Hey guys,

I'm pretty much self-proficient on this game. Downed EC HM and all and now have full Campaign Gear.

I'm looking forward to the new content and want to take the upper hand by tweaking some of my gear.

Im a Sin tank 492dr/546sr/481ar build with just over 24k hp unstimmed but with endurance buff.

(10 Redoubt Augments +4 Absorb)

 

My total DR/SR/AR = 1519

 

Health - 24108.3

Armor Rating - 6140.5

Damage Reduction - 38.25%

Defense Chance - 29.64%

Shield Chance - 44.91%

Shield Absorption - 57.02%

 

Now by tweaking some mods/enhancements and adding orange bracers/waist, I managed to pull this Mitigation build off with room slight customization (+/- dr/sr as needed)

 

Total DR/SR/AR = 1707

599DR/584SR/524AR

 

Bumping my stats to

 

Health - 21592.4

Armor Rating - 6140.5

Damage Reduction - 38.25%

Defense Chance - 31.66%

Shield Chance - 46.08%

Shield Absorption - 58.58%

 

Again this is with all buffs no stim not including campaign relic or dark ward.

 

My concern is that although I added a whole lot more mitigation, would it be considered all in all worth it even if i did throw the 1707 number into the calculator and pulled out the perfect balance for mitigation since I lost 3500 Endurance in the process. I know the stim will add to it, and also to my DR but im just trying to figure out if the 188 points added towards mitigation is actually worth the 3500 endurance loss.

 

I can go more into detail on what I did to make this 1707 point build but is there any formula for mitigation vs endurance I can fall back on?

 

 

Let me know

~Redmurdera

Hmm...not sure about formulas and whatnot to fall back on, but I'll tell you the stats on my assassin roughly:

 

23.5k Health

30% Def

45% Shield

58% Abs

 

All buffs, no stim. So what I'm saying is you can pull off those mitigation stats without sacrificing that much health.

 

I believe it's from the relics. I bet you don't use the PvP relics which give roughly +100 to defense or shield each.

 

Even if you are firmly against pvping, I'd give it a few matches to get the battlemaster relics.

 

All in all, you've downed HM EC so you know your gear works .

<- Arscastic

 

First things first... so if it is worth it. The up in defensive budget will mean that you boost your mitigation with roughly 1.5%. This does not sound like much but you have to consider that you to begin with are talking about +75% numbers which means that you will go from taking around 925 damage weapon/kinetic down to around 865 per second when the incomming raw dps is 4k. That is over 6% more health loss or 3600 more damage taken per minute when going with your first budget. (if spent optimal that is)

 

So as long as you do not get instagibbed health is worthless. It is only for vanity. "Oh I saw this tank with 30k blah blah". Yeah he is a total crap mana sponge. My logs says that landing around 25k is good enough raid buffed with the current content. Next raid will perhaps change this however. Oh and switch in the MK-3 shield instead of Campaign for the biggest mitigation boost with least end trade off.

 

Regarding your stat suggestions I would drop ALOT of defense since that distribution is far from optimal. I know alot of false/bad information floats around regarding 30% defense for Sin tanks but they are very very wrong unless you ofc have around 2k defensive stat budget which I do not.

 

Yeah and PvP relics are the way to go as Rynis says. You do not even have to have warhero to trumph pve ones. But the pve click ones used to be nice to have sometimes though, but for ec I do not use them.

Edited September 10, 2012 by Dhariq

I definitely find it doable to get more hp from build 2. I replaced the the force wielder armoring to resolve in that setup leaving minimal hp max willpower and mitigation point availability. I guess its a matter of preference on hp vs mitigation, if u have lots of mitigation ur not so squishy and over all have more survivability while your cool downs are off. If you go hp u can take big spike hits let ur hp get low and pop def cool downs allowing healers to top you off with ease.

 

I was always big on mitigation over hp personally, there must be a balance somewhere that lets you have still close to ideal numbers with high hp.

 

I messed around with some 63 mods and enhancements now that 1.4 has dropped and wanted to share my finds.

