grandmasterub Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 (edited) I've never liked self healing as a mitigation tool or including it in survivability calculations because its usefulness disappears at low health or with high inc damage. Ex: self heals =~1% mitigation. Inc damage = 2000 current hp = 1010 total mit =50% With pure mit no healing you take 1k damage and live with 10hp giving healers an extra gcd to save you. With healing you take 1020 damage and die before the 1% heal mit can save you. Anyway its a bad mechanic where it really matters and a self heal reliant tank will always be at a disadvantage over a pure mit tank. Its the same reason healers that prevent damage will always be better than healers that react to damage Edited February 13, 2012 by grandmasterub Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord_Galadrind Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 I've never liked self healing as a mitigation tool or including it in survivability calculations because its usefulness disappears at low health or with high inc damage. Ex: self heals =~1% mitigation. Inc damage = 2000 current hp = 1010 total mit =50% With pure mit no healing you take 1k damage and live with 10hp giving healers an extra gcd to save you. With healing you take 1020 damage and die before the 1% heal mit can save you. Anyway its a bad mechanic where it really matters and a self heal reliant tank will always be at a disadvantage over a pure mit tank. Its the same reason healers that prevent damage will always be better than healers that react to damage You are correct, healing is *not* mitigation ... Many people often cross pollinate the terms avoidance , mitigation and self-healing which are entirely separate definitions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grandmasterub Posted February 13, 2012 Share Posted February 13, 2012 You are correct, healing is *not* mitigation ... Many people often cross pollinate the terms avoidance , mitigation and self-healing which are entirely separate definitions. Yup but theory craters and developers for that matter seem to lump them together when determining survivability, without taking into account their effectiveness. In most cases mit>avoid>heal yet they are calculated as being equally effective. In reality it is not. Tank A: his survivability is 60%mit, 40%avoid Tank B: his survivability is 35%mit, 65%avoid Tank C: his survivability is 40%mit, 30%avoid, 30%heal If all their "survivability" is mathematically the same, Tank A will always be the best because his mechanic is the most guaranteed. Mitigation doesn't have "bad luck" or bad "timimg" like avoid and heal do. Abilities like harnessed shadows/combat tech need to just apply a damage debuff or ward effect. Any form of preventative damage mitigation. Not reactive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kitru Posted February 14, 2012 Share Posted February 14, 2012 If all their "survivability" is mathematically the same, Tank A will always be the best because his mechanic is the most guaranteed. Mitigation doesn't have "bad luck" or bad "timimg" like avoid and heal do. Each type of mitigation (since all 3 are forms of damage mitigation since they serve to lessen the impact of damage) has its own advantages and disadvantages: Damage reduction is the most stable. It's the level that the other types are measured against simply because, honestly, it's the most common and least interesting. Avoidance is the more chaotic, but has the added advantages of avoiding secondary effects of the attacks in question. In a game like TOR that has few secondary effects attached to attacks, this doesn't really mean much so the advantages of it are lessened, making Avoidance worse, but only within the context of this game. Mitigation through self-healing and absorbing (like Blade Barrier), while generally considered the "worst" since it is the only *active* rather than passive form of mitigation, has its own distinct advantage: healing is blind. Whereas damage reduction and avoidance are specific to attack and/or damage types, creating gaps in your armor, self-healing doesn't care what kind of attack damaged you since all it does is heal the damage in question. Because of these advantages and disadvantages, in TOR, damage reduction is definitely king: there aren't enough secondary effects to make avoidance's only real benefit functionally irrelevant and, since there are only 2 damage "types" in the game (kinetic/energy and internal/elemental) the advantage of a "blind" mitigation mechanism are less than they could be. Of course, this is only comparing them exclusive of one another, which none of the tanks in TOR do: BH/VGs are a combination of damage reduction and avoidance and the other tanks are a combination of all 3 mitigation mechanisms. Honestly, I'm pretty happy with where all of the tanks are at the moment from a total standpoint: a *vast* majority of all tanks' mitigation is accomplished through damage reduction, more than any other mechanism; everything else is just a sliding scale that creates some functional and tactical differences in how the tanks play. The differences in total mitigation for boss fights, as they are now, are so minor that there isn't really a point in bringing them up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grandmasterub Posted February 14, 2012 Share Posted February 14, 2012 The disadvantages of healing outweigh its "blind" advantage anyday. Yes the tanks are relatively balanced right now and its awesome. But in an expansion or two as the level cap rises, damage inflates, and hp increases healing as a mitigation technique will fall behind. (or will be overbuffed and become op). The split between casual and hardcore becomes inevitable in the evolution of an mmo. If you balance for casual healing becomes useless in hardcore. If you balance for hardcore healing tanks solo heroic content... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parthis Posted February 15, 2012 Share Posted February 15, 2012 (edited) The disadvantages of healing outweigh its "blind" advantage anyday. Yes the tanks are relatively balanced right now and its awesome. But in an expansion or two as the level cap rises, damage inflates, and hp increases healing as a mitigation technique will fall behind. (or will be overbuffed and become op). The split between casual and hardcore becomes inevitable in the evolution of an mmo. If you balance for casual healing becomes useless in hardcore. If you balance for hardcore healing tanks solo heroic content... Take heart in one simple fact; the team at BW have managed to make three VERY balanced tanking classes at launch for all raid and HM content in the game... and balancing is a continuous pursuit. The fact that it's balanced now is impressive, which gives you hope it'll be balanced with new content, too. If Shadow/Tankasin mitigation is too low they'll increase it and peel back something else. I'd also like to add; I play a PT and Tankasin, taking them both to HM and NMM Ops... they're both very strong. I agree that healing isn't mitigation, but it does contribute to survival in game, and Assassin tanks have no problems there. The only area I feel there is imbalance right now is in tanking CDs; Juggs have too many compared to the other tanks. Edited February 15, 2012 by Parthis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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