Guardian Tank 3.0 Defensive stats optimization

[Younique]

Hi everyone.

I'm an avid reader of mr. KeyboardNinja myself and I've done some calculating, but to be perfectly honest.

I'm **** at mathematics and I need your help lads and lasses.

 

I'm a fairly new level.60 Guardian.

And since I hit 60 I had a set goal to first reach the 'recommended' stats as a tank which are

Defense(1360),Shield(737) and Absorb(603).

 

My stats are the following: Defence with Stim 1360, Shield 953 and Absorb 643 and 4071Endurance

 

Gear:

Relics:

Fortunate Redoubt(186 with Adv redoubt augment 36)

Reactive Warding (186 with Adv redoubt augment 36)

+Both give you 125Endurance, 35Power and 95Def with the augments

 

Implant:

2x Yavin Bulwark's MK-1 Implant with Adv redoubt augment 36

 

Ear:

Yavin Bulwark's MK-1 Module with Adv redoubt augment 36

 

Armorings:

8x Advanced Guardian Armoring 36(186)

 

Mods:

9x Advanced Resilient Mod 36B(186)

 

Enhancements:

2x Advanced Steadfast Enhancement 36(186)

5x Immunity Enhancement 36(178)

 

Augments:

8x Redoubt augment 36(178)

 

Hilt:

Advanced Guardiant Hilt 36(186)+41Endurance Crystal

 

Like stated before, I'm awful at mathematics, but all in all. I can't see how I can upgrade my gear without just surpassing those recommended numbers and just overstack defensive stats.

I'd like to lower my shield rating to the recommended stats and gain more health as I seem to be lacking a lot of health compared to other tanks, seem's like I'm missing 3k health+.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

If you need any other numbers then feel free to tell me and I'll get them for you.

 

Thank you for reading and taking the time to help out a fellow tank.

[Serpentino]

Misread the post. Edited December 19, 2014 by Serpentino
Wrong post.

[Horano_Heresy]

I think having tanking stats below or above the 'recommended' numbers posted by KeyboardNinja won't affect you too much and you won't notice much of a difference in your survivability.

 

Also, don't worry too much about endurance. Endurance is probably the last stat you want to consider, unless you're coming up against a boss that hits like a truck!

 

When gearing up my juggernaut, I focus on pushing my mitigation as high as possible, but also making sure that I keep all of my stats balanced - IMO it's not good to overstack one stat too much, unless the boss fight requires it. Having a balanced set of stats is best IMO, because it means you can respond to a wider set of bosses with different damage type output.

[PavSalco]

Do you have +5% to your Endurance from BH/Trooper class? That's what others might have.

[_nace_]

Endurance is a stat you get a lot from comms gear, which normally means that most tanks that have a lot of life either have very bad (186 comms) or very good (HM) gear.

However, it is a stat that generally doesn't do too much for you, so don't worry about it for now, having around 50k life is totally fine if you have 3500+ def stats.

 

As far as shield goes: I assume most of your items are from the commodation vendor, which tend to have a lot more shield rating compared to def/absorb than ops gear. The more OP gear you get the more def stats you'll acquire and by the time you're in full storymode gear you should be able to hit KBN's numbers fairly easily.

 

tl:dr: don't worry about endurance and get started doing OPs for more def stats

[namesaretough]

I'm not sure where you're getting those stats as the end-all "recommended" stats, it's a balance based on your total stat budget. As you get better gear you'll both get more endurance and more defensive stats, keep your defensive stats balanced how you want relative to each other and accept the higher hp as a good thing. If you decide you explicitly want more hp, you can and should trade unlettered mods for b-lettered mods.

[Methoxa]

Defense(1360),Shield(737) and Absorb(603).

 

Bis gear in my opinion of a juggernaut tank would be

 

Defense 1410, Shield 1400, Absorb 990

 

Which would make a total of 3800 defstats out of 4003 in full 198.

