http://sithwarrior.com/forums/Thread-Tradeoff-with-Defense-Rating-Shield-Rating-Absorption-Rating

Long story short, it depends on the current ratio of your stats. Given that you can stack defense very easily, I personally go with a bit more shield rating/absorb. In my current tank set, I have 24% defense, 34% shield rating, and 37.5% absorb. Mod a little bit more for absorb as the diminishing returns on absorb are practically non-existent and the additional absorb is quite handy for overall damage reduction.

I would say Defense is the better stat but you want a mixture of all three.

I myself prefer Absorb because Defense you're relying on the mob/person to miss. Unfortunately Endgame gear kind of stream lines you into defense if you're tanking. I disagree with that notion since it's more common that Elites and up will hit you more times than they'll miss.

But whatever works out for the OP. The Armor ratings and stats with endgame gear are enough to balance everything out when you get there.

Stack the healths whenever possible all your gear comes predetermined till you can get higher level mods enhancements. The best defensive stat is one you can rely on all the time endurance fits this roll. If you have an augment slot or a choice between other def stats and endurance always put it into endurance first

Not true in the least. Health takes a secondary stance to the other stats, as blocking/defending will give you more effective health per point than pure endurance

High Health and armor offer something def rating shield rating and absorb will never offer. These stats are entirely random where as having a higher health pool and mitigation will have consistency. High health and armor offer a consistency that stacking these other defensive stats wont.

Did you know that those stats can't be improved by switching mods? Its only a matter of absorb, shield, defense rating decision...

once you get into hardmode and nightmare operations, you will want defence, and then you'll want some more defence. It's by far the best stat for us, especially coupled with the defense bonus from retaliate.

Not true either. Defense has a HUGE diminishing returns on it, stacking too much is absolutely worthless. You need a balance between them

if you avoid 1 attack, it stacks up to having an extra 2k-3k health. High health and armor are damn near useless, and they're the same stats anyway.

And once you do bosses such as the fabricator, and the 2nd rancor in karaga's palace, you'll realize the importance of defense.

Not true either. Defense has a HUGE diminishing returns on it, stacking too much is absolutely worthless. You need a balance between them

that's for sure true, and i'm not saying you should try getting 50% defense just from your armor, but it should be any jugg's no. 1 priority when gearing up. Once you reach around 25% defense, you can start looking at balancing out shield and shield absorb

Pretty sure i already do them. Def rating and shield rating/absorb rating offer avoidance not mitigation and therefore are unreliable. For example compare armor to def rating would you rather take 20% less dmg each attack or avoid 20% of attacks but takes 100% on the ones you do take. No healers like spiky tanks.

No, but armor has a huge diminishing return and you can't stack armor past a certain point. If you're comparing armor to def rating, it's not taking 20% less damage each attack, it's taking 0 damage for 20% of attacks. Slightly different than what you're saying. Shield rating/absorb offers mitigation in the complete sense of the word, reducing incoming damage by a flat %. What are you even talking about?

if you avoid 1 attack, it stacks up to having an extra 2k-3k health. High health and armor are damn near useless, and they're the same stats anyway.

 

And once you do bosses such as the fabricator, and the 2nd rancor in karaga's palace, you'll realize the importance of defense.

 

 

 

 

that's for sure true, and i'm not saying you should try getting 50% defense just from your armor, but it should be any jugg's no. 1 priority when gearing up. Once you reach around 25% defense, you can start looking at balancing out shield and shield absorb

Ehhh...I'd disagree again. As a MT/OT for our guild running nightmare content, I'm sitting at just over 23.7% defense. However, I have 38% shield absorb and 34% shield rating. The lost 1.3% defense for a gain of 16% absorb and 4% shield rating is absolutely worth it

Shield rating doesnt occur on every hit after the accuracy vs def rating roll to see if it hits there is a second roll a roll that will determine if the attack is a critical or shielded. Shield is not taken into account on every attack and therefore is avoidance not mitagation

Erm, no. Avoidance is attacks AVOIDED. As in, dodge/parry. This is your defense rating. Mitigation is average damage reduction - it does not have to occur every single attack in order to be part of mitigation. With shield rating/absorb, you drop your average damage taken by shield rating * shield absorb. This, then, is mitigation.

I dont think you understand my argument at all where as i understand yours. Having shield rating def rating and absorb could still lead to you taking crit over and over and over again from a boss without avoiding or mitigating anything at all. Armor reduces all damage so lets classify it as hard mitigation. Hard mitigation is a more reliable stat which is important for any tank. Higher health pool increases your effective health where as those other ratings could have absolutely no effect at all because they are random. Priority of stats is:

armor

endurance(maybe switched with armor)

def rating

shield rating

absorb rating(have to have some absorb for shielding at about a 2:1 ratio

While you may take less damage over a boss fight stacking these its not about taking less damage its about being consistent so your healers do not have hectic moments and let you die or a dps die to heal you during a damage spike.

