adds it's defenitly the best spec there, and also for pure ST Bosses I'd recommend this Build (2 kicks, with Sidesteps a very nice CD and you're at at deflect Cap..) IMO it's defenitly worth specing this 17 points in the BD soul. Yeah you loose some HP but at all I'm nearly at 19k HP selfbuffed, so who cares about 1-2k HP more, if it's not just progression orientated.

2nd: I'd not recommend macroing Quick Shot, as a Tank you'll have to Tab sometimes and as Tab works in Rift, earlier or later you'll pull something you don't want to.

And I won't recommend macroing you're ports. Maybe it's just a personal preferance, but it doesn't seem usefull to me.

And Statwise.. Sadly we can just buy the stuff for plaques, until we hit ID, 'cause there isn't any Deflect on dropped items : ( For the right side I'd just look for a healthy mix of Dex and End... Dex is very, very important..

But at all, nice writeup ; )

Greets,
Come@Akala

[Gynxz]

So what I'm telling are my experiences, you might think in a diffrent way.

1st: The Spec, 41/17/8 is also after 1.8 you're strongest mitigation build, if TtT is up.. So for Experts or Trash or Bosses with adds it's defenitly the best spec there, and also for pure ST Bosses I'd recommend this Build (2 kicks, with Sidesteps a very nice CD and you're at at deflect Cap..) IMO it's defenitly worth specing this 17 points in the BD soul. Yeah you loose some HP but at all I'm nearly at 19k HP selfbuffed, so who cares about 1-2k HP more, if it's not just progression orientated.

2nd: I'd not recommend macroing Quick Shot, as a Tank you'll have to Tab sometimes and as Tab works in Rift, earlier or later you'll pull something you don't want to.

I don't think you should recommend a spec based on over gearing the content (experts with 19k health and deflect cap). At that point you can even use a farm spec to tank experts same as clerics can go icar for heals.

Also, QS is great for pulling or building cp from ranged. Your argument against it also recomends never to use ports since you can tab and port to the wrong target. I understand Tab targeting in this game sucks and, because of that, I have QS in my macro AND never use Tab targeting :P

[Muspel]

hey,

i have a question regarding the talent "street smart":

is it worth it to put 2 points in this over 1 point in anthem of glory?

regards,
flaming

In a raid, the armor buff will generally be provided by someone else, which means Anthem of Glory is a wasted talent point. If you're exclusively running 5-mans, then go ahead and take it, because the armor is far more valuable than the avoidance.

Lots of info

Is there any tricks for speed runs besides how you go through the expert?
I run a 51/7/8 rs/bd/rng with more dps items than tanking ones ( literally just puts on 100 toughness with pvp gear and says I'm good to go) and most of the time I have no problems with a reliable healer.
I'm not sure how chloros heal, so I tend to go a bit slower with them as healers.

Like, when to pop sidesteps or when to defer def and the like.

For speed runs, I'd argue that it depends on the dungeon and how geared your healer is. I prefer to use full tank gear so that I can easily pull and survive multiple groups of enemies at once, particularly in dungeons like Iron Tombs, where there are lots of caster-less pulls that are close together. In instances that have a lot of casters or ranged mobs, you're going to need to either abuse LoS to stack up mobs, pull more slowly, or get someone to knockback/silence any stray enemies into melee range of you, because taunts alone won't force those casters to run towards you.

A lot of it is just a matter of practice-- do a lot of speed runs, and figure out which teleports you want to use where so that you always have something available for the next part. For instance, in Iron Tombs, I always put down my flashpoint before pulling Bonelord, so that I can teleport over to the next trash pack right as he dies.

So what I'm telling are my experiences, you might think in a diffrent way.

