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SWTOR 4.0 Defense Guardian PvE Guide by Artorias

Dulfy 76 Comments Dec 30, 2015

SWTOR 4.0 Defense Guardian PvE Guide by Artorias.

Intro to Defense Guardian

Defense Guardian is the defacto cooldown tank. With more cooldowns to offer than Shadow or Vanguard, Guardian combines in your face playstyle with damage control like no other. With the changes in 4.0, no situation is without a reprisal by the Defense Guardian.

Each challenge has recourses from your armory of defensives, so let’s get learning how to use them effectively, shall we?

Utilities

The Defense Guardian’s utilities are both assisting and instrumental to how you tank. Some of these utilities can make or break aspects of your control of a fight both in terms of your influence on a boss and mechanics or control of your own damage intake. Wrong utilities can become problematic.

Skillful

	Battlefield Command: Getting attacked reduces the active cooldown of Force Leap by 1 second. This effect cannot occur more than once every 1.5 second.
	Narrowed Focus: Taking non-periodic area of effect damage generates 1 Focus. This effect cannot occur more than once every second.
	Focused Freedom: When activated, Combat Focus removes movement-impairing effects and increases the Guardian’s movement speed by 50% for the next 6 seconds.
	Trailblazer: Cyclone Slash deals 25% more damage. (AOE fights only, sacrifice Narrowed Focus.)

Masterful

Guardianship: Challenging Call protects all allies within range, excluding yourself, granting Guardianship, which absorbs a moderate amount of damage. Lasts 10 seconds.

Select one of the following

	Ardent Advocate: Force Leap enables your next Dispatch to be used on a target with any health level for 15 seconds after activation.
	Inspiring Force: Freezing Force increases the movement speed of all allies within 8 meters, excluding yourself by 50% for 8 seconds.
	Pulse: Reduces the cooldown of Force Stasis by 15 seconds.

Heroic

	Daunting Presence: Force Leap finishes the cooldown on Force Kick. In addition, Saber Reflect lasts 2 seconds longer and generates a high amount of threat on all engaged enemies within 30 meters when activated.
	Through Peace: Reduces the Cooldown of Focused Defense by 30 seconds.

Gearing and Stats Priority

With the change to a few stats, some big, some small, there are differences than back in 3.0 and before. Things are a bit crazy, especially with Tank stats.

As before defense is still the back bone of Defense, as one of your cooldowns benefits greatly and in tree buffs gain from this stat as well as other aspects of the class as well. Priority is as it was before

Defense > Shield > Absorb

With 4.0, defense is now present in all mods, meaning every mod in your gear now hold defense in the new tiers of gear in 4.0, meaning our best and more sought for stat is plentiful. What has now changed is Shield and Absorb, now both share the same stat slot in implants, ear and enhancements while Defense now sits in its own slot, constantly being stacked. TL;DR: All tank gear is very defense heavy now.

Goal to head towards in SM Deceived (216) gear: 2639 (0xAug) Defense | 1569 (9xAug) Shield | 973 (5xAug) Absorb

• Form: Soresu
• Augments: Unlike Healer or DPS, you won’t be using Mastery, Alacrity etc. for your augments. You’ll primarily be using Shield and Absorb due to how plentiful Defense is in the gear. You’ll need to adjust these two values as you upgrade your gear.
• Set Bonus: War Leader – 6 Piece (KOTFE Tier).
• Armorings: With Endurance now giving a large point-to-point gain, Guardian armorings are more viable in their gain than Mastery’s contribution to force healing which was not the case before.
• Mods: Warding Mods. These are the ones with defense in them.
• Enhancements: Immunity or Sturdiness enhancements (Absorb or Shield). You will be swapping these around along with augments due to upgrades or gear changes.
• Relics: Fortunate Redoubt (Defense Rating) and Reactive Warding (X amount of Absorb Shield).

What You need to Know

Defense Guardian hasn’t got the best passive mitigation of the tanks but to compensate for this, it has an array of soft and hard cooldowns to select from to reduce incoming damage in all situations as well as a new ability that assists in damage control. Unlike Shadow and Vanguard, there is no passive stack management you need to worry about, all buffs are used and expired in rotation, but it’s how often you can keep these buffs rolling without hitch that you can minimize damage intake without having to relly too strongly on your cooldowns.

Through rotation you will gain various buffs which will increase base stats such as Absorb and Defense as well as pure damage reduction. Again, how and when you use these abilities is up to you but the better your priority and usage, better control of damage you’ll have.

Buffs

The following buffs are what will appear on your UI in rotation or situationally. Their presence (or lack there of) will show you how much control you have your damage intake.