I dont think you understand my argument at all where as i understand yours. Having shield rating def rating and absorb could still lead to you taking crit over and over and over again from a boss without avoiding or mitigating anything at all. Armor reduces all damage so lets classify it as hard mitigation. Hard mitigation is a more reliable stat which is important for any tank. Higher health pool increases your effective health where as those other ratings could have absolutely no effect at all because they are random. Priority of stats is:

armor

endurance(maybe switched with armor)

def rating

shield rating

absorb rating(have to have some absorb for shielding at about a 2:1 ratio

 

While you may take less damage over a boss fight stacking these its not about taking less damage its about being consistent so your healers do not have hectic moments and let you die or a dps die to heal you during a damage spike.

Look, instead of sitting here arguing about something pointless (like how armor comes naturally with gear, as does endurance) and telling you that you're wrong, just go to sithwarrior.com and look at the stuff done there.

As some have pointed out here, the armor and defense stats are subjected to very harsh diminishing returns (sithwarrior.com plots all the stats' DR curves if you're curious). They're definitely the best mitigation you can get, though.

Shields are a huge deal, and should not be discounted as second rate defensive stats. Try to keep shield chance and absorb pretty close to the same values (i.e. 25% shield chance 25% absorbtion). And play around with it and find your own sweet spot. I personally have stopped stacking defense for now (i'm around 22 or 23%) because my absorb is pretty low (only 22% while my shield chance is like 35%). The high shield stats really help smooth out the damage, especially when you're holding multiple mobs. With big packs, it just looks like I have a shield on permanently because it's proccing so often!

New game, same old misconceptions and tangled terminology from the last 4-5 games.

the armor and defense stats are subjected to very harsh diminishing returns (sithwarrior.com plots all the stats' DR curves if you're curious). They're definitely the best mitigation you can get, though.

Defense isn't mitigation. It's avoidance. The difference is not just semantic.

DISCLAIMER: None of what I'm about to write is intended in any way, shape, or form to downplay the importance of defense in favor of mitigation stats (or vice versa). In fact, it's intended to do exactly the opposite.

The problem with trying to equate avoidance and mitigation to get a neat mathematical equivalency is that they're two different terms that don't belong together in the same mathematical expression....it's rather like trying to prove that the square root of Chicago is "fish".

For example, Gankstah's "mean mitigation" work, that tried to put defense and mitigation stats into the same expression for formulaic use was an accurate, brilliant piece of math that, unfortunately, doesn't model real tanking.

Yes, avoidance does reduce damage taken over time by avoiding some damage entirely....if you have 20% defense (avoidance), you will "mitigate" 20% damage over time.

The problem is that any random system only models the theoretical distribution over sufficient time, and actual tanking doesn't take place over that kind of time scale. You can't go into a 5-minute fight, with 20% avoidance, and claim that you'll mitigate 20% of the potential damage, and you certainly can't tell your healers that you'll only take 4 hits out of every 5; local spikes will always exist in any random system, and those local spikes are the scale tanking (and healing) occupies.

Mitigation, however, does operate that way; if you have total mitigation of 40%, you can confidently tell your healers that you'll only take 40% of incoming damage...and that number will be true on a scale that matters to them.

I think tanks have a blind spot when it comes to optimization and theory; we tend to forget that our goal is NOT to take as little damage as possible. Our goal is to be as healable as possible; we tend to forget that we're one half of a two-headed system.

So, from a healer's perspective, what kills tanks? Two things do....spikes, and running out of resources.

Avoidance doesn't help a healer deal with spikes...a 40% avoidance tank that takes 4 hits in a row requires just as much work to heal up as a tank with 20% avoidance who takes 4 hits in a row. Mitigation (and in this case, we can count shield/absorb as mitigation, since it's on a separate roll) does; it reduces the amount of damage taken on a local scale, meaning that less healing is required to stabilize the tank.

By the same token, mitigation doesn't help a healer deal with resource management; reducing incoming damage by a certain amount creates a gap that still has to be healed, while avoiding attacks entirely allows them to not cast a heal, therefore conserving their resources.

So, if a game's properly designed, there's no "optimal" stat between the two; it's entirely situational. Are you dying to spikes of damage that your healer can't heal in time? Then you need better mitigation for that fight. Are you dying because your healer's running out of resources? Then you need more avoidance for that fight (make sure the primary damage sources are actually avoidable first). Are you dying to neither? Then you don't need to worry about survival stats...might as well stack some damage, OR add to both roughly equally to improve in a well-rounded fashion.

The whole "avoidance is useless" thing comes from late-period WoW (among other games), where Blizzard's response to gear inflation was to make bosses hit like trains in (often unavoidable) spikes, and where healers could spam forever without risking running out of resources. in that system, yes, EH (health and mitigation) became king, and avoidance's value was severely limited.

This, however, is not that game, and not that system. Both defense and mitigation have their places...you just need to figure out what's (potentially) killing you, and gear appropriately.