Hi Dipstik! Quick question: I am currently deciding to buy Campaign Armoring for 2 set bonus, since I've read that it's a lot better.

It's actually better to use 4 set Campaign until you get 2 piece Arkanian/Underworld Survivor's because the loss of DR from the lower armor is less than the 2% you gain from having the 4 piece set bonus. Once you get 2 piece Arkanian, your DR is going to drop (by a little over 1%), but the 5% additional shield is going to provide you with more average mitigation.

Is it still better to use 61/61/72/72 armorings for 2x 5% shield buff set bonus? Or better to use 72/72/72/72 and just stick with one 5% shield buff?

Once you get 4 piece Arkanian, it's better to get rid of any remaining old set bonuses. The shield bonus is nice, but it's not large enough to offset the increase in DR from both the higher armor *and* the 4 pc set bonus combined.

It's actually better to use 4 set Campaign until you get 2 piece Arkanian/Underworld Survivor's because the loss of DR from the lower armor is less than the 2% you gain from having the 4 piece set bonus. Once you get 2 piece Arkanian, your DR is going to drop (by a little over 1%), but the 5% additional shield is going to provide you with more average mitigation.

 

 

 

Once you get 4 piece Arkanian, it's better to get rid of any remaining old set bonuses. The shield bonus is nice, but it's not large enough to offset the increase in DR from both the higher armor *and* the 4 pc set bonus combined.

Thanks once again Kit! Noted with thanks

So am I to assume the AMR links are more or less BIS lists in terms of optimal mitigation? 32.7k HP just seems unsettling-ly low for Guardians. Moving to fully optimize per the AMR I'd be losing around 5k HP. Does the extra mitigation really make up for that?

Also, exactly how am I supposed to read your relic rankings?

So am I to assume the AMR links are more or less BIS lists in terms of optimal mitigation? 32.7k HP just seems unsettling-ly low for Guardians. Moving to fully optimize per the AMR I'd be losing around 5k HP. Does the extra mitigation really make up for that?

 

Also, exactly how am I supposed to read your relic rankings?

^ this is the crafted enhancments realy better than the 31 enhancments ? better than bulwark and bastion ? like he said 32k seems 2 low

about relics i dont have the EWH relics so what relics should i go with ?

So am I to assume the AMR links are more or less BIS lists in terms of optimal mitigation? 32.7k HP just seems unsettling-ly low for Guardians. Moving to fully optimize per the AMR I'd be losing around 5k HP. Does the extra mitigation really make up for that?

Considering how hard Terminate hits, I would be reluctant to sign off on *any* BiS loadout that had less than 35k hp, and this is coming from the number crunching who has shown an almost compulsive aversion to hp.

The difference in mitigation between the 72 Bastion/Bulwark enhs and the 66 Immunity/Sturdiness enhs is minimal: the mitigation itemization budget difference between the two is only 2 points (14 points with every enh filled). Yes, you'll be slightly off from the optimal distribution for Guardian tanks, but the differences experienced based off of this will be minor, at best, more than offset by the fact that you won't have to worry about getting one-shot by Terminate if Saber Reflect isn't up (not to mention giving your healers more reaction time than you'd be giving them by stacking minute bit more mitigation; honestly, the difference in mitigation between the 72s and 66s is probably beneath even the most observant tank or healer's observational threshold so the only difference would be in hp being *explicitly* better for the 72s).

i would not trust the health, or % values from amr yet. they are still in the middle of handing the project off to the open source crowd. what makes the enhancements better is that you get much closer to ideal stat weights, which have much lower shield. i typically try to avoid being 3 shot, so how ever many enhancements you need to use to avoid being three shot is what you might want to go with.

for the 66 build the total mitigation is 0.3211 with 32.7k health, for using 72 enhancements you get 0.3215 with 34.7k health (according to amr). so you take something like 2 more dps per second but you get 2k more health.

another place you can trade mitigation for endurance is the implants and earpieces.

