Ideal Tank Stats

[KeyboardNinja]

I'm sorry, but Defense is not a mitigation stat. It's an avoidance stat. You are either hit for all or nothing. This is why it's considered a spiky stat and tanks that stack tons of Defense are spiky.

 

Mitigation refers to lessening the blow of an attack... IE, Shield + absorb, armor, and Damage reduction passives.

 

Ah, no… Avoidance is simply not a relevant concept in SWTOR for two reasons, both of which Methoxa has already touched on.

 

The first reason is that you cannot get appreciable amounts of defense (or resist). In fact, the absolute highest dodge chance that you can ever have on any attack is about 45%, assuming an attack which has an accuracy penalty (many low damage M/R attacks), the accuracy debuff on the target, and a defense-statted Guardian tank with Blade Barricade active. No amount of statting is ever going to push you appreciably beyond that level, and thus avoidance or "dodge tanking" is not a meaningful concept in SWTOR.

 

The second reason is that an enormous percentage of damage is simply not subject to defense. Of all of the damage you can expect to receive in an operation, only about 40-50% of it will be subject to defense. So this means that, even with the absolute highest defense that you can possibly achieve in the game, only about 22.5% of damage you receive will be dodged. With a more realistic defense chance, it drops to about 17.5%. That's just not a viable strategy, and thus we can literally take it off the table. This game does not have evasion or dodge tanking in any conventional sense of the word.

 

There is a final factor which hasn't been touched on here, which is attack splitting. Many (but not all) extremely hard-hitting attacks in SWTOR that are meant for tanks are actually split behind the scenes into a large number of sub-hits, each counting as a separate roll in the combat math. A good example of this is Terminate, in NiM S&V, which was originally a single hit that could top out around 45k on a shadow tank if unmitigated (at the time, easily a one-shot). They later patched it to be split into 7 attacks. Now, assuming a 33% effective defense chance (which was standard for shadows at the time), the odds of failing to dodge the one big hit were 67%. So that's a 67% chance of simply keeling over whenever the boss did that attack. With the patch, split into 7 hits, you only needed to mitigate one of them to avoid the one-shot, and you had 7 chances to do it. The odds of the one-shot drop all the way down to 6%.

 

In short, because of attack splitting, defense chance approaches raw damage reduction (though limited to M/R damage) much more closely than it does in other games. This, paired with the high percentage of non-M/R damage and the diminishing returns and class design in SWTOR, entirely justifies treating defense as a "mitigation component".

 

It is conventional in theory crafting in SWTOR to treat defense as a stochastic peer to damage reduction, and consider standard deviation and "worst case" results separately, since they're usually less probable than most people believe. Over three and a half years of work with this TC framework, we have found it to be extremely predictive of actual game performance. You're welcome to call defense "evasion" and separate it in your mind from other forms of mitigation, but the math says otherwise.

 

health only helps with unavoidable spike damage. For an example, if you have two tanks, one with proper stats and one with all health, the one with all health will be squishy. If you stack health on sorc to get to health numbers a proper itemized tank has.... that doesn't make the sorc less squishy, it makes him able to deal with spike damage. it's why in PVP health is more valuable than it is in PVE. PVP is all about burst and surviving that burst.

 

Health helps on several levels. It is true that it is most obviously useful for unavoidable spike damage, but that sells it short. In PvE, the purpose of health is to reduce the apparent damage as a percentage of what it takes to kill you. In other words, health is useful in a TTK setting.

 

The way I like to look at it is in terms of a probability of kill (PK) analysis. It is possible to consider all mitigation cases for each tank separately, weighed against all boss abilities separately, and then joined together as the complement product. The result is no longer an expected value for mitigation (which is what mean mitigation calculates), but rather a probability of mitigation failure. Now, enemy abilities do damage in terms of absolute values (i.e. there are no "percentage of max health" attacks, except for Essence Sheer which doesn't really count). For each mitigation case, you need to look at the damage that goes through and consider what percentage of your maximum health that case is going to cost. This, paired with a function which scales damage-as-a-percentage to death probability (which extensive log analysis has shown has a very tight correlation), gives you the ability to determine the odds of a tank dying in a given encounter or sub-encounter, computed in terms of their mitigation and health.