1st: The Spec, 41/17/8 is also after 1.8 you're strongest mitigation build, if TtT is up.. So for Experts or Trash or Bosses with adds it's defenitly the best spec there, and also for pure ST Bosses I'd recommend this Build (2 kicks, with Sidesteps a very nice CD and you're at at deflect Cap..) IMO it's defenitly worth specing this 17 points in the BD soul. Yeah you loose some HP but at all I'm nearly at 19k HP selfbuffed, so who cares about 1-2k HP more, if it's not just progression orientated.

In expert dungeons, you don't need two interrupts. The BD interrupt is nice for the silence effect, but that doesn't require 17 points in the soul. Similarly, you obtain Side Steps at 0 points, so it's not an argument for going that deep.

On single targets, Turn the Tide has an uptime of 70-80%, depending on your avoidance. This means that it's flat-out worse for mitigation, because going that deep into Bladedancer means that you give up 6% mitigation from ranger and 3.5% from Improved Rift Guard... in exchange for 10% mitigation from TtT that isn't even active all the time. And that doesn't even account for the loss of Scatter of the Shadows, which can let you do some interesting things on certain boss fights.

You're losing so much endurance and reliable mitigation in exchange for a proc that's not even better than what you're giving up in the first place. In experts, sure, the endurance doesn't matter, so you can use a Turn the Tide spec and get away with it, but that's mostly because expert dungeons are trivial to begin with, not because Turn the Tide is a competitive talent choice.

2nd: I'd not recommend macroing Quick Shot, as a Tank you'll have to Tab sometimes and as Tab works in Rift, earlier or later you'll pull something you don't want to.

If you're going to be tab-targeting, then you need to make sure that you face your camera in ways that won't allow you to tab to things you don't want to. Better yet, just don't tab target, and use nameplates instead.

And I won't recommend macroing you're ports. Maybe it's just a personal preferance, but it doesn't seem usefull to me.

If you read through the macro section, you'll notice that in addition to that macro, I also recommend keeping a separate hotkey for Blitz and Stalk, respectively. The macro is there so that you can use a single button to maintain Planar Vortex without needing to rotate through multiple hotkeys, while the separate keybinds are there if you want specific effects. Shadow Assault doesn't need a separate key, obviously, because it's the first ability in the macro and will always be used when that button is pressed, assuming that it's not on cooldown.

And Statwise.. Sadly we can just buy the stuff for plaques, until we hit ID, 'cause there isn't any Deflect on dropped items : ( For the right side I'd just look for a healthy mix of Dex and End... Dex is very, very important..

Dex is largely unimportant, for the reasons outlined in the theorycrafting section.

The thing about healing in Rift is that healers are constrained mainly be reaction time, rather than thoroughput. Each heal that they cast will refill huge portions of your health bar, and because they never run out of mana, they can just sustain that basically all day long. That's why when Trion wants to make a boss that threatens tank survival, they make him hit hard enough to 2 or 3 shot tanks, like Ituziel. Dodge, deflect and parry aren't useless stats by any means, but with the current way that raids are designed, they're really just a solution in search of a problem, rather than something that you'll actively pursue over other stats.

[mystang89]

NM JUST READ ARCON OVERRIDES ANTHEM OF GLORY

In a raid, the armor buff will generally be provided by someone else, which means Anthem of Glory is a wasted talent point. If you're exclusively running 5-mans, then go ahead and take it, because the armor is far more valuable than the avoidance.

Firstly, thanks for the write up as I am trying to branch out from my DPS and Bard roles to learn tanking. I have a question that goes along with what the other person said about Anthem of Glory and Street Smart. From what I have found and seen during the raids I've gone in, (10 mans, GSB, RoS, RoTP, HK, ID) is that anytime a bard is needed here they always want either run speed or fervor up. Please for the love of all that is holy, fervor for the poor energy starved rogues...fervor....Sorry, anyways, those two anthems always seem to be what people want to see. With that in mind wouldn't that make Anthem more valueable in these raids than the 3% reduction to chance of hit or critical hit from Street Smart?

[Muspel]

It depends on whether you normally have an archon or a bard in your 10-man groups.