	Defensive Swings: Each tick of Blade Dance grants Defensive Swings, increasing your Defense by 2% per stack, final tick grants your third stack, giving a total of 6% for 6 seconds. (Buff duration is refreshed per tick for a total uptime of 8.7 secs.)
	Warding Strike: Warding Strike grants Warding Strike, increasing damage reduction by 3% for 20 seconds.
	Expeditious Protector: When your Guarded target takes damage, your movement speed is increased by 30% for 6 seconds.
	Blade Barrier: Blade Storm grants Blade Barrier, which absorbs a moderate amount of damage, lasts 10 seconds.
	Blade Barricade: Riposte grants Blade Barricade, increasing your Defense rating by 5%. Lasts 12 seconds.
	Courage: Parrying, deflecting, shieding or resisting an attack has a 50% chance to grant Courage, reducing Blade Storm and Disaptch cost by 1 per stack, stacks to 3 and lasts 12 seconds. Consumed on use.
	Warding Power: Warding Strike grants Warding Power, increasing Absorb rating by 3%. Lasts 20 seconds.
	Blade Blitz: Defense increased by 100%. Lasts duration of Blade Blitz.

Debuffs

The following debuffs are applied by you in rotation which will reduce your enemies effectiveness against you and other members of your group.

• Trauma: Targets damaged by Slash and CycloneSlash receive Trauma, reducing all healing received by 20%, lasts 6 seconds.
• Impaired: Targets damaged by Guardian Slash become Impaired, dealing 5% less Tech and Force damage to all enemies, lasts 45 seconds.
• Unsteady: Targets damaged by Force Sweep or Cyclone Slash become Unsteady, reducing Melee and Ranged accuracy by 5%, lasts 45 seconds.

Unsteady and Impaired should have a 100% uptime on your targets. Both are applied by AOE abilities, as such you can have them hit multiple adds in a situation to reduce their collective stopping power. Trauma will not be used in End Game besides maybe one fight.

Impaired will reduce the enemies effective abilities that you are unable to dodge while Unsteady will reduce the chance of the ones you can dodge from landing on you, cutting down their over all capability of harming you regardless of damage type.

Abilities

	Blade Blitz: Effectively a combination of Twin Saber Throw and Hightail It. Causing damage between you and the 20m mark from the point you are facing, how ever the damage is on par with an unbuffed Cyclone Slash. Blade Blitz if timed correctly will cause all damage on you to be resisted or dodged, meaning a large attack or series of them can be stopped if timed correctly. How ever keep in mind when using Blade Blitz as it’ll relocate you 20m forward.
	Warding Strike: Replaces Sundering Strike and generates 7 Focus. Deals minimal damage and threat but grants two important buffs, 3% damage reduction and 3% Absorption rating.
	Blade Storm: A very important ability due to the buff it applies, Blade Barrier. Deals moderate damage and can be used at range. When the damage threshold of Blade Barrier is met, it fades.
	Riposte: An equally important ability. Riposte has a low cost, is off the GCD and applies Blade Barricade. Due to the nature of Riposte, it can be used constantly to maintain a near 100% uptime on Blade Barricade.
	Guardian Slash: Your strongest and highest threat generating ability. Also with it’s AOE capability (360° centered on your target) while Warding Strike is present on you, Guardian Slash is unmatched in the benefits it provides in damaging your target and securing their attention on you. Each use of Guardian Slash triggers your Riposte to be usable, regardless of the situation, as such they should be used in pair.
	Force Sweep: A decent damaging 360° AOE centered on yourself. Has a near non-existent cost and is one of your highest for threat generating abilities, second to Guardian Slash in an AOE situation.
	Blade Dance: A series of lightsaber strikes which grant 2% Defense per stack. Due to this new trait, Blade Dance should now be planned to be used before or after a Boss’ rotation may interrupt the ability. Make sure when you use it, you can pull off all three ticks to maximize Defensive Swings.
	Hilt Bash: Dealing high amounts of threat and decent damage. Though it doesn’t apply buffs, it is free and worth the activation every time.
	Cyclone Slash: A 180° frontal cone. A simple AOE ability to use on multiple targets. Though on single target, even with Trail Blazer, still deals less damage than Slash.
	Dispatch: Now with Ardent Advocate, Dispatch can be used in rotation and the opener for added damage/threat though its cost still remains (But is reduced by Courage). Not necessary but helpful, this ability can be a decent filler.
	Saber Throw: Now usable at melee range, Saber Throw provides a decent filler alternative to basic attack, dealing more damage and granting more Focus. Though it should remain outside most openers.
	Force Stasis: A DoT which grants Focus per tick. An average filler but worth while, Stasis doesn’t generate a large amount of threat but is decent damage for an activation to coincide with your rotation.
	Force Push: A filler, nothing more, nothing less. Doesn’t grant Focus and is weaker than Saber Throw, ideally you should never need to use this ability for single target rotation on a Boss.
	Slash: Due to how generous the rotation is with Focus, especially now with Saber Throw, you will need to dump Focus. Slash is your best filler behind Dispatch due to having no cooldown, but lacks decent threat for opening situations.
	Strike: Your basic attack. The rotation on top of changes allow you to generate more Focus than you can so easily dispense. This ability should never be needed, also generates the lowest threat of your abilities.

