NOTE: WORKS FOR DPS BUILDS NOW TOO.

Google Docs: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au6Yg4iBM3q8dG5Wa1VXQTF2aUotamY3ejRPa1kxMEE

RAR with Open Office and Excel 97 files: http://www.mediafire.com/?ondd737kn6433ba (OUTDATED)

This spreadsheet has been created with the idea of helping every Powertech/Vanguard out there refine their characters. Has two sections:

-Mean Mitigation helps with how to reduce incoming damage, making the decision of what stats/skills use easier.

-Threat helps you increase the damage/threat you do, also letting you choose the better spec or stats.

And sorry for all the typos and broken grammar, English is not my first language.

A few general indications first:

a) Is recommended to work on a copy of the spreadsheet, the main sheet could be been modified every minute if I'm working on it. You'll need to create Google account tought for that. You can also download the spreadsheet as excel or open office archives, but the DPS/Threat relative stat values script won't work. You can do it manually increasing the stats by 1 and writing down the DPS.

b) The cell's background color can help you to know what to do with it:

• Pale blue are titles and info.
  
• Pale green are data that can be modified by the user (stats, encounter or rotation configuration, etc).
  
• Pale red are important results after all the calculations. Never modify this unless you know what you are doing.
  
• Grey/white cells are internal calculations. Never modify unless you know what you are doing.
  

c) Sometimes Google Docs introduces a number as a date or plain text even if the cell has a number format, giving VALUE# errors on some cells. The workaround is to write '=' first. So instead of writing 1.5/1,5 just write =1.5.

d) The spreadsheet has 3 different sheets right now, as you can see on the bottom of the screen: Mitigation, Threat and Calculations. You never need to look at the Calculations sheet, is all internal stuff like tables, or extra calculations. The Mitigation and Threat sheets are the important ones, each one helps with a facet of our tanking role.

MITIGATION SHEET

Note: is recommended to start configuring this sheet, even if you are only interested in threat. Some stuff like % shielded attacks or some aspect of the build are taken directly from this sheet.

                         
                              CHANCE             DAMAGE TAKEN
Avoided Hits              15.49%                       0%
Shielded Hits             37.05%                    29.12%            
Full Hits                    47.46%                     47.49%

This section is on constant WIP.

*Based on the current state of the spreadsheet. May change*

31/8/2 seems to be the way to go. Has the better mitigation of every possible skill build.

Also that build has the better sustained dps, take a look at these link for a detailed comparison using the spreadsheet.

1 point on Hot Iron can go to Prototype Cylinders or Advanced Tools, so feel free to put the point wherever you want.

Use the spreadsheet for a better indication for your gear, but as a rule of thumb:

Absorb Rating > Defense > Shield Rating > Armor.

Relative stats values for my actual gear (I recommend to calculate your own):

Absorb Rating 1,55

Defense Rating 1,10

Shield Rating 0,77

Armor Rating 0,38

You don't need to change your build, that's the first thing you need to know.

STATS

Doing a few iterations, these are my relative values for dps as a tank (note I have tech accuracy capped):

Surge 4.25

AIM 2.91

Power 2.58

CUNNING 2.03

Tech Power 1.87

Crit 1.65

Accuracy 0.64

SKILLS

We need to consider a few things when evaluating skills, not only the damage number on the tooltip, or how hard it "seems" to hit on screen. A few indications:

-Elemental damage is usually the best, as bosses seems to have little to none damage reduction to this kind of damage.

-Kinetic damage is reduced by armor, so the skill will always do less damage than the tooltip indicates.

-Weapon Damage based skills can miss with more frecuency, as we don't have usually the Ranged Accuracy capped (these skills needs 10% extra accuracy). So even if you see an high damage on the tooltip remember that probably around 10% of the attacks will fail to hit. Weapon Damage skills for Powertech are Unload, Rapid Shots and Rail Shot.

-The tooltip shows all the skills that increase the damage of that skill, but we can't see other important stuff like extra crit (fire skills and Rocket Punch), or extra surge (Rocket Punch) or chances to proc extra damage (Unload, Rapid Shots, Rail Shot and again, Rocket Punch).

