If this is referring to my "fight" against KBN/Methoxa about how they sort of attacked Xissc on his point about mitigation vs. avoidance, let me make perfectly clear that I have the utmost respect for the work and contributions KBN has made to the SWTOR community with these optimal tank stats posts (and everything else) from day one. I have referred countless numbers of tanks both in-guild and in gen chat on two different servers to this thread (and the one BW blew up) when asked about optimal stat distributions. I do want to apologize for the "mathematica" shot - that was uncalled for.

:-) I didn't take offense at any of it. I've been called enough names on the forums over the years that it takes a fair bit now to get me truly upset. I think the discussion (re: relics) is very worthwhile, because the value of the Reactive Warding relic is counter-intuitive and probably always will be.

Absolutely no reference to your "fight." It's an old saying from my favorite law prof when explaining the value of seemingly minor civil procedural objections. In short, even the smallest victories can add up to a major battle won. In application to KBN's post, adding mitigation...however small...can add up and provide unforeseen benefits down the road. I apologize if it was taken any other way. It certainly wasn't my intention.

No reason to apologize, I do appreciate it though. I can be pretty paranoid about these things, as (is the case in RL as well) I can be generally unpopular due to an extremely sharp tongue combined with a high propensity to get p'o-d. They say the pen is mightier than the sword... well, I've drawn well more than my fair share of blood over the years.

KBN, (sorry to hijack thread) I am definitely interested in your thoughts about crit and surge in the discussion about TK sage dps here http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=814982&page=4 if you get a chance.

Maybe it has been covered already(I'm too lazy to check ), but just out of curiosity how much would dtps increase if you're using the complete opposite of what's BiS for any given fight? Basically, by how much would my damage taken increase if I'd use high M/R profile for a low M/R boss?

This is one of those things that I'd like to be able to easily calculate and show alongside the stats. Generally speaking, tank itemization can make a difference of about five-ish percent on average content, and 7-8% on more extreme damage profiles. This is multiplicative with the post-mitigation DtPS (i.e. what you see in your logs if your group doesn't have a sorc healer). So, for example, going completely counter to the recommended numbers on Torque should yield a DtPS increase of about 150. Noticeable, but not earth shattering.

Another question if you don't mind.

If it's true that there won't be individual mainstats with 4.0, would it be possible to create an "average for all classes" distribution profile? So the really lazy tanks like myself can just use one legacy armor set for all tank classes?

Another question if you don't mind.

If it's true that there won't be individual mainstats with 4.0, would it be possible to create an "average for all classes" distribution profile? So the really lazy tanks like myself can just use one legacy armor set for all tank classes?

What wuld you do for set boni???? You gotta have a set for each set bonus anyway.

What wuld you do for set boni???? You gotta have a set for each set bonus anyway.

How important are they really? I mean, if you compare 198 BiS gear without Set to 192 gear with.... And for alt runs it'll be good enough either way

So without going into too much mathematical details, cause I don't understand them anyway, how screwed are we with the 4.0 stat distribution, aka defense stacking?

PTs are royally screwed

Sins are screwed.

Juggs are the way to go.

Hopefully someone at BW picks up on this and realizes how much worse they are making it for tanks.

PTs are royally screwed

Sins are screwed.

Juggs are the way to go.

 

Hopefully someone at BW picks up on this and realizes how much worse they are making it for tanks.

I think you poorly misunderstand Assassins if you think that they're screwed in the upcoming expansion. M/R attacks are going to be far more prevalent in 4.0 than they are now, and so running more defense isn't terrible to start. We'll be smarting, but then we'll remember that we have Shroud, Force Cloak, Force Pull, Shadowstride, Recklessness, and Overcharge Saber to pull through, as well as an enhanced Dark Ward and a not-terrible 6 piece set bonus. Oh, and Phase Walk as an actual teleportation mechanic, rather than a mildly useless puddle on the ground. The cheese will be real, and we're going to dominate mechanics again, just like we used to.

M/R attacks are going to be far more prevalent in 4.0 than they are now, and so running more defense isn't terrible to start.

