Endurance v. Willpower (Shadow Tanking)

[Kitru]

Actually, you did the math wrong I was unclear, admittedly, but per second the tics on TK increase at 3 HPS, which is what I meant. I agree that it is reduced in a minute long setting, but I meant for mitigating a hit in the moment.

 

My math was correct and your own math was wrong because you didn't give the specific case in which you intended your math to apply. It was also wrong becaus it's not even 3 hp/sec in the case you mention: 12% of 100 additional hit points over 3 seconds is 4 hp/sec. The problem with saying this in any case is that it's not an accurate evaluation of the contribution of the Endurance. It's like saying that increasing your Endurance by 100% doubles your survivability, which is blatantly untrue in any reasonable case because you're going to have a healer throwing heals on you throughout the course of any situation that matters.

 

TK Throw isn't a useful tool for mitigating damage at the time it is taken. For one, the healing is spread out over the course of 3 seconds, and, for another, it takes much too long ramp up time and doesn't stay available for long enough to hold on to in order for it to be intelligent to hold on to. It's simply better to view all Shadow self healing except for Battle Readiness as an average hp/sec contribution over

 

Further, since you HP pool is larger, you can take the hit easier, and since you can heal more of it solo, your healers can ignore you a bit more to aoe heal/interrupt/add dps themselves. Since healers don't need to gear differently then me to DPS, that is a much bigger win IMO.

 

First off, saying that healers can look at other people rather than paying full attention to you is flat out untrue because the healer will still have to spend the same percentage of time healing you as they would otherwise in order to bring you back to full health. I have had to repeat this *numerous* times over the course of this discussion, and it keeps coming up because people still don't understand that hit points *don't actually do anything*.

 

Secondly, you're *vastly* overestimating the additional healing provided by Endurance stacking. As I have said before in the math I provided, in order for you to have any appreciable impact upon the incoming damage such that a healer will actually be able to heal you less *in reality* rather than purely in theory, you would have to stack an impossibly high amount of Endurance. Since you can't stack that much Endurance, there's no point in stacking the Endurance in the first place.

 

It's not a question of "adds mitigation". It's a question of weighing the comparative benefits, of which Endurance has functionally none and Willpower has several.

[drakhri]

You guys seem to think that there is some kind of new magical mechanic that makes tanking in this game different than any other game, there isn't.

 

This isn't theory:

Get enough End in order to provide the healer with enough time to heal you, anything beyond that is useless. Some healers need more time, some bosses have more burst / movement for the healer. I suggest getting enough End for the worst case boss fight, then going all willpower. Threat is an issue in this game and having more willpower helps.

 

This is basic logic, you can apply it to every game with a tank (keep in mind most games will let you choose between mitigation/avoidance and HP rather than a dps stat and HP). It's very obvious why having more hp than what you actually need is useless. If you never drop below 10k life, whats the point in having it? It doesn't help with healing at all. Ending the fight sooner AND holding threat better will help with healing.

 

Having a "safety zone" is a waste of much needed stats, do you still use training wheels on your bike too?

 

This comes from my years of experience playing many mmo's both as a healer and a tank.

 

edit: typo fix

Edited January 20, 2012 by drakhri

[ssyy]

Having a "safety zone" is a waste of much need stats, do you still use training wheels on your bike too?

 

No, but I have an airbag in my car for when the #### hits the fan.

[drakhri]

No, but I have an airbag in my car for when the #### hits the fan.

 

The air bag doesn't actually save your car, though, does it? A better investment would be into keep the car from crashing to begin with.

 

I wonder how many of the people posting in this thread have actually healed an HP stacking tank. It's not pleasant.

[Zintair]

TK Throw isn't a useful tool for mitigating damage at the time it is taken. For one, the healing is spread out over the course of 3 seconds, and, for another, it takes much too long ramp up time and doesn't stay available for long enough to hold on to in order for it to be intelligent to hold on to. It's simply better to view all Shadow self healing except for Battle Readiness as an average hp/sec contribution over.

 

Its better than that, and you can keep the buff up as long as necessary until you need to use it? Every Project resets the timer on the 3rd stack therefore in a normal rotation you should ALWAYS have this up. At least I do and it has been the difference between life and death.