Raid Utility

	Guardian Leap: Leaps you to a friendly target, reducing their damage taken by 20% for 6 seconds and vastly reducing their threat. A good tool to assist your co-tank in their opener by dumping the threat of a DPS, to assist raid damage control or relocate you when needed. Should never be used on your co-tank unless in extremely precise circumstances.
	Guardianship (utility): All allies within 15m of you will gain a buff similar to your Blade Storm buff, absorbing some damage. Good for raid damage control during small AOE spikes though it isn’t enough, alone to mitigate large hits on team members.
	Inspiring Force (utility): When Freezing Force is used, allies within 8 meters of you will have their movement speed increased by 50% for 8 seconds. How ever this buff will not apply to you. Keep in mind you will fall behind in high movement required situations if you do not use an ability such as Guardian Leap or Focused Freedom to keep up.

Cooldowns

The most important part of this guide behind your opener. Cooldowns are the identity of the Guardian and their proper use is what will show if you know what you’re doing. The usage of these abilities will require your knowledge of fights and judgement to decide which will be needed when. Pressing a random blue button for impending damage though effective is not as effective as pressing the right cooldown for the situation.

	Blade Blitz: With its 100% defense increase. Blade Blitz will allow you to take no damage for the duration of its animation. If timed correctly, you can take a devastating hit from an enemy and come out of it in the same state as you entered your Blitz in. Risky with tight timing but worth it, Blade Blitz will allow you to have a second trump card along with Saber Reflect for stopping potentially mortal damage to even you. Lasts: Duration of animation. 45 second cooldown.
	Saber Reflect: While active, Saber Reflect will redirect all single target ranged, force and tech abilities back at the user for the potential damage it would have inflicted on you (but is capped to stop overkill). Saber Reflect can stop a series of attacks which may add up to a harsh amount or one large hit which could be the end of you. Nearly every fight has an application for Saber Reflect, and if it doesn’t then it’s a near unmatched threat tool. With Daunting Presence, it’s a fantastic threat tool, but if you need Reflect as a cooldown in the early stages of a fight, it’s best not used for opening threat. Lasts: 3 seconds (4 w/mandatory utility). 1 minute cooldown.
	Saber Ward: Increases your Defense rating by 50% and reduces all damage taken by Force and Tech attacks by 25%. Ward increases your chance to dodge an attack, meaning you will take no damage if Ward triggers successfully. Any abilities that cannot be dodged such as Force Lightning or Missile Blast, will have their effective damage reduced by 25%. Ward is best used for the former mentioned damage types as if it is used on the right damage types, it’ll cause you to take no damage. Lasts: 12 seconds. 2:30 cooldown.
	Warding Call: Reduces all damage taken by 40%. While not increasing any stat pools, Warding Call ensures all damage taken regardless of type will be reduced in their severity. How ever, as I mentioned above that Ward should be used with Melee and Range, Warding Call should be used with Force and Tech attacks since it’ll reduce their damage by 40% versus Ward’s 25%. What this means simply is, against Force and Tech attacks, Warding Call surpasses Saber Ward. Lasts: 10 seconds (15 w/ Set Bonus). 2:30 cooldown.
	Enure: Your loan shark heal. This ability temporarily increases your total HP % and heals you to assist for the difference. This ability allows you to bounce back from prior damage. How ever, Enure is only as effective as your ability to time it properly and to communicate to your healers. If your HP% falls too low, the removal of Enure will bring you to 1HP (or somewhere dangerously low.) Informing to your healer that “Fake health falling off” should be enough for them to heal you out of any danger. Lasts: 20 seconds. 1 minute cooldown.
	Focused Defense: When you fall below 70%, this ability becomes available. Granting 12 charges which heal when each one expires upon damage taken. Similar to Trauma Probe, this ability persists on your buff bar and will be spent depending on how frequent you take damage during the duration. Focused Defense is optimal for a series of attacks or as an anti-DoT tool. If the enemy uses one big hit, Focused Defense will only spend one charge and will not counter act the damage. Focused Defense serves its purpose well if its heals can equal or exceed the damage you’ve taken during the buff’s duration. Lasts: 10 seconds. 2 minute cooldown (1:30 with Utility).
	Blade Turning (Passive): Activating Saber Ward grants Blade Turning. This buff increases your Melee/Ranged defense by 100%, allowing you to dodge all melee and ranged attacks for the duration. If you try and use Blade Turning purely to fend against a massive Force or Tech hit, it’ll only be reduced by the 25% protection that Ward provides. Lasts: 2 seconds (5 w/ set bonus).
	Adrenal: The new shield Adrenal absorbs 30% of incoming damage until its cap. This will passively reduce damage taken by all damage types until the adrenal burns itself out. Lasts: 15 seconds. 3 minute cooldown

