Numbers on the Shadow armor nerf in PvE

[LagunaD]

The shadow "survivability" nerf is terrible news for PvE shadow tanks, thanks to PvP whining.

 

If Shadows have a survival advantage over the other tanks in PvE, it is so small that nobody has actually noticed it. Nobody specifically looks for Shadow tanks vs. the others for EC, as would be expected if the gap were large enough to merit a hit of this size.

 

I ran the numbers carefully.

 

The current situation is that Shadow tanks get a 20% armor increase from the Stasis talent, and 155.8% from Combat Stance (the tooltip specifying +150% is wrong, or rounded downward; the actual bonus is 155.8%). These bonuses are additive.

 

A full-Rakata Shadow Tank currently has 285*4 (bracers, belt, boots, gloves) + 456*3 (helm, chest, legs) = 2508 base armor rating.

 

This is increased to 2508 * (2.558 + 0.200) = 6917 by Combat Technique and Stasis; this is the number you would see on your character sheet. This gives 39.04% Kinetic/Energy reduction, which is added to the 2% reduction from the Jedi Resistance talent, and the 2% bonus from the armor set. So a full Rakata Shadow tank currently mitigates 43.04% of Kinetic/Energy damage. Equivalently, all damage you do not avoid is multiplied by 0.5694.

 

After the nerf, your armor rating in the same gear will be 2508*(2.150 + 0.200) = 5894. (The bonus on the test server *is* +115%). This gives 35.31% Kinetic/Energy reduction, which (with the Jedi Resistance and set bonuses) translates to 39.31% Kinetic/Energy mitigation. So after the nerf, all damage you do not avoid is multiplied by 0.6069.

 

Because mitigation is multiplicative, the damage you will take after the nerf, compared to now, is:

 

damage multiplier = 0.6069/0.5694 = 1.066

 

In other words, regardless of other defensive stats (Defense, Shield, Absorb), a Rakata-geared Shadow tank will take 6.6% more Kinetic/Energy damage than they do currently. Every hit that lands for 1000 now will land for 1066 after the nerf.

 

In more practical terms, our Armor Rating is reduced by 6917 - 5894 = 1023. This armor reduction is almost as big as tanking without, say, a chestpiece equipped currently. It is much larger than tanking without, say, boots equipped currently. So it is essentially like losing the armor value from 1-2 pieces of gear.

 

Another way of quantifying the nerf in practical terms: go replace all your Rakata armor mods, including wrists and belt, with Level 50 blue crafted mods. You will then have about the same damage reduction you can expect after 1.3.

 

And in addition, our self-healing (which is frequently interrupted by knockback spam and/or the need to move or interrupt) will be reduced by ~40%...

 

The quote in post about "balance" changes says:

 

Rather than hit armor or self-healing too hard, we’ve opted to adjust both by a much smaller amount.

 

A 6-7% increase in incoming damage, a 15% reduction in armor and a 40% reduction in healing is "much smaller" than...what? Forcing us to tank naked?

 

The balance of PvE tanks is currently very close; AoE threat being maybe one of the few areas where there is a noticeable imbalance, and that is being addressed by making threat essentially a non-issue for any class. To a very good approximation, none of the tank classes is currently preferred to any of the others; certainly not to the extent that, say, ranged DPS is favored over melee DPS.

 

It is really infuriating that we are being hammered as PvE tanks due to PvP whining.

Edited June 7, 2012 by LagunaD

[BigUten]

/signed. Apparently this game is made only for Guardians and Juggernauts. And NO i am not gonna roll one. Good Riddance Edited June 7, 2012 by BigUten

[TangTsu]

This is farking stupid. I've paid close attention to my dmg taken compared to guardians / vanguards who are similarly geared, and while I do take more dmg the self-healing mitigates most of it. We are very much on par with other tank classes and have significantly fewer defensive cooldowns. This will totally ruin PvE shadow tanks.

 

If it ain't broke don't fix it!

[Docmal]

I have validated these numbers on my own shadow tank.

 

I also did some tests and came up with this comparison:

 

After the nerf while wearing 3/7 Black Hole / Rakata my armor factor will be less than currently wearing Daily Gear.

 

I could live with the 7% damage increase OR the healing decrease but both is too much.

[Nuzt]

/signed. Apparently this game is made only for Guardians and Juggernauts. And NO i am not gonna roll one. Good Riddance

 

No, the issue is they listen to whiners then claim their metrics showed this. The worst part about it is people cried about shadow burst/dps in PvP which other then the adrenal nerfs was not adressed what so ever. I'm assuming Mauraders/Sents were upset that they couldn't steam roll evey class in the game while smashing their head on their keyboards so this fix was needed to appease them also.

