Ras_Elased Posted June 12, 2012 Share Posted June 12, 2012 In this post i am going to illustrate why the War Hero War Leader is bad and why it will make you feel bad using it. While this fact is quite known and frequently told to newcomers there are no data showing how bad is the truth (at least that i know). Whit the incoming patch i have decided to go deeper into the matter, just to show how bad is the idea to change things without fixing previous problems. The numbers that i am going to show come from Battlemaster and War Hero gear either for vindicator and for war leader and can be easly seen by everyone on the fleet. In the first part of this post i will only compare the five main pieces of gear, those that give you a set bonus (head,chest,gloves,legs,shoes). After this comparison i will talk about the other pieces, made exception of relics. Precisation: in case you are wondering, vindicator gear is the same as weaponmaster, they have the same total, the only difference is the armor class and the fact that on the WH set the fourth stat is placed on a different piece but the total is exactly the same. Moreover there are different implants and earpieces but with no limitations so it is secondary. COMPARISON BATTLEMASTER: vindicator/war leader A full 5-pieces vindicator set gives you: str end exp crit acc power 444 444 500 196 204 96 a full 5-pieces War leader set gives you: str end exp acc def abs surge 405 500 500 153 171 114 102 Let us make a comparison between the two, taking war leader's set as reference and let us see what are the percentages: war leader str is 91.22% of vindicator, endurance is 112.62%, accuracy is 75% First of all we can see that the vindicator set has only six stats while war leader seven, something that could represent that all of them are not weighted in the same way but it could also show that the distribution of values is much more scattered. How stats work helps making some considerations about usefulness. On the vindicator set we have Power, that is an always-on stat because it doesn' apply its effect after a roll, and crit, subjected to a roll. On the war leader set we have def, abs and surge, all of them subjected to a roll. What can be easly seen is that the stats on the vindicator set have a better sinergy because when you attack you have a chance to hit buffed by accuracy, if you hit the damage is decided by str+power and, if granted, the hit is a critical. That means that in Output, dealing damage is quite straightforward in its functioning. In input what we have for the warleader in not so straightforward. A very enlightening consideration can be made if we consider the presence of crit on vindcator and the absence of shield% on war leader. If we place a vindicator in a fight against a war leader what we have is that if he hits the war leader, not only he has a better chance to hit him due to accuracy but the war leader will have an even less chance to avoid some damage due to the lack of shield% and it helps very little the bonus to abs when the vindicator has much more critical, since critical hits ignore shields completely. So in the end, the vindicator will hit more frequently than how much a war leader can avoid\shield damage. In many cases he will not be bothered by the shield since those hits will be criticals. In conclusion the war leader set has 7 stats but they do not have a good sinergy because surge has a very limited use since your crit chance will be low, the lack of shield will make you easier to damage, the lack of accuracy makes active defence much harder since you are not really damaging anyone. To this we should add the expertise buff that increases the different aspects of a fight in a different way, making dealing damage much easier than receiving it. But the worse is yet to come. COMPARISON WAR HERO: vindicator/war leader war hero vindicator str end exp crit acc power surge 461 537 550 175 103 167 106 War hero war leader str end exp def shield abs 405 636 550 105 259 149 In this case, for War leader gear, Str is 87.85% of vindicator, End is 118.44% and there is no another stat that can be directly compared but what we see now is that vindicator has seven stats and war leader six, in particular now there is shield% too. Is this an improvement? Let us see. Now i will show the upgrade happening when passing from battlemaster to War hero for the same set. COMPARISON BATTLEMASTER/WAR HERO: vindicator For the vindicator set the changes are, in percentages: str end crit acc power surge +3.82 +20.95 -10.71 -49.51 +73.96 a100 The a100 value for surge means that the improvement cannot be expressed as a percentage because that stat is not present in the battlemaster set so i used an arbitrary rapresentation since we only need to know that it is there. As you can see there is a reasonable balance because what you get as strenght and power, that influences damage magnitude, is counterbalanced by the significative reduction in accuracy, meaning that you will hit harder but, hopefully, less frequently. Unfortunately, this is probably unbalanced by the fact that there is surge too, that makes the upgrade even more important. This could be argued but it is beyond the purpose of this post. As a whole, i think that nobody could say that passing from Battlemaster to War hero is not an improvement for the vindicator set. COMPARISON BATTLEMASTER\WAR HERO: war leader For the War leader set the changes are, in percentages: str end accuracy defense shield abs surge +0 +25.95 -100 -38.6 a100 +30.7 -100 The numbers are quite clear. By passing to War hero you not only dont see any kind of improvement to damage, since str is the same (+0) but you also lose all the accuracy you received earlier (-100%), meaning that you will hit less and your even rarer critical hits will hit for a significantly smaller