 

Let me explain:

 

Why missing 200 defstats? Because hp has a value now to progression tanks as it increases TTL. It is not hp stacking but using 198 B- mods instead of the unlettered mods with more defstats but less hp. Basically its a 1:1 trade. How much you want to increase your hp is pretty much your own decision but for Juggernauts my thoughts are around 55k hp

 

Why so much shield?

 

Because defense is too much of a rng even for a juggernaut so that healers can not predict incoming damage. They can not get used to your damage per bossfight because defense varies too much, shieldchance however has a higher chance which makes it more predictable.

 

Why so much shield but no absorb?

 

Because absorb reduces the damage you take after it was reduced by your armour. You are sitting at 52% dmg reduction with your buffs which should be up all the time. Having 40% absorb doesnt mean 92% dmg reduction when you shield an attack. It actually means reducing 40% of 48% of total damage. This would be about 19%. Also the Diminishing return of absorb begins to get real at this point. I rather would want a steady or higher chance of reducing dmg by 19% than having a lesser chance of reducing dmg by 25%. This also has something to do with a predictable dmg proffile.

 

Why not only reducing dtps?

 

Because it doesnt really matter if you take 100dtps less or more for a healer. But if your hp suddenly drops from 100% to 5% is what counts for a healer. Having a higher hp pool is nice to have for healers even though you miss 100 to 400 defstats. Also reliying more on shield than absorb and defense lowers your spikyness and makes your dtps profile more smooth than going for the idea tankstats that only are good to decrease your dtps as far as possible. No Tank receives too much dtps for a good healer, but suddenly health drops is what a tank kills.

 

Further experiments?

 

Tried to increase shieldchance to nearly 2000 but dtps increase was too much. Defense is still the best stat for a juggernaut, but for Assasins and especially pt's its a good choice to increase shield to at least 1500.

 

Tanks who only look on their dtps values and try do decrease them as much as possible shouldnt use this approach. It is more or less only an idea which find its way among some progression guilds.

Edited December 30, 2014 by Methoxa

[Younique]

Thank you so much everyone for both your insight and information.

 

I've been wondering a bit though, I already know that 'Defensive' stats go ahead of Endurance and that Endu comes with gear later on.

 

I'm currently using nothing but Redoubt Augments that gives DEF and Power.(186)

And even while I'm using nothing but Immunity a mix of 178+186 I can still just about tip 1400 def rating with them.

Should I just stick with the Immunity ones, or should I drop some immunity for less def and get steadfast for more hp?

 

As the last person above me mentioned and I agree, shield absorb isn't extremely valuable compared to shield chance and def.

 

I've checked the coms gear and I'm not using any of it, I bought/got all my armorings, mods, enhancements and augments crafted. I took one look at the comms gear and I cried rivers from the ****** stats on them.

 

I'm just wondering what I should focus on since the 192 gear doesn't seem to have that much better stats, even the ops gear has very little def on it. And I can't for the love of me figure out how to get the def cap with that gear unless I take multiple of one item just to remove the mods and enhancement to put in my own gear. But that hardly seems fair towards other in the raid that might need set pieces too.

 

See my issue?

 

Just do a small calculation on the jugg/guardian ops gear 192's and see for yourself. A lot of absorb, endurance and shield rating, not a lot of items with def.

 

Now if we could only have some genius calculate what mods, enhancements and augments you would have in a perfect world if you were getting 186, 192 and 198 of said modifications that would be great.

 

Like you need 4 of these mods, and 5 of these, 6 of this augs and so on and so fourth.

 

And that it would add up to be the most "optimal" stat allocation if you had said modifications.

 

It's a lot of work and I would do it, if I weren't so awful at math. I tried to do it myself but ended up getting confused by all the numbers.

 

Thanks again though lads, I appreciate it a lot.

[Torvai]

Now if we could only have some genius calculate what mods, enhancements and augments you would have in a perfect world if you were getting 186, 192 and 198 of said modifications that would be great.

The problem here is, you can't do that. Well, to a degree for average damage taken profiles, but in theory you'd need a completely different set of defensive stats for every bossfight there is. Since one does alot of attacks you can defend/shield, another does alot of attacks that you can only shield but not defend, another has a balanced set of attacks and so on. The requirements basically change from one boss to another.