SKILLS IN ORDER OF DPS (single target)

Note: the chance of IGC proc is included as a 15% of the damage for Weapon Damage skills, and 100% of the damage for Rocket Punch.

The damage is divided by cast time, and is based on my character stats.

The order you wanna use your skills for max dps:

1. DEATH FROM ABOVE 1077
   
2. ROCKET PUNCH 1069
   
3. FLAME THROWER 849
   
4. RAIL SHOT 812
   
5. FLAME BURST 630
   
6. UNLOAD 616
   
7. HEAT BLAST 612
   
8. RAPID SHOTS 376
   

SKILLS IN ORDER OF DPH (damage per heat)

The order you wanna use your skills if overheated, or for heat's conservation:

1. HEAT BLAST Infinite
   
2. RAPID SHOTS Infinite
   
3. UNLOAD 1634
   
4. FLAME THROWER 254
   
5. DEATH FROM ABOVE 215
   
6. ROCKET PUNCH 167
   
7. RAIL SHOT 140
   
8. FLAME BURST 111
   

ROTATION (single target)

Never ever get your heat over 40, unless you need burst damage, and not sustained damage. I need a few calculations more before having a 100% precise rotation, but this is a first draft.

Priority based:

1. Rocket Punch (heat <=25)
   
2. Death from Above (if you can hit the boss, of course)
   
3. Flame Thrower (heat <=25)
   
4. Heat Blast (heat >=12)
   
5. Flame Burst (if boss not debuffed)
   
6. Rail Shot (heat <=25)
   
7. Unload (only if you won't get hit while casting this, boss far away or doing cast/animation)
   
8. Flame Burst (boss debuffed, low heat, all above skills with 3 secs+ CD)
   
9. Rapid Shots
   

Always use TSO with Flame Thrower or Death from Above (if you have less than 20 heat, never use TSO, wait for a another cast).

Always use Explosive Fuel when you have Rocket Punch without CD, and Flame Thrower will be up in the next 15 seconds.

But Shield Rating also helps with procs (extra Rocket Punch, Vent Heat), why we don't stack it?

Shield Rating has diminishing return, you can't shield a defense'd attack, and is only a 50% chance with internal cooldown. Increasing SR give us little extra chance to proc those skills.

For example with 45% Shield Rating, you get a Vent Heat proc every ~13.83 seconds on average (considering a boss hit every 1.5 seconds). With 50% Shield Rating you get a proc every 13.07 seconds, or about 1 extra heat every 30 seconds. And you need 110 Shield Rating for that.

With the extra Rocket Punch is worst, as RP has a normal CD of 9 seconds so you don't get that many extra RP per fight. Again with 45% Shield Rating you get around 9 RP per minute (2.5 extra). With 50% Shield Rating you get around ~9.2 RP per minute, so 1 RP extra every 5 minutes on average.

-I ignored Critical Chance from bosses on the Mean Mitigation tab, because there isn't conclusive info on that matter, and unless there is a third roll for crits, there is no way to reduce the critical chance from bosses with the DR on defense/shield rating.

-All the calculations consider that bosses have around 30% armor reduction (after -20% armor debuff), no elemental/internal damage reduction, 5% defense (the consensus at least) and attack every 1.5 seconds. You can change that data in the spreadsheet.

-I completely ignored Alacrity as does almost nothing for us (a tiny bit faster cast on Unload and Flame Thrower). I'll probably add it in a later version for the sake of completion.

Thanks to Gankstah for the formulas here.

Thanks to Freehugs for the formulas here

CHANGE LOG MM PVS 1.08

-Fixed a few bugs with Sweet Spot. Now will give you impossible results less often (like negative Shield Rating), but still have work to do.

-Added a Threat Tab with many info regarding how much damage does your skill, etc. Still needs work too.

CHANGE LOG 4M PVS 1.02

-Added support for Supercommando 4 pieces bonus.

-Added a new section showing the Mean Mitigation increase with cooldowns or use relics.

-Fixed some typos and made the base Spreadsheet easier to upload to Google Docs with less visual bugs. Less work with each update, yay!