damage (-100%), all this in respect to your previous gear. Moreover, you lose defense by a significative amount (-38.6%) while you get a buff to two stats that not only are heavily dependent on random rolls but are not fully functional since critical hits ignore shields. Just to add the insult to the injury, the War leader set is the only set with a bonus that only works in pvp (+5% damage to players) and with a pathetic buff (+1 second to force choke and you will pass that second standing still even with Force grip), meaning that his usefulness is furtherly reduced. If you want to benefit from this buff you have to be in Soresu form and what happened now? They have nerfed the dps even more by removing the damage buff to Single saber mastery when in Soresu and lowering backhand damage. At the contrary, the vindicator set has healing on intercede and increased damage after force jump! Not only intercede is one if not the most important skill for someone that is guarding but they even have a buff to damage and both work in pve too! That is pure genius. Now let us consider the armguards and the belts. There isn't much to say about it because the war leader ones are so bad that if you compare them with the vindicator and you intentionally buy them the game should report you for self-harrassement. It is sufficient to say that the war hero vindicator belt and armguards have both higher strenght and endurance in respect to the war leader one, even though i think that the battlemaster vindicator belt is even better since it has three times the crit of the war hero one with not a big loss of strenght, that at this point is not a problem. I dont think that even the implants are right because once again you gain accuracy with the War leader battlemaster piece and you lose it with the war hero, just to get a little of that defense that you have lost with all the other pieces. About relics, if you want to buy the shield relics (untill they work as they do now) you will probably benefit the most against other juggernaut tanks. That says a lot. In conclusion if you choose to buy the War leader set for your juggernaut the only thing that you are getting is a nerf. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dracosz Posted June 12, 2012 Share Posted June 12, 2012 In this post i am going to illustrate why the War Hero War Leader is bad and why it will make you feel bad using it. While this fact is quite known and frequently told to newcomers there are no data showing how bad is the truth (at least that i know). Whit the incoming patch i have decided to go deeper into the matter, just to show how bad is the idea to change things without fixing previous problems. The numbers that i am going to show come from Battlemaster and War Hero gear either for vindicator and for war leader and can be easly seen by everyone on the fleet. In the first part of this post i will only compare the five main pieces of gear, those that give you a set bonus (head,chest,gloves,legs,shoes). After this comparison i will talk about the other pieces, made exception of relics. Precisation: in case you are wondering, vindicator gear is the same as weaponmaster, they have the same total, the only difference is the armor class and the fact that on the WH set the fourth stat is placed on a different piece but the total is exactly the same. Moreover there are different implants and earpieces but with no limitations so it is secondary. COMPARISON BATTLEMASTER: vindicator/war leader A full 5-pieces vindicator set gives you: str end exp crit acc power 444 444 500 196 204 96 a full 5-pieces War leader set gives you: str end exp acc def abs surge 405 500 500 153 171 114 102 Let us make a comparison between the two, taking war leader's set as reference and let us see what are the percentages: war leader str is 91.22% of vindicator, endurance is 112.62%, accuracy is 75% First of all we can see that the vindicator set has only six stats while war leader seven, something that could represent that all of them are not weighted in the same way but it could also show that the distribution of values is much more scattered. How stats work helps making some considerations about usefulness. On the vindicator set we have Power, that is an always-on stat because it doesn' apply its effect after a roll, and crit, subjected to a roll. On the war leader set we have def, abs and surge, all of them subjected to a roll. What can be easly seen is that the stats on the vindicator set have a better sinergy because when you attack you have a chance to hit buffed by accuracy, if you hit the damage is decided by str+power and, if granted, the hit is a critical. That means that in Output, dealing damage is quite straightforward in its functioning. In input what we have for the warleader in not so straightforward. A very enlightening consideration can be made if we consider the presence of crit on vindcator and the absence of shield% on war leader. If we place a vindicator in a fight against a war leader what we have is that if he hits the war leader, not only he has a better chance to hit him due to accuracy but the war leader will have an even less chance to avoid some damage due to the lack of shield% and it helps very little the bonus to abs when the vindicator has much more critical, since critical hits ignore shields completely. So in the end, the vindicator will hit more frequently than how much a war leader can avoid\shield damage. In many cases he will not be bothered by the shield since those hits will be criticals. In conclusion the war leader set has 7 stats but they do not have a good sinergy because surge has a very limited use since your crit chance will be low, the lack of shield will make you easier to damage, the lack of accuracy makes active defence much harder since you are not really damaging