You're reffering to "old" bosses have more M/R attacks than new ones? Or what?

I think you poorly misunderstand Assassins if you think that they're screwed in the upcoming expansion. M/R attacks are going to be far more prevalent in 4.0 than they are now, and so running more defense isn't terrible to start. We'll be smarting, but then we'll remember that we have Shroud, Force Cloak, Force Pull, Shadowstride, Recklessness, and Overcharge Saber to pull through, as well as an enhanced Dark Ward and a not-terrible 6 piece set bonus. Oh, and Phase Walk as an actual teleportation mechanic, rather than a mildly useless puddle on the ground. The cheese will be real, and we're going to dominate mechanics again, just like we used to.

I think you misunderstand as well. If I had the choice between a 50% chance to avoid any attack or always getting hit by the attacks, but taking 50% less damage from them my choice would be clear; the latter. Why?

It makes the required healing predictable. With a heavy defense build you'll get chains of attacks that are avoided and the tank takes no damage at all, but suddenly it may change to a chain of attacks hitting the tanks instead, creating unpredictable spikes of damage that can easily catch healers unaware if you just had a period of deflects. As a tank my job is to take damage, and also to gear in a way that reduces the damage I take by an optimal amount, ensuring that the healer get less issues keeping my health bar up and instead focusing on the mechanics. Gearing to avoid attacks is highly counter productive towards this.

I think you misunderstand as well. If I had the choice between a 50% chance to avoid any attack or always getting hit by the attacks, but taking 50% less damage from them my choice would be clear; the latter. Why?

 

It makes the required healing predictable. With a heavy defense build you'll get chains of attacks that are avoided and the tank takes no damage at all, but suddenly it may change to a chain of attacks hitting the tanks instead, creating unpredictable spikes of damage that can easily catch healers unaware if you just had a period of deflects. As a tank my job is to take damage, and also to gear in a way that reduces the damage I take by an optimal amount, ensuring that the healer get less issues keeping my health bar up and instead focusing on the mechanics. Gearing to avoid attacks is highly counter productive towards this.

Your theory is 100% sound, but you're exaggerating the practical effect of a high defense build. Both in the math and in practice, high defense builds make relatively little difference in the spikiness of the tank. To be clear, if you go far enough in the direction of high defense, sure, things will look really spiky, but part of that will simply be taking more damage due to not having as much force/tech mitigation. Amping up the defense by a far more reasonable amount (which is what 4.0 is doing) makes things spikier, but only in a barely perceptible way.

Again, this comes down to bosses doing quite a bit less damage than we intuitively believe (see also: relic, reactive warding).

I think you misunderstand as well. If I had the choice between a 50% chance to avoid any attack or always getting hit by the attacks, but taking 50% less damage from them my choice would be clear; the latter. Why?

 

It makes the required healing predictable. With a heavy defense build you'll get chains of attacks that are avoided and the tank takes no damage at all, but suddenly it may change to a chain of attacks hitting the tanks instead, creating unpredictable spikes of damage that can easily catch healers unaware if you just had a period of deflects. As a tank my job is to take damage, and also to gear in a way that reduces the damage I take by an optimal amount, ensuring that the healer get less issues keeping my health bar up and instead focusing on the mechanics. Gearing to avoid attacks is highly counter productive towards this.

I'm pretty sure everyone here understands the concept of a "spikey" damage profile just fine. However, the guide in this thread focuses on obtaining the highest mean mitigation. For fights with a (relatively) high percentage of melee/ranged damage, defense is undeniably better than shield for increasing mean mitigation.

Of course, there are other gearing strategies. Notably, Methoxa, Dipstik and Jethsidi have all worked on stat guides that account for the problem of spikiness in some way. If you really want to get into a discussion of different gearing strategies, review what has been said about it previously at length.

