I decided to bite the bullet and snag the War Hero Defense relic for situational uses in PvE. Basically, my intention is to swap that relic in for my Campaign proc heal relic on a case-by-case basis. The Campaign proc absorb relic is basically just hanging out, and doesn't get replaced except on pure-F/T bosses (e.g. Soa, Stormcaller, or TFB Phase 2/3).

Interestingly enough, swapping in the War Hero Defense relic actually *lowers* my overall survivability by nearly 0.5%! It raises my mitigation quite a bit, but the loss of survivability contribution from the proc heal relic is more significant than I had expected. Full numbers (all with stim):

With Proc Heal

• HP: 26490
  
• Defense: 28.77%
  
• Shield: 65.28%
  
• Absorb: 58.47%
  

• Weighted mitigation: 64.4947%
  
• Survivability: 71.0414%
  
• Variance: 30.6163%
  
• eHP: 43926
  

With War Hero Defense

• HP: 26021
  
• Defense: 30.68%
  
• Shield: 65.28%
  
• Absorb: 57.83%
  

• Weighted mitigation: 64.9219%
  
• Survivability: 70.6007%
  
• Variance: 29.3939%
  
• eHP: 42819
  

Note that I have my stats and augments set in such a way that I am at an ideal maxima in both configurations, so stat swapping to emphasize one relic or another would not improve things.

I think the reason for this drop is two-fold. First, the proc heal contributes a lot more in the way of survivability than most people give it credit for. Additionally, swapping to the War Hero relic loses almost 500 HP, which drops the value of my biggest self-heal by a significant margin. Between these two components, the mitigation contribution from the static defense boost is entirely negated.

Conclusion: the War Hero Defense relic is very over-rated for shadow/assassin tanks. We simply have better options for most fights. The activated defense relic makes for a fantastic cooldown (and this post does nothing to address that), but even just going with the proc heal relic is a very solid choice. I'm still going to swap in the War Hero relic situationally (e.g. when tanking the first phase of TFB), but it's definitely not going to be my primary Relic #2.

What attack/damage type weights are you using and what is your assumed incoming DPS?

Iirc, you said before you hadn't gotten the numbers for TfB so I'm curious. TfB seems to hit a fair deal harder than EC, so, if you're using the EC numbers, you're very likely overstating the value of the proc heal relic.

What attack/damage type weights are you using and what is your assumed incoming DPS?

 

Iirc, you said before you hadn't gotten the numbers for TfB so I'm curious. TfB seems to hit a fair deal harder than EC, so, if you're using the EC numbers, you're very likely overstating the value of the proc heal relic.

I'm considering all current content except TFB, so EV + KP + EC + NP. Seeing as EV/KP NM both hit harder than EC HM (especially KP), it seems to me that the numbers should be fairly close to what they will look like once I include TFB.

Overall, the damage weights are as follows:

• M/R + K/E = 75.44%
  
• M/R + I/E = 0%
  
• F/T + K/E = 16.68%
  
• F/T + I/E = 7.88%
  

Incoming, pre-mitigation DPS is as follows:

• EV: 1920
  
• KP: 3991
  
• EC: 1859
  
• NP: 3238
  

Average post-mitigation DPS is 986, which tallies pretty closely with my combat logs. At a HPS of 134 pre-relic (and 154 with relic) and a weighted mitigation of 64.4947%, that gives me a survivability contribution (from self-healing) of 6.6588%.

I'll re-run the numbers once I finish parsing out TFB (I have all the data now, I just need to organize it). I'm pretty sure this is pretty close though, and given that the difference between relics is as dramatic as a full half a percent, I doubt that we're going to see much of a change in the result.

One late night later, and I now have numbers for TFB HM!