Rotations

When opening a fight, your priority, above everything else is to ensure the boss focuses on you. What this means is to make sure you’re the target of the boss from the moment the fight starts to the moment it ends or you need to swap with your co-tank. How ever, when threat is secure, this priority shifts to a defensive one, certain abilities will change in priority from level of threat to contribution to lowering DTPS while dealing damage and building resource.

Opener

Above is the ideal opener for threat. Each ability from Guardian Slash until the first taunt is rated highest to lowest in threat. You can get away with using Warding Strike under a taunt window since it won’t cause you to lose aggro while your target is under the effects of your buff.
As for Dispatch if you feel secure enough not to need it in your opener for threat, you can scribble it off and skip over it, it’s nice added damage but it’s not entirely necessary, it does require you to take Ardent Advocate, so keep that in mind. I’ve also added the relevant buffs to their abilities above i.e. Blade Barrier (Snc) indicated by the blue buff above Blade Storm, the ability that grants it. This is just to get you familiar with what ability grants what buff.

When using Saber Reflect, it is deterministic when you use it, Daunting Presence does not grant the threat prior to taking damage from your engaged target. You must wait until you’ve taken damage to activate Saber Reflect for threat, or else it’ll generate zero. Saber Reflect grants an insane amount of threat and is off the GCD. How ever, like I mentioned above, you should save Reflect for required cooldown situations if it is required within the first minute or so. You can squeeze taunts together to be more cautious if this is the case. If you are going to taunt fluff (use taunts constantly to keep building threat and forcing the boss to attack you) be aware of any impending swaps or mechanics, last thing you want is to be unable to swap due to both taunts being on CD.

Guardian Slash grants the highest threat and also impaires your target, reducing their tech/force damage (dmg). This also enables Riposte for use, meaning you can pair it with your second highest threat generating ability, Hilt Bash. Riposte grants your Blade Barricade, increasing your Defense (Def). Following this is your third highest threat ability, Blade Storm, granting Blade Barrier (Bld). Dispatch is then used depending on your utility selection. Force Sweep is finally activated with Taunt, the former applying your Accuracy (Acc) debuff to the target. From there you use Warding Strike to gain your last two buffs, Warding Strike (dr) and Warding Power (Abs) and finally, Blade Dance is used, granting Defensive Swings (Def) meaning all your buffs are now in play and your threat is secure you are fortified.

You may be asking; “Why don’t I use saber throw?” The answer is that Saber Throw generates barely any threat, only a bit more than Force Leap. In 4.0, the Focus generation of the spec is massive and you do not need any more Focus than what Leap and Combat Focus grants. You’re delaying the Threat generation of your rotation by 1.5 seconds, which is all the room a DPS needs to rip aggro from you. Saber Throw does a lot more harm than good. It does have its use.

When Opening from range and letting the boss come to you rather than you to them (rare cases where this occurs example; Dread Master Tyrans, Revanite Commanders, The Dread Council). You substitute Saber Throw for Force Leap, you will build the exact same amount of Focus and do a small bit more threat in comparison. But there is only room for either your gap closer or a Saber Throw, not both.

Mid-fight Rotation

When in the middle of a fight, you’ll be constantly using the below abilities. Pretty much on cooldown as they branch eachother out in the opener. You may be strained here and there for Focus which is when you’ll need to use Saber Throw or Stasis to gain extra resource when Warding Strike is on CD and you need to save Combat Focus for mechanics. The list below is your priority list for abilities if they are all off CD and you have resource to burn to use them all. The premise is to maintain your buffs, how ever if you have buffs active (such as Warding Strike) you can shift priority of it to below Guardian Slash since you have that buff. The duration (or lack) of the buff/debuff determines where in the rotation abilities like Warding Strike or Force Sweep lie.