CHANGE LOG 4M PVS 1.01

-Added support for any character level.

-Added support for Nightvision Scope / Infrared Sensor skills.

-Now calculates the Mean Mitigation gained per skill point. Only works if you have maximum points on that skill.

-Now calculates the best combination of Defense/Shield/Absorb near your defensive stats values with the same sum of stats, the Sweet Spot, with exact values and Mean Mitigation gain. The calculation algorithm is pretty rough, but is hard to do keeping the compatibily with Google Docs.

Very, very nice! Thanks for the good work. Took me a few minutes to actually grasp the purpose of that spreadsheet, but now I recognize the value. Relative stat values are especially crucial to keep track of.

Cheers.

New version uploaded adding some suggestions. Sorry I didn't added the option to modify base armor value with the Rebraced Armor skill, but I hope isn't needed with the new MM/point feature.

You always need to put your character tab stats and your skills. If you wanna change them be careful they don't change your character tab stats.

CHANGE LOG 1.01

-Added support for any character level.

-Added support for Nightvision Scope / Infrared Sensor skills.

-Now calculates the Mean Mitigation gained per skill point. Only works if you have maximum points on that skill.

-Now calculates the best combination of Defense/Shield/Absorb near your defensive stats values with the same sum of stats, the Sweet Spot, with exact values and Mean Mitigation gain. The calculation algorithm is pretty rough, but is hard to do keeping the compatibily with Google Docs.

A new version has been uploaded. See the first post for the links.

Probably will be the last version for a while. All the powertech seems to be focusing on PvP or DPS, so I don't see the reason to add more features, as I don't need anything else included. I'll probably work on a threat spreadsheet next.

A few words about Mean Mitigation and Increases. MM is exponential, so an increase of 1 MM when you have 60 MM is better than when you have 40 MM. Take that in account when looking at increases of MM via skill points, stats, cooldowns, etc.

For example, how much does reduce the real damage you take with an increase of 1% MM for various values of MM:

40% -> 1.67% damage reduction with 1% extra MM

50% -> 2.00% damage reduction with 1% extra MM

60% -> 2.50% damage reduction with 1% extra MM

70% -> 3.33% damage reduction with 1% extra MM

That's why getting an extra 1% is harder as you get higher on MM, that's why Dimishing Returns exist in the first place, and that's why undiminished defensive stats (via skills, bonus, etc) are so good.

Changes:

-Added support for Supercommando 4 pieces bonus.

-Added a new section showing the Mean Mitigation increase with cooldowns or use relics.

-Fixed some typos and made the base Spreadsheet easier to upload to Google Docs with less visual bugs. Less work with each update, yay!

Ok... for those of us who are tech/math not-so-enclined, what do the results say we should DO, assuming we want to maximize the defensive attributes that work, (and skip the ones now found to be lacking) and have some DPS as well?

Z

Ok... for those of us who are tech/math not-so-enclined, what do the results say we should DO, assuming we want to maximize the defensive attributes that work, (and skip the ones now found to be lacking) and have some DPS as well?

 

Z

I'll wait until I finish the threat part of the spreadsheet (is like 50% done, and uploaded to google docs) to answer that kind of questions but a small resume:

I recommend a typical 31/8/2, with the defensive gear oriented to Absorb > Defense > Shield where you can. More armor is always good. Keeping tech accuracy to 105% and doing a good rotation will help with threat management. Surge is a great threat stat but is hard to get in tank gear.

A new version with a DPS/Threat tab is now available. Still have much work to do, but is pretty functional at least for a typical 31/8/2.

I updated the OP with new info. Read if you are interested. I'll keep adding stuff in the next hour or so.

I'm working on polishing it right now, I uploaded a more recent snapshot to Google Docs.

Changes I made:

-Added a -% Damage Taken to Cooldown/Relic use, give us a better idea.

-Rail Shot was being reduce twice by armor.

-Heat Blast doesn't count as fire damage, so doesn't benefit from fire dmg/crit skills.

-Better estimation of extra Rocket Punch via shield procs (did a few hours simulation). Works pretty well for 1.5 seconds between attacks from the boss.