If I were to use an Underworld Relic of the Shrouded Crusader (shied + absorb use) instead of an Elite War Hero Relic of the Shrouded Crusader (static shield) on a Vanguard/Powertech how would that change the stat weights?

you would have 120 points lower in your stat budget. luckily, that stat budget for the vanguard is easier since they like having a ton of shield

 

Also, exactly how am I supposed to read your relic rankings?

you want the absolute value of the last number to be the greatest. except fo shadows which have another colu for equivilnce to healy relic.

or example: the diff colum shows that def proc give .0061 extra mitigation (on average) while absorb proc gives .0049 etc.

base relic weighted diff mit=634 heal dps

def proc 0.32468 0.30595 0.31979 -0.0061 4519

abs proc 0.32594 0.30728 0.32107 -0.0049 5625

shd use 0.32594 0.30739 0.32130 -0.0046 5945

pvp 0.32594 0.32128 0.32128 -0.0047 5913

use def 0.32594 0.31077 0.32341 -0.0025 10902

Considering how hard Terminate hits, I would be reluctant to sign off on *any* BiS loadout that had less than 35k hp, and this is coming from the number crunching who has shown an almost compulsive aversion to hp.

Random note: terminate hits a *shadow* for 32k. It's kinetic/energy damage, and shadows have about 35% DR. Assuming you have guardian slash up, you're going to have roughly 55% DR on a geared guardian tank. Thus, you only have to worry about absorbing 22k damage from Terminate, which allows you to get away with a radically smaller health pool.

So am I to assume the AMR links are more or less BIS lists in terms of optimal mitigation? 32.7k HP just seems unsettling-ly low for Guardians. Moving to fully optimize per the AMR I'd be losing around 5k HP. Does the extra mitigation really make up for that?

for the 66 build the total mitigation is 0.3211 with 32.7k health, for using 72 enhancements you get 0.3215 with 34.7k health (according to amr). so you take something like 2 more dps per second but you get 2k more health.

I'm all for mitigation over health, but 0.04% mitigation vs 6.0%~ health seems like a no brainer to me. I would definitely go with the 72 enhancements.

The crafted vs UW implants/earring are a slightly more interesting decision. Going from UW to crafted you lose 54 End and 66 Str, but gain 26 Shield and 10 Defense. That's a fair amount of mitigation, however, I would still go with UW. If deciding between 54 End vs 36 Mitigation I would go with mitigation on Guardian, but the 66 Str tips the scale in UW's favor.

Actually, 2000 more HP is more mitigation than the .04% mitigation is.

Assume a boss that does 6000 pre-mitigation DPS that takes 5 minutes to kill.

6000 dps * 300 s = 1,800,000 damage

Damage taken with 32.11% mitigaion = 577,980

Damage taken with 32.15% mitigation = 578,700

Difference = 720

So you basically gain 2000 HP, but lose 720 HP in the course of the entire boss fight.

Random note: terminate hits a *shadow* for 32k. It's kinetic/energy damage, and shadows have about 35% DR. Assuming you have guardian slash up, you're going to have roughly 55% DR on a geared guardian tank. Thus, you only have to worry about absorbing 22k damage from Terminate, which allows you to get away with a radically smaller health pool.

All the more reason I think the devs have royally screwed the pooch with the incoming damage profile of the tanks. Shadows just get exploded on with high damage attacks where the other tanks can just soak it without much worry. That big of a difference between the tanks is something that *really* shouldn't be allowed to persist.

Actually, 2000 more HP is more mitigation than the .04% mitigation is.

 

Assume a boss that does 6000 pre-mitigation DPS that takes 5 minutes to kill.

 

6000 dps * 300 s = 1,800,000 damage

 

Damage taken with 32.11% mitigaion = 577,980

Damage taken with 32.15% mitigation = 578,700

Difference = 720

 

So you basically gain 2000 HP, but lose 720 HP in the course of the entire boss fight.

i updated the amr. the best place to get endurance back is those enhancements. they trade with mitigation at 2:24 or soemthing crazy.