 

There should be a training video made from this dev team and shown to all other devs so they know what not to do when making an MMO.

[Nippon]

/signed. Apparently this game is made only for Guardians and Juggernauts. And NO i am not gonna roll one. Good Riddance

 

LOL

 

Actually prior to your Minor nerf, Shadow tanks were far superior to Guards / Vanguards if you had any clue how to stat one or play one (Ie: not the noobs using accuracy on there gear) so get over it, you are now on par.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Nippon

[Dyvim]

I have validated these numbers on my own shadow tank.

 

I also did some tests and came up with this comparison:

 

After the nerf while wearing 3/7 Black Hole / Rakata my armor factor will be less than currently wearing Daily Gear.

 

I could live with the 7% damage increase OR the healing decrease but both is too much.

 

People *****ed that shadow tanks did too much dps...personally compared to guardians and vanguards, vanguards are the REAL dps problem. But ok. So what do the do, they screw with our armour and heals. If dps was the problem, why screw with armor, and then not just a TWEAK, this a a BIG f'n nerf nuke. Then they nerfed the heals in TWO ways. A 3 pronged nerf, all to something that wasnt the QQ's problem, dps. Stupid. Really stupid.

[Nippon]

It is really infuriating that we are being hammered as PvE tanks due to PvP whining.

 

/snip

 

Yet every Shadow Tank in my Guild basically rocks in any Flashpoint and Op, can solo just about anything in game minus world bosses (actually they can solo most of those as well) and have been the premo tank since launch.

 

I warned them, I warned them till i was blue in the face, stop soloing stuff, stop making cups of tea while you tank OPS, but did they listen...NO. They bragged all over the Forums how great they were and now are suffering the consequences. Trust me....You do not have close to the figures Bioware has and anybody with half a brain could see that a mediocre geared shadow could get away with murder.

 

They can even run around in the Rakata Accuracy gear and do a good job....Try that on a Guardian or Vanguard.

Edited June 7, 2012 by Nippon

[Okamakiri]

LOL

 

Actually prior to your Minor nerf, Shadow tanks were far superior to Guards / Vanguards if you had any clue how to stat one or play one (Ie: not the noobs using accuracy on there gear) so get over it, you are now on par.

 

You're so full of ****, your eyes are brown. Sin tanks are already the worst tanks on any boss that loves to ignore shields (Stormcaller and Kephess in Denova just to name two). Jugs and PTs already take about 80% of the dmg we do on attacks that don't get defended or shielded. With these changes, sin's damage intake will be far too great to heal through on any encounter where shields are heavily ignored or useless, it would be idiotic to use us over the other two tanks who have both better mitigation and superior tanking cooldowns.

 

This change is clearly an answer to PVP whiners. I couldn't care less if they got rid of self healing all together and brought our mitigation UP to where the other two tanks are. Instead, they're making us even worse for PVE. If these changes go through, I'm done with my sin, and quite possibly with the game too. And in that case, my brother and gf will be done as well, and THAT is a fact, not some empty nerd ragequit threat.

[Zenthrax]

Soloing content in customized gear you've spent well over 10million credits + healer/dps companion gear does not equal an easymode class ... that equals using your brain to spec correctly

[Psycoris]

I completely agree, I didn't post anything when we received all the other nerfs along the way (I know it has been awhile since our last sin/shadow change), but this upcoming nerf is taking things too far.

 

Currently doing the math I'm not even receiving the full 150% armor rating buff that I am supposed to be it is currently only affecting me by 129.8%, this was seconded by another sin tank within the guild so I may be missing something or it is already broken.

 

Bioware Double check your numbers and find a better way to separate PvP and PvE if you want to swing that nerf bat. You already lost all the ops pvpser, keep swinging and you wont have anyone left to swing at.

 

Psy

[LagunaD]

Here's the thing that makes me very skeptical:

 

Players are hyper-sensitive to the most minor perceived advantages. To the point that people will roll a different class when they think it's the flavor of the month, even when the difference is beyond the threshold of notice with huge sample sizes. Moreover, they will discriminate, mercilessly and often stupidly, against classes or specs that are perceived to be underpowered.