If you run with a bard, then yeah, no one else will be providing the armor buff, and Anthem of Glory is worthwhile. Personally, I just use 2/3 Street Smarts, but I've had all of the 10-mans on farm for quite some time now, so I can easily get by with my 20-man raid tanking spec. If you're still progressing through them and you need the buff, speccing into Glory will outperform Street smarts every time.

However, it's worth noting that there's not really much in the way of hard-hitting physical attacks in 10-man instances, which means that the effective health boost you'll get from the armor is less valuable than it could be. While it's better than the alternative, 10-man bosses just don't hit hard enough to justify respeccing for 10-mans.

Now, if you only ever really do 10-mans and don't bother with 20-mans (other than the weekly raid), that's a different story. At the end of the day, your spec should be set up for the most difficult content that you run on a regular basis, whether that's 5-mans, 10-mans, or 20-mans.

[Anthony01]

I would like to say thanks for writing this up. Are you able to do a BiS Rogue tanking list or is there already one out there that is up to date? Mostly, I'm having trouble deciding on what to put in my sourcecore. Any advice?

Also, as a tip, I would like to point out to use a Planeshift ability right before a boss is about to use a CC ability. This makes you invulnerable to it and can be useful when Break Free and Shadow Stalk are down. Useful on the werewolf in DD and the dual bosses in Upper CR.

[Muspel]

The problem with BiS lists for tanking is that stat priorities are far less absolute than they are for DPS or healers. For instance, on some encounters, post-softcap deflect is far better than dodge (Sicaron, for instance-- Moldering Decay can be deflected, but not dodged). On others, dodge is better, because some enemies apply debuffs when they land a hit, and a dodge will keep your stacks from going up. Endurance doesn't have a static value, either. Every boss in the game has different EH requirements. Anything over 15k HP will be largely wasted on Murdantix (he just doesn't hit that hard), but you'll want more than that for a fight like Akylios, Ituziel, or Maklamos.

Assigning values to these stats in order to rank items just doesn't work, because the stats perform fundamentally different roles.

Basically, just look at what's causing you to die in raids, then focus on gear that improves those areas. Do you get bursted down from full health to zero? If so, then focus on gear with endurance. If you find that spike damage isn't an issue, but attrition is, then avoidance and deflection will help you more.

Which stat is most helpful will vary substantially depending on the content that you're running and what your healers are comfortable with.

Personally, for end-tier raiding, I focus heavily on endurance, and I recommend others to do the same, because in a raid scenario, attrition is not an issue when compared to bosses like Ituziel 3-shotting you. Healers never run out of mana and refilling your health bar is pretty trivial if they have time to react, and increasing your EH will buy them those crucial seconds.

[PopeOrGod]

Overall not a bad guide; however, I do not think you are giving the 17 point BD builds enough credit. I do understand your concerns, and i do admit i do no use them in ID for anything past warboss, but on the same note, i think any main spec tank should have one and know how to play it for the moment their EH does become high enough to make it viable. I say this because they offer an incredible amount of increased mitigation in the form of dodge and deflect with no loss of static mit once you gear up.

Personally, the build i use is a 44/17/5(sab). It was a build i devised a long time ago (then for sicaron back when rogues supposedly couldn't tank sicaron and deflect was hard to get) but now i use for all of HK and warboss in ID. There is a number of reasons i say this build (and other similar 17 Bd builds) are better than the classic 51 point builds. For starters lets begin with mitigation, Self buffed using my 51 point HP build (8 rng 7 bard), I have 20.9k HP, 20.14% dodge, and 37.48% deflect. Using the build i have been describing, i have 17.7k hp, 30.05% dodge, and 45.76% deflect (and note THIS IS ONLY SELF BUFFED, in a raid buffed situation the build shines even more brightly with just over 40% dodge). So in essence i have traded 3k HP for 10+% dodge and 8+% deflect, which is an enormous amount of mitigation. yes, granted, i am above the deflect soft cap, but every little bit helps, and my dodge is high enough that turn the tide is up 90+% of the time so there is ultimately no loss of static mit. Secondly is the utility of the interrupt from the BD tree. As you mentioned, it silences, which in my eyes is almost invaluable since the only other pull rogues have is on a 1min CD, secondly YOU NOW HAVE 2 INTERRUPTS!!!! Remember all those fights where you need an interrupt order? Murd, Matron, berhaust, the annoying whirlpool boss in DH, molinar, and countless others. THEY ARE GONE, never again worry about a missed interrupt! You can now do it all yourself instead of relying on others and worrying about some1 messing up[ and causing a wipe or extra stress on your healers. Even when u aren't interrupting a boss you can just sit there and make a caster add look ******ed. If done properly there are very few casters in this game that will ever get a cast off against you meaning there are sitting there meleeing you, doing a fraction of the damage they normally would, and helping to keep up your turn the tide.