BTW i have the war hero relic already, i use the campaign shield proc with def rate warhero now and my previous ghost builds i was never able to get fully complete since i was never able to get my hands on Immunity Enhancement 26s. Needed 3 for my build buh oh well. need 27s now for this new build loll

 

Health 22339.6

Armor Rating 6276.8

Damage Reduction 38.76%

Defense Chance 30.81%

Shield Chance 51.02%

Shield Absorption 61.68%

 

BTW this allows a total defensive spending threshold of 1943 points!!

 

Defense 552

Shield 767

Absorb 624

With all 63 mods and enhancements and I decided to use the force wielder to keep hp a little higher. Built this on ask mr. robot

 

Let the hunting begin

Edited September 27, 2012 by Arscastic

Always go for higher endurance. You have to consider the amount of damage you take that will never see your mitigation stats but always see your health and frankly if you put the effort into finding the best mods and enhancements it's easy to keep your endurance high will also maintaining high mitigation stats. In other words build the best tanking stats you can - that are good for your class while maintaining high endurance, the 53 end mods + either defense or absorb. robust mod 26B and the reinforced mod 26b those give you a good amount of health and whichever stat you so desire to build on. Then use the 57 end / sheild / deff enhancements like the advanced steadfast 26 or the vigilant 26. The point is, it's easy to build up HP and mitigation stats if you work hard to farm the right ones.

 

Health is the only stat that will protect you from death against all damage types, it gives you longer to live, and gives the healer longer to get that heal off on you. When you really consider the amount of damage you can actually mitigate in a boss fight health makes the biggest difference. Lots of mitigation is great for trash, since they do a lot of mitigate-able damage.

 

All that said in the end the choice is yours it all depends on how hard you want to work to make your gear the best and which definition of "best" you choose.

Always go for higher endurance.

 

Wrong. There's nothing in this game that will hit you hard enough and frequently enough to waste your gear budget on Endurance over Mitigation stats. Having low mitigation and high hit points turns you into a resource sponge during both Trash and Boss fights.

 

The highest non-enrage hit I've taken in TFB so far is 6k spits from The Writhing Horror and each tank has a means of mitigating the attacks that can't be Parried/ Shielded, being primarily Elemental/ Internal damage.

 

There's really no reason to have more than 24k health fully buffed.

Wrong. There's nothing in this game that will hit you hard enough and frequently enough to waste your gear budget on Endurance over Mitigation stats. Having low mitigation and high hit points turns you into a resource sponge during both Trash and Boss fights.

 

The highest non-enrage hit I've taken in TFB so far is 6k spits from The Writhing Horror and each tank has a means of mitigating the attacks that can't be Parried/ Shielded, being primarily Elemental/ Internal damage.

 

There's really no reason to have more than 24k health fully buffed.

 

Two schools of thought on this:

- Higher HP increases TTL against bad RNG

- Higher mitigation reduces healing required

 

I like to stack mitigation but once you bring Damage Taken Per Second (DTPS) below incoming Heals Per Second (HPS) the difference is purely one of preference ON THE SIDE OF YOUR HEALER. I recommend going for a balance around 25k HP (24k for Guardians) stimmed and the rest in mitigation stats. Pretty easy to reach this point by the time you rip all the accuracy off your gear too.

I went for 53 endurance mods on all my gear netting me 27.5k hp fully raid buffed without sacrificing my defensive stats too much. My reasoning was that its better to trade 13 rating for 21 endurance. Many boss fights feature damage types and mechanics that cant be mitigated using our defensive stats and the only sponge to it is endurance. The highest hit Ive takes was 11.5k from kephess the undying.

I went for 53 endurance mods on all my gear netting me 27.5k hp fully raid buffed without sacrificing my defensive stats too much. My reasoning was that its better to trade 13 rating for 21 endurance. Many boss fights feature damage types and mechanics that cant be mitigated using our defensive stats and the only sponge to it is endurance. The highest hit Ive takes was 11.5k from kephess the undying.

 

This is a bit of a myth, actually. The ratio of mitigable damage to non-mitigable damage is *very* skewed in favor of mitigation. Over 80% of damage in HM EC is subject to defense/shield and armor. Less than 3% bypasses armor. These ratios are a bit more out of whack in Nightmare KP, where fights like Jarg and Sorno dramatically up the amount of non-mitigable damage, but in all current content, mitigation is king. (note: I'm currently working through my logs for HM TFB to get numbers for that raid; I'll update on the forums when I have that information)

 

For the record, I've never seen HM Kephess hit me for more than 9k, but I'm stacking mitigation.

