All,

 

I have an debate going with another PowerTech tank in my guild who seems to get a little upset when I contradict him when people ask for tanking stat advice. I have been pretty much living by the tanking spreadsheet and tanking thread listed here:

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=567164

 

Everytime I give someone advice he keeps telling me that the Caps for tanking are 500 across the board (Defense, Absorb, and Shield). I've heard this same comment from other people on my server in general chat. He claims that once you get 500 in each stat you should stop worried about defensive stats and start building Endurance, Accuracy to 95% and Power. This seems contradictory to what I've been following and what the spreadsheet seems to say.

 

We are both in Campaign level gear and Here are our stats:

 

ME

Armor: 8719

Defense: 384

Shield: 606

Absorb: 546

Health: 24800

 

HIM

Armor: 8719

Defense: 500

Shield: 500

Absorb: 400

Health: 27100

 

Obviously he has 95% accuracy where as I have the base 90%, and he's also got higher crit and power than me due to starting to take those stats after he reached his "cap". His health is also higher than me due to him sticking with the B mods and me prioritizing the non-lettered versions (lower Endurance than 26B for example).

 

According to the tanking spreadsheet, he takes almost 5% more damage than me (although he touts thats not true according to MoX Parser in our raids). I told him you can't go by MoX Parser unless it's the two tanks tanking the exact same boss, for the same amount of time, during the exact same phases of the fight....and even then there is still RNG to content with.

 

Of course he gets upset with me and says that I guess "he knows nothing even though he's been playing longer than me and that I'm the all knowning spreadsheet genious". Now to me, this just sounds like someone who doesn't take being wrong all that well and throws a tantrum.

 

But can someone tell me if I'm in the wrong here? The problem is he has been the main tank for the guild I'm in for a lot longer than I have and I know that his buddies will side with him over me even if I'm right. I'm just trying to get validation that I'm working the stats right and that the 2.1 version of the spreadsheet isn't outdated or anything and giving me false information. Knowing I'm right and he's wrong will be validation enough and I'll keep doing things my way and trying to help anyone who will listen out while letting him do his thing.

 

Thanks,

 

FYI: Neither one of us has any problems holding aggro off of DPSers that go all out from the start...so other than him doing a little more DPS then me, the offensive stats doesn't make him hold aggro while I can't.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Jilisipone

Short answer: you're right. Don't want to type more on the phone.

Short answer: you're right.

 

That's pretty much it.

 

Your buddy has to be willfully ignorant to believe what he does: just looking at your character sheet will show you that you've got more mitigation than he does. Hell, according to him, the absorb proc relics are entirely worthless because pretty much all of the proc would be "wasted" on any tank that bothered to use one. It's even funnier because, as a Powertech tank, he's purposefully going with a suboptimal stat allocation (stacking defense when Defense is actually the worst stat for VG/PT tanks to stack).

 

You're also correct in pointing out that MoX isn't a viable method of determining which tank mitigates more damage explicitly because in every multi-tank fight in the game, the different tanks take different amounts of damage: for the twin tanks, the Firebrand tank takes *way* less damage than the Stormcaller tank; even if you do the tank swap, you'll still have different damage taken because you're almost never going to have the same uptime on both bosses *and* the same amount of time on defensive systems. Pretty much no fight in the entire game has both tanks actually taking the same amount of incoming damage in the same attack ratio, which would be required to actually determine which tank mitigates more damage over the course of a fight. If your buddy is taking less damage, it's pretty much entirely because he's taking the easier portion of the fight and just not having as much damage thrown at him.

The 'tanking spreadsheet' is only a guide on stat distribution. How much damage you take in a raid also depend on how good you are at using cooldown. If the mox parse says he's taking less damage than you, that means he's more skilled at anticipating damage. You should take some tanking lesson from him.

 

One more thing, some bosses have attacks that cannot be mitigated at all, and the '5% less damage' only applies to the portion of attack which can be mitigated. If you're on stormcaller for instance, both of you will take the same amount of damage.

Edited January 6, 2013 by NotRonin
Addition

The 'tanking spreadsheet' is only a guide on stat distribution. How much damage you take in a raid also depend on how good you are at using cooldown. If the mox parse says he's taking less damage than you, that means he's more skilled at anticipating damage. You should take some tanking lesson from him.