 

 

First off, saying that healers can look at other people rather than paying full attention to you is flat out untrue because the healer will still have to spend the same percentage of time healing you as they would otherwise in order to bring you back to full health. I have had to repeat this *numerous* times over the course of this discussion, and it keeps coming up because people still don't understand that hit points *don't actually do anything*.

 

Your wrong here. If you raid in Hardmode + Operations your healers on certain encounters are EXTREMELY taxed on certain fights, can be CCd or may not be able to get a heal off on the tank due to range/positioning. Added HP and your CDs are the ONLY difference between life and death here.

 

Until you've raided hardmode + Operation I fail to see how you can even contribute to this point either as you don't know the encounters or what they entail.

Edited January 20, 2012 by Zintair

[Kitru]

Its better than that, and you can keep the buff up as long as necessary until you need to use it? Every Project resets the timer on the 3rd stack therefore in a normal rotation you should ALWAYS have this up. At least I do and it has been the difference between life and death.

 

Except that, if you delay its use, you're not getting the benefit of the cheap damage *or* high averaged hp/sec. You should be using Harnessed Shadows as soon as it comes up, not waiting until your HP drops down. As a tank, you should be taking damage regularly, so there isn't any reasonably expectation that you should ever *need* to delay it to mitigation some powerful attack, especially since it's only 12% *and* it takes 3 seconds for it to apply.

 

Your wrong here. If you raid in Hardmode + Operations your healers on certain encounters are EXTREMELY taxed on certain fights, can be CCd or may not be able to get a heal off on the tank due to range/positioning. Added HP and your CDs are the ONLY difference between life and death here.

 

Or CDs. You know, those abilities we have *explicitly* to deal with the given situations. And in my raid experience, I've never seen or found much use for an additional 2k hp compared to the 18k I've currently got and been in any situation where you could feasibly expect the additional hp to save you that the intelligent use of a CD would simply do more.

 

Until you've raided hardmode + Operation I fail to see how you can even contribute to this point either as you don't know the encounters or what they entail.

 

I've raided HMs *and* Operations. So, ya. My experiences are valid. The additional hp isn't useful.

[BroadStreetBully]

You guys seem to think that there is some kind of new magical mechanic that makes tanking in this game different than any other game, there isn't.

 

This isn't theory:

Get enough End in order to provide the healer with enough time to heal you, anything beyond that is useless. Some healers need more time, some bosses have more burst / movement for the healer. I suggest getting enough End for the worst case boss fight, then going all willpower. Threat is an issue in this game and having more willpower helps.

 

This is basic logic, you can apply it to every game with a tank (keep in mind most games will let you choose between mitigation/avoidance and HP rather than a dps stat and HP). It's very obvious why having more hp than what you actually need is useless. If you never drop below 10k life, whats the point in having it? It doesn't help with healing at all. Ending the fight sooner AND holding threat better will help with healing.

 

Having a "safety zone" is a waste of much need stats, do you still use training wheels on your bike too?

 

This comes from my years of experience playing many mmo's both as a healer and a tank.

 

Exactly. Why stack so much extra health when you never have to use it. Keep in mind most Willpower gear will still give you Endurance, it simply is more important to focus on the Willpower since the paired Endurance should be plenty.

 

Also, keep up the good work, Kitru. Someday people will listen.

Edited January 20, 2012 by BroadStreetBully

[Arbegla]

Also, keep up the good work, Kitru. Someday people will listen.

 

See, the thing about this, is Kitru refuses to see any other point but his own. He has to be right, and when anyone pushes it too far, Kitru ignores them flat out (like he has me)

 

So while Kitru may have some good points, he isn't accounting for how little the DPS gain of willpower is, and thus undervalues any mitigation value of endurance, and overvalues any DPS gain of willpower.

 

And until he can say, with 100% certainty, exactly how much willpower is going to benefit, its all just guess work.

 

We know endurance gives 1hp/second mitigation per 20 endurance you stack. We know that endurance boost your effective hit points, and thus your time until death by a pretty large amount, and we already know that there are encounters out there that will disable your healers for set amount of times.

 

While Kitru has shown math that 200 willpower could equate to 70DPS, he isn't willing to account for the fact that his number is considering PA and HS procs, which also boost your base damage. He's basically saying that 70DPS is a good enough number, without explaining what 70DPS actually does to your overall damage and threat generation.

