PvE Endgame Vanguard Tank stats, rules of thumb

[CitizenFry]

I've been doing a lot of spreadsheet work to optimize my Vanguard tank the last few days, and I've gotten some insights into how I should lay out my stats for optimizing my survivability.

 

tl;dr: For a Vanguard tank, Defense Rating should be about 1/5 of your stat point allotment, Shield Rating and Absorb Rating should be roughly equal to each other (2/5 each) with Shield Rating being slightly higher. Also, the enhancements in the stock Supercommando sets are AWFUL, with the exception of the Columi gloves and helmet, so you should try to replace them ASAP.

 

Assumptions made:

1. You're taking everything in the talent tree that improves your defenses (notably Ceramic Plating, Shield Cycler, Counterattack, and Power Screen). Of course, you should certainly be getting Static Field, Rebraced Armor, Smoke Grenade, and Power Armor as well, but they don't change any of my calculations.

2. I've done the calculations with Power Screen at four stacks (+8% absorption). This is trivial to achieve and maintain (you can easily have it running within the first ten seconds of a fight, and it shouldn't ever fall off), but you will get a significantly different stat weighting (more towards Defense Rating) if you disregard it.

 

More detailed observations:

1. Defense Rating, Shield Rating, and Absorb Rating (hereafter abbreviated "DSA") are pretty much the only stats you care about. Armor Rating doesn't really come at the cost of anything else you care about. Endurance is good and you should get it where you can, but a point of Endurance is not worth more than a point of DSA. Each point of DSA is worth ~0.01% expected damage. Each point of Endurance is worth about 11hp. For endgame content, you will probably take more than 110k damage in a fight as a tank, so the DSA is better.

2. Your 4-piece set bonus is important. 2% dodge chance is great, AND it applies to all attacks, not just melee/ranged. You can come out slightly ahead on melee/ranged attacks if you drop it for four Defense augments, but you lose all of that against force and tech attacks. (1.3 update: and since you can add augments to anything now, you really have no excuse to drop your set bonus...)

3. For endgame levels of DSA, your expected value of damage taken is pretty flat in Defense Rating near the optimum. That is, if you're just rearranging your DSA, as long as your Defense Rating is close to correct (somewhere between 1/4 and 1/6 of your DSA budget), you should mostly be worrying about the balance between Shield and Absorb ratings.

 

edit:

Q: Hey, what about that Smoke Grenade? 20 seconds of -20% accuracy every 60s is a big deal!

A: If you calculate as if Smoke Grenade is running all the time, it's going to bias you heavily towards Defense Rating, to the point that it is (slightly) more important than Shield or Absorb, leading you to want to balance DSA pretty evenly (1/1/1). If you calculate with no Smoke Grenade at all, you get the 1/2/2 weighting mentioned above. If you average in 20s of Smoke Grenade with 40s of not-Smoke Grenade, you come out a bit behind in survivability over the course of the minute for the 1/1/1 weighting. This is where it becomes a judgment call. I prefer the more predictable HP dropoff from higher shield/absorb than the more random (spiky) nature of higher defense. It's up to you and your healers!!

Edited August 7, 2012 by CitizenFry

[Suryi]

Thanks for the time you put into this.

[ATango]

Oh nice. I've been thinking about starting to tank PvE. Thanks!!

[MatticusFinch]

Thanks so much for the insight, I have a few more questions:

 

Does the type of play you're participating in change the weighting of these numbers much? (i.e. PvE or PvP)

The War Hero and Black Hole gear sets appear to favor shield and absorb more heavily than defense in general. Is this change in the weighting significant enough to merit switching mods out in your opinion?

[CitizenFry]

Thanks so much for the insight, I have a few more questions:

 

Does the type of play you're participating in change the weighting of these numbers much? (i.e. PvE or PvP)

The War Hero and Black Hole gear sets appear to favor shield and absorb more heavily than defense in general. Is this change in the weighting significant enough to merit switching mods out in your opinion?

 

I'm not really a PVPer, so modify your expectations accordingly. But I will say that

- Automatic critical hits exist in PVP, but not in PVE (to my knowledge). This will increase the value of Defense Rating relative to Shield and Absorb, as you can dodge a guaranteed crit, but you can't shield it.

- Force and Tech attacks tend to be more common in PVP than PVE. This increases the value of Endurance relative to DSA.