.

 

On the other hand, if he used his superior knowledge of fight mechanics and cooldown rotation along with your guidelines as to itemisation he would be a better tank that he is now. Noones perfect and knows everything, if he refuses to accept general knowledge to improve on his game then I feel sorry for the rest of your guild who has to pick up his slack.

If anything I would tell you that you have too much defence and not enough shield/absorb.

 

The truth is that both those set ups will work, this game simply does not require you to have the best possible stats available. Healers will, however, have easier time healing you.

 

Also when people say things like get x stat to y rating it is always only a general guide. Best thing you can do is look at the DR graphs/formulae yourself and work out what you need. Furthermore, do not get accuracy as a Powertech tank, simply pointless and you are gimping yourself on mitigation,

 

- Rapid Shots; would need 20% accuracy increase to never miss on a boss and you are not relying on RS to get threat or do damage it is something you do to dissipate heat.

- Rail Shot; that 1 or 2 missed shots per Op isn't gonna be a game changer.

- Unload; Incredibly situational, only used to stun standards and get threat on far targets when tanking immovable trash, never used as a rotational ability

 

No other abilities benefit from accuracy.

 

EDIT: realised you are an Imp so I changed the terminology

Edited January 6, 2013 by Darth_Dreselus

Some people do not handle constructive criticism, or even advice, well. I've had similar debates with several Tanks in my guild. They may feel like their method gives them just as much survivability as yours, but that is because healing is always what is keeping you (and them) alive. It can be very difficult to judge as a Tank whether or not small changes have increased your survivability; I've even seen a Tank lower 6k hp (still over 25k left) for a ton more mitigation and claim they feel no different - however ask the healers. Their resource is our life blood, the less they need to pour into us the better; which is what mitigation is for. It saves their resource, which saves us. Mods that favour mitigation also favour our primary stat, meaning our aggro holding is better and we don't need to waste points in things like power to keep threat. Edited January 6, 2013 by MyDarkSunshine

If anything I would tell you that you have too much defence and not enough shield/absorb.

 

I actually like going a bit higher on defense than the spreadsheet recommends

 

But then, I use DG shield/absorb clicky AND DG Absorb proc relics, so shield and absorb are often higher.

 

No desire to pvp for elite WH relics.

I play a powertech too and I have some reasons to change a little what the spreadsheet tells you to do, I'm not an expert but that is how I think it should go, there are some particular things on each class that makes it more worth to get mitigation (or even one kind of mitigation over the other) or endurance, I never played a shadow tank or a jugg tank but for a powertech there are these things that I can remember:

 

1-) When you shield an upcoming attack you have a chance of venting heat (and heat management is a big deal on powertechs) and finishing the cooldown on your main dmg ability, so if you have any spare points to spend I would go with shield chance/absorb.

2-) You get up to 8% increase on absorption from heat screen and that is with no diminishing returns, so that is another reason to go for shield/absorb as much as you can, I can mantain almost 70% absorption without using any clicky relics.

3-) You can kind of say that if your defense chance is higher you get less chances of shielding an upcoming attack (because when you dodge you don't even roll for shield chance).

4-) You use heavy armor and have some very good overall dmg reduction passive skills so you get 4% dmg reduction from your passive skills for all kinds of dmg (and 16% more armor rating for energy/kinetic), so if the attack hits you it doesn't hurt so much as the other classes.

 

So for those reasons I usually trade a little bit of defense chance for even more shield and absorb, even though I get less stat per point by doing it, also I consider the oil slick kind of a clicky relic and not a "oh s***" skill, so I use it almost on cooldown instead of saving it for when you're low on hp, and it compensates a little for my low def chance. On percentages I have like 17/60/61 on def/shield/absorb.

 

The only thing I can't decide is what relic I should use, currently I have 2 WH shrouded crusaders because that is the easy choice untill I figure out what is best for me, the numbers on the clicky/proc relics are very good but I fear that I will take too much spike dmg and maybe overwhelm my healers if I get an unexpected big hit, specially on the procs where you can't really control when they activate or not.