 

He's also said that threat is a non-issue for any tank, so the only benefit to adding willpower is PURE DPS, which flat out IS NOT a tanks job. A tanks job is to hold aggro, take hits, and last long enough for the healer to be able to keep him alive, and the boss to be killed. A tanks job is NOT to stack DPS stats as a means to kill the boss faster, which is the DPSers job.

 

Cool downs only do so much to mitigate damage, and once you use them, you have to wait anywhere between 45 seconds (resilience) to 2 minutes (Battle readiness) to use them again, so saying 'Well just pop your cool downs' doesn't do a whole lot of good, if said cool downs have already been used.

[damionsparhawk]

also, willpower is a more generic spread of damage stats, where tanking as a shadow tends to involve automatically critting a lot thanks to Particle Acceleration, so if you really wish to increase your damage output/threat you should probably focus on power/surge depending on which grants you a better damage curve, though without actual combat logging it's somewhat difficult to acquire the actual numbers to really -know- the statistics. (also, you should be getting increased threat from Project thanks to Bombardment anyway, so it really is your go to skill and what the build is focused on utalizing to the fullest)

 

on the defense point I personally am running with shield/absorb priority over defense on the basis that regardless of when it occurs in the roll, point for point you get more out of it than defense and at 46% shield and 47% absorb (with kinetic ward) on top of innate armor reduction of 39% anything I shield should only be hitting for about 14% of the total damage. All considered I'm pretty sure statistically I'm mitigating more than 70% of the incoming attacks between shield and defense rolls without even looking for a cooldown, and that's not even considering just the amount absorbed by armor (native) and talent related damage reductions. Keep in mind however that this doesn't work as well for non-shadow tanks, since they don't get Kinetic Ward (+15% shield chance).

 

as for the argument about endurance/willpower, it's foolish, every hit point between you and the adversary is the difference between a successful kill and a wipe, as a tank you should never be stacking anything that doesn't help you survive the fight until such point as you're over geared for the encounter, at which point I can pretty much assure you that you will also be overgeared in the damage aspect as to make the question moot. If you're having problems maintaining threat that typically means you should be either utalizing crowd controls rather than engaging the entire mob or, that you need to encourage the dps to hold back long enough for you to obtain a sizeable lead. That being said, the only time threat should be an issue is encounters involving a boss or mob that is immune to taunt .

[Murasakikitsune]

Exactly. Why stack so much extra health when you never have to use it. Keep in mind most Willpower gear will still give you Endurance, it simply is more important to focus on the Willpower since the paired Endurance should be plenty.

 

Also, keep up the good work, Kitru. Someday people will listen.

 

I haven't seen a great deal of the thread, but I'd like to add a bit to this.

 

The healer's power will always heal the same number of HP regardless of your defense. It's a Damage : Healing ratio.

 

If the enemy's damage is 100/time, and the healer heals for 80/time. You're taking 20 damage every unit of time.

 

But say your overall defense mitigates 40% damage. Suddenly, you're left with 60 damage and 80 healing; you're gaining HP rather than losing it.

 

This is a more numerical explanation of why defense etc. is much more valuable than Endurance. Endurance is little more than extra Time To Live, but defensive stats are that and more. If everything leaves you with more Healing/time than Damage/time, then Time to Live becomes almost irrelevant.

 

At that point, it's all about keeping your Healer alive. That's where Willpower comes in, making it much easier to keep your healer up, and your health high.

[Arbegla]

At that point, it's all about keeping your Healer alive. That's where Willpower comes in, making it much easier to keep your healer up, and your health high.

 

Aside from holding threat, which we've already established isn't an issue, how would stacking willpower make it easier for your healer to keep you alive?

 

Your also assuming your healer will be able to keep up with incoming damage all the time. What if they can't? What if your healer isn't geared enough for the encounter but you try anyway? (as the game is still new, its hard to judge what 'geared' would be) Wouldn't it be better to have higher hit points, and thus better self healing (at a minor increase, but it is still present) then having to rely on your healer 100% of the time?