Edited October 12, 2012 by KeyboardNinja

Regarding your stat suggestions I would drop ALOT of defense since that distribution is far from optimal. I know alot of false/bad information floats around regarding 30% defense for Sin tanks but they are very very wrong unless you ofc have around 2k defensive stat budget which I do not.

 

In augmented Campaign/Dread Guard gear, my defense chance is 28.85% with stim. According to my (extensive) calculations, this is within 0.0001% of ideal, modulo the fact that shield chance is inflated due to poor mod itemization. The higher defense chance comes from the fact that I'm using the proc absorb relic, which slightly deflates the value of the static absorb stat.

 

So, I agree that 30% defense chance is too much, but it's not far wrong.

In augmented Campaign/Dread Guard gear, my defense chance is 28.85% with stim. According to my (extensive) calculations, this is within 0.0001% of ideal, modulo the fact that shield chance is inflated due to poor mod itemization. The higher defense chance comes from the fact that I'm using the proc absorb relic, which slightly deflates the value of the static absorb stat.

 

So, I agree that 30% defense chance is too much, but it's not far wrong.

 

My math says 29.21% is ideal, not 28.85%. Please back up your assertion with some spreadsheets, a readable abstract, and some solid conclusions.

Stacking endurance is only good if your self-heals make up for the lost mitigation, i.e. once boss dps is high enough, mitigation is better (assuming you can avoid the damage).

 

My personal strategy has been to take 2 endurance heavier pieces with defense, but take two war hero defense relics, with all other pieces mitigation heavy. I consider this a decent trade-off: I'm stacking mitigation and defense is my weakest stat at this point, however as mentioned there is *some* unavoidable damage so a little extra health isn't the worst idea.

 

Buffed and stimmed:

25.2k hp

30.95% defense

66.2% shield (dark ward)

61.4% absorb

These are optimized for my budget and shield rating. With wither/discharge on target, this gives 76.6% average damage reduction (for avoidable damage), which surprisingly is almost as good as the other tank classes.

 

Also my calculations show that the campaign proc absorb relic is weaker than the war hero defense relics. That's purely statistical, not even counting that you can't choose when the proc happens.

Also my calculations show that the campaign proc absorb relic is weaker than the war hero defense relics. That's purely statistical, not even counting that you can't choose when the proc happens.

 

My calculations (and logic) agree that the proc relic is a sub-optimal option. It provides a very nice boost to mean mitigation but only improves the mitigation of attacks that are already being mitigated. It doesn't increase the chance to mitigate damage. A further argument against it, is that it is proc driven and not controllable mitigation.

 

What it comes down to is that taking 10% less damage on shielded attacks looks really good on paper. But the shielded attacks aren't the ones that kill you. I'd much rather increase my change to shield or defend an attack. Or use a controllable clicky relic to boost my mitigation when needed.

 

Once you mean mitigation is enough to reduce incoming damage to a healable level there are a couple of schools of thought:

- Reduce it more to increase TTL under average RNG

- Increase HP to increase TTL under bad RNG

- Increase utility

- Increase threat generation to limit threat loss due to bad RNG

I take a bit out of all of them. On my gear I reach about 24-25k HP and then stack mitigation, fairly balanced between defense/shield/absorb, I use one WH relic and one clicky relic which I normally pair with an armor adrenal for an extra (pseudo) CD.

 

My main is a Guardian tank, so the absorb proc relic is worth less to me than a Shadow or VG, but I feel even for them it is sub-optimal.

My calculations (and logic) agree that the proc relic is a sub-optimal option. It provides a very nice boost to mean mitigation but only improves the mitigation of attacks that are already being mitigated. It doesn't increase the chance to mitigate damage. A further argument against it, is that it is proc driven and not controllable mitigation.

 

What it comes down to is that taking 10% less damage on shielded attacks looks really good on paper. But the shielded attacks aren't the ones that kill you. I'd much rather increase my change to shield or defend an attack. Or use a controllable clicky relic to boost my mitigation when needed.

 

I can understand using a click relic, but I don't get your reasoning for not using the absorb proc relic at all. It makes the biggest contribution to mean mitigation out of ALL the relics.

