Stacking absorb and neglecting defense

[ISDcaptain]

ok so today i met a powertech on the fleet who has 5% defesne, 61% sheild and 76% absorb

 

so he told me that suppose that if a boss in an encounter hits for 5k each hit, in a series of 10 hits

 

then 6 out of the 10 hits are absorb 76%

 

so 6 * 5k = 30000 dmg, absorbed = .76 * 30000 = 22800 dmg absorbed, giving a total of 7200 dmg taken

 

and then teh remain 4 hits u get hit with the 5k, so 5k * 4 = 20000 dmg,

 

so a grand total of 27200 dmg taken out of what could have been a total of 50000 dmg

 

Now say if u ahve a defense of 25%, 50% shield and 50% absorb

 

in 10 hits, you will dodge 2 or 3 hits, to be conservative, lets say 2 hits you dodge entirely, so 10k dmg evaded

 

your shield chance is 50%, so for the remaining 8 hits, you absorb 4 of those,

 

then we have 20k dmg * .5 = 10k dmg aborsbed, while 10k taken, plus 4 remaining hits that are taken fully hit, so 20k dmg

 

giving a grand total of 30k dmg taken over the course of 10 hits

 

so 27200 dmg VS 30000 dmg, so i guess absorb and shield are the way to go for powertechs??

[mugen_dom]

not all dmg can be dodged and not all dmg can be shielded...so having no defense is kinda dumb.

[Mc_Gregor]

Its almost impossible to get 25% defence on powertech and not gimping your other stats but I always aim to have around 17% defence. Seems enough for everything.

[mugen_dom]

I sit with 350ish defense points, + the 2% set bonus....700 shield and absorb 24700 HP

[Zoom_VI]

as both sheild and defense chance apply to the same types of attacks (not foce or tech for either) then stacking the one that the entire PT/VG tank tree is built around is a good idea

[ISDcaptain]

can anyone argue my math or way of calculating the damge over the course of 10 hits?

 

 

nobody sees anything wrong there?

[TomWolp]

I'm not completely sure but aren't crits not shieldable while the defense roll is only versus accuracy.

[Mc_Gregor]

I dont have time to get into more detailed calculations but you have to remember one thing: how much rating would it take to achieve those defensive stats you mentioned? This way you will see if that difference comes from stat distribution or simply one set overgears the other one. Also you must take into consideration that there are many bosses with attacks that cant be shielded or defended against so you might have to drop some shield/def in favour of endurance which is the only defensive stat that works against all types of attacks

[bbrooks]

You can get to 20% def fairly easily without sacrificing any significant amount of shield or absorb. Just something to consider Edited October 11, 2012 by bbrooks

[verfallen]

Another thing to consider is the way the tree is made. For exemple, heat venting and rocket punch cd reset all happens on shielding and not parrying/dodging like a juggernaut needs to proc retaliation and even more defense.

 

So as a PT, I prefer taking lets say 2k damage rather than 1,5k if I'd have stacked defense, but dealing more damage and not overheated (which translate in even more damage) thus making keeping threat easier.

 

That said there IS a rate limit on this, so NO defense at all sounds a bit stupid. I wouldn't run a focus on my immortal jug, well I would still like a bit of defense on my PT.

[SgtKlavier]

The original damage calculations were not done correctly as you have to factor in damage reduction for attacks that hit; even doing that with your data still results in a situation favoring the no defense argument.

 

However, the main flaw is that the stat distribution in the first case is not necessarily possible (could be with dread gear) and has such a higher gear level than the second case that you cannot compare the mitigation values effectively. For purposes of this explanation I will use for the two sets of stats (5,61,76) and (20,50,50), assuming that no points were put in the power armor talent to make things even.

 

Considering the first case, we need 0 defense rating for 5% chance and about 855 shield rating for 61% shield chance (including talent buffs). 76% absorb cannot be reached from a static point without the use of heat screen because we get 24% absorb from shield generator and the ablative upgrades talent and absorb % from rating caps at 50%, resulting in 74% total (if you reached the maximum absorb value which is not possible anyways). Thus we will consider absorb with the additional 8% from heat shield, so 32% from abilities/buffs. To reach the value of 76%, we need about 945 absorb rating. This gives us a defense stat pool of 1800, which extremely high. My current power tech has a total of 1705 defensive stat rating allocation (pure mitigation), and is 1.3 BiS. Thus you might be able to get to 1800 with the new gear, but I'm certain no one has done this yet.

