Ok.... Up front... I am no math genius. That is why I am posting and asking. I am, however, a Con-Log guy, and have forever been cursed to be the Devil's Advocate.

My assumptions:

Given that Defense and Absorb share a pool, and Shield is separate, shield is the driving factor of my argument as being the focal point of everything. Meaning, everything is based of shield rating as our starting point.

 

As shield goes up, the value of absorb goes up and the value of defense goes down and vice verse.

If you could have 90% shield then you would of course want lots of absorb to compliment that but if you only had 10% shield then you would want a metric crap-ton of Defense to compensate for a lack of shielding. (reasonable assumption)

 

In KBN and Dipstick's threads (by someone...not necessarily them), and on Denchet's spreadsheet, the comment has been made that you "Can't bring shield down low enough to actually be *optimized*"

(My apologies....I was going to link the acual comments from those threads, but I gave up digging through the 100 pages of info)

 

We have this general concept about more is better. Has anyone contemplated or thought about it from the view of how shield impacts the other stats at lower levels? If shield gets lowered to this "optimal" point, it's gonna change the ratio of how we stack Defense vs. Absorb.

 

So my question is....what would the math look like if we took some accuracy? Not because accuracy is good, but because it would actually bring our shield down to an "optimal level" and cause us to adjust the Def-Abs balance. Could that actually benefit our overall mitigation?

 

So in other words....could taking TOO MUCH shield actually be skewing the numbers?

Edited May 18, 2013 by Grumpftard

losing mitigation does not help you mitigate. there was a rare instabnce where losing 14 points of mitigation total increased the mitigation by .04% and that was because you were able to trade something like 91 shield for 77 defense or absorb, which got the stat distribution closer to optimal with minimal loss total stat points, but that was a rare case, and even then that trade of .04% mitigation also would make you lose 2k health, so it still wasnt quite worth it.

 

typically, if you can increase your total stat pool, that will alsoway benifit you more than trying to get closer to optimal.

 

an example is where people use the 32 power mods instead of the 52 crit ones because they dont want crit, but they fail to realize that crit is around 70 to 80% as fgood as power for many classes, which puts those crit mods just barley ahead of the power ones.

So my question is....what would the math look like if we took some accuracy? Not because accuracy is good, but because it would actually bring our shield down to an "optimal level" and cause us to adjust the Def-Abs balance. Could that actually benefit our overall mitigation?

 

You're operating under a bit of a logical fallacy here. You're assuming that having lower shield would end up increasing your total mitigation. This is not true. More shield (i.e. more mitigation) is *always* better. It's might not match the optimal distribution, but it provides more mitigation than sacrificing Shield for Accuracy. The only way you could actually improve your mitigation by sacrificing Shield is if you could sacrifice it for a *different mitigation stat*. Since you can't, you should *never* sac Shield from enhs. This is why the best optimal distro calcs take the "minimum" amount of Shield into account.

More mitigation is almost always better, even if it screws up the optimum stat ratios. There are a couple of instances where I would consider sacrificing shield for accuracy, but neither of them are an issue in current content.

 

A fight that had a really early tank swap, so you would have to save your taunts. If you got a few misses right off the bat, then DPS would pull threat and you would have no way of getting it back because you have to save your taunt for the tank swap. This is currently not an issue on any of the fights, and is rarely going to be an issue because we all have AoE taunts as well. That being said, they could theoretically design something where positioning means AoE taunts would screw up the tank swap.

 

Fights where you personally absolutely have to interrupt something. On the Golden Fury fight, I am always on droid duty with a Sentinel. We each interrupt one of the droids. Occasionally my interrupt misses, which I am assuming is because I am only at 94% accuracy. It could just be a bug and interrupts aren't supposed to miss, idk. Anyway, assuming its not a bug, this is a really annoying time to not be accuracy capped, but we have never actually had anyone die from it. They could theoretically release content where if interrupt misses, someone dies. Imagine if that beam on the golden fury fight one shot people on nightmare mode, for example.

Occasionally my interrupt misses, which I am assuming is because I am only at 94% accuracy. It could just be a bug and interrupts aren't supposed to miss, idk.

 

Interrupts are designed such that they can miss. I know this because you can't be interrupted while Resilience is active (it can be put to great use during the Gree Event when you want to steal a pylon click from people camping the node). I'm curious if it was *intended* for them to miss in PvE content, especially since there are a fair number of "interrupt or wipe" mechanics at various points in the game. The simple solution would be to provide interrupts with a bit of additional accuracy (say, equal to the additional Resist chance that NPCs got in 2.0), but that's only if it's an unintended consequence.