 

Here's the thing though: mitigation can only improve these probabilities very incrementally. It's actually astonishing how little you can tilt the scales purely through mitigation gearing. You can reduce your DtPS quite a bit, and this is important for many fights! But you cannot dramatically affect your PK, which is where health really becomes valuable. The best way to reduce your PK but a significant factor (sometimes an order of magnitude!) is increasing your HP. The math is extremely unambiguous on this point. With mitigation stacking, you can reduce PK from (for example) 12% to 11%. With HP stacking, you can reduce your PK from 12% to 5%.

 

TTK math of course has predicted this general result for a long time. You can think of PK as a significantly refined and more precise version of TTK.

 

PK isn't a panacea. There are problems with the calculation, and it doesn't predict everything anymore than mean mitigation is fully predictive. In general, you need to look at what elements of a fight are hard in order to determine exactly how to weight the results spit out by mean mitigation, PK and Spike (a weighted standard deviation model recently developed by dipstik and myself).

 

This tier of content has very different weights from previous tiers, just due to the way the fights are. Master-Blaster and Revan both have phases where tanks need to be out of healing range for significant time periods, while still taking significant unavoidable damage. They also have extremely high unavoidable spikes that happen periodically (notably, Master's basic attack during the soft enrage, which can hit for upwards of 40-50k late in the phase). This paired with their high levels of internal/elemental (completely unmitigable) damage tips the tier scale significantly toward PK results (i.e. more HP). The general difficulty of these fights and the phases in which these problems occur further tilt the scales.

 

Conversely, Coratanni is a legitimately difficult fight, where a lot of the damage is internal/elemental, but no where near as much as most people believe. There isn't a lot of heavy spiking; it's basically a sustained healing check. This tilts the scales back towards mean mitigation to a very significant degree (Monolith is similar). So on the whole, this clearly is not a purely HP-stacking tier in the sense that mitigation is worthless, but it's also less mitigation-focused than any tier which has preceded it, and the math is very good at predicting this (and predicting the steps that the top-progression tanks have taken in order to improve their performance).

 

In short, this is why tanks are using B mods these days, but also using Immunity/Sturdiness enhancements and Revanite (not commendation) ear/implants.

 

As far as shield and absorb goes, you don't need numbers to figure out that they both need each other. it's like stacking crit and ignoring surge. it makes crit less useful. If you have low to no absorb shielding an attack does little to nothing, if you have a ton of absorb but no shield absorb sits there doing nothing. This is why if you use WoW terminology for Shield and absorb it becomes block rating. Which is a mitigation stat/s.

 

You can't really get any mitigation without getting shield. Absorb and shield don't trade off against each other. You're going to have a ton of shield, one way or another, and all tanks have significant absorb bonuses. I mean, you're not wrong that as a mechanic shield and absorb need each other, and are in fact perfect peers in the numerical sense (i.e. from a mean mitigation standpoint, shield and absorb are the same thing; PK and Spike distinguish them).

 

In any case… I would strongly discourage you from thinking of SWTOR tanking in terms of WoW tanking, as the comparisons are extremely misleading. I mean, you can do whatever you want, but try to remember that the knowledge and general patterns which hold in WoW simply do not hold here. SWTOR is superficially similar, but the combat math, character sheet math, NPC damage profiles and so on are all radically different. I've spent over 3 years theory crafting in this game, and in that time I've done a great deal of research into the work that WoW theory crafters have done over the last decade. What I have found is that their work, while interesting and sometimes inspirational, is simply not applicable here. The same analyses just don't work in SWTOR, which is in a formal sense the reason why comparisons between the two games are disingenuous.

[Methoxa]

it's why in PVP health is more valuable than it is in PVE. PVP is all about burst and surviving that burst

 

No burst in PvE on a tank? Master Blaster Phase 1 when pulling : Max Dtps 7.219 for the first 7 seconds with full mitgation. Try to do that in PVP on a tank.