The build gets real entertaining when you pop side steps. i think my favorite example is matron when a tome is popped, I cant count how many times i have heard tanks start screaming COV, BIG HEALS, Keep me alive! Side steps is pretty much 15 secs of invincibility to nearly all melee damage. when a tome is popped on the matron fight all i do is pop side steps and i literally sit there full HP while watching the endless wall of numbers from strike back and planar vortex. Ever seen a tank spike up over 5k DPS while taking almost no damage? try it out, lo,l its pretty entertaining.

Another less notable, but none the less, valuable trait from this spec is the existence of a ranged aoe skill in the form of frag bomb. It allows you to get some initial aoe threat just before you blink (for those pulls you cant hit everything with a blink) or to tag that annoying pat in the master modes without moving the current mobs you're tanking and getting people cleaved.

In conclusion, I would never said this is the best build for progression tanking when u need ALOT of HP, but it still deserves its spot in the tanking community

[PopeOrGod]

One other things i forgot to mention is when you really out gear content and you are able to wear DPS pieces instead of full tank gear, the 44/17/5 just goes absolutely insane for mitigation. the 30% increase to dex and the increased dex from DPS pieces go hand in hand with each other, when im tanking t2's or even t1 raids, it isnt uncommon to see me in half DPS gear and sitting at 45+% dodge, just LOLing at everything

[Muspel]

Using the build i have been describing, i have 17.7k hp, 30.05% dodge, and 45.76% deflect (and note THIS IS ONLY SELF BUFFED, in a raid buffed situation the build shines even more brightly with just over 40% dodge). So in essence i have traded 3k HP for 10+% dodge and 8+% deflect, which is an enormous amount of mitigation. yes, granted, i am above the deflect soft cap, but every little bit helps, and my dodge is high enough that turn the tide is up 90+% of the time so there is ultimately no loss of static mit.

It's a major loss of static mitigation, especially when you consider that Turn the Tide is only 10% mitigation, and you're giving 9.5% (from Improved Rift Guard and Bolster) by going that deep into Bladedancer.

Avoidance is flat-out less valuable on most raid bosses, because healers tend to spam you anyways, which means you'll often just increase how much overhealing you're taking. Furthermore, sacrificing endurance and mitigation to get avoidance means that every hit that you DO take will hit for a much larger proportion of your health.

Secondly is the utility of the interrupt from the BD tree. As you mentioned, it silences, which in my eyes is almost invaluable since the only other pull rogues have is on a 1min CD

The interrupt only requires 12 points in BD. It's not an argument for speccing into Turn the Tide, it's an argument for speccing for Weapon Barrage, which is a smaller mitigation loss (although still a large EH loss because you don't get as many points in ranger or bard).

secondly YOU NOW HAVE 2 INTERRUPTS!!!! Remember all those fights where you need an interrupt order? Murd, Matron, berhaust, the annoying whirlpool boss in DH, molinar, and countless others. THEY ARE GONE, never again worry about a missed interrupt! You can now do it all yourself instead of relying on others and worrying about some1 messing up[ and causing a wipe or extra stress on your healers. Even when u aren't interrupting a boss you can just sit there and make a caster add look ******ed. If done properly there are very few casters in this game that will ever get a cast off against you meaning there are sitting there meleeing you, doing a fraction of the damage they normally would, and helping to keep up your turn the tide.