- None of the PVP set bonuses relate to survivability, so if you wanted maximum survivability, you'd get the 4-piece PVE Supercommando set bonus, assuming it didn't cost you any Expertise. That's potentially a lot of offense you're giving up though (+5% damage for PVP Supercommando, or various other bonuses for other PVP sets). Your call.

- I haven't thought about Expertise at all, so no comments there. I'd GUESS it's your best defensive stat, point for point, but I am not even sure what the equations for it are, and I haven't done calculations for it.

Edited June 25, 2012 by CitizenFry

[BlastingGravy]

Do these calculations factor in the on-shield relic? I would imagine a 405 absorb rating boost every few seconds would make a big difference in your calculations.

[CitizenFry]

Do these calculations factor in the on-shield relic? I would imagine a 405 absorb rating boost every few seconds would make a big difference in your calculations.

 

I hadn't included the effects of relics at all. For my baseline, not-quite-max-for-1.2 stats, adding 405 absorb decreases my expected damage taken by about 5%. If I weight my stats to maximize my defense while the proc is running, it leads to hugely favoring Shield rating and a small increase in Defense rating. This improves my expected damage taken by 2% while the proc is running over the baseline, but makes the damage taken while the proc isn't running worse by 3%. Considering you will be in an no-proc state about three times as much as a proc state, that seems like a bad tradeoff, so I wouldn't recommend reweighting your stats for the proc relic.

 

Similar results hold for Imperiling Serenity (+405 Def for 20s) and Shrouded Crusader (+255 shield+absorb for 20s), in that you don't want to rebalance your base stats for them. The Shrouded Crusader relic provides better expected damage reduction than the Imperiling Serenity by a pretty good margin (no surprise there, as we favor S+A a lot more than Defense, and you get more total DSA anyway). Assuming you fire off your click relic every time it comes off cooldown (2 minutes, right?) the average expected damage reduction over time is almost identical(!) for the proc relic vs the click relic. Hopefully you can time the use of the click relic to heavy damage phases for extra mitigation, but then you probably lose out some mitigation by not keeping it on cooldown, etc. Your choice!

 

Assuming the War Hero relics change in 1.3 as indicated on dulfy.net (flat +113 Defense or Shield) that's going to be slightly better for your average survivability than either the clicky or the proc relic. It's not a big difference though (I admit to thinking the sky was falling before doing the calcs), and you are giving up a good chunk of +power from the campaign relics, and the ability to focus the extra survivability during spike phases on the clicky.

Edited June 25, 2012 by CitizenFry

[Mozivicus]

I have a question about the soft caps for DSA. Have you found them in your calculations? Or is the soft cap for DSA not a number, but rather just a % as outlined above, which is consistent thought the leveling and progression of our characters and gear?

 

Fantastic work OP!!

[CitizenFry]

I'm not concerned about "soft caps" because I'm trying to maximize survivability. But even if I were, the returns on DSA don't diminish very rapidly.

 

Do note that DSA augments all come with +12 power, so if you're trying to hybridize tank/DPS, I highly recommend them (as opposed to Power or Aim augments, which come with icky +12 endurance)

Edited June 29, 2012 by CitizenFry

[RhinoUF]

Thank you for laying this out in such an understandable comprehensive way. Been looking for solid info on Vanguard tank stat distribution for awhile.

 

I also would like to inquire about stat-caps. Currently I'm rolling with 14.5% Defense, 52% Shield and 54%. By your write up it looks like I may need a tad more def and to flip the shield rating and absorb percentages. I'll have to wait till I get off work to run the actual point totals you discuss above.

 

From researching other posts it does seem there is a cap, however most of the stuff I was able to find showed the cap at 50% for SR and absorb for diminishing returns, theses were pre 1.2 however and even mentioned that 50% was impossible to get at that time anyways. As I am now over both of those thresholds in SR and AB, I want to make sure I am not pissing in the wind.

 

Would love to find if there really is a set drop off % where stacking is no longer viable (even with correct distribution). Any additional intel is appriciated.

[CitizenFry]

Thank you for laying this out in such an understandable comprehensive way. Been looking for solid info on Vanguard tank stat distribution for awhile.

 

I also would like to inquire about stat-caps. Currently I'm rolling with 14.5% Defense, 52% Shield and 54%. By your write up it looks like I may need a tad more def and to flip the shield rating and absorb percentages. I'll have to wait till I get off work to run the actual point totals you discuss above.