 

Even with 4003 defstats you are squishy and spiky, decreasing ones defstats by roughly 160 to be more squishy thus having less absorb but the same shieldrating but investing that into about 3k hp more does not mean you will be as squishy as an evasion tank compared to a mitgation tank in Wow. The difference in squishiness is not even observable by healers or yourself. Some ppl even think that the extra hp will make you look less squishy as your percentual HP will drop less damatically than without the extra hp. Keep in mind Tanks with extra HP just switch their mods thus they only loose defense/absorb. So spikieness is not influenced by that.

 

Defense is not a mitigation stat. It's an avoidance stat.

 

I am not saying that defense is not an avoidance stat. This is exactly what i am saying in my prior post. But avoidance is part of total mitgation for me. This is also very much the way elistjerks in wow handled the avoidance stat. In the programm called Rawr defense was addded into the total mitgation.

 

As far as shield and absorb goes, you don't need numbers to figure out that they both need each other. it's like stacking crit and ignoring surge. it makes crit less useful. If you have low to no absorb shielding an attack does little to nothing, if you have a ton of absorb but no shield absorb sits there doing nothing. This is why if you use WoW terminology for Shield and absorb it becomes block rating. Which is a mitigation stat/s.

 

I think we have a misunderstanding here. I meant with my post by no means to be any guidance to a basic guide. Of course your examples are true. But if i had 45%Shield and 44% absorb or 52%Shield and 42%absorb it would make a big difference for ppl calculating spikieness and squishyness. Same with HP and TTL and PK calculations. It might not mean anything to you or your healers/raid because its far away from being basic.

 

health only helps with unavoidable spike damage

 

What is unavoidable for you? Not shielding an F/T+K/E Attack can be declared unavoidable as you'd never achieve to shield all attacks of a boss. Thus basically all attacks have a probability of being unavoidable. Not to meantion internal/elemental dmg which occurs frequently and especially at the hardest bosses of the new content i.e. Ruugar, Revan, Master/Blaster. Besides Kbn already described Hp influencing TTL and PK, i wont repeat it.

 

Ah, no… Avoidance is simply not a relevant concept in SWTOR for two reasons, both of which Methoxa has already touched on.

 

In Wow avoidance mostly was also included into the mitgation. Many theorycrafters used Rawr and this programm had the same handling of adding avoidance into the mitgation. Or call it mitgation + avoidance if you want. Nevertheless already in wow avoidance wasnt seen as a single thing but always seen in correlation with the other mitgation stats such as block.

 

The first reason is that you cannot get appreciable amounts of defense (or resist)

 

The only reason for that is that we dont have parry compared as to in Wow which makes seeing defense only as an avoidance stat weird as it is the only avoidance stat in Tor unless you can increase absorb to 100% one day.

 

Of all of the damage you can expect to receive in an operation, only about 40-50% of it will be subject to defense

 

While it might be true that 40-50% of the damage can be defended, one has to mention that 70-80% are subject to shield, which again shows that shield is for most bossfights far better. Even in bossfights where only M/R+K/E occurs shield/absorb can be pretty good while not as good as defense but it would make the dmg profile more smooth and less spiky but overall dtps would increase. Doing the same with defense in a shield fight will simply kill you.

 

There is a final factor which hasn't been touched on here, which is attack splitting.

 

Guess you missed my one abt attacking spllitting in my prior post :

 

But most attacks consist of severall small attacks. Therefore the "unlucky" factor was partially removed.

 

But thanks for narrowing it down. Actually i am wondering if Kephess's Asation NM has been updated with splitted attacks, loved it so much seeing my Assasin Cotank getting one - shotted^^

 

You're welcome to call defense "evasion" and separate it in your mind from other forms of mitigation, but the math says otherwise

 

We only have 3 defstatas why giving them unique nicknames. Defstat is what they are, but more important than their nicknames or TC Names is what they do which i tried to explain by also including HP.

 

The way I like to look at it is in terms of a probability of kill (PK) analysis

 

They way i look at it is TTL. Basically your HP should be enough to take at least 2 full hits of the boss you are engaging. For example Underlurker. His hardest hitting attack is somewhere around 25k HP. Lets negate all other damage that underlurker does on the tank to simplify it. He does his 25k attack all 8 seconds. The attack is not segregated into several smaller attacks, but it is one attack. Attack is M/R+K/E.