I don't even know what to say to this. If coordinating two interrupters is even remotely problematic for your raids, then you have some recruiting to do, because those interrupters need to be replaced.

Speccing for a second interrupt at the expense of survivability is like speccing into Assassin for Lethal Poison. It can technically be helpful, but since other people can cover it, there's no reason to give up anything for it.

The build gets real entertaining when you pop side steps. i think my favorite example is matron when a tome is popped, I cant count how many times i have heard tanks start screaming COV, BIG HEALS, Keep me alive! Side steps is pretty much 15 secs of invincibility to nearly all melee damage. when a tome is popped on the matron fight all i do is pop side steps and i literally sit there full HP while watching the endless wall of numbers from strike back and planar vortex. Ever seen a tank spike up over 5k DPS while taking almost no damage? try it out, lo,l its pretty entertaining.

See above: this is an argument for having Bladedancer in your build, not an argument for Turn the Tide. You get Side Steps at 0 points. It's absolutely a powerful cooldown, and on certain fights, I absolutely recommend putting 7 points into BD.

In conclusion, I would never said this is the best build for progression tanking when u need ALOT of HP, but it still deserves its spot in the tanking community

It absolutely doesn't.

Here's what you're giving up:

7% Endurance
15% max health
9.5% guaranteed mitigation
Scatter the Shadows
Physical Wellness
Quick Shot
Planar Switch (lol)
Certain utility talents and/or AP (depending on which points you drop from RS)
2% miss chance

Here's what you gain:
Some avoidance (between 7-10%, depending on gear)
10% mitigation that's only up about 4/5ths of the time
A second interrupt
A ranged AoE threat generator (with no inherent threat multiplier)


The whole point of tanking is stability and reliability. A spec with 17BD offers less of both... and then you spec into Sab instead of Bard, which is just digging an even deeper hole. You're behind on EH when the buff is active, and even FURTHER behind when TtT falls off (the uptime is less than 90%, by the way... closer to 80%, give or take a bit depending on your gear).

The extra avoidance is far less effective than the increased mitigation/endurance of the standard spec, for the reasons that are outlined in the theorycraft section. Evasion-focused tanks take substantially spikier damage, and spike damage is a tank killer. A tank that takes 10% less damage on average but takes bigger damage spikes is worse than a tank who always takes 8% damage and has more health to survive the spikes when they happen.

[PopeOrGod]

It's a major loss of static mitigation, especially when you consider that Turn the Tide is only 10% mitigation, and you're giving 9.5% (from Improved Rift Guard and Bolster) by going that deep into Bladedancer.

Avoidance is flat-out less valuable on most raid bosses, because healers tend to spam you anyways, which means you'll often just increase how much overhealing you're taking. Furthermore, sacrificing endurance and mitigation to get avoidance means that every hit that you DO take will hit for a much larger proportion of your health.

Honestly, i completely agree that a guaranteed 9.5% is better than 10% that is only up most of the time, I dont think there would be many who would argue other wise. I also do not deny that when i do get hit it is for a slightly larger portion of my health; however, the amount of spike damage still required to kill me shouldn't be coming from the kind of bosses that i use this build on. This build is meant to be used on farmed bosses to make them even easier and considering well over 75% of the damage in this game is physical and avoidable it just plainly isn't fair to completely ignore dodge and deflect as valid forms of mitigation.