All the more reason I think the devs have royally screwed the pooch with the incoming damage profile of the tanks. Shadows just get exploded on with high damage attacks where the other tanks can just soak it without much worry. That big of a difference between the tanks is something that *really* shouldn't be allowed to persist.

Has there been any talk or hint from devs that they may rework the mitigation on shadows?

Has there been any talk or hint from devs that they may rework the mitigation on shadows?

Afaik, they've been pretty mum on the subject. I don't know if this is because of their normal incredibly tight-lipped tendencies or because they think the problem is either acceptable (such that they don't really *care* that Shadows are incredibly spiky compared to the other tanks) or that it is only present for right now and will eventually take care of itself (since Shadows are so dependent on mitigation stats, it's a major concern right now and will start to occur less and less frequently as gear gets better and mitigation budgets continue to rise, just like it did at release compared to 1.7).

I do remember there being a lot of talk about Shadow survivability on the PTS with a lot of us Shadow theorycrafters telling everyone that total mitigation actually went up, but I don't believe any of us really paid attention to quantifying the increase in spikiness (not to mention that most of us assumed that bad Shadow tanks on the PTS were simply bad Shadows or people adapting to the new Shadow priority/CD paradigm and lower percentage rather than people dumbfounded by the increased spikiness). After a month of playing, however, it's become pretty obvious that it's simply a case where, even though total mitigation got better, survivability got dropped pretty heavily because of the spikiness getting shot up so I dearly hope that they at least realize that it's a problem that needs to be looked at (since, with their new DR curves on Shield/Abs, it's gonna take a *lot* more itemization until we get to a point where the spikiness is mitigated sufficiently) rather than thinking it's working perfectly fine.

I've had a discussion with a few people about what the best solution might be, and it's always turned out to be a pretty difficult concept. Increasing DR to reduce spikiness sufficiently would necessitate dropping our Def/Shield/Abs and none of those are particularly appetizing, since we Shadows tend to be *very* attached to our mitigation percentages (especially Shield rating, which is where we'd probably take the biggest hit with a reduction to KW's Shield buff since it's so monumentally huge).

The best solution I've thought of that largely preserves our current stats while smoothing out the incoming damage a bit more would be causing any overheal from TkT or CT (or, potentially, any overhealing from the Shadow on herself by any amount so that it works with Battle Readiness, med pacs, and the heal proc relics) to create an absorb shield on the Shadow for the amount of the overheal. It would allow Shadows to "pre-heal" themselves to get ready for big hits as well as letting a Shadow build up a bit of survivability during a period of good luck to prepare for when their luck will inevitably decide to leave them in the lurch, not to mention increasing the "one shot" cushion for attacks like Terminate that the other tanks can actually *tank* and Shadows have to pray Resilience works on or they can get a successful Shield. Probably the best thing about it is that it wouldn't require any tweaking to our current mitigation stats: our self healing is already factored in; all this would do would make sure that Shadow self healing is *never* wasted and works for you no matter when it happens. The only caveat I can think of is that it would probably need an explicit cap of some kind, like 15% of max hp or something, so an offtanking Shadow can't just keep pushing that absorb shield up in size until they just stop taking damage for 30 seconds when they take over.

It's actually better to use 4 set Campaign until you get 2 piece Arkanian/Underworld Survivor's because the loss of DR from the lower armor is less than the 2% you gain from having the 4 piece set bonus. Once you get 2 piece Arkanian, your DR is going to drop (by a little over 1%), but the 5% additional shield is going to provide you with more average mitigation.

 

 

 

Once you get 4 piece Arkanian, it's better to get rid of any remaining old set bonuses. The shield bonus is nice, but it's not large enough to offset the increase in DR from both the higher armor *and* the 4 pc set bonus combined.

Would you recommend the same for a jugg tank ? I currently have 4 campaing armorings for the bonus. Everything else is 69s except some crafted sturdiness/inmunity 66s enhancements. The first bonus is nice, but what I'm really reluctant to give up is the 20% bonus to our Sonic Barrier.