 

Example A : Full Mitgation Tank 4003 defstats 52k. Has around 0.5% lesser chance of receiving a full blow of underlurkers attack. Attack 1 full blow 25k dmg 51%Hp, Attack 2 full blow 25k dmg = Healers have to heal the tank after each attack. If Tank is not healed he will probably die during the next big attack when including the other damage that occurs in that fight because his hp pool is not enough to survive 2 attacks + the other attacks for example add dmg.

 

Example B: B-Mod Tank 3843 defstats 55k. Has around 0.5% higher chance if receiving a full blow of underlurkers attack. Attack 1 full blow 59% HP, Attack 2 full blow each for 25k dmg = Healers see the tank after the first attack at about 60% Hp. They have to heal him whenever he goes under 50%. He can survive 2 attacks even when including the other damage in that fight. Thus greatly expanding ttl by 8 seconds. Furthermore Healers dont have to anticipate the next big hit of underlurker because they know the tank will it survive it even with "only" 50% HP.

 

The hardest Attack of a boss should never be able to put you down from 100% to 50%. Thus dmg of the attack x2.2

 

This tier of content has very different weights from previous tiers, just due to the way the fights are. Master-Blaster and Revan both have phases where tanks need to be out of healing range for significant time periods, while still taking significant unavoidable damage. They also have extremely high unavoidable spikes that happen periodically (notably, Master's basic attack during the soft enrage, which can hit for upwards of 40-50k late in the phase). This paired with their high levels of internal/elemental (completely unmitigable) damage tips the tier scale significantly toward PK results (i.e. more HP). The general difficulty of these fights and the phases in which these problems occur further tilt the scales.

 

Reminds me of Brontes NM last phase....hated it so much^^

 

Conversely, Coratanni is a legitimately difficult fight, where a lot of the damage is internal/elemental, but no where near as much as most people believe. There isn't a lot of heavy spiking; it's basically a sustained healing check

 

Coratanni is one halfth of a fight which is M/R+K/E heavy when tanking her and not the bird. The other half is Ruugar who does only F/T+K/E damage except for his culls and he is really spiky, maybe not on tanks but the raidmembers who get mouse droids.

 

In a final word i would like to mention the DR of defstats which is clearly noticable at the defstat level of 3843 but even more at 4003 to the point that defstats become less worthy than hp. I never meant by no means to encourage anyone to stack only HP. But to find a mix. HP is more useful than many ppl think but less useful than some ppl might say. Just try it for yourself. Or look it up in the tanking forum, some wise man posted ideal defstats, explained spikieness and squishieness more in detail for us and so on.

Edited July 3, 2015 by Methoxa

[XisscVekno]

You guys are completely missing the point of even my original post. To get long winded and try to argue that math this and math that doesn't change the fact the stat works in one way. There is no two ways, three ways, or even 6 ways.

 

What Max originally stated was that health is a stat to lower squishiness... this is a fallacy. You see this all the time in tanks that run around in all com gear (All health little mitigation).

 

And defense was referred to a mitigation stat.... which again a mitigation stat is a stat that lowers the amount of damage an ability does. Not a roll to see if the dam even hits you (Deflect, dodge, ect.) This is why it's called an avoidance stat. If Defense fails it's roll.... it doesn't mitigate a % of damage. You take the full hit (minus other factors). if defense succeeds you do not take damage, not you take a % of damage. This is why it's referred to as an avoidance stat and not a mitigation stat.

 

I NEVER SAID YOU COULD BE AN AVOIDANCE TANK. I said the systems of both games work very similar in the way the stats are calculated and work. My post was never about tank gear strategies, it was about the misuse of tanking stats terminology. This is why I never posted a setup to take a Sin (for an example) and stack nothing but defense.