Considering that interrupts are not classified as force/tech/melee/ranged abilities and have no damage component, it is very odd that they behave this way. I feel they shouldn't miss at all when interrupt immunity is a strictly unique kind of effect that already exists.

 

On the same topic, I would really like mobs and player abilities that are immune to interrupts to have a unique gui for their cast-bar (like WoW). Not a huge deal but its a really nice quality of life thing. This way you could 'let' players be able to burn their interrupts even if the target is immune, as the cast bar is kinda displaying that information already. Not a fan of the arbitrary "Immune to interrupts" prompt as red error text.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Marb

Considering that interrupts are not classified as force/tech/melee/ranged abilities

 

I'm kind of curious where you're getting this from. There isn't anything explicitly mentioned on tooltips (beyond the intuited information gained from damage types) that explicitly states what type of attack it is. Force Pull deals no damage, but it's a Force attack (I know because I can Resilience through that). The same is true for the interrupts. Just because it deals no damage so that we can't intuit from the tooltip what type of attack it is doesn't mean that it's not an attack with an attack type. *Everything* that affects an enemy is an attack. It just depends on whether it's an attack that deals damage or not.

 

On the same topic, I would really like mobs and player abilities that are immune to interrupts to have a unique gui for their cast-bar (like WoW).

 

This would be amazing. At the least, it would take away some of the guesswork when fighting new enemies to determine whether there's even a point. In general, you have to look at their buff bar to learn it (any time the target is immune to interrupts, there's a buff on their bar whether it's permanent or temporary and only there for that specific cast) and that sometimes takes just a bit too long for you to interrupt in time, especially when you're fighting an enemy that has a lot of casts, some of which you want to let go and others that you definitely want to interrupt.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Kitru

I'm kind of curious where you're getting this from.

 

Have you not ever looked into your abilities window in the game? It does list the ability type on the right side when it lists all the abilities you have.

 

There are not just 4 ability types. There are 6. In addition to Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech, there are also Passive and Active.

 

Taunts and interrupts are not listed as melee/ranged/force/tech, but active. Same is true for Force Pull by the way.

 

That you can resist force pull with Resilience/Force Shroud may have more to do with the tooltip not telling the whole truth, as it often does not.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Eternalnight

Have you not ever looked into your abilities window in the game? It does list the ability type on the right side when it lists all the abilities you have.

 

That must've been added after I stopped reading the tooltips.

There are not just 4 ability types. There are 6. In addition to Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech, there are also Passive and Active.

 

erm, just a quick fyi here but Passive and active arent the same as damage type, they just describe the type of ability:

Active being one you actively use(meaning you click it)

Passive being an ability thats always on (Usually in regards to talents )

erm, just a quick fyi here but Passive and active arent the same as damage type

Considering that the text you are quoting is not talking about damage types (Kinetic, Energy, Internal or Elemental), but ability types, I do not see why you feel need to say that.

 

 

they just describe the type of ability

And they describe the type of ability by listing Active and Passive as completely separate category from Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech.

 

 

Active being one you actively use(meaning you click it)

Passive being an ability thats always on

While it is true that "active" abilities are clickable and "passive" are not, this is not the actual definition of them.

 

Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech abilities are clickable just the same way, but they are not listed as "active" in the abilities window.

Only abilities that are not listed as melee/ranged/force/tech are listed as active/passive, making active and passive a separate ability type.

Considering that the text you are quoting is not talking about damage types (Kinetic, Energy, Internal or Elemental), but ability types, I do not see why you feel need to say that.

 

And they describe the type of ability by listing Active and Passive as completely separate category from Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech.

 

While it is true that "active" abilities are clickable and "passive" are not, this is not the actual definition of them.

 

Melee, Ranged, Force and Tech abilities are clickable just the same way, but they are not listed as "active" in the abilities window.

Only abilities that are not listed as melee/ranged/force/tech are listed as active/passive, making active and passive a separate ability type.

 

To be honest, I think you are drawing a conclusion based on correlation rather than causation. Key example of this: taunt used to be able to be resisted on PTS until it was adjusted. Similarly, Sleep Dart and Mind Maze can both be resisted. The fact that Resilience allows you to overcome these (interrupts included), combined with this not being an issue before mobs were given a Resist chance gives a greater argument for them being Force/Tech abilities than for a different attack type.

To be honest, I think you are drawing a conclusion based on correlation rather than causation.

What correlation?

 

One way to define what is or isn't force/tech ability is by what is or isn't listed as such in the abilities window.