Your theory is 100% sound, but you're exaggerating the practical effect of a high defense build. Both in the math and in practice, high defense builds make relatively little difference in the spikiness of the tank. To be clear, if you go far enough in the direction of high defense, sure, things will look really spiky, but part of that will simply be taking more damage due to not having as much force/tech mitigation. Amping up the defense by a far more reasonable amount (which is what 4.0 is doing) makes things spikier, but only in a barely perceptible way.

 

Again, this comes down to bosses doing quite a bit less damage than we intuitively believe (see also: relic, reactive warding).

AS for the "far enough" equation. Let us assume my first tier level gear puts me at something like this:

Defense:1763

Shield:306

Absorb:608

How would you judge that`?

AS for the "far enough" equation. Let us assume my first tier level gear puts me at something like this:

 

Defense:1763

Shield:306

Absorb:608

 

How would you judge that`?

It's hard to say. Without actually, you know, running the math… That's almost a 2:1 ratio of defense-to-anything-else, which is probably not good. Fine for Guardians, since you're kinda stuck with that much defense regardless of what you do, but not great for the others.

With that said, defense minima should be, relatively speaking, fairly close to shield minima in the current gear system (modulo the fact that stims give defense). So we're not talking about a 2:1 ratio or anything close to it. It's probably more like 1:1 or even 1:1.5, which is a lot more reasonable.

tl;dr: I suspect that a 2:1 ratio, as you describe, would be noticeably problematic. 1:1 or 1:1.5 should not be, and while the mean mitigation will be down and the spikiness (as described by every objective metric) will be up, the more moderate ratios shouldn't prove actively problematic.

tl;dr 2.0: I'm not a fan of Bioware "forcing" defense at us in this manner. I would rather they took steps to adjust the content, adjust the classes, or tweak the effect of the stat (e.g. make it affect resist, or perhaps give dodge a stacking effect which increases dodge probability after a successful dodge). Something. Adjusting the itemization in this way just removes the option of running a low defense build, and also basically eliminates meaningful customization of gear sets (since shield and absorb are going to be at a basically-constant ratio, regardless of the content). I don't think it's the end of the world mitigation-wise, but that doesn't mean I'm in favor of the change.

Given the waiver that it's all just hypothetical conjecture at this point, I'm interested to hear what the heavyweight theory crafters think about the status of the three tank classes for 4.0. It's a simple question with a complicated answer, but I'd still like to read what you guys think.

It's impossible to say without seeing the final version of the class changes, the exact gear itemization, and even the exact scaling of the content up to level 65. In general, I have a lot of faith that the combat team was able to keep the TTK and mean mitigation of each tank balanced, simply because they've proven extremely adept at tank balance in the last few years (basically since 2.0).

You're reffering to "old" bosses have more M/R attacks than new ones? Or what?

It's not just that. It's also that Assassins also do benefit from having defense, and not even just small amounts. We have, on live, a 16% base defense with no gear on and no stim. We can get pretty close to a Juggernaut running 50%+ of his budget into defense with just a few pieces, and crush their shield and absorb numbers. We simply have very high mitigation stats, and because mitigation works the way it does, having more % boost of a stat makes it more valuable up until you hard cap.

AS for the "far enough" equation. Let us assume my first tier level gear puts me at something like this:

 

Defense:1763

Shield:306

Absorb:608

 

How would you judge that`?

I'd judge it as categorically impossible.

Let's look at item level 190 gear, which is in the game now, and just over a tier lower than the top item tier in the game (204 isn't a tier... yet.): It comes with 108 tertiary stat and 118 secondary stat, despite being poorly itemized. Expand this over the other 9 pieces of gear that have the same amount of stat, and we're up to 1080 tertiary and 1180 secondary stat. Add in another 48 secondary stat per relic, 80 for a stim, and 46 each for the belt and bracers, to match the poor itemization, and you end up with 1402 secondary stat. Now, let's say that you get 1.25 times as much secondary stat from proper itemization of your mods. This bumps you up to 1720 secondary stat. This is just below your listed value. Now, let's add 14 augments, and make it all tertiary, because you don't have as much budget there. You suddenly jump up to 1808 tertiary stat. This is just at item level 190, which is, like I said, far below the "starter" tier in 4.0.

tl;dr: it's not nearly as one sided as you would make it seem.