-Changed dmg/heat from skills to balance heat instead of initial heat cost.

-Retractable Blade and Incendiary Missile rotations work pretty well now. RB is a bit lower dps (5%), and IM is a little better dps (2% or so), but loses mitigation.

-Rapid Shots has a 15% chance per hit to proc IGC, so around 40-45% chance to trigger it, depends on your hit%.

-Unload has a 15% chance per hit to proc IGC, also can proc TWICE in one cast (IGC has a 1.5 secs CD, and Unload lasts 3 seconds). Has around 50% chance to trigger 1 IGC, and 30-35% chance to trigger 2. The formula isn't exact and is a bit on the higher side.

-Explosive Fuel extra damage is now better approximated for all 3 rotations.

Rocket Punchs / minute based on your % shielded attacks (not your shield chance, remember you can't shield attacks totally avoided via defense)

Rocket Punch Graph

Thanks for the support!

I'll try to keep the good work. I'll add a good chunk of new stuff to the spreadsheet today. I'll only keep the Google Docs link updated, as I can do support to everything on a timely manner.

A few small additions in the last hours:

-Free Rail Shots had the formula wrong for the IM build, underestimated the procs from Flame Burst. Now the formula is more precise.

-IGC (DOT) seems to benefit from the skills that increase IGC (so +25% and +8%), so that's pretty good for the Heat Blast build.

-Added support for the -20% Armor raid debuff.

-Also changed base boss armor to 5000. I did some tests on hard mode yesterday, and bosses seem to have 4k-5k armor (22 to 28% AR after the -20% Armor debuff).

This is great and needs to be stickied on the Powertech and Vanguard forums. Please remember to rate this thread a 5 if you replay to it.

I'm really interested in the "how to use" section because I'm not completely sure what I need to do for my gear. I have a good idea but I'm just not positive about my conclusions about my gear.

Thanks for the 5 stars

I have uploaded a new version to Google Docs. Works pretty well for my expectations. Still work to do. I did many changes and corrections, I'll try to list everything tomorrow and I don't have time now.

Evenflow, I hope to have a basic description of how to use the spreasheet tomorrow.

I'm wondering, what would happen if you worked to minimize your defense %?

I don't feel like tweaking the spreadsheet atm, but it's a thought. Less defense means more shield procs, which means more heat venting and more punches.

Also, does your original post include the full IGC damage in the rocket punch damage? (It's a fairly significant bonus hit, after all).

I'm wondering, what would happen if you worked to minimize your defense %?

 

I don't feel like tweaking the spreadsheet atm, but it's a thought. Less defense means more shield procs, which means more heat venting and more punches.

 

Also, does your original post include the full IGC damage in the rocket punch damage? (It's a fairly significant bonus hit, after all).

The procs thanks to shielded attacks are not that great. If they were at least 100% chance...

Shield Vents for example with 37.5% shielded attacks only vents 68.57 heat over a 2 minute fight against a single target on average. 1% extra shielded attacks increase that by only 1.03 heat (so no extra attack unless is a 15+ minute fight), and you'll need to reduce defense greatly for that.

Rocket Punch is similar, increasing shielded attacks by 5% (a big big number) you only get 0.2 extra RP per minute on average, so 1 extra RP per fight.

And yeah, IGC procs are included averaged in all the relevant skills (Rocket Punch has 100%, Unload has around 80% plus chance of 2 procs, Rapid Shots around 45%, and Rail Shot 15%).

Bump for the effort and time taken.

Definitely testing this when I get back.

The HOW TO USE section is now almost finished for the Mitigation section. Threat section will come in the next few days.

Also I compiled a list of the changes of the last few days. I probably forgot minor changes tought:

CHANGE LOG 1.2

Features:

-New UI, more user friendly.

-Now you can choose your Advanced Class, and everything on the spreadsheet changes names. Except Heat. Sorry Vanguards, you need to think in Heat instead of Power Cells (1 Power Cell is 8 Heat, and depletes as you use skills, Heat gets full).

-You can now choose set bonuses that give us DPS if you wanna take a look. Also there is an option for no-tanking scenarios, just choose "No" on Boss Attacks.