I'll post the full spreadsheet later, but as expected, it didn't make much of a difference. Here are the adjusted numbers, limited to only EC, NP and TFB (note: I also slightly adjusted the relic HPS is calculated to more closely match the combat logs):

With Proc Heal

• Weighted mitigation: 62.6163%
  
• Survivability: 71.2672%
  
• Variance: 31.2837%
  
• eHP: 44103
  

With War Hero Defense

• Weighted mitigation: 63.0098%
  
• Survivability: 70.4001%
  
• Variance: 29.5848%
  
• eHP: 42820
  

Here are the damage weights:

• M/R + K/E = 69.49%
  
• M/R + I/E = 0%
  
• F/T + K/E = 22.81%
  
• F/T + I/E = 7.71%
  

A HUGE amount of damage in TFB bypasses defensive stats, much to my disappointment. It's not quite as much as EV Nightmare, but very very close. Note that the average pre-mitigation DPS for a TFB boss is 2021, as compared to EC which is 1859 and KP which is 3991(!).

So anyway, yeah, the War Hero defense relic is *still* sub-par, even when considering only current content.

do your self heals always go off when you are below 100% health?

I find that most of the time my healers have already topped me up so any self heal I am doing are wasted, in which case the WH relic will come up tops as most of your self heals are just over heals.

do your self heals always go off when you are below 100% health?

 

I find that most of the time my healers have already topped me up so any self heal I am doing are wasted, in which case the WH relic will come up tops as most of your self heals are just over heals.

If my self-heal overheals, then it's on the healers. Any overheal in the self-heal should be credited (demerited?) to them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though. Unless your healers are having pathological energy problems, overheal is a non-issue. If I weren't overhealing on my self-heal, my healers would be overhealing even further on their main heals. It all balances out.

The important thing is that the self-heal contributes to the actual net survivability. Under circumstances where healing is actually tight and difficult to manage (Nightmare Jarg and Sorno, or HM Dread Guard), my self-heal overheal drops literally to zero. This is because my healers know how to take advantage of my survivability when they have to. For this reason, I feel pretty justified in counting the self-heal fully toward my survivability budget.

I've seen you speaking about the dread guard healing relic... But the dread guard healing relic has +power on it, and less endurance.

Wouldn't the campaign healing relic be better for a shadow then? The TK heal would heal for more and probably compensate for the difference in proc magnitude?

The fact that you believe you don't mitigate damage on TFB stages 2 and 3 makes this post even more laughable.

When you are going to collect data to support your opinion you could at a minimum do the fights correctly.

The fact that you believe you don't mitigate damage on TFB stages 2 and 3 makes this post even more laughable.

 

When you are going to collect data to support your opinion you could at a minimum do the fights correctly.

In fairness, the topic has come up in other threads, and KN has been made aware that you can tank on the lower level and mitigate most of TFB's attacks during the 2nd and 3rd phases.

The thread was not updated to reflect that, however.

What I'm more curious to see is why, based on his statistical model, the proc-absorb relic went from "must have" to "also ran" with WH Defense and proc heal. I'm curious if there's an oversight in terms of residual benefit when the primary reason to use either relic becomes moot (e.g. tanking Zorn, Stormcaller, Jarg, etc.) or severely degraded (e.g. Kephess the Undying).

In fairness, the topic has come up in other threads, and KN has been made aware that you can tank on the lower level and mitigate most of TFB's attacks during the 2nd and 3rd phases.

 

The thread was not updated to reflect that, however.

I didn't update the thread, but the conclusion is essentially the same. The WH defense relic is slightly better than it initially seemed, but it's still vastly inferior to the proc heal. (even with the endurance loss on the DG relic)

What I'm more curious to see is why, based on his statistical model, the proc-absorb relic went from "must have" to "also ran" with WH Defense and proc heal. I'm curious if there's an oversight in terms of residual benefit when the primary reason to use either relic becomes moot (e.g. tanking Zorn, Stormcaller, Jarg, etc.) or severely degraded (e.g. Kephess the Undying).

I've been curious about that myself. There was no single point of update in the model at which the proc absorb became less appealing, and yet at this point, the WH defense relic is actually better (by 0.19%). I'm guessing this is simply due to diminishing returns on absorb. The proc absorb relic looks amazing in Rakata and early BH/Campaign tiers, but I'm now deep into the Dread Guard tier, and absorb is worth a lot less (point for point) than it used to be. Defense scales much more slowly, and so it becomes a much more appealing stat at higher gear levels.