People seem to make this subject way way more complicated than the way i see it, if im wrong one of you engineer types can correct me. but please try to do it with as little quantum physics as possible.

So most of the good research ive read says that def is hard capped at 30%(now im seeing 25%?) and shield/absorb at 50%. which means that if you go past those %'s you get no to very little gain.

This is where people screw up, the numbers on your character sheet are not the same as those hard cap numbers people are talking about.

Say your character sheet says you have 52% shield chance, if you mouse over it youll see it broken down into where you are getting that shield chance from. The line that says "Shield Rating" is the number youre looking for, once that goes over 50% (which is impossible to do right now) you dont want to put anyomore into shields. The shield chance you get from "Kills/Buffs" or "Shield Generator" does not count towards that hard cap.

So yes, if your character sheet says you have 60% shield chance, that is your shield chance, as long as your rating isnt over 50%.

So most of the good research ive read says that def is hard capped at 30%(now im seeing 25%?) and shield/absorb at 50%. which means that if you go past those %'s you get no to very little gain.

 

This is where people screw up, the numbers on your character sheet are not the same as those hard cap numbers people are talking about.

 

Say your character sheet says you have 52% shield chance, if you mouse over it youll see it broken down into where you are getting that shield chance from. The line that says "Shield Rating" is the number youre looking for, once that goes over 50% (which is impossible to do right now) you dont want to put anyomore into shields. The shield chance you get from "Kills/Buffs" or "Shield Generator" does not count towards that hard cap.

Your analysis is correct, but when considering ratings you really don't want to be anywhere near the point where you are generating 30% or 50% from rating alone. The hard cap is an absolute value that requires an infinite amount of rating to produce the max percentage. The confusion comes in when, as you say, people mix up the hard cap from rating with the suggested value on your character sheet. It's interesting how the guideline total value for defense on a jugg, for example, is around 30% while the max percentage from rating is also 30%; not sure if this was planned or it just turned out that way.

Your analysis is correct, but when considering ratings you really don't want to be anywhere near the point where you are generating 30% or 50% from rating alone. The hard cap is an absolute value that requires an infinite amount of rating to produce the max percentage. The confusion comes in when, as you say, people mix up the hard cap from rating with the suggested value on your character sheet. It's interesting how the guideline total value for defense on a jugg, for example, is around 30% while the max percentage from rating is also 30%; not sure if this was planned or it just turned out that way.

But even the soift caps are not possible to reach right now, meaning no matter what defensive stat you stack you will never get diminishing returns. So it just comes down to preference, youre too spikey? up your shield chance. taking too much overall dmg? up your def and abs.

On my gaurdian personaly(effective numbers) i stick with 50% shield , def atleast 30% the rest absorb. i dont use augs with with endurance because i find 24k more than enough hp (and ive played tanks long enough to know hp runs out and mitigation doesnt). I may up my shield chance at a later date when getting to a number like 55 or 60% is viable without gimping your other stats.

Your post implies diminishing returns don't start until after some threshold or softcap. They start from the first point. The stats also have an effect on each other (defence makes shield and absorb less important, shield and absorb make each other more effective).

That's why there's so much "quantum physics."

Fortunately the "engineers" have already done the hard work and now you only need to type your ratings into the green boxes on someone else's spreadsheet for it to show you the stat priorities.

Edit: Or in the case of the calculator linked below, the blue boxes.

Oh yeah totally understand that but that big 30k is just...mmmmmyesssss.

 

I haven't done any calculations to see the actual numerical difference of my setup vs optimal setup yet either. That would be nice to see.

To those who want to compare stats between their setups or other tanks, here's an updated version of the original LagunaD sheet with Effective Health. It also has a section to compare gear changes. It's one of few ways to compare tank classes with some actual uniformity. I streamlined it for ease of use and updated class stats for 1.4. I think I have all the stats correct for PT/Sin tanks. If anyone can confirm them, that'd be awesome. Obviously, feel free to report any other issues as well.

The sheet has the standard LagunaD Squish, SigmaSquish and Spikiness metrics, as well as Effective Health calculation to compare endurance stacking somewhat. I also added a roll-by-roll calculation of Total Mitigation (a restatement of Squishiness really).

File > Copy to make your own if you find it useful.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqqlFggS3U48dFRqTW5YM0tLYy0ycnhteGt0LXhXU0E

With Rakata stim and Dark ward my D/S/A looks like this (whole numbers only) 25/60/60... I'm told/have read that this is hard cap and that I only waste time and money getting more in any of these 3 areas. I'm also told, an assassin tank doesn't need more than 25K HP, which I also have (25.1K)... I still do not have augment in my MH weapon... so here is my question.. what augment should I put in?? I'm thinking more Hitpoints is never a bad idea, but the same would be said about willpower or power for more damage, hence more threat.

The thing is, I dont even wear the best gear. My best gear is black hole chest, rest is columni, rakata. I'm surprised I've reached what they call hard cap already... but yeah.. my question... what stat should I now aim for?

With Rakata stim and Dark ward my D/S/A looks like this (whole numbers only) 25/60/60... I'm told/have read that this is hard cap and that I only waste time and money getting more in any of these 3 areas. I'm also told, an assassin tank doesn't need more than 25K HP, which I also have (25.1K)... I still do not have augment in my MH weapon... so here is my question.. what augment should I put in?? I'm thinking more Hitpoints is never a bad idea, but the same would be said about willpower or power for more damage, hence more threat.

 

The thing is, I dont even wear the best gear. My best gear is black hole chest, rest is columni, rakata. I'm surprised I've reached what they call hard cap already... but yeah.. my question... what stat should I now aim for?

