Spreadsheet

The primary use for this spreadsheet it to assist the individual in regards to gearing at every stage of the game. Insert your values into the green boxes at the top of the spreadsheet to get a baseline mean mitigation value for your class.

From there you can adjust damage types, accuracy levels, relics, and see how various stats adjust your mean mitigation curve.

The reasons for doing this versus just taking raw values posted in other threads for optimal values include:

1. The top of the mean mitigation curve is a flat plateau.

In general you can be a couple hundred points off of the true optimal values and still be within less than one half of one percent of mean mitigation. This spreadsheet allows you to know when you are optimal enough to stop optimizing. In the stat playground area of the spreadsheet when you punch in 1 for D and A values (and sometime S, for Vanguards), if the difference is less than .0005 between the Aprox. MM changes/stat, you are close enough to stop caring.

2. Optimal values for a given DSA amount cannot be reached in all cases.

There are many places where for a given DSA value, it is impossible to reach the calculated optimal value, due to the way that stats are distributed.

3. Damage Types can be adjusted per fight.

You can adjust the boss damage types in this spreadsheet to match the content you are gearing for.

A damage distribution graph is now included at the bottom, as a result of a discussion with Mysery about the possibility of gearing shadow tanks to decrease the spikiness by smoothing the damage curve while ignoring the overall mean mitigation value. This lead me to getting a graphical representation of the damage distribution using a RNG based basic simulation of combat, which has been added at the very bottom of each classes spreadsheet tab. The jury is still out on how well this works, but it's still useful to see how damage is distributed during a simulated fight. It should be noted that this chart only includes attacks that can be shielded and defended against, and does not include any accuracy adjustments from earlier in the spreadsheet.

If you don't have Excel, you can open this spreadsheet on SkyDrive and edit a copy of it for your own personal use. Let me know what else would be useful or could be improved upon.

NOTE: The values in the spreadsheet by default for Armor, Defense, Shield, and Absorb are arbitrary values, normally either my stats of the stats of tanks I know. These values are not intended for direct comparison purposes.

A damage distribution graph is now included at the bottom, as a result of a discussion with Mysery about the possibility of gearing shadow tanks to decrease the spikiness by smoothing the damage curve while ignoring the overall mean mitigation value. This lead me to getting a graphical representation of the damage distribution using a RNG based basic simulation of combat, which has been added at the very bottom of each classes spreadsheet tab. The jury is still out on how well this works, but it's still useful to see how damage is distributed during a simulated fight. It should be noted that this chart only includes attacks that can be shielded and defended against, and does not include any accuracy adjustments from earlier in the spreadsheet.

Hmm... I'm not sure if you've considered this as well. But there currently is about a 20% gap between the amount of stats at Guardians and Vanguards are recommended to spend on Defence and Shield rating (which increase the chances to mitigate damage) compared to Shadows (see http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6682858&postcount=77 for the calculations, http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6685007&postcount=81 for KBN's reply, and http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6686502&postcount=85 for follow up). I haven't been able to figure out how to do include the non-stat mitigation to the comparison, so I'm not sure how much the extra 35% shield chance that Shadows can get helps to bridge this gap. That said it seems plausible that Shadows can drop some mean mitigation to reduce spike chance.

For the assassin simulator you should consider Discharge (as a 5% buff to defense rating) and Wither (as a 5% buff to k/e and i/e damage).

If you consider this for your assassin simulation (when sacrificing 360 absorb for 180 shield and 180 defense):

Chance for double hits: from 7,62% to 6,21% (assuming m/r attacks)

Mean migation: 30,27% to 30,76% (about 1% decrease in mean migation for m/r attacks at 100% accuracy)

But i don't aggree on this topic.

First awall, BW changed a lot of attacks by splitting them into a bunch of small attacks (latest change: Terminate). Most of the bosses in nim already have splitted attacks and i would strongly encourage BW to do it for the rest of the bosses aswelll (Thrasher) (see my post in the shadow questions section). So, gimping your stats, when you face a large number of small attacks is not really worth it at all.

Secondly, the main problem with spikes is, that when you get more damage overall, the healer has more stress keeping you up all the time and you will then die too way smaller spikes then before.

If you want to gimp your mean migation for spike "protection" you could also try max hp build (max hp isnt good either) .