-Now you can copy/paste your builds and save them in the extra columns for easy comparison. Also each build has the option to have a % shielded attacks attached, so you don't need to tinker with the Mitigation tab for each new build. Just do it once, and save the % shielded attacks.

-Now there isn't three rotations, all rotations are done in the same place, and change when you choose a skill build. There are still three variations, Heat Blast, Retractable Blade and Incendiary Missile.

-You can now play with the rotation values. You wanna know if you do more or less dps if you never use Unload or Flame Thrower? You can. You wanna know how is heat management if you never use Heat Blast, or use extra Flame Burst in the rotation? Just introduce it and compare the results. The uses of a skill can't be higher than theoretical max use per rotation tough.

-You can now work with decimals on the rotation if you like that, or keep working with integers. If the maximum RP/min is 17.75, you can enter 17 or 17.75. With 17.75 you get a better approximation of reality (and higher dps), but numbers can be a bit awkward to work with.

Bug Fixes:

-Extra Armor was being calculated wrong, bonuses from Rebraced Armor and IGC are additive, not multiplicative. Rebraced Armor MM/Point and +1Armor Relative Stat Values are now correct.

-Damage Taken (Shielded Attacks) were wrong, a misplaced '(' was decreasing this value. Mean Mitigation formula was ok.

-Ion Gas Cylinder (DOT) uptime was being undercalculated for builds with less points on the relevant skills. Now is almost always 1 (unless no points on Rocket Punch proc).

-Death From Above had the wrong cast time, and DPS.

-The extra Rocket Punch / minute formula is not a interpolation of data from a few 1000 hour fights simulation I did. Now is more precise than before. The values are lower.

-The extra Rail Shot / minute formula is now an approximation to a another few 1000 hour fights simulation. Works pretty well for usual values (7-12 Rocket Punch/min, 4-8 Flame Burst/m). Still needs some fixing, for lower or higher values the formula goes far and far away from reality. The results are also lower than before.

-Unload IGC procs are now better calculated. Single procs formula was ok (still around 80% of at least 1 IGC proc per Unload). Double procs formula didn't take in account some stuff, I did a 1 million Unload simulation also, and now is more precise. Double proc is now around 25% per Unload. On average for every 4 Unload, 1 will not proc IGC, 2 will proc 1 IGC and the last one will proc 2 IGC.

just to clarify,

you're suggesting that surge is more useful than aim in our gear? or only after a certain point? .. also, power>crit?

thanks

Yeah, I'm not suggesting it, the spreadsheet assures me that Surge is better stat threat wise than Aim, and that doesn't change until you have an high amount or Surge. Anyway surge is hard to get in Tank Gear (because Bioware itemized badly almost every item) so you can't really stack it unless you lose Mitigation stats.

The reason behind this is that Rocket Punch has a 30% extra crit chance, and Surge scales pretty well at low values. RP is also 25% of our total damage, and scales greatly with Surge (gains 44 dps from 50 Surge, and only 28 dps from 50 Aim).

Just wanted to say thanks for sharing your spreadsheet. It has given me better insight as to how I am gearing up my PT, and where i need to now shift some stats. I like the way it is now, currently, and using your spreadsheet I have learned that for my playstyle i am heading a good direction.

When I plugged my stats into your SS I got:

65.16 Mean Mitigation

My Stats are:

7803 Armor (50.94% dmg redux)

135 Def Rating (11.60% with 4pc bonus)

234 Shield (44.79%)

197 Absorb (43.87%)

Could you run the numbers for a decently geared Khem Val to see how he compares to player chars?

Khem Val has +20% shield stance, Bear pain ability -25% for 12 secs with 120 sec cooldown and -10 reduction to internal and elemental damage that the Sith buff adds.

Could you run the numbers for a decently geared Khem Val to see how he compares to player chars?

 

Khem Val has +20% shield stance, Bear pain ability -25% for 12 secs with 120 sec cooldown and -10 reduction to internal and elemental damage that the Sith buff adds.

Around 51.71% Mean Mitigation with my gear instead of 66.53%. Recieves a 44% extra damage on average.