This may have problems, but it was mostly an example why someone might say certain abilities are not in this categories.

 

There seem to be some things that suggest that some abilities not listed as such there still might be force/tech, but it is hard to say for sure.

 

It's not entirely without problems to define what is or isn't force/tech by just what can or can't be resisted by force shroud/resilience because even though the tooltip for force shroud/resilience does only mention force/tech attacks, we already know that its tooltip is not exactly accurate and correct but is an oversimplification that does not tell the whole truth (for example the tooltip says increases your resist chance by 100% but if you open your character menu and check the on-mouse-over-popup tooltips of defensive numbers it actually increases by 200% (supposably reason for this is so it would not drop below 100% by the accuracy over 100% reduces resistance mechanic in pvp)) so we can't exactly rely on tooltips alone as a source of information.

 

Now having other things supporting the assumption that taunts etc. are F/T, then you have a stronger case.

Edited May 20, 2013 by Eternalnight

What correlation?

 

One way to define what is or isn't force/tech ability is by what is or isn't listed as such in the abilities window.

This may have problems, but it was mostly an example why someone might say certain abilities are not in this categories.

 

There seem to be some things that suggest that some abilities not listed as such there still might be force/tech, but it is hard to say for sure.

 

It's not entirely without problems to define what is or isn't force/tech by just what can or can't be resisted by force shroud/resilience because even though the tooltip for force shroud/resilience does only mention force/tech attacks, we already know that its tooltip is not exactly accurate and correct but is an oversimplification that does not tell the whole truth (for example the tooltip says increases your resist chance by 100% but if you open your character menu and check the on-mouse-over-popup tooltips of defensive numbers it actually increases by 200% (supposably reason for this is so it would not drop below 100% by the accuracy over 100% reduces resistance mechanic in pvp)) so we can't exactly rely on tooltips alone as a source of information.

 

Now having other things supporting the assumption that taunts etc. are F/T, then you have a stronger case.

 

The correlation is a number of abilities existing that are "active" but not listed as Force or Tech. Your conclusion based on this correlation is that there is a 3rd attack type. There is no direct causal link in this.

 

However, we know these abilities previously couldn't be resisted (or miss) prior to 2.0 unless you were using them on a Shadow with Resilience (or the 2% chance from Kinetic Combat procced and wasn't overridden by accuracy). Similarly, I know these types of abilities could previously be resisted by a higher level NPC. In 2.0 NPCs were given a Force/Tech resist chance and now they can be resisted (or miss). It also appears (although no one has tested) that having 100% accuracy prevents this from happening. Based on this information, I'd lean toward the assumption that they are tagged as Force/Tech attacks and not as a new "Active" attack type.

 

At release, this design decision would be fine as resist chance was EXCEEDINGLY rare and player only. As NPC are given a resist chance BW needs to look at which abilities in the utility category should be made "can't miss" or have their native accuracy increased.

 

I assume w.r.t. Resilience (and Dodge/Evasion) that the 100% increase on the tooltip is actually just confusing wording. Giving someone a 100% chance to do something could be interpreted as: You are guaranteed to do it or it could be interpreted as increasing your chance to do it by 100% additively or even increasing your chance to do it by 100% relatively (5% -> 10% is a 100% increase). Given how it is implemented (ie. +200% on a contested roll), I would assume the intention is the former.

I'll be honest. I'm crazy. I can't NOT have accuracy on my assassin tank. Mainly for the fact that when I get a Resist, it absolutely enrages me. My guild has cleared HM S&V so even though I'm giving up ~450 stats in mitigation, it's not enough to cause me to die. Not to mention I get a good dps increase as well as threat generation from not missing. I love my accuracy and I'm crazy for it.

even though I'm giving up ~450 stats in mitigation, it's not enough to cause me to die.

 

You're giving up anywhere between 20% (if you're mitigation stacked BiS) to ~25% of your mitigation budget, which is going to translate in a *drastically noticeable* increase in total damage taken just to increase your threat DPS by 6%. That's not really a good trade off. In fact, it's absolutely terrible. The only thing you're doing is forcing your healers to work even harder to keep you alive since you're playing the spikiest tank around and giving up the mitigation we rely on so much just makes you all the spikier.

 

Not to mention I get a good dps increase as well as threat generation from not missing. I love my accuracy and I'm crazy for it.