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever augment for endurance.

Ever.

Always get mitigation stats.

Also the "hard caps" are when you reach certain percentages from Ratings alone, not from Talents + Buffs + Offhand + Ratings.

Your absorb is fine, you should get more Defense and Shield though.

There is no "hard cap" on tanking stats.

Yes, there is. It's explicitly indicated by the DR curves. With an infinite amount of defense rating, shield rating, and absorb rating, a tank would get 30/50/50 contribution from rating alone (meaning a Shadow would have tank stats of 46%/90%/74%). Those numbers are only possible with an *infinite* amount, since that's the limit on the DR contributions curve. Anything shy of that (or shy of that within rounding errors) would only get within .01% of it.

The chances themselves have no distinct appreciable cap (the biggest buff of any kind is Resilience, which provides a 200% Resistance chance, so my best guess is that the cap is something like 255/256, though that's just because I like even numbers), but, even with buffs, they have functional caps (for Shadows, it would be 96/90/74 since the only ability other than Deflection that provides raw stats on a temporary basis is already factored in to the Shield rating).

It's best to say that there is no *realistic* hard cap on tank stats. The stat budget required to get to the hardcap is so phenomenally high is only has and only ever will be reached by developers playing around with debug tools or database errors. The relevant softcaps change with each new tier of gear, though, as hp is weighed against the new itemization budget to determine optimal survivability.

Yes, there is.

No there is not.

There are no hardcaps for these stats

It's explicitly indicated by the DR curves. With an infinite amount of defense rating, shield rating, and absorb rating, a tank would get 30/50/50 contribution from rating alone

Yes, as you with infinite amount of ratings you would cap at those percentages gained from rating alone (not including percentages from other things).

However infinity is not achievable. Since you can literally keep increasing those stats forever and ever without ever reaching it, there is no hard cap for the ratings.

If anything, those percentages could be called theoretical caps.

A hard cap would be some finite amount of those stats after which they provide no further benefit at all. There is no such cap.

No there is not.

There are no hardcaps for these stats

If you're referring specifically to stats rather than *contributions* from stats, I assure you that there *is* actually a hardcap. Programmatically, while it's possible to create a data type with functionally infinite size (accomplished by doubling its size whenever it needs to get larger and repeating until the size is large enough), that would require specific work to be put into making it behave as such, which is kinda pointless when you consider that, within any feasible realm of itemization, even a baseline "int" is going to be more than large enough (2^32-1, which is more than 2 billion).

Never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever augment for endurance.

 

Ever.

 

Always get mitigation stats.

So... more shield and defense then?

this will put be above the 25/60/60 numbers that I read about. But according to some other site I read, the rato between shield and absorb should always be 2:1. So for every 2 shield, there should be 1 absorb. This was on a juggernaut site however, so it's not really relevant or what?

So... more shield and defense then?

Yes.

But according to some other site I read

When researching info on other sites, it behooves you to check out how old that information happens to be. At low gear levels, before DR starts normalizing the contributions of all of the various tank stats (which is where you're at now), there's a general equivalence ratio (4:2:1 for def:shield:abs) that reflects the comparative percentage gains provided by each source of mitigation. When you get into better gear, the DR curve renders that completely redundant as Defense is hit much more smoothly than Shield is and nowhere near as hard as Absorb is.

A good rule of thumb, aside from 27-30/65/60 for Shadow tank stats (Defense chance should either be ~27% or ~30% depending on whether you use the proc/use relics or passive relics, respectively) is that you want your various mitigation ratings to be roughly equal. While it's not entirely optimal, it's a good way to hedge your bets against the DR curves, and, rather than being specific to a single class, is largely applicable to all of the tank classes.

Yes, there is. It's explicitly indicated by the DR curves. With an infinite amount of defense rating, shield rating, and absorb rating, a tank would get 30/50/50 contribution from rating alone (meaning a Shadow would have tank stats of 46%/90%/74%). Those numbers are only possible with an *infinite* amount, since that's the limit on the DR contributions curve. Anything shy of that (or shy of that within rounding errors) would only get within .01% of it.

 

The chances themselves have no distinct appreciable cap (the biggest buff of any kind is Resilience, which provides a 200% Resistance chance, so my best guess is that the cap is something like 255/256, though that's just because I like even numbers), but, even with buffs, they have functional caps (for Shadows, it would be 96/90/74 since the only ability other than Deflection that provides raw stats on a temporary basis is already factored in to the Shield rating).

 

It's best to say that there is no *realistic* hard cap on tank stats. The stat budget required to get to the hardcap is so phenomenally high is only has and only ever will be reached by developers playing around with debug tools or database errors. The relevant softcaps change with each new tier of gear, though, as hp is weighed against the new itemization budget to determine optimal survivability.

Guess I should have included "attainable with any amount of gear you are ever likely to see in game" or "that you ever need to worry about" at the end of my post? Cause that is definitely what I meant.

A good rule of thumb, aside from 27-30/65/60 for Shadow tank stats

Not to really detract from the conversation, but I keep seeing this 65% Shield Chance (w/ KW) as optimal and It kinda has me trying to figure out whether or not if I'm hurting myself sitting at 29.12%/ 70.34%/ 59.78%. I'm using two BM PvP relics (on Shield, the other Defense) because I'm presently leaning towards more passive mitigation as kind of a cookie-cutter for all content.

I can probably switch out a few of my Shield Augments for some Defense ones to get that to 30%, but sitting at 70% shield chance is just so damn pretty. I do have the Rakata On-use Shield relic and the Campaign Absorb Proc Relic, so switching my relics isn't exactly pulling teeth, just looking for a second opinion.