 

I was using WoW as an example of terminology that others who where familiar with how the tanking stats worked in WoW to transfer into how stats work in this game. I never said health didn't reduce TTK, I never said that you should never stack health. You need health just as much as the other stats. What I said was health never ever reduces the squishiness factor. It reduces the chances of you dieing in 1-3 shots so healers can react. or as you are putting it... TTK. But even to use your terminology.... having a ton of health and no mitigation you are going to have **** for TTK. Which again is why I'm saying health doesn't reduce squishiness. When most people I know who have been tanking in MMOs for 10+ years see squishy.... they are thinking the lack of mitigation. Which health does not add to mitigation.

Edited July 3, 2015 by XisscVekno

[Gardimuer]

Actually i am wondering if Kephess's Asation NM has been updated with splitted attacks, loved it so much seeing my Assasin Cotank getting one - shotted^^

 

Why would Kephess ever one shot an assassin tank? The only big single hit is Dread Bomb (which has not been split up into smaller hits according to my log). Force Shroud nullifies that entirely anyway, as I recall.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Gardimuer

[Chazcon]

So where are we at currently KBN, are the stat tables on the first page of this thread still valid? The latest and greatest? Thx

[KeyboardNinja]

So where are we at currently KBN, are the stat tables on the first page of this thread still valid? The latest and greatest? Thx

 

Basically, yes. :-) The first page numbers do have an outstanding problem, which is that the shield upper/lower bounds are not quite accurate, particularly in 198 gear. Things should be close enough for practical use though.

[UberSamoyed]

Edited to reflect solution achieved. Edited August 11, 2015 by UberSamoyed

[Goblin_Lackey]

Edit: removed post, wrong button. Edited August 7, 2015 by Goblin_Lackey

[Ximaus]

Just wondering. I had seen the arguments and the guides but I have never actually seen the numbers. Why is Reactive Warding a much better relic than Shield Amp?

 

I suppose I've been away from the game a while and the last serious content I tanked was back before NiM DF came out but doesn't Shield Amp's usefulness depend directly on how much damage the boss attacks deal? If the attacks are non-shieldable or only deal 3-5K per hit then obviously a small absorb shield will help more but what about when the boss attacks hit for 40K base and are shieldable? This was the case in DP (although most hits were around 10K base).

 

Also I have always been under the assumption that Shield Amp would instantly apply the absorb rating increase to the shielded attack which proc'd it. Has anyone confirmed this to not be the case?

 

I'm not looking to argue that Shield Amp is better; I'm just looking for a convincing numbers explanation. I haven't been able to find one so far.

[Powerinfusion]

Just wondering. I had seen the arguments and the guides but I have never actually seen the numbers. Why is Reactive Warding a much better relic than Shield Amp?

 

I suppose I've been away from the game a while and the last serious content I tanked was back before NiM DF came out but doesn't Shield Amp's usefulness depend directly on how much damage the boss attacks deal? If the attacks are non-shieldable or only deal 3-5K per hit then obviously a small absorb shield will help more but what about when the boss attacks hit for 40K base and are shieldable? This was the case in DP (although most hits were around 10K base).

 

Also I have always been under the assumption that Shield Amp would instantly apply the absorb rating increase to the shielded attack which proc'd it. Has anyone confirmed this to not be the case?

 

I'm not looking to argue that Shield Amp is better; I'm just looking for a convincing numbers explanation. I haven't been able to find one so far.

 

I second this query, not for the sake of comparison to SA but for looking at RW's true benefit or lack thereof. Without doing a bunch of complicated math it has always seemed that a passive absorb of such a tiny % of hp (~3%) every 40 seconds would render any real benefit of RW negligible in practice. To me it would seem more appropriate to have the Shrouded Crusader to provide an additonal CD to help out healers in times of high DTPS for the tank and/or raid in general.

[UberSamoyed]

Last post on page 2 by Methoxa has all the relevant info.

[Ximaus]

Do you know where the original post is? The one by Dipstick.

[Powerinfusion]

Last post on page 2 by Methoxa has all the relevant info.

 

Looking for a more theoretical perspective in lieu of straight mathematical emphasis. Honestly, it is difficult to derive anything meaningful from the massive jumble of alphanumeric soup referenced.

 

1. It *seems* clear that FR should be far and away #1. The proc grants an average of (198 level) ~267 defense rating, obviously with spikes for 6 seconds out of every 20, but still seemingly an extremely meaningful contribution.