In all reality the 10% dodge i gain actually comes out to about 13% mitigation over the course of the fight just because of how the hit percentage of a mob works. For an example, as taken from ciderhelm, pretend in a hypothetical fight you are going to take 100 hits and your dodge rating is 0% so you are going to take each one of them. now increase your dodge rating from 0 to 1% in the same scenario, you should take 99 hits instead of the theoretical 100 and thus increasing your mitigation by 1%. now lets exaggerate this a little, pretend in this same fight you now start with 98% dodge and bump it up to 99% dodge, just by increasing your dodge 1%(the same in the previous example) you have now increased your mitigation by 50% because instead of taking the 2 hits you were at 98%, you are now taking 1 hit, effectively cutting the damage you are taking in half, and making your dodge an ever more reliable form of mitigation. on top of all this, this scenario is completely ignoring the deflect that is gained which is arguably even better because the numbers are even higher and thus scale higher.

I have parsed this build time and time again and i don't think you can argue that over the course of a fight (especially one with adds which usually have a much higher percentage of their attacks that are dodge and deflect able) this build takes FAR less damage than any of the 51 point builds and still doesn't have insane HP spikes like you are trying to say it does. the difference in HP is 3k which still leaves you well above the EH for most of the fights in the game, so why not pick up some extra mitigation and make it even easier on your healers?

The interrupt only requires 12 points in BD. It's not an argument for speccing into Turn the Tide, it's an argument for speccing for Weapon Barrage, which is a smaller mitigation loss (although still a large EH loss because you don't get as many points in ranger or bard)

I don't even know what to say to this. If coordinating two interrupters is even remotely problematic for your raids, then you have some recruiting to do, because those interrupters need to be replaced.

Speccing for a second interrupt at the expense of survivability is like speccing into Assassin for Lethal Poison. It can technically be helpful, but since other people can cover it, there's no reason to give up anything for it.

Honestly there are perks the whole way up the tree and i would never suggest moving from 7 points, which is a very valid build, up to 12 points just for the interrupt, but i do think going on up to 17 is well worth it for the combination of everything. (5% dodge, 15% dex (which is dodge and deflect), strike back and reprisal (extra damage and threat), the interrupt (murphys law - prepare for the worst), and finally TtT to pick back up most of the static mitigation lost).

As far as needing the second interrupt, you're completely right it should never honestly be needed in a 20 man raid but, as you said in your original post, it never hurts to prepare for the worst and is always a welcomed utility (especially for a pug raid). That being said, in 10 mans, a lot of times it is actually needed. I can't even count how many times i have been in 10 mans with no warriors, or with pugs who just plainly don't know how to play as well as they should, and would have to sacrifice DPS (in the form of switching a rogue to MM or a cleric to shaman) just because we needed an interrupt.

Here's what you're giving up:

7% Endurance
15% max health
9.5% guaranteed mitigation
Scatter the Shadows
Physical Wellness
Quick Shot
Planar Switch (lol)
Certain utility talents and/or AP (depending on which points you drop from RS)
2% miss chance

Here's what you gain:
Some avoidance (between 7-10%, depending on gear)
10% mitigation that's only up about 4/5ths of the time
A second interrupt
A ranged AoE threat generator (with no inherent threat multiplier)

More like here is what you lose/gain:
GAIN: ALOT of avoidance (7-10+% dodge and 7-10+% deflect) which comes out to a very significant amount of mitigation (20-30%) over the course of a fight
GAIN: a second interrupt with the added utility of silencing (virtually idiot proofing any raid as well as giving you another method to pull mobs to you)
GAIN: a ranged aoe threat generator that takes the place of quick shot which isn't aoe
GAIN: an increase in AP because of the extra dex (even with no points actually spent in AP from the RS tree)
GAIN: much higher threat due to the increased damage form the increased AP and increased strikebacks
LOSE: scatter the shadows and physical wellness (nice CD's but worth losing for the extra mit)
LOSE: some HP/END that shouldn't matter because you should still be well above the EH
LOSE: an insignificant 2% miss chance from bard which is more than made up for with your extra dodge and deflect

and just to say again, since you seem to think you do; you do no lose any of the nice little utility perks from the RS other than the 2 CD's and you actually GAIN AP, not lose it.