 

Willpower does NOTHING but boost your overall DPS, and its by a very small amount. Kitru's backwards math says 70DPS increase, which when compared to overall group DPS on a boss with 1 million hit points, and a 5 minute enrage timer, your looking at a 2.1% increase. And as I've already tried to explain to kitru, his numbers are heavily skewed, both in his rotation, and in the way he is accounting for PA and HS. Using the correct numbers, and your looking at about a ~40DPS increase overall, which is even less of a damage boost.

[Ellisande]

How is this even a pretend logical debate?

 

Do you tank with crit on your gear or defense?

 

If you take defense instead of crit why would you take willpower instead of stamina?

 

Yes I understand the logic that optimally you would only have on as much stamina as you need to end every boss fight at 1 hp with every other stat set to optimize your dps, however how often do you go into a fight with the perfect information about the future that would be needed to arrive at that future?

 

As you only have imperfect information about what is going to happen during any particular encounter you need to prepare for a worst case scenario where all your healers have a brain fart at the exact same time. This means you need to be geared to survive through that brain fart and the only way you can be best prepared for such a situation of not getting healed for an unknown length of time is to max out your stamina and defense stats which is exactly what you are being taken into that encounter as a tank for.

 

I mean honestly how many fights have you died where everyone came out of it saying, "We totally would have had this boss if only our dumb as bricks Shadow tank had taken 5 more Willpower instead of Stamina?"

 

At the end of the day it is much easier to know for sure that bringing up the damage of your lowest DPS player is going to help you win a fight than whether having your tank take more a few more points of willpower instead of endurance is going to help you win a fight.

 

Kitru I think is too focused on averages and not focused enough on simulation analysis.

 

And considering that the only time you really are choosing between willpower and endurance is for armoring mods/relics this really is a complete nonissue.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Ellisande

[Arbegla]

Kitru I think is too focused on averages and not focused enough on simulation analysis.

 

Kitru is actually focused on ALWAYS assuming your healers will give you the proper amount of attention to keep you from dying. This means, that your healer never has a brain fart, and thus you never have to plan for it.

 

Multiple people have told him that his thinking isn't the best way of doing things (myself included) and he's either flat out ignored them (or put them on ignore, like he has me) or said 'Its such a small amount of time to account for, it might as well not exist' which just screams of 'I run with the same group over and over again, and NEVER PUG, thus I don't have this problem.' and thus we're having this debate.

 

Because Kitru never PUGs, and thus is horribly biased on what to actually expect in random group environments, Kitru has it in his head that it is generally a good idea to stack willpower over endurance.

 

This isn't even close to actual game play experience, and leads me to believe that while Kitru may SAY he has all this raiding experience, both here and in other games, that he really doesn't have very much true experience at all, and he's trying to use skewed backwards math to make up for his utter lack of real world experience.

 

And considering that the only time you really are choosing between willpower and endurance is for armoring mods this really is a complete nonissue.

 

Its been shown that you can actually trade willpower for endurance in more then just your armoring, as some of the defense stat mods have more willpower on them then others. The real numbers is closer to trading about 200 endurance for 200 willpower, with it being slightly less on lower tier levels, and slightly more on higher gear levels.

[BroadStreetBully]

If you are really scared about being in an awedul group, you can stack as much Endurance as you want. Kitru has simply used math to show the additional damage and threat is more useful. Kitru is more focused on maximizing the potential of the class. If you want to cower behind Endurance, that is fine.

[Kitru]

If you take defense instead of crit why would you take willpower instead of stamina?

 

Because Defense is actually a stat that makes you a better tanks while Endurance has no impact upon your ability to survive once you reach the point where you can keep your healer alive. The entire point of the debate is to point out how, even though it's counterintuitive to stack Willpower above Endurance, it's *better* to do so. You're getting stuck on the idea that if it is intuitive, then it must be true when, as I have repeatedly proven *it isn't*.

 

I mean honestly how many fights have you died where everyone came out of it saying, "We totally would have had this boss if only our dumb as bricks Shadow tank had taken 5 more Willpower instead of Stamina?"

 

I can honestly say that I have been in situations in TOR wherein I have said, "If only we had a *tiny* bit more DPS, we would have had that boss.", but not a single one where I have said, "The tank really needed some more hit points.". You get *more* than enough hit points tangentially just by *any* gear (I met a DPS Scoundrel last night that had 20k hp unbuffed; no joke) that it's pretty much *pointless* to stack it at all.