Maybe a good example for this would be Nefra in comparison to Tyrans. While Nefra only does melee attacks, that you can defend and shield you'd want alot of defense, whereas Tyrans almost exclusively does attacks that defense is useless against, since you can only shield, but not defend them. So you'd take alot of shield more than defense.

 

tldr: You can't say a tanks need X amount of whatever def stat. It heavily depends on the fight you encounter.

Edited January 6, 2015 by Torvai

[mynameisbugged]

anyone else gearing their tank to have more B-mods/deceiver implants/earpiece? With full 192 gear im on 49k hp as a guardian while everyone else in raid is at 51k hp+ I have a stat budget of 3700+ and using KBN's ideal numbers, so im a mean mitigation tank. I only just cleared bulo hm & almost downed sword squad, but noticed that hm has huge bursts of damage. I was told the new ops also has alot of internal/elemental damage which rip through defense and shield and so hp is gonna play a role(see PT tanking guide from Zorz).

 

Anyone else tanking with jugg/guardian in hm ops doing the same? The fact that our class don't get endurance buff means we would have the least benefit to do so hmm...

[namesaretough]

anyone else gearing their tank to have more B-mods/deceiver implants/earpiece? With full 192 gear im on 49k hp as a guardian while everyone else in raid is at 51k hp+ I have a stat budget of 3700+ and using KBN's ideal numbers, so im a mean mitigation tank. I only just cleared bulo hm & almost downed sword squad, but noticed that hm has huge bursts of damage. I was told the new ops also has alot of internal/elemental damage which rip through defense and shield and so hp is gonna play a role(see PT tanking guide from Zorz).

 

Anyone else tanking with jugg/guardian in hm ops doing the same? The fact that our class don't get endurance buff means we would have the least benefit to do so hmm...

 

I gear all 3 tank classes the way that guide suggests (re: b-mods and comm implants/ear, stat weight changes based on class). Unfortunately my jug is my least played and has the least gear of my tanks, but it gets used in our late-week alt runs with healers on similar tier characters and I haven't had any issues with feeling particularly squishy. The philosophy is the same as milas outlined in the PT guide. There are some big single-hit or unmitigatable attacks on the new bosses and the extra hp is incredibly useful when you're taking unavoidable damage or damage that would require you to get lucky to mitigate a 20-30k hit.

Edited January 7, 2015 by namesaretough

[Horano_Heresy]

Defense(1360),Shield(737) and Absorb(603).

 

Because hp has a value now to progression tanks as it increases TTL. It is not hp stacking but using 198 B- mods instead of the unlettered mods with more defstats but less hp. Basically its a 1:1 trade. How much you want to increase your hp is pretty much your own decision but for Juggernauts my thoughts are around 55k hp

 

You make some very interesting points!

 

With regard to using B-lettered mods over unlettered ones for a bit more Endurance, is the DR on mitigation stats so punishing that endurance is actually favoured for a certain stat budget? I've always been under the impression that mitigation is almost ALWAYS better than endurance? There's also the fact that B-lettered mods have slightly less Strength than unlettered ones, meaning your Sonic Barrier absorbs more damage when using the unlettered mods.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Horano_Heresy

[mynameisbugged]

You make some very interesting points!

 

With regard to using B-lettered mods over unlettered ones for a bit more Endurance, is the DR on mitigation stats so punishing that endurance is actually favoured for a certain stat budget? I've always been under the impression that mitigation is almost ALWAYS better than endurance? There's also the fact that B-lettered mods have slightly less Strength than unlettered ones, meaning your Sonic Barrier absorbs more damage when using the unlettered mods.

 

reason why mitigation isn't always ideal is because a) lots of moves in the new ops cannot be mitigated and so b) the sheer amount of burst damage from hm ops can be more survivable with a higher TTL. I no longer use the old 4 piece set bonus and no longer get the sonic barrier - you can even argue the more end u stack the better enure & focused def works etc.