 

You say that the proc does not increase your chance to mitigate damage, but in a way it actually does. Your shield is only ever as good as the damage it absorbs. Shield and Absorb are intimately linked to each other. If your thinking about increasing your chance to mitigate damage, you really need to think of shield and absorb as the same stat when comparing to defence. Defence is the chance to ignore an attack, shield is the chance to absorb an attack.

 

Now with the way most have their stats set up, 113 shield/def is not going to provide that much real mitigation because of diminishing returns, especially shield rating. Using 2 passive war hero relics is a bit silly. The proc flat out gives you a whopping 405 absorb rating, and it does actually have a huge amount of uptime.

 

Most tank relic set-ups should look like this:

 

Absorb Proc

Passive War Hero or Defence Activation. <This is what you change depending on the encounter.

Edited October 14, 2012 by Marb

My math says 29.21% is ideal, not 28.85%. Please back up your assertion with some spreadsheets, a readable abstract, and some solid conclusions.

 

"A readable abstract"?! You're getting a spreadsheet, and you're getting an explanation.

 

• Numbers: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1679797/SWTOR/Defensive%20Stats.numbers
  
• PDF: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1679797/SWTOR/Defensive%20Stats.pdf
  
• Excel (not a good export): https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1679797/SWTOR/Defensive%20Stats.xls
  

 

Note that I'm not using the War Hero defense relic. Instead, I'm using the proc heal as my second relic. If I were using the defense relic, it would give me a larger mitigation budget to work with, which would push up the ideal defense chance a bit closer to your numbers.

 

Also note that I've gone with the 26/27B mods in a couple of places. This is because the stat budget is higher on these mods (albeit skewed toward endurance). The specific ratio of endurance to <mitigation> is 21:9, which is high enough that the extra endurance actually works out to *increase* survivability through the self-heal, despite the loss of mitigation. See my spreadsheet for how the self-heal value is calculated in terms of mitigation points.

 

Also worth noting that my numbers were specifically referencing a shadow tank. Ideal defense chance is much higher for a guardian (in the 33% range) and much lower for a vanguard (around 16-17%).

 

My calculations (and logic) agree that the proc relic is a sub-optimal option. It provides a very nice boost to mean mitigation but only improves the mitigation of attacks that are already being mitigated. It doesn't increase the chance to mitigate damage. A further argument against it, is that it is proc driven and not controllable mitigation.

 

From a purely statistical standpoint, the war hero defense relic *does* provide slightly higher weighted survivability benefits than the campaign proc absorb...by 0.0013%. Not enough that I'll lose sleep over it. It would be slightly higher if I readjusted my stat budget to compensate for the fact that I have less statistical absorb and more defense. Note that at lower stat budgets (non-augmented Rakata), the proc absorb relic is statistically much *more* valuable than the War Hero defense relic, which is interesting. I suspect this distinction is due to the fairly generous DR curve on defense rating when compared to the curve on absorb.

 

A bit of quick algebra indicates that there are real values of defense, shield and absorb where the proc absorb relic is superior. Computing whether or not these n-tuples are ideal loci is a much more complicated problem, and one that would probably cause Wolfram|Alpha to just time out.

 

Random side note: on high damage fights, the War Hero defense relic edges out the proc heal relic in terms of mean survivability contribution, but not by a lot. On Nightmare Pilgrim, the War Hero defense relic provides a net 28 DtPS benefit (with my current itemization), while the proc heal relic provides 20 HPS. On HM Kephess, it provides 21 DtPS, which is almost equivalent to the proc heal. On fights like HM Toth & Zorn, the damage is sufficiently low that the proc heal relic becomes dramatically better in terms of survivability contribution.

Edited October 14, 2012 by KeyboardNinja

I can understand using a click relic, but I don't get your reasoning for not using the absorb proc relic at all. It makes the biggest contribution to mean mitigation out of ALL the relics.

 

You say that the proc does not increase your chance to mitigate damage, but in a way it actually does. Your shield is only ever as good as the damage it absorbs. Shield and Absorb are intimately linked to each other. If your thinking about increasing your chance to mitigate damage, you really need to think of shield and absorb as the same stat when comparing to defence. Defence is the chance to ignore an attack, shield is the chance to absorb an attack.

