I had heard that, in relation to the other tanking classes, the Assassin Tank was harder. I am a sin tank, and I don't find it very hard, but I have only ever tanked on a sin. Is it true that the order from most difficult to least is Assassin > Juggernaut > Powertech?

I'd say so. Having played all three tanks and maining a Shadow tank, we have to keep an eye on a lot more things than PTs and juggs. Due to our low base Damage Reduction and middling number of DCDs, it is important to keep Kinetic / Dark Ward up at all times (but not refresh it too soon), and our entire rotation is based around keeping up four stacks of Shadow Protection (Dark Bulwark?) at all times to give us a little more DR.

I'm not saying Shadow / Sin tanking is *hard*, but it's definitely more complicated than PT and Jugg tanking.

i added to that a clicky relic and the usual adrenal..but for pve it's still my favourite tank

For one thing for Assassin tanks if you use correct rotation or not makes a lot bigger difference than on any other class.

 

Also on Assassin you can loose a huge chunk of mitigation by using abilities too early as well as too late.

 

Like for Juggernaut you have several attacks that for a moment buff your defenses or damage reduction or something, but each of these you just need to use as soon as they become available out of cooldown. You can't **** it up by using something too early.

 

For Assassin it's all different.

 

You need to use abilities at precisely the right time, not too early and not too late.

 

You use Shock and Wither to build up stacks of Harnessed Darkness. Then as soon as you have 3 stacks you cast Force Lightning to build up your Dark Protection which increases your damage reduction.

Use the FL too early (as in with 1-2 stacks of HD) and you get nothing at all. Use it too late and the damage reduction buff falls off before you can renew it. (in this case using it too early is obviously worse as it means you never get the protection buff at all)

 

As for your other buff, the Dark Ward you need to also try to time renewing it at the same second as it runs out. Not too early and not too late.

 

Other things you need to master is the use of defensive cooldowns like Force Shroud which resists all Force and Tech damage so you need to know which boss attacks are Force/Tech and which are Melee/Ranged to know when to use it.

 

On the other hand, Assassin is by far the easiest class to get aggro with, both on single target and especially aoe.

That just isn't worth much unless you know your rotations to maintain your mitigation properly.

 

Saddest part is that like 99% of players seem to be completely clueless about what the rotation on assassin tanks should be and why it is important.

Edited October 25, 2014 by Eternalnight

In other words, a bad Sin tank dies the moment mobs start hitting him, and has a lot of ways to make mobs hit him!

...

On the other hand, Assassin is by far the easiest class to get aggro with, both on single target and especially aoe...

 

I agree with the rest of what you said, but this isn't quite entirely true. Assassins have, by far, the best snap threat gen of any of the tanks barring long cooldown abilities. Juggernauts have, currently, the most impressive snap threat ability in the game in the form of Saber Reflect which, used properly, builds 8k threat + however much damage you reflect doubled as threat, and it builds that against every mob. The only issue with it is that it has a minute cooldown and is thus rarely available on all trash pulls. Juggernauts also have better sustained AoE threat than Assassins, but only because they have more easily spammable AoE moves. We can Shock > Wither > Discharge > Lacerate > Shock > Lacerate > (delay Force Lightning significantly to build more AoE threat) > Lacerate an be out of Force. Juggernauts can Smash > Crushing Blow > Force Scream > Sweeping Slash until Smash comes off cooldown again, using Enrage and the occasional Sundering Blow to build up some more focus. Between that and Saber Reflect, I've ended trash pulls at over 3k dps on my Guardian tank. Powertechs, on the other hand, have much higher burst opening threat than Assassins if they use Explosive Fuel and their Shoulder Cannon, and can produce a lot of AoE threat with free Flame Sweeps, Rail Shot spreading their Ion Gas Cylinder to secondary targets, and then using more Flame Sweeps.

 

tl;dr

Assassins have the best snap AoE threat gen, and extremely strong sustained single target threat gen, but the other classes have us beaten in certain areas.