Best Proc Relic for Tanking?

[sentawan]

Anyone know what the best proc relic for shadow tanking is?

 

Per some other posts across the forums, I am stacking shield and absorb to approx 720 and 840, respectively, while keeping defense low (about 450). Since I have so many pts in aborb and low pts in defense, is the defense proc relic preferred over the absorb one, or do I just use the absorb and get weaker diminishing returns?

[Kitru]

The best proc relic is the heal proc relic. Assuming you already have one of those, the best is the defense proc relic, not because the defense is better, but because it has Defense rating as it's passive stat whereas the Absorb proc relic has Power (and, even if you're crazy like me, you'll still prefer mitigation over damage).

 

Something to remember concerning your distribution and itemization budget is that the average contribution of your stat proc relic should be factored into your distribution. As such, with the defense proc relic, your "passive" Defense rating should be ~150 points lower than what is listed on the optimal distribution and you should be consulting the total itemization budget as if it were ~150 points higher than what you have passively. If you don't do this, you're going to be skewing your distribution in favor of Defense, which means you'll be a bit off of absolutely optimal (not that you're likely to notice since, if you're close enough to the optimal distro, the differences are pretty much always beneath the conscious threshold and, in all likelihood, the difference in damage taken is going to be less than standard overheal).

[genesiser]

I don't understand why the heal relic is best. With it having a 20 sec cd, over the course of a 3 minute fight you'll only heal yourself for 457 x 9 which is 4113 and that's assuming you have it proc every 20 seconds. When it procs, it heals for less than 1 tick of your heal from telekinetic throw and barely anymore than the proc from just attacking. I fail to see how that small amount of healing will save you from dying. Unless of course, I'm just missing something.

[Marb]

I don't understand why the heal relic is best. With it having a 20 sec cd, over the course of a 3 minute fight you'll only heal yourself for 457 x 9 which is 4113 and that's assuming you have it proc every 20 seconds. When it procs, it heals for less than 1 tick of your heal from telekinetic throw and barely anymore than the proc from just attacking. I fail to see how that small amount of healing will save you from dying. Unless of course, I'm just missing something.

 

Compared to the other relic choices, none of them will "save you from dying". Proc absorb or a clicky relic wouldn't make impressive contributions to your survivability either, with relics in general you're talking very small numbers. If the other two tank classes had significant self heal mechanics they may also want to use the heal proc relic. It's the best of a bad bunch.

Edited May 12, 2013 by Marb

[Kitru]

I don't understand why the heal relic is best. With it having a 20 sec cd, over the course of a 3 minute fight you'll only heal yourself for 457 x 9 which is 4113 and that's assuming you have it proc every 20 seconds. When it procs, it heals for less than 1 tick of your heal from telekinetic throw and barely anymore than the proc from just attacking. I fail to see how that small amount of healing will save you from dying. Unless of course, I'm just missing something.

 

The math behind it is based upon average contribution and determining the point of equivalence between a certain amount of mitigation and a certain amount of self healing.

 

First off, to prevent anyone from bringing it up, the heal proc relic and the mitigation proc relics have the same functional CD: there's a 20 second ICD and, while you'll heal less often as a Shadow tank compared to being attacked, the heal proc relic has a 50% chance compared to the 30% chance of the mitigation proc relics. This means that, assuming you're attacked roughly twice as often as you heal, the two mechanisms break even. Considering the attack speed of the enemies we care about is, at its fastest, about 1 attack per GCD and Shadows heal themselves roughly once every 2 GCDs on average (~5-6 secs between CT procs, more with AoE, and 4 ticks from TkT every 12 secs or so), their proc rate is, for all intents and purposes, the same.

 

As such, all you have to do from there is determine the average contribution of each and compare the two. The top tier Defense proc relic (which is the best mitigation proc relic), assuming you're using the appropriate stat distribution for Shadow tanks (which is low in Defense rating), provides 550 Defense with 30% uptime (slightly less than that because of the 22 second real CD, but that's not really a big deal as pointed out earlier). 550 Defense provides, roughly, 4% additional Defense chance. Averaged out over time, this means you're getting .2 Defense chance, on average. The top tier heal proc relic provides 653 healing by default. Over 20 seconds, this equates to 33.3 hp/sec (remember, we get 2% additional healing received).