 

2. RW provides a proc of, in essence, 1620 healing every 40 seconds. This just *seems* flat-out near-worthless. One tick of slow-release medpac would provide that. If this is considered "BiS", to me this would render any other relic to the same level of near-worthlessness. Therefore, pick whatever you want, and SC at least gives you the ability to have an additional CD for times of high DTPS as mentioned previously.

[Powerinfusion]

You guys are completely missing the point of even my original post. To get long winded and try to argue that math this and math that doesn't change the fact the stat works in one way. There is no two ways, three ways, or even 6 ways.

 

What Max originally stated was that health is a stat to lower squishiness... this is a fallacy. You see this all the time in tanks that run around in all com gear (All health little mitigation).

 

And defense was referred to a mitigation stat.... which again a mitigation stat is a stat that lowers the amount of damage an ability does. Not a roll to see if the dam even hits you (Deflect, dodge, ect.) This is why it's called an avoidance stat. If Defense fails it's roll.... it doesn't mitigate a % of damage. You take the full hit (minus other factors). if defense succeeds you do not take damage, not you take a % of damage. This is why it's referred to as an avoidance stat and not a mitigation stat.

 

Get 'em, Xissc. 9 million words and a bunch of "mathematica" (love that term... I sound cool) doesn't change the fact that everything you've written here is 100% correct. Sometimes the super-math people fail to see the forest through the trees. Hence, no response to your rebuttal.

[KeyboardNinja]

Explanation of Reactive Warding: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=728264 This dates back to the Dread Ops, but things have scaled appropriately since then. The tl;dr is that bosses do a lot less damage than you are expecting, and therefore proportional mitigation is less absolutely valuable than one would expect. Edited August 17, 2015 by KeyboardNinja

[Methoxa]

Hence, no response to your rebuttal.

 

No response because everything has been said but no consensus has been found.

 

Mitgation and avoidance lowers spikyness, hence how often you are hit by big attacks

Squishiness is reduced by armour, dmg reduction, to a certain factor absorbrating and it is reduced by your HP. Although the dmg will be the same when having more HP the hp you have left will be more. This buys your healers more time to heal you.

 

But i have said so in my prior post. HP doesnt not essentially lower the damage of a spiky attack, but it will lower its impact as your HP is higher. Ofc tanks with commendation gear are more spiky. But we are talking about squishiness.

Edited August 17, 2015 by Methoxa

[Powerinfusion]

Explanation of Reactive Warding: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=728264 This dates back to the Dread Ops, but things have scaled appropriately since then. The tl;dr is that bosses do a lot less damage than you are expecting, and therefore proportional mitigation is less absolutely valuable than one would expect.

 

OK, but 1620 healing is still *one tick* of slow-release medpac (or rejuv, ballpark, whatever, it's a tiny amount of healing). How 1620 healing every 40 seconds could be considered the least bit valuable just does not stand to reason. That is why I lean towards who the heck even cares what tanking relic you're using, as long as you have one on for the end/power/aug slot. Might as well use FR/SA.

 

EDIT: i.e. Focused Ret/Serendipitous Assault.

Edited August 17, 2015 by Powerinfusion

[Powerinfusion]

No response because everything has been said but no consensus has been found.

 

Mitgation and avoidance lowers spikyness, hence how often you are hit by big attacks

Squishiness is reduced by armour, dmg reduction, to a certain factor absorbrating and it is reduced by your HP. Although the dmg will be the same when having more HP the hp you have left will be more. This buys your healers more time to heal you.

 

But i have said so in my prior post. HP doesnt not essentially lower the damage of a spiky attack, but it will lower its impact as your HP is higher. Ofc tanks with commendation gear are more spiky. But we are talking about squishiness.

 

I think the confusion here relates to the definitions of "spiky" and "squishy". It is unclear what is even meant by those two terms. Irregardless, the bottom line is that Xissc has pointed out that defense is all-or-nothing, and shield/absorb (upon a successful roll on shield) work together to *mitigate* the amount of damage rather than avoid it completely, as with defense. That's it. Anything further is overcomplicating his point.

