I'll start with a few things -

1.) I'm going to focus on Raid Boss Fights. PvP is a separate discussion, and any PvE content other than Raid Bosses are too insignificant to matter while gearing.

2.) My experience is primarily as a healer (NiM EV/KP, HM EC , SM TFB), but I have some experience tanking (NiM EV/KP, SM EC / TFB).

3.) As #2 mentions, I have zero experience with HM TFB in any role, so maybe you can make an argument about that.

So, as a Scoundrel healer, there are generally two types of situations while healing a raid -

A.) Everything is dandy, my HOTs are ticking, my energy is near-max, we're cool.

B.) ****'s hitting the fan! Land some huge heals!

It seems like when people judge tanking stats, the general consensus is that because 1% mitigation is better than 1% more health (this, we can always agree on), it's generally better to stack mitigation as long as health is "high enough" (this is what I'm considering taking issue with).

If your mitigation is so high that you can gear up and raise your mitigation by 2% or your health by 10% (entirely made up numbers), it seems like many tanks choose mitigation (again, assuming health is "high enough").

This would be the case if raids were a war of attrition where healers only had a certain throughput of healing they could be expected to put out. But, in reality, raids have high points and low points. I'd rather do 2% more healing in the easy times, but have a larger cushion for the "Oh ****" moments. And this isn't even factoring a Scoundrel's free heal for someone under 30% max health (which would now be a bigger range).

Maybe this is Scoundrel-specific, since we have not only a variable energy regen, but also efficient heals over time (so we don't have any trouble at all during slow periods). And I'm not saying mitigation is wrong - not at all, I've been a fan of mitigation in RPGs for as long as I can remember - just that maybe sometimes a little more health is nice for your healer and he won't mind burning some resources to heal through your lesser mitigation.

A lot of people will say that mitigation is the only way to go but it really depends what kind of content you are doing.

This is the opening of a fight on Stormcaller 16-man NM:

21:09:20.851 2s Zap Attack 4907 elemental

21:09:22.472 4s Zap Attack 4907 elemental

21:09:23.558 5s Electric Discharge 12208 elemental

21:09:25.565 7s Zap Attack 4706 elemental

21:09:27.077 9s Zap Attack 4706 elemental

21:09:28.666 10s Zap Attack 4706 elemental

It's ~85% more damage than on 8-man and this is after the nerf! You really need a lot of hp to give the healers a chance. An unshielded mortar volley on this fight does ~11.5k damage - if deflection is not available you will take a beating.

Here is part of a log from Kephess the Undying 16-man HM:

23:31:00.228 11s Wrist Laser 8655 energy

23:31:02.071 13s Power Punch 5570 kinetic

23:31:03.274 14s Power Punch 5571 kinetic

23:31:05.057 16s Wrist Laser 8655 energy

Doesn't look that bad does it? Only 28k or so damage - pretty easy on the healers. But I shielded both of the Power Punches, unshielded they do ~13.7k damage. An hp buffer makes tanking this fight much more reliable.

My advise would be to look at the fight you are doing to see if it benefits from more mitigation or more endurance.

here are the conditions which equate to a longer time to kill for the various tank builds:

sin tank (with healing relic): DPS>562+9.02*H (note that H is from healer, not from self heals etc, which are already included). this is using the proc healing relic

vangaurd: DPS > -1.3500*10^9*HPS/(12.0000*N-1.7830*10^8)

hybrid jugg: DPS > -8.7500*10^8*HPS/(7.0000*N-1.3370*10^8)

for 3000 incoming dps:

sin tank will take 12 more dps every 100 points from mitigation to endurance

juggs take an extra 12 per 100 and PTs take an extra 16 dps.

the sensitivity to time to kill (TTK) is not very linear, but taking the slope at 1600 gives:

sin tank: 100 points from mitigation to endurance will increase TTK by 0.85 seconds

jugg: 100 points gives about 0.78s

PT: you get 0.63s per 100 points from mitigation to endurance.

this is all assuming no heals on the tank and a incoming dps of 3000.