 

@Smugglin, thanks for the tip - i'll be playing around when i get more deceiver gear and ask my healers what they prefer.

[Younique]

Thanks for all the great suggestions and information guys.

 

Here's a little stat update.

Got myself a fair bit of 192 raid gear, 2set bonus for warleaders and the 198 bracers.

 

All these stats are completely unbuffed.

def/sr/abs= 1537/1057/582

 

-Thinking about dropping 100+-def and get more shieldrating/absorb.

-But I'm very content with tanking the new content and haven't had any issues soaking up damage, the healers are even asking if I actually take any dmg as there are massive gaps between times when I actually drop any moderate amount in health. Think the lowest I've gone so far in Ravagers was to about 85%.

 

But I think some more shield rating would be good, we'll see though.

 

gotta admit I do hate these freaking elusive mods in the raid gear though.

[Methoxa]

Basically you can equip your Juggernaut the way Milas describes it. There are a couple of reasons for it.

 

#1 Might vs. guardian armoring/hilt : Many Juggernauts used might armoring pre 3.0 and even post 3.0. Sonic barrier increases with it. However sonic barrier's formula has such an punishing "Dr" that even if you had 100 healing power more you'd only absorb 50 dmg more all 15 seconds. Translated into mitgation, this is near useless now, because you also lost your 30% sonic barrier increase. Many guides recommend going for might armorings but the mathematically proof is not given. If your only going for lowering your dtps might armorings will help but only by a small margin. All in all you'd take 20dtps less with might armorings than with guardians armorings.

 

#2 Bosses do unmitgateable dmg. The only protections against it is your HP. Some bosses also do big hits. Some are mitgateable some are not. Even though they are mitgateable, a Juggernaut has the highest chance to get hit by it. Juggernauts have a mitgation of 64% while pt's and sins have higher mitgation. So lets say a boss hits for 40k, the attack is defendable and shieldable. So a juggernaut has a 36% of getting the full blow. Even shielding would hurt the juggernaut a lot because of a low absorbvalue approximately at 42%. 36% is not a reliable factor. But PT's shieldchance of 50% is reliable, also Sins 65% are. PTS are at 65% sins at 80% mitgation. This doesnt mean Juggernauts are the worst tanks but they are the tanks that have the highest chance of getting one - or two shotted. Keep in mind this is for defendable and shieldable damage, where juggernauts should shine, but they dont. Of course their dtps might be the lowest, but in the end its important to survive which doesnot come with the lowest dtps. So if you take a 60k hit over 4min but no other damage at all, your dtps are low, but in the end you are dead and your raid will wipe.

For unmitgateable attacks and attacks that can only be shielded its basically the same, but defstats are even less important here. The more unmitgateable attacks a boss has and the more burst dmg he does the more important HP is. Shielded attacks are nearly the same. You can of course equip towards shield and absorb which helps a lot but still your shieldchance is the lowest of all the other tankclasses, making a bigger HP pool more important than 1 or 2 % absorb or shield because you would be far into the Dr if you'd equip 0/2000/2000. So loose some defstats to make the big hits not kill you instantly. Furthermore HP gives the healers more time to heal the raid before they have to heal you.

Edited January 13, 2015 by Methoxa

[Horano_Heresy]

Basically you can equip your Juggernaut the way Milas describes it. There are a couple of reasons for it.

 

#1 Might vs. guardian armoring/hilt : Many Juggernauts used might armoring pre 3.0 and even post 3.0. Sonic barrier increases with it. However sonic barrier's formula has such an punishing "Dr" that even if you had 100 healing power more you'd only absorb 50 dmg more all 15 seconds. Translated into mitgation, this is near useless now, because you also lost your 30% sonic barrier increase. Many guides recommend going for might armorings but the mathematically proof is not given. If your only going for lowering your dtps might armorings will help but only by a small margin. All in all you'd take 20dtps less with might armorings than with guardians armorings.