1. Riposte (off the GCD, pair it with any of the following).

2. Blade Storm

3. Warding Strike

4. Blade Dance (Vs. Guardian Strike w/ 2-piece)

5. Guardian Strike

6. Force Sweep

7. Hilt Bash

8. Dispatch

9. Saber Throw

10. Slash

11. Force Stasis (If you need some resource for impending costs)

12. Force Push

13. Strike

The highlighted abilites above all contribute to DTPS. Whether it be weakening your target or strengthening you, they’re all important to ensuring your damage taken is as low as possible. For things like Guardian Slash with your set bonus, it is optimal to delay Blade Dance by a GCD to get the Set Bonus buff vs. delaying Guardian Slash by 2.7 seconds.

AoE

Your AOE priority depends on if Warding Strike is active, the reason for this is because Guardian Slash, your strongest and highest threat generating ability is only an AOE when Warding Strike is present. If Warding Strike is not present on you and you find yourself in an AOE situation where you need to gain threat quickly (so quickly that you can’t spare the GCD for Warding Strike), you need to use Force Sweep instead.

If you have an impending AOE situation arising, it’s ideal to shift Warding Strike to the top of your priority to gain the buff for the AOE requirement as such you’ll do more damage and have more snap threat on the targets.

Lastly, Blade Blitz is AOE, how ever due to the benefit of it as a defensive cooldown and the damage output, it’s best saved as a defensive tool versus offensive. Keep in mind it’s a directional AOE rather than centered around you or a target, as such you may not even hit all targets with it and the threat output will be even lower than Cyclone Slash.

Things to Know When Tanking

Tanks are like any other role, you need to know how it works before you step foot into an instance. When you’re leveling you should get an idea of how your rotation works i.e. buffs, gaining stacks, what CD’s affect what abilities/damage and so on.

Becoming a tank is not impossible but difficult if you are not ready to learn the basic mechanics of combat. A tank first of all should sit down and look at the class they’re playing as many of the tanks diversify in play style, not by a lot but enough that each tank will feel unique, which is good. To get a better idea of how your tank operates, again look at your skill tree and buffs, even the tank specs tell you how you should be gearing also: Defense Guardian, Shield Specialist Vanguard and so on. But regardless let’s start from scratch.

Learn about threat. It is the mechanic which the entire premise of tanking is based upon. Your job as a tank is to control the boss and make it that the other roles can do their job without having to worry about survival or positioning. Threat is what determines if the boss is looking at you or them, make sure you and your co-tank are the top of the aggro table. Taunt and your rotation determine your aggro and the effectiveness of your rotation will determine how solid your threat is, hence why you see people discussing; AOE threat, high threat opener etc. It’s so they can ensure that upon engaging a target, that target will be fixated on them from beginning to end. And for the love of Lana Beniko’s butt use Target of Target! (Enable it in UI Editor)

(It’s a tiny portrait of who ever the boss is looking at. If it’s not looking at you when it should be, something is wrong.)

Learn about basic mechanics of fights and how to work with them. Fights in this game are not too different from one another. You’ll need to swap, reposition, kite, aim frontal cones away from the raid and pick up adds. If you master these points then you can adapt to almost any fight.

Try and get a feel of when to use your cooldowns. Using Saber Ward then beginning the fight is the worst thing you can do. Cooldowns are not there to make you remain at 100% for the opening of a fight, they’re there mostly to bounce back from a huge spike or incoming spike. Popping them when damage intake is low so you can maintain a 85%> HP is not needed. I follow a typical priority. Soft cooldowns at sub 70% (Adrenal, Enure, Focused Defense etc.) and hard cooldowns (Ward, Warding Call) at sub 50% or there abouts if damage is continuous on me.

Learn to use Guard effectively and why it is used on certain targets. There is a reason for everything when tanking, DPS always get guarded. DPS are guarded NOT for the Damage Reduction, it’s used for the 25% threat output reduction so you do not lose aggro.

Know when to taunt and when not to taunt. If you’re the main tank, taunting to gain some added threat is fine, but taunting off your co-tank when they’re holding the boss if you are not asked or it is unjustified should never be done.

Lastly, don’t take advice with salt. Tanking takes work, you will make mistakes, a lot. But bounce back from them, accept them and better yourself. Don’t be deluded and think that a DPS pulling aggro is their fault or you not kiting a boss into a mechanic correctly was due to a bug. If you admit your mistakes, you will become a good tank, if you blame everyone but you, then you’ll get no where. Don’t try to make it like your way is the right way. Tanking can diverse in how it is played, you can change your priorities to fit how you want to play. Play what works for you, so long as bosses die and you don’t get your raid killed, job done.