 

From researching other posts it does seem there is a cap, however most of the stuff I was able to find showed the cap at 50% for SR and absorb for diminishing returns, theses were pre 1.2 however and even mentioned that 50% was impossible to get at that time anyways. As I am now over both of those thresholds in SR and AB, I want to make sure I am not pissing in the wind.

 

Would love to find if there really is a set drop off % where stacking is no longer viable (even with correct distribution). Any additional intel is appriciated.

 

The theoretical maximum amount of shield% or absorb% you can gain from Shield Rating/Absorb Rating is 50%, if you had infinite DSA. Remember that your actual shield% and absorb% are higher than that though (+5%/20% base for shield generator, plus talents, etc). The game may have a cap on total shield%/absorb%; I don't know what that might be.

 

For reference: I'm pretty well geared (58s and 61s) and mostly augmented. My standing-around-on-fleet values are roughly 13% dodge, 58% shield, 58% absorb.

Edited June 29, 2012 by CitizenFry

[TheRampage]

I

 

tl;dr: For a Vanguard tank, Defense Rating should be about 1/5 of your stat point allotment, Shield Rating and Absorb Rating should be roughly equal to each other (2/5 each) with Shield Rating being slightly higher. Also, the enhancements in the stock Supercommando sets are AWFUL, with the exception of the Columi gloves and helmet, so you should try to replace them ASAP.

 

 

I have question concerning this, so you say that enchantments are bad, because of bonus on accuracy? Should we use ones from BH enchants?

 

In terms of numbers, my stats are:

 

Defense chance: 15.23%

Shielde chance: 42.71 %

Shielde Absorpion: 42,44%

 

are this numbers good, do I have too much of last 2 and too little of first one?

[CitizenFry]

I have question concerning this, so you say that enchantments are bad, because of bonus on accuracy? Should we use ones from BH enchants?

 

In terms of numbers, my stats are:

 

Defense chance: 15.23%

Shielde chance: 42.71 %

Shielde Absorpion: 42,44%

 

are this numbers good, do I have too much of last 2 and too little of first one?

That's right, the enhancements that come in most Supercommando pieces have enormous amounts of Accuracy, which does not help your survivability at all (and is a pretty awful stat for your DPS, for that matter). Swap them out for enhancements with more DSA as quickly as you can. Even some of the Black Hole Demolisher pieces have Accuracy...Cognizant 26 (45 Endurance, 57 Accuracy, 22 Absorb) is not an upgrade over Steadfast 24 (38 Endurance, 48 Shield, 19 Defense)!

 

Your Defense stat is fine, maybe even a little too high. Your shield and absorb are very low though, I would work on boosting those!

[TheRampage]

Yes, they are low, but I don't have any augment on my pve gear, will buy that now (with shield rating and apsoroption rating, I have that ones on my WH hear - another question, are they good for pvp or should i go with the ones with endurance maybe?) for our next raids because we are starting EC HM, so I belive it will raise up a lot. Plus I will change all rakata enchantments with one from BH head - it gives defense and shield, best combination it seems.

[Tokans]

I don't know what i should be fixing on my stats. I'm in full black hole gear and augmented.

My stats unbuffed.

 

HP: 25,360

DR: 53.84%

DC:13.18% / Rating 187

SC: 53.84% / Rating 576

SA: 58.19% / Rating 513

 

Link i found hope it helps: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au6Yg4iBM3q8dG5Wa1VXQTF2aUotamY3ejRPa1kxMEE

Edited July 1, 2012 by Tokans

[Marb]

The theoretical maximum amount of shield% or absorb% you can gain from Shield Rating/Absorb Rating is 50%, if you had infinite DSA. Remember that your actual shield% and absorb% are higher than that though (+5%/20% base for shield generator, plus talents, etc). The game may have a cap on total shield%/absorb%; I don't know what that might be.

 

For reference: I'm pretty well geared (58s and 61s) and mostly augmented. My standing-around-on-fleet values are roughly 13% dodge, 58% shield, 58% absorb.

 

With shield and absorb values so high like this, what are your opinions of using the clickly defence relic as opposed to the shield/absorb?

 

My first guess-timation was that we would get more value out of it with our natural defence being so low, and that it would boost the effectiveness of our oil slick?

 

Not sure though, just a thought.

