Darth Hater

If the stats pldcanfly outlined in this post still hold up, I don't think the Shadow and Sage will share precisely the same stats and thus have different gear for the most part. Some recent PAX East pictures I have seen show that Agility has been re-designated as Aim, but I would guess it serves the same purpose.   I think it would be lazy of Bioware to not utilize different sets of stats between the two ACs, given the visual distinctions they wish to differentiate ACs as stated in the past. I also wouldn't be surprised if Shadows get bumped up to medium armor instead of light armor.

Shadows will not need Presence, so any gear with Presence would likely go to Sages. Additionally, I could see Shadows having some use for Strength due to the +glance chance and Agility/Aim if it generates +dodge chance, whereas Sages would have no use for those stats. If Bioware does a poor job with itemization, some Sage pieces could be BiS for Shadows, but we can't speculate on that.

Will bad or ill-informed players still roll on Sage gear as a Shadow and vice versa? Probably, but I doubt it will be a fault of the design and itemization.

I personally think that Shadows will continue to have a small mana pool related to Sages, so there won't be too much competition for gear with healers.

The Shadow seems to have a lot of "combo" style abilities back from Jedi Immersion day, and I'm thinking that this sort of mechanic may be extended into tanking.  That is to say that avoidance/deflection/etc abilities may be unlocked as you continue to tank.  This would mean that Shadow gear probably wouldn't have to be tweaked too much now, even with the addition of tanking.  So long as the Shadow keeps its theme of rapid Force regeneration (as opposed to having a lot of FP like the Sage), I can see it working fine without stepping on the toes of other casters.

I think Shadow tanking is going to be a really active endeavour that will rely heavily on things like Mind Tricks and other control elements to keep attackers from laying on the hurt.  The Force Shield/Ward example is a good example too.

Quote from Dover
For example, Blink (or maybe Force) tanking is nothing new. The first blink tank I ever played was in Final Fantasy XI with the ninja class. However, the itemization for an avoidance tank is very peculiar. Normally, you will find light armor pieces with heavy emphasis on pool stats (Mana, Energy, or in this case, Force).  This could cause issues between a group giving a great stat piece to the healer or to the tank.

Are there any other concerns or speculation about how this choice will effect Consular's?

I'm thinking that if what DH put out on Jedi Immersion day holds true in this current game build (and future patches), then we won't have to worry about Shadows and Sages fighting over general gear, because if I remember correctly, the total "Force points" a force-using class has will not change over the course of leveling, or over any kind of gear tier. I do honestly believe that Shadows will have 100 FP and Sages will have 500 FP, so the thing that changes (i.e makes them more viable) will have to be the rate at which these Force points regenerate.

It's also under this assumption that Shadow Tanks will be heavily dependent on the stat that increases FP regeneration, Endurance, and Strength.

If agility has been changed to aim, with the obvious change in effect as well, then I think shadow tanks are going to deviate from their sage brethren by wanting some strength and more endurance. Strength not only for some damage but also for it's classical defense bonuses as well, like parry and block. I think both groups will still want, to varying degrees, cunning gear though.

There could always be stat modifiers in the talent trees.  Your spellpower is converted to attack power.  Rift does this for the cleric class when they spec melee dps or tank

Quote from Dover
Given today's announcement that Jedi Consular Shadows will be able to spec into an avoidence tanking role, I wanted to start a thread to talk with Consular's about possible gear/group/spec changes this inclussion would mean for the class.  For example, Blink (or maybe Force) tanking is nothing new. The first blink tank I ever played was in Final Fantasy XI with the ninja class. However, the itemization for an avoidence tank is very pecular. Normally, you will find light armor peices with heavy emphasis on pool stats (Mana, Energy, or in this case, Force).  This could cause issues between a group giving a great stat peice to the healer or to the tank.

Are there any other concerns or specualtion about how this choice will effect Consular's?