 

Maybe my server, which is one of the higher pop ones, is atypical. And maybe all the people I raid with (which includes, at least occasionally, virtually all the serious raiders on the server) are atypical. But I see no excess of Shadow tanks in PvE ops, in fact, I think there is a slight deficit. I have only tanked an Op once that I can remember with the other tank also a Shadow. I have tanked many, many Ops - guild and PUG, where the second tank was a Guardian or Vanguard. Now, you might say, raids prefer to mix their tanks - but I've also never been turned away from a raid because "we already have a Shadow tank", and if Shadows are so good that they can eat a 6-7% incoming damage nerf and a ~40% healing nerf, and still be balanced with other tanks after that, I would have thought raid leaders would prefer to stack Shadow tanks, but have seen zero evidence of that.

 

So my point is, this alleged "imbalance" in survivability does not seem to have been widely noticed, if noticed at all, by most people doing endgame PvE. I take no position on whether there is or isn't a problem in PvP - but if there is, PvE tanking should not be sacrificed to remedy it.

 

I would like to see some graphs of these "survivability targets" for all tank classes in Denova, and understand on exactly what basis we are effectively being downgraded from Rakata to blue crafted gear in terms of armor mitigation. I strongly suspect that what they are really doing is basing this off PvP.

Edited June 7, 2012 by LagunaD

[Leafy_Bug]

Good to see that some still use those brain cells. I am running some numbers now on my Shadow tank and I seem to be getting similar results to you op. KUDOS for a detailed test which, for the love of god, does not 'set the record straight by using PVP'.

 

My question is : if we are taking over 6 % more damage at any given time, will my slow time (reducing damage by 5%) compensate for this while active?

[NoTomorrow]

Blame the shadow performance in pvp. This class has annoyed the crap out of everyone, and there are no signs that it will underperform now.

[Missandei]

So basically we now have 3 DPS trees..

First - medium ranged DOT specced DPS..

Second - melee DPS..

Third - melee semiDPS with ability to Taunt..

Edited June 7, 2012 by Missandei

[Val-Jean]

I'd been looking forward to end-game raiding with the guild (pvping to pass the monotony between datacron hunting). I'm not looking forward to those raids anymore. I might just forget my tanksin for a while, which is sad, because I had been looking forward to getting PvE gear with my guild ...

[LagunaD]

My question is : if we are taking over 6 % more damage at any given time, will my slow time (reducing damage by 5%) compensate for this while active?

 

You will take 6.6% more Kinetic/Energy damage than you currently take under otherwise identical conditions, period.

 

Every hit you currently take, multiply it by 1.066 after 1.3.

 

Another practical way of looking at the nerfs: every time you drop below 10-15% health now, you will probably be dead after 1.3, because you took 6-7% more damage and every Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness healed you for 4% less of your total health pool.

[LagunaD]

Currently doing the math I'm not even receiving the full 150% armor rating buff that I am supposed to be it is currently only affecting me by 129.8%, this was seconded by another sin tank within the guild so I may be missing something or it is already broken.

 

You are calculating it incorrectly. Please see the original post of this thread.

 

The 20% armor increase from Stasis (Eye of the Storm for Assassins) is additive (not multiplicative) with the 155.8% increase from the stance. If you have the Stasis/Eye of the Storm, the number that shows up in your character panel with the stance off is 120% of your base armor value. The number that shows up with the stance on is 275.8% of your base armor value.

 

Note that 275.8/120 = 229.8% = +129.8%, which is exactly the increase you see.

Edited June 7, 2012 by LagunaD

[Kawiki]

Blame the shadow performance in pvp. This class has annoyed the crap out of everyone, and there are no signs that it will underperform now.

 

Leave. You actually cheered after this news dropped and were on a crusade against Shadows for months.

 

Go play your mara and BTW you are still going to be annoyed by us in PvP when 1.3 hits.

[BroadStreetBully]

You're so full of ****, your eyes are brown. Sin tanks are already the worst tanks on any boss that loves to ignore shields (Stormcaller and Kephess in Denova just to name two). Jugs and PTs already take about 80% of the dmg we do on attacks that don't get defended or shielded. With these changes, sin's damage intake will be far too great to heal through on any encounter where shields are heavily ignored or useless, it would be idiotic to use us over the other two tanks who have both better mitigation and superior tanking cooldowns.

 

This change is clearly an answer to PVP whiners. I couldn't care less if they got rid of self healing all together and brought our mitigation UP to where the other two tanks are. Instead, they're making us even worse for PVE. If these changes go through, I'm done with my sin, and quite possibly with the game too. And in that case, my brother and gf will be done as well, and THAT is a fact, not some empty nerd ragequit threat.