 

#2 Bosses do unmitgateable dmg. The only protections against it is your HP. Some bosses also do big hits. Some are mitgateable some are not. Even though they are mitgateable, a Juggernaut has the highest chance to get hit by it. Juggernauts have a mitgation of 64% while pt's and sins have higher mitgation. So lets say a boss hits for 40k, the attack is defendable and shieldable. So a juggernaut has a 36% of getting the full blow. Even shielding would hurt the juggernaut a lot because of a low absorbvalue approximately at 42%. 36% is not a reliable factor. But PT's shieldchance of 50% is reliable, also Sins 65% are. PTS are at 65% sins at 80% mitgation. This doesnt mean Juggernauts are the worst tanks but they are the tanks that have the highest chance of getting one - or two shotted. Keep in mind this is for defendable and shieldable damage, where juggernauts should shine, but they dont. Of course their dtps might be the lowest, but in the end its important to survive which doesnot come with the lowest dtps. So if you take a 60k hit over 4min but no other damage at all, your dtps are low, but in the end you are dead and your raid will wipe.

For unmitgateable attacks and attacks that can only be shielded its basically the same, but defstats are even less important here. The more unmitgateable attacks a boss has and the more burst dmg he does the more important HP is. Shielded attacks are nearly the same. You can of course equip towards shield and absorb which helps a lot but still your shieldchance is the lowest of all the other tankclasses, making a bigger HP pool more important than 1 or 2 % absorb or shield because you would be far into the Dr if you'd equip 0/2000/2000. So loose some defstats to make the big hits not kill you instantly. Furthermore HP gives the healers more time to heal the raid before they have to heal you.

 

Thanks for the clarification. I've always been under the opinion that mitigation > endurance in all situations.

 

So would you recommend using B mods and Immunity/Sturdiness enhancements? Or have you found a different combination is better?

[Grungle]

This makes interesting reading, I have never really gotten into the stat math, I was grinding for comms to get the Yavin Bulwark armour thinking it would be great, but reading this thread I am not so sure. I would like to gear up properly as SWTOR has me completely hooked (so much I still haven't got the latest WOW expansion yet lol).

 

One of my alts has Cybertech so now I feel like I should be crafting rather than buying. however would the Yavin Bulwark amrour be a good starting point, currently I have the Sky Ridge set.

 

Not sure how to proceed, any info would be appreciated

[Horano_Heresy]

This makes interesting reading, I have never really gotten into the stat math, I was grinding for comms to get the Yavin Bulwark armour thinking it would be great, but reading this thread I am not so sure. I would like to gear up properly as SWTOR has me completely hooked (so much I still haven't got the latest WOW expansion yet lol).

 

One of my alts has Cybertech so now I feel like I should be crafting rather than buying. however would the Yavin Bulwark amrour be a good starting point, currently I have the Sky Ridge set.

 

Not sure how to proceed, any info would be appreciated

 

Good to hear that you're enjoying the game!

 

Although the Yavin Bulwark armour is very poorly optimised and has too much endurance and too little defensive stats, I still think it's a good starting point, especially for Level 60 HM Flashpoints. It's almost 100% necessary that you buy 186 Immunity and Sturdiness enhancements, or get them crafted!

 

In combination with the armorings and mods from the Yavin gear, you'll actually be more than ready for Ravagers and Temple of Sacrifice SM. Make sure you augment your gear too, it'll add on about 728 defensive stats to your stat budget!

 

From there you can start accumulating Resurrected and Massassi gear

 

Good luck!

[Grungle]

Thank you for that info, my crafter is slowly creeping his way to 400 at this stage, where would you purchase the mods you mentioned?

[Horano_Heresy]

Thank you for that info, my crafter is slowly creeping his way to 400 at this stage, where would you purchase the mods you mentioned?

 

The mods, Advanced Elusive Mod 36B and Advanced Resilient Mod 36B, are in the Yavin Bulwark's armor.

 

Going back to enhancements, you may want to use the 178 ones until you get the 186 Immunity and Sturdiness enhancements crafted, as they have better defensive stats. Any loss in HP will be compensated for by the mods mentioned above, which are endurance heavy.

Edited January 20, 2015 by Horano_Heresy