<list type="ordered">Avoidance Tanking: Even with high avoidance (over 50%), unless there is some sort of gimmick that allows them to avoid getting hit two times in a row, eventually it will happen. While it will be a statistical anomaly at that point, it will happen and worse one or both of those hits might be a critical hit (unless a tank can become crit-immune like in WoW). This will basically remove player skill from the equation of whether the tank (and consequently the entire party) lives or dies. Maybe the S/A can survive two hits, but what about when both are crits? Or what about when they eventually receive 3 hits in a row and two of them are crits. These scenarios may be unlikely, but they will happen. Eventually, no matter how skilled the players are, the dice will roll "Snake Eyes" and... bang! You're dead. No chance to avoid it. Nothing you could have done better. Just a huge case of "sucks to be you."
Now, to understand the next portion, everyone will need to understand how "Blink Tanking" worked. "Blink" is the nickname for a Ninja technique from FFXI called Utsusemi. There were two ranks (Ichi and Ni) and they placed the "Copy Image" buff on the player. Copy Image would create 3-5 "Shadows" which would take damage instead of the player if they were hit. Due to a Ninja's high avoidance, they could often last for the entire duration of the cooldown of the one of the two Utsusemi spells (approximately 45 seconds) without taking any damage, or at most, a single hit.
The other potential problem ties into how powerful an avoidance tank can be. Previously I listed the potential weaknesses of an avoidance tank, but one designed to allow for survival when the dice are against them borders on unstoppable, unbalancingly so. As I mentioned above, a Ninja could go for minutes at a time without taking any damage. If you compare that to Paladins who tanked primarily by getting hit in the face and wearing heavy armor to mitigate the incoming damage, it translated to a lot more activity on the part of the healer. They had to constantly be watching the tank and spending MP to keep them alive. Meanwhile, unless something went horribly wrong (and with proper choice of enemies to fight, this could be minimized even further), healing a Ninja was always preferable to healing a Paladin. The dearth of tanks kept Paladins employed during the leveling process, but once you reached level cap, they were often unwanted for a lot of endgame content because they were just a lot weaker than Ninjas. Hundreds of hours invested, all for naught because no one wanted you. Simply put, a well designed Avoidance Tank imbalances the entire game for all tanks involved. They become indisputable kings of tanking and the rest are left to pick up the scraps.[/list]
I feel it bears mentioning that the Ninja tanks of FFXI were not originally intended to tank. Instead somehow the playerbase figured out that Ninjas would be amazing tanks. I would guess it came about when someone was leveling Ninja and the tank died, and the Ninja just tried to tank and realized it worked amazingly well. Square-Enix decided to roll with the idea of Ninja tanks, but they were constantly tweaking the class and it's powers to try to control them since they were so powerful.

I point this out because BioWare is going in with the intent of the S/A to be a tank, so they will be better able to keep the class in line as opposed to retroactively trying to fix something that was never intended without completely breaking it or the system for the other tanks. This is a small point of relief for me and gives me hope that, if the S/A is an avoidance tank, it won't be hideously overpowered like previous iterations I've experienced have been.

With regards to the "crit, you're dead" problem, that could be avoided if the S/A had a "self-rez" ability that was on a very long cooldown.  For example, if the Shadow dies by losing over 80% of its health all at once, it has a "rejuvenate" power that revives themselves back to, say, 30% health.  Something like that could compensate for the statistical anomalies of stacked crits.

Alternately, the S/A could have really high health but low armor, like a WoW Warlock.  Then the amount of damage that would need to be avoided to compete with the damage mitigated an armored tank would be much lower.  Essentially active abilities and dodges would then only take the place of armor and energy shields, not a large health pool too.

Quote from Baelor
In Zoeller's dev blog from the 4/8 Friday Update there's a screenie of Kinetic Ward, a Shadow tanking ability. Here's the ability:

Kinetic Ward
Force cost = 10
Cooldown = 12s
Description = Erects a Kinetic Ward with 8 charges that increases your shield chance by 15% for 20 seconds. Each time you successfully shield, the Kinetic Ward loses 1 charge. Does not break stealth.

My question - does "shielding" negate damage, or just reduce it? The answer might point us toward whether the Shadow will be more "WoW Warlock" or "FFXI Ninja."

Maybe the Shadow is an avoidance tank with a personal shield generator (not unheard of in this time period) that negates entirely or a large portion of damage, and the Kinetic Ward increases the chance it will block attacks. They will probably try to balance the spec around having marginal damage reduction as a baseline talent, and then have it increase with gear. (standard tank model) so that even if they didn't glance/dodge a blow, it wouldn't wreck them entirely.

I think also that the Shadow's saberstaff will function similarly to how a shield works with some of the tanks in WoW.  Because of the extra blade, the Shadow could have a much higher chance of blocking attacks, which could be further improved through skills.

I still firmly belirve the Shadow AC wil be very similar to the Feral Spec of a Druid in WoW, What I mean by that it there will be two builds (plus the shared build) one will promote tanking such as  a Bear for a druid (Melee Tanking), and the other will be like the Cat spec (Melee - Stealth DPS) The shared build will probably contain talents for PvP or such for different play styles for each build.

The Shadow tanking spec will probably have talents that provide situational relief (Such as healing on impact spells, emergeny CDs that increase parry, dodege, or stamina) talents that increase mitigation (dodge, parry, deflection etc.) and stamnia increase talents. All mitigation and stamina buffs will outweigh their armor to create an effective tank.

Or, as was done in WoW, they could give the Shadow Tank an aura that increases armor value from each item by say 300% and increases stamina by 15% Either way, it'll work.

For PvP, Shadow tanking may be rendered mostly undesirable, since the usual specs in pvp are either DPS or Helaing. Most Jedi Shadows will probably spec into Melee - Stealth talents for the same reason OP Feral Cats in WoW do. Effectiveness. THere will be a price to pay for all the mitigation and stamina that could be gained from speccing into tank spec.

One of the reasons bear tanks are effective though is because they have amazingly high armor, so mitigate a good bit of damage when they do get hit, I can't see that being the case with shadows.