I've been rocking Combat stance full-time for the past few levels, definitely seems to help in PVP and the lost PVE burst in Shadow Breach has been sucked up by my change in play.
Plus the 5% accuracy hit is nice (does it work in PVP? What about things like taunts etc?)
See, that pisses me off though. Whats the point in +defense and +shield/absorb if it only works on the weak attack? Then they go so far as to put alot of it on the Tank PVP armor.
I picked a shadow over a guardian because I thought the idea of a tank stealther was cool. Little did I know they have some strange idea of pvp tanking.
It doesnt help the fact that Ive been crafting towards some really nice +defense gear. I made the lvl 50 blue helm into a tier 2 purple. and i actually like it better than the pvp helm, but oh well.
as a healer that gimps themselves in order to support teammates, I'm a huge fan of my abilities being nerfed 30% by default.I am a Shadow Tank and I love pvp.
Guess what?! Shielding and Defense only work on normal attacks. You cant Shield a critical.
AWESOME.
I have to rethink everything until a dev posts on the issue. Just thought you should know.
The Tier 2 PvP helm > PvE helm in PvP, period. Expertise is just so good, and apparently, the budget cost on it is very low. So I gain like 40 expertise and lose like 20 stats from PvE stuff. The PvE will probably be better once you really get some expertise DR. But I remember someone in our guild mentioning it was a flat 20% before DR. Someone else said 10. Don't have the gear to really look at it myself right now.
Armor End Will Def Shield Absorb Acc Expertise
PVP Helm 456 119 70 49 51 50
Crafted Tier 2 404 82 52 71 32 47
Anytime you feel shitty about your class just remind yourself at least you are not a Marauder/Sentinel that literally has zero useful abilities in PvP, and you'll instantly feel better.