 

Kitru I think is too focused on averages and not focused enough on simulation analysis.

 

No, I'm focused entirely upon optimal performance within raid situations. If you want to throw out some simulations that can do anything to prove me wrong, feel free, but make sure they are *accurate* simulations that actually take into account logical gearing for the content simulated. If you do, I'm more than confident that you'll realize that the additional 1-2k hp you get aren't going to increase your rate of success and Willpower actually *will*.

 

And considering that the only time you really are choosing between willpower and endurance is for armoring mods/relics this really is a complete nonissue.

 

Did you not read the post where I pointed out exactly where Endurance and Willpower are traded off? Armoring/hilt *and* mods both have varying amounts of Willpower and Endurance on them such that, if you do choose the more Willpower dependent ones, you're actually going to see a pretty substantial difference. Even if you discount moddable bracers and belts, the number of mod slots that you can use to affect your Willpower:Endurance ratio is 12 (2 for each: weapon, head, chest, hands, legs, feet), and the difference provided by each is actually pretty substantial. Saying it's a nonissue when the entire point of the moddable gear system is that it *is* an issue simply demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the system as a whole.

 

By the way, the only relics with Willpower on them are the Matrix relics and, personally, I wouldn't use them as a Shadow tank since our only options are the Str tanking trink and the WP DPS trink; I would much rather just take a Shield/Abs use relic and a Def relic for the additional CD (both of which have less End and added Power instead of pure End like the DPS relics).

[Arbegla]

Because Defense is actually a stat that makes you a better tanks while Endurance has no impact upon your ability to survive once you reach the point where you can keep your healer alive. The entire point of the debate is to point out how, even though it's counterintuitive to stack Willpower above Endurance, it's *better* to do so. You're getting stuck on the idea that if it is intuitive, then it must be true when, as I have repeatedly proven *it isn't*.

 

The problem is finding that point, which you dont do ANY math to point out. My time until death metric is a measurement of a healers reaction time. If you can only survive 5seconds, then a healer only has 5 seconds to react. That is why any GOOD theorycrafting tank player uses a Time until Death metric to measure their tanks durability.

 

I can honestly say that I have been in situations in TOR wherein I have said, "If only we had a *tiny* bit more DPS, we would have had that boss.", but not a single one where I have said, "The tank really needed some more hit points.". You get *more* than enough hit points tangentially just by *any* gear (I met a DPS Scoundrel last night that had 20k hp unbuffed; no joke) that it's pretty much *pointless* to stack it at all.

 

The issue with this is you are assuming that adding more willpower will suddenly fix the problem. Were your DPS players using the correct rotation? Did they properly use all available cool downs to boost said DPS? There are far more variables to consider then 'Adding more DPS to the tank' would be able to fix.

No, I'm focused entirely upon optimal performance within raid situations. If you want to throw out some simulations that can do anything to prove me wrong, feel free, but make sure they are *accurate* simulations that actually take into account logical gearing for the content simulated. If you do, I'm more than confident that you'll realize that the additional 1-2k hp you get aren't going to increase your rate of success and Willpower actually *will*.

Optimal performance that assumes that a healer (or even 2) are going to be focusing solely on the tank, and that there will never be a time where the above is incorrect. This creates such a HUGE biased on all of your numbers, as you flat out refuse to even account for player error. Your saying 'Nope, any length of time the healer has to heal you up is good enough, and thus extending that time for ANY reason is fruitless.'

Edited January 21, 2012 by Arbegla

[Murasakikitsune]

Aside from holding threat, which we've already established isn't an issue, how would stacking willpower make it easier for your healer to keep you alive?

 

Your also assuming your healer will be able to keep up with incoming damage all the time. What if they can't? What if your healer isn't geared enough for the encounter but you try anyway? (as the game is still new, its hard to judge what 'geared' would be) Wouldn't it be better to have higher hit points, and thus better self healing (at a minor increase, but it is still present) then having to rely on your healer 100% of the time?