Edited July 2, 2012 by Marb

[CitizenFry]

I don't know what i should be fixing on my stats. I'm in full black hole gear and augmented.

My stats unbuffed.

 

HP: 25,360

DR: 53.84%

DC:13.18% / Rating 187

SC: 53.84% / Rating 576

SA: 58.19% / Rating 513

 

Here's my character sheet, for reference. I've been keeping it updated pretty well:

http://swtor.askmrrobot.com/character/c68b9e16-2d93-4be2-a9b7-69496722f517

 

You have an awful lot of HP. Are you using Endurance augments? I highly recommend Defense, Shield or Absorb augments for tanking. Anyway, for your current DSA total, you have some options. For the next 200 points of DSA you add, the maximum expected mitigation would be to split evenly between Defense and Shield, but (all Defense) and (half Shield, half Absorb) are not far behind. Going all Defense makes your Smoke Grenades even better; going with shield+absorb makes your rate of HP decrease more consistent. Your choice!

[CitizenFry]

With shield and absorb values so high like this, what are your opinions of using the clickly defence relic as opposed to the shield/absorb?

 

My first guess-timation was that we would get more value out of it with our natural defence being so low, and that it would boost the effectiveness of our oil slick?

 

Not sure though, just a thought.

If you stack your clicky relic with the smoke/oil, the Defense clicky is slightly better. If you use them separately, the Shield+Absorb clicky is slightly better.

[Zerataul]

Citizenfry, can you post your spec? I'm curious to see your talent tree cause I'm kinda lost with the 1.3 patch lol. Got too many characters to keep up with.

[CitizenFry]

More on enhancements: trawled through askmrrobot's gear section, here are some of the top enhancements in terms of total DSA:

 

grade 26 (blackhole/campaign)

sturdiness 98

immunity 93

bastion, bulwark 79

steadfast 67

vigilant 65

 

grade 25 (rakata)

sturdiness 88

immunity 84

bastion, bulwark, steadfast, vigilant 71

 

grade 24 (columi)

sturdiness 82

steadfast, vigilant 67

 

Sturdiness 24 enhancements are some of the best in the game for tanking! Unfortunately they aren't located in any vendor gear, so you have to get lucky with drops or the GTN...

 

P.S. If you think you're survivable enough and want to add some damage, you might look into the Reflective, Resist, Safeguard, and/or Skirmish lines of enhancements. Particularly Reflective 25, the stats for that in askmrrobot's database have to have a typo...right?

[CitizenFry]

Citizenfry, can you post your spec? I'm curious to see your talent tree cause I'm kinda lost with the 1.3 patch lol. Got too many characters to keep up with.

 

31/8/2. Blaster Augs, power armor, and heavy stock. I skip the items to the left and right of Storm in the tanking tree. If you absolutely wanted to maximize your survivability, drop Blaster Augs and Heavy Stock for Soldier's Endurance, but that is such a ridiculously small amount of HP I don't think it's worth it compared to the not-insignificant increase in DPS from Blaster Augs and Heavy Stock.

[Rivalxl]

You really need to take into account all of the abilities that bosses (or trash) do that are not able to be mitigated at all such as all of Stormcallers damage or Kephess's bleed. Running around with 23k hps in HM 16m EC is damn near suicide for a few bosses. A healer would have to be specifically on you at all times and not have time to cleanse/heal dps that need it.

[Lovia]

I think you are trying to improve survivability by trying to reduce damage taken instead of making the damage taken easier to heal. The typical example for this is, its better to have 10hp take 3 damage per hit and have 1% avoidance than having 1hp take 2 damage per hit and have 99% avoidance.

 

So for me in every and all occasions the first rule of pve tank gearing is, health first and i cant stress this enough

[CitizenFry]

You really need to take into account all of the abilities that bosses (or trash) do that are not able to be mitigated at all such as all of Stormcallers damage or Kephess's bleed. Running around with 23k hps in HM 16m EC is damn near suicide for a few bosses. A healer would have to be specifically on you at all times and not have time to cleanse/heal dps that need it.