anyone. To this we should add the expertise buff that increases the different aspects of a fight in a different way, making dealing damage much easier than receiving it. But the worse is yet to come. COMPARISON WAR HERO: vindicator/war leader war hero vindicator str end exp crit acc power surge 461 537 550 175 103 167 106 War hero war leader str end exp def shield abs 405 636 550 105 259 149 In this case, for War leader gear, Str is 87.85% of vindicator, End is 118.44% and there is no another stat that can be directly compared but what we see now is that vindicator has seven stats and war leader six, in particular now there is shield% too. Is this an improvement? Let us see. Now i will show the upgrade happening when passing from battlemaster to War hero for the same set. COMPARISON BATTLEMASTER/WAR HERO: vindicator For the vindicator set the changes are, in percentages: str end crit acc power surge +3.82 +20.95 -10.71 -49.51 +73.96 a100 The a100 value for surge means that the improvement cannot be expressed as a percentage because that stat is not present in the battlemaster set so i used an arbitrary rapresentation since we only need to know that it is there. As you can see there is a reasonable balance because what you get as strenght and power, that influences damage magnitude, is counterbalanced by the significative reduction in accuracy, meaning that you will hit harder but, hopefully, less frequently. Unfortunately, this is probably unbalanced by the fact that there is surge too, that makes the upgrade even more important. This could be argued but it is beyond the purpose of this post. As a whole, i think that nobody could say that passing from Battlemaster to War hero is not an improvement for the vindicator set. COMPARISON BATTLEMASTER\WAR HERO: war leader For the War leader set the changes are, in percentages: str end accuracy defense shield abs surge +0 +25.95 -100 -38.6 a100 +30.7 -100 The numbers are quite clear. By passing to War hero you not only dont see any kind of improvement to damage, since str is the same (+0) but you also lose all the accuracy you received earlier (-100%), meaning that you will hit less and your even rarer critical hits will hit for a significantly smaller damage (-100%), all this in respect to your previous gear. Moreover, you lose defense by a significative amount (-38.6%) while you get a buff to two stats that not only are heavily dependent on random rolls but are not fully functional since critical hits ignore shields. Just to add the insult to the injury, the War leader set is the only set with a bonus that only works in pvp (+5% damage to players) and with a pathetic buff (+1 second to force choke and you will pass that second standing still even with Force grip), meaning that his usefulness is furtherly reduced. If you want to benefit from this buff you have to be in Soresu form and what happened now? They have nerfed the dps even more by removing the damage buff to Single saber mastery when in Soresu and lowering backhand damage. At the contrary, the vindicator set has healing on intercede and increased damage after force jump! Not only intercede is one if not the most important skill for someone that is guarding but they even have a buff to damage and both work in pve too! That is pure genius. Now let us consider the armguards and the belts. There isn't much to say about it because the war leader ones are so bad that if you compare them with the vindicator and you intentionally buy them the game should report you for self-harrassement. It is sufficient to say that the war hero vindicator belt and armguards have both higher strenght and endurance in respect to the war leader one, even though i think that the battlemaster vindicator belt is even better since it has three times the crit of the war hero one with not a big loss of strenght, that at this point is not a problem. I dont think that even the implants are right because once again you gain accuracy with the War leader battlemaster piece and you lose it with the war hero, just to get a little of that defense that you have lost with all the other pieces. About relics, if you want to buy the shield relics (untill they work as they do now) you will probably benefit the most against other juggernaut tanks. That says a lot. In conclusion if you choose to buy the War leader set for your juggernaut the only thing that you are getting is a nerf. It isn't all about damage, sadly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BanetheDarkLord Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 It isn't all about damage, sadly. ^ This ^ I know its hard to believe, but in PvP doing damage isnt everything. I've played my tank very successfully with all War Leader gear both BM and starting WH with a 32/7/2 build. Yes you all can yell and scream it all sucks for PvP, but tell that to all the people I play and consistantly finish top 3 on the boards and do my job of keeping my teammates alive because I care about keeping them alive more than killing the opponents. