Hi, my assassin tank just hit 50 a few days ago, so I adjusted my tanking spreadsheet to include assassins too - however, my results doesn't seem to match what other people are recommending and claim that their spreadsheets show as optimal, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

According to it, the optimal stat distribution (with a proc absorb relic with an assumed uptime of 25%, which the spreadsheet shows is superior to static mitigation relics) is 334 def/762 shield/590 absorb, giving me 22.12/70.9/60.7 when converted into percentages, but that is way less defense then most people recommend. Am I missing something?

I would drop 5% of shield, that should allow you to get about 8% of Defence,

in my opinion 8% chance to take no damage is better than 5% chance to reduce damage by 60%

Hi, my assassin tank just hit 50 a few days ago, so I adjusted my tanking spreadsheet to include assassins too - however, my results doesn't seem to match what other people are recommending and claim that their spreadsheets show as optimal, and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

According to it, the optimal stat distribution (with a proc absorb relic with an assumed uptime of 25%, which the spreadsheet shows is superior to static mitigation relics) is 334 def/762 shield/590 absorb, giving me 22.12/70.9/60.7 when converted into percentages, but that is way less defense then most people recommend. Am I missing something?

What you're missing is that the proc Absorb relic becomes non-BiS once you're in full 61-level gear, and you wind up being better served by proc healing + either WH Defense or Campaign Shield/Absorb depending on the situation (e.g. steady damage profile vs. periods of "downtime" without M/R damage).

The almost 900 Absorb you'd have with the proc relic active is so far into the DR curve that it's not really doing much for you, and you're better served with increased mitigation the other 75% of the time.

None of the gear spreadsheets account for proc Absorb relic properly to begin with, or properly account for the mix of shieldable and unshieldable boss attacks.

Naturally, not all fights are identical, but just stop and think for a moment...

EC:

Z&T - half the time your mitigation pool does nothing, so CDs and on-use relics are MORE important as their relevant uptime is "higher" due to the damage profile.

Tanks - Sins nearly always wind up on Stormcaller due to highest I/E resistance and Shroud, so can only dodge/shield during Defensive Systems. Again, CDs/on-use are superior.

Vorgath - Not a stress on defenses regardless, nearly all M/R on boss himself, and nearly all M/R in the field, with very inconsistent damage intake (e.g. can't assure proc Absorb firing to timer).

Kephess - Very spiky damage profile, heavily weighted towards the back (Kephess himself) with significant tank swapping. Probably not tanking much during the heaviest M/R phase (100%-60%) due to intentionally eating Savage Wounding (again, I/E resistance).

TFB:

Writhing Horror: Tank swapping, Jealous Male doesn't hit hard.

Dread Guards: Most damage intake comes from the DOTs, and there are lots of scripted breaks when you won't be proc'ing relic.

Operator IX: Wacky fight, low damage taken overall, no useful way to leverage proc relic.

Kephess the Undying: Ugh.

TFB: Tentacles blow up Dark Ward, so significant periods of low shield chance (less use from Absorb). Frequent and predictable tank swaps from phase 2 onwards, reducing value of proc and increasing value of on-use.

I would drop 5% of shield, that should allow you to get about 8% of Defence,

 

in my opinion 8% chance to take no damage is better than 5% chance to reduce damage by 60%

Swapping all the shield I can (augments and the shield relic) for defense drops shield chance by 3.5% while defense chance goes up 3%. From that point, it's just a question of defense VS absorb VS HP, shield chance can't be dropped further unless I swap shield for endurance on a 1:1 ratio trough enhancements, and since raising defense chance also lowers the chance to shield combined with the very high mitigation amount even on stuff that gets trough the defense (71% chance to shield, and 77.5% of the damage being mitigated if it's shielded or 43% if it's not - or even 87% of the damage being mitigated if the proc is up and the attack is shielded, you're not accounting for armour when you say 60%).

On top of that there are other factors, such as being less spiky if you're reliant an shield instead of absorb - high defense means few but high hits, high shield means more but lower hits, and that also works better together with our self heal - there will usually be some small amount of health left to heal, so your self heal does do something.