It doesn't matter how much mitigation you have, you're still dead when your HP falls to 0.

You need to use discrete mathematics to model the damage being taken. Average mitigation is a good guideline and easy to calculate, but it is an approximation that assumes you have infinite HP, and your healer have unlimited resources and unlimited HPS. For 'in game' situations, the basic rule of thumb for almost all MMORPG endgame tanking is "3 unmitigated hits". You look what you're fighting, work out the amount of HP for 3 big hits, then work backward from there. Since a lot of the 'big hit' from bosses cannot be mitigated at all, it's almost certain to get '3 big hit' every fight.

If you cannot maintain the '3 big hit' buffer, then your healer must spam heal. This is one of the reason why NiM EC 16 man is so damn hard.

For the current contents, there is no need to go over 27k hp. However a 24.5k hp tank with 2% more absorb, 1% more shield and 1% more defense is bad, unless you really hate your healer.

Before this thread becomes a warzone, lets look at a different train of thought.

I am sure Keyboardninja and Kitru will make posts to this one.

I believe the extreme of either mitigation stacking versus endurance stacking is a over preaches subject. It is funny that most of the discussion on endurance vs mitigation is only on one class . Shadow. While there is a argument made about stacking HP, because it effects our self heals. Which is a large part of our survivability comes from the self healing nature. On the the otherside we do have a 2k less armour rating. So some shadowtanks feel compelled to stack endurance. While the arguements of kitru and keyboardninja come to mind on the virtues of mitigation stacking,I enjoy their take on it. Rember we STILL have the lowest armour rating of all tanks. There are seveal intstances where the low DR really hurts, and I can't say the maxing of mitigatin helps my survival.

My take is a balanced aproach. If you have optimized gear that is atleast black hole quality, have a base HP of 24.5k and a base absorb of atleast 57% . If your gear is campaign try to stack 24.8k base hp, and increase your absorb to 60%. While I might take flack from the number people on having too much HP, my take is we have light armour and need a good solid hp pool. Stimmed and buffed my HPis a bit over 27k. And my my gear is hazmat /campaign with the dreadguard proc relic, just for arguments sake.

So stack a decent amout of HP and put the rest in absorb, remeber a jedi preaches balance in all things- including stats.

Well lets look at the reason behind endurance.

Endurance is used to reduce the TTK, we can argue that TTK is only of importance during transition phases.

Transition phases = when a tank starts to take more average dmg than he was taking previously.

There are few/none of these in the tier 1 raids, ec introduced a few with Vorgath and Kephess and TfB continues using transition phases as a mechanic to make a fight harder.

Well, I guess that Stormcaller after a mortar phase is also a transition phase for non-shadows/assassins.

When does it happen?

- tank taunts Ciphas without the other tank taunting Kel'Sara a little bit before that.

- tank taking over Kephess the Undying.

- tank taking Operator droid boss (forgot name) and 1 regulator.

- TfB is pretty linear in dmg so not that many transition phases there plus you have time to warn healers due to a long scream cast.

From my own experience as a tank I die and I see other tanks dying during those transition phases.

How to prevent this? Coordinate with your healers or second tank.

Yes Kephess the Undying on 16m hm is a pain, you also need two healers to preemptively heal the tank taking over, or be ready to.

I believe that you can take endurance as it comes without focusing on it, communicate with your healers for tank switching and prepare cooldowns if needed.

The damage going around in ops is healable as long as the correct person is healed, this burst damage for transitions is the new mechanic to deal with. Endurance will help but so will other methods.

Now some numbers which my healer gave me after I asked him for them.

Healing with normal rotation: 1400 hps

Normal rotation + high duration cooldowns: 1600-1700 hps

Disregard energy/force/heat and full healing : 2100-2200 hps

Now I have no idea if these numbers are correct but they're like my healer estimates so I'll trust him.

Numbers could be too low/high and they probably vary between classes.

Looking at damage taken during a raid it should be possible for healers to heal with their normal rotations and be fine, this doesn't happen because they have to move or transition phases occur, be on top of your healing and it should be doable.