 

Here's where the math that confuses most people comes in. In order for .2% additional defense to equate to 33.3 hp/sec, incoming damage post mitigation needs to eclipse 16651 damage (33.3 / .002). At the moment, tanks manage roughly 65% total mitigation, so that comes down to ~5828. That gets pulled down by ~300 from our existing self heals, so the final value is ~5500. Since the hardest hitting boss only hits upwards of 3-4k DPS, the heal proc relic sits pretty as the best relic for a Shadow tank to use.

 

Keep in mind, this is a bit of a simplification. The contributions of the mitigation relic are *slightly* higher because it's additive to existing percentage based mitigation (going from 26% defense chance to 30% defense chance is worth substantially more than going from 10% to 145%), but the difference isn't enough to change the conclusions. In the math that dipstik did, he discovered that the number is low enough that, for the single hardest hitting boss in the game, the mitigation proc relic just *barely* beats out the heal relic as the best, but it's still *incredibly* good for it. It's because of this that the heal proc relic is king. It may not seem like much, but that's largely because you're probably not recognizing the comparatively lower contributions of the mitigation proc relic.

[genesiser]

Wouldn't the absorb relic be more powerful though? For example, the absorb relic when procced adds about 10% damage reduction. As you've shown, the uptime is pretty much the same, and as a shadow tank with the shield skill, you have about a 50% chance to block. With the enemies hitting for about 5k/hit, in the 6 seconds the proc is on, you figure 4 attacks from the enemy, 2 of them getting blocked, so that's 1k dmg mitigated. Also, there is no ICD with blocking in general (as far as I'm aware), so the more enemies you are tanking at once, the more powerful the absorbed amount of damage is.

[Grahalong]

I've got the trinket for absorb rating. It gives 500 more rating for 30 seconds, and it procs every 2 minutes. As a shadow tank, it'll give me about 7% more absorption for the duration of the buff. With it up for 30 second and a 2 minute CD, it's up 1/4 of the time fighting a boss. I don't think you can go wrong with that trinket at all.

[Kitru]

Wouldn't the absorb relic be more powerful though? For example, the absorb relic when procced adds about 10% damage reduction.

 

If you're stacking Absorb like you're supposed to (a decent item budget of 2300 is going to want ~900 Absorb), you're not going to get 10% out of it. You're more likely going to get closer to 6%. Furthermore, the value of Absorb is contingent upon you Shield percentage. At that item budget, you're going to have ~55% Shield chance with KW up, so that 7% absorb would be the equivalent of ~3.3% Defense, and that's not including the loss of 32 Defense rating from the different passive benefits of the relics. If you further factor in how Shield/Absorb apply to the ~15% of NPC attacks that are F/T instead of M/R, you still get only 3.88% equivalence. The defense proc relic is explicitly better.

 

You're also forgetting that the best way to factor in the proc relics is average contribution based on rating, not percent (percent scales based upon DR, but rating is a static predictable amount). If you're putting together your stat distribution properly, you should already be accounting for the variations between the value of Defense and Absorb based upon a functionally static Shield rating at the given itemization budget. As such, the proc effects of the Abs and Def relics are functionally identical so the only real difference is in the passive benefits, which the Defense relic has better (Defense relic has Defense whereas the Abs relic has power).

 

Also, there is no ICD with blocking in general (as far as I'm aware), so the more enemies you are tanking at once, the more powerful the absorbed amount of damage is.

 

There isn't an ICD on dodging either, so it's not really an advantage that Shield/Abs gets over Defense. The Absorb relic was pretty much *designed* to be inferior to the Defense relic. That's why you can buy the Abs proc relic with comms but you have to get the Defense proc relic from a drop.

[Kitru]

I've got the trinket for absorb rating. It gives 500 more rating for 30 seconds, and it procs every 2 minutes. As a shadow tank, it'll give me about 7% more absorption for the duration of the buff. With it up for 30 second and a 2 minute CD, it's up 1/4 of the time fighting a boss. I don't think you can go wrong with that trinket at all.

 

You're getting the stats on the Shield/Abs use relic wrong. The (Arkanian) Shield/Abs use relic provides 245 Shield and 245 Absorb for 30 seconds, not 500 Absorb (this actually makes it better since it suffers from diminishing returns less). Even so, it's stlil worse.

 

The use relic provides 490 total itemization with a 25% uptime *at best* (in reality, it's generally closer to 15-20%), which equates to only 122.5 average mitigation rating gained. The defense proc relic provides 510 Defense with a 30% uptime *and* includes 29 additional Defense, which equates to 182 average mitigation rating gained. Once again, the defense proc relic wins out and, as previously explained, the heal relic is better than the defense proc relic, so you'll want the heal proc and the defense proc for the greatest survivability.