 

This is a nerd ragequit threat. Back to the point though.

 

Shadows are currently better tanks than any other class. They have good defense, great shields, and decent absorb. Guardians have high defense but low shield and absorb, and vanguards have low defense and high shield/absorb. So while shadows had less armor, they were getting good returns from all three mitigation stats instead of just 1 or 2. They paid for this with the fact that they had less damage reduction from armor. They also had high self-healing. After this nerf, they still will do decent self-healing. If you somehow thought these classes were all magically balanced right now, then you have bigger issues than this nerf.

[kornbredd]

The shadow "survivability" nerf is terrible news for PvE shadow tanks, thanks to PvP whining.

 

If Shadows have a survival advantage over the other tanks in PvE, it is so small that nobody has actually noticed it. Nobody specifically looks for Shadow tanks vs. the others for EC, as would be expected if the gap were large enough to merit a hit of this size.

 

I ran the numbers carefully.

 

The current situation is that Shadow tanks get a 20% armor increase from the Stasis talent, and 155.8% from Combat Stance (the tooltip specifying +150% is wrong, or rounded downward; the actual bonus is 155.8%). These bonuses are additive.

 

A full-Rakata Shadow Tank currently has 285*4 (bracers, belt, boots, gloves) + 456*3 (helm, chest, legs) = 2508 base armor rating.

 

This is increased to 2508 * (2.558 + 0.200) = 6917 by Combat Technique and Stasis; this is the number you would see on your character sheet. This gives 39.04% Kinetic/Energy reduction, which is added to the 2% reduction from the Jedi Resistance talent, and the 2% bonus from the armor set. So a full Rakata Shadow tank currently mitigates 43.04% of Kinetic/Energy damage. Equivalently, all damage you do not avoid is multiplied by 0.5694.

 

After the nerf, your armor rating in the same gear will be 2508*(2.150 + 0.200) = 5894. (The bonus on the test server *is* +115%). This gives 35.31% Kinetic/Energy reduction, which (with the Jedi Resistance and set bonuses) translates to 39.31% Kinetic/Energy mitigation. So after the nerf, all damage you do not avoid is multiplied by 0.6069.

 

Because mitigation is multiplicative, the damage you will take after the nerf, compared to now, is:

 

damage multiplier = 0.6069/0.5694 = 1.066

 

In other words, regardless of other defensive stats (Defense, Shield, Absorb), a Rakata-geared Shadow tank will take 6.6% more Kinetic/Energy damage than they do currently. Every hit that lands for 1000 now will land for 1066 after the nerf.

 

In more practical terms, our Armor Rating is reduced by 6917 - 5894 = 1023. This armor reduction is almost as big as tanking without, say, a chestpiece equipped currently. It is much larger than tanking without, say, boots equipped currently. So it is essentially like losing the armor value from 1-2 pieces of gear.

 

Another way of quantifying the nerf in practical terms: go replace all your Rakata armor mods, including wrists and belt, with Level 50 blue crafted mods. You will then have about the same damage reduction you can expect after 1.3.

 

And in addition, our self-healing (which is frequently interrupted by knockback spam and/or the need to move or interrupt) will be reduced by ~40%...

 

The quote in post about "balance" changes says:

 

 

 

A 6-7% increase in incoming damage, a 15% reduction in armor and a 40% reduction in healing is "much smaller" than...what? Forcing us to tank naked?

 

The balance of PvE tanks is currently very close; AoE threat being maybe one of the few areas where there is a noticeable imbalance, and that is being addressed by making threat essentially a non-issue for any class. To a very good approximation, none of the tank classes is currently preferred to any of the others; certainly not to the extent that, say, ranged DPS is favored over melee DPS.

 

It is really infuriating that we are being hammered as PvE tanks due to PvP whining.

 

I second this! I played tanksin since beta and launch and is my main. I have played on the pts server and YES I notice a difference. I notice I die alot faster and easier than before. At first I had great survivability now it seems they are really gunning for me now since the patch, like they think im easy to kill. And i am now with this nerf, so much that I went back to playing my Arsenal BH.(BTW I'm in Full BM augmented survivor gear with some WH relics earpieces and implants) So imo of the nerf I believe that they took it tooo far! We are not that overpowered that our class deserved this. I have a question: "What is the Tankassassin good for now?? Why even have the tank tree if they didnt want us to tank!? And what kills me is that now we get 6-7% increase in incoming damage, a 15% reduction in armor and a 40% reduction in healing and they expect us to tank? Tank what?? Like I said what is the Darkness tree there for now?