 

Just clarifying: I'm not saying my way is the way to go, I'm just giving my perspective on the subject, and actually I'm not entirely sure this is the best thing to do.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Yngow

I agree with just about everything said here. To make your self optimal drop damn near all that defense... 15% is more than enough and dont bother with accuracy as someone else stated. Its nice to completely avoid an attack but when you dodge things as a PT it screws with your heat. I'm not sure about juggy's, but as far as i know NO tank uses accuracy.

I agree with just about everything said here. To make your self optimal drop damn near all that defense... 15% is more than enough and dont bother with accuracy as someone else stated. Its nice to completely avoid an attack but when you dodge things as a PT it screws with your heat. I'm not sure about juggy's, but as far as i know NO tank uses accuracy.

 

Saying that defence over 15% screws up heat management is voodoo. That 60% odd shield chance you have is not going to stop venting heat once you go over some arbitrary defence threshold. The internal cooldown on shield vents effectively makes it proc on cooldown against M/R attacks.

 

Spreadsheets don't place any more emphasis on defence than is optimal. In high mitigation mods anywhere from 18-20% defence with a stim is where you want to be.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Marb

Saying that defence over 15% screws up heat management is just voodoo. That 60% odd shield chance you have is not going to stop venting heat once you go over some arbitrary defence threshold. The internal cooldown on shield vents effectively makes it proc on cooldown against M/R attacks.

 

Spreadsheets don't place any more emphasis on defence then is optimal. In high mitigation mods anywhere from 18-20% defence with a stim is where you want to be.

 

Actually it would stop venting heat since dodged attack cant be shielded and wont vent heat. So if you avoid every attack in a fight you would vent 0 heat except for standard heat dissipation Of course it is not going to happen in real world but still shows the idea how too high defence can stop shield from venting heat properly. But I do agree with the number you give, Im running with 17.5% defence chance and thats exactly what I want it to be.

Actually it would stop venting heat since dodged attack cant be shielded and wont vent heat. So if you avoid every attack in a fight you would vent 0 heat except for standard heat dissipation Of course it is not going to happen in real world but still shows the idea how too high defence can stop shield from venting heat properly. But I do agree with the number you give, Im running with 17.5% defence chance and thats exactly what I want it to be.

 

I understand how defence will bypass shield, but shield vents can only proc every 6 seconds. That in addition to naturally higher shield in ratio to defence is going to mean that it will proc pretty much on cool-down. Following the spreadsheet for optimal damage mitigation is not going to impact on your heat management at all.

Thanks everyone for their input. I'm glad it looks like I was understanding things correctly. I'm not overly concerned with proving the other person wrong, as I was more concerned with making sure that I was not incorrect. So with this knowledge I'll just keep doing things my way and trying to coach other tanks the same way.

 

If he wants to keep believing in his stats, that is between him and the healers in my mind and will eventually work itself out or it won't. Either way it won't affect my playstyle.

 

Just as to note....when I'm fully buffed up and running I'm currently sitting at:

 

24.8K HP (just respeced out of the 3% endurance buff) over to Iron Fist

18.31% Defense

54.74% Shield Chance

67.32% Absorb (with Heat Screen)

 

I know the Endurance talent isn't as useful as Iron Fist and Prototype Cylinders....but it was a personal choice to help the healers feel a little bit better about me being over 24k HP quicker. (which tends to be a mental comfort number many healers like to see for tanks upon initial perception). And I was having no problems holding threat without the DPS increase. But now that I'm well over 24k without it...I figure the extra DPS will help hold threat against overgeared DPS and also help us to beat some of those fights it seems like we are right on the enrage timer for (hey..even 20 more DPS from the tank is still 20 more DPS right, and I'm sure the new spec will be a decent DPS increase for me).

 

Some of you suggesting I dump some Defense may not have realized that my ratings I posted originally were with Stim...without Stim I'm only sitting at 17.22%. Going by the spreadhseet stat weights I swap around augments to do all I can to keep within .1 - .2% equivalency between the three stats.

 

Thanks again for your replies and keep up the good work tanking.

Edited January 7, 2013 by Jilisipone

If you want to do the legwork yourself, this is an updated version of the LagunaD tanking spreadsheet for which he had the (still correct) diminishing returns calculations set up. It gives you the value of each stat based on your current budget and current DR rate of each.

 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AqqlFggS3U48dFRqTW5YM0tLYy0ycnhteGt0LXhXU0E#gid=0

 

Does not account for activated/proc relics.