Those are my ideas on this.

You said it right here:

"a little more health is nice for your healer and he won't mind burning some resources to heal through your lesser mitigation."

More health means that, if you are at full health, you are farther away from death than you would be with less. Obviously. That's great for high sudden-damage mechanics. But it mitigates nothing, thus it scales negatively with healer energy for the majority of the time.

No one 'underrates' endurance. It is entirely necessary, but it functions in a vaguely similar way to being hit-capped. Once you have 'enough', you should start investing in mitigation to optimize for healer energy. What exactly 'enough' is is the real debate, but in truth, I honestly don't think it matters that much. Whatever you get from your gear should be enough for what you're attempting

I have always valued Endurance much more than mitigation as a vanguard tank.

Defense-16%

Shield-52%

Absorb-52%

Armor-8950

HP-30.8k

When I pop my defensive DG relic defense shoots to 23%

Absorb adreanal- Armor shoots to 12350ish

Class abilities and passive buffs from Tank tree- Absorb 73%

No need to sacrifice 5k hps for 5-8% shielding IMHO. I have always been open to the idea of doing so, but i have been waiting for the healers to complain that its hard to heal me.

No one 'underrates' endurance. It is entirely necessary, but it functions in a vaguely similar way to being hit-capped. Once you have 'enough', you should start investing in mitigation to optimize for healer energy. What exactly 'enough' is is the real debate, but in truth, I honestly don't think it matters that much. Whatever you get from your gear should be enough for what you're attempting

What I'm saying is more along the lines of - "This concept of 'enough' health is causing some people to cap their health and pile point after point into mitigation when maybe the marginal point is more valuable in Endurance, even though you already have 'enough' health for the content you're doing."

Not that we're at this point, but if we got to some far-off point (gear-wise) where you got 0.5% mitigation from 1000 points of attributes, or you could go from 25k to 35k health, you're better serving your team by taking the 10k health. Now that we've agreed upon that (I hope), let's examine where the point is when extra max health is more useful than extra mitigation (even ignoring any heals that directly benefit from greater max health). It may be the case that people are artificially capping their health to get more mitigation, and are hurting their team by doing so (consider it anti-wipe insurance for those big moments).

A similar debate was held about guardians in the tanking forum, generally my idea is that both ways have it's own merit, though of course there are critical thresholds that one needs to pass.

I personally have always thought that the +19 endurance I get from augments is better than any +19 mitigation I will get so I only went for endurance augments. The Result is that I am a guardian tank with 30.4k HP 30% def 50% shield and 45% absorbtion. If I was to change my augments to get the 5% more absorption I was ending up losing around 2.5k - 3k HP. After thinking about it while I do see the merits of mitigation stacking I didn't consider it so crucial as to spend money on changing 10+ more augments. Full 63 except earpiece btw.

What's important is to listen to your healers and observe your tanking performance yourself, see how often you get really low in fights, ask how hard for healers is to heal you, look at your wipes in bosses etc. My gear is well enough to take on all the content offered by this game and that suffices for me, until the day I hear from my healers criticism.

As a healer I hate anything with 26k+ unless in at least half DG gear. It wastes my time healing health which should not have been lost in the first place via mitigation. With the currently available mods, enhancements and augments it is pretty much impossible to hit hard DR on all def, shield and absorb.

While there are fights with predominantly unmitigated damage I do not see what difference it makes if the tank's health moves in 10k-25k range or 15k-30k range. If I need that 5k as a buffer then I fail as a healer and it has nothing to do with the tank's gear.

I do concede on the Shadow point. First of all I see the rational for higher HP (self heals are a percentage of health) and secondly I only have Jugg and Vang tanks so I will not pretend to know anything about Shadow tanking.

OP: Scoundrel healing does go into super efficient mode on targets below 30% and thus the higher health a tank has the higher the 30% range is. But ask yourself, do you really want to keep a tank at 30% just for that, especially with how efficient Scoundrel healing is anyway. For Commando and Sages it is detrimental as they can panic when they see a tank at 30% and move onto less resource efficient healing.