[UberSamoyed]

I think it was established a while back that the actual benefit from tanking relics is quite small. But, if asked, you can't really blame them for explaining their theory on why they prefer one over the other...especially if they took the time to do the homework. There seems to be a trend on this thread where people will ask for the math to support Theory A, and then dismiss said math when it does not support their Theory B. Or, restate the understood assumption that item X provides little benefit, thus the math is irrelevant.

 

I mean, if we get down to brass tacks, a very wise (fat and pink) math man explained to me that "It's not what you wear, it's what you do." That pretty much negates all of the math.

 

Realistically, I want to wear the two most effective relics for a generalized benefit. I do not want to have to rely on a "clicky" relic in order to gain a very small benefit. Personal preference. I want to spend that GCD and my attention on something else. But, if employing SC does provide a significant benefit, then I'd love to hear from those who have employed it as such. As is, I just haven't seen anything to sway me from the current status quo. At least, something that makes me feel like I'm truly missing out on something valuable in the HM/Nim rounds.

 

To be clear, I'm not against anyone's theory. I just wish there was some competing homework to advance them beyond the conceptual level. In my profession, what you can prove is far more important than what you think...even if what you think may be the most intuitive thing ever. Law is real simple like that. And, I've found that life does imitate this art in many important ways.

[dipstik]

Do you know where the original post is? The one by Dipstick.

 

my 3.0 page? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=802955

2.2? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=645948

2.4? http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=686677

 

there is a critical value of boss dps (threshold) that will make other relics better than the reactive warding relic, but none of the bosses do that much damage. there can be an argument made that you want to gear for a certain phase, that has a boss dps above that threshold, but that is much more micro than the therorycrafting the community typically performs.

 

the way i do it, i assume 22 seconds for the relic buff initiation timer, and look at 4 cases for the stat procing relics: none on, 1 on, other on, both on. i then calculate an effective squish from these weighted cases, and compare to the base case, where no relics are used in the squish calc. this difference in squish is then multiplied by the boss dps and compared to the effective hps of the warding relic. i can then find the threshold boss dps that will make the best relic for the fight mitigate more than the warding relic (in b mods sins like absorb, jugg like defense, PT like shield+absorb, for unlettered they all like defense for most fights) .

Edited August 17, 2015 by dipstik

[KeyboardNinja]

OK, but 1620 healing is still *one tick* of slow-release medpac (or rejuv, ballpark, whatever, it's a tiny amount of healing). How 1620 healing every 40 seconds could be considered the least bit valuable just does not stand to reason. That is why I lean towards who the heck even cares what tanking relic you're using, as long as you have one on for the end/power/aug slot. Might as well use FR/SA.

 

EDIT: i.e. Focused Ret/Serendipitous Assault.

 

And I have! For progression where DPS is just really really tight and tank damage doesn't matter as much (e.g. NiM TfB Terror on tier, or HM Styrak on tier), I have been known to wear DPS relics and/or crystals. It does make a measurable difference in your DtPS, but it's not the end of the world.

 

I want to reemphasize the point that you're radically overestimating the amount of damage that bosses do, and therefore overestimating the amount of damage that is absorbed by percentage mitigation like shield or defense. Absolute mitigation mechanisms like Reactive Warding, Shoulder Cannon (self-heal), Into the Fray (again self-heal), or the old-style assassin healing don't scale with incoming damage, and so at lower damage levels they absolutely outshine the relative mitigation mechanics. Reactive Warding doesn't seem like much, but it is actually contributing more to your mitigation than either of the other relics (in other words, it's better than the Fortunate Redoubt!). In fact, the Reactive Warding relic contributes more to your survivability than many of your other gear pieces (individually).

 

Can you replace the Reactive Warding with the SA and still do things? Yes, absolutely. The difference is marginal; measurable, but marginal. Can you replace the Reactive Warding with a DPS relic and still do things? Yes, absolutely. The difference is more measurable and less marginal, but it's still small enough that you'll survive. It's just a question of how much you care about min-maxing.