 

1. Numbers I've seen suggest something like 80% or more of damage from top-end raids can be dodged or shielded, so reducing that damage has a significant effect on survivability

2. I concentrate on 8-man, and 23k is a plenty big health pool for that. You say a healer would have to be specifically on you at all times in 16 man...my question is, if you have FOUR healers, what are they all doing if you DON'T have one specifically on your tank? :/

 

I think you are trying to improve survivability by trying to reduce damage taken instead of making the damage taken easier to heal. The typical example for this is, its better to have 10hp take 3 damage per hit and have 1% avoidance than having 1hp take 2 damage per hit and have 99% avoidance.

 

So for me in every and all occasions the first rule of pve tank gearing is, health first and i cant stress this enough

Yes, that is exactly right, I am improving survivability by reducing damage taken. The amount of time it takes to go from full HP to zero is quite long in all non-enrage, non-derp situations. I think healers (read: sages) running out of resources is much more of a concern than a decently geared tank getting burst down before the healers can start fixing the damage.

 

Your "typical example" is not anywhere close to reality. I don't have the ability to trade ninety percent of my HP for better mitigation. I think at most I can trade about 25% of my HP for mitigation. As I've mentioned above, 23k is plenty to get through current content. If I swapped all my augments and enhancements to favor Endurance over DSA, I could probably get up to ~27k, but that would be a big increase in squishiness (15% dodge 60% shield 70% absorb would go down to roughly 12% dodge 50% shield 60% absorb), making me much more of a drain on the healer's resources over a long fight.

[Justcae]

Greetings and salutations oh wanderers and purveyors of all things distracting on the internet.

 

My name is Justcae, which you can find directly to the left side of this post and I am a Shield Specialist Vanguard tank. I am in a guild that clears all 8 man content, with ease and regularity. Eight man content has been openly admitted by development to be more tightly tuned and harder than the same content sixteen man. The only fight I've participated in sixteen man is Nightmare Pilgrim, which is seemingly a joke of a fight at this point.

 

I do not have a fancy specialization. I use the standard 31/8/2. As mentioned earlier in this thread, the two points in assault are in "Heavy Stock", not in "Soldier's Endurance". Two percent endurance on whatever amount of endurance you want to stack is going to be negligible. You either are going to be stacking defenses and be getting less than 500 health (on your 23k-24k health), or you're stacking endurance and even if you had ~2700 endurance, you're only going to see an extra 54 endurance.

 

So as noted, I do run a general specialization as there is not a whole lot of intelligent play in where you can put your points. At this stage in the game it really seems to be "This is how you should have your points if you want to maximize your tanking ability."

 

Now as far as my stats go, I absolutely favor mitigation over health pool.

 

Health: 24022

Armor Rating: 8678

Damage Reduction: 53.55% (Energy/Kinetic), 19% (Internal/Elemental w/Sage Buff)

Defense Chance: 13.25% (189 Rating)

Shield Chance: 56.35% (663 Rating)

Shield Absorption: 62.01 (636 Rating), 70.01% w/4 Stacks, and 77.15% w/Relic Proc.

 

I do not feel that my stats are at all the most min/maxed. I do feel like I could lose rating from Shield and Absorb, put into Defense and I might see a better overall number. That number may say in a tank calculator that I am more tanky, but it short changes vanguards as a class.

 

That stated I do love this stat build. It works on everything currently in the game. When fighting a boss with melee/range attacks its almost laughably easy. The only cool down I'll ever use on Toth or Firebrand is Smoke Grenade, as Zorn and Stormcaller are immune to the ability. Any other cooldown is reserved for their counterparts. Boss fights wherein there is only a singular boss, cooldowns are reserved for more bursty moments (When third bomber dies in Kephess and he unlocks all his abilities, with them all off cooldown).

 

Furthermore we have abilities "Shield Cycler" (50% generate 1 ammo when shielding an attack, 6s cd), and "Static Shield" (50% reset cooldown on Stockstrike, 4.5s cd). This is why I prioritized Shield/Absorb > Defense. They do not proc off misses/dodges (Smoke Grenade/Defense). So though I lose a little bit of maximized avoidance, I consider it a trade off for my overall effectiveness as a Vanguard. If I have the chance to shield an attack, I want to give my character the maximum chance to do that. I want that shielded attack to be reduced by the most that I can feasibly reduce it.

 

The reality is that in the current state of the game most guilds are going to run into DPS problems. You can build your tank in almost any way you see fit. If you favor health pool over avoidances, I may disagree with you, but it may fit your play style. If you are getting content down, its clearly working. Just for the love of god, get rid of the accuracy enhancements on your gear. You do not need them. At all.