 

Now with the way most have their stats set up, 113 shield/def is not going to provide that much real mitigation because of diminishing returns, especially shield rating. Using 2 passive war hero relics is a bit silly. The proc flat out gives you a whopping 405 absorb rating, and it does actually have a huge amount of uptime.

 

Most tank relic set-ups should look like this:

 

Absorb Proc

Passive War Hero or Defence Activation. <This is what you change depending on the encounter.

 

Again I disagree with your blanket statement about relic set up.

 

The absorb proc relic is awesome for the 6 seconds it is active. For the 14 seconds it isn't, it does almost nothing.

 

Pros:

- Mean mitigation numbers are very good

- "set and forget"

Cons:

- Uptime is only 30%

- Uptime is not controllable

- Those hits would normally be mitigated, just to a lesser extent

 

Sure, in the 6 seconds it is active you aren't likely to die. In the 14 seconds it isn't you might as well not have anything equipped (passive power and endurance boost aside). Now think about 6/20 vs 30/120 seconds in most fights. Is that 6 seconds of higher mitigation going to save your life? Is that 30 seconds of higher mitigation going to save your life?

 

Now think about Zorn/Toth or Firebrand/Stormcaller. 30 seconds of controllable uptime is MUCH better than 6 seconds of uncontrollable uptime. If you use tank swaps you can have your relic active for almost an entire Toth/Firebrand timeslice, every other tank swap. This would push the value of those relics up even higher relative to the proc one, which has it's usefulness halved.

 

Now we move onto diminishing returns and this bit varies for everyone due to different stat budgets and distributions. 113 Defence is not going to push you into serious DR unless you already stack defence heavily. Add to this that unless you've been ignoring absorb, 415 probably will likely push you into high DR territory. This is compunded by the DR curve on Absorb being very steep (worth a lot until it suddenly becomes worth nearly nothing) compared to Defence being very shallow (not worth a lot to start with and progressively loses value). On top of that, you need to consider that for all 3 tanks these have different weights (my Guardian having less value from the proc relic than the other 2 due to lower shield chance).

 

Now at no point did I recommend having 2 passive relics. I agree this is not an ideal set up (but better than 2 clicky relics). The reason the dual passive set up is spouted all over the place is for DPS whose BiS set up (for sustained DPS) is usually 2 passive power relics.

 

I look at it this way: tanks must adapt as the fight changes and benefit heavily from increased utility (ie an extra CD). Since using 1 clicky relic triggers a CD on the other, dual clickies is not an optimal combination, so lets trade one out. Now we look at the other options: proc absorb relic, passive WH relics or (for Shadows) proc heal relic. Depending on class and other stats, grab what is most useful. My set up is a WH Defence relic and a Campaign Shield/Absorb clicky relic. I use the Shield/Absorb clicky because it is less spiky than the clicky Defence one despite it giving less mean mitigation.

 

I like to compare the proc Absorb relic to the Sorc/Sage AoE heal in a WZ. It produces some awesome numbers, but it doesn't really keep anyone alive.

I can see the reasoning behind using a click relic instead of the proc on SOME fights. But again, if you want the best overall contribution to your mitigation, absorb proc relic is the way to go.

 

And I retract what I said about the relic setup, you are correct that its not always applicable for all classes in that way.

 

I still disagree with opting for not using the proc at all however. If the fight does not call for the click relic, you should be using the proc.

I can see the reasoning behind using a click relic instead of the proc on SOME fights. But again, if you want the best overall contribution to your mitigation, absorb proc relic is the way to go.

 

And I retract what I said about the relic setup, you are correct that its not always applicable for all classes in that way.

 

I still disagree with opting for not using the proc at all however. If the fight does not call for the click relic, you should be using the proc.

 

As I stated above, for Guardian's the proc relic is far from ideal due to lower shield chance. As KeyboardNinja stated above the WH Defence relic is (negligibly) better than the Absorb proc relic for his Shadow tank. These will always vary for different characters with different gear set ups and for some it may provide a higher contribution to mean mitigation.

 

Yes, the proc relic can greatly increase mean mitigation. I still feel that it is far from ideal for the reasons I highlighted above.