 

At the end of the day, a well-played tank with commendation gear will clear things that a poorly-played tank with perfectly optimized gear will fail at. Tank execution >>> tank gear. Also, healers >>>> tank execution, but that's a discussion for another day.

 

One thing worth noting… A vanguard tank in my guild was recently working on Revan HM. He's cleared Revan before with an optimized Powertech tank, and he noted that his DtPS was almost exactly 100 higher than it should have been. The difference between his Powertech and his Vanguard? A Ruusan relic, a Resurrected Ear and Implant. That's it. Does 100 DtPS make a difference on Revan HM? Arguably no, not when everything is going as it should be, but if you're in a group that is still progressing towards a kill, everything isn't always as it should be. You want to give your group the best margins that you can. Little things add up into big things, and big things add up to wipes rather than kills.

 

Min-maxing has an effect, as small as it may be, and it's worth spending the time to get it right. The Reactive Warding is BiS, and the comparison isn't even close. You don't have to use it, but if you don't you are consciously making the margins in your group just a little bit tighter for no reason other than personal taste in relics.

[UberSamoyed]

Just to be clear (cause math ain't my thing), can someone bottom line it for my preferences?

 

The best passive relic combo for current content B-modders, all three tank types, generally is: RW and FR?

 

Sidenote: I have a tank partner who swears by RW and SA for some PT B-mod fights. Is he correct?

 

Sidenote #2: KBN, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm still doing my best to hit optimized mitigation stats across the board. Fight'em at every trench!

Edited August 17, 2015 by UberSamoyed

[dipstik]

Just to be clear (cause math ain't my thing), can someone bottom line it for my preferences?

 

The best passive relic combo for current content B-modders, all three tank types, generally is: RW and FR?

 

Sidenote: I have a tank partner who swears by RW and SA for some PT B-mod fights. Is he correct?

 

Sidenote #2: KBN, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm still doing my best to hit optimized mitigation stats across the board. Fight'em at every trench!

 

D: Fortunate Redoubt (defense)

A: Shield Amplification (absorb)

S: Shrouded Crusader (shield and absorb)

W: Reactive Warding (bubble)

 

Malfar Squad Undrlrk Cmndrs Retrnd Sparky Bulo Torque Mstr Cortani

unlettered

sin WD WS WD WD WD WD WD WD WS WS

jugg WD WA WD WS WD WS WD WD WS WD

PT WD WS WD WS WS WS WD WD WS WS

 

lettered

sin WD WA WA WA WA WD WD WD WA WA

jugg WD WS WD WD WS WS WD WD WS WD

pt WD WS WD WS WS WS WS WS WS WS

 

edit: jugg lettered was copy of sin. fixed.

Edited August 17, 2015 by dipstik

[UberSamoyed]

Absolutely awesome! I guess I need to get clicky with it...

 

How about CM? (runs and hides)

Edited August 17, 2015 by UberSamoyed

[Powerinfusion]

I want to spend that GCD and my attention on something else.

 

To be clear, the GCD is not triggered on a clicky-relic.

 

Sidenote #2: KBN, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm still doing my best to hit optimized mitigation stats across the board. Fight'em at every trench!

 

If this is referring to my "fight" against KBN/Methoxa about how they sort of attacked Xissc on his point about mitigation vs. avoidance, let me make perfectly clear that I have the utmost respect for the work and contributions KBN has made to the SWTOR community with these optimal tank stats posts (and everything else) from day one. I have referred countless numbers of tanks both in-guild and in gen chat on two different servers to this thread (and the one BW blew up) when asked about optimal stat distributions. I do want to apologize for the "mathematica" shot - that was uncalled for.

 

At the end of the day, a well-played tank with commendation gear will clear things that a poorly-played tank with perfectly optimized gear will fail at. Tank execution >>> tank gear.

 

This is my point, really. However, for serious progression purposes, I get this too:

 

Min-maxing has an effect, as small as it may be, and it's worth spending the time to get it right. The Reactive Warding is BiS, and the comparison isn't even close. You don't have to use it, but if you don't you are consciously making the margins in your group just a little bit tighter for no reason other than personal taste in relics.

 

Thanks for the responses.