 

Willpower does NOTHING but boost your overall DPS, and its by a very small amount. Kitru's backwards math says 70DPS increase, which when compared to overall group DPS on a boss with 1 million hit points, and a 5 minute enrage timer, your looking at a 2.1% increase. And as I've already tried to explain to kitru, his numbers are heavily skewed, both in his rotation, and in the way he is accounting for PA and HS. Using the correct numbers, and your looking at about a ~40DPS increase overall, which is even less of a damage boost.

 

I won't pretend to know the internal mechanics for threat generation, but it should come down to the balance between that extra little bit of DPS (and in-turn ThreatPerSecond) and how much extra health one would end up with.

 

As far as theory itself goes without the actual numbers and formulas, more health would be optimal in groups with less teamwork capability, providing a greater margin of error. Error on the healer's part translates into less Threat on his part, thus less to work against.

Willpower (boosting TPS) would be optimal for groups with good teamwork, as the healer would be doing more than enough to make the extra endurance unnecessary, thus generating more threat to compete with.

[Arbegla]

I won't pretend to know the internal mechanics for threat generation, but it should come down to the balance between that extra little bit of DPS (and in-turn ThreatPerSecond) and how much extra health one would end up with.

 

As far as theory itself goes without the actual numbers and formulas, more health would be optimal in groups with less teamwork capability, providing a greater margin of error. Error on the healer's part translates into less Threat on his part, thus less to work against.

Willpower (boosting TPS) would be optimal for groups with good teamwork, as the healer would be doing more than enough to make the extra endurance unnecessary, thus generating more threat to compete with.

 

But threat isn't an issue. Stacking willpower over endurance comes down to a straight DPS vs effective hit points argument.

 

Would that extra DPS be enough to matter? Would having a higher effective hit points matter? Which is better to fall back on, when you don't know for sure?

[Kemorand]

Actually, I did. Prolifically. I also enjoyed point out that in a vast number of other MMOs tanks that blinded stack their hitpoints without considering the situation in question and the design of the game itself are friggin' idiots. If anyone believes that hit points are a decent metric by which to judge a tank, they're following an outdated model of survivability.

 

Up to a point I agree. However, there always comes a time due to itemflation where Endurance just simply wins everything because it has no diminishing return whatsoever.

 

At first, when gearing up, defense/shield/absorb is better, what you said is true. Later on however, END will just become king again because for the same stat cost on item, you'll gain 1k HP, or 0.2 shield chance and then, the choice is nonexistant. You'd have to give up so much END to get almost nothing in defense/shield gains that pursuing that path would severly cripple you.

 

There will no doubt be a lot of min/max people calculating exactly when and where this switch occurs, but have no doubt it's there since SWTOR follows a very standard item/stat system. I find it quite dull too...

[Wuzseen]

I'm honestly floored that this topic didn't get one reply yesterday. What happened everypony? There is some Grade A trolling in here. Edited January 25, 2012 by Wuzseen

[Dyinn]

I'm honestly floored that this topic didn't get one reply yesterday. What happened everypony? There is some Grade A trolling in here.

 

Yea. Im using this thread for about 2 weeks to put myself too sleep every night. I'll need more content now

[Arbegla]

I'm honestly floored that this topic didn't get one reply yesterday. What happened everypony? There is some Grade A trolling in here.

 

Kitru put me on ignore, so that means he can't read my posts, and then call me an idiot for them.

[Sresk]

Well I'll weigh in on the side of more Will. You only need enough end to survive bursts and one shots after that stack damage. It's not like our choice is between 0 end and 1000 will, vs 1000 end and 0 will. Even if your stacking willpower and defense stats your going to end up with more than sufficient end to tank anything. Any more end than the minimum necessary to tank is a waste. And we get that minimum amount of will no matter what items we choose, so choose the ones with higher will stats.

[Ahrounmoon]

Kitru put me on ignore, so that means he can't read my posts, and then call me an idiot for them.

 

The horse was also dead before the thread started. We've just been beating it ever since. Someone should really call PETA on us. I also don't think I've had my mind changed by anything posted here, just had some suspicions somewhat confirmed regarding tank threat/dps.

[Arbegla]

The horse was also dead before the thread started. We've just been beating it ever since. Someone should really call PETA on us. I also don't think I've had my mind changed by anything posted here, just had some suspicions somewhat confirmed regarding tank threat/dps.

 

What suspicions if i may ask?