SWTOR Tank School: The Basics

Of the three basic roles (Tank, Healer, DPS), the tank seems to be the one most seldom played, most generally misunderstood, and the one for which there is the most disinformation out there in the general game population. This series of articles is a primer on the basics of tanking for new players, based on the collective skill and wisdom of everyone whose brain I've ever been able to pick on this subject (along with my own experience).

Chapter 1: The Basics

What is a Tank?
A tank is a character designed to be hard to kill, at the expense of being able to kill enemies quickly. This is achieved by using gear with damage mitigation stats (Defense, Shield, Absorb) instead of damage-dealing stats (Power, Crit, Accuracy, Alacrity), and by using defensive "cooldown" abilities.

What is a Tank's job?
A simple question, but one that people so often get wrong. A Tank's job is to PROTECT his or her group. The Tank does this by attracting the attention of all enemies so that those enemies exclusively attack the Tank and no one else. By doing this, the healers can focus their efforts on one single target (or just TWO, in the case of an Operation) which is far more efficient for the healer classes.

To do this effectively, a Tank has to be properly geared that he or she (1) can take the damage without being killed by it immediately, and (2) can generate enough threat to keep the enemies from attacking someone else. Both of these topics will be covered in detail later on.

A common secondary job of the Tank is to execute fight mechanics in those particular battles that require them. Fight mechanics are actually EVERYONE'S responsibility, but typically the Tank shoulders a greater burden than the other roles.

What character classes can be Tanks?
There are six advanced classes in the game that can be tanks (3 on the Republic side and 3 on the Imperial side): The Guardian (Jedi Knight), The Juggernaught (Sith Warrior), The Vanguard (Republic Trooper), The PowerTech (Bounty Hunter), The Jedi Shadow (Consular), and Sith Assassin (Inquisitor).

What all of these classes have in common is the ability to TAUNT, the ability to equip a SHIELD, and some sort of operating mode which generates INCREASED THREAT to all attacks.

To keep things simple, we will deal with just the 3 Republic characters. The Imperial characters work exactly the same way as their Republic counterparts.

And as a side-note, you may notice that those one of those factors (the TAUNT ability) is present on companion characters when you put them in tank mode.

Which tank class is the best one?

The Shadow. Totally the Shadow.

Okay, really that's just an example of my own bias showing through, but it is also a good example of information that is really opinion. This article will include a lot of that, and I will do my best to mark it as such.  A lot of the information out there about tanking, indeed MOST of it, is better classified as expert opinion versus hard facts, so it will be unavoidable.  In cases where advice might be controversial in some way, I'll try to present the pros and cons of all sides.

The real answer to the question is that all 3 are viable, and each of the three have some minor strengths and weaknesses over the others that might make one a little bit better for a particular job. As you play the tank characters, you will get to know those strengths and weaknesses well.

What about PvP?
The short answer to this question is that this article is going to focus on PvE almost exclusively. Tanking in PvP is fundamentally the same, but significantly different in the details--because other players are not bound by the rules of Aggro, there's a greater focus on being able to defeat other players one-on-one, and because many of your abilities change in a PvP environment. So unless it is explicitly stated otherwise, assume that this discussion is about PvE environments and that all enemies are NPC mobs and bosses.

Coming up:
In the next chapter, we'll discuss what Aggro/Threat is (two names for the same thing), how it works in detail, and how you can manipulate it to control the fight.