Are we really having this discussion again.

First of all, what one person considers "HP stacking" seems to be different to another's. I would consider HP stacking to be using endurance augments and enhancements. That trade off is never going to be worth it. If your talking about mitigation and health in a 1:1 ratio, mitigation is better.

However, when it comes to mods, they have a significantly higher stat budget in favour of endurance, a much better trade off. Swapping a few unlettered mods out for lettered is the only way you should get more health. I wouldn't consider a tank with 2-3 lettered mods a health stacker.

Also Keyboardninja makes a good case for assassins using 27B mods if your using the correct rotation.

as people have seen from my takes on this subject i follow kintru and Keyboardninja's views. expecialy on the shadow tank.

i agree there should be a balance. my current setup

(in a moment of weekness i took out all my absorb mods and RE'd them to try and get the schem but did not, so they have been replacced by all defence mods. not correct but not bad since it makes deflection a viable oh **** button)

HP: 25290

DR: 40.25

Defence: 33.89%

Shield (w/ KW): 65.10%

Absorb: 58%

this is entirely campaign, since i have no trouble at all tanking any fight in this entire damn game i decided to pool all my resources to gear out my healing in Dreadguard gear. so my poor shadow gets no dreadguard cause he doesnt need it.

here is my thoughts and feelings from what ive seen, learned, and experienced as a healer and a tank.

A balance is nice, But Mitigation > HP. HP might be usefull in some instances but a competent healer can put out enough HPS for any fight at any time. i play the extreme stacking mitigation to the highest degree so i display proof, if healers can heal me through NiM Stormcaller then there is no reason for any more HP.

when i go Dreadguard i will be going for a more balanced aproach since with the numbers provided by Keyboard ninja, there is a point were HP provides more Mitigation in the form of self healing that would a true mitigation point. and im at that point.

bottom line is;

High mitigation is good and dandy for any fight in this entire game,

A strong balance with good mitigation is great and would most likely be considered "optimal"

(being a Mitigation tank i recognize the balance as being optimal but i prefer sleeping through trash pulls simply because its what i enjoy and it is my playstyle)

High endurance is inexcusable and amateur at best. yes you can make it through current content with high endurance on account that THIS GAME IS VERY EASY and NONE of the encounters are changing. but is in no way shape or form the correct way to go.

High endurance is inexcusable and amateur at best. yes you can make it through current content with high endurance on account that THIS GAME IS VERY EASY and NONE of the encounters are changing. but is in no way shape or form the correct way to go.

Excuse me but this is just wrong. There is currently only one guild which has been able to kill Kephess in NiM 16 after much difficulty. The content by no means is "Very easy". Judging the game purely through by the book expectations of healers and dps playing perfectly does not always apply to every situation in raiding. I would not in any way say hp stacking is the way to go, but there is no "this way or you suck" situation in gearing up so long as you follow basic principles in this game, and that does not in any way include having to get 0.2% more absorbtion in comparison to 190 HP. Both have their own merits.

Excuse me but this is just wrong. There is currently only one guild which has been able to kill Kephess in NiM 16 after much difficulty. The content by no means is "Very easy". Judging the game purely through by the book expectations of healers and dps playing perfectly does not always apply to every situation in raiding. I would not in any way say hp stacking is the way to go, but there is no "this way or you suck" situation in gearing up so long as you follow basic principles in this game, and that does not in any way include having to get 0.2% more absorbtion in comparison to 190 HP. Both have their own merits.

maybe in your own server but there are several on our server. Nemesis, Empire, Wrath of the forsaken... and there are 3 or 4 others. but again my comment saying this game is easy is directed to the tanking, there is no encounter where the incoming DPS is so high you need to stack endurance to survive. and I am judging the game by what it is. My main is a tank and my secondary character is a DPS and healer, so ive seen all aspects of the game in all content under all difficulties. i have a pretty good idea of what im talking about.

*EDIT*

I didnt see the 16M part you may be right there im not sure how many have completed 16M yet.