The numbers show that that stat distribution provides the best mitigation, so at the moment that's still what I'm aiming for, but it's possible I might have failed to account for some sort of mechanic or messed up the math somewhere in the spreadsheet, so that's basically what I'm after here.

What you're missing is that the proc Absorb relic becomes non-BiS once you're in full 61-level gear, and you wind up being better served by proc healing + either WH Defense or Campaign Shield/Absorb depending on the situation (e.g. steady damage profile vs. periods of "downtime" without M/R damage).

I don't like either of those choices - spread out over the entire length of a fight a clicky might be better, but preventing X amount of damage now isn't really going to help my healers that much 60 seconds from now when that relic is still on cooldown and they would have regained their resources anyway at that point. The same thing ind of applies to the proc absorb relic, but to a MUCH smaller degree since we're talking about only 14 seconds that you need to wait for ICD after every time it procs rather than 1,5 minute.

The proc heal might be nice, but..there is a chance of over healing, reducing its value from the theoretical max, and it reduces your buffer for "oh ****" moments when something went wrong. I'll experiment with it, but I just don't like relying on an effect like that atm.

The almost 900 Absorb you'd have with the proc relic active is so far into the DR curve that it's not really doing much for you, and you're better served with increased mitigation the other 75% of the time.

 

None of the gear spreadsheets account for proc Absorb relic properly to begin with, or properly account for the mix of shieldable and unshieldable boss attacks.

Yeah, with the numbers my spreadsheet provides, I'd end up at 1040 absorb with the proc active. That's very deep into diminishing returns, but f.e. the last 100 of those points still give 1.5% absorb - and the point isn't really how much you're getting out of the last few points anyway, but rather about how much it goes up in total, while still keeping absorb high enough to be effective when the proc is not active. In this case, absorb goes from 60.7% to 77.2%, so it's still very significant, especially when you have 71% shield chance - which works out to 55% of the attacks being shielded after accounting for defense chance.

Naturally, not all fights are identical, but just stop and think for a moment...

Most of the fights you mention I don't really care about - we have them on farm anyway. I'm mostly concerned with maximising performance in the 2 fights where we struggle, EC NiM tanks and Kephess.

EC:

Tanks - Sins nearly always wind up on Stormcaller due to highest I/E resistance and Shroud, so can only dodge/shield during Defensive Systems. Again, CDs/on-use are superior.

We have the tanks swapping, so need to account for tanking Firebrand too. Even if you use a tactic that allows both tanks to stay on the same boss the entire fight, you're really not taking much damage during the defensive systems phase anyway, and you can pop deflection if you get in trouble.

Kephess - Very spiky damage profile, heavily weighted towards the back (Kephess himself) with significant tank swapping. Probably not tanking much during the heaviest M/R phase (100%-60%) due to intentionally eating Savage Wounding (again, I/E resistance).

Yeah, Kephess is one of those fighs where a clicky relic seem like a very bad choice to me - sure, you can click it and do great for a bit, but once it runs out you'll be in big trouble since you're missing the mitigation you normally would have instead, and if I'm not tanking much anyway due to taking the dot, it doesn't really matter what my mitigation stats are.

...And I just found 1 big part of the reason for the discrepancy - I was calculating with a base of 12% defense with no defense rating, while it should be 16% and amr currently has the extra 4% defense from lightning reflexes awarded from the thrashing blades instead(and I don't take that one in my build) so it "confirmed" the numbers. I'll run the numbers again with that adjustment and the results should be different.

EDIT: And the new values I found taking that into account was 388/744/544 or 27.4%/70.5%/59.6% (roughly, raising or lowering those slightly can give the tiniest of tiny increase in mitigation, but small enough that it's not worth finding - and itemization won't allow getting that exact with the values anyway). That matches up very closely to the numbers given in the "tanking stats balance" thread in tanking forum, except with mine showing a little higher shield and lower absorb due to including the proc relic.