 

To compare to the second case, we must use the same rating pool, and I will use 20% defense as the baseline for distribution. To make that we need about 565 defense rating, leaving 1235 points for the remaining two stats. You could distribute these in many ways, so I'll just use a roughly equal distribution as an example, with 620 in shield and 615 in absorb. The result is ~55% shield chance and ~61% absorb; note that this is without heat shield so comparing this accurately to the first case we will use instead 55% shield chance and 69% absorb (in reality you'd probably want more shield compared to absorb to help with proccing and what not).

 

Thus our final two stat sets are (5,61,76) and (20,55,69). If you set the OP's original case 2 as the standard, you will get something like (25,51,62), which is still higher than (25,50,50). 20 seems to be a good spot for powertech defense though, so pushing it up to 25% isn't really the best choice.

 

To finalize the point, I'll post the results of calculations similar to the OP's regarding these two stat setups, taking into account that hits not shielded are reduced by armor (we'll assume 50% DR for convenience) and shielded hits are also reduced by armor. And instead of just using 10 attacks, I extended it to 100 attacks still at 5k each (500k total damage incoming).

 

No defense mitigation: 127.3k gets through.

20% defense mitigation: 124.1k gets through.

 

Though the difference is not much, 20% defense stacking is favored in terms of overall mitigation (considering attacks that can be mitigated). It is also worth noting that as your armor rating increases, absorb loses value because you have less damage to reduce when hit with an attack.

[OlosBC]

It is also worth noting that as your armor rating increases, absorb loses value because you have less damage to reduce when hit with an attack.

 

The rest of your post was interesting and informative, but I gotta disagree with this part. Absorb will still be reducing your attacks by the same % as before. Maybe it would lower the actual amount absorbed, but it doesn't change absorb's value relative to defense.

 

Think of it this way: one could easily make the following statement with the same logic, and would be equally wrong.

 

It is also worth noting that as your armor rating increases, defense loses value because you have the attacks you are avoiding are for less mitigated damage.

[Teioh_White]

Another small wrinkle, you can't ever really hit 5% defense, as you'll always have the boost from stim, plus the 4 set bonus. Not sure if that 3.5% is enough to make the calculations the same, but it's out there.

 

That being said, if the mitigation is going to be so similar, I'd just go with shield, to make it easier on the healers, as the damage will be fairly consistent coming in, letting them feel confident at to go take care of dps in white damage phases.

[SgtKlavier]

The rest of your post was interesting and informative, but I gotta disagree with this part. Absorb will still be reducing your attacks by the same % as before. Maybe it would lower the actual amount absorbed, but it doesn't change absorb's value relative to defense.

 

Think of it this way: one could easily make the following statement with the same logic, and would be equally wrong.

 

It is also worth noting that as your armor rating increases, defense loses value because you have the attacks you are avoiding are for less mitigated damage.

 

Good point, didn't think of that; I think somewhere someone did extensive calculations as to stat value gain per point for ideal cases, but can't remember where.

 

 

Another small wrinkle, you can't ever really hit 5% defense, as you'll always have the boost from stim, plus the 4 set bonus. Not sure if that 3.5% is enough to make the calculations the same, but it's out there.

 

That being said, if the mitigation is going to be so similar, I'd just go with shield, to make it easier on the healers, as the damage will be fairly consistent coming in, letting them feel confident at to go take care of dps in white damage phases.

 

Because the OP said the tank he saw had 5% defense, I just used that value for base defense, and did not include set bonus nor stim rating boost in either case (though of course one should have those to be most effective). I'm not going to run through the calculation, but I believe adding those factors in would favor defense to 20% even more because you have to go less into the DR curve of defense to get to 20%. Correct me if I'm wrong though.