[Grahalong]

You're getting the stats on the Shield/Abs use relic wrong. The (Arkanian) Shield/Abs use relic provides 245 Shield and 245 Absorb for 30 seconds, not 500 Absorb (this actually makes it better since it suffers from diminishing returns less). Even so, it's stlil worse.

 

The use relic provides 490 total itemization with a 25% uptime *at best* (in reality, it's generally closer to 15-20%), which equates to only 122.5 average mitigation rating gained. The defense proc relic provides 510 Defense with a 30% uptime *and* includes 29 additional Defense, which equates to 182 average mitigation rating gained. Once again, the defense proc relic wins out and, as previously explained, the heal relic is better than the defense proc relic, so you'll want the heal proc and the defense proc for the greatest survivability.

 

I'm not talking about that relic. I'm talking about the Shield amplification one where when you shield an attack, you get a chance of gaining 500 absorption rating. And I've watched the relic proc, it pretty much procs almost instantly when it comes off CD. I don't need a relic that gives me a heal for 200 health if I have a healer who keeps me topped off. The def relic I'll put that in place of my current 245 shield and absorb relic once I get an underworld token I can use.

[Kitru]

I don't need a relic that gives me a heal for 200 health if I have a healer who keeps me topped off.

 

By that same logic, you shouldn't ever use TkT for the self heal. You're a tank. If you're doing your job, you should be taking damage on an almost continuous basis (yes, we've got great mitigation, but you're still going to be taking damage constantly because you're *tanking*). Tanking isn't just about minimizing incoming damage; it's about minimizing external healing required.

 

Shadow tank is *always* going to take more damage than a Guardian or VG tank because our self heals are a fundamental aspect of our survivability: they're the reason *why* we are the most survivable tanks even though we take the most damage. The self heal relic follows this same concept and, because of that, is actually a more powerful relic than the mitigation proc relics if you look at the amount of external healing you require rather than simply comparing damage taken. Ignoring your self heals is almost as bad as ignoring your mitigation in favor of cranking out your hp.

 

Operating under the assumption that your healing will always keep you at max health is both overly optimistic and ignorant of fundamental aspects of how Shadow tanks operate. In both theory *and* in practice, the self heal relic is the better option. Just because you don't *like* it being the best option doesn't change the fact that it is and, by using another mitigation proc relic, you're actually increasing the amount of healing you require.

[sentawan]

The def relic I'll put that in place of my current 245 shield and absorb relic once I get an underworld token I can use.

 

The defense and absorb proc relics both share the same cd. You can't use them together, which is why I started this post.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be getting a heal proc relic, and I am glad I "needed" on the defense one.

[Grumpftard]

There appears to be a lack of clarity when it comes to the healing relic. Someone had 475x9..... Another commented on a 200 health heal. The underworld relic is 635 iirc. All said and done, when you look at the logs.... It winds up being 17 to 20% of total self healing. That is substantial. People *really* don't realize just how much the healing relic does.

[ML_DoubleTap]

You're getting the stats on the Shield/Abs use relic wrong. The (Arkanian) Shield/Abs use relic provides 245 Shield and 245 Absorb for 30 seconds, not 500 Absorb (this actually makes it better since it suffers from diminishing returns less). Even so, it's stlil worse.

 

The use relic provides 490 total itemization with a 25% uptime *at best* (in reality, it's generally closer to 15-20%), which equates to only 122.5 average mitigation rating gained. The defense proc relic provides 510 Defense with a 30% uptime *and* includes 29 additional Defense, which equates to 182 average mitigation rating gained. Once again, the defense proc relic wins out and, as previously explained, the heal relic is better than the defense proc relic, so you'll want the heal proc and the defense proc for the greatest survivability.

 

Even though it wasn't the relic the quoted was talking about, something can be said for the clicky relics. It's basically another cooldown that you can use. It may not provide the same total mitigation over time, but it can provide a higher mitigation when specifically needed. No decent healer has a hard time healing through steady damage. It's spikey instances with raid wide damage that start to tax them. Having an extra cooldown during these phases are more useful to me as a healer than an extra 40hps or so from the tank. Sometimes, actual results are more important to look at then averages over a broad time. If you want your damage taken per second to be as low as possible at the end of the fight, it makes more sense to use the heal and defense procs, but in certain scenarios it's more important to be alive that's to that extra cooldown

[ML_DoubleTap]

All that said about clickies...I am curious how two pvp defense relics compare to a pve defense and healing proc. Or, for that matter two pvp healing. Since the pvp relics can stack, would we be better to put even less defense stat on our gear and rely on 12 out of every 20sec on average having a defense proc. Or, if the healing is better, what about 2 pvp healing proc relics for even more steady healing.