I don't think anyone who enjoys tanking is fond of these changes, but it's just not going to be as big a deal as many are making it out to be. Aside from more or less homogenizing the stat breakdown between the classes.

It's not just that. It's also that Assassins also do benefit from having defense, and not even just small amounts. We have, on live, a 16% base defense with no gear on and no stim. We can get pretty close to a Juggernaut running 50%+ of his budget into defense with just a few pieces, and crush their shield and absorb numbers. We simply have very high mitigation stats, and because mitigation works the way it does, having more % boost of a stat makes it more valuable up until you hard cap.

 

 

I'd judge it as categorically impossible.

 

Let's look at item level 190 gear, which is in the game now, and just over a tier lower than the top item tier in the game (204 isn't a tier... yet.): It comes with 108 tertiary stat and 118 secondary stat, despite being poorly itemized. Expand this over the other 9 pieces of gear that have the same amount of stat, and we're up to 1080 tertiary and 1180 secondary stat. Add in another 48 secondary stat per relic, 80 for a stim, and 46 each for the belt and bracers, to match the poor itemization, and you end up with 1402 secondary stat. Now, let's say that you get 1.25 times as much secondary stat from proper itemization of your mods. This bumps you up to 1720 secondary stat. This is just below your listed value. Now, let's add 14 augments, and make it all tertiary, because you don't have as much budget there. You suddenly jump up to 1808 tertiary stat. This is just at item level 190, which is, like I said, far below the "starter" tier in 4.0.

 

tl;dr: it's not nearly as one sided as you would make it seem.

 

I don't think anyone who enjoys tanking is fond of these changes, but it's just not going to be as big a deal as many are making it out to be. Aside from more or less homogenizing the stat breakdown between the classes.

I should have clairified. The stats I posted does not include ear pieces, implants or relics.

Adding in based on numbers that are based on nothing at all that we can speak of we end up at;

Defense: 2558

Shield:306

Absorb:608

And an additional 456 teritary stat that can be divided into 3 equal portions and spread across shield or absorb.

Augments not included.

I do think 1.25 secondary to tertiary would have been a better ratio, but let us assume that the ratio we will be given is 1.44.

I am trying not to be a doomsayer, but with the changes we are faced with gear optimization is getting a major blow, and I do sincerly hope that BW sees the mistake in this and allows tanks greater control of their gear choices.

I do agree with you though that assassin are very strong mechanically, and 4.0 only improves that futher. I have no complaint about the class, I do however have issues with the itemization we are facing in 4.0

As far as I can see, we will have a statpool of more or less 4,4k (taken from torcommunity by adding up the secondary and tertiary tank stats of the sin from nightmare gear - which means also before min-maxing). Now of course we are going to have way to much defense, which has been stated quite enough in the last few days but that is not what I am aiming for.

If I remember correctly, all the formula for Tankstats consider the playerlevel in some respect. Since we have an increase of 5 level, we will automatically drop in percentages but we get a plus in stats of ~500 withouth even adding augmentations.

This means that we are going to be able to get back to the old percentage values just by gear plus 3-4 augmentations I think (If someone could post the formula I'd be very happy).

So what's the new Meta? Stamina augments; power augments for dps/ aggro; alacrity even?

Cheers

Aristo

not much has been found on the 4.0 equations. 3.0 was:

Defense Chance = 30 * ( 1 - ( 1 - ( 0.01 / 0.3 ) )^( ( DefenseRating / max(level,20)) / 1.2 ) )

Shield Chance = 50 * ( 1 - ( 1 - ( 0.01 / 0.5 ) )^( ( ShieldRating / max(level,20) ) / 0.78 ) )

Absorb Percentage = 50 * ( 1 - ( 1 - ( 0.01 / 0.5 ) )^( ( AbsorptionRating / max(level,20) ) / 0.65 ) )

where the level would now be 65. but these may change in 4.0.