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veeius Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 I think you two are missing the point. WH war leader gear isn't good because it doesn't do as much damage. It isn't good because it doesn't do more damage AND it doesn't provide sufficient durability to make up for the damage loss. In other words, there's no metric by which it makes sense to get WH war leader gear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teioh_White Posted June 13, 2012 Share Posted June 13, 2012 That's pretty much the issue. The added defensive stats on WL gear work on few enough attacks that it doesn't make up for the lack of damage stats. And I don't know about you, but I help my team mates more in dps gear, as a smart crew know not to attack the guy in a tank stance until all his buddies are dead, so it helps if I can actually kill that Sent beating on my Merc, as he won't even look my way until the healers dead, so what good's the ability to dodge his white damage doing for my healer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ras_Elased Posted June 13, 2012 Author Share Posted June 13, 2012 (edited) I agree that dealing damage is not all but i dont know if those who created the war leader gear agree as well. First of all there is the set bonus that makes you deal more damage. Imo, that bonus can have a point now while we still have Single saber mastery that increases damage even in Soresu and we have backhand that does sufficient damage, but what after the patch? The dps of a tank is low and that bonus alone doesn't do much to increase it and it does absolutely zero from the point of view of tanking. It doesn't even work in pve so it doesn't even help you farming your columi gear... Moreover, one more second of Force choke is a joke, considering that if that second adds damage it is like 500, when it is a crit, and can be ignored (the second, not the damage) if your target frees himself from the stun, while you will pass that same second standing still. Changing it for the Intercede bonus would make much more sense but i dont think we will see this change because changing gear stats is a good way to make people quit, no matter the change. When passing from Battlemaster to War hero, you lose all the accuracy you received and you lose a big part of that defense that helps you tanking while receiving shield%, a stat that with all the critical hits and yellow damage that fly in a fight is widely ignored. Imo, a tank should have much more accuracy, in particular more than 100%, and defence for the simple reason that a tank should make you hit him less frequently and eventually making you hit less hard. At the same time, while wearing war leader gear, your health pool doesn't go high that much because five pieces of vindicator + armguards+belt give you 658 endurance = 6580 hp, while the war leader counterpart gives you 766 endurance = 7660 hp. 1080 hp more than a dps are a joke. You lose that amount of health the very first time that he jumps to you with force jump+10% damage from his set bonus, without the need of a critical hit. In the juggernaut skill tree there is Dreadnough that increases Strenght but there isn't a counterpart that increases Endurance. That means that a Vindicator will receive an even bigger benefit from his gear than a war leader, in particular with the new augments. While in soresu you have your armor increased. Unfortunately, expertise increases damage more than defense, there are attacks that penetrate the armor and they come from people with high crit and surge. Quite pointless. With the incoming possibilty of adding an augment to every slot, all the classes that deal damage will see a further increase in that same damage while juggernaut tanks won't since our dps was low. That is why they had to increase treat so much, because our dps would not have been able to generate enough damage and consequently enough threat without spamming taunts, something that would have made the pve'rs mad. In pvp, if you want to survive the incoming damage as a tank you will have to stack defense, in the vain hope to avoid the damage entirely. Since you are not using strenght augments your dps will still be low while damage dealers, by using augments with a main stat plus endurance, will become even more hard to fight, since you will try to kill something that has more hp than before by doing the same damage but receiving much more damage than before. It makes no sense at all! Nevertheless, that doesn't explain why we had to be nerfed in SSM and Backhand and i think that the pve crowd will soon realize that a jug tank is not a good choice in many situations. Edited June 13, 2012 by Ras_Elased Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DNGDangerous Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 (edited) Precisation: in case you are wondering, vindicator gear is the same as weaponmaster, they have the same total, the only difference is the armor class and the fact that on the WH set the fourth stat is placed on a different piece but the total is exactly the same. Moreover there are different implants and earpieces but with no limitations so it is secondary. Vindicator and Weaponmaster is not the same. Vindicator has insanelly good set bonuses! The set bonuses on vindicator alone should already make it the absolute choice between the 3 different armor sets. I dont care if your DPS spec or Tank Spec or AFK in a corner spec... both the 2-piece and the 4-piece set bonuses are the nuts... Heal HP by a x% when u intercede? wow! Bonus damage after you force charge? holy badword! Edited June 16, 2012 by DNGDangerous wall of text Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_FLIPmode Posted June 16, 2012 Share Posted June 16, 2012 So if my juggernaut (who is 32/7/2 immortal spec) has finally got 5/5 for Battlemaster War Leader set, I would benefit more from getting the BM vindicator set and then upgrading that to War Hero? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spazzy_D Posted June 17, 2012 Share Posted June 17, 2012 I am an Immortal Juggernaut with almost full War hero War leader gear, and I wish it was more viable on the defensive front, I haven't really looked into how 1.3 changes effect the gear but from what I've been reading it will not be a real improvement. I had full Battle Master going into 1.2, and at the time pvping with full tank gear in tank spec made me feel pretty much unbeatable (had some Rakata pieces mixed in as well); I was a Hutt Balling machine. Post 1.2 I saw a bigger difference between my friends with dps gear and myself dps wise and not as great a difference survivability, but I didn't want to grind out a new set of Battle Master to then grind out War Hero. Really dumb way of doing things - these number make me sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vaco Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 (edited) its a shame that you are locked on a predefined upgrade path from BM to WH, would have been better if the piece needed was just "battlemaster chest piece" rather than the specific archetype. The prospect of having to regrind an entire BM set and some bits of WH probably means ill just end up retiring the jug Edited June 20, 2012 by Vaco Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ras_Elased Posted June 21, 2012 Author Share Posted June 21, 2012 (edited) So if my juggernaut (who is 32/7/2 immortal spec) has finally got 5/5 for Battlemaster War Leader set, I would benefit more from getting the BM vindicator set and then upgrading that to War Hero? From what i have seen by putting the numbers together, the battlemaster war leader follows a better approach to what kind of stats you should have because all, or most, of the pieces have Defense, that conceptually is better than Shield% since avoinding a damage is always better than absorbing it. In fact, my personal setup is made with a mix of mods and enanchement in order to get a certain amount of stats that i deem fit to my built and play style, meaning that i aim to reach around 1800 endurance and 1600 strength with a str stims, while staying on 1150 expertise. That requires buying a couple of times the same piece of gear to remove a certain mod. At the moment, if i wanted i could buy the earpiece,impants or shield generator of the war leader set but i am not sure that it would be a good idea because the battlemaster ones have a little more endurance and a lot more defense and i am going to wait until they introduce the new relics to decide if i want to get the shield one or the power one, since my augments are a mix of str+end and end+power. In particula because that would mean shifting from tank to dps almost definetely. This was possible until now, with the way ssm works, because you could make and hybrid built with guard and the +5% damage from the set while mixing mods but it wasn't a logic setup since you need to farm much more commendations than other classes, since they don't have a tank tree that does so little dps, starts rage starved and is heavly based on absorption. However, imo, with the incoming patch i dont think that more than 11 points in immortal will be a common choice for tanks in pvp, mostly due to the increased damage generated by the new augments, in particular crits and yellow damage. If you must buy something, buy the wh vindicator belt and armguards since they are better. So my suggestion is to wait untill after the patch to see how they rearrange the Immortal tree and after that decide if going full vindicator or using an hybrid with aimed stats. Edited June 21, 2012 by Ras_Elased Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnthonyMidnight Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 So has there been any change since 1.3? Is BM Vindicator worse or better now than WL Vindicator stuff? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WrykilX Posted June 28, 2012 Share Posted June 28, 2012 ^ This ^ I know its hard to believe, but in PvP doing damage isnt everything. I've played my tank very successfully with all War Leader gear both BM and starting WH with a 32/7/2 build. Yes you all can yell and scream it all sucks for PvP, but tell that to all the people I play and consistantly finish top 3 on the boards and do my job of keeping my teammates alive because I care about keeping them alive more than killing the opponents. You have a great tank mindset but defensive stats in this game in PVP are slightly above useless. The majority of heavy hitting abilities in this game are undefendable yellow damage. However, the damage difference, even if your role is to protect the team first and provide support damage second, is very noticeable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnthonyMidnight Posted June 29, 2012 Share Posted June 29, 2012 (edited) I've noticed a lot of the PVP items drop my Power stats quite a lot but in return I get a raise in a lot of other stats. One example is: Recruit Weaponsmaster's Power Generator +14 Strength +17 Endurance +69 Expertise Rating +21 Accuracy Rating -45 Power +69 Critical Rating +211 Force Power Now is the -45 Power drop worth it considering how many other skills get raised? Edited June 29, 2012 by AnthonyMidnight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AngelEve Posted June 30, 2012 Share Posted June 30, 2012 Look... what's the point of DPS when tanks can soak up all the damage and win? The point of winning a warzone is making the other people DIE and get the objective. Bioware clearly understands that and implemented several changes to improve this, eg. Expertise Buffs (Damage output scales higher than damage abosoption and scales higher than healing) With all your calculations, one thing is very important that is missing, Time. Surviving long enough for your teammates to come out of the spawn is underrated by many, and can't be accounted for in any hard-number calculations. Let's put it this way, the best geared DPS will ALWAYS and SHOULD ALWAYS win vs the best geared TANK or geared HEALER.... why? If that doesn't happen then, everybody should run with 4 healers and 4 tanks in a warzone and let it be a stalemate, every match... every warzone. However, what a good geared TANK/HEALER can do vs the geared DPS is buy TIME, time long enough for reinforcements to arrive, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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