[Kitru]

Even though it wasn't the relic the quoted was talking about, something can be said for the clicky relics. It's basically another cooldown that you can use.

 

The use relics are kind of wonky to calculate. The only one worth using now the Shield/Abs relic because it has the 30 sec duration (the Def relic has the 20 sec duration and the same itemization budget but *less* actual contribution thanks to DR), though it doesn't act as a true CD. At best, it's going to increase your Shield/Abs by *maybe* 3-5% each (the DR on them is friggin' *intense*) which equates to roughly 3-5% decrease in damage taken (even accounting for the fact that it's a percent gain over existing values). The use relics used to be amazing for burst damage and enforced tank swap fights where the tank was only taking damage (or appreciable level of damage) for discrete intervals but not so much anymore because Battle Readiness was turned into a huge damage reduction cooldown. You really shouldn't need more than 2 CDs every 2 minutes for the purposes of burst mitigation, especially if a lot of the burst comes in the form of a single F/T attack (wherein you're using Resilience to laugh it away once every ~35-40 seconds). For VGs, I know that the use relics are nice to have because they only have the single CD, but, for Shadows, with 2-3 very powerful CDs that can be applied for each situation, there's not really much need.

[Vanifae]

Is this the Arkanian Relic of Ephermeral mending? The one that says healing an ally?

[Eternalnight]

Is this the Arkanian Relic of Ephermeral mending? The one that says healing an ally?

This again...

 

One more time: It does work with self healing just fine. People would not have used it or advocated its use if it didn't.

 

You can see it in the combat logs. You don't even have to go to look at combat logs as you can see the hot caused by the relics if you look at your own buffs while playing.

[Vanifae]

It was just a question, guess I will snag this, thanks for the clarification. Just wanted to be sure before I slapped down hard earned currency for it. Edited May 14, 2013 by Vanifae

[Grumpftard]

It was just a question, guess I will snag this, thanks for the clarification. Just wanted to be sure before I slapped down hard earned currency for it.

 

ROFL. it's become almost instinctual for people to get grumpy at this point, because you would be surprised how often the whole "healing an ally" argument rears its ugly head.

Edited May 14, 2013 by Grumpftard

[Myxam]

The defense and absorb proc relics both share the same cd. You can't use them together, which is why I started this post.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I'll be getting a heal proc relic, and I am glad I "needed" on the defense one.

 

Incorrect, the Defense and Absorption Proc Relics are independent of each other (I have them both on my Vanguard and I enjoy seeing both of the buffs on at the same time). The line that says an item doesn't work with similar cooldowns, it means cooldowns that are EXACTLY like it, for example, you can't have two Absorption Relics, two healing proc relics, or two damage proc trinkets. However, in the Shadows case (and like that of the Justicar in Rift), the healing proc relics are the better take as they passively increase your effective health, and threat.

 

There's not many times when I'm in a HM FP that I'm completely topped off even as geared as my VG is, Raids are the same story and if I had a steady source of self healing even for .01% of my HP, I'd take that HoT Proc Relic.

[Eternalnight]

it means cooldowns that are EXACTLY like it, for example

 

It does not have to be exactly like it. There are relics that count as similar effect even though they are different.

 

Just like you can't activate clicky defense and clicky shield/absorb relic at the same time, but can activate clicky defense and clicky power at the same time.

 

I would think that it is that defense proc relic and absorb proc relic have more differences than just what stats they give when they proc, as they also have different causes from what they proc from. One procs from incoming attacks and the other procs from shielding an attack. Hard to really tell which is the reason for them to not count as a similar effect.

[Eternalnight]

because you would be surprised how often the whole "healing an ally" argument rears its ugly head.

often

 

so one easily assumes when seeing the words "healing an ally" that someone is actually trying to argue that the relic would not work because of that

[Grumpftard]

often

 

VERY often

[Mordarion]

All that said about clickies...I am curious how two pvp defense relics compare to a pve defense and healing proc. Or, for that matter two pvp healing. Since the pvp relics can stack, would we be better to put even less defense stat on our gear and rely on 12 out of every 20sec on average having a defense proc. Or, if the healing is better, what about 2 pvp healing proc relics for even more steady healing.

 

Any help here would be helpful .