 

A 6% increase to your damage/threat from ~450 points of itemization is not "a good DPS increase". It's actually friggin' terrible. I'm pulling ~1200 DPS on a tank/spank fight. All of that itemization would add all of ~72 DPS. If you stacked Power instead of Accuracy in all of those places, you'd be getting more than twice that (basic napkin math puts it at ~155 DPS). Accuracy is absolutely *terrible* for tanks and especially Shadow tanks: the 3% additional accuracy we get isn't even a debatable addition like it is for Guards.

 

Every Shadow should be managing 94% accuracy without any gearing which means that the chance you're going to get more than one miss in a row in the beginning is .36%. To put that in context, that's once in every ~277.77 pulls. The only time you'll ever have threat problem is if you get a multiple miss string in the beginning and, comically enough, you can just *taunt* during those times since no fight requires a tank swap in the first 20 seconds.

 

There is no good reason to have any tank stack accuracy: it's worse than any other stat you could possibly stack for increased threat generation, and you don't even *need* accuracy to maintain a massively oversized threat cushion.

Like I said, I'm crazy. Likewise, I've never encountered a situation where we've wiped due to the fact I was 'too hard too heal'. I plan on getting a pure mitigation set, but if I don't need it, why would I use it? Make life easier on the healers? Got to make this game enjoyable for them somehow.

im pretty sure i would refuse to heal u in SnV or TfB HM if u walked in missing 450 points of shield.

For fun I investigated whether increasing accuracy would help you to get more accelerated project procs and thereby increase the rate at which your Shadow fires off Harnessed Darkness Telekinetic Throws. Here are the results...

 

For a 94% accuracy rating and 2 independent hits of double strike/thrash, you have a 0.8836 chance of hitting with both attacks, 0.1128 chance of hitting with one of the two attacks, and 0.0036 chance of hitting with neither attack.

 

Each hit has a 30% chance of triggering an accelerated project. For two hits, p(project proc) = 1 - p(no project proc) = 1 - 0.7^2 = 1 - 0.49 = 0.51. For one hit, p(project proc) = 0.3, and for 0 hits p(project proc) = 0.

 

Taking a weighted average of these results (0.8836 * 0.51 + 0.1128 * 0.3 + 0.0036*0) I found that each usage of double strike/thrash has a 0.484476 chance of triggering a project proc.

 

Whereas with 100% accuracy all double strikes will connect, so you have a 1 - 0.7^2 = 0.51*1 = 0.51 chance with any double strike to trigger a project proc.

 

The 2.5524% increase in p(project proc) is probably not worth the hit in shield that you would suffer.

 

The more useful takeaway from this post is a reminder that double strike typically will have a 48.5% chance of triggering a project proc, not a 30% chance.

 

===

 

Once I get my Shadow into some decent tank gear I'd examine the results of the sequence [melee attack, Project] where melee attack can be Shadow Strike or Double Strike. I know on my shadow in Tank spec and DPS gear (165% surge) my non-crit Shadow Strikes are hitting for ~2033, non-crit Double strikes are hitting for 625 damage each (x2 = 1250) and my Projects are hitting for ~ 1450 non-crit/2385 crit, with the secondary project at 45% damage being ~675 damage non-crit.

 

Since Shadow Strike is a melee attack, it has a 94% chance of connecting and a 30% chance of proccing an accelerated project, or 0.282 chance overall of proccing, compared to Double Strike's 0.485, and on my toon Shadow Strike does an extra 750 damage but the procced project is hitting for 900 extra damage.

 

Since we know shadows want to fire off those Projects as fast as possible and Shadows apparently have more Force available, it might turn out that Double Strike becomes slightly more useful than before, maybe even more useful than Shadow Strike.

Edited May 22, 2013 by MGNMTTRN

very interesting analysis. this might free up 2 points in the build

Like I said, I'm crazy. Likewise, I've never encountered a situation where we've wiped due to the fact I was 'too hard too heal'. I plan on getting a pure mitigation set, but if I don't need it, why would I use it? Make life easier on the healers? Got to make this game enjoyable for them somehow.

 

This is mainly due to the 2.0 content being undertuned for healing. There are a few big hits, all of which are predictable and any threat they pose can be massively lowered by clever use of cds and some burst healing. The only difficulty in healing comes from 16 Trasher and even then it is only because of the AoE damage taken by the DPS. I have cleared HM TFB in what was not even BiS for Vanilla, thus missing cca 500 rating (not because it was in accuracy but simply because of not having better than 63 gear) and neither of the healers noticed a significant increase in healing difficulty. I have also had a tank in a number of 61 pieces on a 16 run.

 

Taking acc is a bad idea, but it will work at the current difficulty levels. Can only hope that NiM TFB will be significantly more difficult (i.e. almost unclearable without full 72s)