[Shouei]

dude the whole nerf shadows the fk ur telling me spending all this time gearing my shadow up tanking your gonna nerf them then talk about oh hey everything unbalaced lets just nerf some classes fk it i never knew this game was just about guardians and juggernaunts

[Heezdedjim]

This is bad.

[LagunaD]

Some more numbers for comparison.

 

Using the known DR formulae and the known combat procedure, it is possible to calculate the fraction of incoming damage taken, including mitigation, avoidance, and shielding.

 

For purposes of this study, I compared a post-1.3 Shadow with a Vanguard. In both cases, I used full Campaign gear, with Black Hole Implants and Earpieces. I do not use Rakata because the Rakata itemization does not reflect a reasonable tanking build (ridiculously excessive Accuracy).

 

A full Campaign Shadow has the following stats:

Armor: 2613 (base)

Defense Rating: 199

Shield Rating: 546

Absorb Rating: 409

 

Apart from armor, a full Campaign Vanguard has nearly identical stats:

Armor: 4935 (base)

Defense Rating: 203

Shield Rating: 546

Absorb Rating: 409

 

To calculate the total fraction of incoming damage taken ("Squishiness") I assume that all self-buffs that can be maintained continuously are maintained. That means Kinetic Ward for Shadow and Power Screen for Vanguard. I also include all bonuses from talents and set bonuses.

 

Here are the modified stats (after 1.3):

 

Shadow:

 

R = Kinetic/Energy Damage Reduction: 40.25%

D = Defense Chance: 22.53%

S = Shield Chance: 64.91%

A = Absorb Percentage: 54.04%

 

Vanguard:

 

R = Kinetic/Energy Damage Reduction: 53.78%

D = Defense Chance: 13.64%

S = Shield Chance: 52.91%

A = Absorb Percentage: 62.04%

 

Using the known combat table and related procedure, the fraction of incoming damage taken (Squishiness = Q) can be calculated directly from these numbers:

 

Q = (1-R) * (1-D) * (1+C*M-S*A) /(1+C*M)

 

where C is the enemy critical chance (assume C = 0.1), and M is the enemy critical damage bonus (assume M = 0.5). The value of Q does not depend much on the assumed values of C and M, but they need to be included to reflect the fact that critical hits cannot be shielded.

 

 

Q values:

1.3 Shadow: Q = 0.3083

Vanguard: Q = 0.2744

 

The ratio of these numbers is the percentage of additional damage a Shadow will take compared to a Vanguard:

 

0.3083/0.2744 = 1.124

 

So a 1.3 Shadow in full Campaign gear will take 12.4% more damage than a Vanguard in full Campaign gear, including ALL defensive combat stats.

 

I do not see how our self-heals could possibly make up 12.4% of a boss's damage, even before they are nerfed by ~40% themselves...

 

We can also make the comparison using a Shadow in the current game version.

 

Repeating the calculation but ignoring the nerf to our armor, the values come out:

 

1.2 Shadow: Q = 0.2888

 

which again should be compared to Q = 0.2744 for a Vanguard in identical quality gear:

 

0.2888/0.2744 = 1.052

 

This means without nerf, we would take 5.2% more damage than a Vanguard. That seems perfectly in line with what our self-heals are currently capable of, given that they are frequently interrupted or outright unusable due to mechanics (c.f. Kephess)

 

As a side note, the differences cannot be made up by debuffs, either. Vanguards have a 4% enemy damage debuff which can be maintained continuously, just like Slow Time. And their Smoke Grenade reduces target accuracy by 20% over 30% of the fight (18s uptime/60s cooldown), making it actually slightly better than our Force Breach accuracy debuff. Basically the debuffs (Slow Time + Force Breach vs. Static Field + Smoke Grenade) are a wash.

 

I conclude that the claimed explanation for the nerf (PvE survivability too good) doesn't hold water. In fact, for PvE our squishiness *is* almost perfectly balanced currently (at least with Vanguards).

Edited June 7, 2012 by LagunaD

[QuiQuaeQuod]

They said in the article about this they wanted small nudges...

 

Then slashed our self-heal by HALF and reduced our armour effectively by 14%. What a complete joke!

 

Good thing I have a lvl 50 Guardian, my beloved lvl 50 Shadow Tank will officially be mincemeat. Why not buff Guardian slightly and nerf Shadow ever so gently?

 

 

This is almost as bad as the awful new Project animation.