I really am enjoying tanking with my jugg now. Kinda bad that all tanking spots on my guild are taken, otherwise I would seriously consider using her as my "main" instead of my mara. Pugging operations sucks, so it'll be while until I'm able to get the 4 new armorings for the bonus. le sigh...

Here is a post that concludes that the armor rating you gain by going from 63 to 72 is better than the set bonus as long as the incoming damage exceeds 2500

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6274957&postcount=540

Here is a post that concludes that the armor rating you gain by going from 63 to 72 is better than the set bonus as long as the incoming damage exceeds 2500

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6274957&postcount=540

Thank you

But kinda sort of like not what I wanted to hear. Gear with no bonus set feels so lackluster

Here is a post that concludes that the armor rating you gain by going from 63 to 72 is better than the set bonus as long as the incoming damage exceeds 2500

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6274957&postcount=540

Thanks dipstik, wow you ninja edited the hell out of me My math was way off... but good to know, thanks for the work!

for us none math geniouses out there, may I get a simple question answered?

As an assassin and Juggernaut tank, what would my Ideal D/S/A be? ratings would be nice too. at 50, it was, for assassins: 27/40/65 if I'm not mistaken (27/60/65 with self buff).

I'm still debating what tank to play. I like the juggernaut better, but I find it way harder to play because of aggro issues, but I guess I'm just out of practise.

for us none math geniouses out there, may I get a simple question answered?

 

As an assassin and Juggernaut tank, what would my Ideal D/S/A be? ratings would be nice too. at 50, it was, for assassins: 27/40/65 if I'm not mistaken (27/60/65 with self buff).

 

I'm still debating what tank to play. I like the juggernaut better, but I find it way harder to play because of aggro issues, but I guess I'm just out of practise.

The math is simple, no need to be a genious. All you need to know is how to add numbers.

Add up the ratings you currently have for def, sh and abs. That's your total.

Take that total. Look up the relevant table in the first post. Find the closest total.

Then, the next three numbers are your def, shi and abs that you should have.

If you still have dififculties with this, tell us what your current def, shield and absorb ratings are, we'll tell you what they should be.

Hey Dipstick and Keyboardninja, really appriciate all the hard math work you are pulling of here.

I have a question about the statdistribution. Am I hampering my team for a great deal for HM opses like TfB and S&V if I use more absorbstats and less defense stats then you two advocate?

I want to play the game the way I like it to do, until recently I really liked to be 'absorbking'. However ... on the other hand, I'm a bit a min-maxer too and I dont want to seriously hamper my team if I tank a TfB HM or S&V HM.

FYI, pre 2.0 I ran with my VG-tank HM opses with 12%-15% defensechance. This is including all bonusses you can get.

A 2nd question I have is about going for the 72 verpinearmoring or 69 arkanian. Is it worth to lose the 4 set (and/or potentially 2-set) and getting more HP+armorrating?

I saw a post back in this thread that you should favor 72 verpine over 63 dg.

Am I hampering my team for a great deal for HM opses like TfB and S&V if I use more absorbstats and less defense stats then you two advocate?

Unless you're completely ignoring one stat for another (i.e. taking absolutely no Defense and stacking only Shield), it's not likely you'll experience a *massive* difference. People clear content without ever checking or using the optimal stat distribution all the time. Hell, people clear the content using almost entirely Endurance gear and that is pretty much as bad as you can get as a tank. The optimal stat distributions are, just that, optimal. If you don't want to hold yourself to them, you're going to take more damage, but it will, by no means, severely hamper your group as long as you're still doing everything else we recommend (high mitigation, decent hp, etc).

A 2nd question I have is about going for the 72 verpinearmoring or 69 arkanian. Is it worth to lose the 4 set (and/or potentially 2-set) and getting more HP+armorrating?

The loss of 2% defense alone is going to make up for more than you gain from the increased armor. The loss of the increased duration on Reactive Shield and Riot Gas are just going to make it worse. 2% Defense is a *lot*, especially now that VGs actually *like* Defense.